Walks with Outsiders's page

I just thought I'd share my thoughts on the animist after a PFS playtest session.

Basic summary : A very versatile and useful and FUN class, even while NOT abusing the heck out of Bile. But Bile IS too powerful and needs to be reigned in.

We were level 5 playing through 4-07 (A Most Wonderous Exchange).

I built a gnome Channeler with Custodian, Stalker and Steward Apparitions. My plan was to only slightly abuse Earth Bile while shapechanging for melee support and using Garden for out of combat healing. Being a gnome let me totally dump Str and only pay a little attention to Dex so that I had decent (+3) in BOTH Int and Cha which allowed me lots and lots of skills (always a good thing, especially in PFS).

Basic plan (gotta have a plan :-))
Round 1: start in Steward, Stance, Bile, Whirl into Stalker
Round 2+: (order as appropriate), Sustain Bile, Sustain or cast Forest Form, Strike.

At the beginning of the session, the GM informed us of his interpretation of Bile. He was interpreting "first time you Sustain it each round thereafter" as "you can only sustain ONE Bile spell a round, the "it" refers to the Bile spell in general and not the specific one cast". While this is definitely a questionable interpretation it (or something like it) is desperately needed to keep Bile under control.

WITH this interpretation I only ever bothered to cast Bile once. And WITH this interpretation I was doing quite reasonable damage every turn (6D4+3) in an area. I always managed to catch at least one foe, often caught 2, once caught 3 and once caught 3 WITH an ally also caught (the player of the caught ally agreed to be in the area). I was VERY happy with Bile even with this interpretation.

Without this interpretation (or some other nerf) Bile is obviously just way over powered.

My above plan actually worked a oouple of times. In one scenario I never got to see the HUGE flexibility that changing form every round potentially allows (I was always a bear :-)) but I've played enough shifting druids to KNOW how incredibly versatile and powerful that ability is (climb speed one round, huge move speed another, agile second attack only when bothering to make 2 attacks, etc).

In those rounds I was quite happy with my damage output, even competing with all the other characters (Exemplars :-)). A decent AoE and a no MAP strike each round is pretty good.

Then the true value of flexibility actually showed up one fight.

Round 1 went as planned, I'd done some significant damage with Bile and had whirled into Stalker for next round.

Then things went south as the bad guys hit us HARD. One character down, another close to down, and a bit more damage spread around.

So, I changed my plan :-).

Round 2 : I whirled into Custodian, sustained Bile which allowed me to dance into the right position while still damaging the bad guys and then cast Garden. Turns out that Garden is a quite decent (not great, but decent) IN COMBAT spell as well as doing insane amounts of out of combat healing. That was enough to bring the one character back up and top up the nearly down enough to survive the next round.

Round 3 : Still in healer mode. Sustain Bile for some damage, sustain Garden for some healing, one action heal spell for some more healing.

One thing that I found quite enjoyable is that I actually had to pay significant attention to the combat. I had to make sure that I sustained and danced in the right order to the right places, had to decide where to place Bile, etc. Its just NOT a boring "Strike, strike, raise shield" or "move then throw spell" class. I had options, I had to plan my turn, group position mattered.

I've always loved flexibility and this class delivers that very well. I was impressed with the fact that I could pivot into a healer role in the middle of combat while still maintaining a decent amount of damage to the bad guys.

And the class supports quite a few builds even in the playtest.

I like the way that they handle shapeshifting. I hope that they transfer the much simpler "+1 status to hit" to the remastered druid instead of the current incredibly kludgy "If you're greater you get +2".

Although it didn't come up in this playtest the flexibility of changing shape each round is probably just about balanced by having to sustain it each round, especially with Dance so the sustain allows considerable movement.

During the entire session I only actually bothered to cast ONE real spell (a one action heal). I also cast a cantrip once more to see how it felt than for any other reason. The vessel spells were enough. This may actually be evidence that the vessel spells are TOO good. But its probably just the build I chose. A pure caster build would probably be using Bile every round and a spell every round.

Is there currently ANY PFS2 legal way to gain access to a Daikyu bow (I can gain PROFICIENCY readily enough, I need access)

Modules/Scenarios/APs that I can play, boons I can purchase, feats I can take ?

Any way at all?

Ran this at Paizocon and thought I'd post a few observations

It ran over 5 hours and I ended with a TPK

A significant portion of that TPK was bad dice luck and somewhat suboptimal character tactics but the last encounter was a beast and it comes after several encounters hard enough to drain limited resources. And that TPK came after I somewhat softballed things. Due to time pressures and the fact that things were already going south I totally ignored the bad guys reactive ability. And I had the servant acting as an active ally.

The pregens were effective enough in general but, from my perspective, didn't overflow with roleplaying character. Obviously that could be players as much as characters. The players did have access to the characters before the game but I think all my players were also GMs at the con so they probably didn't have much time before hand :-(

I suspect this plays VERY differently depending on player choices and dice rolls. I may well end up running it again just to find out. When I ran this they managed to befriend the one servant, they also completely avoided the battle with the statues (saw no reason to go down there) and it still ran long and ended in a TPK.

A few GM suggestions
1) I screwed up at the dinner. One character got the clue, I should definitely have given the information secretly. I foolishly did it openly.
2) I hinted to the players that they were on a timer. There is enough going on that I shouldn't have and just arm waved out of combat healing. Both for speed of play and to reduce resource consumption.
3) the final encounter is a beast. Allow at least an hour for it.

I looked but wasn't able to find this information if it is out there.

I'm thinking of rebuilding my character.

I have the old boon (Pathfinder Character Rebuild) the one granted when ACP were just getting started) which has as its entire text
"Pathfinder Character Rebuild"

I know that the newer rebuild boons do NOT allow one to change ancestry or background (boo :-)).

So, my questions are

1) Is the older character rebuild still even legal to use? I have most definitely played the character recently
2) If it is, can I use it to change ancestry or background?

I was playing a scenario (online, of course) and I wanted to look at my faction information.

So, I went to the PFS2 guide and, uh, couldn't find anything.

They're mentioned in the glossary but the link is a dead link.

Could some kind person please point me to where the information now is?

Oh, and possibly a link could be put in the guide to it? :-)

The guide seems to contradict itself and is exceedingly unclear

"The following are rewards that were available in the past, but are no longer available."

"Starting in season 2, Adventures no longer give Fame. There will be a new Faction boon System coming out, in the next few months, and a mechanism to transition your boons over to the new system. Once the new system is in place, you will no longer be able to buy Faction boons with fame. The current date for the transition is 10/20/2020"

Are things that I have purchased in the past (hirelings, etc) still available until 10/20/2020 (or whenever) or not?

Can I still buy things with fame until 10/20/2020 (or whenever) or not?

I tried to use the surveys but they seem to have no interest whatsoever in ones opinion unless you've played a character.

<aside>These surveys are INCREDIBLY badly designed and buggy as all heck. The detailed one asks for totally irrelevant information such as my age (which did not have a "None of your business" button). The open one asks you if you want to provide feedback on a Magus, you click the "I've not played it but want to provide feedback" button and it then the first question it asks is what was your favourite aspect of playing the magus. When I said that I did NOT play a summoner (hoping to pass the questions themselves) it asked me questions about the summoner anyway. </aside>

So, in the extremely unlikely chance (given the survey) that Paizo cares about a GM's opinion I thought I'd give it here.

I GM'ed 2 sessions of PFS scenarios (not for credit :-)) with all or almost all characters being Magi or summoners. I ran it more or less under PFS rules (allowed school items, for example).

One was at level 1 (Lions of Katapesh), the other at level 5(Grim Symphony). I've played and run both of these before and I deliberately chose them as being fairly combat heavy scenarios with at least a bit of skill challenges on the side.

Due to a combination of the characters, some bad luck, and probably some less than optimal choices Lions ended in a TPK. While its hard to get a lot of evidence from a single data point I've played or run this at least 10 times and this was the first time there was even a fatality, let alone a TPK.

The group did quite well in Symphony and were never really challenged by the combats.

Its weak evidence, but it is evidence that there are problems with very low level play.

From my point of view as the GM, the slider Magus looked by far the most fun and impacted the game in unique ways. Especially when haste entered the picture :-). The player playing the two handed wpn wielding magus enjoyed himself but, to me, his character seemed to play basically like any other 2 handed martial I've seen and almost certainly was mathematically worse than a fighter.

There were LOTS of issues that need to be better defined for the summoner. Basically, it really isn't clear if he counts as 1 character or 2 in various situations. Examples include
1) Exploration mode - does he get his own tactic?
2) Skill challenges - does the Eidolon count as a character?
3) For healing out of combat, is the Eidolon a second character?
4) How does it interact with spells that are "self" only?

From my point of view as a GM, the magus felt finicky. Part of this is doubtless inexperience on the part of both player and GM. But things like remembering if a spell strike was still active the next round, having to roll twice for a spell took time and it would be nice if things were simplified.

The spellstrike itself needs work. It is defintely too weak as it stands, the character would often have been better served by hitting with their weapon once and using Electric Arc (Electric Arc is admittedly an outlier in that it is SO useful, especially when making a melee attack. But its part of the game and the Magus design MUST take it into account).

I'm not sure what the solution is. Having the spell automatically hit would be too strong, please resist the calls for that. But giving some kind of bonus to hit or to the DC of saves would be a good idea.

Another issue that came up was that the 2 handed magus does TOO much damage on a crit, especially at low levels. Over the 2 sessions there were at least 3 occasions where he rolled a crit and the weapon damage alone killed the monster. The spell was just overkill.

And (again, GM perspective here) it seemed really anticlimatic when a crit with a weapon resulted in the spell STILL fizzling (yes, he rolled a 1 :-() or when it just resulted in a success.

The spells that Magus/Summoner get were just about enough to last through a 3 combat encounter scenario (Symphony) at level 5. With more combat encounters a day the characters would have been struggling. Felt about right to me, at least for PFS (where 3 or 4 combat encounters a day is pretty much the maximum). I think there should be some GM advice when the Magus is released as to how many combat encounters these classes are designed for, with a possible optional rule to increase the number of spells if long adventuring days are part of a GMs campaign.

Haste on a full martial at level 5 absolutely rocks. This single spell was used by EVERY Magus and Summoner and made the boss fight almost trivial.

My basic conclusion is that both classes are in the ball park but need some tweaks, especially at very low levels. Like many others, I think the Eidolon should get expert Unarmoured proficiency at level 1. An unarmed fighting Magus should be viable at level 1.

Some things just need to be cleared up. How exactly does spell strike interact with ranged and thrown weapons (does spellstrike go on the bow or the ammunition?). In exactly what circumstances is the Eidolon a minion and in exactly what circumstances is it a second character?

As I was building my battle dancer swashbuckler I just noticed something.

Perform (Dance) has the Move Trait.

The Move Trait states "An action with this trait involves moving from one space to another". Note that there doesn't seem to be the option of NOT moving.

Every other action listed with the Move Trait already has the amount of movement specified. But Perform (Dance) does not.

So, when I use an action to Dance
1) Can I move as part of that action (and if so, how far)?
2) Must I move as part of that action (and if so, how far)?

The Perform (Dance) has the concentrate trait so it already most likely provokes so it isn't that important from that point of view.

But if the Battle Dancer gets to actually move while dancing that is kind of incredibly cool :-).

I just noticed that my reporting of age of ashes resulted in only 8 prestige points being assigned.

I created a second report with 4. It went through ok for me but it complained about the players.

Am I missing something or should I just report each game twice (once with 4 and once with 8 prestige) and ignore the error message?

Unless I'm missing something, ALL of the Advanced Players Guide focus spells are uncommon and therefore not useable in PFS.

While this MAY be intentional for the monk, bard etc it pretty much CAN NOT be intentional for the witch and oracle.

So, please tell me that I missed something somewhere.

Does the Cavalier archetypes dedication ability "you can choose from animal companion with the mount special ability" allow access to the uncommon Drake companion?

Note that this is for PFS so "ask your GM" isn't a useful answer :-(

My apologies if this has been asked already but I couldn't find any thread talking about it.

I am strongly considering running War of the Crown using Pathfinder 2 rules. Has anybody tried this and, if so, do they have any advice for me?

I thought that an official statement had been made about how to handle groups of 5 or 6 players with 16-18 challenge points (the dreaded spot where sheer numbers can throw you into high tier) but I've been unable to find it.

We very nearly TPK'd due to the insanity of a group of level 1's and 2's (with 1 level 3) facing a L5 enemy.

Has the suggested change (groups with 5 or 6 players with 16-18 points) actually been made? If not, PLEASE make it.

The Lost Omens world guide has a wonderful background, Thassilonian Traveller

"You come from ancient Thassilon, one of the citizens that appeared out of time alongside the city of Xin-Edasseril."

But I've been unable to find out anything more about what happened, how citizens appeared, etc. I've quickly glanced at Return of Runelords book 6 but didn't see anything there.

Can somebody please enlighten me on what happened? Or some basic information of what it means to be a citizen of Xin-Edasseril? Or point me towards some source explaining this?

My character should level up at the end of a session I'm playing later this afternoon.

It will make a (small but noticeable, ~1gp) difference if he levels up and then spends his downtime crafting or if he has to spend his downtime crafting and then levels up.

If this was covered in either the guide to organized play OR the Core Rulebook I failed to find it.

My intuition is split. On the one hand, it makes the paperwork easier to level up AFTER the downtime. On the other hand, it makes more sense in world (at least to me) that one levels up and THEN does the downtime).

One of the things that is bugging me in PF2 is how ineffectual knowledge checks seem to be.

I find that putting down my concerns and soliciting opinions helps me get perspective.

So, comments solicited :-)

The core of my concern is that the rules seem to strongly encourage (if not outright state) that GMs should be very scarce in what information they give out. And GMs seem to be embracing that idea (I've played under several different GMs in PFS so far). Combine that with GMs telling me what they want as opposed to my asking what I care about

When combined with the fact that knowledge checks take a valuable action AND build space AND that critical failures are a thing, especially if your knowledge isn't absolutely maxed out I'm seeing that characters often know next to nothing about what they're facing.

And I'm already seeing a significant rise in metagaming and metagaming accusations as a result. Some consider it metagaming for my cleric to know that many undead take extra damage from positive energy, some don't. Is it metagaming for my character to recognize that a centipede swarm is poisonous when the GM chose to instead tell my character a little about swarm checks on my succesful roll?

Closely related to this is how much information should a GM give out "for free"? I had a GM who refused to give any indication of whether I was hitting enemy weaknesses or resistances on the grounds that my character didn't know how many hit points damage I was doing nor how many hit points the monster had so how would I know? I think that was going WAY too far but I think the rules are actively encouraging that type of reaction.

The game is feeling more adversarial to me as a result. I don't like that. And I don't like that I don't seem to be getting the information to make reasoned tactical choices. One reason to have cold and fire spells is to use the appropriate ones, how can I do that if I can't get the information to let me make that choice?

And so far this is all low level play where monsters only have a small number of abilities. The issue is likely to get a lot worse when facing high level opponents with sometimes well over a dozen things that I'd like to know

I had a game yesterday where the GM and I had fairly different opinions on what a familiar can do in exploration mode. So, I thought I'd solicit opinions. ESPECIALLY when I realized that I'd taken a position much closer to the GMs when I ran the scenario :^). Which side of the table I was on made a vast difference in what seemed intuitively fair.

It's pretty trivial to get a flying familiar that talks. A 1st level gnome can get this as a race feature. Various classes can get this at 1st level too.

Can this be used to usefully scout around (ie, fly overhead and look out for enemies, fly around a large building to get the general layout, etc)?

The GMs interpretation was that, basically, that translated to my character scouting so the ONLY benefit was a +1 to initiative. Essentially, the familiar was only flavour.

On the one hand, this seems terribly unrealistic. When wandering through a zombie infested wasteland having a talking eye in the sky should have a huge potential benefit.

On the other hand, giving a huge potential advantage to a level 1 racial or class feat seems unfair, especially to the poor rogue.

Just asking this question has solidified my opinion. But I'm still interested in what others think

Some abilities trigger on a failure. For example, Dubious Knowledge says "when you fail ...". If I roll a crit fail does it trigger?

The glossary defines a crit fail as a worse failure so, RAW, I think it DOES trigger. But it's pretty unclear to me so I thought that I'd see what others think

I couldn't find the answer to a simple question.

Let's say you're hit by a giant centipede and fail your initial fortitude save.

When do you make your next save? I think maybe on the centipedes next turn but that requires an insane level of bookkeeping if the centipedes have their own initiatives. Not to mention what happens if you're poisoned by more than one centipede in the fight?

Poison is potentially do deadly that I had it happen at the end of the players next turn

I'm having difficulty building a cloistered cleric that seems viable.

My first problem is how MAD they are. I want to max out Wis, have decent Cha and can't afford to skimp on Dex or Con if I'm going to survive. Lore cleric is right out :-).

But they'll pretty much have the worst AC in the game (no mage armor, need to have a decent Cha so more pressure on stats in general). And in PF2 hanging out in back isn't all that viable in general.

And then what do they actually do? Oh, they're a wonderful healer and more than justify their existence in the group by that. But I want to be able to make SOME decent contribution to combat when not healing. Their cantrips are generally poor damage dealers (they have great riders to invoke some weaknesses which is sometimes great)

I think my current plan is to either MC into another class for mage armor/damaging cantrips or spend feats on armor prof. Maybe rely on scrolls of mage armor but that is quite expensive.

Edit: there is one that is fun and viable. Fey touched gnome. Dumping STR helps, they get a primal cantrip and done fun roleplay. Not sure that I like that this is the only viable L1 cloistered cleric I've been able to come up with. I very much like this character though. I now have my -2 :-)

Paizo ate my first post on this. Growf.

So, I played my very first session of PFS2 today. And my character probably should have died/retired. In a not particularly satisfying away (The GM either took mercy on me or interpreted things differently than I do so I lived)

In the scenario, my character got diseased. Given that the CR1 creature casts invisibility at will, has a +8 agile attack, and the Fort save to resist the DC is 17 it seems quite likely that at least one PC will end up diseased.

With the current guide I think ending up diseased with a lowish Fortitude save is far closer to a death sentence than the designers perhaps intend.

I THINK (but am a long way from sure) that the way this should be handled :

1) My character has the appropriate downtime to resolve the disease or he is retired as still having the condition. So, 8 days in this case (if I'm right, do NOT get diseased in a quest :-))
2) I suspect that other PCs could (if they chose) sacrifice their downtime to help me via Medicine checks or the like
3) As far as I can tell, there is currently no way in the guide to get spells cast via Fame. Nor can players combine to pay for a remove disease spell (not that I would have asked for the latter with a 0XP character :-)).
4) Not at all surprisingly, my character could not afford to purchase Remove disease. Nor that many antiplagues

So, my character (with a base Fort of +3) most definitely did NOT succeed in 8 days. Hardly surprisingly since his odds of doing that were decidedly less than 50% (assuming an antiplague for the 5 days I could afford one and a +2 check from Medicine about 1/2 the time the odds get close to 50%)

I'm not at all upset that my character died. He had 0XP, I didn't have a huge emotional investment in him :-). But this just seems a really unsatisfying way to go. "Well, the monster had a disease. You eventually likely die".

My character DID have a low Fort save (+3) and maybe thats the answer. No character should have a Fort save of less than +5, build your character appropriately (a +5 instead of a +3 changes the odds of this happening substantially.)

Edit: There is another monster with disease in the scenario (We didn't face it). DC 18 for that one. So its not as if the DC for this was strangely high.

I'm trying to figure out how viable scouting ahead of the party is in PF2

But the answer depends a LOT on how stealth in exploration mode works.

Let us say my character has a stealth of +10 and is NOT carrying light.

Does
1) The PC roll stealth, the GM then compares that against the various bad guys Perception DC (10+their mod)
2) Does the PC roll stealth, and EVERY NPC rolls perception against that result
3) Does the PC roll stealth against a "area DC" set from the difficulty chart

Something else entirely that I'm missing?

There are several changes to the GMs responsibilities. Individually they vary from quite minor to fairly bad but the combination looks daunting.

1) Determining the party level is, uh, wow. With significantly more combinations of things to add and look at on the fly
2) Explaining level up to new players with their shiny pregen. Yeah, thats something else I really needed :-(
3) More paperwork at the end
4) Much more important to report online in a timely fashion
5) Making secret rolls
6) Having to come up with convincing false information on the fly and having to learn how to lie effectively (hey, new GM skill. Deception :-))
7) Actually keeping track of treasure bundles

That seems like a lot, especially right now when we're learning the new system

I can't find any modifications at all to perception checks due to distance. Am I missing something?

Well, I guess now one can actually watch a football game. From 5 miles away:-)

As an example, this post of mine has no picture any longer.

https://paizo.com/campaigns/v5748p75ivka4/gameplay&page=14#669

At the moment, this is just to gauge interest.

I'm contemplating running the Crimson Throne AP but with PF2 rules.

I'd want a moderately fast paced game. So, I'd want people to be able to post twice a day on weekdays and at least once on weekends. Its an AP, it will take time to go through it anyway :-). And to provide me with bot macros (including general tactics) for those times when I have to bot your actions to keep things moving. Obviously, life happens and we'll deal with it but the intent is for this to be a fast paced game.

I'm thinking of starting more or less immediately with the latest playtest rules and then transitioning to PF2 rules when they came out. If I did this, I'd allow full and total rebuilds but I'd encourage (NOT force, encourage) people to keep their character concept more or less unchanged.

Or it may be better to just wait the couple of months until the rules come out.

If you respond, please tell me which of the two alternatives you'd prefer.

I'd probably run with 5 players.

In general, I'm a "Rules as I think they're intended" as opposed to "Rules as written" GM. But since one of the purposes of this would be to become more familiar with the PF2 rules I'd try hard to stick to "Rules as I think they're written" :-). Note, I firmly reject the idea that the rules (any rules) can be unambiguously written so I think the RAI vs RAW is largely irrelevant. I totally reserve the right to say "I don't care what you think (or even what I think), I'm running it like <this>. I'd try and limit that to egregious cases where I think an alternate approach just breaks the game but I DO reserve that right.

This will be run in PF1 Golarion. So, no goblin, kobold, etc PCs. Other PC like races are fine (I'll come up with house rules for them, as a result they'll be mostly for flavour and NOT for mechanics).

The AP involves a lot of Really Bad Stuff happening to Korvosa. It is key that any characters have to
1) Be goodish (Neutral tending towards good or good)
2) Be capable of cooperating with "good" authorities AND fighting "bad" authorities.
3) Be committed to saving Korvosa and not doing the only sane thing and just up and leave the city with their families :-).

I'll quite probably modify the AP, likely in some significant ways. In particular, I might well completely alter Book 5. So, having played or run it before isn't a major issue as long as you do a reasonable job of separating character and player knowledge.

I attempted to see what sessions my PFS characters had played.

On the good news, it was quick.

The button went away and nothing got shown, but it happened quickly.

As opposed to before when it was very slow (more than 30 seconds sometimes).

Several recent scenarios have updated (and reasonable) chase scene rules that I want to steal for an AP I'm running.

But I couldn't find one and my memory is failing me.

Can anybody please tell me a recent scenario with Chase Scene rules?

Thanks

Trying again as this "wonderful" site ate my last post

I tried to create an account for a friend.

Seemed to work ok. Went to make a post.

It then sent me into some captcha hell trying to confirm that I was a person.

Some completely inobvious question was asked with multiple gibberish options provided

I chose the least silly answer and cut and pasted it.

That was obviously wrong as it asked me another nonsense question with more random gibberish to choose from.

Eventually I hit some limit and it decided that my account was obviously spam.

Captchas are very user unfriendly in the first place. But captchas where it isn't at all even remotely clear what you want really, really, really suck.

And I've been playing your game for 12 years. If I can't figure out what the heck you want how do you expect a newby to?

That profile is now set to [SPAM] <email address redacted>

I'm guessing if my friend contacts you the account will get reset eventually. But that is crazy.

If you actually want new customers you should probably fix this.

And this was a LOT more polite than my first (not sent) post. This was REALLY frustrating

I want to playtest the level 17 Doomsday Dawn chapter but my players are getting burned out. They're willing to play but less willing to create characters (yeah, I know what that says)

So, I was hoping that I could borrow some premade characters from people.

I'm trying to schedule my groups future participation in the playtest (we're pretty obviously not going to get everything done) and I just realized an issue.

The Resonance test requires us to use the specialized pregens. Which are now out of date.

I presume that we still use the old out of date pregens. But thought I'd check:

1) Is Paizo going to update the pregens? (I certainly assume not, but thought I'd ask :-))
2) Are we expected to update the pregens to the new rules (I very much doubt that I'll have the time or inclination)
3) Has somebody ELSE updated the pregens and can I steal your work (this has a chance :-))

I looked and couldn't find an answer to the following.

In the Core Campaign, my wizard gets access to a spell book with Ant Haul in it. As was specified in a blog the wizard can pay to put this spell into his spell book and the fact that he did this is written on the chronicle sheet.

To be very explicit, there is NOT a scroll of Ant Haul on the chronicle sheet.

Can the wizard now purchase scrolls of Ant Haul? They're a spell on his chronicle sheet so I think maybe yes. But its really unclear to me.

If he CAN buy that scroll, can he lend the scroll to his cleric friend to cast?

Can that cleric friend then use that scroll to ALSO learn Ant Haul?

If the character is a Wizard/Cleric multiclass character, can he have his OWN character use that scroll to learn Ant Haul as a cleric?

A game I ran today (Doomsday Dawn, L9 characters) crystalized a thought I'd had before.

Being a healer is DANGEROUS if you're facing reasonably intelligent bad guys who want to win.

Final fight of The Mirrored Moon. PCs had done everything right so it was a fight between 4 L9 PCs and a CR9, 3xCR 8 enemies

First round, some damage done, some moving into position, some buffs.

Second round, a wizard does lots of Area of Effect Damage so the bad guys focus fire a bit. Do lots of damage. Cleric heals him all the way back on their turn because that is what clerics DO now.

Third round, bad guys, being intelligent, focus fire the cleric down. Wizard (who has multiclassed into cleric) brings cleric back up.

Fourth round, they focus fire the cleric DEAD. If they want to win they have no choice. The cleric is so powerful that any other tactic is just conceeding the fight. They now know the PCs can bring him back if he is only unconscious.

Bad guys are going down at the point too. 2 Down, 1 almost down, 1 in good shape.

Fifth round, they turn on the alternate healer (the wizard) and focus fire him dead too. They don't know that he has shot his healing bolt so they kill him.

PCs mop up remaining bad guys.

Final Score - PCs win but at the cost of 2 deaths out of 4.

I'm normally a pretty soft GM and don't like focus firing unconscious characters to death but
1) Playtest. So I'm trying as hard as possible to kill PCs
2) There really was NO alternative if the bad guys actually wanted to win. Clerics are WAY too effective, they HAVE to die or you just lose.

I'm not totally sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing. But it is a thing. This game is more dangerous than PF1 and making yourself the primary target is very dangerous. And killing unconscious opponents is a riduculously good (almost essential) strategy

I was building a L10 druid and I realized that Animal Form is pretty much as good as you need, at least up until level 10.

Aerial Form is very useful (for obvious reasons) but Dinosaur Form and Elemental Form are just about identical to Heightened Animal Form in their combat abilities (well, except for what is presumably a bug for the Air Elemental damage. D4 seems a bit low :-)).

Dragon Form, of course, kind of rocks :-). Of course, you get it at level 11 as a spell and have to wait until level 14 to get it from class abilities (which also seems wrong).

I could be missing something but I experienced very little pain (at level 10) with my wild shaping/Animal companion druid. Animal form and Aerial forms were really all I needed.

I'd like to see it in campaign play, of course, but I was only briefly tempted to take Form Control. The fact that it only works on level -1 spells is a strong disincentive to taking this. Yes, 1 hour wild shape is nice for scouting but if you get into a fight you're going to be in a LOT of trouble.

I think that we should try and create some fan created pregens so people do not HAVE to create their own character (they clearly should be encouraged to)

I'd like to put this on pfsprep but there isn't a folder for this yet.

I've created a level 10 druid "pregen". Hopefully accurate (ish).

As an experiment he is a druid who both wild shapes AND has an animal companion.

Didn't take all the skill feats or spend all the gold. This is absolutely because I wanted to let people customize them a bit and not at all that I found nothing at all worth taking :-(

Note - Old character sheet. Untrained is still -2 and not -4. Doubt it will matter much

I can't put these up at pfsprep so I've put links to files on my google drive

L10 Raptor Companion
L10 Druid

It has always been somewhat unclear to me how Wild Shape interacts with various spells and class abilities. The new multiclassing rules greatly extend the number of interactions that are unclear to me. Both in terms of what the rules say but, more importantly, in what they are intended to say

Animal Form (using it as an example, the others are similar) has the phrase "These special statistics can be adjusted only by penalties,
circumstance bonuses, and conditional bonuses"

Its not clear what "special statistics" refers to.

For example, is movement speed included? Can a wild shaped druid get an accelarated bonus (from spell or class feat such as fast movement)?

Do claws count as "wielding two melee weapons" (for twin takedown)?

Can a wild shaped creature power attack (does adding extra damage dice count as adjusting the special statistics?)

I think that everything I describe above SHOULD work, at least I think it is probably RAI. Including hasting a wild shaped druid or barbarian. But it really isn't clear to me that is either the intent or what the wording says

I ran Affair Sunday and decided to use Theatre of the Mind and not a flip mat (I VEHEMENTLY deny the stories that I forgot to bring my flip mats :-)).

I did have a printed copy of the map so we could measure distances at least.

It worked out pretty well. The Paladin had both Retributive Strike and AoO and so got his extra attack pretty much automatically every round

But otherwise no arguments broke out, everybody knew what was happening, etc. A couple of times I randomized how many people would be able to be caught in a burst but I erred slightly on the generous side and so everybody was happy :-)

I've now run the third chapter of Doomsday Dawn and I'm definitely coming to the conclusion that Bards need some boosting.

Arguably the single biggest contribution a Bard makes to combat is its Inspire Courage ability.

Unfortunately, this is a conditional bonus and conditional bonuses don't stack and are reasonably easy to get. In the specific case of Doomsday Dawn one of the clerics cast Sanctified Ground making the Bards Inspire Courage no longer worth the action.

At least with the current Resonance Rules (may change in 2 weeks, of course) Cha is a fairly important stat so many characters will have it at close to maximum levels. Intimidate is currently a VERY powerful ability which increases the chances that characters will invest in charisma.

This means that the Bard only has a small (if any) advantage in social skills over many other classes. If we get better skill feats this MAY improve a little. Their ability to use Versatile Performance is severely hampered by the fact that it can be used only "in social situations". So, for example, if I want to demoralize in combat I STILL need intimidate and, in fact, will prioritize it over Versatile Performance.

What niche does that leave the bard? Bardic Lore? The weakest list of spells in general (especially for combat)? Multiclass in fighter and just become an archer ?

I get that the Bard's primary sphere is social situations and the Playtest just doesn't have them. But that was true in PF1 as well and, at least there, a Bard could still significantly participate in combat (especially with non Core options).

But right now I'd prefer a Core PF1 Bard to a PF2 Bard. And that is just wrong.

A lot of issues will go away, of course, if spells get somewhat increased in power (I'm one of the people who welcome the nerfing of spells from PF1 but think that Paizo has gone overboard in many cases). But it isn't clear that is going to happen.

I think that the Bard needs some ability to be flat out better at social skills than anybody else. Might be as simple as letting Versatile Performance apply in non social situations, together with better skill feats for social skills. Those better feats don't have to be bard specific. I have no problem that somebody else who tries hard CAN be as good as a bard. I just have a problem that somebody else who doesn't try very hard at all will be nearly as good as a bard.

I've a few questions about Expanded Narrative

1) I assume that this IS still an active thing. The only version of the boon has Season 8 on it, I'm assuming that this does NOT matter.

2) Does it apply to Starfinder as well?

3) Do games that we run for PF2 count towards Pathfinder 1? Likely doesn't make any actual difference for me since I'll probably max out the boon before I need to anyway but with something like 12 PF2 games under my belt I thought that I'd ask :-)

I've only seen this once in play (at level 5) so I'm hesitant to call it broken at this point.

But it IS a quite powerful combination.

With Magical Striker being essentially free the wizard can pretty easily cast a spell and make one strike HARD.

1 action move, 1 action true strike, 1 action magical striker is a pretty potent combination.

Certainly the wizard was straight out better AT FIGHTING than was the Valeros pre-gen. And, of course, he is a wizard on top of all that when being a wizard is actually beneficial.

At the moment (its early stages in the Playtest, so this may change) one very common report I'm reading (and it definitely agrees with what I've seen at actual tables) is that the 15 minute adventuring day is back with a vengeance. Characters just quickly run out of resources (especially healing) and retreat.

If the latter turns out to be true then the major limitation on the Wizard (spells being used) just isn't much of an issue any more.

I just played my first level 5 scenario.

Three out of the Four players made their own characters (the 4th created a pregen).

All three of us pointed out that we all actually enjoyed creating the level 5 character and all had created a character that could NOT have been created in PF1.

I created a bard who could do the Dr Doolittle thing and talk to the animals (Gnome with Animal Whisperer)

Another player created a Gish character (Wizard with fighter multiclass). Arguably overpowered but that is another matter :-)

The third played a goblin monk with ridiculous movement.

Just thought I'd make a postive comment in the flood of negativity :-)

So, today, after the Giant Centipede fight the party were trying to stop the poor poisoned bear from dying.

Characters kept making Treat Poison checks to get that +2 bonus. ESPECIALLY after the one critical failure.

On the one hand, I have little problem with poison being pretty easy to deal with outside of combat.

On the other hand, the image of 3 different characters frantically trying to deal with one poor bears poison each round (NINE treat poison attempts) seemed hilarious and very, very, very silly :-).

I kinda think that the -5 to subsequent attacks should also apply to things like medicine checks.

In game today I noticed something rather amusing.

Goblin warriors are much better with their bows than their swords.

Attacks of Opportunity aren't a thing (in general) any longer.

So, the goblins just shot the PCs even while standing right beside them.

Not sure if this is expected or not so I thought that I'd mention it

Several questions came up in play today.

Before I get there, an aside. Bears seem to be the clear favourite for animal companion of choice. Out of 4 characters with animal companions, ALL have take bear. This implies that it may be slightly overpowered.

1) Can an Animal Companion do non lethal damage?
2) How restricted are animal companions by "common sense" as to what they can do?
3) How much does the DRUID have to be able to see in order to command the animal?
4) Do animal companions get resonance? If so, how much?
5) Animal companions are stated to "the exception of barding ... they never benefit from item bonuses". Does this mean that they cannot benefit from items like Antidote that give a "+2 item bonus to fortitude saves"? The bear survived the giant centipedes in Doomsday Dawn only because I assumed that was an oversight :-).

The question is probably more generic than just for owlbear claw but that is where we found the issue.

Owlbear claw talks about "affixed weapon". Does an unarmed strike count as a weapon? Is the answer different for monks as opposed to other unarmed strikes?

Another question that came up in todays game.

The goblins "burn it" feat says that
"Your spells and alchemical items that deal fire damage gain a conditional bonus to damage equal to half the spell’s level or the item’s level (minimum 1). You also gain a +1 conditional bonus to any persistent fire damage you deal, whether it’s from a spell or not."

Does this apply to splash damage?

Other powers (like Empower Bombs and calculated Splash) explicitly talk about splash damage. That implies to me that the lack of any such text in "Burn it" means that it DOES apply. But its a pretty weak implication and I think this should be clarified