Xenocrat's page

What archetype has free sustain actions pre-remastered!?

Captivator archetype, level 14 feat Effortless Captivation.

They should actually strip out more void damage and undead related stuff from arcane, it doesn’t fit the tradition’s essences and was only there for legacy reasons that no longer apply.

Whether the physical one is magical matters for damaging incorporeals. The spirit damage one will be fine.

Paizo often misses sensible traits for space or oversight reasons. My personal peeve is all the magical monster abilities that lack the concentrate trait. Disruptive fighter cry.

I told you the process to use alchemical/magical ammo: (1) load, (2) activate, (3) fire. Depending on the specifics of your weapon and ammunition this can be variable actions.

E.g. arrows don't take actions to load, so if you just activate/strike it's two actions to attack with alchemical ammo.

If you use a reload 1 gun, it's one action to load (if you didn't start the turn with a loaded gun), 1 action to activate (as stated in the items activation block - someday there may be a free action or two action activation, but right now they're all one action as far as I know), then however many actions you want to use to attack. Can be a standard one action strike, or a two action metastrike granted by a feat or class feature.

Load (can be already loaded), activate, shoot.

As a gunslinger there's a feat to make free alchemical ammo every day, paying money for it isn't necessary if you take that.

I'm surprised Diamond has gone bankrupt. They were the big distributor in the market 30 plus years ago when I was looking to publish a comic book. Diamond Distributors has been doing business a long, long time. Not sure if Covid got them or just changing times with everything moving digital or some combination of the two.

When this broke the subreddit and a discord I follow were fully of dozens of posts screaming with glee about the Diamond bankruptcy part back in January, apparently there were an awful abusive/nonresponsive monopoly who everyone hated to deal with for decades. One or two other companies finally entered the space as competitors and stole their big clients some years back (DC in 2020, Marvel in 2021).

I am literally laughing out loud at the idea that Unfrozen Caveman Game Company is just a poor rube getting ripped off here. Maybe so, but ignorance of the law and not being competent to navigate legal and regulatory requirements of business in rare circumstances doesn't actually help you. You still lose in the bankruptcy, you still pay fines to the EPA, you still get your health license revoked until you fix the uninsured sewage line spewing in your restaurant kitchen, etc. People don't actually have to break or rewrite generally applicable rules that exist for well reasoned purposes because you like one side of the dispute more than the other.

Consignment isn't a magical get out of jail free on this. If it is a consignment then, guess what, Diamond has a, uh, liability to ship the goods back when requested - companies in bankruptcy can't spend money on things without permission from a bankruptcy judge to avoid looting the company to pay off the owners/equity holders or other favored parties, and that would include paying shipping fees and labor to box up and return Paizo's stuff.

Bankruptcy is about freezing all existing liabilities and trying to maintain ongoing operations, to the extent feasible, to recover as much as possible to those they owe. The bankruptcy code, and by reference the UCC, then determine the ranking of those claims.

The good news is that they provide a way to elevate consignment claims above/exempt from bankruptcy proceedings, just like they do for mortgages and other forms of secured liabilities with degrees of seniority/exemption. The bad news, well, we already know.

In my personal experience I’ve seen consignment used for big ticket things like boats sold by small mom and pop dealers: they can’t afford to invest $20k (or whatever) on something that might sit on the lot for untold months, so the manufacturer or wholesaler takes the risk spread over many dealers.

The policy reason to require registration/perfection of consignment inventory is to make it easy for a bank to lend money to that mom and pop (or big corporate) business. They aren’t going to investigate the precise contract terms for inventory and other assets on hand that serve as security when they make a business loan. Instead the requirement is placed on the consignor, as the lowest cost possessor of this information with the biggest incentive, to perfect their claim and put lenders on notice that the consignee doesn’t own something in their physical inventory/possession.

Obviously for small unsophisticated parties perfection may be unknown or when dealing with small low value items in moderate volume perfection may be too costly. It’s then a form of bankruptcy insurance you didn’t know about or chose not to avail yourself of for rational reasons.

Claxon wrote:

The stunned one is an interesting example.

Because if we ignore the "you can't act" part it's basically no different from slowed. But if having the stunned condition during your turn at all means you can't act that's probably harsher than intended.

It does raise the question why do we have both stunned and slowed.

The description of stunned also has some interesting implication with how something like haste works with it....although rereading the description haste causes quickened with restriction on what kind of actions you take so it would interact with Stunned and Slowed in the same way.

So anyways...what's actually supposed to be the difference? It doesn't seem like there is any.

The duration of stunned is determined by how it ticks down. If the system had an incap spell that inflicted stunned 4, it'd eat 3A on the first turn and 1A on the second. Slowed always eats the same amount of actions every turn. I can't think of any effect inflicts stunned at high enough values for this to matter, though.

There’s a qlippoth (the level 17 one?) that inflicts stunned 8(!) on a crit fail when it exposes its junk at you, it’s a very funny way to die.

Counterpoint: the first sentence of the Stunned condition is flavor text that should be totally ignored when interpreting it.

Flavor text is nearly universal and nearly universally nonmechanical, and exists 20% for stylistic and 80% for copy fit reasons.

As with any magical/class based counteracts, it should be your spell or class based DC -10.

The inherent/base poison DCs for a poison two levels below the alchemist's level could in some very limited corner cases be one lower than the alchemist's class DC if (1) the Alchemist only has a Int of +1 (lmao), or (2) the Alchemist had a lowish to mediocre Int bonus and is suffering some huge penalty like sickness 4 when making his infused penalties. I don't think something like permanent Stupefied 4 from Never Mind would apply the way it does to spell DCs.

So technically possible, but not really.

Yes, they should at least be a general unsecured creditor, but that’s not worth much. The issue is whether they are legally in a consignment agreement under the uniform commercial code, whether or not each or either party thought they were. Generally to count you have to “perfect” your consignment status by making certain filings and notifications to interested parties. Otherwise no bank could ever know if it was safe to loan to a business against their inventory. “They claim they own the inventory in their warehouse and it’s an asset against the loan? No third party has a consignment on file saying that, no, actually, they own it and it’s just stored in that guy’s warehouse? Ok, we’re good to go.” (There’s an exception where “everyone knows” everything they do is on consignment, but it’s unlikely you can prove that for relevant parties and definitely not soon or at low cost.)

There’s good policy reasons it’s set up this way (we want businesses to be able to borrow without long and expensive audits of their assets, killing the loan market, or killing consignment-like arrangements), and good reasons smaller parties don’t know about or don’t go through the required expense and hassle to protect against this. There are no perfect solutions, only trade offs in risk and costs/benefits.

you can already take the Steal or Palm an Object actions in combat normally, so why is this bit of text here?

You can take the Steal action in combat, I guess, but the action is limited to negligible bulk and automatically fails if the creature who has it is on guard or in combat. So you can only take fairly trivial things from innocent bystanders not participating in the combat. Maybe they meant for this to change and neglected to mention it, ask your GM.

But even if you waive the combatant clause, the number of negligble bulk things on an NPC monster that you'd care to take during a combat are...not high. Maybe there's some feats that grant noncombat or utility transcends where this could somehow be useful - steal and trigger flight as the same action?

The lines are Drift Lanes, and will provide faster drift travel between those connected systems. They're named. So "Jatembe's Jaunt" runs from Triaxus to Xiba. "Ibzen's Calamity" runs from Daegox-4 to Conqueror's Forge in the Veskarium. There's an unnamed one (that was named in Ports of Call) that runs from Great Shadar through the Pact Worlds (Ports of Call said which Pact World it interacted with) and terminates in the Veskarium (again, Ports of Call has the details but this map doesn't).

Presumably the GM Core will have rules for Drift travel speeds and how much faster lanes are.

Individual hexes don't apear to be be meaningful, it's just the base they used to make the map. Larger boxes surrounding numerous hexes indicate related starsystems that are part of the same government. So the Szandite Collective has five star systems inside its borders (but which might be physically scattered around the galaxy - we just know that they're all in Near Space because they're red). Krethiskar is a planet adjacent to a Szandite member star, but subject to Swarm quarantine, so it's outside the actual political border drawn.

The Pact Worlds (orange) Nearspace (two separate red spaces) and Vast (big purple) areas are not to scale (the Vast should be maybe hundredes of billions of stars to the Pact Worlds one or a few) and just meant to show in 3D space how some of these areas link up via Drift Lanes (literally Drift Lane geometry and Near Space or Vast are the only thing that matter about stellar locations, not physical distance) and how certain political entities claim more than one star that share Vast/Near Space status without being in close physical proximity.

That said, we've heard that some entities like the Azlanti DO think in terms of stellar "neighborhoods" that they lay claim to, and apparently do their exploration/conquest in a linear star next door fashion. But they don't have to and it's not smart.

Xenocrat wrote:

Well, invisible to creatures you encounter at level 18+ who lack See Invisibility, Truesight, or a nonvisual sense for precise detection.

tbf, even with true sight and see invisibility, you'll often have the higher rank of the spell so you have the edge on the countercheck for them to see you.

Like, a Balor has a constant 6th rank True sight. Even on a critical success on a counteract, he won't be able to see through a 19th level Monk with Embrace active.

I'm suffering shell shock from recently reading through Stolen Fate's last couple of chapters. Those fey and daemons dgaf, they all get it at rank 9-10.

Monster Core, Norns aside, does tend to assign Truesight at a rank half monster level or a couple of ranks lower. Even the level 21 Grim Reaper only gets it at 6th rank.

And I don't think Truesight would actually see anyone under Embrace Nothingness. It doesn't have the illusion trait, and Truesight only tries to see through illusions and polymorphs, it doesn't inherently see invisible things getting that condition from non-illusory means.

Well, invisible to creatures you encounter at level 18+ who lack See Invisibility, Truesight, or a nonvisual sense for precise detection.

Spellwatch (level 13, new save every round to end a harmful spell effect on you) is one of the few amazing ones.

Divine Mysteries stole most of a page of DA content with the time Oracle and a spell or two, so that’s available for new stuff.

It's easy to buff the Psychic without changing its page space -- half of the feats, including all of the amp ones, are completely pointless and can be deleted with nothing being lost. They can save a few of those by introducing friendly fire targeting, but I doubt they will. Let them all burn.

Dragonchess Player wrote:

It is one of the limitations of PF2 that gaining a widely applicable "Lore" is restricted to the Cha-based bard and thaumature classes (the Bardic Lore feat can be picked up via the multiclass archetype; Bardic Lore is still Int-based, however); or by taking an archetype.

An elf witch or a wizard can leverage the Ancestral Longevity/Expert Longevity/Universal Longevity ancestry feats with the Loremaster archetype to fill pretty much the same role (possibly a bit better, by selecting applicable lore skills [which often have slightly lower DCs] for the expected encounters).

For what its worth, Bestiary Scholar and Universal Theory work great here as well, and can scale up to legendary with Arcana.

Unified Theory doesn't work for Recall Knowledge checks, it's only for a "skill action or skill feat that requires a Nature, Occultism, or Religion check, depending on the magic tradition."

It's for things like Trick Magic item, Identify Magic, Learn a Spell, Recognize Spell, Quick Identification, Magical Shorthand, and Quick Recognition. It doesn't work for Recall Knowledge (which depends on the type of monster, not the magic tradition involved) or Decipher Writing (which depends on the type of text), even when those end up using a magic related skill for non-magic tradition purposes.

This is a sad epiphany all Arcane justifiers go through. I am an opponent of the wizard death penalty and take no pleasure in reporting this.

The worst thing about the Psychic is that the Whispering Mind subconscious mind got stuck with Sending, a rank 5 spell, as their rank 6 bonus spell known. Disgusting.

Kelseus wrote:

You turn to lightning and zip through your enemies with really good damage, what is "weird"? Also by saying it's weird, you can dismiss it out of hand without engaging in a substantive argument.

1- you're right, "weird" doesn't really cut It, i'll be more specific: It's a counter intuitive design, air Is not a melee focused element like Fire or Earth are, so an impulse that goes "get in melee man" IS kinda weird in my books. It's Indeed pretty strong if you also take Earth and do the whole air boomerang juggle.

It's as much "escape from melee" - Lightning Dash 30+ feet with no (non-concentrate) reaction triggers, free half stride from air impulse, one action left to stride/step before or after to further set up or optimally set up your Lightning Dash to get two enemies as you break contact.

Or with air impulse and a stride tacked on for positioning and movement before/after it's "move from just out of melee range to just out of melee range on the other side of the map" especially once Cyconic Ascent is online and you can just zoom yourself straight up in the air 20 or 40' after you finish the Dash.

Yeah, Greaer Masquerade Scarf is infinite two action casts of Illusory Disguise to look like a generic "not me" person. It's only (error?) heightened to rank 2, so it still only functions the same as rank 1 and would only really matter for the purposes of not getting pinged by the very lowest levels of Detect Magic.

Fabios wrote:

IN EVERY CASE forking the path Is Better than taking water's junctions (except the impulse One), in. Every. Single. Case

I disagree. Fire is a very common damage type, and so resistance to it for yourself or your party in your aura is decent.

Water aura is infamously terrible because it's fire resistance to "creatures" in your aura. It shuts off fire runes for allies trying to strike enemies in your aura and blunts fire spells your casters try on them.

Every single other elemental aura junction specifies "allies" or "enemies" and doesn't have this problem.

And, no, Safe Elements doesn't solve it. It only allows you to exclude enemies from a stance impluse that affects your kinetic aura, not the kinetic aura junctions.

Yes, I agree with John. And to briefly recap why this isn't clear and you can rule either way:

While you’re holding an implement in one hand, you can quickly switch it with another implement you’re wearing to use an action from the implement you’re switching to. To do so, you can Interact as a free action immediately before executing the implement’s action

Passive implements (tome, regalia, the, uh, other one) don't have their own inherent action.

You gain the intensify vulnerability benefit of all of your implements, as well as the following action.

This is a class ability action, technically, not an implement action -- it simply resolves the particular effects based on the specific implement in use.

But you can also choose to read it as granting the intensify vulnerability action to each implement, and then those implements now (at level 9!) have an action to free action swap. It still doesn't fix the level 5-8 issue when you have two implements.

The people cry out for a less janky Bell and less laughable Chalice.

At some point all high level, intelligent, well equipped humanoid or similar enemies (and PCs) should be carrying a level 7, 60gp, L bulk Greater Revealing Mist. Two actions to draw and activate and reduce everything invisible in a 30’ cone to concealed, no matter what magic it’s using.

But no one does this. guess_I’ll_die_then.jpg meme

Veil of Privacy is uncommon but a curriculum spell for Ars Magica school.

(Runelords, too, but that’s a rare school.)

Both Hidden Mind and Veil of Privacy would work if they successfully counteracted the detection spell with appropriate traits (these do).

Hidden Mind performs better, has the save bonus, and starts out a minimum of rank 8, but Veil of Privacy works fine if heightened enough to -1 rank (competitive counteract check) or +1 rank (easy mode) vs the spell trying to see you.

Spell attacks are not unarmed or weapon attacks. They are a whole separate category that them breaks down to melee or ranged.

No interaction.

As noted, Regalia and Tome work poorly as you have to hold them in your non weapon hand to work, and they don't inherently have any actions that you can use to free action swap between them. If your GM counts using Intensify Vulnerability as a permissible action to swap then that's something, but it's still not very good given the timing of when you invoke and benefit from the passive benefits of each item. And even then Intensify Vulnerability is level 9(?) and your second implement is level 5. That's a long time to suffer.

Shout out to the complement to either of these choices, Soothing Tonic, which provides fast healing of your HP damage that you take after the temp HP are gone.

Real world modern reaction to hearing an allied unit get attacked in the distance involves a mix of (1) denial and delay before taking action ("they aren't really attacking right, maybe it's the Afghan/Iraqi army shooting up in the air again in celebration for some reason"); (2) not having enough information to act as a group ("lets wait for them to call for help and tell us what they need/where theyare, ok, it has been a while, lets send a couple of guys to see what it was"); (3) delay in getting your gear on/finishing in the bathroom or shower/finding the guy who went missing to get a meal or whatever; (4) convincing yourself that whatever it was is over and you can't do anything anyway, plus another unit is closer, so go back to your own patrol/rest unless you hear something happen again; (5) having a reasonable suspicion that the fight you hear but don't have details on is quickly overwhelming/killing your allied force before you can get there, making a prepared defense where you are and setting an ambush a wiser choice than rushing in and risking getting ambushed yourself.

All of this lets you program in waves of reinforcements scattered over a broad array of time and potentially just sending one or two guys to see what's going on before coming back to fetch their buddies, allowing you to pick off those forces piecemeal. Or letting the cowards, cautious, or unprepared guys nervously draw their weapons deeper in the dungeon and stand flanking the door to get anyone coming through once the PCs are ready.

Now it's June 2025 and still no signal from Paizo. Odd!

It came out in the Fall 2024 errata for PC2.

"Page 130: The oracle’s spellcasting text doesn’t match the table, which has the correct number of starting spells per day. Update the second paragraph under Oracle Spellcasting to “Each day, you can cast up to three 1st-rank spells.”"

Kelseus wrote:

I feel for the Runelord anathema is to really stick to your gut reaction when you read it the first time.

When I read "manipulate minds" to me that means mental compulsions, like command, suggestion, dominate. Something that forces you to do something that you wouldn't otherwise.

That feels a bit too narrow- if somebody magically makes me feel unnatural fear, I'd definitely consider that "manipulating my mind" even if it's not a compulsion. The anathema isn't "controlling minds".

Agree, and this is why I would add Hallucinate from the illusion with mental trait side of the house. Making my neighbor's wife think I'm her husband every time she looks at me (because of a change I made to her mind, not to my visual appearance) is definitely manipulating her mind!

The Radiant Globe (Shining Kingdoms) note doesn't mention and perhaps overlooked that in addition to destroying physical ammunition attackers have to save or be dazzled (blinded on CF). I overlooked that my first time reading the spell.

Option 1. The premaster ban was on all Enchantment spells, and this is closest. I might have thought to exempt Illusion/Mental trait spells, but to my surprise Vision of Death doesn't have Illusion anymore (Phantasmal Killer was in that school), and it's hard to argue that a fear component or something like Hallucinate isn't "manipulating" a mind. Get rid of them all, you still have access to other Fort targeting debuffs and stuff like Slow.

Arcane/Primal casters will want to take note of new Uncommon Eagle's Cry in Shining Kingdoms.

It's rank 3, has almost all the same effects of Fear 3 (except crit fail is only frightened 2), but is a 30' cone that also inflicts slightly sub-Fireball damage (with annoying but substantial +2 heightening) and targets Fort instead of Will. Debuff plus damage with a almost never resisted/immune damage type on groups with high will/reflex saves.

Shining Kingdoms is on Nethys now.

Time to transfer those handwrap runes for a while.

(Talos and Changeling versatile heritage feats are the only ways I know to put cold iron on a natural attack.)

Another amazing use of the Rapid Retreat gates school focus 4 spell is that it prevents a monster (improved) grab/knockdown/push from triggering — you teleport away as soon as the strike damage hits.

The other thing people dumped on these options about when they were published is that they don't come with instinct specific feats. Not being a barbarian guy I don't know how much this matters, but apparently quite a bit.

Okay, yeah, this school is actually good.

Does the forced movement from the focus spell break grapples?

I've seen discussion of this on a discord, consensus that I agree with is that it's not actually forced movement, given that it's a willing target. They call out a special exemption for unconscious allies to get moved without triggering reactions.

Late game when Effortless Concentration comes online Friendly Push is basically equivalent to a quickened stride (that stacks with real quickened) that you can use yourself or gift to an ally on your turn.

The Gates rank 1 spell is like the Wizard’s “we have Four Winds Kineticist impulse at home,” it lets you spend a whole round shifting three martials into or out of flanks/attack range they can’t do with their own actions. Or do it once or twice, for as long as the whole combat. It’s crazy strong party support, especially as it heightens. Even at level 1 it allows you to lift the entire party up a sheer 30’ cliff or wall one at a time per round.

The rank 4 not only gives you resistance (a lot of it if they have bonus energy damage to resist twice), it interrupts multiattack routines like draconic frenzy or at the least trades your reaction for one of their actions to chase you down. It’s great.

The curriculum avoids levels with totally dead/useless spells. Even if you don’t want the utility mid level mobility stuff you can heighten the force damage AOE plus short range teleport that is essentially “small slightly weak emanation force fireball plus a stride,” or the slot spell that does for allies what the rank 4 focus does for you - reaction reduce their damage, disrupt a multiattack, and move them away from a follow on strike.

Justnobodyfqwl wrote:

I don't think there could be any Watsonian explanation that would be as satisfying or sensible as "it's the sci-fi fantasy game, so the formerly only-fantasy characters have stereotypical scifi accoutrements".

I dunno. I personally think some rationale linking the progression of technology that outsiders can display to the technological level the mortals they interact with are aware of would be cool, even if, or maybe especially if, it's some kind of mysterious constant or cosmic law, like the rules which govern when deities can and cannot interfere in the Universe.

For one thing, introducing such a concept means you also introduce the possibility someone can try breaking it, which could have fun consequences for the setting, or at minimum fun grist for an adventure and possible new toys for the party to play with.

Yes, I like to think there's some sort of filter for mortals interacting with outsiders and the outersphere that limits them to only seeing those with similar tech/biology/cultural frameworks. Otherwise every planet that ever had a interplanetary teleport capable caster should have been able to send someone to the City of Brass/Dis/Axis and buy some Sivv/Kishalee Empire tech, as well as plans/equipment from their predecessors who died out tens or hundreds of millions of years before that.

The rules for creating them are just the normal PC building rules. Add feats/abilities/spells/attributes with each level you go up to ensure you don't skip prereqs or pick too many high level feats.

For gear there are wealth by level tables in PF2 GM Core.

It has obscenely powerful abilities, so they probably cut back the AC/strike/HP numbers some. Dragon speed is famously Extremely Extreme, and the breath weapon is the highest damage AOE you can get while being almost spammable with draconic frenzy, which see below for why that's it's own issue on this particular creature.

Here's a comparison to the level 20 Vrolikai Demon.

1. Toughness:

Vrolikai has AC 45 vs 44 on the dragon.
Vrolikai has 440 HP vs 390 on the dragon. The dragon has fire immunity, shares the holy weakness, lacks the cold iron weakness.

Advantage Vrolikai if everyone has holy/cold iron, but it's easier for everyone to have a weakness trigger vs the Vrolokai than the dragon. The Dragon ignores a common weapon rune and spell damage type. Overall it seems fine.

(The Vrolokai has one casting of Regenerate, but I assume a fire or acid rune/spell/bomb is shutting that down regularly if used in active combat.)

2. Saves:

Vrolikai has Fort +35, Ref +33, Will +34; +1 vs magic
Dragon has ; Fort +36, Ref +32 Will +32; +2 vs divine

Advantage to Vrolikai, arcane and occult casters will do well here against the dragon.

3. Basic Strikes:

Vrolikoi +40/38/38 strikes (average 32.5, 0 reach/44, 10 reach/36, 15 reach plus stupefy debuff) bonus damage is void
Dragon +38/38/36 strikes (average 51, 10' reach/43 Improved Grab 0' reach/43 Improved Knockdown 15' reach) bonus damage is better of fire/spirit

The dragon seems less accurate (the Vrolokai +40 is its least damaging strike, but has a special boosting ability -- it's complicated), but it absolutely ruining your day when it lands claws and tail hits. With draconic frenzy it uses two actions to make three of those, and every time it hits it gets a free action +38 athletics grab/trip attempt. Casters are going to spend all their time restrained on the ground, legendary fort martials are going to spend a lot of actions getting up and escaping. Basically the dragon easily manufactures his own off guard to make his strike accuracy equal to the Vrolokai and/or steal actions/effectiveness from the party.

Advantage: dragon.

4. Innate spells:

(I assume the dragon isn't a spellcaster variant (thereby losing draconic frenzy/momentum) and only has its innates. Otherwise it has a deep prepared list to use as part of standard dragon flyby kiting strategies, mixed in with breath weapon bombs.)

Vrolokai has DC 44.
Dragon has DC 40.
(Prepared spellcsating dragon is DC 42.)

Clear advantage to the Vrolokai, who has 10th rank execute, paralyze, massacre, vampiric exsanguination; , plus at will Translocate 5th for an easy escape whenever he wants - comparable to the dragon's option to just fly away whenever he wants.

The dragon has 9th divine immolation (at will), falling stars (fire
only), wall of fire (at will); 8th summon fiend (phistophilus only; at will). Of these endlessly spamming Divine Immolation (range 120 burst 20, 10d6 fire or spirit plus 6d6 persistent fire or spirit damage on a fail) while using the third move for a 180 fly until the breath weapon recharges is the best option, but even the casters are going to save and only take 17.5 damage most of the time.

5. Auras:

Vrolokai has a 30' DC 38 drained aura. It can one action reapply to increase the drained value up to 4.

Dragon has Frightful Presence 90' DC 40, so frightened 0-3 in the opening round of combat (another reason it can have lower strike and spell DC values - many PCs will start with a debuff and someone will get Draconic Frenzied for damage and prone/grab.

Call it even, it depends on tactics and range. The Vrolokai can do nasty stuff if if focuses on weak fort PCs at melee and snowballs their saves down.

6. Special abilities:

Vrolokai Focused Flames two action attack, does extra ~21 void on normal (weak damage) dagger strike on a hit, on a crit ~42 extra plus 4d6 persistent void.
Vrolokai Mindwarping (on tail stinger) is a DC 44 stacking stupefy with crit confused effect.
Dragon Breath, 21d6 (average 73.5 fire or spirit, 60' cone, DC 42)

All of these have their place and are annoying, and have tradeoffs between DC and individual/group lethality and how they combo with manueverability and other abilities. Obviously the dragon managing to toast 3-4 members of the party before flying away to recharge or plan his next charge plus Draconic Frenzy is a standard dragon strategy that is very hard to deal with and one reason they might tank the overall numbers a bit compared to something more straightforward like the Vrolokai (don't forget to Planar Seal it if you want to, uh, seal the deal.)

7. Reactions:

Vrolokai: None! Wow.

Dragon: Reactive strike, at 15' with its tail also gets a free action Improved Knockdown. Gross.

Dragon: But wait, there's more! It also has Hell's Sting. If you crit it with a melee attack it can zap you with 10d6 mental damage, DC 42 and downgrade your save result if you're sanctified holy. Sorry, champions.

Like sure, the bonus damage decay gives you is poison which isn't a highly resisted damage type and it's 18 bonus damage.

It's extremely common as an immunity (e.g. undead and constructs). The latest Reddit compilation I looked at claims 24% of the then published monsters were immune to poison.

Resistance is just under 7%, making it about as common as electricity and between acid and cold. Fire is resisted by 9% and immunities run just under 5%.

Poison is by far the worst damage type if you're fighting random stuff, and campaigns with zero undead or constructs (or other things, there are plenty of others immune) are rare.