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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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

So last night, Sitsi, the Shoanti Wizard was hit with 2 shards of a Force Barrage spell while at 3 HP. The total damage on the spell was 8 damage, 5 from the first shard and 3 from the second. Was Sitsi at dying 1 or dying 2? I thought she would be at dying 1 because the last sentence on the spell description talks about combining damage into one instance of damage, but there was not consensus at the table about that call. In my mind that falls under the “so forth,” but I acknowledge “so forth” isn’t tight rules jargon. It ended up mattering greatly because I rolled a 2 on my dying flat check that round, so if she was at dying 2 instead, she’d be dead. It seems a little harsh to me that one higher level casting of force barrage (where you might be hit by 4+ shards with one casting) is instant death for a character with low HP. Is there somewhere in the rules that clarifies that more, or is it pretty much a table to table ruling? Sitsi is level 4 and ate two Rank 3 vampiric feast spells, the 2nd of which dropped her to 6 hp, so that encounter was really out to kill her.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

It is probably too late to have this reflect in the official cannon, but tying fey as strongly to occult traditions as primal traditions feels much more in line with the stories being told about them in Golarion than having both the first world and the elemental planes rest qsquarely in the realm of primal magic. The occult tradition really needs some lore beyond the old ones and Lovecraftian unknown terrors in pathfinder.


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I figure it would be good to have one super thread for talking about changes or non-changes to spells in the remastered player core book (I finally got mine!!) feel free to post your own spell observations here as well. I will keep adding stuff here as I read the spells more closely.

Acid arrow and polar ray join shocking grasp as spells that are no more, replaced by saving throw targeting spells that are a little different. Acid grab’s speed reduction while taking persistent damage is interesting. It is starting to look like item bonuses to spell attack roll spells might be possible in the future of the game as single target high-damage spell slot spells that target AC don’t exist in the arcane or primal traditions anymore? This is just an initial thought, I haven’t deep dived it.

No love for control water. The exact same verbiage as pre-remastered leaves this spell entirely up to GM arbitration with vague guidance void of clear rules language for things like “raise the water level in an area.” It is left kinda feeling like an NPC only spell to me, which is unfortunate.


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

This is a thread topic that I have been thinking about for longer than the announcement of the remaster, and is very connected to many of the ideas that are posted in these 2 threads:

The Arcane Tradition - what do you think?

Arcane vs Occult

but these are some new things affecting my thinking about the Arcane tradition since the announcement of the remastered ruleset and the dropping of schools of magic as an innate property spells themselves and a classification determined by in world schools.

1stly: The metaphysical reality of Golarion has strongly moved away from "hello player! Here is exactly how everything works in universe, with immutable laws of reality." and towards, "Hello player, here is an example of an in world voice explaining how some people in at least one particular region make sense of the games mechanical rule set, but we are not promising that it always works this way and won't significantly change in the future."

In other words, (and this was something that we did start to see with the Secrets of Magic book), when we get rules text that is connected to lore, it is from an in world perspective that is one of many possibilities, rather than the exact way that it is for everyone. Even our (player) knowledge of the planes is largely just the common innersea interpretation of the planes, with many other possible arrangements of planes out there beyond what the scholars currently know. This was a necessary change because it vastly opens up how different cultures can have different gods and different metaphysical realities than those of the Core 20 and the boneyard etc. Long story short, Golarion is much more of a subjective reality campaign setting than it was in PF1 or even at the start of PF2.

2ndly: In world, I don't think we are going to get much interaction between the loss of schools of magic as objective classifications of types of magic, and what that has meant in world. It is hard to stop talking about something that becomes a huge "this used to be here in the past, but isn't." We got it with the Drow, but it came in the back matter of a transitional AP, and is not something that is going to be brought back up in Core Rule Books published under the ORC license. I suspect the old schools of magic will similarly not be something that can be talked about if the biggest reason for their removal was for legal considerations of wanting the ORC world of Golarion to be different from proprietary metaphysic systems.

So the new schools of magic, as actual physical schools and theories of magic that are held up as philosophies of magic are going to be a little bumpy for many players because they are just going to have always existed in Golarion despite having never existed previously and terms like "Necromancer" and "Conjuerer" aren't fundamentally connected to any inherent properties of magic, but to how certain in world groups look at magic and how it can be manipulated.

Ok, so given all that, I want to revisit the conversation of "what is Arcane Magic?"

There have been 2 ways of approaching this question. One is to stick to the essences. Arcane magic is the meeting place of the essences of Matter and Mind. This will have to be the future of the Arcane Tradition, but I think we as players are going to need a lot of help figuring out what this means, especially, where does this magical power come from?

This is because the more practical attempts to explain the Arcane Tradition tend to do so by describing it as the "science of magic" with a focus on mathematics or linguistics. It had some kind of strange legacy connections to the power of dragons, but anytime someone started talking about arcane magic as a way of understanding the mysteries of the universe, you started running into real problems in world, because what mysteries of the universe are we really talking about? Almost every AP or adventure that really delves into mysteries finds that the root cause of the magic behind those mysteries to be connected to divine machinations, planar influence (which is almost all divine or primal in PF2), or weird, mind-shattering stuff that gets labeled as Occult now.

With no schools of magic, what are wizards and other arcane casters studying, and how are they studying it? There is no more system for trying to classify magic that isn't just directly tied to its power source, some of which falls outside arcane casters ability to manipulate. We can try to compare wizards to real world scientists, but magic is not real, so are our characters breaking the 4th wall to be essentially studying the underlying game mechanics themselves? Any why then would they be tied and limited to just examining 2 essences of magic? "I want to understand the mysteries of how magic works...but I don't want to consider that it could be connected to the spirit or the innate life force of living beings" is a really weird take for scientists, especially when the effects of other traditions of magic are observable and just as measurable as anything in the arcane tradition.

We got some fun lore writing examining this stuff in the secrets of magic book, but the vast majority of it falls apart now stepping away from schools of magic. There were some really cool metaphors and "arcane" ways of talking about how spell casting in PF2 works, but on reading again after considering all the changes, they just feel like ways of explaining how every slot based caster, and especially prepared caster, is limited in what spells they can learn and how.

What does all of this mean?

Well, maybe it is a request for a new, arcane focused rule book to give the arcane tradition its own place in Golarion, because it feels like the arcane tradition has mostly just been the "fill in your own idea about what wizards are from other games/fantasy lore, and it goes here" with nothing really connecting it to something distinctly of Pathfinder Lore. I mean we have the Rune Lords, and we have Tar Baphon, and we have the Magaambya academy and Old Man Jatembe and the magic warriors as really cool examples of Arcane casters that exist in the world, that need to be arcane, but their connection to the new lore and magic schools is going to take some bigger work to situate back into the ORC version of Golarion.

The Wizard is my favorite fantasy class and if you know anything about this Unicorn on these boards, you probably know that I am one of the staunchest defenders of the PF2 wizard's overall class design as the "spell slot prepared caster" as I think that prepared spell slots do the best job of simulating the careful, studied approach to magic that defines a wizard. So I say this as someone who loves the mechanical design of the wizard class, but what is a wizard of the the civics school studying that they wouldn't be concerned with many of the exact same things as a cleric of Abadar? Or would lead them either to scoff or jealously resent the ways an elementalist shapes earth and stone to form permanent structures? Why wouldn't they be trying to study, and potentially exploit these other ways of accomplishing the same things? What is fundamentally making their magic different enough from these others that it exists as a separate magic tradition?

For me, this has to boil down to where the magic comes from and what price you pay for using it. Arcane magic as a studied form of magic is about only harnessing magic that has a knowable price, that doesn't indenture you permanently to another entity (oops bye arcane witch), and that requires incredible intelligence to use safely, repeatedly, and under your own control. I said for me because this also seems to rule out arcane sorcerers as well as witches. It is just really hard to say what arcane magic is or where it comes from in Golarion without intruding into other traditions pretty intensely. Like it almost exists exclusively as a mechanical designation and not well as a lore one...even though some of my favorite Golarion Lore is tied to practical users of this tradition.

Is any of this making sense to anyone else? Is my wizard brain flailing at trying to understand why I partially share a magic tradition with people who make bargains for the power I have worked so meticulously to understand and control? Or with idiots who just happened to smart, magically inclined parents? If it is about magic being some force out there in the universe that can be manipulated in different ways, where is the power that us wizards are using coming from and why can't we studiously understand the connection of magic that involves spirits and life?

I would love to see other player's perspectives on these topics, and I would really love to see a Lost Omens book tackle bringing the Arcane Tradition squarely into its ORC Golarion Lore. How about you?


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

It would be kinda cool for animists to be able to get a hyper specialized lore by calling on a specific spirit for the day, like not just mountain lore, but this mountain lore. Mechanically, I think it’s be easiest to do by just giving a +2 circumstance bonus to relevant checks


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I really appreciate how there is some intended synergy between wandering feats with lore requirements and the apparitions that give those lores. I would love to hear about how people have used some of these.

The one I really want to like but it doesn't work is Roaring Heart with River carving Mountains. Neither one of these abilities on their own is anywhere near the top power levels of what Animists can do, so it is a real shame that you can't benefit from using these two abilities together or even in the same round. Which is too bad because Roaring Heart does kinda work for Earth's Bile: You can move and push a 2 foes into places to take advantage of your area of effect spells. Right now I don't think most players are looking at that as an option because players are racing to just want to throw down 2 or 3 Biles as fast as they can and then they are stuck spending too many actions a turn to do any 2 action activities. With Earth's Bile, I strongly suspect that the fix is going to be that you can't over lap areas to affect the same target more than once in a round, which will also de-incentivize trying to spam cast the spell and just sit around sustaining as many versions of the spell as you can every single encounter. I don't think this because I think it is too powerful an option (if it is, it is only so by a small degree), but because doing exactly the same thing with every action for an entire encounter is boring class design.

But it would be cool enough to actually see happen in play if the benefits of River Carving Mountains could apply to the movement of Roaring Heart. Yes the +5ft status bonus to speed stacks, but status bonuses to speed are a dime a dozen and +5 from level 1 to 20 is not great. Roaring heart takes 2 actions so any round you want to use it while sustaining your River Carving Mountains, you basically get nothing. People generally don't love battlefield control options that only move people around or create difficult terrain, so I don't think we'd be exceeding any power options by letting a character gain the difficult terrain benefit from River Carving Mountains while completing the move and push options form Roaring Heart.

Any way, what are some of the combos you've tried or want to try or wish you could try?

I know Embodiment of battle and Grudge strike has been getting a lot of talk. And Spirit Walk and discomfiting whispers would be good together against haunts if you ever were going to trigger haunts with Spirit walk, if only because making haunts/traps roll twice and take the lesser roll is about the most effective way to keep them from critting everything to death.


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I know that PF2 has picked up a lot more fans and players over the last year, which is totally awesome, and I am betting that means that we have a lot of new folks learning about the playtest of the new classes and wondering how to best participate.

There is no wrong way to download the documents, read them, have feelings about them or express those feelings, and don't let anyone tell you that your impressions of the class are wrong, or that your ideas about what you want the class to do shouldn't be expressed as feedback.

The absolute best place for your feedback is the official surveys so whether you get to build a character and play it, or not, if you fill out those surveys you are doing your part to help the developers learn more about the classes they are testing. That is all information covered in the introduction to the playtest classes and is hopefully just a reminder that we are all doing this for fun, and to help develop a better game for all.

Some things I have learned from doing quite a few of these play tests that I want to share, not as "do this or despair" but as "be kind to yourself and to others:"

It is totally cool and valid to read the classes and have ideas about what the classes can do, can't do, or could do. It is totally cool to share those ideas on the message boards. But remember that the developers are testing out ideas here, and some times that includes ideas that are pretty rough, that might already have alternatives that might be used instead. The developers are not really dependent on us play testers to come up with the new mechanics or mechanical tweaks they might add to the class. What they really need is feed back about how these ideas that are being tested feel and work, especially in play if you can test it. You don't have to know how to fix anything in order to voice concerns or pain points that you experience when you try to play a class, and while it might be fun to offer suggestions, remember that the people responding to "ideas to fix the class" on these boards are just other players with their own experiences and ideas. The developers may step in to answer FAQ type questions about how things actually work, but they also might not, because they want to see how the wording is interpreted by a broad audience, and they very, very rarely will step into conversations about player suggested "fixes" because that is like stepping into a homebrew conversation about material that might not even end up in the game in the first place.

Even if you have an idea on the boards that word for word ends up in the final class release, that is as likely to have been an alternative idea that they didn't really feel needed to be play tested that they were already possibly thinking about, and just wanted to see the reaction to a different, more experimental idea. You aren't going to get writer's credits for anything you post on the message boards as ideas, so there is no need for anyone to get too invested in one idea or another, nor will convincing a stubborn detractor from the idea that you like mean anything about how the final class turns out.

The developers want to know if you have fun with the classes. Especially when you use one in play. That is the feedback that they are really looking for and will help them figure out what feats are succeeding, which ones aren't even being picked, and which ones people want to use but are getting confused about, or aren't accomplishing the fantasy that they evoke with their narrative descriptions.

So if you want to help the most, try to build characters that feel like they would be fun, play with those characters if you can, keep track of what works and what doesn't and fill out those surveys about your experiences afterwards. Anything else you want to do can be fun and insightful in its own way too, but if arguing about mechanics with other forum posters starts to get frustrating or just not fun, remember that nobody's suggestions on the message boards override the data that the developers collect from the surveys and which elements of the class are pretty well locked in and which ones are experiments being tested is not something that gets revealed until after the playtest is over.

People will get really worked up over very small mechanical differences. It happens with every single play test. Getting into the weeds talking mechanics can be a source of fun for many regular forum posters (myself often included), but nobody wins or loses the play test based upon how frequently or vehemently they post on the message boards. In fact the only way anyone wins the play test is by making sure that as many voices and experiences as possible get considered and recorded in the surveys.

Have fun out there because fun is all the payment anyone gets from participating in these playtests. Overall, I am pretty pleased with the classes thus far, but I really look forward to hearing about folk's experiences playing these classes in games. Don't hesitate to share your stories with us!


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I think one of the most interesting aspects of the 2 new class playtests is that we are getting a glimpse of what the spell casting rules for spell casters will look like remastered. In the animist playtest we are told:

"Regardless of which source you’re drawing on, you are a spellcaster and can cast spells of the divine tradition using the Cast a Spell activity. As an animist, your incantations might be reciting relevant snippets of legends—stories passed down orally—or they might see you calling nearby spirits to honor ancient vows; your gestures could take the form of elegant dances or full-body convulsions as generations of memories and otherworldly energies surge through you."

This seems either to be referencing that the cast a spell activity is going to make it clear that there are "incantations" and "gestures" that will be associated with spell casting and will be like verbal and somatic components, and that individual classes will give advice to players about what they look like/sound like for each class.


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

In a number of discussions, an issue that keeps popping up is the role of adventure design and the expectations placed on GMs for setting up and pacing encounters in dungeons.

Is PF2 as a system inherently biased towards Martial characters? Are GMs supposed to give PCs enough time between Encounters for all characters to be at full health and full focus points? How many encounters is a caster’s spell slot load out supposed to last them? Should encounter difficulty generally default to a level where a party should be able to readily win as long as their hit points are full and their focus points are restored, regardless of whether the PCs are prepared to fight the specific enemies faced? Or should there be an expectation that encounters probably require some level of preparation, either to learn about their enemies before engaging them, bring resources (like consumables) that will help the party win, and have potential “silver bullet” spells that would greatly decrease the difficulty of the encounter?

I am going to start off by saying that my personal, strongest wish for any RPG I play or run, is for there not be any one set of “rules” to use to answer all these questions. Variety in encounter design and adventure writing is a good thing that makes the game dynamic and fun to play. I don’t think I want to play a RPG where the players would think “well, we’ve fought exactly 4 encounters, that means this room where we finished our 4th encounter must then be a safe place for us to rest the night and it would be unconscionable that either the adventure or the GM would potentially hit us with another encounter, or expect us to fall back and return later to a potentially changed dungeon if we do want to rest now.” But I think there are some hard coded expectations that are leading to certain meta-analyses of classes and power tiers that are only really true within the confines of those expectations and lead to hurt feelings when GMs or adventure writers deviate from them, or if a player joins a table where that is what everyone else is already expecting...but they are not.

I think it is very common for players to expect combat encounters to be isolated events, contained to the terrain features present at the onset of an encounter, against a number of enemies known from the beginning of the encounter, or minimally revealed in the very first round of combat. Within this mindset, the difficulty of the encounter against these set enemies in this defined space should generally stay in the low to severe threat range and the party should have at least 10 minutes between encounters.

When these expectations hold true for 90+% of the way a GM runs encounters, I think all of the meta analysis about Martials being able to adventure all day and casters having to be able to rely heavily on focus spells, cantrips and reusuable resources becomes 100% true. Especially if the enemies faced don’t tend to have resistances, abilities or tactics that allow them to prepared to fight against a blitz of fast moving PCs focus firing on one enemy and either dropping that enemy in the first round, or (if it is a solo creature) debuffing it by minimally knocking it down and probably frightening it as well. When all of the above expectations are true, I think there is a “one true strategy” that emerges in PF2 that is better than any other and that is the one shaping the “fighters are the new god class” of PF2 and casters can only really keep up in parties if they have un-ending resources (whether that is relying mostly on focus spells or having a mass pile of scrolls to make sure they are casting spell slot spells at least 2 or 3 times every encounter).

As a GM, I find these kind of encounters incredibly boring to run over and over again though, and they tend to be over in 3 rounds tops. PF2 is an incredibly well designed system, especially from the GM perspective, so it doesn’t take much work to throw 10 or more of these encounters together in a hurry so I do get how and why we get so many of them. In fact, I think a game without any of these short encounters would probably skew towards making players feel like the GM is out to get them and they can never have an easy victory, but if they become the only encounters that players think they ever need to prepare for, I think it can really stagnate the game and discourage creative strategizing and lead players to “automating” their characters to the point where they get themselves into a lot of trouble the 10% of the time where the encounter expectations change drastically.

As a GM, whether I am home brewing or running pre-written material, I very frequently aim to have no more than 30% of encounters run this way, or if I have a bunch of encounters strung together that do feel like they want to be run this way, I throw out the scripts of monsters and NPC fighting to the death in their isolated dungeon rooms turned tombs, and will have enemies try to run and escape, alert allies, and collapse these encounters on top of each other, so that the party either needs to start throwing down heavier resources, fall back, or face Extreme+ encounters. These are the effects I have seen by doing so (in no particular order):

1. Durational spells have a lot more value when encounters run 7+ rounds than when they run 3-. If one of the enemies moves to the back of the room, opens the door to a hallway behind them and shouts out “we’re under attack,” it has bought the party a few extra actions in the first or second round of combat that can be spent buffing, healing, positioning, or otherwise preparing for the next encounter that is going to start pouring into the room over the next round or 2. It greatly diversifies the type of resources that are useful to the party and gives 1 minute duration items, spells, and abilities a chance to be utilized to their fullest.

2. It tends to make the battlefield a lot more dynamic. The battle lines move, lines of sight change and have to be reconsidered, Area of effect abilities and battle field control options intrinsically get more valuable because there become predictable points on the battlefield where multiple enemies are likely to be moving and having to congregate before they can engage with the party.

3. It gives the party the opportunity to make total victory, where they stop any enemy from escaping, a potential goal that gives an immediate reward, but is not required if the fight proves difficult/the dice don’t cooperate. It can also incentivize taking prisoners/granting mercy if the GM wants that to be a feature of their game, where enemies trade information for their lives. This spills over into point 4.

4. In addition to the battlefield being more dynamic, it lets npc and creatures be more dynamic too, as they can have changing motives. Unless the enemy has telepathy, it also requires that they communicate (potentially in a language the party can understand) about what they are trying to do, which gives them a chance to have some personality, but it also can serve as a way for GMs to feed more information to the players about the kinds of enemies or threats ahead in a dungeon. Fleeing creatures will run one way but not another, they will shout out “get the boss” and then hint where that boss is. There are just lots of opportunities for there to be more going on that a race to kill the opposition as quickly as possible if the world of the encounter is bigger than a single room.

It does take work to learn how to do this without completely overwhelming your PCs. But look at movies and books, Stories where everyone is always trying to kill everything else immediately, without ever offering deals to stop fights or trade information is boring and almost unheard of in the fiction that informs this game. Players learn to be ruthless and expect always the worst out of their enemies when their enemies are always ruthless and out to kill them. There is nothing inherently wrong with that for the way people choose to play their games, unless it is leading to repetition that is getting dull and flattens the world into a combat simulator for players that are wanting to role play. And the thing is, this really is on the GM to arbitrate and not the adventure writer, because it has to be something that dynamically responds to the way the players interact with the encounter. Trying to script 10 different scenarios is too much to put on pre-written adventure writers. They can drop short hints about the relationships of the creatures in a dungeon and the ecology of the dungeon, but they overwhelmingly already do that. Maybe the one big step moving forward could be to just stop adding the line “so and so fights to the death” and instead it can be understood that you can use that as a default assumption if you want, unless something else is specified, or you should feel free to give goblin warrior #7 whatever secret dream you wish when you see the opportunity for her to fulfill that dream.

I think community spaces like this are much better places to develop GM skills and ideas for our individual tables than we can reasonably expect to be fit into rules books or setting books, or even adventures. Getting dynamic feedback on what you have tried, how it went, and what you would have liked to have happened differently is all much easier in a community of folks who are also playing the game, than in expecting the developers to have answers for you at your table.

So what do you think? What approaches have you tried to make make encounters feel dynamic and fun at your table? What encounters have gotten the best feedback from your players and how have you modified encounters to make sure that everyone at the table feels like a valuable and contributing member of the team?


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I have been busy running some older APs for a while, so I hadn't looked at too many newer APs, especially with so many 3 book ones coming out so recently, but when did we lose the chapter by chapter treasure list?

I am curious why this decision was made, because it seems like there is still plenty of room for it in the chapter summary side bar at the start of every chapter? I have found those lists really useful when preparing a new chapter for my party and seeing what kind of treasure they might find to make adjustments up front to better fit the party make up. Were they causing problems?


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

After having an enlightening conversation about the perceived problems with low level spell casters, it became clear that some tables are having trouble with the wealth distribution expectations of PF2 for treasure and rewards.

Table 10-10 of the CRB "Character wealth" (on page 510 of the CRB) is for players making characters that are coming in new to a campaign. It is a useful chart for GMs to keep in mind when players level up, to make sure no one player is falling behind the minimum expectations, but it is important to understand that it is a minimum expectation for how much useful inventory each character should have left at the start of each level, not a chart of how much wealth a character should earn over the course of a level. In game, GMs should follow table 10-9 (on page 509 of the CRB), for understanding how much treasure to give out to players in the course of actual play over a level. These numbers are much, much higher than the minimum amount on table 10-10, because it is an assumption of the game that players will spend their wealth on things other than permanent item bonus items.

Be sure to keep an eye on whether your players are taking the rune items that you are giving out and keeping 90% of the wealth by transferring those runes to martial weapons, but selling just about everything else and then dividing that remaining wealth up to everyone else. This will vastly unbalance the wealth by level in the party towards your martial players and leaving casters feeling like their characters are second tier characters.

PFS has very strong rules for keeping this from happening, and a GM that is homebrewing can keep a closer eye on the kinds of treasure they are putting in the party inventory (and looking at how it is getting used), but for GMs running pre-written adventures, I think there can be a tendency not to pay attention to items and character wealth except by keeping tabs every level on that minimum wealth by level chart. Be sure to look at the list of items at the start of every chapter in an AP and think about how those items will work for your party in play. Is it going to get distributed equally between all players? Are there items every player will find useful? Are the consumables listed likely to be used (and by everyone)? or are they going to get sold at half value all the time, reducing the amount of treasure for the party as a whole, while the runed items are going to be heavily used by martials and not accounted for in the sharing of treasure?


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SO there are a lot of conversations going on about the mechanics and math of casting, and with the remastery I think that these questions will be going on for the next several months. And I imagine some folks may want to start their own thread collecting stories of frustrations with spell casting, but as someone who has a lot of fun playing casters, I want to hear your stories about spells that have broken encounters and been great fun at the table. Mostly this is just for fun, but maybe it can also inspire players to try out spells they haven't used before. I'll go first:

The classics

6th level slow is an encounter breaker against fey (or really any low fort creatures) At 16th level, it is not even really using a serious resource, but fighting 4 fey monsters with their human master looked like it could have been a daunting encounter...until 2 of the fey crit failed, 1 failed, and the master and 1 of the fey succeeded. In the first round that was 7 actions eaten and the two that crit failed could pretty much be ignored until the fight was over.

Wall of stone against 3 mounted fighters in an arena (I was GM here). Having the cavelry have to charge the wall and then move back so they could get their damage bonus again in order to be able to break the hardness wasted a lot of actions. A fight against 3 became a fight against 1 and then a fight against 2, easily managed.

Calm Emotions. AoE incapacitation spells get way too much hate. They absolutely shut encounters down because if you have 3 enemies, then there is a very strong likelihood that even your second highest spell slot is going to be good enough to land the effect. For assaulting a well fortified position, I have seen Calm Emotions break an entire wave of reinforcements and keep a fight very manageable.

Focus spells

Tempest surge against low reflex enemies is a power house. Not only does it do good damage, it has a good chance of debuffing the snot out of the target for a big spell slot spell the next round. The creature already had a bad reflex, now they are really in trouble. This is the best spell in the game for hunting black dragons.

Amped Shield. Holy Handgrenades can this spell soak damage! I have seen a Wizard MC Psychic use it very effectively as their third action on an ally, and I have had success with a tanky Tangible Dream Psychic because it pretty much doubles your HP through the early game. Combine it with long duration defensive spells like false life and you can feint being a very appetizing target for the enemy, especially if you also have a champion in your party. For the Psychic, if they start ignoring you because they are tired of your shield, you are often in a good position for round 2 to unleash psyche and then amp imaginary weapon. It has to be one of the toughest 6HP caster options out there.

Lingering composition on Dirge of doom. In a party built to exploit the frightened condition, this opens up an absolute flood gate of critical hits and damage. It has been pretty ridiculous in my experience.

Darken eyes. It takes a while to build this up, but taking away enemies darkvision is brutally effective. I once got a higher level Demon to crit fail on their save, and blinded, the creature just gave up and left the fight. It worked as well as banishment without using a spell slot.

others

2nd level Ventriloquism. It is an auditory illusion that lasts an hour and lets you change what your voice sounds like. Casting it before doing any kind of infiltration scouting and you can be creating distractions over and over again, often accomplishing everything you had hoped to do with an illusory image, but without having wasted the whole slot after one use. It also does not break invisibility and can be used to make it very difficult to pinpoint your exact location since it requires no actions to make your voice sound like it is coming from somewhere else. It is a fun way to waste enemy actions when you are running low on combat spell slots too.

Hydraulic Push. I was a little goblin cleric, unconscious and dying 2 in the grasp of a starving bear. I was dead for sure, because the thing had all its hit points and our martial had a weapon and shield, so to even try to grab me would have involved dropping the weapon and getting mauled himself. The party sorcerer critically hit the bear with a jet of water, heavily damaging it and pushing it away from my character, saving their life. Before this I had been down on spell attack roll spells, but realizing how effective they can be against solo creatures when you really need them turned me right around on my wrong assumptions about them. Once I realized how much easier it is as a team to debuff AC than any other defense, I realized that you don't even need to have true strikes ready to go to get good use out of the occasional spell attack roll spell slot, especially if your still have any hero points.

Lightning Bolt. The damage on this spell is swingy, but when it swings your way, it blows any other similar level spell out of the water. A crit fail can one shot a creature your level or lower, especially if they don't have great reflex saves. As a GM it is the only time I have killed a PC with massive damage.


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It might be too late for this idea if it hasn't already been considered, but I think one issue with the spell casting traditions, especially non-arcane traditions, is that too many spells are common and there are not enough suggested or mechanical ways for characters to gain access to uncommon spells.

Instead of just trying to make non-arcane lists more limited than the arcane list (which only really seems to work with the divine list) it would make more sense for the primal and occult list to have a much smaller list of spells that are common/ freely available for any caster with access to the tradition to pick up, but for there to be more GM guidance in giving access to spells for casters to learn/ keep in a spell book. I think this works well with divine domain focus spells, where there are lots of options, but you can't gain access to all of them at once.

Even in the arcane list, it would be fine for more spells to be uncommon as long as wizards (through school and feat) have ways of picking them up.

I am thinking that maybe this is a part of the redesign of wizard schools, where the given spells each level are just spells that are uncommon spells, whether they are from the arcane tradition or not, and that access to them requires finding a spell book from that school, or being a part of the school itself.


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The Remastered panel at Paizo Con today was really enlightening about SO many things that trying to jam them all in one thread feels impossible. One of the most interesting and exciting changes that the remastery is introducing (by necessity) is the elimination of what I will call the old-schools of magic, replacing them with actual "schools of magic," meaning that your school of magic as a wizard is the actual school you attended to learn your wizardry and it will determine your starting spells in your spell book and possibly some additional elements of the class, probably along the lines of focus spells, if focus spells are still a part of the class at all anymore.

This means that Golarion Wizards really are going to look a lot different than other game's wizards as there are nearly a limitless number of potential schools of magic across Golarion. The one's mentioned in the panel today (that I remember) include a school of battle wizardry that is going to include a lot of evocation options, but also martial battlefield control options like Earthbind, which would be "must learn spells" for any wizard that is going to be casting spells alongside an army. I think this means that you are likely to have some higher level spells in your starting spellbook right from the start, as they are resources your school gives you as you graduate. The other two that I remember being talked about is a school of universal something (which is like the generic wizardy wizard school) and a school with a really cool name that I don't remember that is about bodily transformation and nature magic that i think will respond well to the "this game doesn't support a good transmuter" line of criticism.

I can't imagine we won't get an illusionist school of mirages and misdirection as well as a cheliaxian school of devil summoning. But eventually we could get lots of different options which could include feats as well as spells.

One hypothetical example of how this will let them really break the old molds in the future is something like a Ustalav school of wizardry that combines spirit magic (necromancy type spells) and Electricity for a Frankenstein vibe. We also might see one or more Magaambya schools of wizardry in the future that also break the mold of past "schools of magic."

Personally, I am a huge fan of this decision and can't wait to see how it gets incorporated into the player core. Even as a fan of PF2 wizards, I am excited to see the wizard break away from what feels like a bland and restrictive arcane magic tradition defined by legacy elements that don't fit in Golarion, and see what kinds of stuff we get that will feel centered in the game world around them. I think this will also really help PF2 be a better system for homebrewers because it lets you have schools of wizardry that actually make sense to your game world, whatever that might look like.

The next several months are going to be challenging, just because so much more flavorful options are coming through the pipe line. I have a Magic Warrior Wizard in PFS that I basically want to completely rework once I see what new options are going to be available. I can't wait!


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If refocusing is being made to be easier, then it is likely that means refocusing is not going to be limited to 1 point regained per 10 minute rest. I think this make sense because focus points really are a unique 2e mechanic and moving them away from "requiring a short rest" is probably necessary to get further away from D&D.

This also makes the oracle in particular need a little more work because they were already in a position where it was too easy to burn yourself out too quickly with the curses from an early level.

My hypothesis is that curse mechanics are getting a little simplified and that is why they are getting moved up to core 1, along-side the witch. I think it is going to be easier for characters to use 2 focus spells in an encounter, more than once a day from an earlier level, at least for the witch and the oracle if not everyone. What do you think?


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How is this going to work leveling up past what is 18 now? Will there just be max levels that attribute modifiers can reach at different levels? Will it take 2 points worth of investment to boost past +4? It feels like this could change the way characters work a fair bit. Will all the ancestry changes port over cleanly?


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Hello all! Before I go into great depth with details I want to say that overall, the Outlaws of Alkenstar campaign was a lot of fun and played well overall into its thematic space of guns, mana wastrels and stick ups.

The first book was amazing! 5 out of 4 stars for creating a fun premise, giving us the heists and outlaw scenarios to make a gun slinging adventure work well. Many of the encounters feature monsters that are happy to duel it out at range and there are encounter spaces big enough to make that work well and let this AP be the right AP for Guns and Gears to really shine.

Book 2. 3.5 out of 4 stars. Overall, very fun book with great and memorable encounters. Airships, mana waste monsters, enemy mercenaries with guns that are absolutely brutal, a lot of fun. The Cradle of Quartz was a meat grinder. It killed 2 of our PCs and nearly derailed the whole campaign, but we were having enough fun to keep it going, and start trying to bring the story back around. I was surprised to find out that Mugland was the villain of book 2 and not a book 3 villain so the replacement character I built who was entirely focused on revenge against Mugland didn't really fit at all with switch in direction that happens with book three...

Which leads to book 3. 2 out of 4 stars. I wanted to like book 3. I love the overall plot. I love the maw of rovagug as an encounter location. I love bomb threat scenarios. I absolutely should have loved everything about book 3. But the encounter spaces!!! Book 3 encounters are brutal for ranged characters and for parties low on magic, which both are directions the AP kind of leads players towards. From encounter locations that are tiny rooms with narrow hallways, monsters that guns are nearly useless against, and with weaknesses that only really magic can easily activate, it almost feels like the whole third book mechanically makes the characters you built and want to play in this campaign useless. Did other folks have this experience? Our party gave up after getting TPKed by an unexpected creature that could grab all of us at once, was 3 levels higher with an extremely AC and our Investigator, fighter, Cleric and Gunslinger were completely useless against. Alchemical shot and persistent damage almost saved the day, and bad rolls did us in, but by that point it felt like it was too late in the final book to magically have a new set of PCs come in to save the day, because the final clock was definitely already ticking and anyone who could have saved the day at this point, and wasn’t already involved felt like far too great of a narrative stretch.

Did other folks get all the way through it? What did you make of the encounters and maps of the third book? Did it feel like it ran counter to everything thematically the rest of the AP was trying to accomplish? Or did we just have the wrong characters/didn’t take the tech-necromancy foreshadowing seriously enough to try completely switch the focus of our party away from accurate gun toting partials and towards more of a traditional dungeon crawling party?


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There is a lot of talk and thought going around right now on attributes in PF2 and especially the relationship between ancestry, class and attributes and what kind of attribute soereads are necessary for X character idea to be feasible.

For many of us, character building is a game in and of itself that provides its own endless hours of enjoyment. Many people have their own sets of “rules” for what makes a character concept viable or not, and all of those “rules” are incredibly subjective, and table and campaign dependent. There is a whole other discussion to be had about wether whether attribute flaws as a trade off for attribute boosts is a fair way to keep the game balanced mechanically and what are the narrative consequences of encouraging the idea of “dump stats” that I care about, but am seeing take place in other threads. What I would rather talk about here are some common situations about attributes I see playing out in actual play, that I don’t see often represented in online discussions about character builds.

“You need an 18 starting Key attribute”

There are builds where starting with a -1 to your key thing will really matter. The more times you roll the dice for a certain kind of check, or use a DC to make others roll against it, the more the +1 matters. This is nothing new. However, starting with a 16 instead of an 18 can mean having the exact same bonuses from your attribute as the character starting with the 18 for 10 levels of the game, while giving you 2 extra ability boosts to go to other attributes over the course of the game. Additionally, in APs, I find levels 1 through 4 move very very quickly, some times happening in game in the matter of a week or less. Levels 5 to 9 almost always include the first largest break of down time and tend to draw out into a very long period of time. Levels 10 through 14 usually include at least 1 big down time break as well, and be a long time in play, but so again dies 15 to 19. Level 20 on the other hand tends to be one big dungeon or encounter and then narrative wrap up.

Some players are building always ti the end game, and starting with an 18 is the only way to max out that primary number at level 20.that is not meaningless. But over the grand scheme of the campaign, if you hit patches of adventures where you might level up once or twice largely from social or exploration encounters with fewer combat encounters, you might really feel having all of your attributes and skills tied up in combat stats. One party “face” is often a problem in the way social encounters are designed to include everyone, and having 3 characters who are terrible at any social checks can set a party back more than even having a party fighter who has a 16 key stat.

Starting attribute spreads are only one part of the character building story because of the massive boosts that you get every 5 levels. However, if 2 or 3 of those boosts are going into raising attributes over 18, that can end up with 4 to 6 attribute boosts ending up as “dead boosts” for a significant period of time for your character in play. Be careful thinking about the end goal and not the process of getting there. Campaigns tend to change foci over the course of 20 levels. Having large parts of the game where your character is just trying to survive/get through as quickly as possible to be fully realized can be devastating if your character doesn’t make it. Retraining and down time are not super consistent, but talking to your GM about what you are doing with your character can help you figure out if that niche thing you want to do in X levels is worth investing the time in building that character to get there.


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I like having big dynamic encounters where lots of things can be happening all at once, and have a bit of a reputation for it as a GM. I find this relatively easy to do with VTT maps, often just trying to use a pretty basic base map, and adding components on top of it, instead of having massive high resolution images. Even so, I generally top my maps out at about 100 5ft squares.

The problem is that 500ft is too small of an area to run adult dragon fights in. In one set of movements, the dragon can be almost entirely across the whole map, and if you want to have the dragons flying between buildings in a city, unleashing breath attacks, and then drawing heroes way out of position when they try to attack. I have tried doing this all theater of the mind, but I find PF2 players' characters have so many abilities that interact with very precise positioning, that the players get uncomfortable relying on the GM to describe the active combat zone well enough for the character to have a strong sense of their options.

I tried using a very large scale map, with a combat zone to break out into when the characters were in close, and it worked ok, but I worry it discourages some of the taking advantage of the environment when things like walls, rubble, and other features of the terrain are not big enough and laid out in clear enough detail.

I don't know that there is a great solution out there for this, but I was just curious how other GMs handle open air dragon fights and having the encounter space feel wide open and dynamic?


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We finished up or level 6 playtest adventure stress test last night. I ran my players through a stress test gauntlet of 500 Xp worth of encounters without even a single 10 minute break. Many of the encounters erupting on to each other as enemies fled or called in reinforcements the boss was a level 8 demonologist who we had to stop before they fought, and probably would have TPK’d against, but not if I had been kind enough to give them even one full 10 minute break after fighting a slew of demons (babau, Brimorak, and dretch fodder), level 5 elementals of all types scattered liberally through a massive tower complex, and Drow priests.

My players party was a thaumaturge, a Flurry Ranger, and 2 Kineticists.

Stone shield was absolutely amazing in play as the fire/earth kineticist must have absorbed 150 hp and made the lesser enemies miss over and over again in what was essentially a 30 to 40 round encounter. The one concession I may have made to make that possible was letting the kineticist extract fire from the Brimoraks, since their blood boils and everything they do is fire. Player would often (every two or 3 rounds), extract element, cycle blast to earth and the shield raise while focusing on fighting a Babau.

I would like to see the ability to extract element made a little more clear in the Rage of Elements book, but I think any action booster that lets kineticist do a thing and extract an element is going to be very, very popular and make Kineticists happy to use overflow abilities.

Also, melee damage on Kineticists is very good. Both my Kineticists were STR Kineticists (although one had a 16 dex and the other 18 at level 6), but did the most damage when surrounded by enemies up close, which happened a lot in this encounter. Barrage blast in melee was an absolute minion sweeper. Sweep and forceful are cool traits for blasts.

Thaumaturge and Kineticists are also a brutal combo against enemies with a weakness to something like water or fire.

Even though we had to end the encounter before the big fight that certainly would have killed the whole party, the players had a ton of fun with the encounters and party build. The setting was a little over the top with 50 ft cliffs over deep water and narrow slick planks connecting them, and both the ranger and Thaumaturge ran into issues with mobility and being stuck until a kineticist helped make a path more accessible, usually while having to fight off teleporting demons.

Overall, they are very excited about the rage of elements book and the design space opened up by the class. Extracting elements and talking down the water elementals in the pool below were the two activities that miserly felt like something completely new and different, although the expanded mobility and damage mitigation of the Kineticists in tandem worked very well. It just felt more like how the party worked together previously with a shield champion.


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The more I look at the Kineticist, the more unlikely I think it is that a universal Kineticist will have access to all 6 elements. The intrinsic abilities of the class just get too broad and nebulous when you include wood and metal. I mean, even with just 4 elements, it is a little much when you include the eventual resistance and the immunity, but when you add in adapt element and its scaling and extract element, things are going to get weird and far too open to rampant exploitation without a lot of guidance. Limiting adapt element to non-magical helps, but with metal we are talking about keys, locks, manacles, just about anything mechanical for metal, and for wood, will this include all plant matter?

maybe by themselves, with restrictions about size and what it means to be "loose" (is a link in a chain loose?), it won't be too much, but I just can't imagine one universal gate getting this much narrative flexibility without GMs everywhere cursing the design and all the headaches their players are about to unleash. This is all without even getting into the feats and combat flexibility that having flexible feats that can be switched in 10 minutes between all 6 elements.

So this leaves me wondering if the final plan is for Metal and Wood to only be available as singular gates, with options that cannot really be paired with other elements? Or if there will be a hard set number of maximum gates a Kineticist can tap into? Or if all Kineticist will start as single gates and access to other gates will be restricted to feats, or abilities that take multiple actions to gather elements?

It is really hard to guess what the plan is for the gates because they tie so heavily into all the class features the Kineticist gets. Adding the Elements of Wood and Metal is really cool Thematically, but treating metal and wood as elements in world feels like it going to narratively flip the world of Golarion upside down in many ways, especially if there will now be classes that can manipulate them on a fundamental level. It is just so difficult for me to imagine that + manipulating other elements as well...

Unless I guess the elemental/terrain adaption abilities and resistances and immunities of the class get massively toned down.


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At this point, so many people seem to want the blastiest blasters to ever blast, why not just let, fighters, monks and rogues get access to the 2 action gather element from the environment and elemental blast?

No bonus feats, no gate exploits (so only one type of blast), and having to wait to pick up feats like flexible blast or barrage blast. Keep them weird hybrid unarmed attacks that are not weapons so they don’t stack with obvious weapon feats (those should require elemental weapons). Overflows will be too punishing to use and class DC will stay terrible/require feats to get to expert (also potentially limiting crit effects).

Why does single target blaster need to be its own full class and not just an archetype? Who cares if a fighter can Archetype in to kineticist or a unique general archetype and be a very accurate blaster, but struggle to do anything else with the class.

Won’t this solve the “I just want a good blaster” problem, but still allow the kineticist to be the master of battlefield control, get access to the more fun/expansive feats, and just be a little behind in accuracy, but with flexible feats and all that stuff, as well as gate restricted feats, which could include class damage boosters (like it does now).


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I have now GM’d for a couple of Kineticists, played as a kineticist, and played next to a kineticist.

All of the Kineticists I have experience with spent no more time than any other character preparing to do powerful things to do. But I have also only played with dedicated Kineticists and 2 dual Kineticists. It seems like a hidden “penalty” of the universal gate is that it takes you more actions to ready the activities that you want to do, while dedicated Kineticist always knows exactly what element will be needed and wastes less time switching between them.

Yes the cycling blast helps in that you get to make a blast as a part of the switch, the dedicated Kineticist can more easily get off the 2 and 3 action overflow activities and still be pretty mobile.


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A lot of the suggestions I have seen about adding Con stuff to the class feel like attribute substations that don’t really feel connected to what the attribute does in the game.

What if the way to link burn, overflow, and Con in the game is to pull con down to its root and look at the holding breath, suffocation mechanic?

I don’t think the class should be holding its breath the whole time it is has an element gathered, but if there was a timer that worked like that, and overflow double hastened, then Constitution would matter to the class in a way that really felt like constitution. Maybe it is too much to have another counter to track, but if instead of suffocating you got fatigued as soon as the timer went to 0, and then from fatigued to exhausted if it happened again, it feels like it would fit the narrative people are pushing for wanting more Con in the class?

I am sure the developers have some better way to implement it than I am going to work out, but integrating breath and breathing into the class would thematically be very cool.


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I realized we are three days into the playtest and we don't have a collected thread for players to show off what they are making, what feats they are taking and how they play or you imagine them to play. What do your Kineticists look like now that we have the mechanics for you to build them?


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I see a lot of people saying the Kineticists is too inaccurate with both blasts and class DC. I strongly encourage folks play test it and see.

Air and fire have great range and agile. Agile on range weapons is unheard of and by level 4, when you get a 2 action 3 attack ability, a +2 on spamming attacks. Throwing stoke element on that can be a lot of extra damage and will absolutely shred lower level enemies in mass, which is the clear focus of the class. This should be better expressed in the class description.

Earth has propulsive and a feat to use str for ranged attacks with a D8 damage die! This is better damage than a long bow. Your range is rightfully quite limited, and your accuracy should suffer for it, but with forceful, making lots of attacks can still be worth it cause your damage will be brutal. Chain blast is absolutely sickening.

Water gets the accuracy booster of sweep.

The accuracy boosting on this class is primarily about targeting multiple enemies. You are only behind other martials by 1, about half of the time, and you make that up usually if you attack 2 enemies or more.

DCs:

Your areas of effect on two action spammable abilities are gonzo. They are bigger than most spells at comparable levels and the damage can be boosted from stoke element. You will be the best AoE martial in the game by a long shot, and a destroyer of armies. You will struggle as a striker vs single target enemies.

This was all very carefully designed to work this way. Just like a monk spamming flurry of blows with stunning fist, you get your good effects by targeting enough people to catch some in some bad rolls.

Hopefully this analysis helps folks see what is going on with the accuracy and how the accuracy boosts are factored in to getting lots of attacks each round.

In combat, the kineticist is a sub-machine gun firing indiscriminate bursts of small rounds, not a sniper rifle. Maybe the Metal element could work differently, but that is the general expectation of this play test class.

No one is coming after fighters or gunslingers for single target damage.


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I think it is important, when looking at a playtest, to try to understand what basic roles the class is being expected to fulfill before judging it on expectations that it might not be trying to live up to.

When I look closely at this playtest, I see a class that is going to shine best as a damage dealer against multiple lower level enemies and struggle to do much damage against solo, higher level enemies, but possibly be very good at slowing them down or eating up their attacks.

They have excellent mobility options and battlefield control options and can do a fair bit of support. By middle/high levels they can even switch feats around each day, so they don't have to be an all this, or all that build. If you know you are going into a boss fight, maybe drop some of the AoE and get more support and battlefield control options?

If you know you are going to be clearing a dungeon full of evil cultists, well, you are going to decimate them with your multiple attacks and AoE.

How do I feel about this?

I think it is going to work out, but the folks hoping the Kineticist was going to be the all day single target blaster are going to be very disappointed. It seems that the short bow is going to remain the short bow of consistent ranged damage that can be directed against a single target all day.


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So I try not to get too wrapped up in numbers or mechanical analysis until I can build a character and get a feel for them in some actual encounters with some allies.

For my First Kineticist, I decided to buck some conventional wisdoms and go with an Ancient Elven Deckhand Dedicated Gate (Air) Kineticist. I love the flavor and narrative of this character, and it feels like a cool adventurer out on the high seas, having spent many many years on various boats, keeping their head down while slowly learning to be at one with the wind.

My initial attribute spread is (S:12/D:16/C:16/I:12/W:12/Cha:10).
Con is useful, but not desperately so, so a 16 starting feels more than enough, while the 16 Dex feels very necessary.

I feel like a lot of folks will pass on the air blasts, but 120ft range increment is wild, especially on a character who will eventually be flying. I love that it also is a ranged weapon with agile (a HUGE deal, not being talked about yet in these analyses), and that it has reach, so early on, I can get a couple of extra damage points as I keep boosting STR when I attack in Melee with it.

As an ancient Elf, I really, really wanted to go ranger, because it feels like there should be cool synergy there, but looking it over, Ranger feats all reference weapon attacks and so that dream died, even though getting to ignore penalties on the 2nd range increment would be pretty wild. 240ft range with no penalty, Anyway, it is a bust, so with this build, Rogue looks like the only option. 2 extra skills is all it is worth at first, but sneak attack will later stack with blasts, and Skill Mastery is one of the best feats later on to fill in for dead levels.

Class feats immediately become a problem (perhaps of my own creation). Choosing dedicated Air, you get 3 1st level air feats which is almost all of them. I chose, Aerial Boomerang, Fair Winds, Air Cushion, and with no charisma, this is more than I will probably use 90% of the time. But then you also get a level 1 feat for being a Kineticist. This is too much class feats at level 1! Do you pick up Elemental Weapon, never intending really to use it, but it may make a nice option for having a weapon for when your allies grant you strikes? Flexible Blasts is pretty useless for air unless you are going STR I guess...Which might be worthwhile in retrospect because an elven air kineticist is going to be very difficult to get close to, providing an interesting form of defense. Stick and move from reach, combined with blasts might be a better option here.

The character ends up with 8 non-lore skills, a little low of HP (17), but decent HP and with Nimble Elf, has a speed of 35 and can kite with the best of them. Damage is low, but versatile, so better than most other elements for overcoming resistances. Your attacks are agile as well so if you get set up far away, you can spam attacks at great distance, although the accuracy is still pretty bad for a couple of levels, so moving once and attacking 2x is a pretty decent strategy for keeping enemies from attacking you back. If they do move up on you, you can end up kiting them with a reach attack once and then moving twice for 70ft. But really, you have no reason for letting anyone get close to you with wind. I am not sure if I understand whether Kineticist blasts that do slashing or Bludgeoning constitute physical damage? or is it energy damage that is also bludgeoning?

Level 2 was a bit of a bummer though because again I was left feeling like there was no good class feat for this character. Kinetic Activation was at least interesting, but air is a bit of a challenge to work with at low levels so this is very much a "sit on it" feat.

At level 3, elemental resistance air feels like a completely useless ability, unless you are playing a very particular campaign, but Extract Element is a really cool ability to work into the Kineticist class. I love that it gives the creature penalties to your attacks and the ability to ignore resistances.

Level 4 gives Blast Barrage, which is pretty cool with an agile ranged weapon, but this character's accuracy is still so low that only the first 2 attacks really feel significant. I thought hard about soothing breeze and Flinging Updraft, but I just don't love that soothing breeze is three actions and the way it grants immunity feels like a head ache to keep track of, especially if you end up bouncing from 1 encounter to the next without taking a 10 minute break. I already gave this character battle medicine, which only takes one round, and keeping a hand free is very easy with this character. Ultimately the fun of air is agile and range so you want to be able to attack 3 enemies at once, and Blast Barrage is the feat to make it happen.

Level 5 feels pretty dead for this build. Getting crit specialization is cool, but please give me the accuracy first!

level 6: Stoke element is the clearly intended feat for this build but spending an action for a +2 damage? Or picking up sneak attack or dread striker (depending upon the party) Sneak attack is pretty useful on an attack with 120ft range. Hiding for 1 action gives me an accuracy boost and extra damage on the next attack. I looked at clear as air and Storm Spiral, but Overflow is rough, 10 minute cool downs are awkward, and why get close enough to the enemy to risk getting attacked, especially when true flight is coming very soon.

Level 7: Adapted Terrain is a really interesting idea, but players are going to need a lot more advice and guidance to make it work, especially with an element like air. Can I make a vaccuum in a 5 foot space? what does that do? How big is one light bulk of air? Can I use this ability to increase the area of spells like stinking cloud (if cast by an ally)? or move areas around? The fact that elements react to the environment naturally after being proliferated is a bit of a GM/player argument waiting to happen. BUT I get my proficency based accuracy boost and weapon specialization at the same time! Level seven is too heavily weighted in immediate power boosting compared to level 5.

Level 8: Wings of Air. Fly for 10 minutes. No difficult terrain for going up. Awesome. Is there really no cool down on this ability? Level 8, this character is hitting an awesome stride. Damage is low-ish, but your unattack-ability is very high at this point.

Level 9:Elemental Flexibility is a cool ability for the kineticist and I hope it stays. Getting to switch around abilities every day will be a lot of fun. Celestial Palisade is a fun candidate, but we are starting to hurt for actions to do everything cool that we can do.

Level 10: Chain Blast. 120ft range increments make this a "hit every enemy" ability, but it also makes the agile trait feel a little useless...still it is up to 5 attacks a round with no MAP. It is time to make sure we have a weapon rune that does something nasty on a critical hit!

Level 11: Pure adaptation is again a really interesting ability that is difficult to imagine how to use with air, beyond clearing out mist, and poisonous clouds? I guess it is more sensical than Adapt terrain though.

Level 12 has some interesting options...but not really for this character. Rogue Skill Mastery it is then.

Level 13: Finally get the defensive boost, but again, why is this character getting attacked enough for that to feel like a big deal? Blast Mastery on the other hand is a very big deal. Honestly, it kind of feels like I have hit as high a level as I will ever really need on this character and everything after this is just minor "oh, that's nice" things.

Level 14: Oh, wait! Ferocious Cyclone. This is awesome, but the Class DC save here feels pretty far behind...still 7d10 damage with half on a success is better than the other attack options, except overflow means that I might be in danger of falling unless I cyclone first and then gather elements in the round? I am not exactly sure how that will work.

Level 15: is all about improved Elemental Flexibility. Really fun abilities.

Level 16: The best feat option here is to go back and get Aura Shaping to make Fair winds a 20ft emanation. That is a very large area of difficult terrain and to boost ally speeds. Maelstrom blast really isn't better than chain blast unless you are trying to murder armies.

Level 17: Mastery on Class DC is feeling long overdue at this point, Elemental Immunity is pretty underwhelming for air.

Level 18: Nourishing Gate feels like it should be a built in class feature for the Kineticist and not a feat. Infinite expanse of Bluest Heaven is a very cool feat conceptually, but the effect in practice feels pretty underwhelming especially since it doesn't have a critical failure effect.
Crowned in Tempest Fury is absolutely devastating...except it is a two action overflow ability, can it be sustained? You pretty much have to gather elements immediately afterwards to be able to do anything with it though, so I guess it has to be? It is also cut down a little bit because these are the things that you have spent 4 or more feats getting to do previously. Do you just retrain out of all of that now?

Level 19: Final gate is cool, but this still feels like a flat level. Casters get legendary proficiency, and level 10 spells...

Level 20: Flawless Element feels like it should be awesome...and it kinda is, but not really for this build. What 3 action activities are we trying to do? And so it is Omnikinesis. Dedicated Gate Kineticists really feel left behind by these options unless they go heavier on 3 action activities.

That is the character progression chart. I will play the character in some scenarios at various levels to see how they feel and report back.


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The psychic added the oscillating wave conscious mind which gives us a psychic produce flame that does 1 fire splash damage when amped. The problem is that “splash” exists in PF2 as only a weapon trait and a type of damage. So what does this mean for this spell? (As well as acid splash, and scatter weapons)

It seems like the insinuation is that the spell acts like a weapon with the splash trait, but this is not well defined. Is it supposed to trigger on a miss? Does it affect an area? I will probably run it as yes to both, but splash as a damage type really needs to be clarified because I know numerous GMs who run scatter guns and the acid splash cantrip differently, and this makes me hestitant to play an oscillating wave psychic in many games.


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Evilgm deserves the credit for this realization

But should Necril be the language of accessibility in Golarion? The undead, more so than any other group of people in Golarion can really come in all different shapes, sizes and access to sensory perception. It would make incredible logical sense, especially in a nation like Geb that is so practically minded, for the language of Necril to have been deliberately designed with redundancies of expression into every word. So the way you “speak” the language would include visual motions, sounds naturally produced by those motions, tactile senses of heat and texture, and probably olfactory senses as well, as the undead really should have no shame.

Is it just me, or does this add a really interesting and logical place for language scholars the world over to be interested in Geb and Necril as a language where an animated rib cage and a headless ghost are capable of communicating ideas back and forth to each other?


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There was talk long ago about the 6th pillar archetype getting Errata'd quickly, but it has been about 6th months and it looks like nothing specific has been changed.

Do we know if there is anything in the works for fixing the archetype or is it just going to be removed?


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The psychic is a really cool class!

The infinite Eye power of mental scan is awesome. A human starting with versatile heritage to pick up Expert perception and Cooperative Nature has a nasty evil eye to unleash on round one, with a +1 circumstance bonus to attacks and damage rolls against one enemy, for everyone in the party, and learning its weakest save and strongest automatically, AND getting a free seek check rolled into the mix! Oh, yeah, and if you succeed on aid check with your beefed up perception, you give a +2 circumstance bonus to both the attack roll and the damage roll for one ally!

Circumstance bonuses stack with status bonuses meaning that a psychic, a bard and gunslinger or magus walk into a dungeon room, and one boss creature is going to be seriously feeling the pain.

All of this only costs the psychic one action on the first turn, meaning they can intimidate (if they are charisma based) and also probably tack on -1.

I am getting really strong mesmerist vibes out of this build and I really want a chance to playtest. If only time was an object, and I had any of it.


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With another new class building its chassis on the recall knowledge activity, there are some aspects of the activity that could use more definite explanations in the next rule book. Since Dark Archive feels like THE book for seeking out strange information, I think it would be both appropriate and useful to have a couple pages dedicated to talking through the recall knowledge action.

Right now there are major question marks that GMs have to resolve individually that can have massively swingy effects on the usefulness of whole builds.

Does the DC for identifying a creature go up for every individual monster of that type faced? If so, this is brutal on classes like the Mastermind rogue, the investigator, and the thaumaturge. Part of the issue is that the word "Identify" and the idea of "learning more about" a creature are fundamentally tied together in the recall knowledge activity, but they really have very different purposes, especially for classes built around identifying their enemy.

Relatedly, what about uncommon, rare and unique versions of common creatures? Are these targets supposed to be extra difficult to use basic class features against? Can basic information about the common aspects of the creature be learned/used on a check? Does that DC have to be determined before the roll, so the GM or the player has to decide what they are trying to learn? This question becomes important for the 4 tiers of success, and the reality is that targeting a lower DC with gaining additional information on a critical success is always the better idea than targeting a higher DC slightly out of your characters range.

Similarly, with secret checks that can be triggered off of multiple different skills, who decides what skill is used? DOes the GM automatically decide to use the player's best skill for the creature? Does the player have to decide which skill to use? Both can be reasonable and fun, but radically change how a character should be built if they have core mechanics built around recalling knowledge. Additional Lore skills are a lot of fun, but when the player has to decide wether the new enemy is a demon or fiend generally, and thus whether to use demon lore or religion, it can result in wasted actions for the player against a creature that punishes wasted actions.

Lastly, because the "identify x" aspect of the activity is linked directly with the "learn more about x" aspect of the activity, what information to give becomes a big nebulous ball of GM fiat. We have already seen that a big part of people's perceptions about whether spell casting in PF2 is underpowered or not is tied to whether or not players gain useful information about weaknesses and low saves from recalling knowledge or not. As more classes gain specific abilities tied to this activity, its broad, far reaching, and highly subjective interpretability is going to consistently lead to arguments and hard feelings without further guidance about how to handle it. This does not have to mean establishing a new set of specific rules in the Dark Archive book about how to use the recall knowledge activity, but it could also include a transparent discussion about how such an activity is always going to come down to GM fiat, but that GMs probably need a little more support and help understanding the consequences of the different ways that interpreting the activity can have.


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Lately, I have been finding a couple of different GMs have been incredibly resistant to letting parties take enough time after combats to heal in AP dungeons. I GM, I understand not wanting to give parties for ever. I understand collapsing fights on top of each other, I do it a lot. It can create a tension that can be fun for everyone. One of these time, I, the healer, rolled under a 5 six times in a row and failed to heal anyone (we were 3rd level), with a party that was too beat up to press on, so I get a GM not wanting to let a party spend hours healing, and that bad luck is just bad luck.

My issue isn't actually that I think GMs are being unfair, in fact I totally sympathize with wanting to make dungeons feel dangerous.

My problem is actually with the meta that gets created by this dynamic. What happens over and over again is that very injured parties end up trapping themselves in small rooms and end up spending hours of game time creating incredibly frustrating encounters with very high chances of player death, especially when the GM doesn't give players even 10 minutes.

This has been a game stopper as pushing on with one or more character at 10% or less HP is not at all viable in PF2, and in both of my sessions this week we spent about half of the session trying and failing to create spaces where the party can heal.

As a GM, that is really not a dynamic that I want to create in my games, and I generally only interrupt healing when it really has the opportunity to create a really fun or interesting moment in the story.

Mainly I just curious to hear whether the the 10 minute healing breaks are best just done as nearly automatic time, or if you have had more fun trying to build tension around it?


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If I am reading the rules on critical immunity correctly, it would have no effect on a critical hit from a spell like Hydraulic Push, as Hydraulic push does not double the damage of a critical hit but give a separate effect for a critical hit than a regular hit?

This makes it incredibly good against oozes, but that seems to really fit the spell thematically, as it is seriously diluting them.


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It is not uncommon to encounter an attitude on these boards that recalling knowledge is a useless activity. I am not going to try to argue that individual players might have experiences that lead them to believe this, largely because the handling of recalling knowledge is incredibly GM dependent and experiences will obviously vary.

However, I think it is worth pointing out to people who have this experience that that is really an unfortunate situation to be in and that it is probably worth talking with your fellow players/GM about why it feels that way and figuring out as a table how to change that dynamic. The reason why I think it is important to push back against letting recalling knowledge be a frustrating or wasteful activity is that it really is one of the central ways a GM needs to be giving information to players beyond direct sensory experiences of their characters and is how you bring the world alive and help dungeons feel like an ecosystem and not a series of random encounters.

This is something that I would love to see turned into a guide, but as I am not able to sit down and write it myself, maybe starting out as a thread where people just toss out ideas for how recalling knowledge is fun for them will suffice for now, or inspire someone to compile it all into a sharp looking guide.

In that regard here is one idea I have for now:

GMs
As the GM, you are the player who probably caries the greatest burden with making recall knowledge feel useful. That can be frustrating when it feels like an added responsibility but there are a couple things to keep in mind.
1. If the idea of making up false information is a nightmare for you, you might as well not make recalling knowledge a secret check. Instead, push it back on your players to make something creative up when they critically fail and it invites them into the story telling process. When a PC crit fails a RK check on a water mephit and decides it is a rare kind of water goblin that other goblins hate and fear because it replaces their children with wet rocks, you end up with a much richer world to play in. If you go this route (making RK checks public) I highly recommend letting players specify what kind of information that they get from you.
2. If you like making up the stories yourself and playing with the ambiguity of secret rolls, the important thing to keep in mind is to make the information the player gets (most important) fun, (next most important) exciting and (ideal but not necessary) actionable in a way that can move the story forward, even if it is not true.

Whether you use secret checks or not, if players succeed in recalling knowledge and don't move forward feeling like they have a better understanding of the question they just asked about, and a sense of something new that they can try because they got that knowledge, they are very likely to start feeling like recalling knowledge is useless.

A really easy way to put this into play when players recall knowledge in combat, spending an action to do so, is to make the knowledge directly related to the upcoming tactics that the creature is about to employ. Is it about to try to bite and swallow a player? Attack with a special move and raise a shield? Describe this as the player identifying the creatures combat style or physiology and it will go a long way to making recalling knowledge feel both fun and useful.


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How have you run hero points and effects that bypass the dying system? Is the wording of the rules only supposed to interact with the dying condition? Or also supposed to work with the dying system? Does this make persistent damage the most dangerous condition in the game?


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Continued over from a side conversation in this thread:

Link here

Do you think that a character can use fire an arrow from a short bow with a standard shield in their other hand, using the feat Nimble Shield Hand?

Relavent rules text:

Hands wrote:

Some weapons require one hand to wield, and others require two. A few items, such as a longbow, list 1+ for its Hands entry. You can hold a weapon with a 1+ entry in one hand, but the process of shooting it requires using a second to retrieve, nock, and loose an arrow. This means you can do things with your free hand while holding the bow without changing your grip, but the other hand must be free when you shoot. To properly wield a 1+ weapon, you must hold it in one hand and also have a hand free.

Weapons requiring two hands typically deal more damage. Some one-handed weapons have the two-hand trait, causing them to deal a different size of weapon damage die when used in two hands. In addition, some abilities require you to wield a weapon in two hands. You meet this requirement while holding the weapon in two hands, even if it doesn’t require two hands or have the two-hand trait.

Nimble Shield Hand wrote:
You are so used to wielding a shield that you can do so even while using the hand that's holding it for other purposes. The hand you use to wield a shield counts as a free hand for the purposes of the Interact action. You can also hold another object in this hand (but you still can't use it to wield a weapon). This benefit doesn't apply to tower shields, which are still too cumbersome.

My reading of these texts is that you would only be able to use the free hand from nimble shield hand to perform an interaction action or hold an item, not use that free hand as part of a strike, which is what is required by a 1+ handed weapon.

Some people argue that the archer is only using the free hand to reload the shortbow with with a reload of 0 so I will include the reload text as well:

Reload wrote:

While all weapons need some amount of time to get into position, many ranged weapons also need to be loaded and reloaded. This entry indicates how many Interact actions it takes to reload such weapons. This can be 0 if drawing ammunition and firing the weapon are part of the same action. If an item takes 2 or more actions to reload, the GM determines whether they must be performed together as an activity, or you can spend some of those actions during one turn and the rest during your next turn.

An item with an entry of “—” must be drawn to be thrown, which usually takes an Interact action just like drawing any other weapon. Reloading a ranged weapon and drawing a thrown weapon both require a free hand. Switching your grip to free a hand and then to place your hands in the grip necessary to wield the weapon are both included in the actions you spend to reload a weapon.

What do you think? At the very least, this conversation seems like a separate rules question than a general discussion about what might happen with the repeating trait.


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Since splitting out magic into 4 clear traditions and tying one skill to each of them, it feels like a lot of adventure writers have gobbled up the fun mysteriousness of Occultism as a basis for inventing new monsters, compelling sinister plots and researching the mysteries of the universe.

At first I thought this was great, but with going on 2 years of hindsight, it feels like arcane magic is getting left in the narrative dust. Studying magic anymore just seems boring in comparison to what occultism has to offer. I guess, in world, there is the very real incentive to study arcane magic instead of occult, in that it seems like there are very few ways to study the occult without losing your mind to some greater old one or other mysterious patron or muse.

It just seems like in play, arcana is now a nearly useless skill for understanding magic generally, as it now applies to such a specific subset of what magic is in golarion and a bunch of monsters seem to have gotten labeled as occult, just because they are weird, even though they are crafted by wizards.

I am hopeful that that is primarily just a product of occult magic being the shiny new fun thing to play with narratively. But having 4 traditions of magic now, and society applying to almost everything, it does seem like arcana is the least important knowledge skill in the game, short of participating in a specifically wizard or dragon hunting campaign. And even with rituals, it doesn't seem like Arcane magic has anything unique to it all anymore.

This realization arise from participating in many conversations about the wizard class, and while I actually am a fan of the class mechanically, I am starting to see that narratively, studying arcane magic is starting to seem like the "safe option" that nobles let their kids study because it is entirely knowable and contained, whereas anything really powerful or potentially dangerous gets labeled occult. It is making arcane magic look really boring.


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As a GM that runs both APs and a Homebrew, I can say with experience that keeping track of player wealth is not something I am very good at doing, and it is an area I need to work on improving too so this post is in no way meant to be me saying "you are doing it wrong."

What I am asking of other GMs especially, but players as well:

Do you treat treasure as a renewable resource or a limited resource you only get so much of?

I feel like the advice in the player's guide is for GMs to treat it like a renewable resource, and if PCs are using that resource, like by using consumables, breaking shields, giving away treasure to those in need, the GM is supposed to check in and make sure that the party is getting more loot drops. The wealth by level chart should loosely match characters in play, not just new players starting at X level.

Traditional APs though do a terrible job of setting this expectation and pretty much run exactly the opposite, making wealth a total set number per book and GMs (Myself included) rarely double check it. I think that the books tend to award too much treasure, rather than too little, but I doubt many GMs count it out and make sure that players aren't ending up with too much if they horde it, or not enough if they use it.

I will say, from playing PFS, I have realized that the game plays a lot smoother and more player friendly when the player uses resources quickly, rather than holding on to them, and I think a lot more players would have more fun if they realized that using their shield to block the mega hit and stay on their feet to save the poor helpless prince was more likely to result in the prince giving them a new, more level appropriate shield as a reward, rather than thinking that sparing the shield is more important because if you let it get destroyed, it is wealth gone.


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So my players had an absolute blast with this debate and it was a lot of fun to have Baats'Ulan throw out the best anti-capitalist rhetoric he could at the party but the artwork of the character shows him wearing this solid gold necklace, which just made for the easiest target. If was a fun way to give the PCs a very easy way to poke out at hypocracy, but it really doesn't mention anywhere in the text that Baats'Ulan was a money grubbing hypocrite, or if so I missed it. At first I was planning on running Baats'Ulan as being authentically looking to teach his disciples to abandon the concept of wealth and return to means of protecting and providing for their communities with the skills of survival that humans have been cultivating for years, but as soon as I showed the party the artwork, I was pretty much forced to play him over as a con artist.

I am interested if there was an intention to play Baats'Ulan as a Con from the beginning or if it was just a strange occurrence of the art work telling a different story than the text?


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Did they go out the "swamp dragon" route? Is there a passage in B8 that can cleared out to link to the sink hole in A8?


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Is there an obvious sticky thread with a link to the playtest surveys I am missing somewhere? Trying to find the blog with the link is proving more complicated than it feels like it should be.


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Note: I would normally post this in the AP specific forum instead of AP general discussion, but I don't see an Abomination Vault Forum so if this can be moved there when that happens, I would greatly appreciate it.

First of all, RAVE!

James Jacobs has some beautiful adventure designs in this book and the flavor and color of the world and the creatures is all amazing. I can't wait to run this. I especially love the presentation of a mega dungeon as fitting within the larger world of Golarion, but being left incredibly open ended for me as a GM to get my PCs in the door. I feel like this really encourages me to take ownership of my campaign and make it something special. The book really focuses fast and furiously on the dungeon environs itself and spends the vast majority of its time making a lively and dynamic dungeon ecology. As a classic dungeon crawl, this book has creativity in all the right places.

For example: I can't wait to play up the gang turf war of the mitflits and the morlocks. I think I am going to really try to push my PCs away from going full on Murder Hobo, by having Mitflits break down and spend a full round crying and mourning the first time a party member brings one down with lethal force, to encourage more social interactions with obviously intelligent enemies. I think I am also going to discribe the mudlickers as all having dirty faces that look like they have been face planting in the muck of the Fogfen, and for their graffiti to be a series of brownish vertical streaks on the wall, from where they drag their mud covered...tongues along the wall.

But all of that is just riffing off of the beautiful flavor that is already present in the book. What I am very interested in doing, is playing this whole AP on slow XP progression, so that there is also room to introduce a lot more social encounters with NPCs from Otari and allow for a lot of downtime interaction with the town to unlock some of the bonuses in the Gazetteer.

I absolutely LOVE the way that the Gazetteer for this book was handled and hope to see its form cary over into future APs as well. It really presents all the information I need to integrate the more fun subsystems from the GMG and I can't wait to see how the PCs run with it.

Overall, I just wanted to say that I was really surprised at how effectively this AP shows off why PF2 is designed the way it is, even for running an adventure that would seem to otherwise be so traditional that it might feel system agnostic otherwise.

Really incredible design here, and I can't wait to run it.

Also, question: James! How did you find the time to put this together (and nail it) between the 100000000 other projects you seem to be involved with at this time?


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Has there been any hinting at the possibility of getting anything like demonic, infernal or aberrant instincts for the barbarian? I am secretly hoping for something like this in the Secrets of Magic Book, if it is going to include material for the other classes, but I feel like we haven't heard about anything that would suggest this for this book yet, so I am thinking it might still be aways off.


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Especially if we are going to get new weapons that have the splash trait, we need an errata to clarify how splash damage works specifically.

This was already a problem with the spell acid splash, but the blunderbuss will confuse people too with the definition of splash calling out thrown weapons and having a system where weapons with the splash trait don't do splash damage on a critical miss, but the blunderbuss appearing to do splash damage to everyone in the cone, no matter what the die roll, and then the acid splash spell only doing any splash damage at all on successful hit, and only to the creature hit.

Basically splash is a weapon trait which is clearly defined, and a damage type which is not clearly defined, and that could really stand to be better explained if we are going to get new weapons that do splash damage but don't have the splash trait.


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An interesting thing I have noticed about the gunslinger, looking more closely at it, is that there really are 2 different paths for the gunslinger to go with their firearm usage, and right now only one of them is really supported.

Direction 1: Invest in 1 weapon that you really focus your wealth and character resources into. This is the direction that the playtest class is best suited to support as it lines up very well with many of the most powerful feats (Firearm Ace, running reload, reloading strike, Dance of thunder) as well as the PF2 action and wealth economy. This play style is already well supported but it has some bugs to it.

The ways all have drawing a loaded weapon as their primary first round shtick. This is fine if you are welding a martial firearm, as you are only losing out on 2 points of damage on that shot, but with simple firearms and crossbows, drawing a loaded weapon is a bit of a bummer. You are basically losing out on 4 points of damage with firearm ace. But it is only for the first shot and then you are reloading your fancy gun so you will be getting the full benefit of your firearm ace every round after.

Direction 2: play the brace of pistols character who quick draws cheap disposable weapon after weapon.
There is a tiny bit of feat support for this style, and the hint that we might get a magic bandolier or something similar for handling the massive cliff of effectiveness this build will face as weapon runes become more prevalent, but this style is entirely impossible with crossbows (maybe not a problem, maybe as it should be), and the real problem here, is that quick draw, the one feat really playing into this style, will always leave you with an unloaded gun, so you can never benefit from any of the interesting reaction abilities that would otherwise work really well with this style of play. I.E: Wasting a round from your carefully set up Arquebus decked out with runes is going to feel pretty wasteful compared to fire and forgetting a hand cannon shot to give your alchemist the opportunity to attack again with their failed top level bomb attack , only using your fighter like proficiencies and ignoring cover.

I think that a great way, beyond the magic bandolier, to make this style work even better is to have a 1st level free feat that does something cool (other than giving you a strike) when you draw a weapon. Maybe an intimidating draw, that lets you make a demoralize action when you interact to draw a weapon or something like that to make drawing a weapon to have a loaded gun in hand for after your turn is over not such a dead space for the class. Also, if crossbows are going to be a part of the class, it might make more sense to either have a separate firearm ace feat specifically geared off of drawing a weapon instead of reloading a weapon, as that fits a lot better in my narrative of the class anyway than reloading, but at least would be a cool separate option.

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