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Last session, my party defeated the Black Tears, but it was a near thing. After only taking moderate damage once or twice for the entire manor, I had to retcon an instant PC death on the first round of combat with Volodmara, when she dealt 46 damage to a PC on a critical hit with her Overhand Smash ability. I basically cheesed the rest of the fight, ignoring the overhand smash ability and not using any of her lesser healing potions, and still had to be very careful not to wipe the party.

I checked her stats afterwards and was not surprised by what I found: Moderate to high AC, extreme hit points w/ 4 lesser healing potions), high attack modifiers, extreme damage on regular attacks (almost double extreme damage on overhand smash). It’s all push and no pull, so much so that I’m not sure how she made it past playtesting, and I hope she gets retuned in future errata.

What have y’all’s experiences been? I’m curious to hear if other groups encountered the same problem, and also if there are any other encounters/creatures I should be wary of.

This started out as a versatile heritage, but I’ve since expanded it to its own full ancestry, and created 3 ancestral weapons for them as well.

This is my first serious attempt at homebrewing something, so I’d be really grateful for any and all feedback.

Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/18DJi-W1CCSR-YPD0-lLgPv1OgN81DF35/view?usp= drivesdk

With Paizo Con coming up, glad to see this thread resurface. Hopefully the Anadi worked themselves into the announcements somewhere.

We’ll be watching you Paizo—watching with all eight eyes.

I’ve also been tinkering with an Anadi homebrew. Here’s what I’m stealing and here’s what I’m proposing.

Core stats: I agree on all of the base stats. These are what I came up with too.

Fangs: lose the agile trait, bump damage to 1d6, and make it available only in spider form, more like the Anadi NPC’s have.
Change Shape: This seems to be the most defining thing about the Anadi, other than being spiders, is their innate ability to appear human, and I think it’s one of the things that makes them interesting. I like your ability, but think maybe it should be a heritage or ancestry feat instead. Here’s what I came up with for the change shape.

Change shape (1A): Arcane, Concentration, Polymorph, Transmutation. You shift between your true form or your human form. While in true form, you gain a fang attack and a climb speed of 15ft. Around outsiders, most Anadi won’t revert to their true shape unless in defense or to intimidate.

It doesn’t seem right to limit the duration an Anadi can spend in their true form, but it’s a bit tricky because their true form is better than their human one. Even if they spend their whole time in a true form though, this is basically just a climb speed and an unarmed attack.

That’s all I have time for right now. I’ll come back later and share my thoughts on heritages and feats. Off the top of my head though, should definitely have some kind of feats for Anadi venom and cool tricks you can do with your web.

I’m starting an online campaign soon, and I want gunpowder to be part of the setting. There’s a lot of homebrew attempts floating around, but I want something easy to implement, that doesn’t require a bunch of new mechanics, and is still balanced and fun.

All firearms are advanced ranged weapons in the firearms group.

Weapon Traits:
Point Blank - THis weapon is more deadly when fired up close. Add a bonus to attack roles equal to the number of the weapon’s damage dice, against creatures within the weapon’s 1st range increment.
Scatter - When the wielder of this weapon hits with a ranged weapon attack, they can choose to deal splash damage to all creatures in a cone, equal to the damage dice listed. The size of the cone is determined by the listed area of effect. This damage scales with striking runes as normal.

Firearms:

Pistol (100gp): 1d8 P, Range: 20ft., Reload 2, 1 hand, 1 bulk.
Traits: Fatal d10, Point Blank

Musket (150gp): 1d10 P, Range: 40ft., Reload 3, 2 hand, 2 bulk.
Traits: Fatal d12, Point Blank

Blunderbuss (200gp): 1d8 P, Range: 10ft., Reload 3, 2 hands, 2 bulk.
Traits: Point Blank, Scatter 1d4/15ft.

Still a work in progress, so please tell me what you like and don’t like. I’ll probably throw together feats for Rapid Reload and Firearm Training. I’m least sure about the blunderbuss. I like the splash damage, but trying to work out the damage and the number of reload actions.

I also based these heavily off of 1e, dropping misfire. . The ranges and reload times are pretty much the same, the prices are the same divided by 10, and I tried to emulate more close quarters, more accurate, better crit versions of crossbows.

They keep saying on stream that they’ve thought about doing an Anadi ancestry, and to speak up if we want it. So here I am.

Add it to the APG, release it on its own, send a living Anadi to my house, I don’t care. I’ve wanted to play one since picking up Hellknight Hill.

Anyone else? Surely I can’t be the only person who wants to kick butt s a spider person? It sounds super sick and I want it please.

Kazmik Flameborn, dwarf dragon instinct barbarian, killed while trying to set a trap for Voz in Hellknight Hill.

The players found the secret tunnel that led back to Breachill and set up a watch on the entrance to see if Voz came back. I moved it out of the Pickled Ear and had it be a tiny hidden cave on the banks of the river. Voz made an appearance and the party confronted her. She made up some excuses and tried leaving, at which point the party attempted to subdue her, which did not go well.

Kazmik charged, swinging his axes, wounding Voz, but instead of collapsing, she surged forward, her hand wreathed in trailing black mist and seizing his throat, she drained what life she could from him and left him on the shores. At which point she called in her undead minions and made an escape.

The player loved Kashmir though, asking if there was some way to bring him back after a couple sessions playing another character.

The party got revenge on Voz, making sure to let her know it was for Kazmik before finishing her off. After a desperate encounter with Malarunk and his cultists, in which at one point only 1 party member stood with 11 hp. They repaired Huntergate and stepped through.

The party ran forward towards the other side, but were stopped halfway as smoke pooled and formed the aspect of Dahak, glaring at them with blazing eyes, chained at his feet, was Kazmik, gaunt, scarred, and looking at them with pained eyes.

Next session will start with the battle against Dahak to free their once dead friend.

Voss wrote:

Lightning Raven wrote:

Well, I guess Striking runes may not be the "got to" choice for weapons with small dices, which can make these elemental dice more appealing. Hopefully, the game's environment breeds these types of choices.

We will see. The playtest damage rules just meant that using a weapon with a smaller damage die was just a flatly bad decision. Rogues got use out of shortswords, but not daggers, and d12s and d8s ruled two handed or one handed, respectively, with a choice of S,B or P, with a bias toward S/P from swords.

That's was one of my worries indeed. If in PF1e the dice size almost didn't matter since the bulk of damage came from bonuses, now the size does really matter a lot. This may take more effort to circumvent if the game expects a lot more dice being added.

It seems to be the case. Looking at the stat blocks from the bestiary, it looks like maybe some of the lost damage from the lack of potency runes is going to be made up for inherently in your character, through additional damage dice like we see in one of the ranger spoilers, and additional damage bonuses and ways to deal additional damage on your turn, as in the barbarian’s thrash ability.

As touched on by now, there’s also the benefit of other weapon upgrades. A striking dagger may only deal 2d4, but that makes it better than weapons that are a die step or 2 above the dagger. Not to mention, things like flaming which would make your dagger deal an additional d6.

So as a ranger with that precision hunter’s tactic, and a striking dagger of flame, I’d be dealing 2d4 + 1d8 piercing + 1d6 fire damage. Which isn’t bad at all for a dagger.

Sure, it requires some upgrades to the weapon itself, but I like the idea of better weapons being deadlier. Of course a longsword will deal more damage than a dagger, but a character that wants to use daggers can find ways to make their damage at least comparable I think.

One alternative for the weapon damage progression, would be to tie the additional damage dice to proficiency.

So untrained and trained remain the same, but each tier after that grants an additional damage die.

So an expert in a type of weapon would not only hit far more often, but also be more deadly when they hit with their weapon, which makes sense, but I’m not sure how this would compare to the current damage progression.

Got a google doc going with everything transcribed from the imgur thread going around.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g55e2S4C2bYEibLJVHhlEgclrVZhvqH_z_fpJZ- EHIQ/edit?usp=sharing

Still missing 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 20, 25, 26, 40, 46, 50, 51, 52, 58, 63, 66, 74, , 76, 79, 84, 85, 86, 92, 93, 99 if anybody has them.

The link doesn’t appear to be working. It just says the document does not exist.