Unicorn

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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber. Organized Play Member. 6,898 posts (6,900 including aliases). 3 reviews. No lists. No wishlists. 6 Organized Play characters. 1 alias.


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The reason I think the suppression effect was added and left in even for non-magical causes, is because it allows this spell to be effective in lower level slots for much longer than it would be otherwise. I think this is a good thing because the conditions it removes are common, but not often life threatening enough to waste a high rank spell slot and 2 actions on in an encounter situation. Giving the spell a pretty nice boost of “this is not likely to fail uselessly” feels like a kind way to keep it pretty relevant in a top rank -2 to -4 spell slot, where it’s not taking up a ton of character resources, but can be useful enough in a couple of encounter situations where I can see a lot of level 7 to 11 prepared support casters taking the time to memorize one in a lower tier slot.


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For conditions like grabbed, things that let you give it to someone else tend to specify that the grab ends if the creature moves away from source. I would personally then just rule that if the cause of the effect is no longer in position to maintain or give the condition, the condition just ends.


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magnuskn wrote:
The slowly building dread that it really is going to be Saranrae ain't that much fun, I can tell you...

I mean, I can completely understand that perspective, but isn't the story and how it helps the setting evolve going to end up being much more important than which specific god/goddess dies in the end? It is not like stories of that god or goddess are going to go away, or that they are going to be forgotten from the setting. I feel like Aroden is more present in Adventure Paths and Golarion Lore than most other gods and goddesses specifically because he did die, so it is possible that being the deity to die is only going make Sarenrae stories and lore even richer and more interesting. That is definitely why I think it is going to be her and am looking forward to it, even if I love her as a deity in the game far more than many others. I would much rather get to explore all the places in the world where her death will be meaningfully felt and lead to changes than Zon Kuthon, Gorum, Iori, or even Desna.


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Any effect that does damage or has DCs or makes rolls probably should have a level given to it. Even if you are using Simple DCs for something that could be giving conditions like grabbed or Clumsy, a trained DC 15 is also a level 1 DC. An expert 20 DC is also a level 5 DC, a Master 30 DC is also a level 12 DC, and a Legendary 40 DC is also a level 20 DC.


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Wouldn’t someone looking at “core only” in either the remastered content or the original PF2 rules be ignoring all supplemental books? Like, even if you are playing core only in a preremasted game you aren’t going to be seeing any Kineticists, psychics, magi or inventors.


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The thing about Kobolds is that you can absolutely still play a kobold character that is a smol dragon, and as a GM you can have entire groups of them that fan girl a dragon around, so nothing about the kobold loses the old flavor of existing kobold groups, you just probably aren’t likely to see more draconic kobold material in adventures and AP material for a little while until they can get enough other kinds of representation that players can get used to seeing other kinds of kobolds too.


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I guess a question I have about these tradition-based dragons is:

Do they inherently have spells that relate to their various traditions? or is the tradition less about the magical essence of the dragon and more about their role in the world? Will we get lots of caster dragons that study different traditions of magic than is their core essence?


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I think the Expert but with the juggernaut type effect makes a lot of sense of the Rogue as a "Luck" type character. A lot of traps and hazards do target fortitude and I think it is very on brand that Rogues tend to either be fine from such effects, or they are in big trouble.


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It is fun to try to guess where on Golarion the gods war is going to take place. I imagine much of the corresponding AP will go to the planes, but certainly a lot of it will be fought on Golarion. It could be global, but that moves the story pretty decisively out of the hands of PCs. I mean, we also know that the PCs aren’t likely to directly kill the god, but the AP will be a pretty big point of entry for many players to the story and hopefully some of the NPCs and descriptive detail that doesn’t fit in a rules book.

So Sarkoris seems like one possibility. I am hoping Casmeron personally. I am thinking the Mwangi expanse as a no, unless some Sarenrae/sun god pantheon stuff enters the picture.


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I think Kingmaker, having the video game and crossing over from PF1 to both PF2 and 5e has to be pretty high up there. The very first PFS2 scenario might be up there too, just from convention play and online play by post.


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(I assume the suggestion was made with humor, but it is a fun thought experiment) And thus we get a class taking voluntary flaws in all 3 save stats, that never, ever wants to use a finesse weapon as a finesse weapon, but only can use finesse weapons with their key ability. Also, every 5 levels they beg their GM to only give them 3 boosts.


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The Raven Black wrote:
Finoan wrote:

There will certainly be new books of monsters. I don't expect that the developers are going to say, "enough is enough and we will just continue using the same stagnant monsters that we already have".

I think people are getting confused about what a book being Remastered means.

The Remaster was never intended or advertised as causing old content to become unavailable - other than some things removed for licensing problems.

The idea that 'Oh, that was from an old book, so we can't use it since we switched over to the Remaster rules' is something that is coming from people on the internet - not from the game developers.

For example, the Cave Scorpion is from Bestiary 2. Which hasn't been Remastered. But that doesn't mean that the next AP book that comes out isn't going to include a Cave Scorpion or reference Bestiary 2 to get the stats for it rather than reprinting the stat block for the creature in the AP page count.

The only thing I don't know is what the name of the new book of monsters will be: "Bestiary 4" or "Monster Core 2".

AFAICT ORC and OGL must be completely divorced. Paizo could not mention an OGL book or a monster that comes from an OGL book in any of their future products since all those will be ORC.

For home games, everything is still available though.

I believe this is why we haven't had any ORC APs yet, because the content was there to publish an AP under the ORC license. Going forward after 7 dooms though, I am pretty sure any AP that wants to use a monster that is not in ORC published content is going to have to put the creature in the AP bestiary or have the stat block in the book as a "new" creature.


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Did the Will-o-whip pick up any elemental traits?


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Bluemagetim wrote:
keftiu wrote:
You don't have to be the inventor of the engine to blow it up when you try to modify one while it's running.

This is kind of what im trying to parse out.

Is it a single engine? is it many engines?
Are the engines of the gods fundamentally different from the ones mortals tap into.

So when Nethys breaks the engine what engine actually broke? who draws from it. are there others and so on.

Anyone who has an answer for you is trying to sell you their version of how magic works. After all, we already have Halcyon casting in PF2 which is a combination of arcane and primal magic.


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I am starting to wonder if the gods we are getting prophecies for are gods that are not going to be critically involved in the gods war? Or if they are going to be central to it?


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So, with all the hype trainery going on around the release of the new mythic book coming out down the road, I think there has been some confusion about they role of prophecy in it all.

The god that dies, in world, has no clear and well stated prophecy about their death floating around, much less one that is going to come true. (there might be hints of tidings of such news in one AP, stolen fate, but I don't think that exists as general information that all the heralds are heralding. The prophecies of the gods that are being "marked safe" in the blogs are all false prophesies. It is not that there is any kind of "a god is going to die" talk happening in Golarion. That is all happening here on Earth as promotional material for the book that will be released where a god dies, raining god goo down on some people, resulting in strange mythical powers.


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I would not require a player to have detected magic to cast dispel magic targeting a specific effect they describe.

To return to an old example: My level 5 wizard meets a guard at castle where a crime has just taken place. This is the guard who was supposedly on duty at the time of the crime. She gives a generic report to our party who is investigating the situation, but our party is not acting as official investigators on behalf of the owner of the castle (as is usually the case with adventuring parties). I ask to sense motive on the guard and am told that the guard looks a little out of it, with a dopy smile on her face. I subtly cast detect magic, but I am fifth level, so all I get told is that there is a 8th level magical effect in place. I have every reason to believe that the guard's weapon is magical with a property rune on it (as this guard has been described as having a flaming sword (they are a major plot figure we think we might either fight or fight along side later in the adventure), so that is probably going to be the highest rank/level of magic in the area. They could also be under the effect of a charm spell, a modified memory spell, a suggestion spell, or possibly even something like a domination spell or something higher rank if that effect has been disguised in some way). They could also not be the guard and are using an illusory disguise spell or a humanoid form spell. They could also be drugged with something that could be magical or could not be magical, or they could just be happy because they hate their boss. My character really doesn't know.

If my wizard has a rank 3 dispel magic memorized, that is going to counter a rank 4 spell effect on a success and a rank 2 or lower spell effect on a failure.

It sounds like most of us have very different ways we would handle this situation as a GM if the player said "I think there is some kind of magic affecting this NPC's mind or disguising something about this person, I want to cast Dispel Magic to try and counter that magical effect."

Personally, I am pretty comfortable letting a PC cast dispel magic in this circumstance, regardless of which of the cases it may be. If they roll well, I would personally let the dispel magic affect any one of the above possible effects. It is probably a difficult check to make, and I would rather players try to become active agents in the adventure as quickly as possible, rather than try to railroad some plot point of them being unable to figure out what is going on until later. Spell slots are limited resources and the odds of a very challenging combat encounter (probably at least level +2 or 3 at one of the most challenging level differences for parties to handle) breaking out with a success are going to be enough consequence to make the payout worth it. If there was supposed another level or two gained before this encounter takes place, then I might have the guard fight to escape rather than fight to the death. It is also possible that the guard was duped by a spell, and the total gain to the party is instead learning that a powerful caster is involved in the plot that has access to some rank 4 enchantment spells, as well as maybe more about the circumstances where the guard was enchanted. Again, this is probably a better thing for my party to learn now than later for the sake of their fun in navigating this adventure.

It sounds like many of you would say the player would have to treat "some kind of magic affecting this NPC's mind as one potential spell effect" and then "disguising something about this person" as a separate potential effect and that the player would have to choose one per casting of the spell. As a player I would accept this ruling without a complaint, even if it isn't how I would do it. People read things differently and I will probably have more than 1 dispel magic available to me at this point anyway, so I can try one, maybe both cases, and we can keep an eye on the character to see if they are still around in 10 minutes after I have substituted in another dispel magic.

If a GM told me I just cannot cast dispel magic in this circumstances without being able to investigate the spell effect and have a stronger sense of what it is, I would probably be a little frustrated as a player, because identify magic also requires that you know for certain that an object or effect is magical and then spend minimally 1 minute (maybe 10 depending on whether I have quick identify by level 5) investigating. If the GM lets me do that investigating in scene, than I probably swallow my frustration and go along with it. At least a path forward has been made clear to me and I will be sure to make sure that I am taking feats and items in the future that help with the identifying magical effects. But it is also quite likely that a GM that is already ruling that I can't dispel a magical effect without identifying it is going to let me subtly investigate and identify magic on a guard in a castle in an active social encounter, at least without adding in so many additional skill checks and/or additional spell castings that the message becomes a pretty clear:
"this obvious clue you found is an intentional dead end until a later point in the adventure when you can finally look back and say 'ah ha! I knew it!'"

I hope I wouldn't be so upset that I would rage quit or anything that dramatic, but I would probably be upset enough to (leading finally back to the OP conversation) realize that I made a mistake playing a wizard in this campaign, because the GM has a very different view of how spells can be used in this game than I do, and it is unlikely that I am going to have fun using the kind of spells that make playing a prepared caster/wizard fun for me personally. I will either have to look over my spell list and see if there is a different way I can have fun playing this character, or talk to the GM about either making changes to my character or bringing in a different character that I can have more fun with knowing the GM's play style better.

This conversation has helped me as a player because I realize that talking to a GM about how they run dispel magic is a great session 0 conversation for me to have, as it (like illusory object) is a good way to express what makes playing a prepared caster fun for me, and for the GM to make it clear whether that is a good fit for their campaign.


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Zoken44 wrote:

A fair point has been made that with the lack of wide spread taboos and hang ups regarding LGBTQ relationships, terminology regarding them would not be as colorful and euphamistic as it is for us.

However, what about inter-ancestral relationships. I'm not talking about simiply humans/elves, or Elves/Orcs, y'know, basicaly the same thing with a few cosmetic changes, but seriously varied creatures.

like is there a term for a person from a medium ancestry in a relationship with a small ancestr? Or what about being an animal ancestry (including the more common humanoids) in a relationship with a plant ancestry?

Do Gebbites have terms for their undead who have relationships with the Quick (living)?

I guess a quickie in Golarion is a very different thing than on Earth.


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keftiu wrote:
Our hint for this week from Luis: the deity has a two-syllable name.

This is a hint about which god will be featured this week, right?


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Xenocrat wrote:
If a creature has multiple spell effects on it and you're not specifying which one you're trying to dispel then how do you handle it? One at random?

If the caster was casting the spell without any further direction than "I think there is a spell effect there" than I would probably randomly roll to decide which effect. That is also how I would handle a character deciding to attack a square adjacent to them that contained more than one potential target (like a couple of tiny creatures).


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Strike can only target a creature. But if I have a player character that believes a creature is in the square next to her, I have always allowed that player’s character to make a strike where they believe a creature is, then resolve the action and tell them they don’t hit anything, the same as if a creature was there and they missed on a concealment check, or just didn’t roll high enough to hit. The player doesn’t need to know what the creature is, or if it is actually a creature or statue or an illusion. I play dispel magic and spell effects the same way.


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I guess that is up to GM arbitration. As a GM, I would let someone cast dispel magic on a presumed spell effect, and as a player, if I encountered such a restrictive GM, I would ask about whether higher ranked detect magic would be enough to target. I have not encountered many GMs that have had any issue with that before.


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Don't forget that you don't even have to know what spell effect you are dispelling with dispel magic.

Meet a NPC that is acting really weird? With conceal spell you can cast dispel magic on them without even knowing whether they are wearing an illusory disguise, under the effects of a charm, suggestion or domination spell, using nondetection, using a form spell, have a nasty prebuff cast as they are preparing to ambush you, etc., and no one will know it was you.

As for using dispel to counter magical traps, the huge benefit is 120ft range (150ft with reach spell) and almost always a lower DC than skill requirements, as well as no minimum proficiency requirement. Also most traps require multiple skill checks (and disable device is usually a 2 action check anyway that has to be done from an adjacent position. Even magical traps that don't have a specific entry for dispelling can still be counteracted with dispel magic if they have the magical trait, or a tradition trait or a school trait, because they are magical objects, as called out in the "Counteracting a magical hazard" section of the core rulebook. The difference is that it might require more than one casting as it would otherwise work like using a skill check to disable the hazard.

It doesn't work on mechanical traps, so it can't completely replace a good rogue, but Paizo loves their weird magical traps in APs and dispel magic is usually a very effective way of countering them.

I agree it is a great spell for spontaneous casters, hence why I brought it up that I think it would be weird to choose a spell like sudden bolt over dispel magic as a signature spell, but it is still excellent for prepared casters. With most prepared casters, I will usually have one in a top slot or top-1 slot any time I know I am hunting a caster or have evidence that there are going to be magical hazards around. Otherwise, I will maybe have it in a -2 or lower rank slot, plus I usually have a scroll or two of dispel magic at some lower ranks. It is a scroll I will buy frequently with most prepared casters, because there are often creative ways to use it.

With a spell substitution wizard, I will usually start the day with one in a top rank slot every day, then switch that spell out later in the day if I need the slot. Sometimes I will switch it into a top rank -1 one slot if I can, or just rely on scrolls if it really doesn't seem necessary. The ability to start the day with a couple of "maybe incredibly useful spells" memorized, but then the ability to switch those spells out after a challenging encounter if the party wants to continue on is just awesome. It is one of the coolest features of any class.

Another really fun way to exploit spell substitution for great effect is to use nonlethal spell on some damaging spells early on in a dungeon raid against minions, then question one or more of the minions after the combat about the rest of the dungeon, and especially about any casters that might be present (this is also an excellent opportunity to use Mind Reading if greed or fear don't seem like they would work in this situation). Then, based upon how confident you feel about your intel, you have very good clues about what spells will be worth bringing into the next couple of encounters.


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Deriven Firelion wrote:


Everyone touts the number of spells on a spell list, but the reality is a spell list could have 400 plus spells on it and only 20 to 30 will see consistent use and 50 to 80 inconsistent use. The rest are just filler spells that may be situational or just bad and tacked on to add content to a book. This is the part no one much mentions when touting the number of spells on a spell list. I'd much rather see a tally of what casters actually use on a spell list consistently. That number would be much, much smaller and likely redundant across lists. A larger spell list in no way is indicative of the quality of the spells on the list.

I think the heart of our disagreement is that I see "situational" spells as useful spells to be able to cast when you know you are entering into those situations, which spontaneous casters can only really cover with scrolls, so probably only once, and requiring access to a magic store in the time between knowing they will be useful and needing to use them.

Prepared casters generally need a day to accomplish similar tasks, with wizards sometimes needing a day and access to a magic shop, but because that aspect of prepared casting is so much fun to me, Spell Substitution makes for a play style that no other class can touch, which is why I spend so much of my gold on scrolls as well. I agree that it tends to require a lot more preparation on the part of the player coming into sessions, but it doesn't usually take much time away from the game, as everyone usually wants to rest at least 10 minutes after an encounter anyways and that is usually enough time for me to figure out what spells I want to change around.

I think there is a lot of table variation on how often that happens, and how often GMs will make sure to give casters the time to go buy scrolls that will be obviously useful for the upcoming encounter.


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Slashing gust says:

Quote:


Make a spell attack roll against each target's AC.

I read that as one spell attack roll, or it would have said "make spell attack rolls against each target's AC."


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I bet few people have used it, but do you all, or would you, have a player roll damage separately for 2 targets of slashing gust? I had not previously.


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When I see dispel magic used most frequently in combat encounters is against traps and hazard where it can be a one shot kill, although I have seen it used against spells like fly and fly like magical effects too.

Edit: also, a high rank dispel magic counters any lower rank effect even on a failure. So it can often be much greater than 50/50.


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shroudb wrote:
Unicore wrote:

I think everyone agrees fireball does one instance of damage to every target. You only roll the damage once though, not for each target individually. The same should be true of scorching ray, right?

Magic missile/force barrage is different because there is so much flexibility on how you target with it. I agree that no matter how you split up the missiles, each target only takes one instance of damage, and I think the spell should work where, after declaring targets, you roll damage for each shard separately. But the rules don’t state that very explicitly, and if you directed 1 missile at each target the spell would work very similarly to scorching ray. I don’t think it should work that way and don’t recommend running it that way, but it seems like Foundry VTT runs it that way and players seem confused about it.

No? Why would it be the same?

Fireball is 1 ball of flame, so it makes sense to have 1 number rolled for it.
Scorching ray is 3 distinctively seperate rays, so you roll 3 times.

Would you roll damage only once for something like Hunted Shot that targets two different targets with your arrows just because Impaling finisher rolls only once when it hits 2 targets?

I am sorry, I was operating under the misrememory of scorching ray being one attack roll, not a separate attack roll for each ray. Something like slashing gust or even the swipe feat would be a better comparison point. Swipe at least is explicit in calling out that only one attack roll and one damage roll is used to apply to all targets, so maybe that can serve as the rules based refutation to why magic missile/force barrage does require a separate roll for each shard, even though the spell doesn’t explicitly say that: because the default is to roll for each shard as a separate attack, that just requires no attack roll.


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Some of the gods. Supposedly. That is what I love about Golarion’s deities. There are conflicting stories about how the world was made and the roles the gods played in in. There is a core 20 of gods that have a pretty consistent story within the inner sea region and beyond of Golarion, and some of those gods may go by other names elsewhere, so they could be the same gods, but they might not be, and the myths of their scriptures don’t always agree, and some of the stories have been filtered through incredibly unreliable narrators, like Asmodian scholars.


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In response to Deriven’s comment about being unaware of how a prepared caster can be more effective than a spontaneous caster in combat:

1st of all, preference and style of play here mater a lot. I am not trying prepared casting is objectively and always better than spontaneous casting, but that it can be, and more importantly, it can be more fun for some players too.

But prepared casters can utilize sells that spontaneous casters won’t touch. Spell immunity, for example, really has to be a signature spell to me maximally effective at higher levels, and there will be many days where you won’t use it at all, so why would you want it taking up space in your repertoire? But a wizard can memorize it on days you know you are going up against casters, especially ones you’ve heard rumors about, at exactly the right level without it wasting much space in the “total spells a wizard might cast.” It is an awesome defensive spell that lasts all day and doesn’t waste any actions in combat.

False life is another example. Is it worth a signature spell? No. But dropping it in the highest slot not specifically needed for a particular other spell is pretty nice and can be the difference between getting taken out in an encounter, or having another round to cast spells, again without wasting combat actions. Definitely not worth a signature slot though.

Dimensional Anchor can be a clutch spell when you know you will be fighting fiends that teleport away to alert reinforcements, but what level to memorize it at? Depends on your level and their access to dimensional door and what level they have it at. 5th rank is probably good, but is it worth a rep. spot? By the time your casting level 6 spells, it is an easy spell to have in your book, just in case for some campaigns, but for others (like wrath of the righteous) maybe even a sorcerer is going to find it a necessary spell for levels of play at a time.

Summon and form spells are more flexible for prepared casters than spontaneous ones too.

Incapacitation spells across the board are better for prepared casters than spontaneous ones unless those are taking up a signature slot, which end up with massive competition.

I mean fireball in a signature slot? That seems like a terrible idea unless you plan on doing a lot of retraining. Sudden bolt instead of dispel magic? I love magic missile/force barrage at many different levels but eventually Thunderstrike really out paces it (or pairs powerfully with it as a third action) for mega single target damage rounds.

It is much harder to get really creative with your strategies and team tactics when your character is limited to a handful of spells you can cast at each level rather than when you can heighten all of your spells known. Scrolls can buy some of that back but wizards combining scrolls with creative, flexible spell selection can do it more often and for cheaper. Yes, there are days your spell selection can burn you (not as often with spell substitution) but that is the trade off for this style of play.


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I think everyone agrees fireball does one instance of damage to every target. You only roll the damage once though, not for each target individually. The same should be true of scorching ray, right?

Magic missile/force barrage is different because there is so much flexibility on how you target with it. I agree that no matter how you split up the missiles, each target only takes one instance of damage, and I think the spell should work where, after declaring targets, you roll damage for each shard separately. But the rules don’t state that very explicitly, and if you directed 1 missile at each target the spell would work very similarly to scorching ray. I don’t think it should work that way and don’t recommend running it that way, but it seems like Foundry VTT runs it that way and players seem confused about it.


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The complexity with force barrage is that you get control of each missile. Generally when targeting multiple creatures with one damaging spell you only roll damage once, then apply that to each target. Do you all roll separate damage for multiple scorching rays? Sometimes, force barrage can be used that way, but it can also be used to target 1 creature or asymmetrically against 2 or more creatures.

I do prefer to treat each missile/shard separate for rolling damage, but that does lead to some confusion with players thinking each shard is a separate instance of damage. Not enough for me to want to do it differently either, but there is perhaps more ambiguity than is necessary.


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I agree with you that I like to run it that way, but the spell doesn’t say each shard does 1d4+1. It says the shard does 1d4+1, and then a separate sentence talks about the number of shards. Which doesn’t mean that we are wrong necessarily, but it does feel like it leaves open the possible reading that all shards would do the same damage.

I know nothing about 5e, only that my player said it works that way over there.


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Remember that our knowledge of divinity in Golarion and its powers are mostly tied to myth, not certainty. Also different regions in Golarion have different gods for different domains. Sarenrae’s death would not necessarily mean the sun disappears, we are not even certain she made it/there is not worldwide agreement on that.

The same is true for every PF2 deity. Even Phrasma’s death would not necessarily end the cycle of birth/death and the movement of souls through the boneyard. People, maybe even the gods themselves might believe such things, but the story only ends that way if you, or the GM, decides that to be the case…or if the writers end up writing it that way in a future book, and even then, you don’t have to go along with it if you don’t want to.


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So it seems there is general consensus on the effect of dying values with force barrage but a player just raised another issue with the spell for us.

The GM targeting Sitsi with 2 missiles targeted a second PC with a third missile. Foundry VTT only lets you roll one 1d4+1 at a time with this spell, so we’ve been doing it where we roll once for each missile, but apparently 5e with magic missile does it where you only roll 1 time and then apply this result to all missiles. Apparently foundry does this with PF2 as well because of the simultaneous damage rule, but that feels wrong to me, but maybe my instinct is off. How do other people resolve a rank 1 casting of force barrage with 3 actions? Do you roll each missile separately? Do you roll once for all missiles? Is there a clear rules reason for this or just personal preference?

The reason I dislike rolling only one d4 and applying it to all missiles, even if they were all targeting different enemies is that it makes the spell 25% chance max damage, 25% chance minimum damage for 50% if all results with every casting. That just feels off compared to other spells. Rolling max (or min) damage with 6,9,12 or even more missiles seems very off to me as far as spell intention. What do you all think?


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Personally, I really like that they took away the overwhelming advantages of prepared casting from PF1, so that there is no power incentive to choose to be a prepared caster. Let players who enjoy having all the fiddly bobs keep them, but not as a secret way to have overpowered characters. 1 signature spell per rank really makes the choice meaningful and character defining without taking away spell slots or spells known. I am pretty impressed by the balancing act, even if I have a deep preference for prepared casting


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This is absolutely amazing! Great job to everyone involved with it.


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Simple NPCs are your friend for running small parties through dungeons. Just creatures like level-1 goblins or other creatures that have 1 attack and minimal complexity can provide the “Hero” (or in my case 2 Heroes) enough support to handle how dice dependent PF2 is. That is the real threat to small parties. If the whole PC team is only rolling 1 or 2 attack dice a turn a string of bad luck is death. Those super basic NPC allies can be an easy way to help mitigate bad luck and spread out damage without adding a lot of complexity or show stealing potential. Especially if they have 1 handed weapons and shields that they raise every round.

The key to making it all fun though is to make sure encounters are built around the 1 or 2 player characters. They won’t cover every skill or be good against every type of combat encounter, but if the player wants to be a Ranger with a bow, add shootouts/enemies with ranged weapons. If they want to play a trap finding rogue, add traps. If they want to play a caster, add level -4 minions and watch spells like burning hands/fire breath or acid burst shine in ways that will never happen against a party of 4.


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Arkat wrote:
Unicore wrote:
I think Zon Kuthon will be involved, but won’t be the deity who dies. He might be it he one to do the killing though. I am really starting to believe Zon Kuthon is going to kill Sarenrae and Shelyn is going to have to forgive him as he begins a path to redemption.

While I would hate to see Paizo kill off Sarenrae, I could get behind this story if Zon Kuthon is actually redeemed and takes over the Redemption subdomain (PF 1E version) and the rest of Sarenrae's portfolio.

That would be a great sequence of events if done and told right.

That is one possibility, but he could also not change very much and Shelyn and Nocticula could take most of the redemption angle stuff on themselves since it is already pretty much there. He could still become less evil without becoming good though. Like he could still be the god of pain and shadows without a focus on mutilation, and he could lose the anathema against providing comfort to those who suffer, changing it to something like "help others see the value in the experience of their suffering." It would kind of be cool and fitting if he took up healing as a domain in place of destruction. It really feels life a better fit and would put him in a more interesting place outside of the old alignment chart.


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Deriven Firelion wrote:
This was a resurrected thread. We already beat this topic to death. I should have looked at the date.

I think the remastery changes might be enough to make revisiting this topic again worthwhile personally. Everyone is going to have their own perspective on this topic and I value hearing people's play experiences and theoretical concerns/ideas about classes.

The options for Wizards and Sorcerers cover too many different potential builds for me personally to consider the classes in terms of overall class parity or balance. I will present the two wizard builds I have seen in play/played since adopting remastery changes and why they feel incredibly "wizardy" to me, doing things that a sorcerer character is not going to do.

Wizard 1: Level 16 wizard in Fist of the Ruby Phoenix campaign I am running.

This wizard is a counterspeller. Enemy casters (of which there are a lot in this campaign, especially at higher level) are completely shut down. Even worse than shut down, their spells get used back against them every time they try to cast. Between clever counterspell and reflect spell, the wizard is able to use higher level slots very often to make sure that their counter spell attempts are succeeding minimally on a success, and often even on a failure. The wizard has spell blending as their thesis to make sure they have a lot of these higher level slots so that they can cast a spell on their own turn (often something like a level 6 haste or slow) and then still shut down enemy casting. The fact that wizard feats and theses tend to apply to all spells you can cast make wizards very effective when multiclassed into something that gives you a different tradition of magic, although the real benefits of this don't tend to kick in until much higher levels/once you can have 2 slots per rank in your MC tradition.

The effectiveness of this wizard is hedged by the campaign giving you a lot of the same kinds of caster enemies (although that is pretty common), you getting to watch the other teams in the tournament fight several times before facing them down yourself, and GMs wanting your shut down counterspeller to be effective without feeling like you have ruined the campaign for them. Acknowledging those situations, this wizard is absolutely beloved by the party, is the party face and tactical lynch pin and there is only one team in the later round of the tournament who is likely to be getting any casting off against the rest of the party (because they will be casting with so many different casters each round, I look forward to seeing it). Cali is an amazingly effective character who does not feel like she would be the same as a sorcerer at all.

Wizard 2: Level 4 Wizard in a conversion of Curse of the Crimson Throne I am playing in (we just finished book 1, I think the GM is planning on running the campaign to level 18, but considering adding some material to take us to 20).

Sitsi is a spell substitution Ars Gramatica wizard. She is also the first and only wizard I have played with/seen that was built from the start of the campaign to be a remastered Wizard. A big part of that is that the remastered rules are neither finished being published, nor available on the archives of Nethys yet, so I imagine this will be worth coming back to in another year. Sitsi is low level, but her wizardness is definitely in her ability to basically prepare for encounters on the fly. In an urban campaign, it is very common that we get a mission that we are supposed to accomplish that day. I think any other thesis would be infuriating in this situation unless the GM let you do all of your spell preparation after reporting in to your various quest givers. But what really makes a spell substitution wizard feel unique is what happens when you start really going all in on filling in your spell book with spells that you have access to after having bought them off scrolls. What makes the spell substitution so cool is that, with 10 minutes, I can heighten any spell I know to whatever rank spell I need it at. My character is only level 4 (so I only have 2 ranks of spells), but already being able to do stuff like decide I need a rank 2 ventriloquism or Illusory Disguise, or Thunder Strike, instead of the level 1 one I have on the scroll I purchased has been useful and I have 19 rank 1 spells in my book, 5 rank 2 spells and 1 rank 3 spell (well I can't use it from my book yet, but I learned it and can cast it from the scroll we found it from without worrying about not having that spell later). I usually start the day with very generic combat spells memorized and then tune my spells as we go for the very different kinds of encounters we experience in this urban campaign. I can't wait to get my level 8 focus spell, because then I will have basically unlimited clairvoyance, and we have almost always been on time crunches of the scale "you can spend a couple of hours preparing for what is next, but you don't really have a day" which will make the recon stuff I will be able to do incredibly valuable. I also use nonlethal spell a lot, because we are almost always trying to learn information from everyone we are attacking and spells are terrible for taking enemies alive.

I can see an argument that some arcane sorcerers are in a similar place, but 19 rank 1 spells at level 4? It feels like it would be hard to build a similar character.


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Leliel the 12th wrote:
The Raven Black wrote:
Squiggit wrote:
The Raven Black wrote:


The death of the hunter at the claws of a primeval beast that then becomes a pure hunter of deities. And how both mortals and deities struggle to adapt.

My only real gripe is that instead of being a prophecy about the death of Erastil it's more like the prophecy of a monster that happens to kill Erastil along with a bunch of other deities.

It's supposed to be his story but you could take him out of it and wouldn't have to even change much. The story is very interesting but I feel like it doesn't do quite enough with the brief for me.

It is more the story of his legacy IMO. But I think Old Deadeye would approve.
And that's kind of why I'm going back to the "this is a series of stories about what the gods fear or being unable to be their natures" theory; Erastil, the ultimate hunter and community protector, is overcome by a predator that goes on to slaughter a significant portion of his community, the other gods. Quite simply, in this story, he failed his nature and task, and in Golarion's actual continuity, it's a warning for him to not get overconfident.

Also, Erastil is not just a god of the hunt, but of community and family. A predator that doesn’t just come to kill him, but goes on to kill everything he was trying to protect is a very Erastil centered story.


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Stormlord506 wrote:
keftiu wrote:
As a fan who came in with 2e, I still feel like I barely know daemons and the Horsemen... but I know some 1e fans really love them. I'd welcome this being their big apocalypse push!

Honestly, same. I've been reading Chainsaw Man for a while now, and I'd like to see more classic apocalypse stories.

Also, is Daemon pronounced Day-mon or Dee-mon?

The opposite of a Daemon is a Nightmon.


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I think Zon Kuthon will be involved, but won’t be the deity who dies. He might be it he one to do the killing though. I am really starting to believe Zon Kuthon is going to kill Sarenrae and Shelyn is going to have to forgive him as he begins a path to redemption.


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Jonathan Morgantini wrote:
Noven wrote:
I really wanted Pharasma to be the one to go.
She can be in your games if you want! I know at least one Infinite author has come up with something for that scenario. Side note, if someone DOES do this in their home game (Pharasma or whomever) let me know how it goes because I'm insanely curious.

One of the really cool things about the way y'all are handling this with the promotional blogs and everything is that any GM can very easily run with any one of these stories and make it into the seed for a whole campaign very easily.


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See I feel like with Cayden Cailean as your diety, it is also fine not to be too specific about what kind of adventuring party you are about to join. I mean, either way you wake up the next morning sore, hungry, and in need of a stiff drink.


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For sure, and even if it isn’t center stage (which I don’t want it to be) it could be caused by any number of malignant forces in world beyond gods enough for it to affect cultures and languages.

I guess, I would just personally want it to be localized enough that in many areas those two married guys that run the local book store are just married, and they could even have kids without requiring any special terminology or backstory because there are spells that turn humans into rabbits forever, and there could be bountiful domestic rituals that are as cheap and accessible as any GM wants them to be in their setting.

But I would also love it if, for example, holy Calistrian texts detail methods of giving pleasure with clinical, economic inspired terminology that would clearly indicate that understanding what a person wants is the best way to keep them coming back for more with bigger and bigger stacks of coins, which I think would probably generate a plethora of metaphors and coded language that could be rich and secretive.


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I mean part of the trick to thinking about language, especially coded/euphemistic language is understanding the need for it. If there is no one on the planet insisting that relationships must be between one man and one woman, and no religions who’s gods are putting forth such ideas as edicts or anathemas, then there are probably places where there is no such thing as a gay or queer or lesbian relationship, because those are just relationships. People don’t tend to develop language to talk about differences that are largely invisible or not the subject of public scrutiny or discussion. It does seem like sexuality in much of Golarion is just not a subject of political discourse, probably because writing adventures about it falls outside of Paizo company baseline topics, even if the adventures and setting material does do a good job with representation generally. Removing alignment might make it easier to have antagonists so focused on the control of other people that controlling bodily autonomy and sexuality could a plot line without overt politicization, but I doubt these would be aspects of villainy pushed to the center stage in a game module.

So negative language around gender and sexuality in Golarion feels like something that wouldn’t have much cause for getting invented in the first place to lead to reclaiming words like queer, but I could see places where relationships like those of highly revered gods would be celebrated and “noticed” socially in a positive context enough for language to evolve around it. I think the churches of Shelyn and Calistra would be two of the most long standing sources of creative expression around sex and sexuality, with Nocticula being a new player in the creative language game. Maybe Cayden, and maybe Zon Kuthon would be sources of creative inspiration for language too.

(Sorry, I am a language scholar, I can’t help but dive deep into how words take on meaning. This is intended to be a fun thread and I am trying to positively contribute to that, but if I am off base, I apologize).


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This is just my head canon, but I always read Nex as a place where people used magic so often, especially polymorphic magics, that the idea that a person hasn’t spent some amount of time living in different identity categories (including gender) would be kind of strange. Like maybe some folks struggle to afford such opportunities, but that generally, exploring different ways of being would be a social value.


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Xenocrat wrote:

It’s not like any occult casters would love the Brass Bastion. Toss out a Slow, then plink with Telekinetic Projectile or Needle Darts for often no damage?

Sustain Phantom Orchestra for consistent small chip damage?

What are divine casters doing? Healing the melee guys I guess.

Which is still probably a lot more than they were doing against an equivalent golem.


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I think the point about scrolls for casters is having lots of different types of spells. A kineticist isn’t going to be covering missing element types with scrolls.

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