criticalham's page

Aw, I had a big ol' essay typed up about this and you beat me to it. Honestly, I think the easiest, most straightforward fix is to just let Overclock Gear be a free action for spell-based minions.

That said, I actually don't know if this boost is even that useful until late levels. There are very few non-summon sustain spells on the arcane list. Only I was imagining, like, overclocking your summon, giving it some cool sustained buff, and launching it into the fray... but most of the interesting sustain spells are on the other spell lists. Instead, you're limited to, what, telekinetic hand? Figment? Detect thoughts? Seems like there'd need to be more interesting options to make it a bit more worthwhile.

Silly aside: All of this is sorta' predicated on the notion that ServoShell's boost option even works on summoned/spell-based minions in the first place, though. The overclock boost specifically says "whenever you Command an overclocked minion, you can additionally Sustain a spell as a free action"... except, technically, the minion trait ( https://2e.aonprd.com/Traits.aspx?ID=653 ) says that you use the Sustain action to control a spell-based minion, not the Command action. Obviously, this can't be the intention, since that would mean there was literally no way to use this ability without archetyping into something that actually gives you a permanent tech minion, but I just thought it was funny. :P

criticalham wrote:

MadScientistWorking wrote:

Why are there so many weird errata for grenades? Like Im only saying this because why was their an FAQ about reusing grenades?

Oh! Oh! I know this one!

At launch, there were a lot of complaints around how expensive grenades were for how little damage they did. There were a number of people rationalizing the prohibitive cost as intentional because there teeeeechnically wasn’t anywhere in the CRB that said grenades were consumed after use, so oooobviously you were meant to just pick them up and reuse them after battle. It was a stretch, for sure. Eventually, errata got added to clarify that they are actually consumed on use. Prices came down eventually, too. I think twice, actually? IIRC, I believe they dropped something like 55% around the time that Armory came out, and maybe even further later on, but I can’t recall exactly.

This is the answer, but I don't think prices dropped all that much.

Huh, you're right. I could have sworn the prices dropped, but that must have just been wishful thinking and/or me conflating errata with some homebrew that I played with. Or maybe... hopefully... a prophetic dream? Double-checked my old launch books, and the prices are the same as what's up on AoN.

EDIT: Oh! Some of the grenades changed, but not all. Shock Grenade Mk1 changed from 130 credits to 50 credits, Stickybomb went from 170 down to 80, etc... but Frag Grenade Mk1 (the first one I checked) was unchanged. So yeah, a pretty big price drop on some of them.

Why are there so many weird errata for grenades? Like Im only saying this because why was their an FAQ about reusing grenades?

Oh! Oh! I know this one!

At launch, there were a lot of complaints around how expensive grenades were for how little damage they did. There were a number of people rationalizing the prohibitive cost as intentional because there teeeeechnically wasn’t anywhere in the CRB that said grenades were consumed after use, so oooobviously you were meant to just pick them up and reuse them after battle. It was a stretch, for sure. Eventually, errata got added to clarify that they are actually consumed on use. Prices came down eventually, too. I think twice, actually? IIRC, I believe they dropped something like 55% around the time that Armory came out, and maybe even further later on, but I can’t recall exactly.

Oooooof, what a gut-punch. Firing Sara feels like such a colossal screw-up by Paizo management. I hope she and Diego both land on their feet! :( They've done so much for the forums and the community in general...

Good stuff! Lots of cool things in here. :D Glad that they didn't go the path of trying to make grit a thing, and I like the new version of misfires a lot. Wondering if I should run a demo scenario for my group to try these out...

(...) If you attempt to fire a firearm that was used the previous day and that hasn’t been cleaned and maintained since then, attempt a DC 5 flat check before making your attack roll. (...)

Oh, so guns auto-clean themselves after 2 days! I'm guessing that was supposed to be in "a" previous day rather than "the" previous day. Otherwise, you could alternate gun stacks to avoid ever needing to do maintenance. :)

Also, I wonder if it's intentional that gunslingers that use more than one gun have to spend extra time maintaining them all? It's probably not that big of a deal in practice (adventuring days rarely cut into morning prep time), but a dual-wielding gunner will typically need to spend 2 hours doing prep while all his party members (spell casters, etc) only need 1. It might be nice if gunslingers got some class ability to clean multiple guns at the same time.

Looks like no luck for me today, most likely. Ah well. Congrats to everyone who got theirs this week! :D

Huzzah! This will make 1e -> 2e AP conversion sooooo much easier. Guess I'll be spending tonight throwing some stat blocks together! :)

I might be wrong, but I think part of the reason why it is the weakest is because you’re not taking up an anathema. The anathema are effectively small character flaws/limitations that provide you with a boon, and picking Fury is opting out of that. I feel like it might be fine as is.

Core Rulebook, p.409. Atone ritual. Says “Heightened (5th)” when it should say “Heightened (+1).” If it caps out as at 5th level, then characters above 10th level would never be able to atone. The heightened entry is otherwise written correctly—if allowed to heighten up to a 10th level ritual (usable at character level 20), you would be able to target up to 20th level characters.

I very much agree that the bonuses/penalties are set up in a very confusing way, and how much more complicated it makes running the game. I get that they are trying to simplify down from Pathfinder 1e's 20+ categories (or even Starfinder's 10 categories plus untyped), but... maybe this particular split isn't quite right.

Specifically, I think it stems from the fact that "conditional" and "circumstance" are practically synonyms of each other. It's almost impossible to tell if any particular effect is going to be considered one over the other. And it doesn't even seem like the design quite agrees with itself!

If I just skim through the rulebook...

1) Conditional seems to include morale effects (barbarian's Rage, bard's Inspire Courage), stances, trained resistances (alchemist's Poison Resistance, monk's Diamond Soul, paladin's Divine Health), luck and divine blessings (Bit of Luck, Bless), and effects caused by conditions (asleep, blinded, deafened, drained, enervated, etc.).

2) Circumstance seems to include... cover, screening, morale effects (cavalier's Cavalier's Banner), racism societal training (dwarf's Ancestral Hatred and Giant Bane), innate/trained resistance (dwarf's Ancient Blood, halfling's Illusion Sense), innate physical abilities (elf's Keen Eyes), training (alchemist's Alchemical Savant), special techniques (fighter's various unique actions), perceptiveness/experience (ranger's Hunt Target, Monster Hunter, etc), and effects caused by conditions (asleep, flat-footed, dispositions, prone, etc.).

So conditions are usually conditional effects, except if they relate to positioning, in which case they are circumstance effects. Being asleep, on the other hand, provides both circumstance and conditional penalties. Most morale-type effects are considered conditional, unless they relate to your disposition or a cavalier's banner (huh?). Experience, practice, or training via your class/ancestry could provide you with either a circumstance or a conditional effect, but there doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason to which one you'll get.

So... I dunno. I like that there are fewer bonus/penalty categories to worry about, but this just seems to be the wrong split. I imagine the way to fix this would be to split the bonuses into more logical categories, even if they have to add a few more to the list.

Ultimately if I, as a GM, don't know for sure what category a bonus is, I should be able to make an educated guess during play. It's not a perfect suggestion, but maybe something like this could work:

- mental/morale (effects caused by alterations to your mental state--disposition, inspiration, rage, fear, blessings, etc)
- physical (effects caused by alterations to your physical state--poison, enervation, sickness, mutagen and magical enhancements)
- talent (effects based on training, skill, or innate ability--things like Hunt Target, Keen Eyes, etc)
- item (same as now; effects based on the quality or properties of your equipment)
- positional/environmental (effects caused by your positioning or imposed on you by the environment--cover, screening, darkness, flanking, prone, etc)

Obviously, any change to how stacking works would need to take into account how that alters the math and balance of the game, but there has to be a better categorization than what we've currently got.

Hm. I was hoping the wording was going to get addressed in the archetype update, but it's still just as vague as before. Does anyone know how multiclassing is supposed to work with wands/scrolls/staves?

You can use wands, scrolls, and staves, but only for spells of a spell level you can cast.

If a Cleric who can already cast 3rd level spells takes the Wizard dedication, can she now cast 3rd level arcane spells using a wand? Or can she only cast arcane cantrips through wand/scrolls/staves, since she doesn't know how to cast higher level arcane spells?

Good update, all-in-all, though. Looking forward to seeing how it all plays out at the table!