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If someone reads the rules text, and plays off of that, then there is no problem. When each attack or impact is one instance, there are no edge cases that create OP/UP balance issues, no contradictions arising from multiple instances, etc.

The problem is that this interpretation directly contradicts the damage rules text.

Player Core page 407:

Once you've calculated how much damage you deal, you'll need to determine the damage type.

THE damage type. Not damage types. This entire section acts like anytime you deal damage, you are dealing exactly ONE type of damage. There's no allowance anywhere in there for dealing multiple damage types at the same time.

Which indicates that each type of damage is its own instance of damage.

This is why it is rare for multiple resistances or weaknesses to apply to one instance of damage, because you'd need to have both weakness iron and weakness bludgeoning. Or for a spell to deal holy fire damage (as holy is a trait).

There's other issues as well - if you apply the highest weakness to the whole attack, then if something has resistance 10 to fire, it could prevent more damage from the attack than the attack dealt in fire damage in the first place.

I think it's actually mostly pretty simple - the holy trait would only apply to the base weapon attack, because it doesn't say it applies to any of the other instances of damage (like the elemental weapon runes), so it doesn't. This makes perfect sense, honestly, and also makes it so that things like special weapon types and holy damage won't stack if they're vulnerable to both (which seems reasonable to prevent the champion from doing like +20 damage with a holy cold iron weapon).

The biggest issue with the instances of damage is when you deal multiple different damage types with an area attack. As all of them are clearly area damage, you end up causing spells like Earth's Bile to double proc the weaknesses of swarms and troops.

That does make sense. Though with that in mind, how come Double Slice prevents double dipping on precision damage but *not* Strength, when many Dex-focused classes rely on precision damage to offset lower Strength values?

Because rogues.

A rogue using double slice, even only able to apply the precision damage once, does more damage than a rogue striking twice.

If you could apply it twice, Double Slice would be so good literally every rogue would be stupid not to take it.

What I'd like to see is them making the magus always be in the stance, or for the stance to be something you trigger by spellstriking/casting a spell. I'd also like to see them put a built-in attack focus spell for it so everyone doesn't archetype.

For summoner, I'd like to see some more focus spells as well, and for going down as a summoner not to be so shafty. More eidolon items would be fun.

I look forward to the Necromancer.

I dread the Runesmith, as the playtest was... not great. Very broken class, and they probably had to completely rejigger it.

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There aren't many attack spells because attack spells are fundamentally broken from a game math perspective.

Spells scale much more aggressively than strikes, and end up being about twice as powerful as strikes.

To prevent spells from being super-broken, it is roughly twice as hard to mess with spell save DCs as it is to mess with attack rolls.

If you give an attack spell normal damage spell scaling, then it becomes possible for it to deal way too much damage by boosting your attack rolls.

Moreover, because attack spells don't have half-effect on miss, they're also way swingier than normal spells.

As such, almost all attack spells are very low level, and only a few are relevant at higher levels (mostly focus spells plus Holy Light and Moonlight Ray, which, if you've ever used them against appropriate enemy types, are kind of broken).

Alchemist is bad and is not much like a caster. That said, it shouldn't be missing any more than any other martial.

Arcane and Primal casters deal tons of damage at mid to high levels. The only time they're low damage is very low levels (1-4, and especially 1-2). Divine eventually does a lot as well. Occult does some but not nearly as much as the other three.

Casters are better in games with fewer combats as you can unload on them.

The success rates of spells

Spells do not function like attacks.

Most good spells are not single target spells.

Spells are extremely accurate. They have an effect even on a successful saving throw. This makes them MORE accurate.

Spells also do not have single targets. A fireball, thrown at four PL+0 enemies, will deal half damage to two of them, and full damage to two of them, assuming they have average reflex saves.

This means that spells do lots of damage. A fighter at level 5 is doing 2d10+4 damage. A fireball is doing 6d6.

At level 11, Chain Lightning is doing literally twice the base damage of a fighter with a polearm.

Spell success rates will be ~50% at best. Area spells are less impactful because of few possible targets.

AoEs actually work well against 2-4 enemies.

And again, "spell success rates" is a bad way of thinking about how spells work. Good spells do some effect on a success and a larger effect on a failure. Or just have automatic effects like Wall of Stone.

(And maybe something that works in the earlier levels. Playing a class for a year until it becomes fun, is not what I am looking for.)

Play a caster class with good early focus spells and good early slotted spells.

Druids and Animists are both really good from low levels. A druid with an animal companion not only does a lot of damage but can also cast Thundering Dominance, which is a hugely powerful, no friendly fire AoE damage + frighten spell that does 4d8 damage from rank 2/level 3. The animal companion plus your spells allows you to fight effectively.

By level 6 you can get Pulverizing Cascade from Wave Order and constantly pound enemies with AoE damage spells every combat.

Animists, you use Earth's Bile plus either strikes or casting spells, doing some mix of the two generally speaking. Using a weapon like a longspear is good, or a breaching pike plus open hand for battle medicine if you can. You can use the other focus spells as well, a number are good from level 1.

Oracle, Cosmos Oracle or Tempest Oracle both have some solid options at low levels as well thanks to their focus spells.

Oni Shogun wrote:

There is already an Impossible Lands sourcebook?

Yes, there is.

Whatever Impossible thing is coming, it may be related to the Impossible Lands (esp considering the theme of the two classes therein) but its *not* likely another Impossible Lands setting book. I believe someone speculated Impossible Magic, but we have yet to see. It could be a full book of magic but with the Rival Academies im not sure we'll double down so closely on a purely magical focus unless maybe this book is to expand on other approaches to magic besides the academic environment.

I think it is likely to be a magic book.

Secrets of Magic cannot be remastered; there's too much OGL content.

My guess is we'll see a new magic-centric book that contains the Runesmith, the Necromancer, and a remastered Magus and Summoner, plus some new magic stuff (and unfortunately, probably a lot of reprints of Secrets of Magic spells and other things).

Draconic Codex Issues

Horde of Underlings (Draconic Codex pg. 225) - Damage is currently dealt separately by all the minions rather than combined. This creates two issues: monsters with damage resistance are effectively immune to the minions, while monsters with weaknesses (including granted weaknesses) will take the weakness once per minion, resulting in, for instance, a ruffian rogue who inflicts weakness 5 to bludgeoning on a monster via Vicious Debilitations adding +50 damage if someone casts a 5th rank Horde of Minions that deal bludgeoning damage.

Recommended Errata:

"Each underling attacks one enemy adjacent to it (if any), automatically dealing 1d4 damage of the chosen type. If multiple underlings attack the same creature, combine the damage and apply resistances and weaknesses only once."

TBH, I think the real problem is that precision damage immunity should be exclusive to oozes and maybe rare monster types like Wrom Who Walks type things.

I think that ghosts and other insubstantial monsters should be immune to precision damage UNLESS you have a ghost touch ability, in which case, it should work (because of course cutting a ghost's head off with a ghost sword works).

While I get why swarms are immune... honestly, I just don't think they should be. Yeah, it make some sense, I guess, but ehhh, they're normal creatures.

I think if they used it more judiciously it'd be fine, but it is on too many things.

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WRT: other immunities:

Poison immunity makes sense for stuff that isn't alive (undead and constructs); I don't think they need to make so many random demons and whatnot immune.

Fire immunity makes sense for monsters that are either made of fire or which do things like bathe in lava (which dragons do, which is why fire immunity makes sense on them).

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And while magic/spell immune enemies were annoying, golems were designed to have weaknesses. In fact, most such monsters had something they were vulnerable to.

There's also the fact that there's a bunch of spells that don't technically affect the golem, like Wall of Stone, or doing something like collapsing a ceiling on a golem's head. Or using summons. Which meant that casters had a number of ways of circumventing that immunity.

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WRT: Runes, which runes are best depends heavily on your campaign.

In outlaws of Alkenstar, Shock runes are the best because of the constructs that are vulnerable to electricity. Astral Rune, meanwhile, is actually pretty mediocre, because all the constructs are immune to it and there aren't many ghosts.

In Abomination Vaults, Astral is best because of all the ghosts.

In just generic terms, Fire and Frost as a combo proc the most weaknesses.

Liturgist practice for animist is severely overpowered compared to other practices.

Medium practice flavor and mechanics are contradictory and one or the other needs corrected to avoid confusion and/or create consistency.

Liturgist is fun to play; Dancing Invocation is a lot of fun. Nerfing it would make the class less fun to play as.

I think the real problem isn't that Liturgist is overpowered, it is that the other traditions are underpowered and get really lame level 9 abilities; medium is the closest to right, though still worse than Liturgist, but the others are pretty bad.

My suggestion:

* Medium: Dual Invocation (9th) You can build powerful bonds with multiple apparitions. You can select two of your attuned apparitions to be your primary apparitions. If you have the supreme incarnation class feature, you choose which apparition's avatar form you manifest each time you cast the avatar spell. The number of Focus Points in your focus pool is equal to the number of focus spells you have or the number of primary apparitions you are attuned to, whichever is higher (maximum 3). Once per round, when you Sustain a vessel spell, you also Sustain an apparition spell or vessel spell.

* Seer: Invocation of Protection (9th) Your status as an intermediary across planar boundaries grants you further defenses against spiritual ailments. You gain spirit resistance and void resistance equal to half your level, and your status bonus to saving throws and AC against the effects of haunts and the abilities of spirits and incorporeal undead increases to +2. When you Recall Knowledge, you also Sustain an apparition spell or vessel spell.

* Shaman: Invocation of Growth (9th) Your bond with the physical form of your chosen apparition grows stronger. You gain the Incredible Familiar feat. When you Command an Animal to command your familiar, you also Sustain an apparition spell or vessel spell.

This lets all of them lean into their particular things:

* Medium gets to have two primary apparitions and can channel both of their vessel spells at once, making them the best at using two vessel spells at the same time. It has the once per round restriction to avoid "going infinite" with itself.

* Seers get to sustain for free when they Recall Knowledge, which is a very Seer thing to do, making them better at exploiting all those bonus lores and letting them lean into Recall Knowledge in a way other Animists cannot due to action economy.

* The familiar will often chew into the action economy you want to use for your actual stuff, so making it so that commanding your familiar also sustains your vessel spell makes you more able to use that familiar. It also makes sense flavor-wise, given that your familiar represents one of the spirits you are working with.

It also gives all of them action compression, but makes them good at different things, which would help to diversify Animist builds.

Exemplar Dedication!

With it's current state, a martial character with the exemplar dedication, taking one of the weapon ikons will outperform a fully classed exemplar using the same ikon in most combat scenarios.
An easy fix would be for archetype Ikons not to apply Imminence effects (and only apply them if they're are needed as a part of a Transcendence during the Transcendence).
This would help exemplars gain a place among damage martials, as well as create a healthier and more diverse ground for building characters

Having actually seen Exemplars in a number of games, and characters with the Exemplar dedication, it hasn't been an issue at all. It's a solid archetype but I have rarely found it to be the *best* option.

While getting the Ikon static ability is a nice boost for a number of martial classes but it isn't better than other powerful class archetypes (getting Heavy Armor from Champion or Guardian, going into Marshal to get an aura that boosts your allies' damage (you and your allies all getting +2 damage is much better than any of the static damage boosts), going into Beastmaster to get an animal companion who basically means you ALWAYS get to flank and get a fourth action per round due to the companion, getting the action compression from Spirit Warrior, getting free alchemical items every day from the Alchemist dedication, going Psychic or Druid to grab powerful focus spells, going monk to get a powerful monk stance as a class with restricted weapons which also leaves them with free hands, etc.) and the follow-up feats from a lot of other archetypes are *way* better than what you get from the Exemplar - a character who goes Marshal for Dread Marshal Stance, or who goes Champion to get Lay on Hands and the Champion Reaction, generally ends up significantly stronger than someone who just goes Exemplar.

Moreover, Exemplars themselves are one of the strongest martial classes in the game; the idea that people archetyping to them surpass them suggests to me that you haven't seen Exemplars in action.

Exemplars, because they have multiple Ikons, can use their Ikon abilities every round of combat, bouncing between them constantly and changing which static bonuses they have. This is very powerful, and is something you can't do by archetyping until level 12. Moreover, because of the Epithets, Exemplars basically gain a bonus action every time they use one of their special Ikon powers, which you can just never do as any other class archetyping to them.

Moreover, Exemplars themselves archetype very well into other classes, especially Champion, but there's a number of other powerful builds they can go into.

Exemplars are very, very powerful; you can build them in a number of different ways and there are a number of very strong builds.

And of course, Exemplars themselves archetype very well into other classes, like Champion (which gives them heavy armor and the ability to protect other people with their reaction), Guardian (for much the same reasons), and Alchemist (with the ability to feed potions to their buddies as a single action).

Indeed, a lot of Exemplars will archetype at low levels due to the generally lackluster low-level Exemplar feats (which is also part of why the Exemplar archetype isn't actually all that good, because most of the low-level Exemplar feats are mediocre) and you end up with a very, very potent character.

Exemplars use Ikons MUCH better than other classes do due to their suite of abilities to support their usage and just the fact that they ping their spark between different ikons instead of having to waste an action to get their ikon recharged should they use a special ability.

Not to say that the dedication is bad by any means, but I wouldn't put it above other good dedications.

Ambiguity/Confusion Issues:

• Stifling Stillness (Rage of Elements, Page 71) - Clarification as to how Stifling Stillness works. It should note that the enemies can't just hold their breath in reaction to the spell being cast, so unless they were already holding their breath when it was cast, it affects them; as is, there's inconsistency between tables as to whether or not the spell allows that. It is very weak if enemies can just automatically hold their breath in response. My suggestion would be to change the text to "Creatures in the area that breathe air that weren't holding their breath prior to the spell being cast must spend a single action..." to clarify this.

• Freezing Rain (Rage of Elements, Page 173) - I'm not sure if it is intentional, but the way it is worded, you can't freeze the rain on the round you cast it, which makes it rather lackluster for a 3-action rank 5 spell compared to other control spells at this level. I've seen confusion as to whether or not this is allowed, as the flavor text suggests you can "do a magical tweak" to turn the rain to freezing rain, which makes people think you can do it immediately, but as written, you cannot. I'd change it to make it so you can freeze the rain the round you cast it. My suggested wording would be:

"Intense cold rain comes from nowhere, a microcosm of a sudden downpour, and a magical tweak can turn the rain to freezing sleet. When you cast the spell and the first time you sustain it each round, the rain makes the area difficult terrain and extinguishes magical fires in the area, and you can choose to freeze the rain; if you sustained the spell, you can also move the area up to 20 feet. If you freeze the rain, each creature in the area takes 4d6 cold damage and might be slowed, depending on the result of its Reflex save."

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Swashbuckler ( Player Core 2 pg. 158): In the Finisher section, change the text: "Once you use a finisher, you can't use actions that have the attack trait for the rest of your turn." to: "Once you use a finisher, you can't use actions that have the finisher trait for the rest of your turn." Swashbucklers don't need to be shut out of additional attack actions after using a finisher; this makes them more able to use abilities like grapple and trip on their turn, which feels good, and not having to choose between using your finisher and doing stuff that helps you in the tank role is good.

My group has played with this as a house rule and it hasn't been an issue at all; indeed, even with this buff, Swashbucklers are still on the weak side of things, so we've actually gone further than this and also given them Reactive Strike as a bonus feat at 1st level, and they're still fine.

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Magus: Change Arcane Cascade (Secrets of Magic pg. 38) to a free action. As-is, it is rarely worth entering Arcane Cascade because the Magus's action economy does not support it; it is almost always better to be doing something else with that action. Making it a free action makes it more consistent with Quick Tempered. Making it so that the Magus can fight in their stance much more consistently makes the class work a lot better and adds more distinction to the different hybrid studies.

My group has played with this as a house rule and it hasn't caused any issues, and it has made the Magus feel better to play.

Magus's Analysis (Secrets of Magic pg. 42) - I would delete "If your check is successful" and just make it automatically recharge your spellstrike. This feat is very lackluster as-is because the chance of getting nothing out of your recharge is pretty high, especially given that you likely only have 1-2 knowledge skills trained to a particularly high level; making it just work lets you upgrade recharging your spellstrike with getting a free Recall Knowledge when you do it, but only once per creature, so it's a nice little boost but it's not a huge upgrade. As-is, this feat is not really worth taking; with this upgrade, it is more of a consideration.

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Inventor: Change Overdrive (Guns & Gears pg. 16) to a free action, triggered when you start your turn. This makes it more consistent with the remastered Rage, allowing you to start it up without spending an action. Inventors are on the weaker end of classes, so avoiding an action tax to use their main class ability (in the same way that Barbarians do) would help them significantly.

My second suggestion would be to change Unstable (Guns & Gears pg. 15) to "Unstable actions are experimental applications of your innovation that even you can’t fully predict. When you take an unstable action, attempt a DC 15 flat check immediately after applying its effects. This DC is 13 if you’re legendary in Crafting. On a failure, the innovation malfunctions in a spectacular (though harmless) fashion, such as a belch of smoke or shower of sparks, and you cannot use that unstable action again. On a critical failure, you also take an amount of fire damage equal to half your level. You can spend 10 minutes retuning your innovation and making adjustments to return it to functionality, at which point you can use all unstable actions with that innovation again."

As-is, taking additional Unstable feats is mostly a bad idea, because unstable applies to ALL your unstable actions, unlike focus points, which give you an additional focus point for each focus point you take (up to three). By changing Unstable to make it so you can't use that particular unstable action again, it encourages Inventors to take a lot of unstable actions, because then they can use a variety of different ones across the encounter, but will rarely get to use the same one twice in an encounter.

This would help to boost the inventor up; currently, the inventor is one of the weakest classes in the game and is generally rather lackluster. This would encourage them to lean more into their class features and would help bring them more up to par with classes like Barbarian.

My group has played with these as house rules and it hasn't caused any issues, and has made the Inventor feel better to play.

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Monk (Player Core 2 pg. 114): Make Reflexive Stance (Player Core 2 pg. 125) a base class ability for the monk. Monks often center around stances, but they take an action penalty in the first round of combat, and for stances like Mountain Stance, if you are caught out of your stance, you often have massively lower AC. The Stance is basically the monk's equivalent of the Barbarian's rage, so giving them it at the start of combat in the same way that Barbarians got Quick-Tempered would bring better parity between the classes.

My group has played with this as a house rule and it hasn't caused any issues and has made the Monk feel better to play.

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Ranger Hunt Prey (Player Core pg. 154): Add "When you roll initiative, you may Hunt Prey on one creature you can observe as a free action." As-is, it is optimal for Rangers to Hunt Prey out of combat, but sometimes the GM forgets to ask, and sometimes you're in a situation where it is hard to determine which particular creature the Ranger might be hunting if they are tracking a group of creatures. This creates greater consistency for the ranger, and also lowers the burden on both the GM and the Ranger players to make sure that they are Hunting Prey at all times outside of combat, while still making it so that if the Ranger is ambushed by creatures it isn't aware of, it can't just have Hunt Prey up automatically on them.

My group has played with this as a house rule and it hasn't caused any issues; it has smoothed out Ranger gameplay significantly and lowered GM and player burden.

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Animal companion consistency vs Archetypes - a lot of the classes just have slower scaling than the Beastmaster archetype for no reason, this should be brought up to par; as is, it is better to just take the Beastmaster archetype than the class feats for many classes:

• Change getting a Mature Animal Companion to a level 4 feat for Champion (Loyal Warhorse, Player Core 2 pg. 95), Commander (Battle-Tested Companion, Battlecry! pg. 31), and Ranger (Mature Animal Companion, Player Core pg. 159), as well as for the Mammoth Lord Archetype (Mature Megafauna Companion, Pathfinder #177: Burning Tundra pg. 77)

• Change getting a Incredible Companion to a level 8 feat for Champion (Imposing Destrier, Player Core 2 pg. 97), Commander (Battle-Hardened Companion, Battlecry! pg. 32), and Ranger (Incredible Companion, Player Core pg. 161)

Animal companions at high levels - The third upgrade is at level 14 (or 16, for non-druids/non-beastmasters), but this makes the animal companion feel like it is significantly behind at levels 12-13 (and 14-15), as PC damage jumps way up from levels 8-12, making the animal companion fall woefully behind; the previous jumps (4 and 8) happen on striking runes and getting your first elemental runes respectively; it makes sense for the next jump to occur at level 12, when the next level of striking runes are unlocked. I would suggest changing Specialized Animal Companion to level 12:

• Change Specialized Companion to a level 12 feat for Champion (Auspicious Mount, Player Core 2 pg. 98), Commander (Peerless Mascot Companion, Battlecry! pg. 35), Druid (Specialized Companion, Player Core pg. 135), Inventor (Paragon Companion, Guns & Gears pg. 30), Ranger (Specialized Companion, Player Core pg. 162), and the various pet archetype classes: Beastmaster (Specialized Beastmaster Companion, Player Core 2 pg. 189), Cavalier (Specialized Mount, Player Core 2 pg. 193), and Mammoth Lord (Specialized Megafauana Companion, Pathfinder #177: Burning Tundra pg. 78).

Companion quality of life issues:

• Extremely long cooldown times on Animal Companions and Familiars dying is a big problem if those things actually die during the course of a campaign, as there are a lot of situations where spending a week of downtime getting your familiar/animal companion back would be disruptive to the plot or make no sense. A familiar or animal companion may represent 3-4 class feats, a significant chunk of your character's power. My suggestion would be for all classes to regain their familiar/companion during their daily preparations.

• The Witch suffers even more if their familiar dies during a fight, and it happens much more frequently with them than other characters because their familiars are often put in harm's way to get to apply the Witch's ability. I'd make the Witch's familiar be re-summoned after refocusing, so that the Witch isn't out one of their main class abilities if their familiar dies to a stray AoE damage spell in the first combat of the day.

We have played with all of these as house rules in our games, and they haven't presented any significant issues and has made it more fun to use these abilities without making them centralizing or overpowered.

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First rank spell rebalancing - a lot of the damage spells at 1st rank are just bad, not doing enough damage to be worth a spell slot. A big part of the problem is that they don't hit the important 8 damage threshold, which means they often can't kill level -1 monsters, while a Martial's strike can. Moreover, the chip damage often doesn't end up mattering because strikes one-shot the creatures anyway, and a level 1 creature that makes its save against one of these spells often doesn't take quite enough chip damage for it to reliably be taken down with two strikes from a martial. This is a major source of complaints from low-level casters; they often go for the damage options (which are good at higher levels) but end up feeling underpowered/worthless, and it leads to long-term negative consequences in terms of mentality and puts a lot of people off casters. I would suggest buffing the damage but lowering the scaling for a lot of 1st rank spells:

• Change Acidic Burst (Divine Mysteries pg. 256), Admonishing Ray (Pathfinder #158: Sixty Feet Under pg. 76), Breathe Fire (Player Core pg. 319), and Briny Bolt (Pathfinder #188: They Watched the Stars pg. 80) to 3d6 base damage with a heightened of +1d6 damage per rank, to make there be more worthwhile blasting spells at 1st rank without scaling up above what higher rank spells do.
• Change Chilling Spray ( Player Core 2 pg. 242) and Pummeling Rubble (Player Core pg. 351) to 2d8 base damage adding +1d8 damage per rank for the same reason.
• Change Hydraulic Push's (Player Core pg. 336) critical effect to dealing double damage instead of 6d6, so it works consistently compared to other spells when heightened
• Change Shockwave ( Divine Mysteries pg. 260) to also deal 1d8 bludgeoning damage base plus 1d8 damage per rank, and have it do double damage on a crit fail instead of just a static boost.
• Change Wooden Fists' (Rage of Elements pg. 199) heightened 3rd rank effect to what the spell does at rank 1 and eliminate the Heightened Rank 3 version entirely; the rank 1 version is just really not worth casting.

Second rank spell rebalancing - There's a few 2nd rank spells with rather lackluster damage as well:

• Increase the base damage of Ash Cloud (Secrets of Magic pg. 90) to 2d8 and increase the heightened damage to 1d8 per rank.

• Increase the base damage of Rime Slick (Pathfinder #151: The Show Must Go On pg. 78) from 2d4 to 4d6, and change the d4s to d6s on the heightened versions of the spell.

• Increase Sticky Fire's (Battlecry! pg. 91) base damage to 2d8 fire damage plus 1d8 persistent fire damage.

Third rank spell rebalancing:

• Change Firework Blast (Firebrands pg. 89) so all creatures in the AoE must make the Fortitude save regardless of their degree of success on the Reflex save; as is, the odds of getting the rider are too low to make this a viable alternative to spells like Fireball and Cave Fangs.

I'm a big fan of this. Definitely makes oracles substantially more powerful. Suspect Cosmos, Time, Ash, and Tempest oracles are top tier now.

I'm interested in what changes (if any) they made to the mysteries, especially the weaker ones.

I just completed this adventure yesterday as a player. It's quite good overall, and frankly, a better introduction to Pathfinder 2E than the Beginner's Box.

The module does a number of things quite cleverly:

* It has a NPC healer who helps you out for a couple encounters at the very beginning, giving you "training wheels" that also feel like a natural part of the world and precondition you towards remembering that NPCs have agency, too.

* It has a variety of different (if mostly pretty simple) enemies you fight over the course of the module.

* It presents the players with a small mystery that they get to solve via RP after getting a few combat encounters under their belt, and which has multiple ways of solving it that lead to the next part of the adventure so the players can't really get stuck.

* There are actual stakes - the players aren't just doing it just because, there's a reason why they need to help out and go and continue into these dangerous situations, and it makes sense from an IC perspective that they would do so.

* The combat encounters aren't overly difficult but aren't overly simplistic.

* It teaches players about weaknesses, gives them the tools to exploit them, and rewards them for exploiting them.

* There are RP encounters throughout the module, not just in one place - each section of the game has an opportunity where you can do some roleplaying, and not just going into every encounter with bloody intentions in mind can allow you to avoid fights and get help and allies

* The NPCs who are helpful often have a good, very sensible reason why they are supplying you with stuff rather than joining in to help you fight, so you don't feel like they are just shoving it on the PCs for no reason or leaving the fighting to the PCs for no reason.

* You can disrupt the bad guys' plans in ways that go beyond just killing things that, if the players are paying attention, will allow them to make their life significantly easier.

* The little town in the module is just big enough to be interesting without being so big that you'll get lost in it and derail the adventure.

I liked it a lot! It was a fun thing and it worked very well, and had a bit of charm to it.

This was a fun little story. I do enjoy that he died of imposter syndrome, and the implication that he never actually achieved godhood via the Starstone at all, but just lied about it enough it became true.

Doubly funny when Norgorger's solution to people claiming he was a fake was just to kill him. Somehow, not so convincing there Norgy.

Speak of the devil, and he will appear.

Look, folks. I know you think I'm some sort of boogeyman, but let's be honest here.

1) WotC owns the right to the distribution of their PDFs. They have the right to choose who can and cannot distribute their PDFs. If they decide no one can do so, so be it. You may not like it, but it is their decision, not yours, not Pazio's, not anyone else's.

2) The current situation was not ideal, but you all seem to lack empathy. You are not looking at it from other points of view.

a) Wizards of the Coast is not a villian. They're a company which produces a successful product, one which you all are so quick to forget is the basis for Paizo's pathfinder line, and really the success of Paizo in the first place, with their right to distribute some of their products, including Dungeon & Dragon magazines. They chose to withdraw these PDFs not for evil, machievallian reasons but because they are tired of the documents getting pirated the day of a release. Its when the PDFs come up on these sites when you see torrents of these files come up. They are guilty of miscommunication and misunderstanding, and perhaps of somewhat brash action - they decided to yank the PDFs, but immediately? Steve of DriveThruRPG claims that was the result of a miscommunication. Moreover, WotC is a company which does care about its customers. Anyone who says otherwise has never interacted with WotC. They do deal with customer service complaints, and they do care what people think, though not necessarily in the way that people generally think of it.

b) Paizo, DriveThruRPG, and the other PDF distribution companies aren't blameless victims here. They promised their customers the ability to download their documents again in the future, and did not make it clear to their consumers that this was not an inviolable guarantee; that if they were asked to pull down these documents, they would be removed, potentially on very short notice. They didn't make this clear enough, and people are, very understandably, upset. However, directing that rage at WotC is misguided; it wasn't WotC who told you you could redownload your PDFs several times in the indefinite future.

c) The people who lost downloads are the only real victims here. They actually lost something. But quick as people are to blame WotC, its pretty clear that WotC wasn't the one who made them the promise that they could redownload their PDFs. Hopefully this well be a lesson to the consumer, that these companies do not own the rights to all the products they distribute and apparently lack contracts which prevent their PDFs from being yanked down immediately, given that's precisely what happened, and even Paizo only gave its customers a day's notice. It will hopefully also be a lesson to these companies to actually write better contracts with their PDF suppliers, so that this sort of situation cannot recur.

3) While it is fair to be annoyed that PDFs are no longer available for the time being, it is still possible to purchase the books yourself and scan them in manually, if you want to use them as PDFs for some reason. Yes, its less convenient. No, its not an excuse to pirate. There is no excuse for thievery.

I do try to help people. I understand many people don't understand my motives, and really despise me. Or simply that they don't want or need my help. That's fine. But maybe other people do. Maybe other people do value what I bring to the proceedings.

And, perhaps ironically, you do as well. If you didn't, you wouldn't have made someone tell me "Hey, they're talking about you on Paizo's forums". But you did, and you had a moderator actually warn you about discussing people from other message boards. Someone even mentions that they'd forgotten, which implies this isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened.

It is really too bad that people do not try to look at things from the point of view of others, or to dissociate themselves from a situation before jumping to judgment. There would be far fewer problems in this world if they did.

Before you leap to blame the other, consider things from their perspective. It will help you better understand the situation, approach it more appropriately and, perhaps, allow you to see things you didn't see before.