Wheldrake's page

The Core Rulebook 4th Printing says this, about Minor Magic:
"Page 184: The rogue Minor Magic feat was unclear on whether the spells are innate spells or made you a spellcaster. We've amended the text to note that you gain the Cast a Spell activity. These spells work similarly to the ones you get from multiclass dedication feats for spellcasting classes. However, you don't gain a spell repertoire, spellbook, or similar, so your oddball rogue magic doesn't let you use abilities that require those."

Sure, damage is important. But DPR comparisons put me to sleep, and my general impression is that DPR discussions don't take into account so many other factors. It's "white room" analysis.

I've been around these forums and other discussion venues for over ten years, since mid-way through the PF1 era, and can't say I've seen "selfish" oriented remarks. Perhaps if you tried to rearticulate what problem you see, more folks could engage with it.

The Decaying weapon property rune does void damage, but has the Acid trait, which states "Effects with this trait deal acid damage."

Either the type of damage or the trait choice need to be changed, or else some sort of text addendum explaining why this instance of void damage is like acid in some way.

Other DMs may suggest you choose character creation options that don't lead to having the same feat multiple times.

Not hard to do.

Another option is to have a companion of some sort, such as an animal companion, casting a summoning spell yourself, and having a familiar. If you really need three minions capable of combat, there is the Spirit Guide familiar, or give the familiar the Spellcasting ability and a summoning spell that they can cast and sustain on their own.

Several problems with a familiar casting a summoning spell:

Minions have at most 2 actions, and all summoning spells take 3 actions.

Minions cannot have their own minions. Last line of the Minion trait: "A minion can't control other creatures."

So you could theoretically have a companion, a familiar and a summoned creature, spend all three of your actions commanding them, and do nothing else yourself. Very few familiars have any relevant combat abilities. Summoned creatures are generally 3-4 levels below the spellcaster that summoned them. Animal companions are nice, but their combat stats are 1-3 levels below their master's level. So it's a moot point what you plan to do with your zoo.

*cough* The Control Water spell is woefully imprecise on how it works.

The sidebar on page 33 refers to the Brimgate Walker character background in the Gatewalkers Player's Guide, but said player's guide contains no such background. I'm guessing that it got cut for space, but perhaps Jason or someone else at Paizo might care to enlighten us?

Even the name, "Brimgate Walker" doesn't resemble the names of the other backgrounds. Either there was some renaming involved, or as you say, something got cut between the player's guide and the actual AP books.

Charau-Ka are the "goblins" of PF2.

Kobolds have been cool at least since Neverwinter Nights. Deekin lives!

Yow! This thread is **still** going on???

Oh, now I see. It's devolved into a discussion of whether or not we should use the word "fluff" to describe so-called "flavor text".

Yes, it's an offensive term, and "flavor text" doesn't exist. It's all part of the rules, even if no mechanical elements are invoked in a given sentence. Everything helps determine intent and usage.

And yes, there is an interact action baked into firing a bow, or any "reload 0" weapon. <g>

Call it a "cutlass".

Alchemists and Investigators are probably the weakest classes - or at least the hardest ones to make competitive. People will chime in and say, "well, if you build them in just such and so a way, they're fine" and they're probably not wrong. But it is certainly far easier to make a profoundly unsatisfying alchemist or investigator than any other class in the game.

At the end of the day, you have to ask yourself, "what is this spell supposed to do?" and "how far is that in line with a 5th-level spell"?

The problem is the missing parts in the spell perameters and description. Interpreting what is written in strict RAW terms simply doesn't give a satisfactory result.

I do the same as a few other folks here: alignment damage affects all targets not of the same alignment as the damage. So Evil damage affects all creatures not of evil alignment.

I don't want to fiddle with half damage calculations. And it really solves all my problems, since I don't allow evil PCs in my groups. We play heroic fantasy, not selfish "in it for yourself" fantasy. YMMV.

In the Pendragon RPG, there is virtually no magic. A single healing potion giving 1d6 healing is a valuable artifact.
Furthermore, natural healing (even with the assistance of a chirurgeon of some sort) is agonizingly slow, often requiring months. The Pendragon RPG is designed to have a single adventure each year, with the rest of the year being spent managing the PC knight's estate.

It seems self-evident that a PF2 campaign set in the world of Pendragon would be very different indeed. Even if you removed all magic, and used ABP to avoid a profusion of magic items, you would have a very, very different situation if PCs had access to standard PF2 medicine-based healing.

I'm not saying that it can't be done. Simply that you'll need to have extensive houserules, and that the end result won't look anything like the Pendragon RPG.

One of the things I really liked about Pendragon was the concept of opposed virtues and flaws, and they way they are used to determine PCs' actions. IMHO that would be a hard sell to players used to more free-form RPGs.

Since companions can't take reactions, they can never Grab an Edge when falling off a cliff.
Sad widdow putty tat.

Yet another reason why Grab an Edge should've been a free action, not a reaction.

Everybody engaging in Paizo-bashing here needs to take a deep breath and a step back.

Yes, mistakes were made. No, we'll never know the whole story. Heck, I doubt if even the people involved directly in this situation know the whole story.

The most heartening part of this whole crisis is that the top folks at Paizo have admitted to making mistakes and pledged to do better in the future.

If this incident makes some people take a knee-jerk reaction against the company as a whole, that really saddens me. Paizo has gone above and beyond in supporting diversity and inclusion, and the fact that top management hasn't always managed to keep to the straight and narrow path of virtue only shows that they are human, with human weaknesses and shortcomings, just like lesser mortals.

I for one will *continue* to support Päizo, and continue to support their efforts to foster inclusion and diversity in our hobby.

Thank you Erik, Jeff, Jason and others for being so forthcoming and for trying to better in the future. Thank you Sara, Diego, Crystal, Jessica, and Lissa for helping to not only bring us great content, but to champion important social issues that affect us all. Thank you Owen, Jim Sonja, Mark, Aaron for weighing in and helping maintain balance in these difficult times. My condolences and support to those who lost their jobs, or lost less tangible but no less important things like respect, trust and confidence in this whole situation.

Thank you Paizo, for facing these obstacles and shortcomings and trying to do better in future.

Cheers, --- Wheldrake (aka Phil Benz)

Regardless of the relative merits of undercasting some focus spells or cantrips, nothing in the rules allows you to "undercast".

Indeed cantrips say, "A cantrip is always automatically heightened to half your level, rounded up."

Focus spells also say, "Focus spells are automatically heightened to half your level rounded up, just like cantrips are."

So any decision to allow the undercasting of spells is a pure houserule subject to DM fiat. It's an entirely reasonable houserule, for many of the reasons brought up in this thread. But the RAW make no allowances for it.

There is nothing in the slingstaff entry that says it isn't a staff.
If you look at the historical version of the slingstaff, it is simply a staff with some cloth or leather stips attached to it.
(as distinct from the wacky artist who thought a slingstaff should look like an oversized slingshot)

Your DM is right. Magical Shorthand is all about writing faster and learning faster, not about reading a new spell written in the clouds. You still need either someone to teach you or a grimoire or some other written source. Maybe you could summon a devil that would agree to teach you the spell - but that is beyond the purview of the Magical Shorthand feat.

It even specifically references the notion of availability at one point: "you choose a spell available to you to learn".

The speed at which you can learn new spells with this feat is lightning fast, and the downtime system is just gravy on top of that.

Back in the day, we built our characters on a sheet of paper.
And we liked it!

<g>

I think the attraction of the Free Archetypes optional rule stems from a feeling I've often had when creating a character for PF2: most of the characters seem "feat starved" and there are so many cool & interesting feats that I feel like taking on a given character, but I can't.

This isn't helped by the fact that all the campaigns I've had the opportunity to play in are very low level.

We started the current campaign I'm running **without** Free Archetype rules, for the simple reason that all my players were new to PF2. A year and a half in, with 30 sessions under our belts, I finally did add in the Free Archetype rules, retroactively, but for story reasons. My PCs discovered an ancient Azlanti artefact that allowed them to share in some of the memories of ancient Azlanti heroes dead some hundred centuries. This happened when they were 8th level, so it was a bit of a chore to go back & select four archetype feats in one go, but my players have matured in their understanding of PF2 rules, and it worked well as a reward.

If I were starting a new PF2 campaign tomorrow, with experienced players, I'd state up front that we were using Free Archetype rules. It adds a little more breadth and complexity to PCs, and just feels right.

I'm really enjoying the new Mwangi book too, and I have to agree that much of the Mwangi material from PF1 has a colonialist vibe to it, H. Rider Haggard style adventures, braving the dangers of the Dark Continent.

That's not necessarily "bad* per se. A lot of heroic fantasy is inspired by literary sources that are not entirely politically correct, viewed from today's perspective. But it is very refreshing to see a new outlook in this latest Mwangi book, and it helps balance the earlier colonialist-oriented material.

But let's face it: heroic fantasy RPGs are all about facing dark and dangerous foes and defeating them. There have to be evil adversaries to fight just about everywhere, so it makes sense to maintain at least some of the pulp-era themes, at least for those who want to use them.

I dunno, I tend to feel that adding level to just about everything is good design. Players want to advance in level every couple of sessions, if only to be able to try out new things, and feel powerful. They want to be able to stand up to stronger and stronger adversaries, and the game lets them do it.

Everything is working as intended.

As player you can't sell it for half price.

It is up to the GM to set a price for you if you want to buy it (anyhow - an intelligent item will be uncommon at best but more likely rare - so you depend on the GM to make it available RAW in any case)

As a class of items, one might say they are rare. But each intelligent item is unique - one of a kind. That's beyond simply being "rare".

This said, you can get a ballpark figure by checking what level it is, and how other items of a similar level are priced. But IMHO, the fact that the price is listed as "-" is indeed an intentional decision on the part of the devs. These items are "priceless". Any attempt to buy or sell such an item is an adventure of its own.

As long as the spell is on multiple lists, nothing prevents you counterspelling a given spell.

Your problem will come with spells that are not on your list at all.

There is no price on intelligent items simply because they cannot be purchased. They only enter a campaign if the DM decides to include them. They are unique items, priceless in more ways than one.

And, FWIW, you can't expect Paizo devs to chime in on your question, especially when all you could possibly want to know is already listed in the book. Their price is "-" = meaning there is no price.

I don't buy it, the rules also state that individual playing cards and an Palm Crossbow, and Alchemist Goggles are "thick" objects.

Really? Where? I'm not seeing it in those links you pasted.

DR, in my opinion, does not actually relate to thick OR thin objects at all those are "flavor words" meant to communicate the intent.

Hey, you're certainly entitled to share your opinion, or even modify the Dwarven Reinforcement feat in your home games if you like.

But PF2 is a game system built on keywords. Thick and thin objects are defined, and a shield is listed as a thin object. Hence making the Dwarven Reinforcement feat inapplicable in the case of shields, according to the RAW.

This is a rules forum, so I tried to answer the OP with the applicable rule. Not with just an opinion, mind.

BTW, thanks for the reference, Aw3som3, that is indeed exactly what I was thinking about in answering the OP.

Hey, this forum seems fairly moribund, about what you'd expect from a 10+ year old adventure, but I thought I'd see if anyone is interested in discussing some bits of it. Specifically, book 2, Racing to Ruin.

I had been running a homebuilt pirate-themed campaign, but the main villain, a disgraced Chelaxian noble, had to run away from his previous base, and I decided that the former Chelaxian colony of Sargava (now Vidrian) would make a good destination.

One thing led to another, and I ended up taking 3/4 of book 2 of Serpent's Skull, and switched up a few things while adapting it to PF2.

I had planned for the PCs to get the full Eleder treatment, but they bushwacked me, and took a riverboat up from Port Freedom, along the Lower Korir River to Kalabuto. So my PF2-ization efforts only really covered the part from Kalabuto to Tazion.

More soon, if anyone actually sees this message.

Dwarven Reinforcement doesn't apply to shields, since they are not "thick objects and structures".

This has been discussed before. It works on doors and buildings, but shields are classified as "thin objects", so no go on that one.

The best shields for shield block are sturdy shields. But against high-level adversaries, you may have to purposefully forego shield blocking, unless you have backup shield(s).

The only element in the spell's description that suggests the option of not breathing is, "You deal 6d8 poison damage to each breathing creature that starts its turn in the spell's area."

It would appear that whether or not you hold your breath, if you are a "breathing creature" you are subject to the spell's effects.

I tend to side on the permissive ruling of allowing a circumstance bonus to PCs holding their breath, but nothing more. A strict RAW interpretation wouldn't even allow that. A "breathing creature" holding its breath is still a breathing creature.

Most DMs would rule that the clumsy condition expires at the end of the six rounds that the poison lasts.

A step beyond would be to rule that it lasts until your next sleep cycle.

Saying that clumsy is permanent until magically healed is IMHO beyond the pale. I suggest you talk with your DM, point out the 6-round duration of the poison and see what he says.

It's ambiguous in the RAW. IF your DM says it's permanent until magically healed, and doesn't want to change that ruling, you have to roll with it.

Maybe try invoking the treat disease or treat poison portions of the Medicine skill, and see if he'll bite.

If a PC is simply holding their breath, without the aid of specific spells or powers, a DM could simply give them a circumstance bonus against Cloudkill (say +2 to their save), saying that they partially avoid the effects by not breathing it in. Otherwise, it seems like too simple a counter for a 5th-level spell.

Although it's true that you never double extra damage that occurs on a critical hit, you do double base elemental damage from property runes, and the wording of the skock rune, doing "an equal amount of damage..." can be read to mean "equal to the electricity damage dealt by that critical hit."

In my experience, at the levels you're talking about, many adversaries that are +3 or even just +2 levels above the party level can be highly problematical. For homebrewed campaigns, I tend to stick to on-level or below-level adversaries, and rarely go above +1 or +2.

Also, a party's chances against a spellcaster depend so much on the specific party composition and the terrain available. I had a recent battle with an occult spellcaster using darkness to cloak his movements, and none of the PCs had darkvision. It was rough.

Great!
And it's certainly true that the mind-bending sums of raw cash that mid or high-level characters toss around have no relation to any economic system outside the base conceits of the game.

Far too rarely do PCs spend any significant cash on comfort. A tavern binge. Fine clothes. Jewelry. High-maintenance girl/boyfriends. A cool house. A boat. A villa. Servants. Bodyguards.

But all that can change, if the DM runs his campaign in that direction.

Objecting to the established RPG naming conventions for swords isn't going to get a lot of traction. It's a question of RPG legacy, going back to OD&D in the '70s.

Without getting into culture-specific weaponry, we do have a nice range of swords: dagger, shortsword, longsword, bastard sword, greatsword. This range of weapons covers pretty much any sort of sword you might want, even if some folks find the labels inaccurate.

Most historical sources just call them "swords", in whatever language they are using.

As pointed out above, there are more egregious weaponry errors in the game. Bucklers should be held in the hand, not strapped to your arm, where they would serve little purpose. Slingstaffs are not oversized slingshots. I'm sure there are other examples as well.

This said, RPG combat is so abstract that further distinctions aren't really useful.

Yeah, a troop of large critters would have to double the dimensions all round. IMHO, the troop rules are not a very useful mechanism for simulating mass battles, but some folks seem really enthused about them.

Troops seem to have several specificities that could be used to create new types:
- the Form Up trait
- the Troop Defenses trait
- an attack mode that does variable damage depending on the number of actions it uses for the attack.

Aside from that, they appear to have unique abilities, so it would be free reign for the potential homebrewer.

My reading is that you have no attack forms while in pest form.

It depends.

If it happens a limited number of times, and the PCs don't expect it, and they have a nasty fight each time, sure, why not? They're in the same situation as if they'd simply met another of the same monster type, rather than the exact same one.

If it feels like the PCs are "farming" the critter and puposefully taking advantage of its respawn ability to earn more xp, then no.

As DM you can make such decisions. You could even decide to stop using xp entirely, as many DMs do, and simply state when they are ready to level.

Hey, what's this new form of damage?

"Edolpho deals an extra 1d6 percision damamge to flat-footed creatures."

We need that damage type!

(Seriously, great stuff. We're eager to see more city content.)

AFAICT, the intent is for you to spend the action to command it, then it takes its 2 actions, then you take any remaining actions you might have for yourself.

If it's taking one independent action, that could take place any time before during or after your actions.

Why would it be any different?

If you count 5' squares, 40x40' = 64 squares. 30' high is at least 3 stories, maybe 4. 64 x 3 = 192, enough for those 150 people and 24 staff, with a little left over.

Plus, people sitting at a table probably don't need 5', unless they're practicing social distancing.

This said, I'll agree it doesn't sound much like a "mansion".

It won't be runes, but there will be some options for adding various traits to weapons, once the inventor class is out, sometime next fall.

IMHO it's not a good plan to enable players to endow their weapons with just any trait. Breaks verisimilitude, for me.

The ocean is a vast and unknown place. In *your* Golarion there could be any number of island nations waiting to be discovered, lost worlds, relics of ancient civilizations, unguessed mysteries and unplumbed depths.

So why not a Polynesia analogue?

AFAIK there is no such treatment in extant Pathfinder rulebooks, for the simple reason that it is exceedingly rare for campaigns to span years, let alone lifetimes.

It's up to you and your DM to concoct something, perhaps a variation on the reincarnation ritual.

A lot of people really dislike the "pay to play" approach, as I'm sure you've already seen. Why? I'm sure there are many reasons. Some people are also hesitant about paying for basic gaming supplies, like rulebooks and adventure modules, and they'll do anything to get access to them free of charge - sometimes, regardless of their objective ability to pay. And other people simply want to play and can't afford extra costs.

So there's a pretty wide gamut of reactions here. And you need to be understanding towards venues that ban "pay to play" adverts. They may also ban other sorts of advertisement for paid content, like adventure modules.

Making money off our shared hobby isn't easy. But there are ways to do it:
- write 3pp modules or other content, and sell it on a site like DrivethruRPG. I took a foray into this last year, and made a couple hundred bucks. If I'd done it seriously, I could have made significant supplemental income.
- make battle maps, with programs like Dungeondraft. Some artists make money selling maps.
- make other content, like GM advice, NPC design, trap design, etc. If the content is good enough, you'll make a little money from it.
- use Patreon, once you have a certain starting critical mass of content for it to be worth it supporting you. You could also use Patreon as a way to organize "pay-for-play" DMed sessions for your patrons. But IMHO it would work better if you also have other content to offer them.

And Ravingdork, I know you have some good content on offer, even if most or all of it is freely offered to the community. Things like your character emporium are sincerely worth money. Or, they can stay free, and be used as a sample of what people will find behind a paywall.

Pay-to-play DMed sessions aren't illegitimate, as such. But they are a very sensitive topic in the community and need to be approached carefully and respectfully.

Sorry, but the Trigger is what matters here

Trigger A creature within range enters an environment where it can't breathe.

So unfortunately, it would only be if they have to hold their breath, or are suffocating, not in an environment that merely causes damage (which sucks).

I dunno. If I'm in an environment filled with deadly poison gas, I'd be the first to assert, "I can't breathe!!!"

Equating "where it can't breathe" with suffocation is one way to interpret the RAW, but it's a very narrow interpretation and not the only one possible.

Unicore has the right approach.
I would add that the best approach is the one that tells the most interesting and engaging story for your table of gamers. Poison gas is a major obstacle. Your DM needs to weigh the merits of allowing a more liberal interpretation of this ambiguous spell.