Zergor's page

As someone that is currently playing a redeemer champion (old rules) in a 1-20 campaign (agents of edgewatch) and currently level 17, my opinion is that sturdy shields are more than good enough.

Granted as a redeemer my character adds an other layer of damage mitigation but even when they shield block for themselves I found the mitigation very effective.

Shield blocking is very effective on normal blows where usually the hardness will get rid of half the damages which mean that you basically transfered half your damages to the shield.

As you only decide to react after knowing the damages you can keep the reaction for low rolls and let crits hit you.You just have to keep the reflex of thinking "shield block" when the DM announce low damages and not wait for your health to be depleted.

As a champion that can do a double reaction to give level+2 resistance + shield block for an ally I can't keep count on how many times I reduced the total damages to 0.
Remember that shield block is after resistance so any mitigation you can provide on top of it reduces by that much the damage the shield takes.

Quick repair is a skill that makes sure that as soon as you are master in crafting all shields can be repaired in less than a minute. It's fairly rare to not have that time between fights.

Expecting to be able to shield block every single round, including critical hits seem a bit too good. A sturdy shield has a bit less HP than a warrior type character of its level which mean it can save you a bit under half you hp before breaking plus the hardness for each use before that happen (on a champion with +50% on their shield its even more) [As an example my level 17 champion has 280 HP, the shield has 204 HP, 102 BT and 19 hardness. By blocking tactically I can usually block for myself 6 or 7 hits saving more than 200 HP without breaking the shield, not even accounting for the shield of reckoning reaction that blocks a total of 19+19 = 38 damages on my allies (even more if the attack does multiple types of damages) which usually negates the attack].

Toxicologist is "ok" , but really requires system mastery to reach that ok when you're building him to actually end with a workable action economy.

I partially agree. I still feel it's a mess.

Injury poisons are terrible from the start. 2 actions to apply them make them unusable in combat for most people. You can put them before combat at the risk of them being useless (encounter against poison immune or just big high fortitude monster). Granted the toxicologist ignoring immunities partially ignores that but still you would prefer to use the good poison for the good enemy.

Going from 2 to 1 action partially mitigate that but you still need 3 actions. Two of those have to be consecutive because poisons become inert at the end of the round (applied poisons stay for 10 minutes). That makes double brew clunky as you can't for example make two poisons and only apply one. If you want to make two poisons you need double poison and use both in the same turn.

All those problems can be mitigated by carefully using your actions, checking your positioning and making good use of the quicken status but that's work. Compared to the rest of my arsenal as a toxicologist :
Bombs : I just recall knowledge, find the weakness, throw the good one.
Elixirs : 1 action to draw, 1 to use even on allies.
Mutagens : Everyone has the correct one way before combat using the advanced alchemy stock (It's quicksilver 90% of the time). Never used mutagens on quick alchemy (and I agree that this makes the mutagenist feel redundant)

Side note : While that a toxicologist has no problem using any of those and I used and abused them, a non toxicologist can't use poisons efficiently at all. I feel that paizo could probably buff them in general. Make them cost 1 action to use and instead make the toxicologist craft and use them in one action and keep the fact that poison weapon (rogue and poisoner) allows to draw and use a poison in one action (I always found funny that transforming 3 action in 1 was balanced. In any other case that would be broken. That show how bad the normal action is). I feel that the toxicologist should make the poisons go from "sometimes useful" to "main weapon" instead of "unusable" to "sometimes useful".

Chirurgeon is actually terrible. The heal bombs require you to hit the target, they don't heal almost at all on splash, making them quite useless. And the elixirs have so much worse action economy than a cleric's 2-action heals, and the healing amount sucks as well

I don't agree. First, nowhere it is written that you have to hit. It's an interact action not an attack one. You always hit. Compare that to https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=1899 that indeed requires a hit.

Second, comparing it 1 to 1 to the best heal spell of the game is not fair. You are an alchemist not a cleric. Your advantage is versatility. Everything you do is a bit worse than a caster but you can choose on the fly how to use everything.

Third, it's for the versatile vial not the elixir. Your free resource. Being able to use it at range makes positioning less of a pain. The heal is bad but you can spam it on allies with less than 50% health which is a plus compared to heal.

At high level you can double brew 2 quick vials, throw them at an ally for 48 HP at the cost of your turn. It's a bit less than a third of a level 10 heal but you used exactly 0 resources. At that level you can also just use your perma-quicken and an action every turn to heal someone for 24. It's not impressive but that's a free option of your huge arsenal.

After finally playing a toxicologist in a high level setting (17+), I feel that there is a huge gap between the effects of the different research fields. Some help you a lot doing what you want to do, some not so much.

The most well rounded one is bomber. Nothing is useless here. When you increase your field, your bombs become more versatile and powerful. You get extra splash, you can trigger more weaknesses. The field vials are solid. All elements mean you can easily avoid resistances and target weaknesses. Also bombs have insane action economy compared to the rest. They work very well with double brew and a feat even allows you to throw one immediately.

Chirurgeon is good too. Healing for "free" in combat is good even if its a limited number of times. Allowing to throw heal bombs is great for the action economy (which is usually horrible for the alchemist). The greater field discovery increases heal substantially which is great.

Mutagenist is not great. Only the greater field discovery is good (it is great even). their shtick of drinking potions to remove the drawback would be nice if it wasn't 1 turn. Using two actions (creating vial + drinking vial) to suppress a single drawback for one turn is not great (even if you gain a bit of resistance). Gaining temporary health on a mutagen would be good if it wasn't one minute. Starting at level 3 your mutagen last for 10 minutes and go up to an hour later so there is no reason to use them during fight. You can't switch mutagen during fight as you would stack drawbacks except by using the field discovery to purge the old but the effect require a trigger.

Mutagenist would clearly gain from an option to purge a mutagen for a benefit at any point. That could be the use of field vials : You drink it and purge the current mutagen for a bonus that lasts more than the current turn. That could be a heal for example.

And toxicologist... I really have to thank my GM that allows fancy things like poisoning an ally weapon that they are still holding or I would seriously feel underpowered. I have done many fight just not using poisons and relying on mutagens, elixirs and bombs because they are more reliable.
The problems are :
-Poisons are not great. Most enemies will save on a 6 on the dice. They do nothing on a success (except with the pernitious poison feat)
-Injury poisons are clunky. Even with the "cheat" of using only one action to apply it you need 3 actions to use them : create, apply, strike. They work terribly with double brew as you need a weapon in hand to use them.
On top of that nothing in the toxicologist kit makes them better with poisons after their field benefit (which is great. 100% love it).
The field vial is clunky to use as any injury poison. "The substance becomes inert at the end of your current turn." is horrible. You can't even apply it one turn and strike the next. You have to commit 3 actions. My nice GM consider that the "inert" part only apply to the vial before it is applied (after it is the normal 10 minutes). But that doesn't seem like the intended ruling.
Non of the discoveries after help with poisonning. Poison resistance is ok but it's just a worse version of an alchemist feat (and doesn't even stacks with it). Persistant poison damage is ok but it is on the clunky vial which could have been thrown as a bomb and would have dealt those damage as splash which can be as good in some configurations.
And the last is super cool... but as you don't have anything to help the poison work, it will almost never have any use.

There are feats that help poisoning like "pinpoint poisoner" but I would expect the toxicologist to be a bit better with poisons. One of his field discoveries could be that a crit on a strike (which will not happen a lot as an alchemist as you are no fighter) decrease the initial save on the poison by one level. This would at least help the poison stay one turn.

Zergor, your discomfort with the action economy of injury poisons is a fine complaint. But I consider it secondary to the fact that alchs are just not as good at hitting things with a weapon without getting high on their own supply - i.e., needing to use a mutagen to just keep up with a dedicated martial's to-hit bonus. It's why I haven't considered playing a tox (or any alch), even with the remastered alch getting a lot of improvements

I'm with Finoan on Quick Alchemy: Create Consumable poisons remaining potent on the weapon for the 10 mins after application until expended normally; unlike how tox field vials work. That will allow you to use them with additives in the 1 turn to set up, later turn to Strike routine

>Inhaled poisons cost one single action to use
Can you tell me where you got this? If it's the tox field benefit...

Field Benefit wrote:

You can apply an injury poison you’re holding to a weapon or piece of ammunition you’re wielding as a single action, rather than as a 2-action activity.

I'll be pleased if I missed something, but aside from that detail I'm still in favor of inhaled poisons for their ease-of-use (no to-hit roll) and area denial. I'd probably make a few in the morning with AA and hand them out along with a bunch of bombs to the real martials so I don't have to get close to the front line, since your DC and other field benefits (acid instead of poison on select creatures) would still apply as they do for all your infused poisons. And don't forget blight bombs exist

Yup I agree alchemists have a hard time hitting things but I don't feel it's that horrible (you get your masteries 2 levels after everyone which mean 4 levels where you are behind on a total of 20. Bad, but manageable).

So with the 10 minutes the action economy may not be broken anymore. 2 actions to poison a weapon in the same turn then as many turns as you want to land a hit seem manageable.

Quick vial injury poison seem still hard to use because it clearly has a clause that says the poison disappear in the current round but I can still throw the vial and that will be probably 90% of how I will use it. The injury poison may be useful in the rare cases I am ok trying to do massive damages as a 3 action activity (which may be slightly better than attacking multiple times with my weapon due to the low attack making MAP a real problem).

I don't have a problem with advanced alchemy poisons. As you said the coating rune take care of them : One action tu use them and one to strike, and they arn't lost on a miss, and you can choose between all stored poisons, up to 10.

Advanced alchemy poisons are great. My problem are quick alchemy poisons.
Those seem almost impossible to use but there are feats that only work with them, and you have a special use for your vials with them that also seem almost impossible to use.
That's the part I find strange.

Quick Bomber does work with Quick Alchemy bombs after the Remaster, and is why every single Alchemist is very incentivized to take that feat.

Yeah bombs seem great in general and I will probably use a few even with a toxicologist to apply a few persistant damages. But my main question is how to make the main features of the toxicologist work. Pernicious poisons seem to be a great feat until you see the additive tags and the hoops you have to ge through to use a poison with quick alchemy as described in my first post. As said before my impression is that the action economy is impossibly stiff due to the "stops working at the end of turn" clause which is harsher than many other class power that often have at least "until the end of your next turn" so you can have a setup turn and a payoff turn.

If you happen to be a spellcaster, you can also try to get the Deep Breath cantrip, and become immune to your own inhaled poisons. The oxygen ooze item can do the same for an hr, but costs alchemy.

If I read it correctly, holding your breath and similar effects gives a +2 to saves and not a full immunity.

Something I want to add that I found while looking at all the poison rules is that injury poisons seem strangely restricted in general. Their use is super clunky without specifically the rogue feat to draw the poison and apply it in a single action.

Compare them to inhaled poisons (which have as far as I can tell the same DC and same level of effects) :
Inhaled poisons cost one single action to use to create a 4 tile poison cloud at melee range for one minute. This mean that compared to injury poisons you spend one less action just to use it and your victim will immediately roll without the need for you to manage to hit it with a strike. You can hit a creature two tiles away and even better you can hit multiple creatures that are close together. The cloud stays a menace for a full minute (which work for and against you depending on situation, granted).

Yes you can use an injury poison before combat but I don't know why that would warrant to make them almost impossible to use during combat.
Toxicologists get a small buff compared to that baseline but not at the same level that rogues get and as I said on the previous post, the 1 round hard limit on use on quick vial poisons makes it clunky to use (the rogue poison is weaker but it doesn't go away at the end of the round).

I don't think the action economy is that bad.

Quick Bomber is not needed for Quick Alchemy bombs, and in fact is probably not usable for them. Quick Alchemy is one action and creates the bomb in your hand. So one action to create a bomb (either Create Consumable or Versatile Vial version) and one action to Strike with it. You still have one action left.

Any non-Toxicologist would take all three actions to poison and then Strike with a weapon and wouldn't have an action left to create the poison with in the first place. So create consumable or draw advanced alchemy poison on the previous round only. Toxicologist can poison a weapon with 1 action instead of 2, so they can use one action to Quick Alchemy a poison, one action to poison their weapon, and one action to Strike with it. And that can be done for both melee and ranged weapons.

Poisoning a weapon wouldn't work well if using a 2 hand weapon (such as a standard crossbow or longspear)....

I get that non toxicologists basically can't use poison and that the toxicologist can use bombs... but if I play toxicologist it is to play with poisons and not bombs and it seems that even with all the poison feats I can take bombs are more reliable.

The main difference between bombs and poison is that you throw a bomb so even if you use 2 actions to create it and throw it you can still hit any enemy at reasonable range and on top of that the fact that you only used 2 actions mean you can move. If you have double brew you can create 2 bombs and throw them with your 3 actions at a reasonable distance.

For poison, you need 3 separate actions if you have a melee weapon : create poison, coat weapon, strike. Meaning that you don't get an extra action to close the distance and thus are unable to poison any enemy that moves away on their last action (and it may be just my GM but they tend to have their monsters do that to avoid being permanently flanked). On a ranged weapon it's even worse because you poison the ammunition. That mean that you need 4 actions : create poison, coat ammunition, draw weapon, strike (and you have to start with an ammunition in hand and a free hand which mean you used an action in the previous turn to switch the weapon for an ammunition).

THe fact that you need 3 actions is ok, but if you have to do them in the same turn, you require a great amount of setup (your allies making sure the ennemy stay in melee range with you... which may be a problem as you are a d8 hp class) and I am not sure that setup can be consistantly done.

I want to make a toxicologist but I am not sure about a few things about creating poisons in the new rules.

From what I understand :
-Poisons made with advanced alchemy work perfectly fine but can't have additives.
-Poisons made from create consumable (quick alchemy) stop being potent at the end of turn but the poison will work normally for the full 6 rounds if a creature is affected before then.
-Quick vial poison is the same (except it doesn't have a duration and directly deals damages).

The thing that I am not sure about is what happens with poisonned weapons :
Does a weapon being poisoned count as an effect of the poison and thus stay poisoned for 10 minutes with quick alchemy or does the weapon stops being poisoned at the end of turn.
The quick vial version specifically says that the substance becomes inert at the end of turn. It seems to target specifically the poisoned weapon so for this one does the poison last until the end of turn on the weapon ?

I ask those questions because the poisons seem extremely short lived for what you want to do with them. You have quick bomber to create and throw a bomb but if you want to use a poison it seem that you have to create it, put it on your weapon and strike all on the same turn meaning you have no actions left to close the gap (and on ranged weapons it seem just impossible to use, because you have to poison the ammo with both hand then draw the weapon).
If the poisonned ammo or weapon wtay poisoned for 10 minutes that seem a bit more usable but I am not sure if this is the correct read (quick vial seem to directly point the contrary as I understand it)

Thank you Cordell Kintner. That clarification is indeed really useful. That seem way clearer now.

So I guess that the answer to my first question is that I can use the feat treat condition on conditions that come from afflictions (specifically clumsy and enfeebled) as if they were conditions with a duration of the stage but they could come back at the next stage depending on which one it is (except for sickened, but all conditions that give sickened explicitely say you can't remove it anyway).

If that's the case how would the clumsy condition ever go away ? Aside from specific feats there is no simple way to remove clumsy.

Thank you for your answer, so conditions for an affliction are permanent but only applied once each stage, and removed automatically when reaching an other stage if those conditions don't have a different listed duration or specific rules to be removed like drained seem to have (reduced each day in that case).

That seem unnecessarily messy.

So that gives me an other question :
If an affliction gives sickened and has the caveat that this sickened can't be removed as long as the affliction continue, that sickened condition would continue after the affliction end (but a simple fortitude check would allow to remove it) because sickened include a rule for recovery like drained.
On the other hand an affliction that gives clumsy that end would remove the clumsy part instantly because there is no duration rule for clumsy.
Am I right ?

Thanks Super Zero. There seem to be a rule for conditions from affliction, I did not find it initially.

But that does mostly clarify what happens if the condition has a duration that does not match the stage duration.
What is the baseline ? Should I read it like the affliction gives the condition for the duration of the stage at the start of the stage and is not reapplied (if for instance removed using medicine) until a new stage is reached ?

Ok so a disease reapply the conditions each round if I understood you correctly so I would not be able to remove the clumsy part of for example bog rot (https://2e.aonprd.com/Diseases.aspx?ID=1) because it would indeed be instantly reapplied.

Thanks.

The treat condition feat (https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=2029) allow to remove some conditions except for specific cases : "Treating a Condition that is continually applied under certain circumstances (for instance, the enfeebled condition a good character gains from carrying an unholy weapon) has no effect as long as the circumstances continue."

Is a disease a specific circumstance that continually apply the condition ?

If not, can a medic remove all the effects of a disease that only gives one of the three conditions and how long will that last ?

Thanks a lot.

I can only talk about my experience but I noticed a few things during the VTT sessions I did as a GM and as a player compared to real life ones (and I did a few):

-VTTs are tiring, particularly for the GM. We play without camera so we don't see the others and I think that's a big part of it. Having to keep constant attention to what's happening without that connexion is hard. Particularly it's very hard to not start talking at the same time as other players without visual cues forcing extra mental work to make sure everyone can talk.

-VTT are easily boring. If a conversation between the GM and a player or 2 players goes on too long it's very easy to get bored. Empathy is harder without seeing faces so everything seem more distant. Also only one conversation is possible at the time. Usually you can quickly whisper something to someone without losing track of the main conversation, here you can't.

-VTT work well on the other hand when doing tabletop strategy. During fights there are way less problems than the RP phases. Moving tokens is intuitive and having automatic sheets that do all the calculations for you is great.

-Some people can't deal with VTT: I had a GM that didn't want to continue GMing his table with VTT after 2 tests that werent great. Basically the first problem I discussed was too much for him. He felt physically exhausted after (and during) a table. I also had a player that didn't want to play (other table with an other GM) because of a combination of the two problems (tiring and boring).

To be fair the two campaign that were stopped were heavily RP based with very few fights.

I am currently GMing a lighter setting where fights have a huge role and I spend a lot of time crafting maps and tokens so my players have visual cues. It seem to work very well.

Long story short I feel that VTT work well for a campaign centered around strategy and fights, and a lot less for one based on RP and drama.

Looking at the rules of unnoticed the only requirement to be unnoticed is for the opponent to no know you exist at all.

So in a combat if your opponent has not reason to suspect you exist you are unnoticed.

There is an explanation in gamemastery guide that seem strangely worded but may act as a rule :
https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=836

"So what do you do if someone rolls better than everyone else on initiative, but all their foes beat their Perception DC? Well, all the enemies are undetected, but not unnoticed."

This seems to imply that if you are undetected AND win the initiative, you are unnoticed. If any of those is not true you don't.

I feel that the religion part of Golarion is the way it is to avoid a society that is way too alien to comprehend.

The monotheistic look may be because right now the existing religions are mainly that and a pure polytheistic society is pretty strange for us because we don't have many modern examples for it.

Worshiping only one god is also way more convenient, allowing players to remember the tenets of only one deity and not have their character's day shapped by a multitude of prayers to divinities that may actually answer them.

The ramifications of having that many gods that are not a question of belief but pure facts are not explored in my opinion but again it's probably best to avoid a world too strange to imagine.

It's a bit the same that for magic. It's strange that magic is only used by a few practitionners that are generalists and do everything. Ok learning full schools of magic is hard but many people would probably learn one spell that help their job and learn to do it almost perfectly. A bit like you specialize when learning a craft and not crafting in general. But thinking about all the ramifications of it would take a lot of time to the authors and lead to a world very strange.

So yeah I think the monotheistic approch is the best way to have gods part of the setting but not so entangled with it that you have to rethink from scratch a universe that makes sense with them answering prayers and shaping the world in general.

Not sure if I'm allowed to join a discussion I have not fully read on, but my views on spellcasting, both as an AoA GM (players are almost level 14) and level 6 monk player on Extinction Curse, are as follows:

- The Divine list is simply awful. Not sugarcoating it. I don't really think I could, at this point, agree with anyone that argued otherwise. I feel like it needs 20+ spells that have the flavor and quality of Holy Cascade to feel fine.

- Casters, no matter how you feel about their power level, interact poorly with PF2E's action economy. With most spells and even the crappiest cantrips costing 2 actions, they don't get the opportunity to have many cool feats because of that, and they play in a pretty predictable way compared to martials.

- Cantrips suck at dealing damage. Electric Arc is the only *decent* one, and only when there are 2 or more enemies. The problem is that the equivalence of cantrips and a regular Strike by a martial is awful. I'm not running math on here because I'm sure many others have done it previously, maybe on this very thread, but the point is, cantrips cost two actions to do a very questionable version of a one-action Strike by any competent martial. Sure, you can and should argue that cantrips SHOULD be weaker than strikes, because being better than them is a job for spells that expend a slot, but it's still pretty awful, particularly until level 7 or so.

- Spell attacks suck because they are still hit-or-suck, and they are very hard to hit on desirable targets. They should either deal more damage than they do, be affected by runes or interact in a meaningful way with the action economy.

- Incapacitation is a very punishing trait, and IMO should only prevent crit failures, but still allow enemies to normal fail.

- It genuinely DOES feel better for casters on higher levels, with my level 13 players being very happy with their abilities right now, except for the cleric (which absolutely LOVES the class and is a monster when healing, but feels the divine list...

I agree with a lot of things here.

The action economy part is so true... You are so limited in what you can do in your round. It seems that it will be a big problem for a martial caster like the magus we could playtest a bit.

Cantrips are bad but I disagree that's a problem. I think the ability of hitting basically any damage type is really good and cantrips should suffer a bit for that versatility so they aren't better than fighter hits against an ennemy weak to them (if they did wizards would be too good against enemies with weaknesses).

Spell attacks are just horrible. The touch CA was removed and nothing else was added to compensate. No item bonus on those attack with runes are just the nail in the coffin. Why would you ever use them when you can target saves ? They should indeed either hit like a truck or have a failure effect to be remotely worth it.

I have no problems with incapacitation. I just use those spells when incapacitation doesn't apply. But I agree having just critical fail become fail on big enemies would make the spells more versatile (and avoid the meta question of "Is that enemy my level or my level + 1 ?").

Personally I think that the thing wizards are really missing is something that show that they are the ones that study magic and do cool things with it both thematically and mechanically.

The thesis is a great first step and makes wizards a bit more unique but I feel there is room for a bit more.

The current wizard feat pool may be the problem. I don't feel the wizard has a unique identity. Many feats are shared with other casters and many others seem bland (or just terrible like eschew material).
A lot of their unique feats revolve around using their bonded item which is ok but not that exciting. They are good at counterspelling but that is a huge chain to have something a bit useful.
I think many feats could be more like "light thesis" that give them more ways to use magic in ways other can't. I think that for instance "silent spell" is a great wizard feat because it allow something other caster can't do : a sneaky spell. Sadly there are not enough feats like this one that can allow the wizard to break the rules other casters have to follow.

We have to remember that wizards lack something to do other than casting spells like wildshape divine font or bardic performances.
The schools focus spells exist but they do not alter how you play your wizard a lot.
They lack feats to push the few defining features they have : Only one feat for each school if I am not mistaken and no feat to push thesis.

Wizard was the generic caster in 1st ed and it was ok because the arcane list was by far the best and the defining feature of the wizard. Now that all 4 lists are made a bit more equal, the class need something else to shine.
By the way in first ed, wizard had arcanes discoveries that were a great way to convey the wizard identity : a class that understands magic more than any other and that can change the way it works.

I have no PFS experience but here is my experience with "normal" games with my wizard with alchemist multiclass:

I have a familiar that use master form and she uses her alchemical potions to kill baddies. Ok her health is laughable and her attack terrible but sometimes it works.
My GM also use the dying rules for my familiar and allow me to use my hero points for her instead of my character making her a bit less squishy.

That probably breaks a few rules but that's how we do it. Rule 0 is important for us.

For PFS, familiars are probably terrible, having so many restrictions and undefined rules to make sure they can't be used outside of their "give a few extra things per day" role.
In PFS I think the creature part can be forgotten. Just pick master abilities (but again I never played PFS characters).

In normal games though, discuss with your GM and usually your familliar will work like a normal creature if they are not hating your guts. Yes the rules say that a familiar can't do anything (missing stats, never trained, no reactions, can't act if you don't give orders except with independant, etc ...) but I am sure many GM will prefer familiars that make sense to familiars that respect all the rules.

Intelligence based caster suffer a lot from their PF1 counterpart.
They were squishy caster that used to have some of the best spells and in abundance and a very high number of skills.

The result when transposed in PF2 : Very low HP. 1 less skill to "make up" for their high intelligence. Bad proficiencies (Abysmal for the wizard). All those things like in PF1... except you get none of the old benefits.

I feel that they pay for advantages they don't have anymore.

I feel that the worst part of this monster is that if it really wants to play dirty (and it's intelligent so it can) it can hold its breath and attack from 40 feet or so beneath the ground (max 60 if it burrows straight down).

First turn it burrows (1 turn of air)
second turn it implants (1 turn of air)
for 3 turns it can attack (doubled so 6 turns of air)
seventh turn it goes back to the surface to breath (1 turn of air)

using 9 turns of air out of the 10 it has.
It can rinse and repeat pretty fast depending on how much time the DM thinks the creature need to breath on the surface.

There are very few ways to attack a creature that is deeply burried.
I am very happy it's an abberation and not an elemental looking at this strategy.

I don't understand why people would use cat stats for a familiar when familiar doesn't have stats at all.

I think Paizo clearly does not want to give familiar stats for that exact reason : There will always be a tiny animal a bit too good to be a familiar or a set of abilities that can be exploited.

Paizo tries to avoid using the bestiary for character options. Familiars don't have stats, animal companions have a selected choice of stats and abilities, it will be the same for eidolons it seems.

Eschew material is a relic of the past.

I looked a bit at the spells of my characters and almost none have amterial components. I think summoning does but it's not really the best spells.
This feat is a trap. Except for pure flavor there is no reason to take it.
It's replaced by 5 sp as you said and even if you lose your pouch, 90% of your spells can still be casted.
Also in any situation your pouch is missing, your spellbook probably is too so the ony situation it could be remotely useful is if you are inprisoned (or other situation where your entire stuff is missing), still have spell prepared and those prepared spells happen to have material components (and are useful for the current situation).

Rolling once feel easier but would get a bit complicated in many fringe cases.

You have to remember that effects are shared only for HP and actions.

Take a spell as simple as noxious vapors. If you roll only once and take the worse result, on a critical failure you would both get sickened. That would make the link extend to more than just HP and actions which is not consistant.

Excluding those spells would remove the simplicity argument, forcing to check for each spell if they affect only HP and actions or not. And rules built on exceptions are not great in general.

For the "realism" part I don't see why it's less realist than finding enough water in the plane of fire to sustain yourself indefinitively (survival), fall at terminal velocity and make a perfect landing (acrobatics), etc...

When you have +30 in intimidation you don't " just make threats", you basically use words of power on your opponent. Words so violents they can shatter the determination of anyone.Yup those words don't exist in real life but that's not the point.

You don't give a bad stare to the enemy you show them death directly with a few carfully chosen words.
The same as with survival you extract water from pure fire, the same as with thivery you distract someone while sealing their whole set of heavy armor, etc...
Legendary is not mundane. It's basically physical magic. You break reality when making a legendary check the same way a mage casually breaks it.

It's a bit low level but a denizen of leng would be perfect.
https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=604

They dissolve 1d4 rounds after being killed.
The only problem is that they leave their equipment behind. That will require to be a bit crafty to make that work.

As a side note, I love the alchemist for exactly one thing: Its multiclass dedication.

The Alchemist dedication is the most efficient multiclass in the game, only really needing 3 feats (including its base one) to get full access to its resource pool.

You also just get so many! If you prep them ahead of time, you eventually get 40-42 daily items - which, while not the most powerful on the market, carrying around 20 lots of elixirs that restores 8d6+21 Hit Points is still great at 20th.

Plus all the weird little utility elixirs and mutagens.

It's rather for me to make character these days without trying to squeeze in the Alchemist dedication.

As I said a bit before, for me it's a proof of how bad the alchemist is. I have a wizard MC into an alchemist and it's great. Too great. I don't feel like I miss on anything from the alchemist. If it was the other way around I would not have many important wizard features (school and thesis mostly).

The alchemist doesn't seem to gain more than the ability to do alchemy for free. Of course there is the exception of bombs. As shroudb showed there are plenty of feats that make bombs more useful than just the alchemical item thrown by any warrior.

But for mutagens and elixirs... not so much. Almost everything the alchemist get is the ability to make more stuff (there are of course exceptions). And more stuff is redundant at some point. If you are mutagenist, making 10 mutagens a day is not useful. You will at most use 4 or 5 (and that would be if mutagens were good as discussed before).

Multicalssing into an alchemist you get a few reagents (and by a few I mean almost as many as a real alchemist at higher level) and you have the full versatility of a real alchemist.

Clearly the real alchemist need some bone thrown at them. If for instance a mutagenist had 0 drawbacks from using mutagens they would be better than anyone just buying the thing and drinking it. If a chirurgeon could throw elixirs at friends the action economy gained would justify some of them that feel useless without.
Those ideas may not be balanced but I think the alchemist should have something that makes you want to play the class and not multiclass into it (aside from bombs.)

I really feel that mutagen suffer from their PF1 version where they were more on the OP side due to their huge bonus to abilities and the fact that those bonus had their own group (alchemical) meaning you could stack them with basically everything else.

Right now a mutagen increases your item bonus by 1 if you have the apropriate item even at high level. Spells give status buffs most of the time so they can be stacked with your items and give their full value.

I don't know if it would be better to make mutagen use the status bonus but right now they are just bad. In one of my games our alchemist basically only use bombs and every 'mutagen alchemist' I had in my previous games reverted to using bombs quickly.

In an other game I have a wizard with an alchemist multiclass... and my mutagens are never used except for quirky completely unoptimized things like giving a feral mutagen to a familiar so it has natural attacks (which is a terrible idea for a lot of reasons).
I feel that a wizard with alchemist multiclass show a LOT of the alchemist problems :
-You don't need that many alchemical items so multiclassing is often enough. Except for bombs but I have fireballs...
-The class abilities are a bit lacking : There is not a lot of differences between a full alchemist and a multiclassed one. A full alchemist makes more stuff... but not a lot better.

To compare if I multiclass into a wizard, I lose the school and the thesis that are both fairly powerful. I would cast 3 times less spells (and I am generous) instead of making maybe 50% less reagents (granted at high level an alchemist makes more batch with one reagent but for quick alchemy the difference is small).

Alchemist feats are lacking but I would say so are many of the wizard ones (it's the main reason many wizard including me multiclass). I think the bigger problem is the alchemist core. Bombs are great but the rest is subpar.

I feel that the main problem with mutagen is that they seem designed as "fair" consumables. They are useful in specific situations at the cost of a drawback and a bit of money.

Making them for free remove that last bit but doesn't remove the fact that those are average consumables. As many stated, mutagens give item bonus and very often to skills. So they allow an unprepared character to shine a bit more but has no effect on a prepared one (and battle ones are tradeoffs)

The alchemist does get things to make them a bit better but those feats are ridiculously conservative. Basically they get a normal feat worth but requiring to use a specific mutagen like the mind blank of the rogue they get specifically while using the serene mutagen. So at the same level you get a bonus that isn't permanent but last only during your mutagen (which has harsk malus) while the rogue can sleep under mind blank.

I really feel that mutagenist should have something that makes mutagen really feel useful. Halving penalities for instance would help mutagens feel more versatile. At least the feats that buff mutagens should give small bonus to other characters (or even the same bonus wouldn't be too broken I think) so the alchemist get something more than just a normal feat but conditionnal.

HumbleGamer wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

To reiterate here from the stream–a familiar is a companion or friend or mentor (depending on how you want to play that relationship out). It is not a slave.

So, could a familiar decide just to ditch you if the more the game proceed the spellcaster changes its habits or simply become something the familiar is no more affine with? Or its alignement is bonded to the caster ( if i go evil, so the familiar does ).

But I guess the same could be said, eventually, for a companion pet.

I've said my piece on this topic and am not interested in debating it or arguing semantics or corner cases.

Feel free to rule things how you want at your table, but the official stance from Pathfinder's Creative Director is that familiars are not slaves. Use common sense and real-world meanings to parse that as you wish in your games if you want to adhere to the official world lore.

Thank you again for taking the time to answer directly to the topic.

I think I'll stick with the idea that familiars can easily keep their powers if dismissed which seem the best way to stay true to the relationship they should share with the wizard (And I like the idea of an unhappy magical cat ditching their wizard and opening their shop in town :) ).

Yup I see it as a parnership and the creature does understand what it gains.

Again I may have voiced in a way that is not clear but my problem is only that the familiar has those powers that it wanted (or giving them would not indeed be nice and raise other etical concerns) but those things the familiar may want to keep forever are due to the bond with the wizard.

If the familiar and the wizard have a huge disagreement and out of spite the wizard dismiss the familiar (and if being dismissed mean losing the perks of the bond), the familiar would lose basically everything they have. The wizard will lose a familiar it can replace in one week.
The risk for one is way higher than the other.
And that's why I talked about slavery : The familiar has a huge compulsion to never anger the wizard and even obey them to keep their things. And that can make for a pretty unhealthy relation.

If on the other hand the familiar has an easy way to keep those things without the wizard, the power balance in their relationship is way better. The familiar can easily leave the wizard if they want and the fact that they don't is entirely because they WANT to, not because they NEED to.

Zergor wrote:

It's not that you particularly have to desire intelligence, it's than when you have it you don't want to lose it because it is part of who you are. ...SIC... Maybe indeed the way they see the world is totally different but I would imagine loss aversion is a thing all living being share (survival would be way harder without it).

I am now getting a very Cthulhu vibe... As the animal creature, knowing all it needs to know to live and get along amongst it's kind and the world in which it was born. Suddenly raised to a new awareness and understanding of the universe by a being noticeably more powerful than it, including the ability to bend the fabric of reality in ways the creature could never have understood before... But now can...

For the familiar... is this an existential crisis now? Are they falling into the Cthulhu-level madness? If so, perhaps they really WOULD prefer to go back to their previous understanding of the universe. To be able to pretend it was all just some nightmare...

And now, I also extend this thought process to "Are cultists just familiars for Mythos critters?"

I thought about it a bit too but what seem to happen in Golarion is that new abilities are gained mostly painlessly. When you character magically gain intelligence or wisdom nothing seem to imply that their bubble is bursted and that this new way to see the universe frighten them.

Again back to the familiar, the idea of losing all your powers can be very frightening. I spoke mostly about the intelligence part because I think it's the worst to lose but a familiar that had magical wings and ended up losing them would probably feel very handicaped. Losing a part of you doesn't seem like a fun experience.

It depends on what you want to achieve I guess.

Personally in most of my game it's Show don't tell and many players don't like that players justify their character actions by their state of mind because knowing their state of mind is meta information and they prefer to try to decipher the actions and guess what the character meant by them.

Also indeed breaking immersion is often seen as a bad thing in my tables.

What we do though is to talk about those after the game so that we can better understand why things happened that way and also to help the GM know what is indeed on the characters mind for future scenarios.

Sometimes I really want to stop to explain the motivations behind some actions that seem counterproductives, detrimental or flat ou pvp and sometimes I do but I learned that sometimes the RP behind tring to understand a character and their actions without any meta information to orient the discussion can be quite fun and interesting.

On the other hand if I played with people that posess character without any evident motivations maybe I would indeed try to push them to talk about them. Strong BGs help avoiding that most of the time though.

To reiterate here from the stream–a familiar is a companion or friend or mentor (depending on how you want to play that relationship out). It is not a slave.

Yeah I imagine that's how the relation is meant to be. I was just a bit overthinking the ramifications of having a bond with an animal that has a higher cost if broken for it than for you.

One thing I've noticed in this discussion is a default assumption that a familiar desires intelligence. Why are we assuming this to be the case? An animal mind might be perfectly content to reject magical intelligence that it did not initially have. Furthermore, to characterize it as "death" seems misleading, especially with increasing understanding that many other creatures have inner lives, despite an absence of human-like intellect.

It's not that you particularly have to desire intelligence, it's than when you have it you don't want to lose it because it is part of who you are. Like I said not many people would agree to return to their 5 year old self intelligence. Usually people hate losing more that they like gaining. And I imagine that would be the same for a familiar. Maybe indeed the way they see the world is totally different but I would imagine loss aversion is a thing all living being share (survival would be way harder without it).

Ok so for the familiar to be a companion and not a slave it must be able to use its free will to leave the wizard if it's unhappy with the situation.

That implies that it can break the bond and that breaking the bond will not come at a cost too high to bear.

An yeah for the second part there can be a problem: If the familiar powers are a gift at the start of the bond and are not taken away it's all cool. Which is what some people here think would happen but not all.

If on the other hand like some other people claim here the familiar loses all familiar abilities there can be a huge problem.

It's a bit like if someone follows you because they like you but they also know that a feeblemind will be cast on them if they leave you (not by you, just cast by something but you knew perfectly that would happen when you accepted them by your side). They may like you a lot but at no point you will ever be sure they follow you because they want or because they don't want to suffer the feeblemind. Worse if at some point they really want to leave and you are a nice person, you will have to face the fact that you put them in an horrible situation*.
Granted the difference here is that animal intelligence is a bit higher that feeblemind intelligence and that they were an animal in the first place. Still it's really hard to lose a part of you you lived a long time with. I don't think I would like to be reduced to the intelligence I had when I was 5 years old even if it was indeed my level of intelligence at some point in my life.

*For the familiar case this could theorically be solved by the ritual "Awaken" that would both sever the bond and give them permanently human like intelligence (which is what they seem to have exactly. I tend to read their flat level checks as having basically 10 everywhere ). Could be a cool scenario.
The familiar would lose the other cool abilities but those could be easily be obtained through learning magic (I would imagine the familiar would have a nice headstart for that, being the companion of a wizard).

I can't remember where but it was on these forums maybe a year or so ago. But James or Jason said that in universe if a Wizard(or whatever class) with a familiar were to die the Familiar actually keeps its elevated state and magical abilities.

Also the way I read Familiars in PF1 and 3.5 is that to gain a familiar a caster is actually imparting part of their own soul into the creature. Sort of like a horcrux if you will. But if you read up on the 1E spell awakening you can see some of what you are worried about but with a familiar they have sentience for the whole ride where as an animal suddenly given it after being a servert may resent its master.

So at least with good characters I don't see Familiars as slaves but as companions.

Thanks for the references.

Which mean that you are right, if you check that the animal would be ok with it, if it stays with you with its newfound gift it's indeed true companionship and not slavery.

Zergor wrote:

Do I read too much into it ?

Definitely yes.

To be fair, I was aware from the start that the answer was yes. But still it was a discussion I wanted to share because I find it very interesting and I hope other people do.

I may even explore those questions with the character I created now that I think of it.

The problem I have with the concept of pact with an animal is that I can't see a way to make it understand the ramifications without forcing the pact on it.

An animal can't understand the concept of being a familiar.
And giving it the intelligence to do so would force it to accept because of loss aversion. Having gained new intelligence the creature would not want to lose it.

I like that interpretation. That explain well the link indeed.

That doesn't change the fact that the animal get a big boost in its cognitive abilities even if it's not from its own mind.

If both minds are perfectly separated that would not be a problem but I don't know how it would work. Maybe if the animal is trapped in its own body and the wizard takes over but I don't think that's a better fate for the animal.
If they aren't it would be complicated for the animal to not consider the given intelligence their.

I started recently the creation of a wizard concept using the Familiar bond thesis. I wanted to delve a bit deeper into what a familiar mean, how to create it and how to perfect it.

And I thought a bit about the implication of having a magically enhanced being as your familiar.

It seem that a familiar (at least for the wizard, for the witch it's a totally different thing) is an animal that the wizard experimented on and gave high level of intelligence using a special bond (in PF1 it's pretty clear that the animal gain human level of intelligence, in PF2 it's only implied but there is no reason it should have changed)

This supernatural intelligence may probably also mean the creature is perfectly sentient and this is entirely due to the bond with the wizard. Having your own intelligence only exist because of this bond mean you can in no way break it without basically dying. Reverting to an animal intelligence would indeed the the death of the creature that the familiar is right now.

So the familiar has no choice but to follow its master which looks like slavery even if the familiar is content with its situation.

Do I read too much into it ?
Do I make assumptions that are not correct ?

I tend to prefer Toughness to Diehard for the fact that Toughness may give you extra conscious turns (pretty rarely due to the fact that attacks of your level will normally deal 2 or 3 times what toughness gives but still an extra turn sometimes is a good thing). A few actions before falling can help you a lot.
When you fall unconscious I found that the few turns you have before dying with bad rolls are often enough for someone to stabilize you if really needed. Diehard has it's uses but usually at my tables there is someone that can spend two actions to give a potion (or cast a healing spell or do a medecine check) to my character on the next turn even in the middle of a fight.

The fun thing is that three distinct triggers exist on attacks due to feats like dodge and raise shield:

-An opponent targets you with an attack (trigger before attack roll)
-An opponent hits you an attack (trigger before damage roll)
-An opponent damages you an attack (trigger after damage roll)

The real question is if those triggers are all valid for reactions. My fear is that as more and more content exist we will have more and more obscure triggers that may allow uses of reaction that may be too good.

Let's note that because the money component of the wish was removed in 2e it's power was reduced.

For it so stay balanced I would consider the "earn income" activity as a baseline. An alchemist feat (philosopher stone) already does something similar.
Here though it's not taking your day but just casting a spell. I would probably go for 50GP* without any drawback (possibly higher with bad effects like the previous post showed).

It's important to take into acount that any day a wizard doesn't use a wish slot they may use it for money at the end of the day.

*50GP is a bit less than what an expert level 19 character would earn. I did not make it too good because it's a 3 action spell meaning it doesn't even require your whole day like the philosopher stone.

Yup, the main problem of alphabetical order is how frustrating the first editions would be.

If you started with the A you would end with a lot of good aligned creatures (angels, agathions, azatas) that don't make for good enemies.

The goal of the bestiaries is to give a good list of friends and foes that can be used in adventures. So a bit of everything is necessary. The logic is to have the most common creatures in the first with a few rare things to spice things up then go to rarer and rarer creatures for the followings (or creatures from other continents or that arn't as important).

For instance it's pretty important to have a good set of low level enemies in the first bestiary (goblins, skeletons, gnolls) that can be found often.

On the other hand they can leave things like agathions for a later bestiary because their stats are less imortants (NG outsiders you will find on the material plane will probably be angels and not agathions. And you would not face an agathion in combat very often)

I feel that this can be really interesting if done correctly. I have been misguided by my GMs sometimes with good effect but it's something you have to do very carefuly.

I think that having very clear but very ignorable proofs of the truth would make everyone regret their mistake and not feel that it's a cheap trap by an omnipotent GM. The less contrived the situation is, the more the player will feel it was their mistake even if the informations were subtle enough to be ignored.

You would probably have to think of good reasons for the situation to not disambiguate itself.
The mage, as a bodyguard would probably put their elementals between the carriage and the bandits which could be a giveaway. Also the mage would probably speak a bit. My players would often offer a surrender to their opponent and if the answer is "Never, bandits !" it may at least puzzle them enough so they think about the situation.

So the mage should :
- For some reason think the players are with the bandits (which can be a huge stretch if the players open their mouths, screaming "leave those people alone !" or something of that effect while entering the fight which is always a possibility)
- If the mage talks you would have to carefuly pick their word so the message adressed to bandits can be taken as a message adressed to guards.

My fear is that you would have to sacrifice realism to keep the illusion and that would leave a sour taste in your player's mouth.

A less dramatic thing for the players but more safe would be to have the mage die (with carefully crafted ambiguous last words) when the fight start and only the elementals pose a threat. They would not have the guard's blood on their hands but still help the bandits. That would reduce the chances that the illusion is broken too soon.

graystone wrote:

Rysky wrote:

The familiar ability is literally “it understands and speaks a language you know”, it doesn’t copy a few phrases and sounds, it can communicate and have full conversations with others.

You can LITERALLY speak with animals and that doesn't make them sapient. Kinspeech allows your familiar to understand and speak with animals of the same species: does that make all animals sapient. Speech by itself isn't a determiner of sapience. Alexa on my tablet "understands and speaks a language" but that doesn't make it sapient: why would it be different with magic 'technology'?

The main problem is the completely lack of information provided by 2e in familiar rules. We even don't know their main stats to know some thing like how intelligent the Familiar is.

CRB Pg. 217 wrote:

Familiars

Familiars are mystically bonded creatures tied to your magic. Most familiars were originally animals, though the ritual of becoming a familiar makes them something more. You can choose a Tiny animal you want as your familiar, such as a bat, cat, raven, or snake. Some familiars are different, usually described in the ability that granted you a familiar; for example, a druid’s leshy familiar is a Tiny plant instead of an animal, formed from a minor nature spirit.
Familiars have the minion trait (page 634), so during an encounter, they gain 2 actions in a round if you spend an action to command them. If your familiar dies, you can spend a week of downtime to replace it at no cost. You can have only one familiar at a time.
Modifiers and AC
Your familiar’s save modifiers and AC are equal to yours before applying circumstance or status bonuses or penalties. Its Perception, Acrobatics, and Stealth modifiers are equal to your level plus your spellcasting ability modifier (Charisma if you don’t have one, unless otherwise specified). If it attempts an attack roll or other skill check, it uses your level as its modifier. It doesn’t have or use its own ability modifiers and can never

...

They don't have stats but they have a value for all competence checks. That value is Owner level + 0 (or + casting ability for 2 of those). So yeah you can argue for the familiar exact intelligence but the fact that it can do better than a human NPC at almost anything plus can do things like quick alchemy with the good ability both tend to put that intelligence around human intelligence (give or take).

I think that it's a mistake to use the only rule we have as an all encompassing rule.

Yes minions have specific combat rules but those are that... combat rules.
It's pretty sad that there aren't extra rules for that but using combt rules for exploration and downtime is not acknowledging why there are different rules: the situations are different and thus the rules are different.

Again I will use the animal companion as an example because it's more straightforward than the familiar.
An elve can move 30 feets. A horse can move 40 meets. In combat when my character rush with his mount he is slower than an elve. This is for balance: After having made those 80 feets I can attack twice (or any other activity) but the elve is out of action after his 90 feets.

But of course outside fights when I tell my Gm that my character race as fast as he can he will go faster than the elve even if combat stats would say otherwise. And even in official scenario it works like that: Without spoiler there is one where having a mount is a significant advantage in a race against time. It's common sense and it's balanced. But as soon as combat breaks out mount is back to be slower than the elve taking a full round run.

So what I really think is important to consider is the following : What rules should a familiar follow out of combat so it's fun but not a balance problem.
And because we don't have rules for that it would depend on the GM.

For instance:
-I would probably allow a familiar to act as a (pretty bad) party member in exploration if my group of player is not too big. If I have 5 ou 6 players and 2 familiar I may restruct them more because it may slow the pace and their contribution may not be that important.

-In downtime I would probably allow a lot of fluffy actions but none that have a real effect because downtime actions are balanced around time cost. If a familiar can gain money for their master that doesn't feel balanced (and to be fair I think that in this case the rules give some protection anyway: most useful actions in downtime require to be trained, something a familiar is never).

But those are my personal takes and many GMs would do things differently. Again though, I think it would be bad to extend combat rules outside of it to fill some missing ones in the other 2 modes.