egindar's page

This is something of a tangent, but I wonder how useful it might be in general for a PF2e player to have "MAP dice." As in, an icosahedron numbered -4 to 15 for MAP-5 (with appropriate markings on the -4 and 15 to let you know they're the equivalent of natural 1s and 20s respectively), and something similar for MAP-10. Different colors so you know which one is which more easily.

Might be a little too much if you need additional dice for agile weapons or flurry ranger MAP, though.

If a class that has more (mutually exclusive) build options must be balanced to be weaker than a class with fewer build options, what does that say about printing new build options? Should (e.g.) champion have been retroactively nerfed with the post-CRB release of the evil causes?

Seems like classes that have more options printed for them in new books (which is mainly the core ones) would become more and more over-budget as time passes, relative to classes that see fewer new options.

Say you design a class with no class feats, but at even levels it gets one pre-set feature catering to a melee striker role. Would you then need to ratchet up its damage significantly higher than fighter or barbarian simply because it has less build versatility?

A class with a single list can get more bespoke options for that list, but that doesn't mean you can't bake in the same amount of power into list-agnostic options. I think you could give a wizard the occult list and not see any major difference in power.

Thinking about it from another angle, why should pick-a-list matter? It's a choice made at character creation, like class or ancestry; once it's locked in, you don't get any extra versatility from the options you didn't pick. It'd be like making a martial with twice the normal amount of class feat options (not class feat progression, just options available) and then making it noticeably weaker because it needs to pay for having 10 options to pick from for its 1st-level feat instead of 5.

Hmmm, that's true, and I hadn't considered until now that that would also rule out using reaction Strikes to get the damage bonus twice in a turn. The Ready activity does allow you to change the base cost of actions, so a Readied Strike would be considered a Strike as a reaction without a containing activity, but it's not compatible with using Support for other reasons.

You might be able to get off a reaction Strike mid-Stride in some narrow contexts. So the horse would Support and Stride, then 10+ ft into the Stride, a reaction attack is triggered, then the Stride goes for at least another 10 ft before finishing, and you Strike again as 1 action. Whether the Stride counts as "the action before" the 2nd, non-reaction Strike is a little dubious but I think it works with the RAI of the Support feature.

egindar wrote:

It'd be limiting functional reload compatible with Spellstrikes to 1-2 times per fight.

Doing Spellstrike + conflux, then Spellstrike + reload, then recharge + Spellstrike is still 3 straight rounds of Spellstrike plus the Stride (or whatever the conflux spell ends up giving you), which is about as much as what the bow magus can expect (Stride + Spellstrike, recharge + Spellstrike, recharge + Spellstrike).

If you're opening with a True Strike Spellstrike, then you only get two full rounds before things break down (True Strike + Spellstrike, conflux + Spellstrike), but you'd get the free Stride over the Starlit Span magus (True Strike + Spellstrike, recharge + Spellstrike).

After both these points the gun magus has a harder time, but it's using stronger weapons and Starlit Span is already pretty high up on the power curve; I think it's fair to ask for something in exchange for the higher weapon damage. You're still not that much worse off than a melee magus, who doesn't get the baseline expectation of turreting with Spellstrike every round.

but... only like 4 guns actually have higher than short bow damage and only one has higher than longbow damage, and given that composite bows give the option of adding str to damage, a normal hit from a 0 reload gun will still be less damage than the normal hit with a bow, the only advantage guns have is comes from crits, in 90% of combats if you are spell striking with a gun, you will either not crit so its exactly the same, or you will crit on something that would have died anyway... so its exactly the same, the only situation where the gun is actually better in practice is when you crit against a foe who would not have died to a crit bow spell strike anyway which is already an absurd amount of damage.

Building Str on a ranged magus is not an insignificant opportunity cost, and firearms can get kickback. A 14-Str magus wielding a harmona gun is doing Xd10+1 instead of Xd6+1. Not sure why the proportion of guns that beat out shortbow matters; you could look at other non-reload options for Starlit Span and compare those to d4 and d6 firearms if you want to compare sub-optimal options to each other. The game tends to balance around the power ceiling and not the power floor or power median.

I would also like to point out that by making it a custom action as I proposed, you cannot use conflux spells like bows can. It would also cost a feat, so them being slightly better per hit - if at all - than a bow that needs no feats isn't bad design, that's completely normal. And as Kekkres pointed out, bows are still objectively better for when you don't want to or can't spellstrike, which happens fairly often.

Therefore guns wouldn't actually be a straight upgrade, like bows objectively are currently.

Making it a conflux spell on the other hand is bad design, as walling off viability behind resources other than feats is neither fun nor balanced. You might as well tell the magus to throw their weapon away after 2-3 turns, which is barely a moderate encounter at best. Just no.

A ranged magus that needs to reload their firearm and recharge Spellstrike separately isn't suddenly useless. You "only" get 2-3 turns of full-time Spellstriking out of combat, which is bad when measured against a baseline of Starlit Span doing it every single turn or almost every single turn, but 2-3 consistent rounds of Spellstrike up front and then getting alternating rounds of Spellstrike afterwards is honestly better than what melee magus can expect IMO. It's not as if you lose the ability to do so after the 3rd round, you just can't do it on the 4th round.

Regarding "you cannot use conflux spells like bows can" - I've found it difficult to fit Shooting Star into the bow magus' routine. Yes, it's "free" relative to simply recharging, but it's a choice between -5 on the Spellstrike or making Shooting Star's Strike at -10. There's Force Fang, but I wouldn't consider it so stellar that it would make the difference between a shortbow and a harmona gun or jezail.

It'd be limiting functional reload compatible with Spellstrikes to 1-2 times per fight.

Doing Spellstrike + conflux, then Spellstrike + reload, then recharge + Spellstrike is still 3 straight rounds of Spellstrike plus the Stride (or whatever the conflux spell ends up giving you), which is about as much as what the bow magus can expect (Stride + Spellstrike, recharge + Spellstrike, recharge + Spellstrike).

If you're opening with a True Strike Spellstrike, then you only get two full rounds before things break down (True Strike + Spellstrike, conflux + Spellstrike), but you'd get the free Stride over the Starlit Span magus (True Strike + Spellstrike, recharge + Spellstrike).

After both these points the gun magus has a harder time, but it's using stronger weapons and Starlit Span is already pretty high up on the power curve; I think it's fair to ask for something in exchange for the higher weapon damage. You're still not that much worse off than a melee magus, who doesn't get the baseline expectation of turreting with Spellstrike every round.

What about a conflux spell that allows you to Interact to reload and then maybe do another minor thing like Stride? Should limit the issue of Spellstrike + recharge that would come up with a non-conflux recharge + reload action.

Surprise surprise! GMs have a huge amount of power and responsibility in PF2 to make sure everyone is having fun. Yep, GMs can ruin the lunch of a conjurer. They can also ruin the lunch of any player.

This is true for everything in the game, but it misses the point being made when someone says something varies by table or subject to GM fiat. There are reasonable assumptions that can be made about how the game is being played/run, based on what the rules say and how clear they are about what the game expects, among other things.

All these situations lie on a spectrum, as most things do, and arguing that they're all somewhere on that spectrum of GM choice misses that the distinction people are making isn't literally between two binary states of "affected by GM choice" and "not affected by GM choice," but between two broad sections of that spectrum.

A GM can ruin the lunch of rogues and swashbucklers by exclusively throwing precision-immune enemies at the party, but doing so is incredibly unlikely without a deliberate effort on the GM's part to screw them over (or a heavily themed campaign/plotline, in which case the fault would be more on the GM for not warning the players some classes may not be suited for it). A GM could also prevent martials from buying fundamental weapon runes and not drop any in loot, but this also requires more effort than normal and goes against the game's stated expectations for play.

On the other hand, which allies the GM has enemies target is something that has fewer guidelines and is going to vary more significantly with playstyle.

I should also say, the list I gave isn't exhaustive, just what I could think of off the top of my head. I think it's easier to treat them as meat points in a game that's not meant to be realistic than it is to try to rationalize every single feature as representing luck and dodging.

For Pin to the Spot and bow critical, you're assuming the combatants are wearing armor/clothing; these work the same regardless of whether you're using them on a city guard or a dire wolf. I can kinda see your points with the other stuff, but I think it's a stretch.

It seems like your last sentence is conceding the point, though? That these represent real wounds but you heal up just fine.

What you lose in terms of hit points are in terms of the game world near misses, scratches and glancing blows, with that actual "goes through your guts" blade being the final hit that reduces you to zero. It's an abstraction, always has been.

This also explains why PCs function at full capacity even after losing 99% of their HP.

In PF2e the abstraction does represent "meat points" in a lot of ways, though. Hard to abstract away bleed effects (and persistent damage in general) and features like Dazing Blow or Pin to the Spot or Impaling Finisher or bow critical specialization as "near misses" or "glancing blows."

Heroes in Pathfinder simply shrug injuries like that off (if they're not dropped to 0HP by them) and can recover fully with under an hour of medical treatment; it's a fantasy combat game.

ABP should make the draw-fire-drop tactic even more viable, no? You lose out on property runes, but you could carry a bunch of dueling pistols, take Quick Draw, and now you're firing guns at the rate of a bow user.

A pretty needed nerf though, I'd hope you agree.

I can see why Paizo would be concerned about it from that angle, but I think it would have been fine to make it stronger than it is and leave a note somewhere that GMs shouldn't use it against PCs. It's a little clunky, but that's already how they handled targeting mounts as a strategy.

Scarablob wrote:

Unicore wrote:

It is not quite that yes or no. Many casters get a feat a level 1, but it is chosen for you based on a choice you make about Druid order, bard muse, wizard thesis, cleric doctrine, etc. the free floating level one class feat is more of a martial thing, but if you really want another level 1 class feat, you can get one as a human.

A slight tangant here away from the martial/caster balance, do people generally agree that there is a big disparity in usefullness in ancestry feats? They generally seems to be around "skill feats" power wise, but a few ones are seems much more powerfull.

Humans feats in particular, when compared to most other ancestry. Uncommon weaponry give you access to pretty much any weapon, and make it automatically scale with your class weapon scalling, while all the "X weapon familiarity" necessitate 2 feats to actually scale that way, and you have to wait all the way until level 13 for it to work. It seems quite unbalanced to me, but I may be missing something.

Your overall thesis here holds, but your example is poor. Unconventional weaponry only offers a single weapon (as opposed to the racial weapon proficiency feats, which offer a selection). Also, many (though not all) of them have built-in scaling as well. Finally, ancestral weapon access feats usually come with a follow-on feat that offers crit specialization in the weapon in question, which unconventional weaponry does not have.

But yeah, it's true that some feats are just worse than other feats. It's not just ancestry feats, either. Some of the class feats out there are just terrible.

Yeah, but most characters are only going to use one kind of weapon, and they can pick exactly what it is with Unconventional Weaponry. Fair-ish point about crit specs, but many classes get crit spec automatically.

Humans can also take General Training for Weapon Proficiency if they want access to a wider array of weapons, although unlike the [ancestry] Weapon Familiarity feats, they won't be able to scale it up at 13th, nor will they have scaling access to uncommon goodies at the same time.

imaginary weapon is a great cantrip, unfortunately the amp is not good with starlit span as they are the only magus who cant spellstrike the amp with their primary weapon (theres a feat where you can use 3 actions to make multiple spellstrikes if the spell allows it, which does not work for ranged weapons unfortunately)

besides that its still a solid dedication for some cool spells

Gunslinger gives some intersting weapon options but consider that reloading and spellstrike recharge can be iffy to manage at the same time

Archer is also very solid to give yourself some more bow tricks

it might seem redundant but the eldritch archer offers some intersting options too, you should consider an unarmed laughing shadow magus for that instead, it basically exchanges flexibility in using the spellstrike in ranged for better melee spellstrike, extra spells and some magical arrow moves

Amped Imaginary Weapon works fine with Starlit Span; you just can't attack two enemies at once. All that base Spellstrike requires is that the spell is 1-2 actions and requires a spell attack roll. The Spellstrike Specifics section calls out that "the spell targets only the target of your Strike, even if it normally allows more targets," as in you can use multi-target spell attacks, but they lose the multi-target option

Another thing I haven't seen mentioned here is how absurdly better Investigator is with ranged weapons compared to melee. Their action economy is extremely tight, their core feature extensively benefits from the possibility of re-targeting, and their MADness doesn't really alow you to invest in Strength properly, meaning melee and ranged builds do basically the same damage, except ranged is much better at everything else (including using some of those super strong Magical Ammunition options from TV). Melee Investigator is screwed from so many sides at once that I'd almost call it one of the few trap options in the game.

And the core fantasy of the class seems to be "discombobulate". Rapiers and sword canes are probably their two classic weapons, flavor-wise. So bows being such a better option feels pretty bad.

This leans further into the whole "ignore the class' intended flavor" issue, but if you're building Str you can just drop Int to raise other stats instead. DaS swapping Int in is optional; you do lose out on Strategic Strike, but if you're going 2h Str you don't need it because it exists to compensate Dex melee for its low damage.

In such a case, the melee build still loses out on stuff like special ammunition, but all of its Strikes deal damage equivalent to that of the bow WITH Strategic Strike.

If you have a normal weapon in the other hand, you could hotswap the weapon implement out by using your second implement's action to retain Implement's Empowerment, although obviously that only leaves 1 action to actually Strike with the bonus on the other weapon.

Ah, double-checked the forum archives - this was explicitly outlined by someone else on the forums almost exactly two years ago, and I forgot where I got it from. Credit to Gortle for coming up with it here.

I've seen this with alchemist conversations a few times, too. Not sure what to call it other than a "null class" argument.

Hypothetically, say you had a class with absolutely no features whatsoever other than typical martial proficiencies, and then give it class feats, but don't actually print any options for it, so it has to spend them on archetypes instead.

In the hands of a competent player, this is actually a pretty viable class. It won't have anything flashy, and it'll still pale in comparison to a real, full class, but you can eke out solid contributions both in and out of combat.

But the viability of such a class/build type shouldn't be used as a defense for the strength of a class that has to pull out the same tricks that the "null class" would - in fact, it should seem like an indicator that the class has problems.

That works RAW, yeah.

The fortune trait says "If multiple fortune effects would apply, you have to pick which to use." For True Strike + DaS it seems pretty clear that you'd be able to pick, then.

This can't/doesn't apply in the case of activating a second post-roll reroll ability, and as seen with feats like the thaumaturge's Turn Away Misfortune, the expected ruling seems to be that benefiting from a fortune effect like Turn Away Misfortune counts as having "picked" it, so other fortune effects triggered later are retroactively not picked and do nothing.

One thing that really struck me when GMing for a player with an investigator is how much I could control how powerful it is or isn't. The class never became a dominant power house, but with more liberal readings of Pursue and Devise and with gameplay sections that focused on more singular narratives, these two abilities could work together every fight against almost every opponent.

...

Out of combat it fares better, but a lot of its features and feats don't feel that significant, or feel redundant with simply good GMing and adventure design, so I'm not sure that really makes up for it (indeed, in some respects it feels like I should be GMing worse with an Investigator so they can take advantage of those feats).

These both strike me as pretty true, as well. Running for an investigator, I ended up allowing Leads to be broader in scope than suggested, so DaS was often free against multiple creatures in a fight at the end of a story hook, and it still wasn't particularly powerful.

That investigator also took That's Odd and a lot of the time I'd use it to spoonfeed the plot to them if possible, or introduce little roleplay/lore details about the NPCs in the room if I didn't have anything salient. I actually liked that aspect of the class a little, as it suited the table's play style and reminded me a little of what I like about PBTA systems, even if the plot-relevant stuff boiled down to the party finding the same things they would have anyways, just with the investigator called out as the one who found it specifically. I think I don't really mind that illusion of niche because it's more or less what happens with any skill check I include in my plotlines; they still need to affect the narrative (but the narrative can't rely entirely on success or failure), and it's nice if they're geared towards a specific PC's niche to let them shine.

1-action DaS with a polearm can still sorta be used if you have multiple viable targets without moving, I think. Sort of like Exacting Strike on a MAP-0 attack or True Strike. Haven't seen anyone do it at the table, though.

But I was about to say something similar, yeah, where something that frustrates me is it feels like investigator is heavily incentivized to play against type. I picture the classic character archetype of investigator using a single 1-handed light melee weapon, or firearms/crossbows, but for melee, 2-handed Str is obviously more effective unless you need the hand free for Forensic Medicine or something similar, and for ranged, bows are supreme because there's not much support for Reload.

For guns, it's honestly probably as simple as adding a 1st-level feat that lets you Reload upon using DaS, maybe with a prereq gate to prevent it from working with the MCA. I think Strategic Strike needs to be rebuilt more heavily to accommodate the Dex melee issue though.

I really have but a simple wish: Ancestry, heritage and class design rules. Not guidelines, rules. Under which all the currently released and future official ones are rules-legal.

I think it's enough of an art over a science that you're never going to get rules that fully describe classes this way. Heritages seem a little easier, ancestries are somewhere in-between.

There's obviously a few guidelines for classes that they cleave to pretty strongly, but when comparing something like swashbuckler's panache and finisher system to barbarian's rage there's not really a 1:1 throughline like with HP or save scaling. And maybe the panache/finisher system is deliberately weaker/narrower and swashbuckler is compensated some other way (using swashbuckler as an example here, not making actual claims); that flexibility/improvization in design isn't something that's easily put on paper.

It seems like sometimes in playtests they say "there's a window of acceptable power here and we shot on the low end of it, but feedback feels like there's something missing - so we could print it as-is, or we could add a little extra oomph with a minor class feature and still remain within that window while satisfying players."

I think the monk is a pretty positive example of a class inspired by Asian tropes that avoids negatively representing those tropes. Building a whole class out of a character archetype like that allows you to give them more variety and room to breathe than if you just said "build an unarmed fighter/rogue" or "make it an archetype;" it's the same reason why we have swashbuckler and investigator instead of particular fighter or rogue builds. Even now, there's no reason why you couldn't make your unarmed rogue character be a monk in-story, but I think the game would be lesser without having monk the class.

I have pretty good confidence in Paizo to be able to thread that needle with similar concepts, although I agree that it probably shouldn't be Ninja the class name/flavor at this point and something a little broader.

That said, what I'm mainly interested in seeing myself right now (as far as specifics beyond a more general larger-than-life wuxia-/anime-trope-inspired abilities) is the iaido unsheathe-Strike-sheathe fighting style, and an option that enables a martial to throw fulus/ofuda as weapons, possibly with various rider effects. Both of those could be accomplished with archetypes for the most part, even if I think they'd also work as class paths within larger class concepts, so I'll be happy if they or concepts similar to them are there in archetype form too.

I don't take lot of incapacitation spells. They are terrible in this edition even with an effect on a success. That rule doesn't seem well thought out to me. Most lower level creatures won't be affected by the incap trait. Most higher level creatures will succeed getting a critical success, so you're kind of bypassing the success benefit in most incap spells. It makes using them against boss level enemies risky and pointless.

Multi-target incap is pretty good since you want to use it against weaker enemies anyways. Functions similarly to AoEs but failure can take the enemy out of the fight instead of chipping away at its health.

I'd like there for there to be a place in Pathfinder for both fantasy representations of pan-Asian real-world cultures, like these books seem intended to be, and for anime-inspired adventures and options. I don't see a reason you can't do both, time and resources permitting of course.

I can't claim to speak for all Japanese people, but as a Japanese person I never really had a problem with historically-inaccurate representations of samurai or ninja or the like, provided they came out playing and looking cool, and that seems to be a common sentiment among other Japanese people I know (again, speaking anecdotally) - it's of course never impossible for any concept to be handled poorly, but I think the threshold is higher than people tend to imply. As others have mentioned, we don't hold treatments of European culture/mythology or Christian concepts to nearly the same standards.

And as a notable exception to this, Cast Down requires either kind of font, but applies to all Heal and Harm spells you cast, even if they don't come from your font. So you can take it with a Heal font and use it exclusively with Harm prepped to your normal slots.

Support says "If the animal uses the Support action, the only other actions it can use on this turn are basic move actions to get into position to take advantage of the Support benefits," which isn't the same as not being able to act after using Support.

It's a little wonky and wasn't written with the rootball chair in mind, but I think Striding after Support is pretty clearly using a basic move action to take advantage of the Support benefits.

Leomund "Leo" Velinznrarikovich wrote:

Actually, it could conceivably happen. A level 14 fighter that has taken only wizard dedication and basic wizard spellcasting puts on a ring of wizardry IV. Do they get the two level 4 slots?

That is as corner-case as it gets. And honestly, I would invoke the factor that, without the Expert Spellcasting feature, you lack the ability to cast 4th level or higher spells, so having access to slots you can't cast from does nothing.

You can't cast spells from a Staff that are 4th level or higher without that feature, as you are unable to fulfill the "appropriate level" clause, so expecting yourself to magically "gain slots" of a level you can't cast without a feat, and therefore magically let you use the Staff's spells, again, without a feat, is a level of shenanigans that the Ring simply doesn't account for.

You'd have more luck using Trick Magic Item to activate the Staff over this, because the level of cheese being used here falls well under TGTBT.

Why does the buck stop at the ring of wizardry in the staff+ring example, instead of at letting the staff interact with the ring? It seems like if that's the only balance reason the ring of wizardry shouldn't work that way, and the base interaction is fine balance-wise, then you could just prevent the staff and ring from interacting with each other in that way.

Even further, if you're allowing a staff to work that way, effectively reading the intent of "able to cast spells of the appropriate level" as "able to cast spells of the appropriate level through any means" instead of "able to cast spells of the appropriate level through slots gained from class feats/features," couldn't you cast spells of any level from a staff merely by being able to cast spells of any level from a scroll or wand?

Someone who drinks starsong nectar ignores the flat-footed condition from undetected creatures, but not hidden ones. You could probably also remove the "initiative rolls" bonus considering it applies to Perception and all skill checks, which should cover all bases there, similar to how Heroism works.

Enigma-sight potion says "you use your Perception modifier and your level for the secret counteract check instead of the normal counteract modifier and spell level." I assume the intent is to use half your level for the counteract level, but it could be made clearer. There are already enough arguments about level vs counteract level due to the clay golem.

The chainsword is great for drifters or swashbucklers that can get access. Reach makes a drifters job a lot easier plus sweep is good for drifters wake. A natural fit for a flashy swash too.

It's a pretty good weapon but I'm a little confused by the flavor text relative to the mechanics. Seems like it's more of a flail than a sword, but still in the sword group? For something trying to emulate the fictional type of two-moded weapon you see in fiction from time to time I would've expected something more along the lines of modular that switches weapon groups and exchange reach for another trait.

There's some question about what PF 2e's goals are around object damage, but something else I'm thinking about now is that it's a little strange to remove object damage capabilities from most spells and avoid implementing any guidelines for Striking objects, and then introduce a common consumable that can break a lot of objects pretty easily, especially smaller ones like locks. If the intent is to let GMs adjudicate it as needed for their stories (which is my best guess for intent at this point), then having a defined (and pretty accessible) way to damage objects is surprising.

I'd imagine because they do not have to spend money on weapon runes, so they can spend more of it on staves and wands and the like. If you adjust party wealth down to account for ABP, more of that burden falls on casters. If you don't, casters still don't have to spend wealth on armor runes, but martials are still more ahead relative to them.

The long hammer is effectively a guisarme that goes from d10 to d8 in exchange for brace and B/versatile P instead of S damage. So it'll act like a d12 weapon when brace is activated, but for non-brace turns it'll just be worse. I can't say I see it being a problem MOST of the time for it to be active on all reaction attacks - in the cheesy example given, you have one d8 MAP-0 Strike and then two d12 MAP-0 Strikes, and that costs all of your actions for the round and requires a specific scenario. Is that better than three d10 MAP-0 Strikes, one d10 MAP-5 Strike, and then a third action to reposition, use a skill action, etc.? Probably not in most cases.

Ah, forgot about the people who wait for it to show up on Nethys, since it's out on pdf/print and Foundry pushed the update already. Here's the full text.

Traits Consumable, Evocation, Fulu, Magical

Usage affixed to an object or structure; Bulk --

A demolition fulu allows a saboteur or excavator to be far away from the scene when demolition happens. The fulu crumbles to ash over 5 minutes to 8 hours, as you determine when you place the fulu. Once the duration ends, the fulu lowers the Hardness of the object it’s affixed to by an amount equal to the fulu’s level and then deals the listed damage to the object. A demolition fulu serves as a hazard with a Stealth DC to detect it and Thievery DC to disable it according to its type.

Type lesser; Level 3; Price 12 gp
Sometimes called the moth fulu, good for destroying softer objects; 3d6 bludgeoning damage, DC 17.
Type moderate; Level 11; Price 275 gp
Sometimes called the termite fulu, good for destroying wood objects; 6d6 bludgeoning damage, DC 28.
Type greater; Level 17; Price 2,750 gp
Sometimes called the rust fulu, good for destroying metal objects; 10d6 bludgeoning damage, DC 37.

It do not say that it permanently lowers the hardness, but then again it could have used another terminological if that was not the case.

also just because you slap several on the object dont make the damage stack, just like attacking several time in a row dont make the damage stack for overcoming damage resistance.

The 11 3rd-level fulu example isn't combining the damage for the purposes of Hardness, to be clear. Each fulu is -3 Hardness and 3d6 damage immediately afterwards, so the first 3 fulus have a chance of doing some damage but still have to compete with high Hardness, fulus 4 & 5 likely do a little bit of damage, and the damage from 6-11 is done against 0 Hardness, so you can add it all up to 18d6 and say 1-5 did some amount extra that's too much of a pain to calculate on the back of a napkin.

If the trigger you designated occurs before the start of your next turn, you can use the chosen action as a reaction (provided you still meet the requirements to use it).

Using the Readied action is optional, as far as I can tell. I think I prefer it to do so, generally, so I'd rather the brace trait's wording change rather than Ready's.

I'm still reading through Treasure Vault, but I'm looking at the entry for demolition fulus right now, which reduce an object's Hardness before dealing damage to it. The thing is, there are multiple levels of demolition fulu, but reading the entry it seems like the Hardness reduction stacks - in which case the higher-level versions are only useful for being harder for an enemy to spot and disable.

As an example, the highest-Hardness material class in the CRB is "iron or steel structure" with 18 Hardness, 72 HP, and 36 BT (obviously a GM can set higher statistics, if they'd like). You can slap 11 3rd-level demolition fulus on a steel door for less than half the price of an 11th-level demolition fulu and deal 18d6 damage (and change) to it, handily breaking it in most cases, whereas the 11th-level fulu will deal 6d6-7 damage.

So I suppose my question here is, am I reading this right? Is there anything I'm missing? The wording of the fulu is "the fulu lowers the Hardness of the object it's affixed to" - it's not a typed penalty, but phrased like other various adjustments to statistics that are effectively untyped bonuses/penalties but aren't directly stated to be such.

Temperans wrote:

I personally never understood the "magic item tree" complaint. I always saw it as "look at all the cool items I have". Compared to now where its "look at all the cool items I have and will later have to sell to get more". Idk to me it feels like now its even more of a magic item tree where you need to keep chaging its leaves or else it just ugly (outdated).

Also a lot of wasted book space typing the same item 4 times.

The magic item tree looks dumb in the mind's eye. Having to buy a cloak, a ring, a belt, armor, a weapon, and the like to meet the saving throw minimums makes everything look like exactly the same like they're checking boxes.

Some of us want magic items to feel like Sting in Lord of the Rings or Excalibur. Very unique, make you more powerful, and not something everyone else around you is wearing.

You want magic items to feel magical, not common. PF2 has not hit the mark on that, but at least everyone doesn't have to be draped in exactly the same magic items to meet the math of the game other than weapons.

Seconding this. The "light up like a Christmas tree" style of play lends to a more MMO game-y feel, which is not inherently bad but not to many tastes. Styles of campaign that try to more directly emulate the fantasy media that tabletop games were originally based on (before morphing into their own distinct sort of thing and eventually feeding back into the fantasy zeitgeist) are at odds with the characters finding and using dozens of different minor magical items over the course of the story.

egindar wrote:

My first thought went to a high-level fighter with Combat Reflexes or similar reactions. You benefit from the bonus on additional reaction Strikes, not just the Readied attack.

From what I can tell, readied strikes against targets that enter your reach is all that works. That's the only thing that's mentioned in the trait. It would be really awesome if it applied to all opportunity attacks though.

You still have to Ready the Strike, so it IS two actions on your turn, but the trait says "until the start of your next turn, Strikes with the brace weapon deal an additional 2 precision damage for each weapon damage die it has," so you could make the Readied Strike, benefit from the trait, and then make an AoO later, and also benefit from the trait.

If you know you're going to get as many AoOs out as you have reactions, you could also cheese it a bit by doing Strike + Ready Strike, then opt not to use the Readied Strike at MAP and AoO instead. This works before Combat Reflexes, and probably works slightly better without it honestly.

My first thought went to a high-level fighter with Combat Reflexes or similar reactions. You benefit from the bonus on additional reaction Strikes, not just the Readied attack.

Untyped damage DOES exist as seen with Disintegrate, but I couldn't say for sure whether it's intentional that Rovagug's Mud is untyped.

As a side note, many of the permanent alchemical items have a pattern of "spend 3 Interact actions to feed a specific consumable into a chamber in this worn piece of equipment, then Activate the equipment as a single Interact action to expend the consumable and get a specific benefit" and I'm a little curious why that was handled by repeating the mechanics a dozen times, instead of by making a new category or trait.

Some of this may just be me not reading carefully enough or not understanding the rules properly.

Is the action cost for Activating lozenges mentioned anywhere? I assume it's 1 action and Interact, but it doesn't appear to be in the trait's sidebar or in the items' entries themselves.

Green colorful coating says "+2 circumstance penalty" rather than "-2 circumstance penalty."

Bottled monstrosities generally don't seem to specify whether the creature who Activated the item chooses the targets of the monstrosity or what it does with them (in the cases of the roc flying to a specific square to drop a target vs repositioning them, or where exactly a repositioned creature is moved to). I assume that it's all chosen by the player, but the bottled monstrosity is spoken about as if it's its own agent on the battlefield for the most part.

I'm not sure whether the bottled roc should have Grab be capitalized in its wording; it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the Grab monster action, and against hostile creatures it uses the Grapple action instead.

Living leaf weave does not specify the magnitude of the item bonus it provides, but I assume it's equal to the item bonus the elixir of life provides against diseases and poisons.

As a reminder, this is what Logan Bonner said about the idea of a class that was solely focused on blasting, when talking about the Kineticist:

Quote:

Going all-in on single-target blasts can lead to extremely stagnant, repetitive play, so we aren’t planning to make that the sole focus. However, we will be exploring what room we have for boosting single-target damage as an option for those who want it, without making that the only role the class can fill.

Personally I think it is very reasonable to assume the first sentence there speaks beyond the kineticist specifically and is saying they don't want to make a class that is going to be doing single target blasting as the class' one thing.

Ranged single-target blasts shouldn't be the ONLY thing a hypothetical simplified blaster-caster class would be doing - I would want to see meta-blasts with extra effects and/or different "playstyles" akin to different weapon loadouts, but I see no problem with having a fighter or monk model where yes, you are mainly just rolling to hit and adding bells and whistles to those attacks as you go on.

The examples you gave sound mostly like issues of low rolls causing failures, rather than high rolls making success happen faster/more easily. Would it be possible to simply turn the encounter difficulty down a bit? As others have said, this does mess with the math a lot more than a simple extra 5 or 10 percentage points added to the odds of success.