Rogue is a top tier multiclass.
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Actually, heavy armor has 1 higher AC than medium or light (+6 total from item/dex, instead of +5), which is definitely not nothing. I've also made several characters who wear heavy armor and max out dex for the ranged options alongside the +1 total AC and rune and armor specialization options. So increasing dex cap so much just means it's night and day optimal to invest in that spell as well as dex while wearing plate. I think increasing the dex cap by only 1 is interesting, because it can combine with item, circumstance, an status bonuses, making it a very powerful effect. You could also work on the other end and increase the value of heavy armor in other ways, such as giving them resistance to damage equal to their dex modifier. Or limit it in scope, such as gaining the full benefit of your dex modifier against one attack to make it a miss as a reaction, which dismisses the spell.
I might recommend homebrewing an item that gets you the rest of the way there, like a spotlight drone with swappable effects. You could give it "ammo" that it uses up to generate hardlight effects so there's some money/action cost associated with using it. Maybe have it do basic effects baseline, then more in-depth effects if you take feats to boost it.
I love the ole Druid Cleric wombo combo. The multiclass spellcasting feats aren't as amazing as you might assume, the access to primal scrolls and staves can be almost as good. However, going for more slots is a pretty straightforward way to keep playing to your strengths.
Yes this is a workaround for Dex Cap which might make against a core concept of the game regarding Dex and Armor bonuses. If too OP what would fix this? Any thoughts? As Teridax said, this is definitely OP. As written, it's essentially a longwinded version of "+~4 to AC while wearing medium or heavy armor with a ton of other useful bonuses on top", which is an insanely overpowered spell. The first fix would be to remove the increased dex cap to armor, or limit it to a modest +1 to AC or something along those lines. I think the more important question is: what your goal is for the spell? Do you just want a spell that makes the downsides of heavy armor less onerous? Or are you more interested in playing around with Dex Caps, and this spell is just one way to do that?
One tactic I've used is to play up the enemy's mental state while giving mechanical effects tied to it. For example, gaining HP every time it lands a hit as it revels in its own strength and bloodshed.
I love reflavoring an add as part of the boss. I had a boss that was a rogue AI core inside a humanoid hooked up to a bunch of wiring hanging in the air, with a huge Doc Oc style robot arm that attacked the players in melee. Behind the scenes it was essentially a Technomancer and a construct who shared a combined HP pool and had separate actions. It worked very well in that scenario. You can get extremely creative with it. For a Giant boss who I wanted to be threatening, for example, I might have it swinging a massive chain in one hand almost absentmindedly, while it goes about its normal actions. Behind the scenes the chain is a medium sized monster with hardness doing a linear trample from and back to the giant's space and can be targeted and disabled. If that style of thing isn't something you want to do, or do often, my preferred easy enhancement is giving in-world buffs. A Hasted giant with a ring of resistance to an element they'd normally be weak against can really bump up the difficulty and doesn't feel bad especially when they loot the items it was using.
Really looking forward to this book!
I'm hoping these spotlights fill the void of the 1E Witch's hexes which haven't been adequately replicated in the 2E system. I love reusable, targetable buffs and debuffs that you can acquire a bunch of for various situations.
For an absurd example, "Anatidaephobia" is literally from a Far Side comic based on a linguistic construction. It's (probably) not common enough to be recognized outside that context, but maybe someone has severe anxiety about it. This is absolutely not something Paizo should take pains to avoid.\My example is hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia... the fear of long words. ;)That said, a community-driven spreadsheet like this for GMs who are concerned about which products have what triggers is a pretty interesting idea. Not one we have the time or resources to create and maintain, alas, but something like the webiste "Does the Dog Die?" for movies but for RPGs?This sounds about the best option to be honest. Anything past a having trigger warnings for the most common phobias is impractical on your end. This is how I found out how this site handles text wrapping on mobile for long words (it doesn't, the end got cut off)
In Vault of the Onyx Citadel in my PF2-converted Ironfang Invasion campaign, the party acquired a map of the Onyx Citadel and learned exactly which room they had to go to. They entered invisibly through a 3rd-floor window and then proceeded hastily from room to room heading directly to their goal. They did not dare stop because they knew reinforcements from the 1st and 2nd floors would show up as soon as they learned of a fight on the 3rd floor. The party did stop when they entered the final chain of rooms and locked the single entry door behind them. A high-level villain Dimension Doored in, but they were high level, too, and defeated him.How was the party able to keep tabs on each other while operating invisibly? You'd think they'd be bumping into each other and making noise and the like, unless they all also had something like see the unseen active. By the power of holding hands!
I have a feeling this one is going to be a slam dunk. Name? Fantastic. Gameplay? Sounds solid so far. Flavor? Hells yeah! Now to give it a read
Thank you! That praise makes my day. I ran it with PF2 for the corn maze, and SF2 for the skeleton space pirate one. It was a lot of fun watching how they reacted to each new set of nonsense in their way to taking over the ship. The AI had a whole monologue about how it assumed they were pact world's secret agents sent to rescue the crew. It was also funny when one of the facehuggers glommed onto one player to no effect and they had to just kind of continue the encounter with a facehugger on their skull.
This character isn't unhittable, just harder to hit, and isn't dishing out a ton of damage. They have a neat debuff for the enemy if they're not targeted, which is nice for all players. They also aren't solving all problems solo. That party could very much still run into bad luck and fail. You may be overthinking how strong the build is, since this level of AC difference has been achievable for a long time now on different builds. If you're not having fun because you don't like missing so much, then I would talk to the players about it. Maybe you could propose upping the difficulty just to add some spice. They might like to brag about that even. It's very easy to raise or lower difficulty in this system if you're all on board.
In my opinion, it's not really that overpowered. The speed penalty and action cost of raising the shield is helping a lot, but also the bulk cost shouldn't be ignored, as well as the action cost to set up with the mutagen at the start of combat. For all his effort he's ~3 ahead of another character not really doing much special. A normal monk with taunt might actually be better in many scenarios because they could more easily juke and keep the taunt debuff up. Personally, I wouldn't even blink at such a character joining my games. Have you found yourself missing so much you're growing frustrated? Are they not feeling challenged?
Not sure how they're built, but I just want to be sure they're not stacking the item bonus to AC from the mutagen with existing armor, and are correctly taking into account the mutagen's dex cap of 2. I think with this method they could be getting to 34 while raising a shield and perhaps a status bonus to AC from somewhere. Drakeheart should also be dropping their will and reflex saves, which helps. Taunt isn't mind control and is a Guardian ability, not monk, so I'm not sure how they're taunting, but if it's multiclassing they're really going all in on tanking which isn't really a bad thing.
I did basically this for the first year or so of PF2, but ended up moving away from it because the mental adjustment wasn't really worth the effort with Pathbuilder and everything that would need to be adjusted.
I just want to chime in that I find the rarity tags very handy as a GM, and Exemplar being Rare makes perfect sense. If I told a new player to go to AoN and go ham, they might bring an Exemplar and read into it with the expectation that they're going to be significantly grander than the "kill 6 basement rats" quest I'm intending to throw at them. I can easily recommend they only look into common stuff, and if they're interested in uncommon or rare they have to talk to me.
I hunger for more deets.
I think it might be interesting to compare against D&D5e and now 5.5e. Common wisdom was that an edition had a lifespan of 8 to 10 years. 5e held on for 10 and now 5.5e, which barely changed anything, has been going for another 2, with no clear indications of a 6e coming out any time soon. D&D makes their money in different ways, they're reliant on their IP rights rather than publishing books, get lots of their money from D&D beyond, have an ecosystem to keep rolling, and still have money issues with D&D. PF2 came out in 2019, and here we are 7 years later, having gone through a remaster that may have somewhat reset the clock but also makes a 2.5e kind of a messy question, and now it's tied to SF2 which has only been going 1 year. Paizo has a growing IP presence, with several video games set to come out in the next couple years. They're also supposedly more reliant on selling APs, but I don't actually know what their breakdown is. I think it's worth asking, if Paizo is still dependent on keeping rulebooks flowing (which I believe they are with no sign of that changing any time soon) what strategies could they employ to extend the lifespan of the edition, which may be a good idea for: being able to capitalize on the cultural cache growth they're seeing with different forms of media, allowing SF2 to get a fair shake, and keeping the growth in 3rd party market going, which helps keep the playerbase fertile. If your response to this thread is "PF3 is inevitable, give up" you're not really engaging with the questions this thread is actually asking.
Which is important to note because Lores are one of the things it's a good idea to talk with your GM about beforehand in any case. A GM might tell you straight up they don't like running swarms so it's going to be pretty pointless. They also might tell you their strategy for setting DCs and suggest a better fit. In general, though, I think Swarm Lore is a pretty neat lore to take if you have good character reason for doing so. I'd give it a pretty good edge in the specificity DC reduction cases.
I like this version of the idea better. I wonder if it might be cleaner to make it give you the fatigued condition. This automatically discourages you from using it in an unintended manner with more lasting consequences, and represents pushing your body to the limits to move more than you otherwise would be able to, and doesn't interact with things that negate fear. I personally let my party go to chase mechanics if they want to flee mid-combat, sometimes I require them to get to the edge of the map before allowing that, so this could be good for that. I could see it as an option for the low movement speed characters to make that last burst of movement in a time critical situation. Gate coming down, bridge falling, etc. Essentially smoothing the contrast between the 40ft speed elf and the 20ft speed dwarf in important sequences, with a proportionate penalty (fatigued).
Yeah, it's an idea that definitely got me thinking. Especially since I prefer keeping attributes if possible.
I pulled together some homebrew rules to better enable being wielded by another player when playing as an Intelligent Weapon from Roll for Combat's Battlezoo Ancestries line. The default rules give you two options: 1. Enter "inanimate" mode and pretty much leave the table because you're restricted to extremely limited effects you have to buy with ancestry feats or performing Seek or Recall Knowledge checks. 2. Play as pretty much a normal intelligent weapon with no real PC build options, no physical stats, and extremely low agency overall. Essentially an option you'd give to your 5 year old nephew so they can pretend like they're helping. I wanted to be much closer to a full party member balance-wise, even if you are hoping to play primarily as a wielded item. (Potentially even a non-weapon, like a magic ring). So far, these rules have been working fine at our table though we're a relaxed, non-powergamey group. These rules aren't perfect, but I thought I'd share them since I took the time to write them up, and they're pretty fun. Modified Rules for Being Wielded or Equipped by Another PC You can choose to allow yourself be wielded by another PC (or equipped, if you chose to be a non-weapon item). While equipped by another PC: * You only gain 2 actions each round, and cannot perform typical physical activities utilizing your item body such as striking, moving, or performing a combat maneuver. * You can perform assistive actions, such as preparing to Aid your wielder to make an attack, reloading yourself on behalf of your wielder, as well as other minor actions allowed by your GM. * If you Ready for two actions to guide your wielder's hand, your wielder can spend an action on their turn to grant you two actions which may include physical activities such as making Strikes. * You can perform mental actions such as Recall Knowledge and Seek, as well as performing spellcasting actions. However spells that would cause you to move automatically fail, and spells that target self are not conferred onto your wielder. When casting spells or otherwise performing obvious magical effects, outside observers may recognize that you are the source of the effect, and may decide to target you separately from your wielder. * You use the same offensive and defensive statistics you would ordinarily possess while operating independently via whichever heritage option you picked. * Your wide magical aura makes you easier to hit than normal held or worn items. For the purposes of targeting, you are considered a separate character sharing a space with your wielder. * You share a single HP pool with your Avatar, Possessed Body, or Symbiotic Partner, depending on your choice of heritage, even if you are far apart. Modifications to Intelligent Weapon Ancestry to Enable Being Wielded HP damage suffered by an intelligent weapon is primarily borne by the vital essences that animate it. Upon death, an intelligent item ceases to be a sapient creature, leaving behind a normal item possessing only the enchantments and runes it was inscribed with. Any other consequences of the loss of the items’ mind and soul are left to the GM’s discretion. Modifications to Intelligent Weapon Heritages to Enable Being Wielded Animated Weapon
Possessing Weapon
Projecting Weapon
While being wielded, you can Project Avatar to manifest or unmanifest your avatar, but it appears adjacent to your wielder. Symbiotic Weapon
Your newly reclaimed power can temporarily be directed to your new wielder, granting them an untyped +1 bonus to attack rolls, Perception checks, saving throws, and skill checks for one minute, or until they no longer wield you, whichever happens first. This bonus can only be granted once per day. You cannot be targeted separately from your new wielder, unless by effects that would normally target items. If you do not return to the hands of your wielder within 10 minutes, when you do reunite you will be afflicted with an untyped -2 penalty to attack rolls, Perception checks, saving throws, and skill checks for a length of time equal to the time you were separated. Justification One of the major attractions for playing an item is to be able to be used by another player, which is a novel, fun way to approach play. The default rules harshly discourage this capability, either relegating you to a tool lacking agency or a modified intelligent weapon without anywhere near the value of a full player character. The Intelligent Weapon ancestry is already one of the more complicated ancestries ever written for PF2, so it was reasonable to decide to make conservative decisions to ensure it functions at the widest number of tables, however this left many hopeful players unsatisfied. This set of modifications seeks to make being wielded a viable option when the situation calls for it or potentially even a character’s sole focus, which also allows a player to create a character similar to something like the One Ring, by becoming a buffing accessory. This houserule modification to the ancestry should be reasonably balanced for those who are willing to accept the risk of additional potential edge case issues or inconsistencies. The following are some reasons by which the houserules can be expected to be relatively limited in power: * Being wielded sacrifices one action out of three for the intelligent weapon player * While the intelligent weapon gains the benefit of the movement of their wielder, this benefit is no stronger than having a mount companion * Being wielded prevents the use of many martial capabilities, severely limiting the value of the additional movement. * The intelligent weapon is more vulnerable to area of effect attacks, since they share a space with another player character and may have another body on the field * The best intelligent weapon to wield would be a buffing caster, who would prefer not to be carried by the front-line martial (who they benefit the most from buffing) and risk being targeted * Martial characters wielding the intelligent weapon do not gain flanking bonuses from their equipped team member * Unlike the default rules, the intelligent weapon can be specifically targeted if they draw enough attention to themselves
I just want to chime in to say that while I've seen Investigator in play several times at my table, and the players enjoyed the class and it was overall very fun and effective, there were two pain points that arose from it. 1. That's Odd and 2. The awkwardness of free action versus 1 action Devise a Stratagem That's Odd is annoying as all heck to GM for, and it has to be at the forefront of your mind at all times while the party is exploring or you will stumble on it awkwardly. In actual play, it is a constant thorn in your side. As for Devise a Stratagem, it was always a bit annoying to navigate when to give it as a free action or not, since the power of that feature encouraged gaming the Pursue a Lead system with investigations that allow for more potential free action DaS targets versus what actually narratively makes sense. For one game, I just let them get it as a free action all the time and it worked out fine. So, to me, those are the only actual problems with the class, and in play at my table the rest of the chassis is just way better than online discourse would suggest.
It might be helpful to remember that level affects a LOT of things, and it's kind of weird to just apply real world logic to skills and not, say, your ability to take a knife to the stomach, or suddenly getting a higher IQ because you kicked goblins around in a dungeon for a few days. If you can accept that a higher level character has better perception, because they've honed their senses, reaction speed, and ability to notice details, then it makes sense that those talents bleed over to their ability to perform at various skills. Crafting involves having an eye for detail (perception), hand-eye-coordination (attack bonuses), patience (will), and having seen more things in the world (experience). It might also help to think of having something trained means you're keeping it in the back of your mind at all times, thinking on it when you get the chance.
I rule that having Dispel Magic prepped counts as having "the same spell" prepared. This means they can load up on Dispel Magic if they want to be counterspelling a lot, or they can research their enemies to memorize the correct spells so they have more options on hand.
As a heads up, sorry I had to edit one of your posts, WatersLethe! Vulgar language is a part of profanity, so I had to. Please keep this in mind for future posting, and I hope you all had a good weekend! Alas, that is the risk of flying too close to the sun in the pursuit of humor. (◡‿◡✿)
Really a "i am feel uncomfor when we are not about me?" situation on our handsExcept worse, because the martials without Medicine could not default to punching the problem. I would like to formally retract my statement and apologize. I thought it was funnier than it sounded aggro, but that's not the case.
Except worse, because the martials without Medicine could not default to punching the problem. Really a "i am feel uncomfor when we are not about me?" situation on our hands
Those "does the character die or not due to persistent damage/poison after the combat is over" are some of the most gripping moments in the game. When the GM has you stay in initiative because moments matter... that's so much fun to play out. If a medicine character had no answer to those situations, [removed for profanity (vulgar)] Even if that were the only case where first aid stuff came up (it's not), it'd still be worth having in the game. --- EDITED 4/47/2026 BY MEC
I think it might be worth trying to make a Words of Power system that doesn't try to compete directly with regular spellcasting. Sort of like how Kineticist gets by.
I'm worried because even the existing feat load is cognitively challenging for many people. If the "trait feats" have a bunch of little things to remember, it's going to be a large additional cognitive burden.
The original concept was adding it as a feature to every magical staff, upgradeable with potency and striking as normal, and letting people add property runes as a further modification to the base staff rules.
First, I think it’ll be helpful to go through an example to show what type of differences ability scores actually provide a character, to make sure we’re not losing customization points by glossing things over too much. I'm going to use Barbarian as an example, since it gets thrown around a lot. To keep things simple, I'll also just compare two different builds at level 1. Strengthmaxxed Barbarian
Natural Ambition: Sudden Charge
Perception +6
Trained Skills:
Skilled Barbarian
Natural Ambition: Sudden Charge
Perception +6
Trained Skills:
Differences Attacks: Going from +4 to +6 in accuracy with a ranged throwing weapon is a significant upgrade. Equivalent to the main damage boon of the Fighter class. It goes from a tertiary option, to a very strong secondary option. The -1 to the greataxe attack and damage relative to the Strengthmaxxer hurts, but for half of the remaining levels it will be a 0 relative difference. Note how the idea of even taking Raging Thrower is a whole lot more attractive with increased dexterity. Defenses: Same, one wears a Breastplate, likely planning on going into heavy armor in the future to avoid spending more ability boosts on dex. The other wears a kilted breastplate, and may switch to leather in the future. Major differences are 1 bulk and later access to various runes. HP: Having a decent ranged option the Skilled Barbarian decides to get by with a lower Con, since they can back off if need be. The two point difference in HP is minor, and both will continue to invest in Con so the gap doesn’t grow wider. Skills:
-1 Athletics. Annoying, but again will be equivalent for half the later levels.
Conclusions
1. Significant mechanical incentives to wield different weapons or engage at different ranges, either by accuracy, damage, or both
If it doesn’t deliver on these, I don’t think I would even consider it. Are there other things I’m missing here?
I would love to see a thread working through some of the details of a homebrew attributeless system. I think we could all learn a lot from that exercise.
I want to push back on the banning of aquatic ancestries with just this: if not in an aquatic world campaign, when would you play an aquatic ancestry? We recently played an aquatic starfinder game, and swimming through and breathing in clouds of blood and viscera near drums of unknown fluids contaminating the water was so gross my character opted to use their suit's capabilities. Just saying, maybe give it another thought.
We've been playing as Spooky Scary Skeletons! One was the party rising in a cursed corn field where they were murdered by various slasher/horror film creatures under the control of a secretly evil priest in town. They fight their way through the monsters that killed them to eventually march on the town in a skeleton parade along with other past victims. Another was a crew of a space pirate skeletons who trojan horsed themselves onto a government ship in their little vessel disguised as a archaeologically significant funerary pod. The ship they were taken into was ALSO overrun with Aliens of the face hugging variety, a criminally insane goblin/ogre prisoner uprising, and a malicious AI infector probe. Of course they had to fight their way through all of that to claim their booty and ransom the crew!
Really cool work! I gave a follow on Youtube. It's nice to see hand crafted music of such quality and character.
Ravingdork's house rule is kiiind of the default for one shots, short term high level campaigns, and a lot of monster of the week style games. If you're making a character for such a game, why would you waste a bonus you won't capitalize on, especially when you know you're guaranteed flexibility for character tweaks if it does come up? I don't think it has any unseen ramifications, because it's already effectively used a lot and no one has really complained. It's a bit of a power user house rule, but by the time it comes up new players should have enough experience to be able to handle it. The only downside is it slightly reduces long term character narrative consistency, but so much else changes over 5 levels it's only noticeable if you're a bit of a nitpick.
I don't, sorry. Just in case it may help: I would note that Patrons are some of the easiest content to homebrew, so there might not be a big market for 3rd party Patrons, and thus not many on offer. Their only complexity has come from the more recent remaster where familiar abilities got more interesting. I would suggest reflavoring Spinner of Threads. The Occult spell list fits with the interpretive mysticism of astrology, and gets you Nudge Fate which seems appropriate. It also has the good/bad omen thing for the familiar, which is also pretty astrology coded. If you prefer Arcane for its hard rule and logic based aspects and want to play up Astrology as being a kind of science, I would let you swap out Occult for Arcane in a reflavored Spinner of Threads.
Ugh I want the sketch covers so bad but I already spent so much.
I prefer vancian casting, and would like to see it stick around. I also like attributes, and would prefer to have them tinkered with to make people feel better about them rather than get rid of them. But we don't need to rebutt people's wishes here. I want people to talk about what they want to see, not argue back and forth about it. And since this thread is about unchained books with variant rules or things that could be changed in a new edition "keeping things the same" is sort of the null stance we don't need to reiterate.
Bah! Have none of you heard of conveniently placed glowing moss and/or mushrooms?
I've certainly made a fair share of non-maxed key ability score characters, but usually those are gishes or skill monkeys or have a significant reason to do so. I've also seen plenty of non-maxed characters in play who did fine. I think you're coming in a bit too strong on the "it's required and always happens" side of things. However, those characters I build where there are significant differences from the "baseline" stat spread are where I find the most enjoyment from the ability score system, and there *are* issues with them (requiring a certain amount of system mastery to utilize effectively, for example). Gishes may benefit significantly from an ability-free system, since you can manipulate the accuracy math and stuff directly without worrying about making characters who are too broadly competent in unintended ways. You also might end up making gishes too good, and no one is really focused on anything. I'd be open to an ability score free system as long as I get even more ways to mechanically differentiate my characters, even within a class. If I *have* to play maximal-strength-barbarians (however that is represented) I would probably lose interest in such a ttrpg system.
Hmmm, anecdotal but thinking back on all the reddit threads I can remember, pretty much every time someone says something like "I need ideas for my [class] with free archetype character" or similar, they didn't specify anything further and the default assumption from comments was unrestricted. Personally when someone says to me "Free Archetype" with no qualifiers I just assume bonus archetype feats every even level. I think there may be a strong argument to be made that that is the default expectation, at least from what I've seen online.
Done right, it might replace my Spooky Scary Skeleton pathfinder/starfinder Halloween one-shots.
Also, if you make a significant enough mechanical break, you can think of it as a Class Archetype on steroids, rather than a direct buff. With clever naming conventions, it could be an all around win, keeping people who liked the old version happy, offering a viable option for those who were not satisfied by the old, and offering more options in general for people who might like both for different reasons. I do think for the most part the existing classes are not so bad they they need a strict upgrade. Even the inventor has some fans.
I'm trying to make it as simple as possible to apply on the fly, so going through the feat choices and deactivating them and their potential downstream effects would be too much of a cognitive load I feel. I want it to be quite rare that it comes up, but if it does it should have a more satisfying rule than "your lvl -1 wielder is instantly annihilated by the weakest enemy mook nearby". Both Stormbringer and Soul Edge are more on the parasitic side, which the heritage expressly says may require special group consent to permit. Soul Calibur is closer. But I should have said biggest recent media example, which Mark Seifter explicitly referenced when talking about it. |