I don't know that arguing about particular class capabilities really helps the OP here. We simply don't know how their Kineticist is built or how they're playing.
I think building a Water/Earth or Wood/Earth kineticist focusing on filling a champion like-role could absolutely shore up this party, provide good cover and flanking for the rogue, etc. But we don't know if that's how they're built. The player could be an Air/Fire kineticist focusing on blasting from a distance. Likewise, a warpriest could be built as more of a tank, but they could be built using a bow. Given that the OP grouped their warpriest in with their casters, I get the impression that they are not focusing on the martial aspects as much - but that's all just supposition.
None of your party has more than a d8 hit dice and light armor (well maybe the Warpriest has heavier armor). I have questions about how the warpriest and kineticist are built, but this feels like a skirmisher group.
I think they're naturally going to always feel better against larger groups of lower level enemies. Their proficiency gaps and lower HP pools will feel better and the casts will have more opportunities to land both on single targets and having a wider range of outcomes on AoE targets. Keep your main villain (or villains) closer to party level and give them extra combatants who might not pose a significant threat themselves but which can significantly prop up the mains' longevity: lower level healers, creatures with defensive reactions, etc. Another option is hazards/terrain which make direct approaches unrealistic or that favors the villains enough that it's making them stronger despite equivalent "math." something like hazardous or difficult terrain that the villains can bypass or ignore inherently, but which the party will need to spend resources on to deal with.
Wylderhart is accessible without a specific boon. It would require 1 to 2 other small boons though.
Shining Kingdoms Character Options
"All options are of standard availability unless specifically noted otherwise."
Wylderheart isn't otherwise noted in the text, so you need to just meet the Prequisite and Access condition:
Prerequisites member of the Wylderhearts would be achieved using the Secondary Initiation boon (which allows you to be a member of any organization.
Access You’re from Kyonin. would be achieved by selecting Kyonin as your home region at character creation or the World Traveler boon (allowing you to count as being from a home region not your own).
I mean you can disagree with me all you want. This is an abstraction to begin with to create a structure to adjudicate the specific problem created in the scenario. Hand wave the described rules or not, as I said in my post, most parties may not hit the limit anyway. The scenario itself identifies two pools of resources -- food and water -- and makes no attempt to differentiate between types of food, their relative nutritional value, or says that one can be interchanged for the other.
If you are GMing and don't want to disambiguate food and water, that's on you. And I'm sure it'll be great. They're functionally just victory points. The scenario is written with the pools of each separate to create trade offs and choices within the context of the dungeon. If you want a single character to negate it all with a resourceless infinite ability then you can note that it works and move on. Or you could let that player cover half of the effect and give the other players something to do. The question was asked in the context of the specific AP. I offered my recommendation in that context having recently GMed it myself.
Given your fixation on nutritional realism, I look forward to your inevitable adaptation of a ketosis debuff for parties which can only subsist on a meat-based diets. Of note, the scenario does offer a small section of recommendations on how to handle the psychological effects (on players and characters) where parties might rely on sentient beings for food. Though you may be disappointed because it falls short of articulating how much water content could be extracted from such food sources.
Relevant to the AP, food and water are tracked separately. So even if you allow Fresh Produce / Base Kinesis to make edible plant matter with nutritional value capable of sustaining the party, the players still have a finite amount of water.
The survival elements of this chapter aren't necessarily a central plot driver, but seem to be more of a support to encourage forward momentum. The dungeon itself rewards sufficient quantities of food and water through progress, sometimes gated behind skill checks. There is even a scroll of Create Food later and mechanisms to make items to help deal with the problem. If you math it all out, the a party of four will have about 12 days of food and water by the time they hit the 'beach' which should stall them for 1-2 days until they reconstruct the raft or have the ability to swim / water walk long distances. The crew they find adds more survival pressure, reducing the available supplies to 3-4 days. But once you hit the beach, the sources of water increase (with the alchemy lab for desalinization) and once you clear the water the scavenging food also becomes trivial thanks to fish/crustaceans.
I think it's reasonable to let a Water kineticist negate water needs and a wood kineticist to negate food needs. A druid or cleric is also going to make this much easier on the party, though it does require them to burn what are probably top level slots to do so which may slow down progress through the chapter (in-game time). Players with high Crafting skills are also given the ability to help deal with the situation.
I think the point is: you can negate this problem and if you can it's totally okay. If most parties move at a "normal" pace, they'll never even run into the constraint so in that regard you could make a case for ignoring it. But it does create a sort of soft narrative pressure to move forward and makes more sense to introduce it as the situation unfolds when they get locked in instead of later if they start to slow down. When my party locked in, I just made it a point to explain that the food they have is the food they have and helped explain how it's not a crisis yet but it is something they should monitor. They've moved along decently (even resting once before the hitting the water) and have engaged with scavenging without it dominating the sessions. They used the scroll of Create Food to make a wand in the Essence Forge to help deal with the issue.
This AP is pretty good about giving page space to "what if my party does X or Y instead of Z." If you party moves fast, they may not need the survival elements anyway. If they ignore it and go slow, there's other text about how various NPCs and factions later will react to the party being slow.
I've got more to say about book 2 in general, but I wanted to share some adjustments I made to the Essence Forges after seeing them in action in Chapter 1.
Summary Changes:
Activate - Priming the Forge removes the requirement that the Forge has no essence in it. This prevents the double jeopardy of losing half the value on a failure, and then potentially losing the other half simply because it's not enough to craft what you wanted or having a failed crafting event for the secondary item.
Activate - Craft an Item now takes 1 hour, instead of 2 and can be done up to 6 hours with no penalty. Each attempt on hour 7 or 8 requires a Fortitude Save against the Item's DC or be fatigued for 24 hours (no rest option). Cannot craft beyond 8 hours. Four rolls against the target DC simply isn't enough for a player to reasonably get to 4 points consistently. 6 rolls boosts the EV for forge points to 3-4, and 8 moves it closer to 5-6. This lets players actually consistently craft their items with the maximum time investment (which is non-trivial during Chapter 1) and even have a shot of making something cool. They can gamble on the last two hours.
Activate - Craft an Item can now be done with an appropriate tradition similar to the Forge as long as the Crafter is also at least trained in Crafting. This lets other players participate and run in parallel. My summoner wanted to use the Matter and Life forges, using Nature, but simply could not participate. At five when he takes Crafting, he'll be able to do more if they're able to come back.
Activate - Craft an Item uses the DC of the item being crafted, instead of the base forge. This just feels like common sense. A level 3 item is DC 18 which significantly smooths out some of the issues. A level 5 is DC 20. Most of the recipes the players have are level 3-5 items. In the event they get higher recipes later, this makes the normal crafting progression relevant.
Rationale: When I read through Book 2 in preparation, I expected the Essence Forges to functionally work as a stand-in for shops and to let the Crafting rules play out a bit. On paper they appear to do this, especially since the players are given access to many basic recipes for items you'd expect players to want to buy in the levels of 3-6.
In practice, I found the forge is more of a casino, and therefore a trap to burn players time and money. If that's what they were intended to be, then that's fine, but as I said I wanted them to act as a reasonably reliable stand-in for stores and provide a compelling bit of downtime activity for how much page space their given. It'll get better over time, in theory, but for when the players encounter these and have the most access and time to use them they feel really bad.
The Problems:
Priming the Forge adds an additional failure point to the crafting process. DC20 isn't awful to hit, but consuming half the resources on a failure means that even a 55-60% success chance is going to eventually eat a good chunk of gold.
Crafting at the Forge has a few problems:
The flat DC20 is fairly unreliable for a level 4 to hit consistently. A player with max Int, trained in Crafting, and level 4 will only have a +10 to Crafting, +11 if they happen to have a +1 item bonus. The forge can provide that if your Primer crits, but that's not a guarantee either and realistically only happens about 5% of the time for players at level 4. All of this means that for all intents and purposes, assuming a player spends the maximum 8 hours to forge an item, they will only be expected to get between 2-3 forge points based on expected values across 4 rolls.
You need four points to make the item permanent. 6+ gets a crit success, but that's an incredibly low probability requiring most players to crit twice and succeed twice on something they're likely looking at 50% chance of success on. In practice, most players will need to make all 4 two hour attempts to craft an item with 4 forge points. There's only a 24% chance that a single failure will not not occur across 4 rolls when you have a 70% success chance of hitting a DC 2 (a +13/14 mod, level 8 trained or level 6 expert). That means 76% of the time, a player will need at least once crit to craft a permanent item. Most players will have lower success chance that that at levels 4 and 5. They'd be better off having a single roll for all 8 hours.
Crafting is the only skill you can use to actually assemble an item creates two conflicting problems. 1) With the DCs being as difficult as they are initially for a level 4-5, you will probably only end up with a single person being able to make use of time. 2) Reaching the water at area C creates a natural delay for the party to reassemble the barge. This can take a few days if your primary crafter uses the forge and only secondary crafters are able to make progress on the barge.
Actual Play Example:
My party has 4 people, three of which have crafting. The Wizard has crafting trained, max intelligence (+10). A fourth party member (a summoner) has Nature and the Herbalist dedication. A champion has crafting trained, and our rogue has crafting trained -- each with +0 or +1 intelligence (+6-7 mods). When they reached the water in area C, they decided to make camp there while they built the barge. This took the secondary crafters two days. During that time, the party decided to try to use the Forge to make a Rank 2 Wand with the Scroll of Create Food that the party found on the beach.
In this practical example, a level 5 item is a DC20 to craft anyway. The Summoner primed the Forge and failed on the first attempt burning half the cost of the item before any crafting was attempted. A 2nd Rank want is 160 gold, so this automatically meant that they only would have 80. They cannot restock this and would have to craft a 80 gp or less item instead of their intended item or waste this 80 g on top of putting another 160 in to gamble again on priming successfully. I allowed priming to be additive because their gold reserves aren't infinite and this was a definite feel bad moment if I'd followed the written Priming instructions.
Then our wizard crafter stepped in, having learned and prepared a Create Food spell the day before to fuel the requirements. I allowed our Summoner to use Nature to attempt to aid despite not having Crafting because our other two crafters were working on the barge all day (they were using the Matter Forge). In his first 2 hours, he succeeded earning a forge point. In his second attempt, he failed, earning 0. In his third, he rolled a 19, getting a 29 -- one shy of a crit. On his fourth, he failed but used a hero point to succeed.
This would be 3 points, effectively creating a temporary wand which could cast Create Food once in 24 hours before the wand would break (even if not cast). For 240 gold (150% of the wand cost) and costing a full day of the Wizard's time meaning he couldn't meaningfully contribute to barge construction. I ultimately decided to give the +1 bonus arguing the first "Prime" of the forge was from the NPCs and they'd crit to give all Craft attempts the +1.
The whole experience was nerve-wracking and would have felt awful to expend that much money and time while the players were actively making choices to try to engage with the dungeon content and problems being presented (resource scarcity). I didn't want to discourage that. Failure is okay and getting unlucky happens, but this was a nail-biter and felt like the system was rigged against the players trying to use all the tools at their disposal that they could reasonably summon in the limited time they had to know about the Forges (including Aid, etc).
There are a few things one probably should note, First is that First Edition actually did explicitly state that water blocks line of effect for all fire effects.
Second is one would expect wall of water to block all fireeffects, but it doesn't, Only counteracts.
We do have a few things that can deal fire-damage without being firetraited, Shadowblast for example. I also have memories of poisons/curses that deal firedamage and those wouldn't be removed underwater.
Overall, this is a really weird one to consider.
Tengu's Mariner's Fire ancestry feat allows the Tengu to cast Ignition underwater, but won't remove the 5 resistance the target will receive.
Blistering Invective is a spell which can do fire damage without having the fire trait. It does not have the Fire trait and is primarily mental spell with Auditory, Mental, Emotion, and Fear traits. It can be cast underwater and will apply Persistent Fire damage on all but a critical success from the target.
Under the rules for Assisted Recovery, a GM can decide that some things will "Automatically end the condition due to the type of help, such as healing that restores you to your maximum HP to end persistent bleed damage, or submerging yourself in a lake to end persistent fire damage," but this is an optional adjudication by a given GM. The 5 fire resist from being under water guards against any fire damage that can get through the usual restrictions and implications of fire underwater.
I think the intent is pretty clear that fire is meant to be mostly negated in a Water environment. There are some ways to get around that, and the resistance is in place for those instances.
For the specific question: if you detonate the fireball above the surface, I'd probably let it affect creatures in the water using the following rulings: if they are at the surface, I'd just give them the resistance; if they are submerged at all, I'd give them a +2 circumstance bonus to their saving throw due to Standard Cover in addition to the resistance, maybe going to +4 greater cover based on depth. If you detonate it under the water or at the water's surface directly, I'd probably rule it doesn't work.
This feels like the kind of thing that happens only occasionally in most campaigns (a GM might only have to deal with it once) or it'll happen all the time (you're in a heavily water/aquatic campaign), at which point if I'm your GM I'm probably asking why you picked Fireball in the first place over other options.
My party doesn't have any animal companions (we have an Eidolon for a Summoner), but Mr. Oats is an often talked about backup character as an Awakened Animal on our table.
There are definitely spoilers in the book; there's discussion about the troubles Talmandor's Bounty experienced during it's early years and the state of the town itself is a bit of a spoiler to that premise. I don't think anything I've seen hits the heaviest parts of the plot, but I'm also not the best to evaluate since I haven't played RoA. But reading SoB definitely builds on the region and the impacts of RoA are noted as relevant so I'd be careful here.
it has the ability Bond with Mortal, is the intention that it does this with the whole party if they pass the test?
"After making this promise, the Keeper establishes a special bond with the entire party and grants them the gift as noted below."
Is the special bond here the BwM? Or do they only get the listed boons in the Reward section?
If they get the BwM the ability says it only works with one person. So one PC?
Or none?
I just gave them the special bond (boons in the reward section w/ edicts and anathema), not the whole Bond with Mortal from the stat block. Granting a +2 status bonus to attack and damage and 20 extra hit points to any one party member is already really unbalanced and doing it to the whole party will definitely adjust a lot of the CR math. The text notes that the Keeper is weak, so I assumed the intent was for the whole party to get the special bond as a lesser form of connection. Using Bond with Mortal would also make the Keeper more vulnerable. We know it wants to end the Shadow and needs help to do it, but probably wouldn't place itself in a compromised position especially when they don't even know yet what's causing the problem.
Currently preparing to run this book this week and I was planning to put together a little map for when Inizkar and Tlaytin tell the party about Vil-Azmar. I noticed on p20 that it's referenced as NW of Talmandors Bounty by Inizkar at the end of Changing Plans and NE in Traveling to Vil-Azmar.
Ultimately I can just pick one but I was curious if its supposed to be the small island NE and in the top middle of the cover of the Ruins of Azlant map folio? I didn't play the AP so wasn't sure if that island had a purpose or not yet.
Any time a Pathfinder Society NPC or allied NPC provides a healing potion or heal spell (as a casting, wand, scroll, effect of a boon including promotional boon, or other similar effect), a PC who relies on void energy healing can receive an oil of unlife GMC pg. 258, APG pg. 258 or harm spell PC pg. 334, CRB pg. 343Player Core page 334
Core Rulebook page 343
(click to close) of an equal spell rank instead.
The player must make this request at the time the healing is supplied. Treasure found during the adventure and gifts from NPCs not affiliated with the Pathfinder Society are unaffected.
Note: Scrolls marked with an asterisk (*) can be chosen at higher levels, heightened to an appropriate level for the character. For example, a 5th-level character could receive a 3rd-rank scroll of heal.
So, Pathfinder Provisions are 1) an Pathfinder NPC, 2) providing you a casting of Heal, 3) in the form of a scroll. As long as you've got void healing, you can select the Harm version. Other party members cannot make that choice, but you can and hand it to someone else. And you can selected a heightened version just as the Heal choice can be heightened.
I don't really know what to tell you other than: I've played with several Skeletons at PFS tables and they've generally brought some self healing with them or potions they've handed to others to apply to them if they go down. Even if you can't cast it yourself, you can select a Scroll of Harm with Pathfinder Provisions and hand it to someone who can as an emergency. And it's sometimes an annoyance but generally isn't an issue. You can invest in things like a Channel Protection Amulet, which is accessible via a few scenarios and I think a purchasable boon to minimize your exposure to blocking 3 action heals.
The Skeletons and Undead archetypes are expressly Rare due to how complicated they are in a standard game. PFS has made it significantly more accessible to play as a negative healing ancestry with as many global changes as they can. But you're still opting into a harder mode and not all ancestries necessarily work equally well with all classes. I can't speak to why they decided to make Constructs living instead of constructed (though I can guess given that being a Construct has huge advantages and the fact that the rules for Repairing instead of healing would make them significantly more different).
I think you're also overlooking how many advantages you do get as a Skeleton PC: immunity to void damage (fairly common), immunity to death effects, bonuses against poison and disease, not needing to breath (PFS ruling), and arguably bleed immunity by virtue of not living (in the Bleed mechanic, not the undead side).
You're trading immunity to those problems that living Pathfinder's face for having more issues healing. You can really easily offset this with just a bit of work without it being a hindrance to the party. You could also investigate making a different kind of Exemplar which fights more from range to avoid some of the risks of constant damage in melee.
Now, maybe if we are looking for a more PFS specific issue, I have a question about the character build. What options are there in PFS for playing a skeleton (or damphir) and having healing options? What options I have been able to cobble together involve using up a good amount of feats and hoping to reach a high enough level for the build to kick in, and the intense consumption of consumables. The least feat and gold taxing option I can work out is to get Stitch Flesh to use treat wounds between fights, but then hope I don't get too beat up during fights.
Anything with access Harm (divine spell casters), so Divine Witches, Divine Sorcerers, Divine Summoners, Oracles, Clerics, and Animists. The Undead Sorcerer Bloodline and the Bones Oracle are also particularly handy. The former can allow you to heal allies with Harm even when they don't have Void healing or improve your own Harms on yourself. The latter can use Nudge the Scales to give yourself Vitality healing and to flexibly heal undead or living targets. Champions can now take Touch of the Void as long as you're not sanctifying holy, which is a significant level of flexibility that didn't exist previously. You noted Stitch Flesh, so any class with extra ability to invest in Medicine (and Battle Medicine) like Rogues or Investigators (especially Forensic Medicine). You may also want to grab the Robust Health general feat at 3 to ensure you can be healed by Stitch Flesh battle medicine more often. Any Occult caster can also get access to Soothe. It's not quite as good as Harm but it works.
An option to make Exemplar work would be to take Oracle Dedication at 2 and then Nudge the Scales at 4. Your vitality healing options would now work. It would take until level 4 to work though.
That "extra top rank slot" is limited to two spells. Oh, and at level 15+ it's reduced to a single spell. You at least get to spontaneously choose which one you want to cast before then.
Then there's spell quality. Getting to choose between 2 spells isn't great if one or even both of them are just bad or highly situational.
Sure, you can use the charges to spam a few lower level spells but even for those many are bad - or become bad as levels go on because they rely on damage, counteracting or have the incapacitation trait.
There's maybe 2 sins with a spell list that really benefits from those extra top rank slots at all levels.
The errata'd Runelord is barely worth dealing with the anathema. And only because the base wizard is somehow even worse, if more flexible.
I was going to point out that if you don't like your top level bonus spell slot, you could convert those points down into lower level spells (which is also flexibility), but you seem to be aware of that.
So instead I'll politely ask if maybe this archetype just isn't for you? I don't think getting *another* extra top level slot from those two spells is going to fundamentally change the issues you've got with the archetype if you don't like how the first one works.
The Runelord staff still functionally gives a Runelord an extra top level spell slot on top of them already having 3 + School spell. This comes in addition to the free advanced school spell feat at level 8.
Appropriate level staves almost never have on-rank spells attached so even with extra charges you can only use lower level versions (e.g. Greater Staff of Phantasms, a level 10 item, only has 4th rank spells available. Casters getting that at level 9 or 10 already have 5th rank and are about to get 6th).
Runelords effectively have a limited form of Spell Substitution (dedication ability), Staff Nexus (personal rune staff), and Spell Blending (extra top rank slot from the staff). I get being disappointed, but this is really fine. They're still thematic and strong for a wizard choice.
I'd like to see more action compression feats that other classes get / got in the Remaster. Defensive Advance (Stride, Strike, Raise Shield for 2 actions) is a good example of this added to the Champion.
Some examples:
Arcane Advance - Stride and Spellstrike for 2 actions. Leaves a third action for a recharge (conflux spell, etc) or Arcane Cascade. Could even make this only active while Arcane Cascade was already up.
Efficient Spells - A feat to let you recharge your Spellstrike when you enter Arcane Cascade but using some the spell energy.
Reflexive Cascade - you store a fragment of arcane power to be used at any time. When you roll initiative you can immediately enter arcane cascade as a free action, but it only lasts until the end of your first turn. You can reenter it as normal.
There's no guidance on warning players that they are about to break their anathema, so a player could cast a spell they believe to be well within their limits, and end up breaking their anathema due to the GM seeing it otherwise, leading to a very expensive Atone ritual to regain their class features.
A GM should always tell a player that an action they're about to take will violate their anathema and have consequences before allowing the action and applying the consequences. No one should need guidance. Players and GM's may disagree on what violates an anathema when it's vague. In the event of a disagreement, the GM can decide but should still communicate that to the player. There's no situation where a player should be ambushed with consequences. This isn't a game of chess where you take your hands off the piece and you're locked in. We've had anathema for awhile on lots of classes. This isn't particularly unique; it's just a variation on the old "making a Paladin fall" scenario.
Runelord players should bring up the discussion with their GMs beforehand, especially for spells which skirt anathema or lean into the vagueness of some of the phrases (e.g. no creation... does that include effects that persist for more than a round?). In the event a player prepares a spell that one GM has allowed in the past, and a different GM later decides isn't legal mid-game, I'd probably allow the player to swap it on the spot.
I think you might be underestimating the impact / effort of "someone at Paizo could just do the final approval part" and also the effort necessary to build that list in the first place but a community group. What happens when the first few encounters get stale because everyone's seen them and you want to add more? How do you document and distribute this.
This is fine for a home game, but it really would take more work and be more complicated to organize, communicate, and maintain than I think you're giving it credit for. And it's even more awkward if this all *doesn't* live in the scenarios themselves. At which point it's harder on GMs. I don't mind more role play and world building. I'd prefer it in games I'm playing. But I also don't think the organized play vehicle is the best way to do that if isn't a part of the scenario being offered.
Given the limited about of development resources for these scenarios, which may already be loss-leaders from a direct product standpoint, I'd be disinclined to spend time producing optional content. From a pure opportunity cost standpoint, I'd rather that effort be spent on adding an extra 2-3 hour scenario or two in a given season -- even if or especially if those sessions are lighter or more world building and less related to the metaplot.
I wish I knew sooner that there was an official thread to post such questions in. Anyway...
Players and GMs are supposed to use the remaster rules where possible. Does this include remastered monster stat blocks?
There's a great thread here on this topic with a bunch of very experienced GMs and VOs weighing in on the issue that you might want to look at.
That's SuperParkourio's thread. I believe they're asking here since they're hoping to receive some clarification from Org Play leadership and it would make sense for it to live on this thread if it did come down.
On the surface, there's nothing that indicates anything against the rules is happening here. It can be frustrating, but if it's an open public game and you can sign up but just don't get in on time it sounds like there's significantly more player demand than GMs. There's a problem if the GM is making a 'public' game but then explicitly never allowing public players to join, but there is also nothing stopping this GM from playing a PFS table privately. The issue would be advertising and running it as a public game if it's not. I'm not sure that's what's happening here, though, and I'd be loathe to just ascribe bad motives to the GM. This GM may just be putting up tables to run and they are simply filling up quickly.
I don't know your lodge, but is it possible there's a Discord you don't know about? There's a lot of ways these players can be finding out to sign up before you that don't involve private channels and such. At our lodge, a GM can put up a scenario on Warhorn and then often they'll drop a link in Discord. Each lodge/location is different, however. It may be there's a mechanism people use to communicate that you just don't know about?
If you can't get a hold of the organizer, have you tried contacting the GM and say something like: "I've been trying to get onto one of your tables the last few weeks but it seems like whenever you post it fills up so fast. Is there a way I can find out when you're posting or if you're advertising that it's up somewhere so I can try to join?"
You may also want to ask the game store you're playing at if they can help you get in touch with the new event organizer. I'd also advocate signing up for waitlists even if you don't get to play. At our lodge, wait-listed players can trigger calls for additional GMs and consistent wait lists can signal a need for potential growth to new tables in a given session.
"Your characters gain access to an uncommon heritage. Must have played PFS2 #5-08: Protecting the Firelight to download"
You just need to go in and download the Chronicle Boon on the character that played the scenario from your Organized Play section on your Paizo Account. There's no reason not to do so -- if the boon can be applied to another character it still needs to be bought on the one that earned it.
I don't know if Versatile Heritages have to be paid for with boons? I already have a Gnoll/Dhampir and a Gnoll/Nephilm and it cost nothing.
Dhampir and Nephilim (or Aasimar/Tiefling back in the day) were both boons for purchase too before the Remaster. With their inclusion in PC1 and PC2, they were made more available. This was also the case with several base ancestries. In general, the goal I think is always for things in the base game to be available without cost -- in this case PC1/PC2. It's part of the "Core Assumption."
Oread is covered by the boon: Geniekin Heritage
Geniekin Heritage wrote:
Build a player character with the ifrit, oread, suli, sylph or undine heritage found in the Lost Omens Ancestry Guide, or the ardande or talos heritage found in Rage of Elements.
Despite being Uncommon (usually an 80 ACP cost point), it's discounted to 40 because of recent Society activity exploring the planes.
I don't know if Versatile Heritages have to be paid for with boons? I already have a Gnoll/Dhampir and a Gnoll/Nephilm and it cost nothing.
Dhampir and Nephilim (or Aasimar/Tiefling back in the day) were both boons for purchase too before the Remaster. With their inclusion in PC1 and PC2, they were made more available. This was also the case with several base ancestries. In general, the goal I think is always for things in the base game to be available without cost -- in this case PC1/PC2. It's part of the "Core Assumption."
Awakened Animals are available in PFS with the purchase of a boon for Achievement Points (earned through play and GMing). Strix similarly requires a boon. They are both rare ancestries, so the cost is the same. Oread also has a cost associated with it, though much lower. Of the ancestries listed, only the Tengu option would be costless.
Thematically, I think Awakened Animal - Oread probably makes the most sense. Gargoyles have the Beast trait, as to Awakened Animals. Oread gives that earth elemental vibe. Strix/Tengu have unique cultural identity attached to it, whereas Awakened Animals are often more singular -- your unique backstory in this case is less of a deviation.
Aside from Necromancer's Generosity and Harm, what are the spells on the Divine and Arcane list you think that are missing on the Occult list? What would you add?
The bespoke spell lists like Elemental are forever stuck not expanding unless there's a lot of upkeep. It was a huge problem in 1e and is already a little problematic with the Elemental list. I don't see a bespoke list working.
I've said this in other threads, but I'm completely in favor of Occult for this list being the bridge between Arcane and Divine. It does a pretty good job of getting most undead themed spells. I also fully expect there to be more feats and abilities which empower spells with the use of a Thrall -- a sort of custom Spellshape for a Necromancer.
Overall I'd say that Bard is probably the better fit for what you need than a Sorcerer trying to also know everything. That said, here's an alternative approach that might fit the theme and roll your GM has asked of you without completely changing everything like switching to a Thaumaturge.
Reflavor/respec your Arcane Sorcerer into an Arcane Witch with the Inscribed One patron. It's not necessarily the strongest Patron, but more than servicable. The Hex cantrip directly contributes to not just you, but anyone in the party making better Recall Knowledge checks. You can even build your familiar out to help even more with Independent, Skilled, and Second Opinion familiar abilities. Being Int based will let you maintain stronger knowledge skills without fully sacrificing your defensive stats completely.
Since your Hex cantrip is less viable outside of Recall Knowledge, you can also pick up some alternative hexes like Lesson of Life to give you an on-demand heal to support the party. And/or invest in something like Loremaster dedication to give yourself a scaling 'General Lore' which keys off your primary attribute to cover the skills usually provided by Wisdom. Finally, your familiar's unique ability isn't great but the ability to periodically provide flanking might help out your many martials. In your party it may see more value than in other situations.
I'm making this thread just to ask that during consideration of this class that some additional support is provided to add Runes which directly support spell casting as much as there are runes for supporting melee. The previous Commander play test also had a 'support' style which heavily focused on melee support and so looking over the Runesmith's options currently, I can't help but say "I wish this did more to support spellcasting."
Certainly, reducing an opponents fire resistance does this, so I won't completely ignore that fact but I'd like to see some more general purpose runes that a Runesmith could inscribe on someone's staff or explorer's clothes which would do more to set them up to enhance casting.
Some examples might be: runes which impose circumstance or status penalties to specific saves when traced an/or invoked against targets, runes which 'draw' ranged spells and ranged attacks to a target when traced on them giving +1 circumstance bonuses to attack rolls of those types, runes which enhance the damage of spells from a person with them traced or etched on their gear.
These need not be dominant themes but a little bit more options along this line would be great and do a lot towards encouraging more teamwork to support spell casters as much as we have in encouraging players to support melee.
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Separately but somewhat related: I would love to see some kind of class archetype support in this book taking elements of the Runesmith and pairing it with Wizards, possibly as a Thesis option or even just a few new feats that stay on this theme. PC1 added some new feats for Wizards in the form of 'Spell Arrays' or runic sentences which provide bonuses that point to this potential overlap and integration. I'd love to see this concept extended and blended with Runesmith themes. This could even be a class archetype for Wizards giving them Runesmith like options for specific Runes that support spellcasting -- not dissimilar to the Spellshape concept but with more focus on runes.
Spell Protection Array: "You inscribe a circle of arcane runes that dampen enemies’ magic".
I completely agree with Occult being the best fit for this class spell list and don't want to see a Divine or Arcane option. Divine is traditionally the undead specific stuff, but Necromancers are also on the Arcane side. When you look at the wheel of everything, Occult is the one list which has the most overlap with the 'arcane' vibes of Necromancy and the 'divine' vibes of Necromancy. It's not perfect but it's the best fit for sure. I do think that some feats to extend the Necromancer's access would make sense.
I understand why they aren't in the play test but I hope to see feats to support the casting side of the class as well, like the following in the final version:
Sorcerer's Divine Evolution to grant a top level slot for Harm only.
Summoner's Master Summoner to grant extra top level slots for Summon Undead only.
Shadow Caster's Shadow Spells to grant access to thematic spells from the Arcane and Divine list like Necromancer's Generosity, Harm... and I guess any others that aren't already on Occult which I'm now suddenly struggling to find.
One of the things I'd like to see more of on the focus spells where the more thralls you consume, the more powerful you are. Variable action spells are usually cool, so if most grave spells had a variable thrall component (even a single boost for an extra thrall) it'd add some additional gameplay. Create a thrall to use a spell immediately, or create two and hope to use them next round, etc. It's trading actions on past rounds for benefits on later rounds.
I don't really think we need to be making stronger thralls -- I suspect we'll get some direct support for the Summon Undead play style at some point but they likely know what that looks like. Being able to summon an undead from a Thrall or using Thralls to empower a Summon Undead spell to keep it more competitive, or healing it, protecting it, etc. would be an easy extension of the base system presented here.
I don't think the OP is arguing or even suggesting anything about the in scenario use of the Crafting skill. The post seemed entirely focused on the use of the Crafting skill to use the Craft (Downtime) action in Society.
Crafting isn't useless, but it is bound in power to the point that the mechanical hoops it takes to get an edge out of it often isn't worth what you put in outside of a few corner cases.
Crafting in PF2 is most effective when 1) you don't have access to items via a settlement level or rarity and 2) you have downtime to really take advantage of creating items. These are usually campaign dependent and -- as you noted -- the global campaign really doesn't support those conditions well. We operate out of Absalom and on-level levels are always available. Uncommon and Rare items are more often controlled by chronicle access or AcP boons. And downtime for players is fixed. Everyone gets 8 days per scenario or 24 days per level. Using all that time for Earn Income nets X money (a small % over your overall net worth), and Crafting in that same time only gets some small % above that.
I think that crafting is balanced for Society play in general, but being balanced may not be fulfilling for the Crafting power fantasy. In general, I think for it to be more fulfilling, we'd need more ways for crafters to be able to use their crafting to access things. More boons for access to rare materials might help in this way, or even some crafting specific boons that allow someone to make an uncommon or rare item (but not just buy it outright).
I like the Influence subsystem in concept, but in practice it does leave much to be desired and you end up having to strategize the system itself instead of really worrying about what's being said to the person. The biggest trap is the opportunity cost between Discovery and Influence. You can't spend time chatting with someone to get to know how to Influence them because you can easily run out of time to do so, especially when you often don't know how many arbitrary rounds of dialogue you're going to get. And sometimes the success or failure conditions on those influence can be very binary (e.g. you didn't hit the threshold at all so you get nothing). And it's even more complicated when you've got to also juggle the strategy of that same opportunity cost on multiple NPCs at the same time.
There are also good chases out there. I like them mechanically because they do leave room for collective group success and sometimes they allow for choices which make sense. The little bit of strategizing on who goes first makes a big difference. I'd like to see more options on chase cards where a single action against a high DC (e.g. unlock a door with Thievery) might immediately allow the party to proceed vs. some other checks to navigate through a bunch of corridors or something. The crit success condition kind of does that, and with appropriate DCs it can feel good. But this is all in how it's implemented.
That's been my biggest takeaway. If the subsystem is designed *exactly* the way it's written, they work pretty well. But sometimes they're deployed in tricky ways with different assumptions in mind. That can run against what players expect when they encounter the subsystem. One example I can think of off hand is a chase where you're pursuing someone, but they aren't actually represented on the map. You cannot actually catch them. Each time you clear a block, the narrative is they're one step ahead. This can feel like a failure to the party but the system is actually designed just to measure how many rounds it takes to get through the obstacles with scaling of the next encounter based on that. The same is true of some of the more complicated influence scenarios -- influencing a single NPC is hard. Trying to do it to 4 at a time is even worse when you don't know at all what the victory condition is. In combat, I know I need to knock out, kill, or get my enemies to flee. In a skill challenge it's often not clear.
One thing I've tried to get better at as a GM is to tell the party up front "This will look like an chase/influence, but your goal is 'X'" especially if assuming it works like a regular chase or influence will result in a bad time. There's definitely a balance in trying to expose the mechanics of the system to make it clear while also not focusing on them so heavily that it removes the immersion and interesting options. And gauging how the party looks during the execution -- if they're feeling down by results try to encourage them especially if they're actually doing better than they think they are based on their expectations of the subsystem.
I'll point out that the opposite isn't true. The Sorcerer's Undeath's Blessing 1st level focus spell. "For the duration, harm and heal spells treat the creature as undead."
So if you just need a template to homebrew something akin, there's at least that as an option.
For what it's worth, at least for spontaneous casters we do have a truncated form of "the spells you know" and it's called a spell repertoire, not a spell list.
I think that if "your spell list" was meant to be the spells you *personally* know, whether in your book, your familiar, etc then they'd have given it a name like the repertoire. Further, classes with unlimited access to their whole tradition (clerics, druids) would have a ludicrous advantage over other classes.
I'll admit I think some of the language around "your spell list" is colored a bit by my experience from 1e and I think it's something of a holdover. Not explicitly but if you read from that perspective it seems intuitive and if you don't read from that perspective I can see how it's easy to take an alternative intepretation.
While I agree that certain "skill challenge" subsystems get overused, any time you roll a skill to do something, that's a skill challenge. Some of those are team based pass/fail, some of them are individual, some of them are subsystems.
I think you might be experiencing a problem with GMs who don't (or can't) take the time to really flesh out the skill challenges beyond the mechanics. Even the simplest form of "everyone gets a chance to do something" and there's a collective victory condition can be an opportunity to let people describe what they're doing. And a GM is well within their rights to provide circumstance adjustments based on those responses.
I'll admit that my delivery of these can range from explicitly "everyone roll something appropriate off this list" at the short end to trying very hard just to use narrative to explain what's going on and engage with each player to elicit their skill or work through the system.
Just for reference, the Core Rulebook equates a Spell List with the spells of a given tradition and notes that some classes can add spells from other traditions to their own, thus adding them to their list. Those spells become the tradition (e.g. a Divine Fireball for a Saerenite cleric).
Spellcasters cast spells from one of four different spell lists, each representing a different magical tradition: arcane, divine, occult, and primal.
Your class determines which tradition of magic your spells use. In some cases, such as when a cleric gains spells from their deity or when a sorcerer gets spells from their bloodline, you might be able to cast spells from a different spell list. In these cases, the spell uses your magic tradition, not the list the spell normally comes from. When you cast a spell, add your tradition’s trait to the spell.
Some types of magic, such as that of most magic items, don’t belong to any single tradition. These have the magical trait instead of a tradition trait.
I have not found this language in PC1 or PC2 yet though.
A spell list is just your tradition + any bonus spells out of your tradition you can learn as a result of a class feature (e.g. deity spells for Cleric, mystery spells for Oracles, bloodline spells for Sorcerers).
The spell on the wand just needs to be one you could theoretically cast either because it's A) on your tradition or B) you have access otherwise. For example, a Fey Summoner would have Primal + any spells which they'd otherwise be able to access via Fey Gift spells (Illusion and Enchantment). It's a little weird since the Remaster did away with spell schools, but I think you can get the idea.
Do NOT start with all the hazards triggered to make this a more "exciting" fight.
When I played this, we had 5 copies of the hazard on the board (high tier, 6 players: 1 x L4, 3 x L5, 2 x L6). The GM made an honest mistake and had them all trigger at the start of the fight (missed the line they only roll initiative after their reaction). This meant that in a single round we were being subject to 20d6 damage across five reflex saves. Burning hero points on saves and everything had most of us down to less than 1/3 health and an animal companion in a dying state in one round before most of us had gone. We players at the table were incredulous since it felt like there was no chance. On my turn I spent all of my actions trying to identify the hazards (I used Act Together to have my Eidolon and I both try to figure them out) and succeeded. Only two of our PCs had Religion or Occultism appreciably trained. Our GM allowed us to disable them from a distance and even with that I failed and so did the other player. Most everyone else either tried to close on the ghost, do some damage if they could, or heal if they couldn't do anything else. Round two was going to murder an animal companion before any of us could even go.
All this to say, if you're wondering what happens if they all trigger... it's basically death. We were all visibly frustrated at this point and I pulled the GM aside to confer. We found the issue and rolled back the damage from round 1 to keep the fight going (accepting that we'd spent round one healing/spending actions and hero points) and in the next round only had the two active which should have been on as our party had advanced to the docks. I haven't read the scenario in full yet to GM, but based on what I saw it seems like the spirit is probably meant to lead you around the lake a bit, staying out of range until people close and then moving to the next. But yes, if the party has no way to turn these off they will absolutely murder everyone quite quickly if they activate to many at once.
This post reminds me a bit of this other post about there being to many leaders in the Society, to the point that it's difficult to get connected to specific faction leaders.
I've been playing since 2014 and feel a bit similarly to you -- especially over the last few seasons (3, 4, and 5 specifically). The metaplot simply hasn't captured me in the same way that other seasons did. Even Season 1, which had a relatively soft metaplot, felt like we were reopening and exploring things for the society as a whole.
My favorite arcs so far have not been metaplot related (season 2 being the exception), but are instead continuous development arcs where we're either exploring new things or dealing with the aftermath of major world events: the three Pallid Peak scenarios, exploring the Azlanti ruins of Blackwood swamp, or exploring and dealing with the aftermath of emergence of the Gravelands. Season 2 felt similar in that we were focusing on exploring and dealing with our own exploration of the Cyclopean ruins in Iobaria. Even when that metaplot had us in other regions, it generally tied back to that exploration.
I think back to PFS 1 seasons and they felt similarly more tied to a theme than any particular NPC. Season 4 was all about ancient Thassilon and it allowed you develop strong feelings about Shield Heidmarch. I'm hopeful for this season since it ties so heavily into the Godsrain and is also continuing arcs like the Mountain of Sea and Sky (also loosely connected to Forest of Spirits).
All that said, I can certainly accept that my brain is tinged with a certain amount of nostalgia for some of the earlier seasons and it may also be that I'm missing a lot of the rougher edges. So I'll just emphasize that I'd like to see more development along stories where the Society is actively exploring new regions / ruins that might not be tied to the meta plot of a given season.
I've tried an Organsight build before and it's neat when it works but the limiting factor is that it's not actually a buff to you, but a spell cast on the target creature. So in practice unless you're going up against one big thing that's going to last multiple rounds you tend to have a lot of set up to knock something out quickly. And if you are going up against that one big thing, it's probably higher level than you and might even be rare or unique which makes landing the medicine check difficult and the subsequent strike to deliver the persistent damage.
Several of the other backgrounds from the BB made it into the Player's Core 1, but not Deckhand. The Sailor background gives the Underwater Marauder feat, but that is not a good fit for a character that was more focused on staying above the waves. According to the AON website, Deckhand is limited, and requires a boon to unlock. I don't see any rational reason for it to be limited like this, nor can I see any way to get a boon that would unlock it.
By any chance was this a mistake? Should the PFS option be Standard rather than Limited?
It's a Chronicle boon for playing the scenario.
PFS (2ed) Adventure: Menace Under Otari (Beginner Box) wrote:
Access to the Deckhand background. Must have played at least one level of Menace Under Otari to obtain.
I can further confirm that the full text of the boon allows it for all of your characters once you claim the boon. So it's a very low barrier to entry and probably meant to encourage the Beginner's Box.
It's probably worth noting that if Vapor Form conveys immediate ability escape, it's actually better than Unfettered Movement for most tactical purposes and therefore more versatile in a single spell slot.
A player under Vapor Form could 'automatically escape', Stride or Fly away with Resistances, and then dismiss the spell.
As it is, Unfettered Movement still requires the player to spend the action to escape, it just becomes an automatic success but does incur the MAP penalty and that doesn't put them any further from their opponent.
If you do decide to let Vapor Form grant a bonus to escaping, I wouldn't let it be automatic and probably mimic the Unfettered Movement function. I'd probably only allow Escaping (bypassing the limitation on Attack Trait actions) and doing so with a circumstance bonus as best - maybe +1 or +2.
Both are 4th level spells with similar durations (minutes) and a range of touch. In a situation where a player may get Grabbed over and over, the Unfettered Movement is superior, but for a quick escape Vapor Form would be much better to prepare.
There are several feats that make it quite clear that 'Command an Animal' on a minion is intended to happen exactly once per round. This is in addition to the general text of the Minion tag.
Companion's Cry is featured on a number of classes and archetypes and provides a way to extend that single Command action to grant additional actions at a worse rate of return (1 for 1 instead of 1 for 2). Inventor also has this feature baked into the Construct innovation.
Other feats also note the one time use of Command an Animal like the Druid's Instinctive Support which provides a unique benefit to commanding quickly, but still limiting to 2 actions.
Your proposed example is simply too good to be true. The power of Cavalier's Charge is that you're getting to combine 3 actions in a unique order (the Strike occurs) in the middle of the two Strides by the mount. As noted in this thread, minions can only have 2 actions a round, taken when Commanded unless you have an ability that explicitly lets them receive more.
I think, generally, the rules don't support a familiar going off an reconnoitering a hex on their own. Animal Companions and Familiar's don't really get separate exploration activities from their masters. That said, I agree it feels like something a player should be able to invest in. I'd consider creating a familiar ability similar to the other assistive ones like Ambassador, Second Opinion, and Partner in Crime.
Spotting Partner:
Your familiar is particularly good at helping you scout unfamiliar terrain. When you use the Reconnoiter activity in hexploration, your familiar assists your efforts and provides a +1 circumstance bonus to your checks to find hidden special features, or +2 if you're a master in the associated skill. Your familiar must have Share Senses and a movement speed appropriate for the terrain (Swim, Flight, Climbing, etc), as determined by the GM.
Doing this would allow a player to derive a benefit from their familiar, and it's made with a significant choice because if an encounter happens during the Reconnoiter, the familiar won't have other powers to lend to the player that day. Further, this keeps the familiar and caster working in tandem and doesn't split them mechanically. From a narrative perspective, they'll range apart briefly, but for any shift to encounter mode during the day you can keep them together.
As for spells: I'd probably let the use of a non-trivial spell or resource expenditure to abstractly grant a circumstance bonus to a Reconnoiter or Map the Area check or count as an automatic success in some cases. It's not strictly necessary to say the spell is doing all the work and most spells are written with encounter mode or exploration mode (not hexploration) in mind. It could be that as your player is Reconnoitering, they see something in the distance and use the spell to help get a better look before proceeding farther.
