Wizard Level 1's page

So bursts read

A burst effect issues forth in all directions from a single corner of a square within the range of the effect, spreading in all directions to a specified radius. For instance, when you cast fireball, it detonates at the corner of a square within 500 feet of you and creates a 20-foot burst, meaning it extends out 20 feet in every direction from the corner of the square you chose, affecting each creature whose space (or even one square of its space) is within the burst.

You deploy a mine that flies to an unoccupied square of your choice within 60 feet and hovers in place.

So mines are not being placed in corners, they are being placed in squares. So how are bursts supposed to work in this instance? Do we choose a corner to measure from? Or we measure from the center of the square which will create a rather non burst like shape) or is this basically an emendation that includes the square the mine is in?

They do exist though. APs print spells that are intended* to be exclusive constantly. Things like Bee man's summon or tortuous trauma are very linked to the campaign they appear in.

The blood lord spells are especially a good example of "spells that everyone shouldn't have access to" because they're supposed to be messed up and if your wizard fresh out of school is casting torturous trauma that's gonna be weird. I'm very glad that comes out the gate with a warning your GM could say no to it.

*I.E contain hyperspecific tone or flavour

So, while this is a reply to what you said, what I'm writing isn't all meant to be entirely addressed to you. Rather, what you said was more of a jumping off point for some thoughts I had.

Shouldn't those hyper specific AP spells and options be unique then, or rare at the very least? If something is only meant to be used within the AP they were made for, the uncommon tag seems likes a poor way denote that because it lumps them in with so many other uncommon things, even things from core rule books.

If a player is looking at an uncommon spell from an AP and an uncommon spell from a core rule book, what's the difference? How would they know? How would a DM know the difference unless they look at the source of those things? That's the point more folks than myself have tried to make in this thread, the rarity system is watered down and nonsensical because there doesn't seem to be any sort of consistency to what is being tagged uncommon or rare.

If something is uncommon to the inner-sea for narrative purposes (guns come from only a few places so there are not many of them around), fine. That makes sense. If something is uncommon because it's in an adventure path and it's only meant to be used in that adventure path, that's fine too though now we have a different set of standards. If something is uncommon because you have to be a certain ancestry, that sounds great, but now three separate standards are being applied to the same tag. If something is uncommon because you have to be part of a special group to have access to it, (Pathfinders, Firebrands, Knights of Lastwall), that makes sense, though now we're at four different standards.

The problem is that the uncommon tag encompasses ALL of those above examples, and many more than that, and so we end up where we are right now. For many people, it doesn't mean anything anymore and it all comes down to DM fiat which is where it would be anyway if we didn't have rarity.

Some people have said that rarity tags help them to know what they need to pay attention to and take a look at for their players. I would argue that a DM should be checking the choices their players are making anyway, irrespective of rarity. I'm sure we could all find examples of common things that are narratively or mechanically problematic, if not in general than in certain campaigns. Just because something is common, doesn't mean it's appropriate. If that's the case, why should rarity indicate that something might not be appropriate?

Maybe what we needed other than rarity was tags that were more informative. Unique has a place as it is. If something is from an adventure path maybe it should get the AP tag. If something is 'locked' to a region, ancestry, or organization having the tag of that thing should suffice. If something is locked of to a class (like the Witch focus spells) a class tag should suffice and so on and so fourth. This not only tells DM's that they need to have a look at something, but it tells them at a glance why they need to look at it. This IS something that they do by the way for many things, but like rarity it's inconsistently applied.

Lets follow the chain of logic of "I don't automatically disbelieve my own illusions".

If we assume that we can be duped by our own illusions, are we fooled by our own disguises? If I disguise myself, and later see myself in a mirror, do I need to succeed in a check to recognize it's me or will I think it's just someone on the other side of a pane of glass mocking me by doing the same movements? What about a party member I disguise? Will I also not be able to recognize them? Will I think they are a stranger?

What about when I use Stealth to conceal an object on my person? If I succeed, do I suddenly not know where I hid the object, or that I even have the object at all? Do I need to beat my stealth DC with a perception check to find an object that I hid on my own person? If I hide an object inside something, like a sword in a bale of hay on a cart, do I forget where I put the sword? Does putting a blanket over an object make me think the object ceases to exist as if I'm a literal baby?

What about deception? Do I believe my own lies? If I'm lying about who I am, do I then think I actually am that person? If I'm using the feat that allows me to use magic items and make people think I'm casting spells, do I believe that I really AM casting spells unless I succeed at a check to recognize the truth just as onlookers must do?

In this hobby we spend so much time obsessing over the details of word placement, and what it means that there is or is not a comma here or there and how that can change the meaning of something. We are all prone to overthink things, that's part of what games like this train our brain to do. The truth of the matter is that some things really are so obvious they don't warrant mentioning.

Here's how I see it. I cast an illusion, I know I cast it, and more often than not the spell lets me decide what the illusion looks like and what it does. I don't need to disbelieve it because I never risked believing it in the first place. I think that is the basis from which to start from and beyond that, there might be edge classes where I could believe my own illusion such as: persistent illusions that I might happen on again, or that might change in ways I don't control, or illusions that do their own thing independent of me after casting them to the extent that I might wonder if I really did make it after all. If someone caused me to be confused I might forget about an illusion I cast (though if that's the table ruling the same should apply to enemies that disbelieving an illusion and later became confused). I think those are exceptions that should happen sparingly though.

The problem I have with rarity is that it's inconsistent. Here's some examples.

Rarity is not meant to denote if something is more powerful, but there are many rare things that are clearly over-tuned for the level they are. I'm sure everyone has seen an example of this. Rarity is 'meant to signal if something might cause a problem in a DM's campaign', but often something is uncommon for no reason other than 'it's a little weird'.

Rarity seems to lean toward indicating the rate that things can be encountered in standard Galorian but we have things like Leshy being common but Catfolk, Centaurs, Hobgoblins, Iruxi, and Kobolds being uncommon. Furthering this issue is that people places and things are mixed up in adventure paths and Lost Omens books that are considered cannon and part of a meta-narritive of the world. This makes the distinctions of rarity mean even less. In fact, I cant think of an adventure path that cared one bit of a character option was common, uncommon, or rare. In most cases everything is listed as at least appropriate, so not even the Paizo writers are taking rarity into account in their narratives.

There are a lot of very weird unlocks for certain uncommon things. Be this ethnicity, or from this part of the world is one that comes up often, which anyone can make up for their character. Then there are uncommon things that only become available if you take a feat or a class option. There are some uncommon feats or spells that require you to take a prerequisite which is, itself, common. I mean, that's a little weird isn't it? I take a common feat and I get an uncommon spell?

Many focus spells are uncommon, but the only way you could get them is by being a member of a (common) class that can use them; all of the Witch focus spells are uncommon for example. Why, why is uncommon being applied to class spells or features for a class that is common? Is the DM suppose to consider every Witch hex as something that could complicate their campaign?

There are a lot of things that seem like they might be uncommon. People are just as likely to see a Necromancer walking around as they are a fighter? A Kineticist is just as common as a Cleric? And of course there is still the debate about if the Examplar deserved to have the Rare trait just because of some story telling implications.

--
I'm not advocating for there to be more things that are considered common or uncommon or rare or to do away with the concept. I'm just pointing out that the rarity traits are so inconsistent that they verge on being completely useless. Maybe they are to most people.

I know in my own groups we almost entirely ignore the uncommon trait precisely because uncommon is the biggest offender of being inconsistent and often nonsensical (just look at how many perfectly reasonable bombs are uncommon).

I don't know what the solution is, if there even is one. Maybe Common, Rare and Unique are the only rarity traits we needed.

I might be repeating things others have said.

The designers made it a 2-slot caster so that they could spend the power budget elsewhere. Necromancers start with 2 focus points, and most will probably opt for Natrual Ambition for a third. I dont think any other caster can start with 3 focus points right off the bat at level 1 like this. They have the ability to recharge many focus points in combat every 10 minutes giving them up to 5 or 6 focus points in most combats. With all that in mind, they have so much spell casting potential that the lack of leveled spells is hardly an issue.

The necromancer has very strong focus spells, many of which are a single action to cast. Their main damaging focus spell, Necrotic Bomb, is a nearly universal damaging spell able to damage everything other than constructs with no risk to damaging their own party members. Nearly all the focus spells that create powerful thralls are a single action (
Bloody Tendrils, Conglomerate of Limbs, Living Graveyard, Perfected Thrall, Recurring Nightmare, Skeletal Lancers.) giving them an extreme range of control capability. Just being able to create flanking and difficult terrain in multiple spots on the battle fields for a single action is very strong.

Their feats are very strong and unique. Like expanding harm to 60 feet and making it a (nearly) universal healing and damaging spell. Or the ability to sense life (and unlife) and know the hit points of a creature just by looking at them. Or the ability to effectively give themselves the same attack bonus as a martial. The ability to heal themselves and others, or give enemies status effects with no save (like bleed whenever a thrall is destroyed). The ability to effect mindless undead with mental and emotion spells and effects which happens pair great with the single action AOE damage and debuff focus spell Deathly Scream or Recurring Nightmare.

A Necromancer is plenty powerful without casting a single ranked spell. I think players will find they don't mind having two slots per rank to prepare some 'just in case' spells.

Impossible magic seemed like it could have been a good book to clean some things up with the Kinetisist and add more impulses. Maybe it would have been too much to put into a book that had two new classes and 2 remastered classes though.

Even though they said they don't plan to remaster Rage of Elements stuff and it technically uses the remaster rules, it's off the mark with a lot of things and it has many references to non-remastered stuff so I wonder if it's still the case that they are not remastering it.

There are a lot of things that needs to be addressed with Kinestist like Impulses that don't list ranges or areas even though the impulse says it's an area effect, no synergy with any of the things that reference strikes or casting spells which is a really big problem for Commander tactics that allow an ally to make a strike or a cast a spell, or spells or effects that add bonuses to strikes or spell attacks. Some impulses underperform by a huge amount and some seem to be missing text or rules elements entirely like the stats for Elemental Artillery. I think there would be so much errata for the Kinetisist that it might be better simply to update it and reprint it somewhere.

Then there's other things like the Elementalist, feats and spells that don't really work quite right with the remaster rules, wonky items that don't follow along with remastered stuff.

Aside from all of that, I don't really need to see a new book with more impulses, I just need to see them add a few here and there. Again though, I'm disappointed that the MAGIC book didn't have anything for kinetisists at all except maybe some staves they can use or spells they can access via scrolls.

Exemplar:
There are many class feats that give the same damage bonus or better than the Exemplar feat can. +2 damage at level 2 that can scale to +8 is inline with many class feats that increase damage.

+1 AC aura could be a little problematic, but it IS a status bonus, and status bonuses to AC are very common so it will compete with the many other status bonuses like Benediction.

-1 circumstance penalty that an enemy takes when attacking though, that's pretty unique. Circumstance penalties to enemy attacks is a pretty rare thing to see. Still, -1 on a d20 roll means they'll hit you 5% less often.

For Horn of Plenty, one level 2 feat that offers action compression is not even close to being uncommon. Action compression is kind of the bread and butter of this game. We see action compression as early as level 1 for most classes.

Rune smith:
There are feats that can increase your AC (Guardian, some ancestry feats etc). There are class feats that increase damage. Runes are also magical, so they can be dispelled. The extra splash damage IS very good, but there are so many ways to do splash damage when you need to that do not require investing in a feat.

These are not "major boosts" as many people like to frame them. They are impactful, buy they are not out of line of class feats, other archetype feats, or even some ancestry feats.

I mean, heck, you want to talk about increasing damage? What about one feat that gives you training in all martial weapons?

You want to talk about AC boots? How about becoming trained in light and medium (and maybe heavy armor) and that training scales?

What about Archetypes that give you a cantrip? Eat Fire for fantastic damage resistance against the most common nonphysical damage in the game. Rousing Splash to get scaling temp HP that you can put on yourself before you enter a room so you start with temp HP before nearly every combat. Even the humble Shield cantrip, an AC bonus that gives you shield block with scaling HP and hardness can be a very strong option for a two handed martial character looking for some damage mitigation. What about making a thrall on the other side of your enemy for a single action so you can flank and also make that square difficult terrain?

My personal experience is this. My group are all power gamers, and I'm the only one that has ever taken the Exemplar dedication. Once it was for Horn of Plenty on an Alchemist (they really should have an action compression feat for elixirs anyway), and the other time was a Shadow Sheath for my Commander so that I had a good ranged option that would use my high strength and would basically be quick draw. In the latter case, it was once again the action compression of Shadow Sheath that drew me it, not the extra damage. I'll take action compression over a +1 to AC or a +2 to damage any day of the week, but I digress. I ended up retraining out of Exemplar when I could put another property rune on my main weapon (returning).

There are so many dedications that I think are stronger: Poisoner on Investigator, Champion on a low dex caster, Alchemist on just about any martial (healing, mutagens, cat's eye elixirs, easy access to every damage type to trigger weaknesses etc).

It's easy to understand exactly what you're getting with the dedication for Exemplar or Runesmith, it's easy to meet the prerequisites, and you don't have to really think about the bonuses once you get them. For that reason, I don't think these class archetypes are more powerful than most other archetype feats rather that they are merely more accessible and that creates the illusion of being more powerful.

Please not, all of what is with the assumption that Free Archetype is not in play. A lot of the issues with people claiming that 'this is too strong' or 'that is broken' is because so many groups use Free Archetype and that means you don't have to give up anything. Without free archetype, giving up a class feat is a much harder choice that actually has some consequences.

Aaron makes some valid points in that, basically, there could have been other ways forward for Paizo and AoN instead of simply cutting them off and then saying 'but maybe we can negotiate' but then not answering e-mails.

Time and again the one point I see getting missed is that Paizo themselves have pointed people to AoN, linked to it, called it the official repository for the rules and so on.

Legitimizing them in some way would have been better. Some kind of integration with Paizo's store front so that people could click a link to go directly to a product page for whatever it was they were looking at. Small banner adds on the bottom that led to Paizo store pages, all kinds of things.

This can't all be laid at the feet of AoN as being their fault. If Paizo treated them like a partner, if Paizo reached out to the community to let us know what issues there were and asked for ideas about how to resolve them or make things work better.

You have TALK to us Paizo! You have to trust you're community to WANT you to succeed and have ideas of how that can happen. Instead you're quietly doing all these things behind the scene and it looks shady AF.

LOL, using art being put up by other websites as a reason for doing this to AoN is wild.

The argument that 'Demiplane pays Pazio so it's not as bad.' Firstly, Demiplane isn't "paying paizo". They have a profit sharing business arrangement. It might be splitting hairs, but language is important. How does someone think stealing art from Demiplane isn't as bad as someone using art they got off AoN? Stolen art is stolen art no matter the source. Stealing art from one source is not magically less harmful than stealing it from another source. Paizo will still have to issue DMCA's.

There are far more efficient ways to rip art than taking them off websites. Tools exist to rip it right out of PDFs. If a webmaster wants to illegally use Paizo's art, taking it down from AoN is not going to stop them from doing it. It's not even going to slow them down.

As for AoN being duplicitous or whatever by making the announcement while negotiations are ongoing? They don't have time to negotiate to the very edge while that dead line looms. They have 10 days. If they want to be complaint they have to start their work now. If they don't get it done by the deadline then the whole site will have to go offline until it's scrubbed. Letting us know that there are going to be changes to the site isn't duplicitous, it's responsible.

What Paizo is doing is as close to a nuke option as they could get. So what could Paizo do? Well, I assume the way they currently purchase art is with an upfront fee and royalties paid out to artists when sales reach certain thresholds. That's a fairly common arrangement. They could change that arrangement though, using a purchasing agreement for art so that it doesn't matter if people use it on fan sites as long as they are not making money off those fan sites. Some publishing companies outright buy their art from artists so that they can do whatever they want with it and license it themselves however they wish.

There are options, internal and otherwise, to make all of this work without putting the blame for other people's bad behavior on the AoN agreement and thus focusing on them for a fix but it sounds like Paizo made a poorly thought out decision, attached and attached an arbitrary dead line time line to it without much more thought, and now they are in a scramble to fix their poor planing.

Let's not gloss over the fact that AoN has been called, by Paizo, the "official online rules repository". They've said that many times in press releases, on streams, in conversations and posts to the community. They've directly linked to it. I think it's important to keep that in mind when we think about this conversation.

AoN isn't just a fan site. At least, it didn't use to be.

This is a very mature approach to the situation that the company has found itself in. There could have been some knee jerk reactions, but instead you've outlined thoughtful and well thought out ways to address company stability with as little disruption as possible. Honestly, I don't think any of the choices you've outlined here will have any impact on the two groups I'm involved in.

My thoughts on the Society modules on Foundry: Currently the foundry modlues you sell are at a VERY high quality, in fact sometimes I wonder if the quality it TOO high, leading to the prices being driven up. In the case of society modules, while people in my group have expressed some interest in them, we find that the price for them feels too high.

If they were just simple maps that have been walled and lit, actors with passable tokens, and a serviceable journal all at a reasonable price, I think most of us would be okay with that. In other words, the society modules don't need anywhere near the same treatment as your adventure paths for Foundry if the price felt better.

In any case, thanks for sharing what problems you've been facing and how you are attempting to address those problems. Being open and honest like that does take some courage, and it's nice to see.

Lord Fyre wrote:

keftiu wrote:

Lord Fyre wrote:

Looking at the expected economics, we need a return to the Classic structure for an AP.

Meaning?

In the current economy, APs need to appeal to the largest possible audience.

So an AP (or two) needs to be aimed at people who are not already veteran Paizo players (and therefore are not tired of basic themes).

What makes you think that Paizo ain’t delivering on tried and true in addition to unique and unusual?

We have an entire line-up of adventures from beginners box to an AP that involves a popular setting: classical gothic horror. We have a dungeon crawl all about vampires, a rebel war story, these aren’t obscure settings or story types. If anything, they are a lil too conservative for my taste. Looking forward to Vaultlines.

I have to agree with this. If classic adventure material is dungeon crawling, there is no shortage of dungeon crawling in adventure paths. Even settings that could have been rich for something new like Seven Dooms of Sandpoint, based at the port town of Sandpoint is just a bog standard mega-dungeon when it could have offered something unique like aquatic adventuring, on exploring lost islands or something.

The adventure path about vampires could have been a narrative focused campaign full of tense social encounters and intrigue and warring vampire factions, but it's a dungeon crawl.

Paizo is indeed being conservative. I don't fault them that from a business perspective, but from a creative perspective it leaves something to be desired.

When I played Age of Ashes my friend and I wasn't aware of the players guide until we were a few levels in. Age of Ashes is over-tuned though, and the players guide for that it isn't very helpful.

The newer players guides are very good though and I couldn't imagine starting an AP without consulting them.

you can have multiple, portable installs of different foundry versions, so there's no need to wait for one system to update if others are ready.

also, the idea of being impatient after a month is wild to me, coming from systems where it was usual to be 1-2 major versions behind lmao.

I know it's possible to have different instances of Foundry, I said so myself in my post. If that solved the problem in a way that was acceptable to me, would I have made that post?

As I said, I use foundry many times a week and these adventure paths have been the single biggest problem for me with every new version. Maybe this isn't the fault of Paizo or with the company that maintains the adventure paths, but with Foundry. I wouldn't know, because after a new version releases, I never seem to be able to find information about whats going on with the adventure path updates. Besides, I bought the modules from Paizo, so that's where my frustration goes.

I'm a paying customer making my displeasure know. While you don't need to agree with what I'm saying,it seems odd to me that you feel compelled to try and minimize it; that's just being rude and unhelpful to anyone.

Have a little bit of patience my friend. There was a bug in core Foundry that did not allow the adventure modules to be updated. That bug was fixed last week. The Metamorphic team expects to get all the modules updated this week now that that blocker has been resolved.

I wish there was an easy way to see what's going on with these AP's while waiting for updates, some kind of communication. You seem to know where to go for info though, so thank you for sharing with me. Just knowing what the problem was and that it's on the way to being resolved makes me feel a lot better.

I like Foundry, but its unstable API and how things break for weeks or months at a time every year is its single biggest downside. This is just one of the examples of the issue, but its at the point where even Foundry itself has to remind people every update "please don't get this update until all your stuff is verified to be working."

Its just a constant churn that burns people out. I'm still using 13 and haven't even attempted to update to 14 yet mostly because I haven't felt up to dealing with the inevitable issues yet.

This is really where I'm at. After 3 years of Pathfinder 2 on Foundry and the yo-yo of these updates I'm feeling pretty salty, especially because it effects the other systems I play besides PF2. Heck, I can't even play-test the Starfinder Luminary because it only works on V14! Thanks for sharing that you understand.

Yeah, I basically only update Foundry to a new version when a system release for the PF2 system requires the new version, and it has content I want - typically some big new Core book. All the other systems I run on foundry haven't meaningfully changed in several major versions, so I'm pretty happy just waiting until I actually have to update to remain up-to-date.

I hear that, but I have some systems that no longer support the older Foundry Version or the supporting modules for those systems whenever there's a new Foundry version. I cant even enjoy the new features in those other games that are ready (or Starfinders Luminary for that matter), unless I install other instances of Foundry but I've done that before and I don't care to do it again.

Once again we have a new stable release of Foundry that has been out for over a month and while all other systems I use and all other modules for those systems are v14 compatible while the Adventure Paths remain locked to v13. V14 has been available for more than 2 months publicly, and probably longer than that for developers.

I don't even need the adventure paths to take advantage of the new features, I just need them to work as they are on the new version so I can finally update my Foundry to take advantage of the features in other games.

I feel like I need to run two instances of Foundry because it takes so freaking long for these adventures paths to be updated every time Foundry released a new stable version even though developers would have had access to the new version for months beforehand.

At this point if anyone asks me if they should buy an adventure path for foundry, I dont think I can recommend it, at least not without a lot of caveats.

Uncommon and Rare tags are simply meant to cue a GM to look at a thing and decide if it fits their game. That's all. It's not tied to mechanics, and it is only tied to Golarion incidentally because Golarion is the default setting. Uncommon represents options that stretch the 'standard' fantasy setting, and rare even more so. They indicate that a GM might need to do a little bit of extra work to make those options fit the game. Rare doesn't mean "no", or even "probably no". It means, 'take a look at this GM.'

The background Chosen One is rare for example because the DM has to do some extra work to make the concept of being the literal chosen one fit. Poppet is rare because an animated doll in a serious and gritty campaign could lampoon the entire thing just by existing. The Cobyslarni patron is rare because it represents a lot of lore that might not fit into a GM's story, and may thus require some retooling.

If you think something that is rare or uncommon should be allowed in a game, that's great. As a GM you can tell players that it's allowed, and as a player you can work with your GM to make that option fit. If a GM bans rare things out of hand without any negotiation that's a GM issue, not an issue with an option being rare.

Not many TTRPG's have something like this rarity system to help DM's to evaluate things. I think it's great that PF2 does, and I think for all the reasons discussed above, but especially for lore and roleplay implications, it warrants Exemplar having the rare tag.

Paizo developers might be a little overly cautious when it comes to assigning these tags, but generally I find they are useful when my players build characters so I can take a look at things that might be problematic to a theme or that might represent some extra attention on my part. As a player, those tags prod me evaluate if my character might be a bit much and to check in with my DM and talk about the concept I have and how we can make it work, if it can be made to work.

Sailing stuff! Pirates, privateers, and sailors alike. combat and adventures in, around, and under water. There are SO many aquatic options in the game right now but almost no interaction with it from any of the adventure paths.

Just wanted to make a note on FA, having read back some of the comments here that point out that it could have resulted in this 'problematic' build (which I show is not problematic at all in my post above).

I have a group I've been playing and DMing with for the last 5 years, me and another guy swaps out DM duties when we want a break. In any case, we used all cool shiny alternate rules. FA, Ancestry Paragon, Automatic Bonus Progression and so on and so fourth but over time we got rid of one after another until we were not using any of them, not even FA. When I said I'm not running any games with FA any more everyone was skeptical, but we've come to love it. Pathfinder 2 without any optional rules, it turns out, is a really fun game!

Instead of FA, we do have bonus campaign feats that players can earn if they impress someone or do an exemplary job at something. So there are still free feats every now and then but not one every other level and certainly not whatever they want. Players really seem to enjoy searching for opportunities to get these feats as rewards. For agents of Edgewatch for example, characters that did well on their missions could receive training from the guard to get an archetype or dedication feat from an extremely short list (but only at 4, 8, 12 and so on IF earned).

I guess I just don't think FA is as good as the community likes to think it is. I would encourage DM's that see problematic character builds and power creep to try running some games without FA and see how going back to vanilla PF2 works out.

That's just my little soap box.

This doesn't really sound like an over optimized character to me, just a competently built one. It's difficult to build actually broken PF2 characters because of the way the math is level bound. There are extremes on either end of where numbers can be a given level, but that is not an indication of something being broken because those extremes are (usually) known to the designers.

Your players working as a team to help everyone out is fantastic. I would be careful that, whatever decision you make, that you don't send the message that you don't like when they play as well as they can or when they work as a team.

I recall Abomination Vaults being very difficult. When I played through it, my group HAD to optimize the crap out of our party to get through it. What your players are doing now might be in response to just how over-tuned Abomination Vaults is.

There are some things you can do to make encounters more challenging for the monk and the rest of your team and more fun for you. Many of these things are what DM's should do in adventure paths anyway:

-Rework enemy spell lists. Experiment with spells that that make the ground difficult or hazardous terrain, or give people speed de-buffs, or block the monks vision (walls) and/or vocalization so that he can't effectively taunt anything he wants all the time. Remember they need to see or hear the taunt, there are spells and consumables that can mitigate that.

Experiment with spells that give debuffs even if the target succeeds so that in longer more drawn out fights you can debuff the monk's AC and saves to make him more hitable. Give some of your enemy casters dispel magic, even if it's just a scroll. It's an essential in any casters kit, and that Pazio refuses to give it to enemy's in adventure paths is a travesty. I wouldn't give it to every caster all of the time, but some of them some of the time will keep your team on their toes.

-Remember that there are LOADS of one action things enemies can do to get advantage on foes, just like players. From tripping, to demoralizing, to disarming.

-Enemies can buff each other and themselves! They can use Aid actions just like the party to help them hit in combat. You can give casters guidance to help each others out or sure strike to help them hit with a spell.

-You mentioned making enemies elite. This could be good tactic, but don't make them ALL elite. In a large group, one or two elites to focus on the monk while the others focus on the rest of the team might feel good. In smaller groups one elite should feel better.

-You could put traps and hazards on the field before combat that the enemy know about but that the group doesn't then position enemies to lure your players into them. I would make them more annoying and scary than deadly though.

-Remember that anything they can do, you can do. So give your enemies potions and mutagens too! Or maybe a fulu or a gadget here and there. Change up their equipment to make them more optimized with weapons that have more interesting and useful traits for them and their team. An enemy with a steel shield could have a tower shield or a fortress shield of their own! Tinker with what skills they have so that they (you) have more interesting options. In other words, create some of your own synergies in the enemy groups that your players fight.

You don't have to do all of these things all of the time, and probably shouldn't. If you do some of these things some of the time, not only will you be having more fun, your players will as well. Remember that the goal shouldn't necessarily be to make an encounter harder, the goal should be to create more opportunities for fun and surprising moments for you and for them. Making something FEEL more dangerous is more important than actually making it more dangerous.

If your players notice you changing up tactics and having more answers to the things they do, well why shouldn't Belcorra and the dungeon denizens have heard of this group rampaging through their home and made plans of their own? Players are adjusting their tactics and strategies to fight better, so the residents of the dungeon should be doing the same. Don't make every enemy fight to the death, have some run away so they can report the parties strengths and weaknesses to others so you have an excuse for future groups to target them a little more thoughtfully. You could even make this part of the banter of enemies when they meet the party. ("Hey, isn't that the invulnerable guy we've been hearing about?")

It sounds like your players are bringing you their A game. Are you bringing yours? Your tool box is just as interesting and varied as theirs are. I would encourage you to dig deeper and bring the same thought and attention to your enemies approach to combat as your players have.

-----

The above was what I was going to send, but before I did I wanted to do a quick analysis of AC and saves that you say are broken. I was pretty surprised. Here's some results.

At level 10 a Champion can have an AC of 31 without anything special. Just a +1 resilient full plate.

10 + 7(resilient full-plate) + 14 (prof)

34 if they raise a fortress shield. Exactly the same as the monk but I didn't need to use a mutagen that reduces my will saves and reflex saves.

For saves: Fort 21, ref 15 (18 against damaging AoE's) and Will 19. For an average of 18/19 (Same as the monk).

The champion could take the defender feat, but they already have really good protecting reactions that don't require them to use an action to taunt.

Also the champion has shield block right out of the gate and free reinforcing rune options as part of it's class kit so it can make excellent use out of that raised shield. It will probably have more HP because it would need less varied stats all around to make this build work.

This example is at least as effective as the monk you have a problem with, and I didn't even take anything special to get there. I would argue that, side by side, it would actually outshine the monk in the roll of being a defender. This is standard character building stuff: try to get the best AC you can, pay attention to your saves, improve your action economy.

Your player didn't really optimize too much here. They used a few tricks to turn a class that is not traditionally a tank into a tank. Anyone can take a fortress shield, a drakeheart mutagen, and a class archetype feat and many classes have saves that are at least as good as the monk. Most martial classes have options to get two attacks out of 1 action, so even using flurry of blows to squeeze out an extra attack isn't that special of a synergy here.

Eliminating damage cantrips seems like an oversight. A high rank damage cantrip is often better than a low rank damage spell. In fact, I tend to find that high level characters do better with utility spells in rank 1 and rank 2 slots (and maybe rank 3) because low rank damaging spells are so weak compared to high rank cantrips.

Damage cantrips offer a very nice baseline of damage types to easily trigger weaknesses and bypass resistances and immunizes. There are some useful riders on them too, like speed reduction and persistent damage that is always good. If a high level caster is trading them all out at for utility cantrips they might be doing themselves a disservice.

Beyond that, my list of non-damaging cantrips that I think maintain their usefulness throughout a casters entire career would include:

Guidance/Time Sense: Great when you have an action left over with nothing else to do, or when fighting a higher level monster that's hard to hit. A +1 is always useful.

Rousing Splash: Casting it on everyone before a suspected combat is just a nice way to get some free temp HP.

Eat Fire, because fire is so prevalent in the game and the ability to easily give concealment is nice.

Figment: In the hands of a creative player can get a lot of mileage, even at high levels

Glamorize: I've found this to be useful throughout a casting career when I find myself in a sudden social situation and need to look the part.

Tame: Depends on the adventure of course, but there are a lot of higher level animals that baddies often like to make pets out of. Tame, along with some other spells to support it's use, can be a great way whittle away at an enemies allies before the inevitable final confrontation.

Paizo has done a really good job of putting in fantasy creatures as playable characters, and not just euro-centric fantasy creatures. We have a lot of creatures inspired by African myths and fantasy, stuff from south America, and from all over the Asian continent. Creatures from slavic stories and from the stories of islanders.

Other than what they've been doing, I'd like to see more 'alien' type creatures. One thing Starfinder has been doing well, is that they have a lot of non-humanoid shaped and styled creatures from oozes to jellyfish looking things to sentient colonies. I'd like to see Pathfinder 2 explore more stuff like that. What if there were a playable ooze and it's heritages were Tomb Ooze, Gray Ooze as an example?

I'm glad to see that some of our feedback has already landed. These two classes are very interesting and they take advantage of some design space that wasn't being utilized by other classes. I'm interested to see the debriefing.

Fail forward is something they seem to do with chases. Rarely does failing a chase scene in an AP bring then entire thing crashing down. Aside from that, yes, there are too many things in AP's that can cause the party to get 'locked' out of the rest of the AP.

I've run Outlaws of Alkenstar with around 6 different groups, and there is a hazard very early on doesn't really fit the themes of the AP in a way that 5 out of the 6 groups had significant trouble with it, and one of those groups didn't have a single skill of the 2 or 3 that could be used to resolve the hazard. Further the party is trapped in an area and cant leave to get help and come back, and making checks on the thing puts them in significant risk of taking major damage. If a party member has the right skill, this hazard is trivial, if not...we'll I've seen the hazard completely lock the party down.

I've played through Abomination Vaults, half of Extinction Curse, and Agents of Edgewatch, and I've DM'd Strength of Thousands and Bloodlords multiple times, and those are full of situations where players can get stuck with seemingly no way forward. There are too many 'this one way is the only way to progress' situations.

Now, I'm a seasoned DM so this isn't really a problem for me, but for a new DM that is getting these AP's and depending on them, there are an awful lot of fail states in these AP's and no written help about what they should do if the party gets stuck.

I understand one can't write for every eventuality, but one can write an AP that doesn't depend on someone to be able to make one specific check, and one can also write in some 'escape hatches' for the DM to use if they need to move the party along.

If they dont adopt 'fail forward' in more of their AP designs, they could at least take more care in making sure there are some alternative paths though difficult situations.

This is a huge increase in price, and I'm not sure that 'production cost's' as a reason makes sense to me. You already have to make the PDF's so you can send them out for previews or for internal use, so the cost to produce PDF's (I.E. press the export to PDF button and upload to your servers) is already factored into your production costs. In other words, PDF's are basically a by-product of your book production line (or should be anyway), so what additional costs are going into their production specifically?

More likely, increasing PDF prices helps to offset the cost of producing physical books and if that's the case it just feels bad to ask digital customers to basically keep physical sales afloat.

$30 for a PDF is wild. $50 for a PDF though? That's just insane. I cannot even wrap my head around that. What 'production costs' are going into exporting your book to PDF format one time and uploading it onto a server that makes one PDF product more expensive than the other, let alone FIFTY dollars!

Maybe licensing has gone up, maybe you are paying artists more, maybe you are paying employees more, IDK, but if that's the case you could have been more transparent about it and said more than 'development, art, and production costs'. Are you paying artists more? If so, what kind of increase in payment have they gotten? Are you paying writers more? Are they making royalties per copy? You could have told us more about these things and maybe that could have offset how bad it feels to pay more for a copy of a file stored on a server.

Now that the Starfinder 2 system is out on Foundry VTT, can we expect this to be getting a Foundry VTT module? If so, do we have any idea when that might be?

I would have liked if summon spells had a specific list of available summons and how those summons advanced by level. Something like how animal companions are handled. The type of creature you summon would all share a stat block but the individual kind of summon determines attack types, abilities and so on. So for example:

Summon Undead for instance would have a certain stat block, but being a zombie or skeleton would determine it's weakness, resistances, and 2 of a list of 3 or 4 types of attacks that suit them as well as certain abilities (zombie brute would get grab, skeleton might get a ranged attack to go with a melee attack) and so on.

Summon Animal would have a stat block shared by all summoned animals but the type of animal determines it's move types as well as a list of attacks and abilities that different animals might have.

Or even more simply summons could have been made share the players stats with some modifiers and it's own HP but have access to different attacks and abilities based on the type of thing summoned.

I think having a selection of attacks and abilities that the caster can choose would have been a nice way to allow summons to be versatile without requiring the player have access to the monster manual to browse through all the options.

Lastly, it would have been easier to balance something like this. Two creatures of the same level can have vastly different stats and capabilities. Monsters were not designed to fight other monsters after all, they were designed to fight PC's.

Until they errata it, I will be allowing this item's precision damage to affect oozes despite their immunity to precision, citing specific over general as my justification. As with the bane rune, this still won't allow other damage types the target is immune to to affect it, such as slashing vs a string ooze

That seems like a good way to handle it. I think there are some plants and fungus immune to precision as well, so I think I'll add a line that 'creatures immune to precision are not immune to the precision damage from this item.'

I'm concerned about Sniper Operative action economy. The way they are built, they are currently slightly worse Sniper Gunslingers from PF2E. They are entirely action-starved currently, leaving very little room for any fun Operative kit flair during play. To alleviate this, I propose three things:

1: Give the Operative access to the Running Reload Feat (with the Traversal trait added) from PF2E. Running Reload is a must in most Gunslinger builds for the action compression since most guns worth using have a Reload 1. The Sniper Rifles in SF2E, unfortunately, suffer from the same problem. Giving access to this Feat, at probably the same level, would benefit the current Sniper Rifles greatly. And whilst on the subject, please consider making Sniper Rifles something like Magazine 3 weapons. I find it rather ridiculous, and somewhat unbelievable that considering Starfinder's improved technological prowess we're still shooting guns and reloading them after every shot. Especially considering the Sniper Rifles that existed in Starfinder First Edition. I believe this would open the Sniper Operative to be built more creatively (And actually be able to use some of the fantastic Operative Feats you have created), and with this change it may open the Sniper Rifle to any other class that would like to use it.

My player had a really hard time making his Sniper Operative work well. It wasn't until he thought of his Sniper Rifle as his secondary (situational) weapon that he started to see the class come together, but it's a very odd thing to make your primary class expression secondary in order to make the best use out of that class.

It all comes down to sniper rifles being a complete mess. They are unwieldy (except one) AND can only have a single shot loaded, but sniper operatives can ignore unwieldy but that only lets them fire twice every other round. Snipers rifles are not so much more powerful than other weapons that they need to have two limiters on them.

I'm not sure why "sniper" exists as a weapon group except to give a sniper operative something unique to them. Just about anything the sniper does could have been done with any weapon 'over a certain range' (say 120).

Starfinder Player Core pg. 437

The glitching condition is not clear as to the duration of the effect. Both the failure and critical failure effects impose the penalty without a duration (such as the end of the turn?).

The duration is quite clear.

"The glitching condition always includes a value. If you have glitching equipment and take any action involving that equipment, you must attempt a flat check to see what occurs. If you have the glitching condition, you must attempt this flat check at the beginning of each of your turns. The DC of the flat check equals 5 plus your condition value or the item's condition value.

Critical Success Reduce your glitching value by 1."

So we can see that Glitching is reduced by 1 every time you critically succeed at a flat check either when using glitching equipment or starting your turn while glitching.

It's wild to me that this book has a street date of Nov 5, over three months after the release of the player core. I would have much rather had this instead of the GM core. My group plays on Foundry and right now we are just twiddling our thumbs waiting for some aliens instead of reskinning PF2 stuff.

I would hate if I only played off-line and didn't have any PF2 stuff. The staggered release of this edition is insane.

For historical context, in the system PF2/SF2 is based off of (D&D 3.0), Lethal damage and nonlethal damage used to come off of 'different ends' of HP: nonlethal created a threshold = to max HP -nonlethal damage. If lethal damage met that threshold they would pass out. You could continue to do normal damage (or even nonlethal damage) and kill them. You could even do enough non lethal damage that it effectively became lethal.

Now, back to today's game. That entire subsystem of how nonlethal damage worked is gone now, and all it means now is that the final blow doesn't kill an enemy. So, honestly, we could just fully remove 'Nonlethal damage' from the game. It serves no purpose that would wouldn't be able to get from something easier and more consistently applied.

According to the rules, a fist is nonlethal, but I absolutely could kill someone with my bare hands, or destroy a robot with them, anyone could, and certainly someone that's fighting eldritch horrors and demons on a regular basis could as well. Taking a -2 to make the attacks lethal just breaks my suspension of disbelief. If hitting someone with a fist is nonlethal, why do people die in accidents in fist fights and stuff all the time?

Lastly, why would a robot be immune to nonlethal anyway? You can shake up a machine and jostle it's parts loose without doing any actual damage to the individual components.

For all those reasons, and more, we don't lose anything by getting rid of "nonlethal damage" We've already gotten rid of all the subsystems around it so lets take the band aid off and move on.

How it could work: The non lethal trait could simply indicate that the attacker can choose not to kill an enemy with the final blow, or that the trait grants a free action called something like "Show Mercy" with the trigger of "your last hit reduced the enemy to 0 hit points" and the effect "you decide to show them mercy and knock them out instead of killing them". Or a player using a weapon without the nonlethal trait can knock enemies out on the final blow with a successful dc11 flat check, while weapons with the nonlethal trait can kill an enemy instead of knowing them out on the final blow with a DC 11 flat check. Either of these or something else as elegant would do.

Starfinder Player Core pg. 94 and 227

The Disciple background grants access to the Religious Talisman feat. It does not feel appropriate for a common background to grant access to a feat that requires mastery in a skill and is level 7.

The Religious Talisman feat likely was included in the Disciple Background in error, as the playtest draft of it, Holy Talisman, was a level 1 feat that required training in Religion, and was included in the Disciple background, which means that they might have intended to swap it to a new skill feat, but simply forgot.

But if it was intentional, well I understand Religious Talisman is a more powerful version of Pathfinder's Pilgrim's Token, but Starfinder likes to skew more powerful anyway.

Recommended approaches:
- Make the Disciple background Uncommon or Rare for using nonstandard feats.
- Switch the Disciple background to granting Student of the Canon instead of Religious Talisman.
- Make the Religious Talisman feat a level 1 feat that requires trained in Religion, as if it was available to a level 1 character by a common background, that means it's already considered balanced for this tier of play.

Not only is Religious Talisman a level 7 feat but it requires mastery at Religion. It should not be given away at level 1 if it has these requirements.

On the face if it, it honestly doesn't appear to be that strong of a feat being that it only grants a +1 status bonus. It does stack with circumstance bonuses such as from incredible initiative or scouting and it is unusual to have a more or less permanent status bonus to something so it probably makes sense that it has these requirements.

For those reasons, I agree that the background needs another pass. It either needs to be rare, or it should grant an entirely different skill feat.

There's a couple of Witchwarper focus spells that have a sustained duration. Does the sustain action on them have the anchoring trait, so that you don't have to separately sustain the quantum field on subsequent turns? I assume so, because it's really the only usable way to design them, but they don't say so and the majority of people participating in discussions about this issue seem to go the other way.

Specifically this line from Warp Spells could use the clarification:

"Warp spells have the anchoring trait, unlike other focus spells. This trait means you can only use warp spells while your quantum field is active, and you automatically Sustain your quantum field when you cast warp spells."

Either adding to that final sentence that sustaining a Warp spell gains the anchoring trait or that it does not.

Ex: "and you automatically Sustain your quantum field when you cast or sustain warp spells."
Or
"and you automatically Sustain your quantum field when you cast warp spells but not when you sustain them."

Whatever the intention is for this.

Slayers Stone: "When you apply a slayer’s stone to your weapon, choose aberration, animal, beast, celestial, construct, dragon, elemental, fey, fiend, giant, monitor, ooze, or both fungus and plant. A weapon under the effect of a slayer’s stone deals an additional 1d6 precision damage to the creatures with the chosen trait or traits for 1 minute."

Oozes are immune to precision damage.

If this is meant to be something like the Bane rune, that rune does extra damage of the weapon type. I wish this was caught before publication. It's another example of products that maybe don't get as much time with the editing staff as needed. I caught this just in a casual reading.

Any idea if this include vehicle combat?

I watched video by some fellows who got an early copy. They mentioned a lot more vehicle things. There's some archetypes geared toward vehicles, there are quite a few new vehicles. I think they said there are some expanded rules for it. They didn't go into detail, but they said that what is in the book certainly supports more vehicle focused play.

This being updated for Foundry V13? If so, any kind of ballpark figure on that?

3 years, and one remaster later, and the feat reads the same.

It's too bad this book is releasing so long after the Tian Xia World Guide. A more coordinated release would have been nice so we could play around with the world guide lore using Tian Xia character guide characters.

136 pages for $50? Yikes.

This product page at least has some interesting info. It shows more than anything they had to say in the "showcase".

Do we know when the players guide will drop?

It astounds me that this is on Kickstarter. Paizo is one of the largest TTRPG publishing houses in the industry right now with decades of success, and BKOM Studios is a successful videogame development company that's been in the industry for a number of years now with quite a few projects under their belt.

That you (Paizo) and they, in partnership, decided that you need your customers to subsidize development costs is incomprehensible to me. This is a disgusting business model for you to use, and if it speaks to what kind of plans you might have for future projects, it's dire.

It doesn't go nearly far enough to bring me back to Starfinder, but I'm happy to see the system get a bit of a tune up.

There were three uncommon Kobold snares in Grand Bazaar.

Damn, you got me. Guess three's better than none.

So much for Snare Setter ever seeing the last part of this line be of any use: "You gain the Snare Crafting feat, though when choosing your formulas for that feat, you can also choose from uncommon kobold snares, as well as common snares."

Tresure Vault would have been an excellent place to see some Kobold snares, especially since it's narrated by a Kobold. Still waiting for that future proofing so many people fell all over themselves to proclaim when I pointed out years ago that there were no uncommon Kobold snares and anticipated that there never would be.

Wizard Level 1 wrote:

Bombs do not have the Thrown trait though.

But the item doesn't ask for a trait. It asks for "one-handed thrown weapons". Note the lack of capitalization on thrown. As such, it uses thrown in the general sense [which bombs qualify] as opposed to saying 'weapons with the Thrown trait'.

By that logic you can put rocks in there since you can throw them as improvised weapons. Good luck convincing a DM of that though.

Alchemic_Genius wrote:

Not to be a party pooper here, but bombs techically don't have the thrown trait, which means rules as intended might not have them them work with the bandolier. I hope they do, but, well yeah

It says they are thrown weapons here:

https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=703

"Bombs are martial thrown weapons with a range increment of 20 feet."

And this fulfills all the requirements of the Thrower's Bandolier.

Bombs do not have the Thrown trait though. While they are descriptively thrown weapons, mechanically they are different.

Descriptive text is not always an indicator for mechanics. That it has been this long since release with many MANY debates across the internet, and Paizo hasn't clarified their intentions here is a bother.

Perhaps it is intentionally vague to allow GM's enough wiggle room to decide for themselves. But by Raw, since they do not have the thrown trait, they would not benefit from anything that references thrown specifically (feats or runes or equipment) though they are clearly ranged.

Putting my two cents into the optional flaw rule:

I am assuming I read this correctly, especially given everyone's reactions, that the rule is now -2/-2 instead of +2/-2/-2?

It seems there is an argument about to what degree this makes your character better

There are a lot of possible arrays, but assuming we have an 18 in a stat always, which I am fairly sure there are no characters that don't want this, the normal arrays for +2/+2 are:
18/16/12/12/10/10
18/14/14/12/10/10
18/14/12/12/12/10
18/12/12/12/12/12
With flaws:
18/16/14/12/8/8
18/14/14/14/8/8
18/14/14/12/10/8
18/16/12/12/10/8
18/16/14/10/10/8
+ A variation that is worse than no flaws
18/14/12/12/10/10

I may have missed a possible stat array or two, but I want to know if anyone thinks any of these arrays are overpowered/imbalanced. To me it just looks like voluntary flaws allows for more stat diversity compared to not using it. None of these arrays seem flat out better than others. Personally, I like 18/16/14/12/8/8 and 18/14/14/14/8/8 because I can do something like dump str and Cha to sure up defenses on a wizard in order to stay alive in order to help keep my party safe with spells and also further disincentivize rolling checks I should be letting other people at the table do

I'll add to this. As pointed out, voluntary flaws were the only way to achieve certain arrays like 18/14/14/14/8/8 or a number of other ones presented above. +2/+2 simply can't do it. Now the only way to achieve something like that is to play any of the handful of ancestries left with +2/+2/+2/-2.

So while it might be nice to see everyone get the same stat versatility as a human (even if I think it's a big middle finger to the human who is supposed to represent versatility and that's why they were the only ones that had that), there are now a handful of ancestries that have a clear advantage in the stats that can be generated because they can choose the +2/+2 OR keep their +2/+2/+2/-2. That's a design decision that doesn't make sense to me.

Some discussions here about how Paizo could just rename everything and call it their own (strength becomes brawn, dexterity becomes quickness, etc). But they can't. If you take a piece of published material and republish it, it's plagiarism. If you take a piece of published material, use a thesaurus on all or most of the words and publish it, it's still plagiarism. Copywright doesn't just protect words and the way in which words are written but the ideas in those words.

Paizo could make the case that the rules they have in PF2 are so different that it constitutes a different game entirely with only some similarities.

But WOTC can make the case that PF2 is built off of the 3e rule set and that, despite how it is written or presented, it is still the D20 3e rule system.

Either way it seems to lead to a messy and potentially long court case.

I'm less worried about Paizo, and more worried about how viciously OGL 1.1 goes after VTT's. We might see them shutting down or running at significant reduced capacity without support for our favorite TTRPG as soon as a week after the new OGL goes live. I'm worried about all the great work being done with PF2 modules for Foundry. All that could be shut down while this OGL gets dragged through the courts.

This isn't going to destroy Paizo, but it will destroy so many other creators, many who have built their livelihood around content creation.

Wizard Level 1 wrote:

Totally Not Gorbacz wrote:

Wizard Level 1 wrote:

So now my sprite can be as strong as an orc but it can't have as many Hitpoints?

A 20cm tall Sprite is hitting with a Greataxe for exactly the same damage as 120cm tall Ratfolk, but you never had a problem with that.

You don't know if I've ever had a problem with that. What a massive assumption.

You've been around for at least 2 years and haven't raised it even once. So, yeah, I'm making an easy assumption that you never had a problem with that - likely because your actual problem is not WHAT changes are being made, but WHY are they being made. Game balance thing that results in Small and Medium weapons doing the same damage is fine with you because game balance doesn't trigger you; a change that comes from a societal thing sets you off. Predictable.

I've played since 3.0. I've railed against the changes to how small characters were handled after 3rd ed days. I've had those arguments, not here, but certainly in other places. Your entire response here seems to be trying to psychoanalyze me. Go talk to someone else and stop trolling me. I'm not here for that.

Wizard Level 1 wrote:

So now my sprite can be as strong as an orc but it can't have as many Hitpoints?

A 20cm tall Sprite is hitting with a Greataxe for exactly the same damage as 120cm tall Ratfolk, but you never had a problem with that.

You don't know if I've ever had a problem with that. What a massive assumption.

Wizard Level 1 wrote:

Especially not in a fantasy game where a spider-person has a venomous bite, but humans don't. Or where goblins can bounce like a rubber ball, but a halfling would go splat. The game has so many heritages and feats based off the biology of different species of humanoid, but we aren't going to address those?

It's not a view I hold but I think I've spotted a difference.

Some people equate better and better. If you are mathematically stronger faster smarter wiser you are just better. This gets equated to better in an ultimate/moral sense...Which is what people really want to avoid

A +2 is just BETTER than a +0 which is just better than a -2. Bouncing vs. a venomous bite vs a feat are fundamentally incomparable. There isn't any implication of better and there really can't be.

10 Hitpoints isn't better than 6? 30 speed isn't better than 25?