Vallarthis's page

I expect it's less about balance and more about added complexity, crowding the typical battle map, and one player's turn taking a lot longer. Better to make that an opt-in thing for brave GMs.

Ooh, I would *definitely* play a Runeknight. That sounds very cool.

"Breach-loading flintlock with paper cartridges" was enough for me to suspend disbelief just as easily as with crossbows' unrealistic loading time, but everything Michael just said makes the question actually cool instead of an obstacle to be overcome.

Midnightoker wrote:

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

I suppose, but we can extend that argument to, say, a horned helmet that does D4 piercing, or even one of the specific armors (I think there are Full Plate ones) that have an attack. Would you let someone throw their armor or helmet that they are wearing with this ability?

Even if RAW is yes, GM FIAT and other existing mechanics (such as wearing gauntlets to make attacks with them, or armor to protect yourself, the latter of which takes excessive time to don or remove) would kick in and say no.

Imagine how hilarious this ability would be if Spiked Armor was still a thing.

You launch yourself at the enemy and then return to your hand (causing a pardox and disappearing from existence).

I now want a Cannon Ball feat with "oversized" firearms, where you can shoot someone one or two sizes smaller than you at enemies, dealing bludgeoning damage to the target, as well as half the bludgeoning damage to the "ammunition," with persistent burning damage equal to the weapon damage dice.

Hell, don't make it a feat, make it a monster ability, call it Cannon Fodder, and I'll be happy.

Specifically, an ogre loading goblins into its blunderbuss. It's begging to be a scatter attack.

Honestly since Rebounding Assault is already on the Way of the Drifter (the melee Class), I think it might make more sense to just turn this into a gap closing ability that you can regrip the weapon as part of the attack.

Like the thing that's easy to visualize is:

- Throw weapon

- Shoot weapon faster

- Half your speed Stride to target

- Draw weapon from targets chest for free

And the above is something that we've seen a lot in popular culture/video games/etc.

It's easy to understand how it can be visualized and it follows along with the Drifter's already built kit (it kinda mirrors the level 1 and Sword and Pistol).

They are already the melee-ish Class, I see no reason to have the dang thing fly back to their hand when it could be used to close the distance and focus on the target.

That also alleviates weird attack cycle shenanigans where you are fighting someone in melee, you throw your weapon at someone else, and then you get your weapon back and make a Strike against someone else entirely.

At least that's my take. If it stays in its current form, I would really hope it goes to a Feat instead of mandatory because it is a little ridiculous.

If you shoot first, then throw at the opening the bullet made, it also works for gun blades.

Excellent! I figured there would be something, but since I didn't see it mentioned anywhere I thought it bore mentioning. Thank you for the explanation!

I've also been afraid of trying the wizard and cleric classes since some issues back in 2nd edition D&D, although at least with the wizard there was also the 'OK, I cast Magic Missile, now what use am I?' aspect.

That's a joke with my group to this day.

Honestly I'd be astounded if this change hasn't already been in Mark's notebook for weeks now. He's a smart cookie, and I have every confidence the final version will be great.

The only concern I have is whether I will be able to give my dire porcupine Beast Eidolon persistent piercing damage on a crit...

Does anyone have an idea how long the designers have before they need to hand the book over to editing to get it out in time? I'm curious how much time they have to actually digest and implement the playtest data, as that dictates an upper limit on how much the design can change. If it's, like, two months, a ground-up redesign doesn't seem feasible.

A "Hide User" button for these forums would be a great quality of life improvement.

I've had the second (and final) session with the second group now.

The phantom summoner continues to feel straightjacketed by the manifest action taking a full 3 actions. She had plenty of opportunities for neat tricks by unmanifesting the eidolon or warp it back to her side, but losing a whole turn to do it was prohibitive. The one thing they did that took advantage of the eidolon's impermanence was that when the rest of the party escaped a bad situation but the eidolon was trapped behind, they decided to just run and hope she hit the 100' limit or, failing that, if it got dropped they could heal her and still all be out of harm's way.
The summoner proved unexpectedly resilient again; the party was split into two groups, and both were getting hammered with AoEs, with the summoner in one group and the eidolon in the other. Despite getting both sets of attacks, the summoner held on and kept fighting on both fronts.

The two slide caster magi played pretty much exactly as you'd expect magi to play: they scoot up to a baddie and spellstrike. These two use cantrips exclusively for spellstriking, saving their slots for things like Fly and Haste, or Weapon Storm for area effect. The players talked a lot about which cantrips they were using, and the consensus was that Electric Arc is the best because it still has an effect when your spell roll or DC fails, which is often, and Telekinetic Projectile is for when you are confident of a successful hit (like smashing through a wall). Other cantrips are only worthwhile for trying to hit elemental weaknesses, they concluded.
With slide casting, the class plays very much like the consummate gish it is meant to be, at least against lower-level foes so your spells can hit often enough. One of the players is running a warpriest in another game, and the other has a fighter/sorceror, and they both have a lot more fun with those characters than they did with the magus. There wasn't a big flavourful hook, apparently.

The third magus was the shooting star magus with a Returning javelin. His build included 0 magus class feats, instead taking all barbarian multiclass feats, and he had a great time. With rage and giant instinct's oversize weapon, he actually had better damage than the other group's powergamer maul user. The other two magi were a bit jealous of his character for having an option besides setting up spellstrikes.

Second group is an even split, two magi and two summoners.

The first magus chose sustaining steel, and as a result of needing to move around the battlefield a fair bit didn't get to use spellstrike much. If he had played a fighter with a maul and spellcasting multiclass instead, I don't think I would have noticed the difference. That player is a powergamer sort, and built his character with an eye towards maximum spike damage. He got one really good spellstrike in which made his night, but he expressed that those moments appear to be so few and far between, he probably wouldn't play another magus in its present form.
He did take martial caster to get himself some Jump spells, which was a spell several of our magi sought out, each independently. Some sort of feat or focus spell for a jump slam would probably be very popular.

The second magus was the same shooting star magus from first group, because we had a dropout last minute. I'll discuss him with the other group.

The first summoner chose a dragon eidolon. He badly wanted to use the breath weapon, but the rest of the party kept running into melee and leaving him without an angle, so he hasn't had a chance to use it yet. Evolution surge was deemed very good, providing scent and speed at crucial moments. When it came to casting spells, he opted to cast Haste on a magus, so obviously he feels the summoner has better action economy than the magus. There isn't all that much to say about his first session: everything was basically fine. The eidolon was fine in combat. The number of spell slots was fine. Managing two bodies was fine. He would entirely happy playing the summoner as-is.

The second summoner chose beast eidolon, and as a roleplayer type, is having a ball being two characters (one an adorable leshy, the other a Hulking bear). He ran a one-man good-cop/bad-cop routine on an NPC and discovered the power of two skill attempts against the same problem. This player hasn't had much experience with PF2, but doesn't appear to be having a problem grokking one character with two bodies. In fact, all the summoners I've run for so far don't seem to have any trouble wrapping their head around the shared HP pool, but none of them played PF1 to have preconceived notions of how the summoner works.
He tried a primal roar, which would have been useful if he had rolled better. The fights so far have been too close to use the charge.

The broad overview I've seen from all the players so far is that the summoner is pretty fun and effective in its current form, whereas the magus looks good on paper but struggles to make good in practice.
All the magus players have expressed a desire for more low-level spells, while the summoners haven't complained about their spell slots at all.
Probably the most common single phrase I've heard from my players is "slide casting is fun, but".

It looks like they're going to stick with Cha is the primary stat for all spontaneous classes. Which...ug, but I think they'll continue in that fashion.

Also, there's no Con classes at all, so hopefully that will be coming at some point. Kinetecists are the obvious choice, but perhaps other classes that are pure focus/cantrip classes would also be appropriate.

CON would work for the summoner, if there is a will to go that direction. You manifest your eidolon by sharing your life force with it.

I have two groups I and running through a scenario, I thought I would put my observations here. We've just started, I'll add more as we play.

The first group is 3 magi and a summoner.

Two of the magi chose slide casting, and the third chose shooting star with returning javelin, which I thought was clever. All three had plenty of fun with their schtick, and the shooting star player didn't seem annoyed about not getting the free move. There was plenty of talk at the table about how cool the various magus feats and features were, and they all made liberal use of the fact you can hold your spell in your weapon for a round to split a spellstrike up, which made them able to be more flexible with their actions than I was expecting.
The overall first impression from the magus players was that it is a class with lots of fun ideas, but missing most of your spells makes it a bit of a bummer in practice.

The summoner kept getting tripped up by manifesting taking a full turn. They were moving through a foggy town, not knowing if the next creatures they encounter are going to be monsters to fight or panicy townsfolk to rescue (who might freak out about her ghost), and guessing wrong meant she lost the first round of combat. Everyone felt a full round to manifest was punishing.
Once in combat, though, the eidolon proved a powerful tank, what with the summoner standing out of danger healing herself. The player seemed satisfied with it's attacks and damage, even though she only used boost eidolon once.

Some of them have been liberal with their slotted spells, so we'll get some data on their endurance in the next session, I'm sure.

If it played more like a monster, high stats and few abilities, would that step on the toes of other party members? If your Eidolon had at least as much + to hit as a fighter, but no shield block, lunging stance, power attack, etc, could you balance that?

Could we find a way to use the monster creation rules to make balanced Eidolons?

I contend that the opposite is the way to go. The to-hit bonus is the crown jewel of the fighter class, and if the eidolon matches it there will definitely be some hurt feelings. Perhaps more importantly, having few abilities means they will get boring fast. NPC monsters with few abilities are great because you fight them once or twice, see them do their schtick, and then fight something else. If you fought cyclopes for an entire adventure, you would be entirely sick of cyclopes by the end. On the other hand, more abilities is more room for customization, and more opportunity to make the eidolon feel monstrous or bizarre.

A pacifist negotiator is useless against animals, constructs, oozes, most aberrations and elementals, plenty of undead...

It only works in adventures tailored directly to that class, which does not bode well.

You have to be careful how much freedom you give for where you manifest your eidolon because of transpose. If you can manifest it anywhere within 100ft, with transpose that becomes a 100ft teleport at will.

It might be best to make 'Monster: the class' (can't think of a decent name to propose) separately, fully and solely martial, and let the summoner focus on its own identity as a two-part PC. I would enjoy playing both of those.

I'm confused why one would want to add disarm, trip or shove to unarmed attacks. Couldn't the eidolon take those skill actions regardless? Is it just to get the potency bonus from the summoner's handwraps/invested weapon?

Do archetypes taken by the summoner apply to the eidolon? Or perhaps you could pick to which of you the archetype benefits apply?

I want to have my angel Lay on Hands, and a dragon with Panache.

Disadvantage on saves that hit both of you is pretty rough, and not what I would have expected from how the rest of the class feels. I would have thought you roll once, and use that die result for both saves.

Overall, though, the class looks cool and I want to try one.

The samurai would make a decent LN champion. Their code is just as strict, but elevates duty and loyalty above any question of morality. They are about as bound to their lord as a paladin to their god. Use the "tenets of bushido" instead of "tenets of good/evil/neutrality", and their focus spells could be more ki or resolve themed. Ronin could be the CN counterpart, perhaps.

What is the best spell for a Spellcasting familiar?

I would have said Heal, in case you drop and they can bring you back up,

The default system works fine if you pick a class, then imagine your character based on that class identity. Where you run into problems is if you design a character first, and then try to fit that design into a class's silo. I enjoy the latter sort of character very much more, but there is always something that doesn't fit into any class's defined boundaries. I don't really want a double helping of class feats; I see the benefit of a tight budget. Just a free dedication, though, would help by extending the available possibility space in the direction I'm trying to go without the speedbump of buying access.

Looks like some didn't notice Nudge Fate has a slightly different lockout than most hexes:

"...changing the outcome appropriately. The spell then ends, and the target is temporarily immune for 1 minute."

The lockout happens when the spell actually accomplishes something, not just because you cast it. That feels a lot better.

Unrelated, but is it clarified anywhere if the witch MCD familiar has one less ability than normal for a familiar (making it 1), or one less than normal for a witch's familiar (which would then be 2)? I would assume it's the former, but it's ambiguous.

I think playing someone with a gigantism condition feels very different from someone who is very big, while being a typical size for their ancestry. Do correct me if I'm wrong.

You know what would be really easy to implement? A half-nephlim human heritage. The PF1 nephilim entry describes them having half-human children, which are basically like humans but especially big and strong. You might even be able to fit it on a single page, and it sounds like it would satisfy the majority of what people are looking for. Maybe do a Large size full nephilim eventually, maybe not.

A giant-themed ancestry definitely sounds cool, but this would be easy to get out quickly and satisfy a lot of people.

Sapient wrote:

Martialmasters wrote:

Sapient wrote:

Martialmasters wrote:

If you don't like religion at all on some level cleric isn't for your, neither is champion.

I can play either but I don't play preachy characters.

I enjoy playing religious characters while not personally liking religion.

Few are like that. In truth

I STRONGLY disagree. The late majority of people one played with enjoy playing characters substantially different than themselves.

Not in the circles I've ran in then. Yes different from yourself. But that seems to fall apart when it comes to religion.

I expect it varies by location. What one wants out of fantasy depends a lot on what your reality is like.

Perhaps the best way to answer the titular question is with an example:
I recently made up a cleric character: a leshy cleric of Hathor. I had decided I wanted to try a leshy, and the idea that a plant would worship the sun seemed too appropriate to deny, so I began looking through the deities with the sun domain. When I came across a happy dancing cow god, I couldn't help but have fun pretending to vigorously espouse those beliefs.

Speaking to the point that almost all of the afterlives on offer seem unappealing, I agree, but for any given mortal there just needs to be one that sounds lovely. If you personally think heaven is the only one that sounds good, you're probably a Lawful Good sort of person. I would describe my brother as Chaotic Good, and he thinks turning into an animal and wandering through an idealized wilderness sounds great. A place for everyone, and everyone in their place, I guess.

Hex cantrips are a tradeoff for one less spell slot; what if they published one patron that, instead of giving you a hex cantrip, just gave you that spell slot back? Seems like a pretty easy fix for hex cantrips not being entirely satisfactory. It would also provide excellent data to see whether players consider hex cantrips a worthy tradeoff.

A big thanks to everyone who has helped out with previews on this thread, you've kept me from suffering an anticipation-induced aneurysm.

I've been wanting since PF1 to build Hosteen Storm, Beastmaster (from the novel of the same name and its sequels, by Andre Norton). Alas, still no joy. Storm has a team of four (later five) animal companions -- an eagle, a big cat, two meerkats, and an Appaloosa stallion -- but he is not limited to having only one "active" at a time.

Ah, well, waiting is...

Is it just him and his animals as the protagonists? Because that sounds like an adventuring party, rather than a single adventurer. Maybe see how persuasive you can get with convincing your fellow players to try out some homebrewed ancestries. :)

+1 Occultist

It pairs well with the Investigator, if they want to do more investigation adventures. The Karrin Murphy/Harry Dresden dynamic.

Murder cults? Is it the Skinsaw Cult? :O Edit: I guess its probably one from Vudra because why else the vudra article?

If so, I expect one could follow this up with Cult of the Ebon Destroyers quite easily.

There is also an option intermediate between 3-level modules like Fall of Plaguestone and the three-part adventure path, that being the 6-level modules like the upcoming 128-page Dead God's Hand, or previously, Ire of the Storm (I just checked and it's 5 levels, but only 64 pages, which is some high-density adventure). These are effectively two-part APs. I quite like these, as it is long enough to feel worthwhile to really get invested in a character, while short enough to hopefully get through it before life dissolves the group, as so often happens.
Paizo seems unsure about trying more 3-part APs (understandably so: if it ain't broke don't fix it, especially when it's your bread and butter), but are demonstrably okay adding these 6-level adventures on the side. I just hope they do some mid-level ones, instead of always starting at 1st.

I know when I'm GMing, I always appreciate it when my players talk to me about a plan they are unsure is sportsmanlike before they try it.

I would strongly encourage you to ask your GM if it will upset them. If the answer is yes, ask what about it in particular is a problem for them. Maybe the two of you can find a happy compromise.

I also played it wrong based on an assumption; in my case, I assumed the trigger for grab attempts was the usual "creature enters or begins their turn in the area."

Side note, Dimension Door says the spell automatically fails if it would bring another creature with you (even in an extradimensional container). It would be nice for familiars to be exempt from this restriction.

I, too, was down on Cackle, until I realized it applies equally well to insane-evil-genius, milking-the-giant-cow maniacal laughter. Now I'm on board with the theme, but it does need mechanics that aren't so edge-case.

Getting ready to run the AP and this is bugging me too. What I've come up with is:

-Cayden's keg and Shelyn's smile are successful businesses, so perhaps those businesses were fronts for the religions in darker times, and now that the hellknights are gone and Thrune's power is waning they worship openly. (Desna must be relatively new)

-When the hellknights arrived and suddenly somebody cared that there was no church of Asmodeus in town, maybe the council asked them to hold services in their fancy new citadel?

On a similar note, my table has been using pf2.easytool.es and it's an amazing quality of life enhancer. I can queue up the BBEG's favourite spells for immediate reference, or quickly check what exactly sick 2 does to someone. One player says she can't imagine playing without it any more.

Do need to know this as when my books arrive the first character I'll make will be a Bard, and this the only ranged attack Occult cantrip.

Good news! Daze now does mental damage, with Stunned as the critical effect. Not a ton of damage, but it's an option.

The thing is, TKP has better damage than any other cantrip I've seen, and it in the playtest it was the only cantrip that targeted AC rather than TAC because of its high damage. So it might intentionally use your lower stat (DEX) on your spellcasting proficiency. It's not even less versatile than other cantrips really; it may only do physical, but being able to deal all 3 types is sweet.

I figured a larger damage die was its schtick, in lieu of splash, extra range, optional melee attack, or two targets.

Also worth noting, detect magic and readying an action/attack are each 2 actions, so you can't be doing them both at the same time, let alone moving as well.

If they decide to just go everywhere very slowly, and you want to hustle them along, the time-honoured tradition is to bust out some nasty wandering monsters (that aren't carrying treasure). Maybe they spot some rust monster tracks. It just passed this way, who knows how long before it comes back?

Produce Flame goes out of its way to say it can be delivered as a melee spell attack instead of a ranged spell attack if you so wish. Why? Ranged attacks trigger AoOs and melee attacks don't, but it has the somatic casting action which makes it a manipulate action, so it triggers AoO anyway, no?
I would be grateful if someone could explain what I'm missing.

I mean, realistically for weapons too large to carry at the hip, the most common carriage for those is "held, resting up against your body in a way that is comfortable to march with." Not just for spears and polearms and such, also for large swords; back sheaths are sort of an invention of movies and video games.

So it's hard to envision a way one could carry a greatsword where it could be retrieved relatively quickly that does not already involve holding it.

The historical method was to have an attendant carry your big sword for you. Different players will consider that either an awesome or terrible idea for their character, I imagine.

New kobolds are literally new kobolds to me, not just new art. I doubt i will use these new kobolds same way as i did before due to the way they look even if the lore is the same.

I know what you mean; I am already thinking of them less like yappy, scaled little humans, and more like the raptors from Jurassic Park. I love it.