Vaetta Sciona's page

The following is an assorted collection of rules changes I would make to the playtest rulebook (as of update 1.5)

Stronger Ancestries
• Unconventional Weaponry has the following alternate benefits: "You’ve familiarized yourself with a weapon from another ancestry or culture. Choose a common or uncommon weapon. You're trained in, and have access to that weapon."

Earlier Ability Boosts
• Every character classes' Ability Boosts have the following alternate benefits: "At 5th level and every 4 levels thereafter, you boost four different ability scores. You can use these ability boosts to increase your ability scores above 18. Boosting an ability score increases it by 1 if it’s already 18 or above, or by 2 if it starts out below 18."

Improved Infusions
• The alchemist's Advanced Alchemy has the following additional benefit (inserted at the end of the first paragraph): "When you create an infused alchemical item that allows a saving throw, you can change its DC to your class DC."
• The alchemist's Studied Resonance has the following additional benefit: "You gain 3 bonus Resonance Points, but you can only use these bonus Resonance Points when you create alchemical items during your daily preparations (see Advanced Alchemy)."
• Remove Powerful Alchemy from the list of Alchemist Feats.

Fighter's Armor Training
• If you're a Fighter whose Key Ability is Dexterity, you gain Light Armor Expertise at 11th level instead of Heavy Armor Expertise. Light Armor Expertise has the following benefits: "Your proficiency rank for light armor and all shields increases to expert."
• If you're a Fighter whose Key Ability is Dexterity, your Armor Mastery ability has the following alternate benefits: "Your proficiency rank for light armor and shields increases to master. Your proficiency rank for medium armor and unarmored defense increases to expert."

Wizard's Foci
• The wizard's Arcane Spellcasting has the following additional benefit (inserted between the first and second sentences): "Because you're a wizard, you can usually hold an arcane focus or spellbook as part of your Material Casting and Somatic Casting actions, so you usually don't need spell components or another hand free."

Armor Resistance (Optional)
• While wearing a given suit of armor, you gain (or increase your existing) resistance to the listed damage types (see below). Reduce the resistance given by a poor-quality suit of armor by 2 (to a minimum of 0). Increase the resistance given by a high-quality suit of armor by the listed item bonus for an item of its quality. Note: The resistance values were chosen based upon my estimation of how much worse given armor types are compared to the "best possible defense in the game." Which is being Legendary in Unarmored, with a 24 Dexterity and Mage Armor X (via either bracers or spell).
Light Armor
• Padded (bludgeoning 3)
• Leather (slashing 1)
• Studded Leather (slashing 2)
• Chain Shirt (slashing 2)
Medium Armor
• Hide (bludgeoning and slashing 1)
• Scale Mail (piercing and slashing 1)
• Chainmail (bludgeoning and slashing 3)
• Breastplate (piercing and slashing 2)
Heavy Armor
• Splint Mail (piercing and slashing 3)
• Half Plate (bludgeoning, piercing and slashing 2)
• Full Plate (bludgeoning, piercing and slashing 3)

Uncommon Martial Melee Weapon
• Bayonette (10 sp | 1d4 P | 1 Light | 1 Hand | Spear | Agile, Attached to crossbow or firearm, Two-Hand d8)
• Court Sword (18 sp | 1d6 P | Light | 1 Hand | Sword | Agile, Disarm, Parry)
• Odachi (40 sp | 1d12 S | 2 Bulk | 2 Hands | Sword | Versatile P)

Uncommon Exotic Ranged Weapons
• Hand Pistol (250 sp | 1d8 P | 40 ft. | Reload 2 | 1 Bulk | 1 Hand | Gun | Deadly d10)
• 10 pinlock cartridges (10 sp | 1 Light | Alchemical, Consumable)
• Long Rifle (400 sp | 1d12 P | 80 ft. | Reload 3 | 2 Bulk | 2 Hands | Gun | Deadly d10)
• 10 pinlock cartridges (10 sp | 1 Light | Alchemical, Consumable)
Pinlock Cartridge: Ammunition for pinlock firearms (including hand pistols, and long rifles) can be crafted in batches of up to 40 cartridges (20 if created by Advanced Alchemy, or 10 if created by Quick Alchemy).
Critical Specialization Effect (Gun): The target takes 1 additional damage per weapon damage die (including the extra dice from a critical hit).

Healing Surge
• You automatically succeed when overspending resonance points to activate any kind of Healing Potion or Elixir of Life (including an Elixir of Rejuvenation) while you are Dying.

Daily Heroics:
• Unless otherwise noted, you begin each adventure with 2 Hero Points, and lose all remaining Hero Points at the end of the adventure. You may gain 1 Hero Point each day during your daily preparations, and may have up to 3 Hero Points at any given time.

Realistic Exploration
• You can engage in a fatiguing tactic for up to 30 minutes, or a very fatiguing tactic for up to 5 minutes before becoming fatigued.
• You can engage in any tactic while fatigued, including fatiguing and very fatiguing tactics.

I wrote up this table for randomly selecting a character to create... but I'm unlikely to ever actually get to use it so... here:

First, take a long hard look at this item and then compare it to Oil of Potency (PRB 399). Ask yourself why anyone would buy/make Potency Crystals instead of Oils of Potency? Both items have an activation cost of 1 RP; however the crystal affects one attack (effectively lasting 2 seconds), while the oil lasts for 1 minute (effectively allowing for 10 or more affected attacks). The oil only costs 50 sp, compared to the crystal's 20 sp cost.

Second, imagine the frustration of using your only/last RP on a found potency crystal, only to fumble the attack roll and waste both your RP and the item (or the 10 sp it would have sold for).

Personally, I think the Potency Crystal's effect should last until you score a success, a critical success, or more than one minute has elapsed.

Quite a few creatures in the Bestiary wield nonmagical, if superior-quality weapons and many of them can cause far more damage with them than a similar level PC wielding the exact same weapon (when pried from the creature's cold dead fingers).
It would be nice if there was a in-world explanation for this, but I understand it was a necessary measure to ensure such creatures could compete with the PCs without awarding them excessively valuable loot.
So instead I would at least like to see these arbitrary damage increases take the form of an explicit creature ability that grants the creature extra dice of damage (or effective potency runes) with the listed weapons. For example:
The Vile Necromancer (PB 119) would have "Weapon Enhancement (Sickle +1)" to explain why they can deal 2d4 S with an expert sickle when you (the player) cannot.

I propose that both Humans and Halflings should recieve a bonus language (chosen from those to which they have access, in addition to the languages they already recieve).

Mechanically the benefit would be to improve the two ancestries with the weakest initial benefits. As it stands these ancestries are functional, but lackluster in that other ancestries recieve quality of life features (such as low-light and darkvision) for free. I know that access to Ancestry feats is supposed to counter this, but in practice it doesn't appear to actually do so even now. Further, I am certain that as more ancestry feats are published, power creep will eventually homoginize the average power level of every ancestry's feat list.

Flavorfully, the first benefit would be that Humans would become natural polyglots; learning Taldane and two or three languages of their choice (usually regional or ethnic). The second benefit would be that Halflings would be able to learn the regional/ethnic language of their current or former masters (in addition to Halfling and Taldane). These changes would better represent these ancestries' places in Golarion.

Saving Throws have been around longer than I've been alive. They are a classic element of D&D's legacy. However, does having two systems for resolving attacks really benefit this new ruleset?
Do we need to keep the legacy mechanic of the victims of some effects rolling an active defense check, but not others?

I propose that Paizo change Reflexes, Fortitude, and Willpower into static DCs (10 + level + ability modifier + proficiency modifier, etc), and remove TAC (see below).

This would have the benefit of always putting the dice in the hands of the PC or GM doing the thing. Spells and effects that previously required saving throws would instead require the appropriate kind of checks(s) against the appropriate difficulty class of the victim(s). Spells and effects that previously targeted TAC would target Reflexes instead, and have the Touch trait to indicate the effect cannot generally be blocked, only avoided. Armour and shields could still grant a bonus to Reflexes against Touch spells and effects; based on their limited ability to provide you with cover and/or deflect such effects harmlessly.

What Evolutions are available to Eidolon Subtypes published after Pathfinder Unchained, such as the Fey Eidolon (Ultimate Intrigue 71) and Kyton Eidolon (Curse of the Crimson Throne 431)?

There are numerous Evolutions with Requirements that were written before these subtypes existed (and therefore do not include them). The Kyton subtype states that it can take the Tentacle and Web evolutions, however the Fey subtype make no mention of what (if any) normally restricted Evolutions it can take.

At 4th level, a Magus (Mindblade) gains a class feature called Psychic Access. Amongst other things, Psychic Access declares that when a magus takes the Spell Blending Arcana, they select spells from the Psychic List instead of the Wizard List. However, Spell Blending can normally be taken as early as 3rd level.

What happens when a Magus takes Spell Blending before receiving Psychic Access?

Was the archetype intended to prevent them from doing so?
If not, do they select those spells from the wizard list (assuming they take Spell Blending at 3rd level)?
If they do select spells from the wizard list, what happens when they reach 4th level and Psychic Access changes how Spell Blending functions:
Do they have to select new spells from the psychic list to replace those they selected from the Wizard List?
Or do they keep the spells they selected from the wizard list and select future spells from the psychic list (assuming they take Spell Blending again at 6th level)?

Does a psychic weapon manifested by a mindblade using their psychic pool count as a weapon enhanced by their arcane pool for the purpose of Magus Arcana (such as Bane Blade, Devoted Blade, Ghost Blade, or Planar Hunter) or Feats (such as Banishing Critical)?

I am doing some research on the kineticist and the specifically the Void Healer wild talent (Occult Orgins 7), and I have some questions and hypotheses regarding how it works by RAW. I didn't find anything conclusive from a cursory search, so if this has already been discussed in detail and I missed it, I apologize in advance, and ask to be pointed in the right direction.

Void Healer says that it...

functions as kinetic healer, except that it heals undead (and others healed by negative energy).

Instead of paying the burn cost yourself, you can cause the recipient to take 1 point of burn.

Q-1) This means that the kineticist can choose to either accept the burn or the recipient takes the burn, correct?

The Burn class feature says:

Nonlethal damage from burn can't be reduced or redirected, and a kineticist incapable of taking nonlethal damage can't accept burn.

Q-2) Does this also mean that they cannot be "forced to accept burn"? Such as because of a failed attempt to Gather Power (see below).

If the kineticist takes damage during or after gathering power and before using the kinetic blast that releases it, she must succeed at a concentration check (DC = 10 + damage taken + effective spell level of her kinetic blast) or lose the energy in a wild surge that forces her to accept a number of points of burn equal to the number of points by which her gathered power would have reduced the burn cost.

Here are some of my additional questions regarding the material presented above.

Q-4) The burn class feature specifies kineticists, does this mean that a non-kineticist can accept/be forced to accept/take burn even if they are incapable of taking nonlethal damage?

Q-5) The Burn class feature specifies kineticists when discussing the number of points of burn you can accept. Does this limit also apply to non-kineticists?

Q-6) Does being healed by a kineticist other than yourself (using either Kinetic Healer or Void Healer) count as a "source outside [your] control" for the purpose of being able to accept/take the burn for them using this ability on you?

Q-7) If nonlethal damage from burn cannot be reduced, does a creature immune to nonlethal damage still take nonlethal damage from Burn if it somehow acquired burn?

My hypotheses, based upon a literal reading of the rules:

The hypothetical situation:
The character is a nameless Neutral Evil Human Chaokineticist 3/Cleric 3 Zombie Lord (with a total of 8 hit dice) refered to hereafter as the character. The character has used his clerical sells to animate a single Human Zombie (with a total of 2 hit dice) via Lesser Animate Dead. He currently controls a Human Fighter 1 Skeleton Champion (with a total of 3 hit dice) he encountered via the Control Undead feat (fueled by his ability to channel negative energy as a 3rd level cleric). He also has a Dhampir Chaokineticist 4 as his cohort as a result of taking the Vile Leadership feat (Ultimate Intrigue 135). The rest of the character's party is composed of boring 8th level neutral evil humans of various classes, but nobody cares about them anyway.

The hypothetical outcome:
The character definitely cannot accept burn; because as an undead he is immune to the non-lethal damage it would cause, and he has a class feature preventing him from accepting burn under that condition. I do not think that he can be forced to accept burn either, but I am unsure about this because:
A) The contradiction is of equal specificity, given that both clauses are located in class features of the same class and...
B) If an undead kineticist cannot be forced to accept burn, then Gather Power becomes an overpoweringly effective class feature for them because it has is no real penalty for failure. This is more than equal to the lose of access to utility talents which require accepting burn in my mind.
However I do think that the character can still take burn, because it isn't prohibited by the RAW; and prohibiting it would either significantly reduce or increase the effectiveness of Void Healer depending upon what happens when you attempt to force a creature that cannot take burn to take burn (see below).

Ignoring his ability to channel negative energy for the moment (perhaps because the character already used it all up for the day) the character can use the Void Healer wild talent on either the dhampir, the skeleton champion, or the zombie to heal them, but he cannot use it on himself because he can't accept the burn for doing so, moreover he must choose to have the dhampir, skeleton champion, or zombie take the burn (because he can't).

Neither the character, the skeleton champion, or the zombie are subject to nonlethal damage as a general rule of their creature types, however the specific rule in the class feature says that the nonlethal damage from burn cannot be reduced, and it's effects cannot be ignored. So if any of them somehow do accept/are forced to accept/or take burn they would also take the nonlethal damage (and somewhere on another plane of existence, a paizo developer would cry in agony).

Neither the skeleton champion or the zombie are kineticists, so they can accept/be forced to accept/take any amount of burn, I assume even after it renders them unconsious. Although if I recall the rules for nonlethal damage it would convert back into lethal damage and basically be a wash.

The character cannot accept burn (and likely cannot be forced to accept burn either, see above), but he can still take burn whenever his cohort, the dhampir uses their Void Healer wild talent on the character. This is the only condition I can think of that would create this situation however.

The Dhampir can only accept a limited amount of burn, and can be forced to accept burn (such as when a Gather Power attempt fails), but he can take additional burn beyond that from sources outside of their control (Aka Void Healer). I am assuming for this hypotheses that the character's Void Healer qualifies as a source outside the dhampir's control, and vice versa. Since the dhampir doesn't get to choose whether he or the character takes the burn when the character uses void healer, and vice versa. Although I suppose the character/dhampir could try and save against the wild talent like any other "harmless" spell-like ability.

For the Zombie: The zombie doen't have an intelligence score, so it can never heal, regardless of how long it "rests". Channeling negative energy won't get rid of the nonlethal damage from the burn it has accepted either. Meaning the nonlethal damage from the zombie's burn will eventually render it "unconscious"... Forever. Making using void healer this way basically useless.

For the character, the dhampir, and the Skeleton Champion: Thanks to their intelligence scores (or for the dhampir, thanks to not being undead), the character, the dhampir, or the skeleton champion can be left to rest for a day whenever the nonlethal damage from the burn (or damage they take subsequently alongside the burn) finally renders them "unconscious".

Is there a complete stat block for the City of Daggermark? If so, where is it published?
I am planning on running an Emerald Spire/Thornkeep campaign in the future. Since neither of the primary settlements in these modules are large enough to have clerics who can cast Raise Dead, I expect that at some point the players may have to travel to Daggermark for services they cannot acquire locally.

While researching rules for a post last night I found an apparent contradiction in the FAQ and core rules that I would like to see addressed.

The July 2013 FAQ post regarding the use of a two-handed weapon and armor spikes is contradicted by the march 2013 and October 2014 FAQ posts.

A) Armor Spikes are considered light weapons; which require they be "used in one hand".
B1) The March 2013 FAQ Post:
http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1fm#v5748eaic9qda
B2) The October 2014 FAQ Post:
http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1fm#v5748eaic9sk0
C) The Core Rulebook states that "you can perform one or more free actions while taking another action normally"
D) The Core Rulebook, under Two-Weapon Fighting states that you must "wield a second weapon in your off-hand..." in order to "...get one extra attack per round with that weapon".

Therefore, the July 2013 FAQ is now incorrect: You may declare that you are shifting your grip to hold your greatsword to hold it one-handed as a free action during a Full-Round Attack action, make the extra attack granted by the Two-Weapon Fighting feat with your Spiked Armor by using your now free off-hand, and then shift your grip back to holding your greatsword two-handed in order to continue making your normal iterative attacks with it.
The March 2013 FAQ Post and Core Rulebook allows individual GMs to limit the number of free actions which may be taken, however given the stipulations given in the March 2013 post regarding shifting grip, this will usually only prevent a character from making the additional extra attacks granted by Improved and Greater Two-Weapon Fighting (since it implies you cannot shift your grip more than twice).