Wendy_Go's page

I think the benefit of special material weapons (SMW) over consumables is reliability and action / hand economy. You may not have time / fore-warning to pre-buff, or if you do you may be using a consumable in a case where it is no benefit and loosing the opportunity to apply some other buff. With a SMW you could just use that other pre-buff. You don't need any time or free hands, it's just there all the time.

Yeah, it's mostly a benefit when you know you will be facing a themed series of enemies. You don't buy an SMW at random. But (for example) my holy sanctified thaumaturge bought a silver weapon after almost getting done in by a devil, and had a good time on a certain level of a certain dungeon. He'd have had an awkward time using consumables to anything but pre-buff, since he fights sword an board (shield implement).

A BIG plot change I'm building towards (without certainty of details as yet) is that in my campaign, the space whale won't be "evil" and was never "defeated" by the elves - it was HARVESTED (as whales tend to be).

Instead, the elves found the space whale's body (its spirit can roam free psychicly, so its body was hidden for safety except at rare times it needed to feed) and used magico-tech similar to the memory garden to tap into it's ability to span great distances with thought. Osoyo's body is now trapped as a living battery powering the elf gates, greatly curtailing it's ability to travel psychicly and slowly causing its personality to splinter off fragments that seek escape. The boss(es) the players fight and the source of the black frost, missing moment etc come from these fragments.

Ultimately they will have to make the choice of whether to shut down the elf gates and allow Osoyo to heal, or to preserve it as a living battery, perhaps in an (even more) lobotomized state. There may be other options / outcomes that I come up with along the way.

This makes Ososyo into a captive tool of the elves, rather than a imprisoned threat to the world. My thinking is along the lines of the builders of the elf gates found a psychic whale slumbering and wired that sucker up like a nuclear core to power their elf gates.... and then were surprised when they started getting radioactive fallout (aka blackfrost).

How badly does this conflict with lore from outside the AP? I'm aiming to paint the gate builders as more "Dutch East India company of Castrovel" who got smacked back by the starfall than "benevolent explorers of the solar system". The analogy to Victorians using whale oil to fuel the intellectual revolution (and imperial expansion) should be pretty obvious.

I know this thread is quite old so OP may never see, but I am currently running this AP (in foundry).

I did dial back the backlash effects on Wraith in particular, to put it (what I considered) on par with the rest.

Mild is sickened 1 with a free flat check of 15 to recover each turn.
Moderate is dazzled for 10 rounds.
Severe is Fatigued and Drained 1.

I've also been making all special magic loot with daily powers work such that the power can be used additional times, counting as a use of deviant ability.

I plan to introduce some magic item or effect that reduces backlash flat checks to starting at / increasing by 4 instead of 5.

I did the free archetype thing and (so far) ALSO give the recommended free feats, so at 3rd level my PCs have both level 2 feats, one of them awakened. The will get a feat at every even level hereafter, maybe others the AP suggests.

Players can also have more than one deviant class. As with free archetype, this requires having 3 feats in a class (including awakening). Backlash level and flat check difficulty is separately tracked per deviant class (I made Foundry tools for this, basically just conditions that count up).

I made one custom deviant ability so far, and it is an ability that gives the user what amounts to the Scaley Skin feat, lasting until next daily prep. One of my players was a low dex witch and REALLY needed something to stop me critting her. Flavor wise it is a wraith ability that puts them slightly out of phase so less affected by physical attacks. The character who has it actually phased out entirely and was unable to interact with the party for 24 hours once (as an in game explanation for missing a session), so it fits them well.

As for **Sakuchi**, I am laying the groundwork to eliminate her (or at least her role as the "chosen one") completely. I had the memory gardeners do a ritual to link them to the mind of Iskariel and planting a "memory seed" as an excuse to grant them revelations on an ongoing basis. I'll be making other major plot changes, such as to Osoyo's situation and motivations, but that's for a different thread.

Flourish trait is for per-character limit.

The trick of having multiple unwieldy weapons wielded so that you can Strike more than once per turn is a cute trick. I'm not convinced that it is very powerful or cost effective.

Didn't imply it was, because I don't think it is. Was just wondering if the rule was actually intended to allow it.

You have to have the hand count necessary to wield all of those weapons. ...
You may have to Swap hands to use all of those weapons.

Hand count is a non issue (except in cases where multiple hand sets grant some other bonus). With just two hands, you can do a "swap weapon" as easily as holding two weapons in multiple hand sets and swapping hands.

I think it might be intentional. At least the Longrifle Reload feat's ability to switch hands from one unwieldy weapon to another makes me believe so.

Yeah, I guess that ability would be fairly pointless without being able to shoot the weapon you switched to. You'd be just as well off reloading the one you just shot. Although I think maybe there are ways around the sniper rifle being unwieldy, like just being a sniper operative?

The rule for unwieldy says "you can't use an unwieldy weapon more than once per round to Strike and can't use it to Strike as part of a reaction, such as Reactive Strike."

If you had two unwieldy weapons and swapped after you strike, could you make a strike with the second unwieldy weapon? From the wording above I would have to say you can, but that doesn't really make sense / seem the intent. Has this ever been clarified? Why was it written as a limit per weapon, rather than using plural terms such as "You can't use unwieldy weapons more than once per round to Strike and can't use them to Strike as part of a reaction, such as Reactive Strike."

On the other hand, if you count their gear, picking up and carrying a party member who wears any real amount of gear becomes impossible for a lot of characters unless you remove all your own stuff first, which means situations like "we need to grab an unconscious character and retreat to avoid death" suddenly becomes a lot harder to pull off.

There's also the dragging rules, and you could "improvise" some rules for doing a 2 person carry.

But also, the higher weight makes builds that have good str and low gear requirements more valuable and arguably more interesting.

But yeah, having anybody be so heavy they can't be carried off the battlefield is bad. When I played Shadowrun, we eventually ended on a party that didn't have any trolls or orcs, largely because if they went down, nobody was gonna be able to carry them back to safety.

I'm curious to know; for those of you who use Free Archetype in your games, do you allow your players to double up on feats if they choose? That is, take more feats from a single archetype than normally would be possible without Free Archetype in effect. Why or why not?

The game I'm in, the GM has allowed (or at least not dis-allowed) me to build my Thaumaturge with free archetype as a mostly-Champion. I even double up on HP from resilience.

He allows it because he explicitly WANTED people to gain power from FA, because we are running Abomination Vaults.

This does actually bring up a something somewhat gameplay related thing of slayers are encouraged to never use non-lethal for quarry, as a creature has to have died to claim a trophy from it, which I would like to see changed to let it be used on non lethal takedowns.

Yeah, this came up with literally my slayer PC's first quarry, which was effectively a person who needed arresting. The trophy was no problem (he wore a mask) but there was no other reason to kill them. I think it should just say "defeated" or some such.

Summon a creature that has regeneration, watch it drop to 0 HP every turn and then pop back up?

I agree that the only likely use of Mark Quarry as currently written is vs "broadcasted bosses". And not all published adventures even have those.

An example is that basic box set - the adventure is largely about discovering what the boss is! If the Slayer can't use their core class feature in the most common introductory adventure, that's gonna make for a lot of annoyed new players!

A sensible GM might find a way to allow the Slayer to use the presented clues to Mark Quarry in that adventure, but IMO the presentation of the ability shouldn't require the GM to make such a reach, and should allow more explicit player agency in selecting a quarry.

And perhaps "On the Hunt" should take a page from the remastered investigator, and apply to all combats "in pursuit of" or "against allies of" that quarry? That way the Slayer in my hypothetical box set play through would quite likely gain the use of On the Hunt for most of the adventure, not just in the final combat.

Yeah, I think simply having "On the Hunt" grant an extra reaction (with appropriate use types) OR the quickened condition would do a lot to both make it more useful at high levels and help avoid cases where it grants no benefit because the Slayer is already quickened from another source.

Or it could alternately / additionally be phrased to allow you to stride or strike as a free action during your turn.

Castilliano wrote:

Yes, "typically" gives an out re: humanoids, but I'm thinking of a perverse Slayer that atypically keeps trophies of their peers. They're likely a diverse group that possess several spell Traits. Good pickens.<snip>

My first thought was almost the opposite, a slayer who has "trophies," more like keepsakes, of all of their party members so they can defeat monsters with the power of friendship.<snip>

I actually play a Thaumaturge who has this as his back story. He's an orc quartermaster named "Brukthar the Relic Keeper". As a quartermaster, he was in charge of handling / redistributing the gear and often personal effects of fallen soldiers while fighting at the world wound. His esoterica are a collection of mementoes from soldiers who fought well against various creature types or exhibited particular useful abilities. Most of his feats are actually from his Champion archetype, as he's a champion (via dedication) of Ragathiel, which plays well with this theme of his fighting style drawing on the strength of the fallen.

So yeah, I think trophies from fallen friends could work, but I suggest that this use a mechanism separate from Mark Quarry. Perhaps if your quarry killed the ally, or perhaps if you take some extraordinary action to defend / aid that ally (either and ability, or just GM determined).

Honestly I think the eligibility for trophies is maybe best divorced from "mark quarry" and just left up to the GM. That might seem a bit to loosey goosey, but equally important choices like loot awards and hero point distribution are already up to the GM. You could even tie these together and allow the Slayer some agency by declaring a fallen foe ally worthy of taking a trophy from by spending a hero point or spending a certain amount of gold (say equivalent to a scroll with rank half the creature's level) to "enshrine" the trophy as something usable for reinforcement etc.

Wendy_Go wrote:

Well yeah, the trophy taken is easy to determine.

But the "Claim Trophy" action has the following:

Requirements: You have access to the remains of a creature that was your quarry when it died.

Which RAW, means you can't take a trophy from them if they are still alive.

I missed the point that RAW it has to die. but frankly... my fix is rule 0. we ain't playin' that way.

I agree, its well within GM purview to do so and entirely sensible. I was mostly posting this by way of playtest feedback that the eventually published rule should likely use terms that allow for capture / defeat rather than only literal slaying.

I'm running Gatewalkers and my group is a bit low on out of combat healing. So here's the ability I am adding to Verdant Core (which I am allowing / may force on somebody as a deviant classification) to provide some reliable out of combat healing. I might be work out a similar ability for other classifications. It is modeled on the Pearly White Spindle aeon stone. Should be "fun" trying to set this up in Foundry....

****************************************

Verdant Growth, Feat 2
Exploration Activity, sustained
Vitality, Healing
Area: 5-foot emanation

Your can bridge vital life-force from the First World or other verdant planes into the space around you. Within the emanation, all living creatures heal wounds quickly, restoring 1 HP every minute. Additionally, plants sprout in soil and crevices and slippery moss covers hard surfaces, making the area difficult terrain. This growth withers when you leave the area. After initial use, sustaining this ability does not require a backlash roll. The frequency of healing increases at higher levels.
Level 3 - 1 HP every 30 seconds (every 5 rounds)
Level 5 - 1 HP every 12 seconds (every 2 rounds)
Level 7 - 1 HP every 6 seconds (each round)

Awakening: For 1 action, you may amplify and use this ability even in combat, although sustaining it will require a DC 5 backlash roll. When used this way, the healing increases to 2 HP at level 4 and +1 per two levels after.
Awakening: You cast "Cleanse Affliction" as an innate spell, heightened to a rank equal to half your level. Regardless of rank, this can only counteract curses if they also have the disease or poison traits.

Well yeah, the trophy taken is easy to determine.

But the "Claim Trophy" action has the following:

Requirements: You have access to the remains of a creature that was your quarry when it died.

Which RAW, means you can't take a trophy from them if they are still alive.

How would people interpret the slayer playtest classes "Claim Trophy" in a case where the slayer was acting as a bounty hunter and brining the quarry in alive? Would they still be able to claim a trophy for defeating their quarry?

I like it. It has the additional benefit of making the one action casting more likely to be worth it on occasion.

In general I'd prefer ALL damaging spells to have heighten +1, or to have Rank X versions in cases where the effect actually changes. Spells that have heighten +2 because they gain 2 or more dice of different types (live wire, looking at you) could alternate, either with a new Heighten description or Simply by listing damage at each rank.

Since you asked about abuse, I'll try to think of a few methods.

One (probably not abuse and likely intended) would be to make use of social skill exploration activities like Coerce and Make Request.

Another that is maybe more questionable would be to make a load of Recall Knowledge tests. But since Hypercognition is only a rank 3 spell an you are looking at rank 8+, I would say this is a non issue.

I suppose it might be used to Intimidate or Bon Mot or some such just before the duration ends, but that seems very inneficient, both action and spell slot wise.

Yeah but my point is, fire does some baseline damage because it has X energy. A small amount of fluid that only does damage because of how your physiology reacts to it, doesn't have any baseline effect; its effect is entirely due to your "weakness" to it.

Sure, a few rare things might uptake poison more strongly in some cases, but that's nothing like the difference between hitting a rock with fire vs hitting a cloud of whirling paper with fire.

I'm surprised TTRPGs (to my knowledge) haven't tried making sneak attacks automatic crit attacks...

Isn't that pretty much what backstabbing attacks were back in AD&D (and maybe 3e, I'm not a D&D player except by 1980's childhood origins) days? Was just a straight multiplier to the damage you did, like a cit in PF2e is!

Hold on, this search cannot be right.

I cannot get an AoN search to show more than one single creature in pf2 as weak to poison? Does that seem correct to yall? Is poison type really just outright not considered to be a valid/normal weakness?

Game balance aside, how would the concept of "weak to poison" work? Isn't that redundant? More or less by definition, if a poison affects you at all, it is because you are "weak" to it. It's not like they a pumping you so full of toxins that you pop from internal pressure....

I think that alone can explain why authors "neglected" any balance considerations that adding "weak to poison" to more creatures would have helped.

On the other hand... some poisons certainly are much more effective against some creatures. It might be cool to have insecticides that work extra well vs insects, metabolic disrupters that work best vs warm blooded animals, etc. The problem is we don;t have traits for that. Best we could maybe do is oozes, humanoids, beasts, animals, etc.

A FAQ. I'm writing a FAQ full of rules questions and official answers.

Make a print on demand version available as a book for anyone who likes that format.

I can't remember what company it was, but I remember one that used to not only do errata, but had them formatted such that when printed out, you could cut up the sheet and glue the new text over the old in the book. Not sure how that would work with PDF, but it's a cool idea...

I think I've come down on it definitely needing to scale off standard weapon attack proficiency. The goal is to compete with having an air repeater, not to make a wizard as good at using an air repeater as a fighter, better than most martials.

Conceptually, it's launching an energy attack without building in spellwork to make it accurate. It's not supposed to be anyone's main plan of attack, and making it scale with spell attack is just too no-brainer. You'd never see casters opting to pick up different backup ranged weapons if they liked, since that legendary accuracy is too juicy.

If someone were to try to go all-in to optimize it with goodies that power up attacks, I would want a martial to be the one to be able to do that. So a multiclass fighter with a staff that they're really good at going pew pew with, better than a wizard, sits with me just fine. It might even help them feel more like a multiclassed character since they get more from being able to use staves.

OK, when explained that way it makes sense. I guess if it was just gonna be a spell attack, you could simply create a 1 action cantrip.

So how to implement it?

I think maybe a new class of staffs (and maybe some other special items like wands or even energy flinging swords) would make sense than a new rule applied to all existing staffs?

Rather than having a special rule, maybe just have an attack line with a trait that is the "casting stat" equivalent of Finesse / Brutal? That opens up some new possibilities...

And maybe these attacks could also work in melee so that users have an option for an attack that does not provoke / benefits from str on damage?

Would the ranged attacks have a range increment like weapons, or just a max range like spells?

Who can use them? Champions are casters and would love a ranged option that uses Chr, but they don't normally use staves. I don't see anything stopping them from gaining the non-spell benefits from one if they DO wield it, so it seems they could also do this sort of attack? Monks are maybe in the same situation. The maybe seem potentially appropriate for a Thaumaturge as well, perhaps as an optional replacement for the Wand implement?

I'm personally not a fan of both making a staff's attacks work like casting a spell and also making runes apply to those attacks; that feels like it's stepping on the toes of martial classes. I would definitely apply runes to the staff's attacks if the attacks keyed off Dex, however, or even if they worked like normal weapon attacks but used the casting stat to hit.

I don't understand what the difference between "work like casting a spell" and "work like normal weapon attacks but used the casting stat to hit" would be, in any practical sense. Why is applying runes to the later OK, but not the former? I don't think anybody is talking about save spells here.

Bonus or not, I definitely think this should be a spellcasting attack, not a ranged weapon attack. Otherwise a Dex fighter who who takes a caster dedication could be better at using these things than a full caster.

Currently Resiliency feats are (IMO) good when you actually plan to take a lot of the feats the archetype offers and need the HP. Which basically means you are building a front line martial on the chassis of something that has less HP. And IMO that is when they SHOULD be good. If it is just as good as taking a high HP class outside that circumstance... then it starts cutting into the niche of high HP classes.

I really do think +3 per level is just to much HP - it means a warpriest with a champion dedication gets more HP per level than a champion (unless that champ seperately buys toughness)!
*Drop the free toughness.
*Make Resilience +1 per level when you take the feat, with another +1/2 level if you qualify to exit the dedication.
Yeah, that's not super strong, but on a build that needs the HP (like my thaum tank with champion dedication, or on a warpriest with fighter dedication) it very much IS worth taking (along with toughness as a general feat).

That would "solve" the "problem" of resilience not keeping adding HP unless you keep buying archetype feats. That means Resilience is now actually usable outside of FA games, and in FA games you can get it's full benefit without being "locked into" an archetype as you level up.

I also think it the very least we need to keep the limit that it only works if the dedication class has higher HP than your base class - this isn't mentioned above but maybe is implied? And obviously you should only ever be able to get the bonus once (as you have already addressed, as it won't stack).

I don't think a wand that (even just potentially) costs 3 actions every casting is going to be popular for any sort of combat use.

How about making this sort of wand use require being in a stance? The stance could even have certain disadvantages and advantages. Like maybe you can't cast any other spells, but you get a +1 save against similar spells (as defined by sharing at least one from a list of tags like flame, mental, fortune, etc). Normally knowing a stance is a feat, bit in this case part of the magic item could be that holding it grants you the stance action, meaning you could have multiple types of wand even, with different stance effects.

I just straight up can't sign into my account. It says my email simply doesn't exist, so won't even send a sign in link. Umm... so how am I posting here?? Are all my PDF purchases just GONE now??

Another difference is hand & action economy. A wand that can cast (for example) Fireball X times can be held in doesn't need you to manipulate to ready a new scroll each casting if you want to cast multiple times in a row, and only occupies one hand (vs maybe 2+ if you hold multiple scrolls).

The Raven Black wrote:

Strangely enough, the Trip action does not require the target to be in your reach BTW.

Ugh, you're right. There is no target text nor range limitation anywhere in that chain involving the Trip action. Nothing inherited from Athletic checks, etc.

Kinda nuts that has not been fixed in errata by now.

I think it is kinda sane that they have not "fixed" it ion errata if the intent is in fact to sometimes allow use of the Trip rule in contexts outside of unarmed / trip weapon reach.

Which they have done, multiple times. Of the ones I know of, slam down is one example, ranged trip is another, and the playtest version of s certain Starfinder feat would be a third.

I kind of like the original idea here, as it sort of makes the scroll into an expendable component that empowers a spell. I'm not sure if +2 DC / Attack is appropriate, maybe it should scale with level like runes do? But numeric quibbles aside, is the fundamental idea sound?

Possible flaws:
- the fundamental bonus scrolls already give is basically more spell variety and casings per day
- The bonus is only useful for spells that need a roll
- Some spells that need rolls are already popular scroll choices (I'm thinking Cleans Affliction for a divine caster, for example) since they are very useful but very situational.
- Scrolls for some spells are arguably already cheap compared to other options. For example, I'd maybe rather buy multiple scrolls for rank 2 Tailwind (12 gp) than a wand (160 gp). Am I actually going to (need to) use that 160 GP wand more than 13 times? At level 5? Or is 6 or 7 uses enough until I reach a level where the gold for the wand is no longer a major expense?
- Kind of puzzles the mind why only max spell slot rank equivalent scrolls get the benefit (other than obvious game balance)

Possible strengths:
- Does what is says on the tin, makes on-level scrolls appealing to use
- Bonus is arguably balanced (at least in some cases) by the action cost of using a scroll (in theory you could get the same bonus using the action to do a successful demoralize, bon mot, etc) combined with financial cost.
- Lots of games are tight on cash and short on consumables, and finding the "right" way to spend consumable money is hard; an always available "buy this consumable to boost casting you'd already be doing" option could make shopping easier.

Very much on the fence here. I feal like it's touching on a good idea but not quite there. A possible adjustment would be to add some non-money "cost" to such casting, that maybe also allows it to work for ALL scrolls. Like maybe the scroll must be attuned, and you can only attune one scroll at a time this way? Or more extremely, that you must spend a appropriately ranked spell slot, but need know / have prepared the spell? The later makes it so you both use the scroll AND a slot, which clearly is worthy of some bonus, and allows scrolls to practically work as talismans that bump up your casting rolls. Combine that with limited attunement and you get something very like a talisman, although talismans don't use actual attunement. Maybe the scroll would be "attached" to a staff or wand or new type of "casting implement" to allow such casting?

My own personal take on PL+3 / PL+4 boss fights usually includes some of the following:

1) Make defenses like damage immunity dependent on a reaction, but applicable to a wide range of damage. That means it's not just certain party members who have their damage ignored, and the party can get past the immunity by eating the reaction (or at higher levels, canceling it with magic).

2) Lower the attack stat by 1 or 2 to reduce crits.

3) Give the creature interesting options for movement and special abilities that will both entertain and keep the threat high despite reduced attack.

4) Hand out enough hero points that everybody has at least 2 going into a boss fight.

5) Play the creature as dumb and don't have it focus fire unless the players do something that would naturally encourage it (like having only one character engage in melee).

6) Don't use superior mobility to have a creature kite unless that is central to it's personality, or it is already loosing. If the boss creature is sure of it's superiority, why would it kite?

So I used this for my Trouble Under Otari / Beginer box group. Single level 3 slime mold vs party of 4 (armor inventor w/ gada, guardian w/ sword & board, water kinet, and commander with pike).

The critter worked really well I think, though seemed a bit high threat for an 80xp encounter. One party member went into the temple and drank from the bowl (acing her fortitude roll, though I was gonna give her the blessing anyhow since she's a hydrologist azarketi), at which point I had the slime ooze out of the statues mouth to start combat. (I also had the "out" in the back of my mind that the temple would use the water bowl to heal them and the slime push them out the doors and seal the temple, if it was a tpk.)

After splitting in reaction to being attacked, one slime downed one party member (the kineticist who was at the alter) and the other nearly got two more (lucky crit hits), but the party quickly knocked one split under 10HP. The more injured slime re-merged and the fight went a couple more rounds, but I didn't split again to maintain medium size (though I did use the reaction once without splitting).

Needing to use reactions to split but then having the reaction negate that physical damage entirely regardless of type seemed to work well, but the merge action was awkward because both times I used it it amounted to one slime moving to "Flank" and then merging back into one that didn't move. I think I may add a note that the non-acting slime is the one that moves (which would have been possible, even better tactics, but I forgot to do so).

I think I ended up using the split reaction like 3 times and the merge twice (once just for fun offence, once to absorb a slime that was under 10 HP so couldn't use it's split reaction any more). The merge ability really made sense when used by a slime that had taken a beating and would no longer be able to use splitting to ignore damage.

I think the default string slime it was based on would be MORE deadly, so probably also shouldn't be an 80 xp fight vs 4 level 1's. The changes in tokens and nuttiness with initiative ordering made it a pain in the ass to run though. I'm working on cleaning up the text a bit, would love to run it again or somehow get other action reports. One thing I did already was to drop all the attacks to match the creature build "moderate" level - the string slime is one higher, but landing multiple crits from that thing on level 1 party is HARSH.

Heavy sling bullets, exists for every kind of sling, changes propulsive to brutal. Costs 1gp each, purchasable starting from level... 1? As per composite shortbows.

I understand the cost is an effort to balance, but... ooof. Seems like what that really does is make str ranged builds possible in campaigns that start at high level, while still locking low level str builds out of the range game. Which maybe isn't so bad, given that at higher levels characters are more likely to face threats they can't deal with via normal movement & melee.

Still, it seems like just using a bigger rock shouldn't cost a gold piece, and if str characters can't just throw cobblestones using "brutal", I don't see how a sling changes things.

A property rune that makes a propulsive or thrown weapon Brutal might make more sense and again fits with the "mid-higher level characters need more options outside melee" idea.

So... hearing this is reminding me of something. Namely, how I realized why slingshots haven't shown up in Pathfinder 2e:

They're too new.

The slingshot depends on vulcanized rubber, which wasn't invented until 1839.

Let that sink in. The GUN is older than the slingshot.

Bullet shooting cross bows however WERE quite common. And overlapped the gun in use by quite some time. They served a similar niche in hunting that a slingshot would - good for bagging small game. The pellets cost less than crossbow bolts, you could just use stones or baked clay, so people could afford to practice. Shooting contests were quite common and had some absurd demands on accuracy. Not much use as a weapon form combat though. Then again, neither is a blow gun.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet-shooting_crossbow

By balanced I mean that when this slime splits, it pays a price (depending on what variant rule you use).

I was trying to bake up a slime encounter suitable for low level PC's. I saw the String Slime and liked it, but the fact that it's splitting magnifies it's action economy with no penalty (other than risk from area attacks) bothered me, as did the fact that slashing always splits it and other damage types do not; this could make certain players feel singled out, or fail to teach the "split" mechanic if it is never triggered.

This is my (perhaps overly complex) response. I'm planning to use the 3rd level Slime Mold as an encounter in the beginner box temple. I've run it against the Iconics and they generally come through fine, with maybe one character getting seriously injured but not downed, though the casters do typically use some spell slots. I suspect normal players will fair worse, but probably not to much so - the need to use a reaction to split curbs the craziness, as does the fact the new slimes are either lower level, or are stunned. I plan to use the "resize" rule variant myself.

As you might see, I only have stats for slimes up to level 5. Levels 7 and 9 will continue the trend of being larger, slower moving, and harder hitting, likely also gaining reach and the ability to split into un-equal sized slimes and / or more than two slimes. I might add some other oddities suitable for a mega-sized "collective life form" that hint at emergent (and very alien) "intelligence".

Rules are linked as imaged from my Foundry screen. Sorry about the awful rule formatting, if there's a better way to post Foundry sheets here, let me know!

https://imgur.com/a/O8f1AOC

In the adventures I have played (all Paizo published) I've seen "technology" interacted with via many skills.

Computers yes of course. Crafting, of course. Thievery when dealing with disabling or bypassing (and not just traps). Piloting when dealing with vehicle tech. Medicine when dealing with drugs, toxins, and medical machines / data. Society for recognizing alien tech.

I honestly wonder if Reach and 2-hand d10 shouldn't just be one trait like the others, since the reason you make them two is "so you can't take them together" but a 2 handed reach weapon that does d10 is just something anybody with martial weapon proficiency can buy at the shop.

It is a one handed reach weapon that does d8 and some bonus on every hit (difficult terrain or bonus damage). It is an EXCELLENT weapon that NOBODY can buy, even before the bonus effect.

The two hand trait (as noted above) is just that and is... not worth the squeeze. Even if you COULD take it in combination with reach, I wouldn't. Much rather have Trip, Shove, or Free Hand.

Given how common guns/ranged weapons are in starfinder I suspect nimbus surge gets a good bit of use or whatever you are attacking gets stuck to you forced to use only melee attacks.

Most mid+ level creatures seem to have even stronger melee than ranged, and many low level have ONLY melee. So that's not so much "forced to use", as it is "get to use".

Even so, especially with a reach weapon and a shield (phase shield leaves your hand free and is +2 AC), you are doing classic area denial and tanking ... much better the Solarian be eating those melee attacks / engagements than, say, the Mystic.

If you're trying to 'fix' this for Poppets (and, realistically, only Poppets), it would be better off as a ancestry feat for Poppets that gives a +1 status bonus to armour if they have -1 Dex at the cost of -5ft speed. Let's call it 'Ponderous Poppet', deliberately moving slower so as to better use their unnatural anatomy to block hits

That's a really excellent idea. Might use different specifics, but in general pinning it to a racial feat that requires -1 Dex seems good. It even makes sense for the Barathu (they have adaptable physiology). I expect any future race with a -1 Dex would probably also have a physiology that lends itself to permitting abnormal toughness / wearing abnormally heavy armor. I'd love to see some races with that option.

It really wasn't just my intent to "fix poppets" - I originally just wanted the option to upgrade some of the newer armor types with a change akin to the Armored Skirt. Since the Armored Skirt was written to apply to only specific armors, it will never work with any new type of armor unless maybe they think to mention it in that armor's description.

While looking at that I figured a -1 Dex mod on heavy armor might just be interesting. But if races with a -1 Dex can already reach typical heavy armor AC, this item could be much less restrictive / handicapping when used in the originally conceived way. I don't think I'd want to just copy Armored Skirt stats, but -5 move instead of actual Ponderous makes it much nicer for most users, for example.

Sure, poppets would let you dump stat DEX to -1 for your STR martial. And other ancestries let you dump stat Chr or Int, and are probably more suited to martial builds, especially in fantasy terms. Are those meta for Str builds? Do you have to consider them? Isn't the fact that nobody is playing the race with it's default stats equally a sign of forced optimization?

I don't think having this item would "entice" anybody to take a voluntary dex flaw; voluntary flaws don't come with any offsetting advantage any more. But I guess it might make such a flaw manageable, which seems very much inline with the game having cheap and fully enabling prosthetics and other aids for those with voluntary movement or sense concerns.

In either case, fixing (heavy armor only) AC for those characters still leaves them with a penalty to some saves, defense DC's vs some attacks, and multiple skills. Which is STILL a drawback comparable to other -1 stats. Only now they have taken on a movement and initiative penalty, so... still worse than just about any other -1 stat.

So if I want a heavy armor character with a -1 in some stat, optimization wise I'm going Android, Conrasu, Dwarf, or Lizardfolk, maybe even Skeleton ..... not Poppet, even with this item in play.

As for alternate boosts... when you can just grab two boosts like a human, what is the point of even giving the ancestry a penalty THAT NOBODY IS GONNA PLAY IT WITH?? That is why I don't think the alt boosts are a good "fix". People absolutely do run characters with -1 to Str, Int, Chr, even Wis and Con. And while the options to even have -1 Dex do are rare, it seems that when offered... the overwhelming incentive is to say no. Which again, means they probably won't be making races that allow it, because why waste space listing mods nobody will use?

I don't think the issue is the AC per se. We can intuit that they meant for the -1 dex cap to mean that you take -1 AC from DEX regardless of your DEX modifier, so even if you had +0 DEX you would subtract 1 from your AC if you were wearing plate armor with this modification. So in theory all this is doing is making it so -1 DEX characters can reach the same AC values as other chracters by translating that -1 AC into a different penalty.

You are correct in what the net effect is; the effect of a -1 dex cap follows logically from the dex cap rules and the fact that it is possible to have a -1 dex. Hence this item can never give you a better AC than the existing armor can, it just lets you get the same AC with a lower Dex, at an unavoidable cost to movement and initiative.

The issue is more that STR characters already have a ton of incentive to dump DEX and DEX penalties are extremely rare - making it so Poppets are the best bang for your buck in terms of dumping a stat you're ignoring anyways with Bulwark is just really annoying. We generally don't want to give the player a reason to actively seek out a penalty because it narrows down choices in ancestry way too much, and it's just so much worse when only one ancestry offers this as an option and that ancestry's aesthetics clash with most players' fantasy for a heavy armor user.

The basic game mechanics making it so that poppets always want to buy off thier Dex penalty is also really annoying. If that is the intent, they should just have written them so always use Alternate Ancestry Boosts.

It seems odd to focus this conversation on the balance of on one rare race that (as you note) doesn't even fit the common fantasy of a heavy armor user. But I think the lack of a -1 dex armor is actually why only one ancestry offers that option. The point here was to look at a way that might be addressed for possible FUTURE ancestries as well.

For example, the Starfinder 2e Barathu race also has a dex penalty (in a game with a ranged meta no less) and is also used almost exclusively as an Alternate Ancestry Boost build, making it's listed stat mods equally pointless.

I think sticking with a -1 dex (or other basic racial minus) is kind of a nice way to play into the racial tropes, and should always be a valid play choice (IE, without an outsized penalty relative to the upside). But dex... generally just isn't. A -1 dex reduces the two most commonly targeted DC's (AC and Reflex) and Bulwark only party offsets that (have fun being tripped with -1 dex). I don't think anybody seriously runs their character with it unless they plan to be effectively impossible to attack, or are doing one off / playtest builds (as I did with a Barathu fighter that kept -1 dex).

But, opinions differ, and it seems like something at least some people wouldn't want in their game.

TBH I'm not as concerned about breaking paradigms, that's part of what homebrew is for, but I do agree that it's really cheap for what it does.

I feel something like this, something which heavily incentivizes going super all-in on strength and enabling someone to invest less in other abilities should cost more, at minimum. Different grades that increase in level, and cost, as your armor gains runes, for example. It could also possibly be an armor rune in and of itself, but given how competition for armor property runes isn't especially stiff I'm not sure that'd really adjust the opportunity cost of taking this as an option.

Yeah, the fair gold cost for the effect this gives is hard to assess. I put it higher than an Armored Skirt, which isn't much but is enough to be some obstacle at low levels, which are also the levels where the -1 dex would tend to be hardest to negate in any other way. I personally don't think the gold cost really matters much as long as it is high enough to be a significant expense for a starting character, and in any case the REAL cost is the downsides of using it (lower initiative, speed penalty that can not be offset via str).

A lot of the issue you raise re relative price for different armor types and rune levels seems a broad game flaw to me. For example, once you get your first rune, all weapons (from a normally free club to a 25gp backpack catapult) have the same cost - they are all just a "magic weapon". What's the point of all the weapons prices if they all just boil down to the cost of basic runes once you level up?

Precious material costs DO somewhat scale with item effectiveness, by being based on bulk. So maybe this would make more sense as a "precious material" type? It could be an actual material (precluding using other materials) or it could be noted as specifically not preventing the application of normal precious materials, since it is more of an "alternative construction" in the vein of a Sturdy Shield.

Heavy armor is pretty specifically design to be capped at +6 item bonus.

I don't want to see anyone rewarded for deliberately building such a character to have -1 dex and getting around that design paradigm. Generally you can only achieve a -1 dex by choosing an ancestry that has a penalty to dex and then choosing not to increase dex ever.

IMO your homebrew here breaks design rules/paradigms.

It seems odd to assert that -1 dex forcing an AC penalty no armor can offset is a "design paradigm" when there is (as you note) only one ancestry that can do so, and only when you don't increase dex. Why is it a "paradigm" that armor dex limits are never negative? Because they haven't done an armor that has one? They also don't do any heavy armors with a -5 move penalty, but the Armored Skirt allows that... a fact my Dex 0 Champion rather appreciates!

Allowing a net +6 to AC for characters with -1 Dex seems fair, and the other drawbacks of the armor mod hardly make it a "rewarding" option. It's almost certainly a side-grade at best. If anything I was thinking I made the drawbacks too harsh - as also pointed out above, it is generally a worse version of the Armored Skirt.

I'm a bit confused, isn't this effectively just an armored skirt but worse? Or is the intent here specifically to have this apply to heavy armor for a +7 item bonus to AC and a Dex cap of -1?

Yes and yes.

Well, it's arguably not worse than an armored skirt, it just has different drawbacks. Notably, this doesn't increase the str requirement.

And it potentially has uses other than taking heavy armor to +7 w/ -1 dex cap. You could wear it in combination with padded armor to have a medium armor you can sleep in that doesn't depend on high dex to give a decent AC, for example. Quilted armor with heavy gambeson would give +3 with a +1 dex cap.

But at the same time I think we need to be able to evaluate classes in a somewhat feat agnostic way too because there are lots of feat choices and if we narrow our description down to "this specific feat utilized in this way is strong" then we're talking less about the health of the class overall and more about this one specific quirky build being good, which is materially different to me and suggests there are lot of traps and fail states you could accidentally stumble into.

I think "there are lot of traps and fail states you could accidentally stumble into" actually describes the Solarian class balance pretty well. It can do quite well or very badly depending on build choice and play style, and it is not always obvious which choices will give which result. Making it especially bad is that it is a "cool vibes" class that LOOKS easy to build and play, so appeals to a lot of new players.

-Solar Weapon: A solar weapon is marginally better than a martial weapon one handed, but it's not great as an advanced weapon equivalent because they don't let you get damage boosts like deadly, fatal, or even just forceful....<snip>

-Solar Flare: It's... an acceptable thrown weapon. One that doesn't take a hand and has an alternative critical effect, but that's it. You could carry around a javelin and a trident and get more or less the same effect.

The Solar weapon can be a d8 one hand reach weapon, which is something you can't do any other way I know of. That's nice in combination with Solar Nimbus, for obvious reasons. Yes, there are better two hand weapons but...

The Solar Flare doesn't require a hand and doesn't need to be readied or retrieved. That makes it VERY good thrown weapon, on par with one that has a built in returning rune and quickdraw feat and free hand trait.

You can combine the two items above with a worn shield. I use a phase shield so I even STILL have a free hand for spell ampules or battle medicine.

So yeah, the Solar Manifestations are actually pretty good, though there are obviously things they can't do as well as conventional weapons. If you play a Solarian, you are heavily incentivized to stick with what they do uniquely well, which depends on using a lot of small benefits in combination, not making MAX POWA from any one feature.

Wendy_Go wrote:

I think the bigger issue is that it is very MAD. You need the +4 str and +3 dex to do that, which doesn't leave much for putting on other stats. You'll be locked in on being good at str and dex skills, and maybe have a +2 in a decent mental stat if you play a 3 stat race.

a 4 str/3 dex solarian is also going to have pretty low con and wis, which is potentially a lot of trouble for a class that needs to be kind of a tank.

Yes, that's why it is a big issue. That and having limited skill options. It's not so much that this makes for BAD builds, as there's a pretty narrow range of good ones since your 2 best stats are fixed.

As I recall, for mine I went Android with 4 str, 3 dex, 0 con, 1 int, 2 wis, -1 chr. His fortitude save is pretty bad, but perception and reflex are fine. I use a Phase Shield to good effect to keep my AC up so the HP hit isn't awful, and will probably go heavy armor at level 2 if I keep playing them past "Murder in Metal City". My initiative is actually quite decent because I'm a Disciple of Triune. Obviously I keep my mouth shut when there's talking to be done...

I agree that the core book version LOOKS under tuned, but works decently on the table top. This is from my admittedly limited experience playing at level 1.

Solar shot is actually good when you are in range (which is more than you'd expect from the talk about "ranged meta"). A +3 attack instead of +4 isn't a big difference in most low level fights, and a flat +4 to damage (from +4 strength) makes that an unusually effective ranged attack. Maybe my guy just rolls well and has only faced soft targets, but I basically ripped through a target a turn in every fight we have had... except one that was a (somewhat scripted) TPK.

I think the bigger issue is that it is very MAD. You need the +4 str and +3 dex to do that, which doesn't leave much for putting on other stats. You'll be locked in on being good at str and dex skills, and maybe have a +2 in a decent mental stat if you play a 3 stat race.

Also so many of it's special "solar effect" only apply on crit, which seems like a "win more" feature that doesn't actually help in hard situations.

I'm told it feels even better at higher levels, though I have my doubts. Getting the multiple crystal sets to upgrade your solar weapon(s) and solar flare as well as armor (and likely a shield, you'll need it not to get mobbed down as a solo front liner) to stay at level, seems like it would strain and surpass typical wealth. And the effects gained from orbital crystals seem both weaker and less reliable than those from mods, often being tied to one attunement.

As to fixes, I do think they could use ... something more. Possible ideas:

- Solar Crystals should apply to ALL solar attacks, so you don't need to keep up on 2/3 sets of them.

- Solarian gets choice of increased proficiency with either one attunement or the solar weapon / solar flare as class feature. This gives "sub classes" that are more proficient with one attunement or with melee / ranged fighting, brings those crit effects into play more often, and is a simple way to give the 10-20% damage boost people say the class needs. It is especially appropriate to a class that will often be striking in melee without any aid from allies for flanking.

- All Solar Attacks should have Boost as an option (d10 for weapon, d8 for flare). It is SILLY that (all else equal) using a Painglave can easily be more effective than using your solar weapon.

I always found it odd that you can make a character that has a -1 Dexterity mod, but there is no armor suited to them. There are also a rather limited number of armor types in general. The Armored skirt broadens this a bit, but actually makes the armors best suited for a -1 Dex character less so, not more so. With that in ming. I cooked up the following item.

Armor Adjustment - Heavy Construction
Uncommon , Adjustment
Price: 6 gp
Usage: applied to light, medium, or heavy armor
Bulk: 1
 
Armor can be made of thicker materials, although this is counter-productive for many wearers. This adjustment can be applied to any armor when originally crafted or purchased, but can not be removed or installed on existing armor.
 
Heavy Construction increases the armor's item bonus to AC by 1, reduces the armor's Dex cap by 1, increases it's bulk by 1, and adds the Ponderous and Hindering traits. It can not be added to armors that already have either of those traits, or to any armor that has the Aquadynamic or Flexible traits. This also changes the armor from light to medium, or medium to heavy, with no further effect if already heavy, and you use the proficiency bonus appropriate to this adjusted armor type.