biphenyl's page

We just finished our third session using the playtest rules last night, and ran into a situation that *felt* like it ought be possible but the rules text seemed to conflict.

Our Solarian has a Commercial Antigrav Harness that he found on the Bloom during It Came from the Vast! He was on a roof in standard-gravity Absalom Station and wondered if he could activate the harness to potentially Leap to the ground without taking falling damage.

The text for low gravity reads:

An environment with low gravity is liberating for creatures accustomed to normal or higher gravity. A character can jump twice as high and as far, can lift or carry twice their normal amount, and doubles the range of thrown weapons.

So no mention of falling damage. But out of curiosity we compared with the text for low gravity in Pathfinder GM Core, which reads:

As in normal gravity, bodies of great mass act as centers of gravity, but the force relative to the size of the body is less than in the Universe. The Bulk of all creatures and objects is halved, meaning creatures acclimated to normal gravity can carry twice as much and jump twice as high and far. Physical ranged attacks are possible up to the twelfth range increment (instead of the sixth). Creatures that fall in low gravity take no damage for the first 10 feet of a fall, and then take bludgeoning damage equal to a quarter of the remaining distance it fell.

In this case, it would have meant taking no fall damage — 20ft fall reduced to 10ft for a total of 2 damage, which would have been mitigated by his Tactical Dermal Plating.

I went with the Starfinder Playtest Rulebook version since that takes precedence but wondered if falling damage was an accidental or intended omission here!

DROON! I played 35 sessions of an iruxi bard + beastmaster from Droon a couple years ago, but I had to make up a lot of the details in her backstory since there's only been offhand mentions in the books. So excited to have some world flavor from the area, especially in this neat little slice of life format.

Firstly: these stories are delightful, and I'd like to thank Grandmother for sharing them.

Secondly: the previous story has Grandmother talk about merchant's "up" in the Kaava Lands. This story reveals that they have a pet dinosaur. I'm beginning to have thoughts about exactly where Grandmother and Baranthet and Lin live, and for the possible implications if I'm right.

I would absolutely love for it to be Droon. There are so many excellent two-sentence teases about Droon in the various books and I'm obsessed.

Awesome! The original Dark Alliance was prolly my favorite videogame adaptation of a TTRPG despite the hundreds of hours I put into Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights. Perfect kind of game to couch co-op with somebody else, and Abomination Vaults is a great choice to adapt since it's already heavily combat-focused.

This is one of my favorite collections of Pathfinder NPC stories I've ever read, and all the fun and interesting items are just icing on the cake. Kudos to everyone that worked on this book!

Sure I'm not arguing that the base ability's exact power level is perfect. Maybe add the item bonus to spell attack rolls or have it act as a penalty on saves for non-attack roll spells. Just that the implementation as a free action metamagic ability is much more interesting than just stacking every desirable mechanic into a single activity that will probably have to be 3 actions.

One of the neatest things about the current Striking Spell ability is that it makes having a held charge a unique state, which is unique to the Magus in 2e. Think of it like Panache. Since you aren't beholden to discharging it as part of the casting action (like in 1e), this opens up a lot more tactical options and synergistic feat options. Consider these scenarios, where I'll use everyone's favorite vanilla option, Shocking Grasp with Slide Casting:

Begin turn outside an enemy's reach. 2 Actions: Cast shocking grasp with Striking Spell. Use slide casting synthesis to free move into melee range. 1 Action: Combat Assessment to strike the enemy and also gain information about their weaknesses. Better yet, if you have haste or hasted assault, 1 Action Feint and then Quickened 1 Action Strike.

Begin turn in melee range. 2 Actions: Cast shocking grasp, but use Slide casting to move out of melee range first. 1 Action: Demoralize, weakening enemies for your allies. Next turn: 1 Action: position yourself in melee, with 2 enemies adjacent. 2 Actions: Spell Swipe, getting 2 max level shocking grasps for 1 spell slot!

There's a lot of getting hung up on the fact that this thing named Striking Spell doesn't behave exactly like the 1e ability named Spellstrike, which *both* gave you a free attack *and* removed the need for a separate attack roll from the spell, either of which would be extremely strong abilities in 2e. There is a way cooler design space to consider if you aren't stuck discharging the spell as part of the cast action.

Rather than combining this all into a single boring probably 3-action activity that you'll be doing every turn to be balanced, let's consider abilities that might come from feats or features that interact well with the Stored Spell state. Maybe something like:

Conduit Strike
Feat 1
1-Action
*Requirements* You have a spell stored in your weapon or body from Striking Spell, and it requires a spell attack roll.
Using your weapon or body as a conduit, you channel your spell to strike true. Make a Strike with the weapon/body storing the spell. If it hits, you gain a +1 status bonus to hit with the stored spell. At level 5 this bonus increases +2, and at level 15 it increases to +4.

Or if you like high-stakes gambling:

Desparate Discharge
1-Action
*Requirements* You have a spell stored in your weapon or body from Striking Spell, and it requires a spell attack roll.
Make a Strike with the weapon/body storing the spell. Use the result of the Strike's attack roll in place of the Spell Attack roll normally required by the spell. If the attack misses, the stored spell is discharged with no effect.

Abilities like this start to get to the feeling of the 1e ability, while also playing nice with the stored spell state, which is the ability unique to the magus class in this playtest. They don't meanwhile limit the design space for other martial abilities like Spell Swipe that also want to make use of it.

The movement component, whether stride, step, or teleport, would follow the rules for subordinate actions in the sidebar on page 462 of the core rulebook. So a slide Stride would only trigger reactions when a Stride normally would, it doesn't gain additional traits etc. even though it was triggered by the Cast a Spell activity.

Likewise if you cast out of something's reach and then slide Stride through a threatened space, only the subordinate Stride action risks being disrupted by Stand Still/Impassable Wall Stance/etc.

Gonna state again here what I did in another thread, I strongly prefer the free action metamagic version over anything that combines the spell and strike into a single activity. It allows more interesting action sequencing and makes turns feel less samey.

I've been using a homebrew version for about a year that combines the spell with a free strike and the metamagic version is way cooler.

Put it in the center of your tunic and then Utena yourself.

"You can draw or return a weapon in a spirit sheath as an Interact action, as can anyone else holding the object bearing the sheath."

I read this as you can put it in your party member's armor while they're sleeping and then you can Utena them!

I really do like the versatility of Striking Spell with respect to when the spell may be triggered (ie holding a charge basically). One of the core improvements of 2e over 1e is the number of fun and viable things one can do on any given turn. If this worked more similarly to like the Eldritch Archer's Eldritch Shot (a 3-action activity combining the strike and spell cast), it pushes too hard to have combats that feel the same round after round.

It also opens up interesting archetype builds, like a Magus with LG Champion's Retributive Strike, where you can likely be discharging your spell on a reaction rather than a strike on your turn. That's amazing! I'd hate to see that sort of versatility in action sequencing replaced with something more vanilla where every turn ends up looking the same, just because it "felt more like 1e spellstrike."

I played an Eldritch Scion Magus in 1e that ended up getting converted to a Sorceress with a Champion multiclass dedication (and a homebrew spellstrike feat) in 2e.

I've now built an alt version of her using the playtest rules as Magus with Sorceress multiclass dedication and I'm pretty happy with how she looks on paper, though won't have a chance to play with her for another week or two.

Going deep into Sorceress feats (she's level 16), I can end up with 2 sorceress spell slots at level 1/2/3/4 and 1 slot each at 5 and 6, with the 2 magus slots each at 7 and 8.

I think there are certain feat lines in these playtest rules that are built with multiclassing for more spell slots in mind, things like Portal Slide or Bespell Strikes that require you to cast spells from slots and/or focus points so don't apply to cantrips. Since you can pick any spellcasting archetype it gives a lot of flexibility for the kind of spellcasting and character flavor that you want (even Eldritch Archer from the APG and then you can be a melee + bows magus).

For reference, my build looks like:
Magus with Slide Casting synthesis
2: Sorceress Dedication (Dragon bloodline)
4: Spell Parry
6: Basic Sorceress Spellcasting
8: Capture Spell
10: Portal Slide (my 1e char was a dimensional dervish build so happy to see this)
12: Expert Sorceress Spellcasting
14: Bloodline Breadth
16: Spell Swipe

The sorceress spells I picked are mostly interesting utility things that sound good if you read them as "Once/twice per day, you can cast ____." Stuff like Dimension Door, Invisibility, and Solid Fog. For the two signature slots, I went with bread-and-butter spellstrike options like Shocking Grasp.

As a trans woman who did a lot of her processing prior to coming out via roleplaying games, kudos to Paizo for both the LGBT+ diversity of their staff, as well as striving for authentic queer representation in the books and campaign setting. <3