Tiene's page

I’m not very experienced with PF2 but I was trying to build a thaumaturge with an undead eidolon from multiclassing when I noticed gaining the initial benefit requires a feat. This raised a few questions for me:

Does the eidolon still have Negative Healing?

Is the Eidolon still a living creature even if it doesn’t have the Negative Essence initial benefit?

Rules-as-written, does this mean the eidolon has the normal undead immunities mentioned since not having them is part of the initial benefit? (I understand this is probably unintended if so. Though I also don’t see any immunities listed in the undead trait on the archives of Nethys, other than a description of effects that sound identical to Negative Healing)

I’m trying to figure out how to make a fighter/alchemist after that hobgoblin preview. My assumption is that RAI is for your advanced alchemy level to be what you use to determine what level of items you can make at no cost during your daily preparations, but RAW it seems to only affect what items you can make two batches of from one batch of regents and what items you can make with quick alchemy.

I’m just posting to make sure I’m not making it harder on myself/any potential multiclassed alchemist PCs I GM for.

So when you Rage as a barbarian, you can't use any actions with the Concentrate trait (Moment of Clarity feat notwithstanding). This means a barbarian can't Command an Animal or Demoralize (even with the Intimidating Glare feat) in a single action. However, the Cast a Spell activity doesn't have the concentrate trait unless a verbal component is used. This means a barbarian is fully capable of casting as long as the actions needed to cast those spells don't have verbal components.

Enter the Bardbarian. If you're a bard, you can replace verbal components with focus components (which don't have the concentrate trait) by playing your instrument. As far as I can tell, this works whether you're a bard multiclassing into barbarian or a barbarian multiclassing into bard, because the bard dedication feat says "you cast spells like a bard."

I haven't dove into the occult spell list or higher level barbarian abilities deep enough to see if there's anything particularly great about this besides how cheesy it feels. But I just thought everyone should know that this exists and I'm not sure how I feel about it. (Mostly just because I think it's a shame that it takes more effort for a raging barbarian to Demoralize someone than a flimsier but more charismatic character.)

I'm using Archives of Nethys and can't find how to use an animal companion's Support Benefit. There's one line where it calls it a Support action but I can't find the description for that action. Is the process: Command an Animal -> grants the companion 2 Actions, the companion uses 1 action to Support and I gain the benefit? Are there any other requirements (besides the "you can't be mounted unless it has the mount trait" restriction)?

Also, under the horse entry it says:

"Your horse adds momentum to your charge. Until the start of your next turn, if you moved at least 10 feet on the action before your attack, add a circumstance bonus to damage to that attack equal to twice the number of damage dice. If your weapon already has the jousting weapon trait, increase the trait’s damage bonus by 2 per die instead."

(By the way, I find it weird that it doesn't say I have to be mounted.)

Does this mean I can do this as a ranger using a shortbow while mounted on a horse companion with the hunted shot feat?:

Spend 1st action to Hunt Prey, Spend 2nd action to Command an Animal, spend horse's 1st action to Support me, spend horse's 2nd action to Stride at least 10 feet, spend 3rd action to Hunted Shot, potentially dealing 2d6+4 damage?

The section under "targets" here says that if you, for example, target a vampire that you erroneously thought was a living creature and the spell requires a living creature, it fails to target the creature. But what does that mean? Is the spell slot used? Is the action spent?

"You are talented at outwitting and evading your prey. You gain a +2 circumstance bonus to Deception checks, Intimidation checks, Stealth checks, and any checks to Recall Knowledge about the prey, and a +1 circumstance bonus to AC against your prey’s attacks."

I feel they're supposed to but the wording is vague. If you Hide and Sneak, does the +2 circumstance bonus only apply to the check's result versus the Prey's DC or does it apply to the check generally (and therefore against all enemies' DCs)?

I made this thread for everyone to share their results with the new encounter building rules. I love the design of the encounter building rules and how the XP values are based off of the PCs' level, but it doesn't seem to work in every case.

I ran a playtest one-shot yesterday with three combat encounters for four level 3 PCs.

The PCs: human fighter (focusing on dual-wielding), human rogue, gnome bard, and goblin alchemist.

The encounters: 2 Crocodiles (level 2, low threat), 1 kobold scout and 4 kobold warriors (levels 1 and 0, high threat), 1 young black dragon (level 7, extreme threat).

The fight with the crocodiles took place in difficult terrain (human waist-high water, so greater difficult terrain for the gnome and goblin) and it started off with the rogue falling into the water due to failing a check to maintain grip on a pulley he was using to improvise a zipline across the swamp (I set it to DC 10, he got 8). The fall was short enough it did no damage (25 feet into water). The crocodiles succeeded at their stealth initiative rolls so they were able to use ambush. The rogue nearly dropped to 0 HP even with the crocodiles fighting each other over him. No one else was injured and the crocodiles were dispatched within 2 rounds. Considering the circumstances, it seems to be within parameters of a low-threat encounter (especially since I apparently gave them their jaws' grab for free by mistake).

The fight with the kobolds was a different story though. The kobold warriors were basically unable to do anything with their +0 to hit bonuses. Even if they did, their damage wasn't going to make a dent in the PCs' health at all. I have no idea how this was supposed to be a high-threat encounter. The terrain here was pretty neutral. They were dispatched within 2 rounds as well.

The fight with the dragon was over within one round: the dragon knocked out the fighter with its acid breath weapon (critical failure) and the rogue with one jaw attack (the rogue being the most injured, though he had been healed); the gnome and goblin fled. I have no idea how any party of level 3s is supposed to take on a level 7 creature even when fully rested -- the numbers are just too high.