hyphz's page

These are OK, _if_ it's actually intended by the author that what are in some cases fairly large chunks of the AP can be bypassed. The example in Strength of Thousands 2 bypasses an entire encounter series, for example, and since there's no consideration either way in the text it's not clear if it's what is planned for.

I've either played in or ran several APs where it seems that the author designed an encounter assuming that the edges of a natural clearing could be used as hard bounds. But they can't be. They can be flown over, and some characters might even be happier or at an advantage in the jungle.

Examples:

While I appreciate this, it is not actually legal to spend a Hero Point before rolling. The text reads: "Spend 1 Hero Point to reroll a check. You must use the second result. This is a fortune effect." You cannot reroll what has not been rolled (and it would make no sense to spend a hero point before a roll to do a useless first roll and then roll the second result)

By the wording of "second result" then the implication would be that the hero point roll is a new roll, so if they were affected by Misfortune on "their next roll" then they are no longer affected by it, but if they are continuously affected by Misfortune then they cannot spend the hero point?

For running the gauntlet I treated it like I'd treated the chase and just put the effects in sequences.

I also found it wrong for the last encounters to not have maps. It is rather ironic that the book says that the area of the spiral "can't be measured" then tells you that the worldsphere moves 30ft per round!

I did find two seriously unexpected major hazards in the last section of the adventure, though. First of all, Blue Viper's Plum Rain Deluge using Tears of Death is absolutely lethal and can cripple party members or even wipe the whole party in a single move.

Second, the first phase Syndara's ability to use Disjunction can be very nasty, even if it is only once per d4 rounds (and it is rather awkward that the adventure does not give Syndara's counteract check modifier - I have noticed this is a recurring error in APs, they will give an enemy's spell DC but not the modifier for attack roll spells). In the first round he used it on one of the PCs magic weapons and seriously limited his damage dealing ability for the entire rest of the fight.

I probably won't ask them to use survival, but it's still a bit tacky that the author clearly wrote this as a fixed series of fights, then put it onto an island to mirror the first section but apparently didn't consider the consequences.

Then again, I'm trying to prep chapter 2 and just read G1. The aolazes roll across the bridge and through winding tunnels in the mines, firing at the PCs through "the lookout windows around the perimeter of the mines". The PCs will naturally, enter the tunnels to pursue the Aolazes once they realize what is going on. The map shows no tunnels nor lookout windows. It doesn't even specify elevation.

If I wanted to play OSR I would be playing OSR.

Yes, it is using the chase mechanics. If those mechanics create a situation where I cannot explain what is happening in terms of something that the character is experiencing, then those mechanics are bad. "You can't shoot the creature you're chasing, even though you can clearly see it, because it's a chase" is definitely in that category. What, the character has a little HUD in the corner of their eye that's flashing "CHASE MODE"? Come on.

That said - your point about "if you stop to aim and shoot then it will slow you down and you risk Razu getting away" is absolutely what I would have done, if the chase was on foot (or, I suppose, if they were using their own Fly speeds). But it isn't, it's on a flying chariot which will continue to move no matter what the Gunslinger does.

Ok, but how do I explain to the players that they can see where he is going clearly enough to follow him the right way, but at the same time cannot see him clearly enough to shoot him?

If it is going to be cinematic, it should not be producing a sequence that would end up on CinemaSins :)

What made me think "this is a problem" was the statement that "makes calculating distance.. largely unnecessary".

Unless the adventure suspends all the standard rules for survival and overland travel, it cannot be unnecessary to know how far the PCs have to go.

If the story would break if the distance between encounters were a million miles, then guess what, calculating distance is now necessary because that's what tells you it's not a million miles.

A fundamental part of writing fiction is making the heroes able to win without it appearing that the villain is letting them. In the case of the AP, it is a case of making the adventure and game fair without feeling that Syndara is being fair, because he wouldn’t be. An AP author should be doing this because I am paying them for the AP because they have those skills professionally and I don’t.

It doesn’t matter if the adventure doesn’t say he doesn’t have total control, the PCs need to know that.

The map purposefully does not include a scale; the mutable and unpredictable nature of time and space on Syndara’s Island makes calculating distance both impossible and largely unnecessary.

Seriously? I mean, surely someone could point out that this makes no sense?

Of course it's necessary. If it's in Syndara's control, he waits for the players to take a step away from the Solar Jian, then makes it a million miles away and so is everything else. The PCs starve. Done. If he wants them dead, there's no reason he wouldn't do that.

This isn't a straight street where they either go down the alley or not, and if you don't see them, they went down the alley. It's the open air. If you don't see someone there's an infinite number of options for where they went.

Phewwwwp. Have just finished playing through the Razu chase sequences and really it shows how very inadequate the chase rules are.

The PCs on their chariot identified Razu, and he immediately jumped from the top of the Pathfinder Lodge and dodged to create acoustics. I gave him an initial lead of 4 chase points, since as written if the PCs roll well in the first round they can catch him instantly. And they did roll well and got hot onto his trail as he started to fly toward Mogaru’s path.

The PC bard casts a mass Haste including the drakes on the chariot. Per the chase RAW, this makes no difference. This seems daft. I decide to give them a bonus to their chase rolls.

“I shoot him,” says our Gunslinger. Oh. For whatever silly reason, the chase rules have no integration with actual distance! When there’s spells with 500’ range and attacks with 150’ range increment, that’s a pretty big omission. The Gunslinger hits Razu’s AC so I decide to hold off on the HP damage and instead announce that Razu’s wing has been damaged, and figure he’ll roll lower dice for the chase. He also releases the Melodic Squalls (of which there were 3 because there are 6 PCs in the party)

Immediate problem again. Releasing the Melodic Squalls make this a combat encounter, so initiative is rolled. Because initiative has been rolled, the Gunslinger can shoot again with Hair Trigger. There is no rule about who he must shoot at, so instead of shooting the Squalls, he decides to shoot Razu again and crits, so I figure that Razu is now spiralling out of the air. Immediately there are a ton of questions about how many feet up we are in order to determine how much falling damage Razu might take when he lands, which isn’t specified anywhere.

So we now need to know how far Razu is away, how fast the chariot moves, and how high up the chase is happening, none of which are specified by the chase rules or the adventure. This is complicated by one of the players announcing that they want to steer the chariot to intercept Razu’s fall. Razu will fall 500’ this round, but we don’t know how high up he is, so I just allow a PC to spend the round steering the chariot to make an Acrobatics check to catch Razu. This is also predicated by the Gunslinger player’s sylph PC jumping off the chariot to fly up to Razu themselves (with the extra movement from Haste) in an attempt to catch him in the air, which he successfully does with a Grapple check. I could not find any reference to whether or not the Melodic Squalls can block the movement of the chariot or how much damage they might take/inflict if the PCs just decided to ram them.

So, next round. The chariots move closer, pass below the Gunslinger and Razu where they fly, and Razu squirms free of the Gunslinger’s grip and lands on the lower chariot, being immediately surrounded by PCs with flickmaces and beaten to death in a round.

Now, on the one hand this worked pretty well at the table, on the other hand PF2e is meant to be a rules crunchy game. If I wanted to have to make that many guesses about how things work I’d play an OSR game. The chase rules really need a revamp and assertions in the adventure like “we don’t consider attacking vehicles” are just not acceptable, especially when the existence of the crunch in other contexts leads to a lot of table slowdown such as a lengthy discussion as to whether or not there are railings around the deck of the chariot and what might happen when a Melodic Squall landed off-centre on the deck and hit the railing.

Edit: also - there’s no point giving out XP bonuses in a milestone based adventure.

Well, the Phoenix Challenge was a bust. Hao Jin had to quickly correct the rules to add that flying isn’t allowed, but just jumping over the area in two actions wasn’t a problem, and the person climbing the spire of Earth had a climb speed and did it in one round.

Since Hao Jin will ensure nobody is permanently harmed, there is no reason for every team not to volunteer for every event.

Oh, and it is a strange thing indeed for Hao Jin to “cast a spell to protect the rune giant from the heat, but not direct contact with the lava” because Rune Giants are immune to fire anyway.

Sorry, really not impressed here.

.. Why does Blue Viper have a bunch of poisons with 1-10 minute onset times? How are they going to be useful? Do they think that if the PCs just keel over 10 minutes after the fight that Hao Jin will go "oh, that's no problem?"

Are you adjusting encounters for the larger party size you apparently have?

I adjusted some of the regular encounters. I am not adjusting team encounters because their numbers and difficulty vary widely anyway.

So, we've nearly finished Part 1.

First of all, let me say: the organisation of this book is terrible. Frequently to run an encounter I was frantically flipping between the team member templates and another creature or team member with specific stats in their encounter section. The frequent use of templates on the team members meaning that the stats as printed are not the ones to use made this even worse.

Also, I had to write up my own "rules document" because as presented the tournament just does not seem to allow for the huge range of options available at level 11 and higher. Most obvious is that many of the teams are melee only and have no way to deal with flying opponents even though flight is generally available at levels 8-10.

Most of the team fights were a bit too easy due to large party and flickmace prone lock. Not really the adventure's fault, but not ideal at the same time. I do wonder why the adventure would be called "Despair on Danger Island", when the tone is generally rather upbeat and positive.

Partly because they were finding the fights easy, the PCs didn't really have much interest in generally exploring the island other than to find other teams to fight. They also tried to specifically seek out other teams, and seemed a bit disappointed when I said there was basically no way to do that. Since they had no real direction, by the end I was ignoring the map and just having the PCs run into encounters in orders that seemed fun, such as the Kaiju Egg for foreshadowing and the odd monster lair if things had been quiet for a while.

I also moved some of the treasure packets into the monster lairs because you're supposed to get loot when you win an encounter, right? It was much more pleasing than just getting loot randomly and then having encounters with only XP reward. The book's suggest that the PCs gain XP even if they lose tournament bouts still makes the creature dens a bad bet (since they can die in the creature dens)

Because of the fights being relatively easy, the PCs had 10 feathers after Event 6, which meant they didn't really do anything on Day 2 other than visiting the remaining watchtowers and Event 7 was moot as they couldn't enter.

Event 8 was a surprise but it got tedious really quickly. It's not clear why Wave 1 "climbs into the training space" when the later waves can just teleport in, and the adventure gives no way to find out where they are coming from or what is happening beyond the walls which the PCs urgently wanted to find out (remember, the PCs in this encounter have no way of knowing that there isn't someone outside summoning infinite soldiers until they are found and defeated). They were also annoyed that Ingdani wasn't helping even though this attack was obviously against the rules (I would have been OK with it except she has no stat block)

Oh, and the loss of help for destroying the old man statue is a bit harsh. There's no guarantee that the PCs will go to A6 (to find the holy symbols of Irori) before meeting the old man, and the adventure assumes that just identifying the statue as a Divine Warden will mean that the PCs know they can make another check to know how to pacify it. (Also, it might be worth clarifying if, in the case where the Old Man is around to help, he's still Clumsy and Enfeebled.)

I hoped that Koto Zekora would take 2-3 feathers from the PCs to give them something to do on Day 3, but she went down in 6 seconds so again event 10 was moot.

Event 11 seems a bit silly. Since the PCs probably have their 10 feathers by now, the Last Breath ran off into the wilderness, and the PCs went "huh, ok, well we're alright jack" and left to carry on up the mountain. After all, the PCs didn't need to win.

As mentioned above, suggesting that the legendary Hao Jin just gets disintegrated 1/20 of the time she's attacked is just daft, so I figured she just had a teleportation/invisibility spell on contingency and was just trolling (as she blatantly is for letting Hana's Hundreds into the tournament) That said, the fight against the two Fallen Moon members is a bit of a weird beat as it's quite easy, although I didn't consider the possibility that they might be aiming to steal the fan rather than attack the PCs.

We ended the session after the Butterfly Blades fight which was again underwhelming since they're melee only opponents and can't even deal with something as simple as Fly, let alone flickmace locks trolololol. It did result in some laughs about how the empress's bodyguard would leave her defenceless against gnomes. Also, what was the point of giving her a stat block? I don't think the PCs are ever likely to fight her, although if they did she'd also have no anti flight and people might start asking why their empress has Rogue feats.

hyphz wrote:

This is just nasty. They have essentially just thrown Lone Wolf and their customers under a bus.

I'm probably not the target audience for either of these products, but I have to say that Lone Wolf threw any chance of me supporting them under the bus when they changed to a model where you both pay a subscription and purchase individual books. At least Nexus only requires you to purchase the books.

D&D Beyond, which Nexus is based on, does also require a subscription - it just gives a wider range of content prior to subscribing. The only reason Nexus is only asking you to pay for books at the moment as that as I understand it, all it does is to provide PDF surrogates.

But even then, that's a whole different kettle of fish for those people who did pay the subscription to HLO and may now find the tool becomes unusable over time if Nexus is given priority over HLO for content releases.

Any web based app will be either subscription based or subsidised somehow, and unfortunately I don't know of any good desktop character generator for PF2e other than running Pathbuilder under Bluestacks which is a bit of a fudge.

This is just nasty. They have essentially just thrown Lone Wolf and their customers under a bus.

Oh, and Hana's Hundreds:
"Most teams opt for as few fighters as possible, since the winners must split their prize evenly, but Hana’s Hundreds favored quantity over quality when it came to their own team, reasoning that only a few of them will likely make it to the final bouts uninjured."

Makes sense if you can just enter the tournament. Doesn't make sense if you have to be picked by Hao Jin.

For that matter Golarion's Finest could probably destroy any other listed team in the tournament, how on Earth do you explain that they do not even make top 8?

Because they didn't list stats for the winning teams, so they have to win by fiat! I mean, seriously. :(

Oh, also.. there's a team that disintegrates Hao Jin? Really? I think that when they turn one the PCs their reaction is going to be less "fight these scumbags" than "run away from these obviously ludicrously powerful mages who just killed a living legend in one spell".

Your players have far, far more slots than any NPC does, as well as more options in general. I cannot think of a realistic way for them to introduce a system to randomly determine what spell slots an NPC has used. It just isn't how the game works.

Um, no they don't? The Mage of Many Styles NPC archetype has 5/3/3/3/3/3/3/2, same as a 13th level PC. The PCs are 12th level when they attempt this part, and the Weak adjustments don't remove spell slots (it just reduces spell damage)

And while I agree that it's very difficult to determine this, nobody forced Paizo to give the adventure a structure that puts the PCs in the position of likely having to fight NPCs who have fought multiple times before in the day.

If you want them to have less spells left over... Remove them yourself? The vast majority of players are never even going to think "uh, this NPC is CHEATING because it didn't have any expended spells". They almost definitely will not care. I don't know how this is such a colossal issue.

It's an issue because the PCs will have reduced spell slots if they do more than one challenge in a day, and sometimes they are scripted to do that, and they may well have to do even more if their earlier ones go badly - let alone any slots they use on island hazards while exploring. In that environment it's hardly fair to say that they always face NPCs who are effectively 100% fresh, but also very difficult to judge the balance between what spell slots the NPCs may have saved in their earlier bouts and the effect this would have on them having won/lost those bouts.

On day 1, for example, Event 4 puts the PCs against the Glowing Embers and although it does mention effects of tiredness on them, they still have all their spells whereas the PC mages may be seriously reduced by that point if they have been adventuring for the day. (And the effects are Clumsy and Enfeebled which do not reduce spellcasting stats.)

Essentially it seems that there are too many cases where the adventure breaks down if the PCs approach the situation as a martial arts tournament that they are trying their hardest to win, and do things like scouting other teams, challenging teams when they're weakened, and actively hiding from other teams when they themselves are weak. Instead it assumes that the players will just recognize the adventure as a hexcrawl variant and play it like that and that really doesn't seem desirable.

There are a couple teams that do specifically say that they become weak pretty quickly into the match because they aren't doing so well. Other than that, your players will likely never know if the other teams were at max HP or not.

It's not about HP in particular, it's about spell slots. The default Mage of Many Styles has only one of each spell prepared and knowing that, say, Shocking Grasp was used in an earlier round can make a big difference to attacking the opposing mage. While this can be ignored, it's not very fair to any MU PCs who do have to manage their spells for all of their fights in a day.

This is especially the case if the PCs decide to go to one of the arenas and watch others fight, which is fairly likely if the rules don't forbid it.

It's not really the adventure's fault if your players can't manage their resources well.

No, but it is the adventure's fault that it encourages "resource management for thee but not for me" by not giving any mechanism to simulate NPC teams losing resources over the course of a tournament day.

Even if the loopholes were ignored, the limited daily resources issue is massive, as is the healing issue. Remember that per the last-but-one paragraph on page 26, it is legal (and apparently supposed to be a feature of the adventure) to challenge a team who are in the middle of napping or bandaging their wounds, and they have to stop immediately.

This would make sense, if magic was banned, or there were clear rules on its use, but there aren't. So everyone turning invisible at the start of a round is allowed, etc. There's already one team apparently attempting to take three horses into the arena with them. And several of the teams are explicitly cheats, so they will certainly loophole the rules if able.

I mean, I can't imagine there aren't going to be any PC groups that rescue the Cloud Jesters then immediately challenge them.

I've been asked to set this up but I'm getting quite concerned about interactions with the tournament rules and how teams might be able to mess with them. Especially, a number of items of magic don't seem to have been considered.

Are teams required to travel together? This is sort of implied by the rules, "a team" must present their necklace and feathers at any time (what if someone else has them?) or recieve a challenge (what if someone separated from their team is challenged?)

What counts as a "lethal effect"? This is obvious enough for regular weapon attacks, but what about spells? Can a higher level team hang around casting Blindness on other teams in the hope that they critically fail, then challenge the team to a fight with a member blinded?

How quickly must teams respond to being challenged? The text seems to imply that they must travel to the arena right away. But do they get time to heal up, etc, afterwards? Otherwise, it seems that a metastrategy is to wait for another team to lose a fight, then immediately challenge them, it will take no time to get to the arena and they are already wounded or unconscious. Or have a friendly sparring match, knock a team member unconscious then immediately challenge them. Likewise, are team allowed to cast buff spells just before climbing into the arena or are they stripped before the challenge starts?

How do the challenge rules interact with limited daily resources? This seems by far the biggest issue because it creates an entire metagame in the tournament, where challenging a team later in the day will give an easier fight because of resources they expended during the day; even potentially allowing abuses like challenging a team for 1 feather, letting them all blow spells powering up at the start of the fight, then immediately forfeit. Wait for the spells to wear off then challenge again for 2-3 feathers.

What is more concerning is that this is unfair to the players because their daily resources will be tracked while there is no described tracking of the other teams. I wondered if I would actually need to come up with a fight diary of who fights who during the 3 day tournament in order that an NPC team the PCs challenge will potentially have resources depleted.

How do the rules interact with the island's monsters? What happens to the feathers owned by a team who are killed by hazards on the island?

.. And can they be modified? We know that there are undead on the island. If a team member goes into hiding and casts Animate Dead to sic a bunch of zombies on an opposing team, all they know is that they were attacked by zombies, not that it's another team cheating.

.. Or tricked? Can a team use an illusion to disguise themselves as a wandering monster and then kill an opposing team-member out of a challenge? Or disguise themselves as a wandering monster, scare someone, let them attack them, then drop the disguise and call an enforcer saying they were attacked lethally?

.. Or controlled? If a team command a wild animal on the island to attack another team, is that an island hazard or an illegal attack? Can you mind control an enemy into breaking the rules, then have them disqualified?

Can you just straight up steal silver feathers? It doesn't seem to specifically say you can't, so sneaking into enemy camps while they're resting seems a good bet.

Because

a) it's not the APs fault, but it is the CRBs fault if an unbalanced combat build is available.
b) "hard mode" by deliberately using a build known to be worse isn't satisfying. If you want a challenge, you play the tennis player known to be better than you, you don't play someone you can easily beat but while standing on one leg. Making the enemies harder would be an option, but tends to result in initiative tag or non-pick PCs going down too easily.

I like the idea but I'm afraid that in play it will come down to a dual pick wielding PC trashing everyone in the tournament. Will there be adjustments to this particular local minimum in the combat rules?

Also, is it intended that you're allowed to loot opponents in the qualifiers?

A big issue is that most actions require the firearm to be loaded, then leave you with an unloaded gun at the start of your turn.

Risky Reload lets you reload and strike, but you have to fire the reloaded round, so you can't use it to be ready for a Reaction outside your turn. Maybe changing this to allow reloading and striking in any order?

Hum, let's see.

Gunslinger:

This seems to be ruined by reloading. Firearm damage doesn't scale with level, and even increased chance of crits is lost when by default you can only make 1-2 attacks per round because of the need to reload. The fact that if your final action isn't to reload then you can't use any reactions is the icing on the cake.

Also, "the previous day" isn't really suitable for non-magical items.

Blast Lock: Aargh! Will you please stop creating class feats that just provide rules for doing things without any explanation for why others cannot do them. This feat implies that any Gunslinger who doesn't choose this feat can't shoot a lock open.

Looney Tunes: "Rebounding Assault": you throw a sword at the opponent then shoot the sword so it bounces back to you. "Black Powder Boost": you run and shoot your gun behind you to speed yourself forward with the recoil. "Deflecting Shot": you shoot someone else's bullet out of the air. "Redirecting shot": you shoot your ally's bullet back onto course! I can't see how these can work without screwing up any serious feel in a battle, especially when juxtaposed with guns, which are classically seen as scary exploding death sticks by fantasy characters.

Well, that's where it gets confusing. Doublespeak doesn't say "you can say any old ****"; as written, you can't even say "We'll agree that when I shout 'spoon' I'm going to throw a fireball" because that is disguising your meaning by relying on shared experience.

I don't know about monetization. What it seems is that there is a temptation to use a Feat to provide a rules description of how to resolve a particalar thing.

I can see reading a sealed letter as something featworthy. But not being able to read a letter because you saw it upside down? That'd be a very pedantic GM.

So, looking through some sections in the APG, they're reflecting trends in development that seem to be very negative - and undoing a number of the improvements in Pathfinder 2e compared to 1e and 3.5e D&D.

Feat Creep! Some of the APs were already pushing this, with PCs being unable to learn an organization's internal language unless they took a Feat, no matter how much time they spent with them. Now, without a feat, they cannot speak in innuendo (Doublespeak), estimate the numbers of objects (Eye for Numbers), read upside down (Glean Contents), take extra time to search as they travel (Thorough Search), consult with an underground guild they are a member of (Underground Network), or calm people down (No Cause for Alarm), even if they are legendary in the related skills.

Yes, there's cause for alarm.. On the topic of that feat.. what the heck is the deal here? It's harder to use on targets with a better will DC. Plus, it contains a big abstraction break. One of the problems with the Frightened condition is that a character who is frightened doesn't necessarily have it (you don't gain Frightened if you're on 2HP and a dragon is bearing down on you), so the use of this feat implies that there are two kinds of fear; regular fear that someone can be talked down from without a feat, and the actual Frightened condition which does require a feat. This is really awkward to visualise.

Weak Feats Concealing Legerdemain - who's really going to train Thievery but not Stealth?

.. Oh, and class features too You have to be a member of a particular class to give someone a bonus by sharing information with them (Clue In)..

Yea, this is a pretty bizarre thing to say. But it's also true as far as I can tell, unfortunately.

Let me begin by saying that I actually love the PF2e system. But I'm increasingly feeling that it's a good system that just doesn't allow for people being people.

First of all, we lost two players who could only attend intermittently. We had a group of four and then these extra two players who couldn't always come, and in most previous systems that wasn't a problem, because we'd just divide XP and gold by 6 instead of 4 in the sessions where they arrived to compensate. This would make the party relatively weaker to compensate for the extra PCs making encounters easier.

In PF2e, however, I either have to use the 1000 xp rule or milestone levelling, and so every encounter has to be rescaled if there are more players. So rather than prepare two versions of every encounter I had to beg those two players to try and tell me when they were coming. This came to a head when they unexpectedly arrived when I'd only prepped encounters for the group of 4, and so I gave them NPCs to play instead. Needless to say they weren't very happy at the surprise welcome and decided the game was no longer worth the trip. 2 down.

Now we are getting into very high level play, and our main party damage dealer has a ton of elemental damage runes on his picks and repeatedly uses them in combinations intended to fish for critical hits. Unfortunately, enemies also tend to have complex elemental resistances and immunities too. The game slowed down dramatically due to us having to calculate the damage ultimately dealt by every one of the 4+ elemental components of every one of his 6+ attacks per round, and when I asked if he could set up a Roll20 macro to speed things up, he instead quit the game saying he wasn't expected to be a programmer and he wasn't necessarily enjoying just ending every encounter anyway.

So we're now approximating the loss of half the players because of PF2e's relative lack of tolerance for social error or circumstances. Maybe it's just like communism - one of those good ideas that fails when exposed to real people.

Yea, it takes either a Level 10 Dispel Magic or the series of other spells.

(I notice that very few NPCs or monsters have this capability, potentially making it a fast win for PCs in certain battles.)

But there's still the big question of whether or not your own spells, missiles, etc. pass through the wall because you can "ignore its effects".

Just did the fight with Embermead, but it was a bit of a damp squib.

The text states that the door to area 12 is iron and barricaded with "a ton of rubble". One of our PCs, however, simply used the high-grade adamantine pick from the earlier mine area to smash through the door and then dig through the rubble at high speed. This did alert Embermead who cast several buffs on herself, then threw a Blade Barrier between herself and the approaching party.

Unfortunately things then broke down as the fighter PC who had done the digging simply backed off, leaving Embermead there, and just waited. Since she has nothing to do in the room she's in, they could just wait for her to either leave and walk into the party's attacks after her buffs ran out, or stay there and starve, or move around in the temple for no real reason.

It's unfortunate that mos tmajor encounters in AoA have avoided this problem so far by including something that the main enemy was doing or that needed to be stopped to require the PCs to act, but it doesn't seem to be present here and that's a bit of a problem.

A slightly odd one here, and possibly pedantic but reflective of a wider issues that doesn't seem to have been addressed.

As far as I can tell nothing in Pathfinder 2e makes monster's innate etc. spells any exception to the spellcasting rules. This creates some problems with components.

For example:
An Aboleth Alghollthu Master can cast Hypnotic Pattern and Hallucinatory Terrain, both of which have material components. But it has no hands and no possibility that it would be carrying around a component pouch.

A Cassisian can cast Heal, which requires touch if cast only with a somatic component, and verbal if cast at range. It's a flying helmet with no hands or mouth. Lantern Archons have the same problem; while it's explicitly mentioned that they can speak, they still have nothing to touch or perform somatic components with.

Invisibility is a favorite; it has a material component. But it can be cast by Greater Bargests, Brain Collectors, and Cacodaemons. Can anyone see them carrying around a compnoent pouch? Cacodaemons don't even have any limbs.

Now, ok, it's easy to say that these are easily fixed up by the GM's decisions and that's true. But it speaks to an underlying issue, which is whether or not the monsters and game were balanced on the assumption that enemies use all the components in the normal way when spellcasting. I and the players have noticed that casting enemies are much easier to deal with in PF2e than other d20 games, and their battles much more initiative dependent, because even requiring them to move or open a door can shut down their key defensive spell and then they are eating 2-3 actions worth of dual pick attacks the next round.

So, was the balance of NPC spellcasting components verified or was it assumed that the GM is handwaving stuff?

I'm pretty sure that if there was ever a game that's crying out fon an electronic GM assistant, PF2e is it, so I hope that Lone Wolf can pull their fingers out.

Per page 305, anyone can always identify any spell they have in their repertoire. This means that if an enemy casts a spell, whether or not the GM should tell the PCs what it is will be determined by if any PC knows that spell or not. Since the GM cannot ask "does anyone know X...?" without giving away what the spell is, presumably this means the GM has to keep a list of all the spells the PCs know. Is there any better way around this?

One of my players is playing a Redeemer Champion, and getting good use out of "Glimpse of Redemption" which forces an enemy to choose between losing their damage on an attack or being Enfeebled afterwards.

The ability is fine, my question is with the flavor text which states that the enemy is distracted by the weight of their sins. This would imply that the ability would not work on (for example) animals who are just hungry not evil; constructs who don't percieve evil; mind controlled individuals who already know what they are doing is wrong; and so on.

So far I have just allowed the PC to use the ability regardless because there's no indication that the flavor text is meant to limit the power, but there's more confusion with the Code for the Redeemer which says that they must allow enemies the opportunity to redeem themselves. This means that if this Champion is fighting, say, a Demon, then they can somehow try to let it redeem itself - and the fact that Glimpse of Redemption works on this apparently indicates that this is possible because if it wasn't there would be nothing for them to glimpse!

Is the text supposed to limit the power or is it just awkward flavor?

This is all true, but this not the goal, which was just to LIST the things in PF2e which are deliberately left to GM fiat in the rules design.

That is not the same as the GM being able to override any rule if they want to, and I am not saying there is anything wrong with this, but it would be a useful reference to have especially on a rules questions forum.

Just spotted this rather weird rules interaction and I'd like to know if it's really right.

Assurance is a Fortune ability.

If you have a Misfortune effect applying to a roll, you can choose to use Assurance on that roll. Since it is a Fortune effect, it cancels out the Misfortune effect, but that is all it does; you still have to roll. But that also means you still get to roll, rather than getting the relatively low (by level scaling) fixed value Assurance gives.

So if you have Assurance with a skill, you can essentially ignore all Misfortune effects with that skill for free by using Assurance to cancel them and make it a regular roll.

Is that correct and intended?

After the mention on a couple of threads I think it might be nice to make a list of things which are "officially" made GM fiat in PF2e and were not in PF1e or other d20 games (as obviously everything that is outside the rules is GM fiat and that would be an infinite list)

I'd start with
- the effect of two characters accidentally ending up in the same square
- the ability of a character or creature to wear a particular suit of armor (fit, etc)

So I did a fair amount of thought about this and the problem is that pretty much all judgments end up confused in some cases or other. This means that it is very different for a GM to make a ruling that's consistent with other rules and with versimilitude, and that means that the book's failure to do so begins to look like a tactical omission rather than a conscious decision to acknowledge unique cases.

- The one thing that RAW determines is that an invisible creature can choose to be "willing" to permit another creature to move through its space.

- This is not on its own ideal, as it implies that a Huge creature occupying a 3x3 grid of spaces can permit a creature to pass through its centre. (A Huge creature is not three sizes larger than a Medium creature, so the rule about moving through larger creatures does not come into play.) That's acceptable for that but triggers some other issues below.

- What, however, if it chooses to prevent it? The only RAW is that the move cannot be made. There is no guidance about how the creature knows this, or whether or not it causes a move to fail or the action to be lost, which can be critical to the action economy.

- There is also silence on the effect of this on the Undetected / Hidden status of a creature. A reasonable RAI is that anything that reveals the location of a creature causes it to become Hidden, since the ".. has no idea what space [they] occupy.." statement will be false. However, this "common sense" interpretation of Conditions falls down in some other cases: for example, would you rule that if a PC is Wounded and low on hit points, and avoiding combat because they are afraid an enemy would kill them, then they gain the Frightened condition because they visibly are in fact frightened?

- Special effects in the case of stopping in a square with a creature also suffer from this problem. If you can accidentally stop in a square with an Undetected creature and have it pushed out of the way at the moment, what about a Hidden creature? If the answer is "no", then the next question is if a PC can consciously forget that they have seen a creature in a space, or if another PC can tell a PC or order a creature to move to a particular square without communicating that a creature is present there, in order to gain the additional tactical option that is provided by the creature being Undetected and denied when it is Hidden. If the answer is "yes" - that you can invoke any special displacement rules on a Hidden creature - then why not a Detected one?

- Shove is an action which takes a separate turn and has a failure chance. Essentially, the current RAW says that accidentally entering the square of an invisible creature triggers a free failure-proof Shove action for one of them, and so the judgment the GM makes potentially has a notable effect on the action economy. The GM could reasonably call for a Shove check (Athletics vs. Fortitude) to see who moves out of the square, but what if both fail?

- If a PC can pass through the centre of a Huge creature then they can also attempt to stop in the centre square of a Huge invisible creature. This creates a situation where no 5' movement can resolve the overlap. This potentially makes this option actually stronger than a free Shove.

To some extent, but the basis of the combat system and clearly defined level abilities is that there's a fixed and predictable rules base (even if there is hidden information addressed by those rules)

A degree of simultaneity doesn't work at all. Having that requires old school wargame-style declare-and-resolve initiative that is a massive pain in the ass in an RPG (well, in a wargame too, but at least there it can be 100% concentrated on)

I have nothing _against_ the style of play where what goes on in combat is all judgments and rule of cool, but I wouldn't use Pathfinder (either edition) for it. After all, 80% of character generation is picking Feats and the point of most of those Feats is to give unique and dependable action options.

Except that there's always an edge case which can invalidate a spot judgment. If you rule that an enemy can slip out of the way if they want to be stealthy, but a PC who knowingly moves into the square of an invisible PC can't allow that other PC to move out of turn as a result, then you've ruled that the effect of stepping into a square depends on the intentions of the person doing it which ends up making no sense (so what if I charm someone into wanting to step into my square? Do they stop displacing me?)

I don't think it's unreasonable. The first page of pretty much every RPGing system is how RPGs have rules so that arguments don't happen between players, unlike "Let's Pretend" games.

In a tactical combat situation it is especially important that the players know in advance what the results of their moves will be. Otherwise it's like saying we'll play Chess but change how the Queen moves in the middle of the game because it's too powerful.

It is a big deal if a level 1 spell can be used to arbitrarily obstruct movement for an entire battle. There's other issues with this too (I just read on Facebook someone asking that if he could use Mage Hand to drop a potion on someone, couldn't he also use it to drop an entire bandolier full of potions on them because both are Light) .

Plus, this and 3D were raised during the playtest which means they are being consciously ignored by Paizo, which isn't a good start.

DROWNING AND SUFFOCATING: You can hold your breath for 5+Con rounds, not Con actions; but there is no Breathe Deep action. Air is no longer lost by performing actions other than speaking, but being critically hit costs a round worth of air.

DCS: Now a single table of DCs and of modifiers to apply to them, rather than multiple columns of DCs for different difficulty levels.

CRAFT DC: Repairing an item usually uses the standard DC for the item, not the “low DC” (ie, the DC with the Easy modifier)

RESONANCE: Is removed. All characters by default can invest 10 magic items per day, and only items with the Invested trait require investment.

ITEM QUALITY: no longer exists, other than the ability to produce “shoddy” items. All items, even shoddy ones, can be etched with Runes.

ACTIVATE AN ITEM: no longer costs Resonance. As with spell casting, activation components are no longer separate actions, but a single activity which encompasses all such components.

DISRUPTING ACTIVATIONS: Gone. Activations can still be disrupted by effects that specifically cause disruption, but not by receiving damage during the activation process.

CASTING A SPELL FROM A SCROLL: The level of the scroll no longer limits the attack roll and spell DC of spells cast from it, although such spells still cannot be Heightened.

TALISMANS: Renamed from Trinkets. Attaching one is now a special action AFFIX A TALISMAN, not a special case of Repair.

PREPARING A STAFF: Renamed from Investing A Staff. You can prepare a staff only if you have at least one of the staff’s spells on your spell list.

CASTING SPELLS FROM A STAFF: Implies that a staff would typically be held in one hand, not two. Casting spells from a staff can only be done by expending charges from the staff, not by spending your own spell slots. But spontaneous casters can reduce the cost of a spell to 1 staff charge by spending a spell slot as well as that charge.

If it was, it would have been in an update I guess?

Playtest, P297, heading "Triggers":
"You can use only 1 free action on a single trigger, but you can take both a free action and a reaction on the same trigger."

Release, P462, heading "Limitations on Triggers":
"You can only use one action in response to a given trigger. For example, if you had a reaction and a free action that both had a trigger of 'your turn begins,' you could use either of them at the start of your turn but not both."

Conditions:

ACCELERATED, ASLEEP, ENERVATED, ENTANGLED, HAMPERED: Gone.

BLINDED, DEAFENED: You always critically fail checks requiring sight orl hearing, rather than potentially just regular failing if it’s worse.

CONFUSED: target selection is now GM fiat. No dice roll to determine target, no chance to act normally, and no automatic targetting of anyone who has targetted you. However, any damage done to you triggers a flat check to stop being confused.

CONTROLLED, CLUMSY, DOOMED, HIDDEN, INVISIBLE, OBSERVED, SENSED, UNDETECTED, UNNOTCIED: new.

DYING: automatically lost as soon as any HP are gained, as in playtest 1.6.

ENCUMBERED: now rewritten in terms of Clumsy.

ENFEEBLED: only gives its penalty on Strength-based melee attack rolls, not all attack rolls.

FATIGUED: penalty no longer increases with actions taken.

FRIENDLY, HELPFUL, HOSTILE, UNFRIENDLY: no longer give bonuses or penalties to deception and diplomacy actions.

FRIGHTENED: clarified that penalty applies to DCs as well as checks and saves.

IMMOBILIZED: renamed from IMMOBILE.

PARALYZED: now prevents Seek actions also.

PERSISTENT DAMAGE: flat check to remove damage is now 15 even without others’ help. Effect of being helped is a GM fiat choice between reducing the flat check to 10 or immediately ending the damage.

PETRIFIED: clarified that you do not age while turned to stone. Your statue can be destroyed, but not given the Broken condition.

PRONE: no longer automatically gives +1 AC against ranged attacks, but gives the opportunity to Take Cover instead.

QUICKENED: renamed from QUICK. Clarified that it does not give you an extra action at the moment you become quickened.

RESTRAINED: now allows Force Open to be used to escape as well as Escape.

SICKENED: renamed from SICK. Clarified that penalty applies to DCs as well as checks.

SLOWED: no longer prevents Readying.

STUNNED: rewritten. Now reduces your actions each turn by your Stunned value, then reduces Stunned by one.

STUPEFIED: the check to cast a spell while Stupefied is now based on the Stupefied level, not the DC of the creature that gave you the condition.

UNCONSCIOUS: now gives penalty to Perception and Reflex saves as well as AC. Added rules for v1.6 playtest update to dying rules.

WOUNDED: from v1.6 playtest update.