hyphz's page

It seems that it's possible for a Tiny creature with Invisibility to Sneak and Hide in a creature's actual square. Is that correct?

It also seems that by RAW this is actually very powerful. The Seek action says that if you're looking for creatures, you choose a cone or a burst. If you choose a cone, it starts at the edge of your square and moves outwards, which means it doesn't include your square itself.

This seems quite powerful because it means that all attempts to seek in the cone, which is the most common option, will fail. Only if the character thinks to seek in a burst that includes themselves will they detect the creature. This potentially means that in an encounter where such a creature may be present, their opponents (PC or NPC) are likely to waste a lot of actions checking their feet. Is that correct?

It seems that in Treasure Vault, the Pacifying rune was copy-pasted out of Agents of Edgewatch while forgetting that in that AP, the PCs are expected to be dealing nonlethal damage all the time.

So with the Treasure Vault version you can stab someone to death with a weapon that makes them feel horribly guilty about stabbing you back.

Also, the -2 it gives is untyped and lasts an effective 10 rounds, so could multiple party members with Pacifying weapons stack up a huge penalty on an opponent's lethal attacks?

The section on carrying and using items reads:

Worn items are tucked into pockets, belt pouches, bandoliers, weapon sheaths, and so forth, and they can be retrieved and returned relatively quickly.

It seems a common assumption that this allows any item to be worn, but I could not actually find that statement anywhere, and "worn items" is still a unique category of magic item.

The confusion we encountered comes from the Thaumaturge implement rules:

If you had your lantern implement in one hand, a weapon in the other, and a chalice implement you were wearing, you could swap your lantern for the chalice to use its reaction.

"Swapping" the lantern for a worn chalice implies that the lantern can be worn. But if that's true, it's beneficial for any character to wear a lantern to provide light without taking up a hand. Is that the intent?

Hi,

If you are a bounded spellcaster such as a Magus who no longer has level 1 slots but has higher slots, can you use a Ring of Wizardry to regain level 1 slots?

It seems ambiguous. The number of level 1 slots is listed as "-", not 0, implying that the slots are unavailable. At the same time, the Ring of Wizardry states only that you must have "a spellcasting class feature with the arcane tradition", not that you must already have slots at the level indicated.

Is there clarification on this?

Hi folks,

Two questions came up today:

1) Confusion says “use all your actions to strike or cast offensive cantrips…”. Since “stride” isn’t an option, does this imply that someone who’s confused is unable to move and can just be kept away from?

2) We disturbed a Drider armed with a glaive with 10ft reach. The Drider opened the door that was between us. However, the GM then had trouble as the Drider entry does not list the reach of the Drider’s hands and it was a bit difficult to believe that the Drider hooked the door handle with their glaive and then pulled it open. Is there any standard assumption about the interaction reach of creatures with weapons that would clearly increase reach beyond their hands, but that don’t have listed unarmed attack reach?

Spellstrike reads:

You Cast a Spell that takes 1 or 2 actions to cast and requires a spell attack roll. Make a melee Strike with a weapon or unarmed attack. Your spell is coupled with your attack, using your attack roll result to determine the effects of both the Strike and the spell.

[...]

One Target: The spell targets only the target of your Strike, even if it normally allows more targets.

[...]

Multiple Defenses: Any additional rolls after the initial spell attack still happen normally, such as the Fortitude save attempted by the target of a disintegrate spell. Similarly, a spell that allows you to attack with it again on subsequent rounds would only combine a Strike with its initial attack roll, not with any later ones.

The Imaginary Weapon cantrip, which a Magus can access via Psychic Dedication, reads:

Amp: You form multiple force weapons to lash out at multiple foes. You make two imaginary weapon Strikes, each against a different target. Your multiple attack penalty doesn't increase until you've made both Strikes.

Does this mean that by Spellstriking with Imaginary Weapon, you can make two Imaginary Weapon Strikes against the same target?

"One Target" says that the spell targets only the target of the Spellstrike. The argument is whether effects that would otherwise have targeted others are lost, or retargeted to the Spellstrike target. The wording seems to favor retargeting. Thus, the One Target rule rewrites the description of Imaginary Weapon's Amp effect to omit "each against a different target". By the rule in Multiple Defenses, the second attack would not be resolved based on the weapon Strike, but it's still two attacks with extra heightening damage.

The Take Control action states that you only have to be adjacent to the controls and suceed at a Piloting check in order to "become the vehicle's pilot". It does not seem to require or mention that there must not be an existing pilot, so fighting over a vehicle's controls is remarkably easy, and you can drive a vehicle at double speed by constantly swapping the controls. Is this intended?

In addition, if you fail the piloting check, does the vehicle still become uncontrolled even though you were not successful at becoming the pilot?

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:

A PC rolls an ability while affected by a Misfortune effect that makes them take the worst of two dice. The result turns out bad and they want to spend a Hero point. How is this dealt with?

1. The PC cannot spend the Hero Point because it is too late to affect the Misfortune effect on the roll.

2. The PC retroactively cancels the Misfortune effect on the roll, meaning that they should have rolled only one dice, so their roll is now the “first” roll which has to be tracked as well as which is the highest and lowest roll.

3. The PC spends the hero point and gets an additional roll in the normal way because the Fortune effect of the hero point is happening after the roll and does not cancel with a Misfortune effect that happened before the roll.

Recieved a note that the PDF had been updated but no errata saying what the changes were - are they layout only?

Is this legal? Nothing seems to prevent it, but it seems to have some strangely powerful effects.

For example, sustaining a spell has no line of effect/sight requirements. So a mage can hit an enemy with a sustained damage or effect spell, then Maze themselves, so the enemy has no possible way to reach them and they can sustain their spells over and over from absolute safety. When they want out, they just stop sustaining the Maze.

There's even other possible uses, like setting up an ambush where stealthier party members agree a time, and the mage Mazes themselves, waits for the agreed time (5 minutes etc.) then returns. While he's in the Maze, he can't possibly be detected. Or, they can scout by using Share Senses on their familiar, which has no range limit, from the Maze...

The CRB states that to improve the stage of a virulent affliction requires two successful saves in a row. It seems to be commonly assumed that if you fail the second save having previously made one, then you fail to make the two consecutive saves but the affliction doesn't get worse as it normally would when you fail a save. But I could not find an actual reference for this. Is that correct?

If so there seems to be a very strange interaction with Tears of Death. Tears of Death has stage 1, 18d6 poison and paralyzed, 1 round. Stage 2, 25d6 poison and paralyzed, 1 minute.

Since the maximum duration is 10 minutes, this has the weird effect that if someone fails all their saves then they take 283d6 in total before the poison wears off, from remaining at stage 3 for 8 minutes (and the poison wears off 6 seconds before the 9th stage 3 check).

On the other hand, if they make every other save, and the rule about not getting worse is applied, then they take 1800d6 in the 10 minutes it takes the poison to wear off (10 minutes * 10 6-second rounds per minute * 18)!

Obviously either of these amounts of damage will kill a PC without help but with magical healing or regeneration available the first one might just about be possible. It seems bizarre then that the PC is potentially penalized for trying to recover from the poison. Is that the correct reading of this?

Are there any rules for aborting a fall in the middle?

This has come up with some of the APs which include aerial encounters. The PCs are high in the sky above the city on a flying vehicle.

They encounter a dragon. A PC crits the dragon with a flail.

Per RAW, the dragon now plunges all the way down to the ground. While it can use the Arrest a Fall action to avoid taking any damage, it can't use it to stop the fall. Assuming it fell 500' as per the rules on one round of falling, and even if it has an 80 foot fly speed, it will now take 4 rounds to get back up again (half speed to fly upwards, 500 / (40 * 3)) by which time the PCs may be long gone. It seems ridiculous that in this case it can be practically defeated by a single blow.

If it had, say, 1000' foot to fall, then it spends two rounds falling. The RAW is silent on what you can do when it's your turn in a round while falling, and whether or not taking a Fly action in that round will end the fall. It's not readily obvious, especially given that ruling that it does gives flying creatures the ability to make stall descents, which may not be the intent.

The first sentence of Legendary Sneak reads: "You’re always sneaking unless you choose to be seen, even when there’s nowhere to hide. "

The text of hide says that "you cease being hidden if you do anything except Hide, Sneak, or Step".

I've had players argue that this means they always remain Hidden no matter what they do, because they case being hidden in the moment they do something else, and then "you're always sneaking.." means that their Stealth kicks back in as soon as they do not choose to be seen.

Is that the intent?

Sorry, another question that came up.

The text states that you may be able to state the name of someone who the target “murdered or grievously wronged”. The flavour text implies that the victim in question has to be dead but the rules text does not say this. So can the PC argue that the player has “grievously wronged” another PC by attacking them in a previous round?

Just occurred in a gaming session:

1. PC A is Restrained by an NPC’s critical grapple. Delays.
2. PC B kills the NPC grappling A.
3. PC A undelays.

Is PC A now forced to play the turn still Restrained because they are not permitted to use a Delay to wait out a negative effect?

The spell "cast into time" states that the targeted creature "disappears until the end of your turn".

Is it correct that others can ready actions for "when X creature falls into time.." in order to take that action while the target is still gone, since it's taken as a reaction during the caster's turn?

Champion, P106:

For instance, as a paladin, if an evil king asked you if you’re hiding refugees so he could execute them, you could lie to him, since the tenet against lying is less important than preventing harm to innocents.

This turns out not to be true, though. While the Paladin tenet "you must act with honor.." is the third most important, the general tenet "Do not perform acts that are anathema.." is the single most important one.

A Lawful Good champion must follow Erastil, Iomedae, or Torag, all of whom have anathema against telling lies in some form (although Iomedae calls this "dishonour yourself")

So in fact, a Paladin who lies about hiding refugees is not violating the Paladin code, but they are violating the first tenet of Good by performing Anathema to their deity, which is certainly not OK.

(This has some other weird effects as well, such as followers of Cayden Cailean technically being required to prioritise not wasting alcohol over preventing harm to innocents!)

It's missing, which makes this one of the very few ways to move by choice without taking a Move actions and creates weird interactions with AoOs and other reactions.

- Battledancer: fascinating performance gives 1 hour immunity.
- Braggart: Demoralize gives 10 minute immunity.
- Fencer: Feint gives no immunity. Create a Diversion is an area effect but gives a circumstance antibonus.
- Gymnast: Shove, Grapple and Trip all give no immunity.
- Wit: Bon Mot gives no immunity.

So it seems that Battledancer and Braggart are very seriously limited compared to the others, since they can basically only gain panache a number of times in an encounter equal to the number of targets. Braggart gets an advance that can remove this, but it's only undoing a disadvantage.

Also, do you have to use these abilities on the same enemy you target? It seems a bit strange to gain Panache against the boss by taunting his minion who's 30 feet away.

"This brand can’t be hidden, but it is visible only to followers of your faith, who see it as clearly as a lit torch."

"A torch sheds bright light in a 20-foot radius (and Dim Light to the next 20 feet)."

This seems to imply:
- All but one of the party declares they follow a Good deity
- The remaining one has Darkvision and follows a different Good deity
- Cast Brand the Impertinent on them and they voluntarily critically fail their save
- Those in the party without Darkvision now have a light source that only they can see and it is unlikely that any Good followers would want to attack the party member

Recently I learned about a nifty tool called TiddlyWiki which builds local single-file wikis with database features.

I wondered about using this to create a PF2 reference document that could not only act as a traditional AoN style reference but also deal with some automatic reference resolution and indexing, and it turns out it works great.

You can see the development here https://github.com/hyphz/PF2TiddlyWiki/ or the preview version here https://github.com/hyphz/PF2TiddlyWiki/releases/tag/Preview . Currently I have most of the general feats, but only the Alchemist class and a subsection of spells.

The built version is just an .html file and never needs the Internet again once it is loaded, so you can save it out to your hard disk, grab it on your iPhone or Android or whatever else you have as long as it can run JavaScript.

Is this an interesting thing to continue developing and is anyone interested in helping transcribe? (Because I'm trying to also break up the text blocks and link intelligently, simply scraping AoN doesn't provide content alone without inspecting it as well.)

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)..

"If you’re a Bard Casting a Spell from the Occult tradition while holding a musical instrument, you can play that instrument to replace any material, somatic, or verbal components the spell requires by using the instrument as a Focus component instead. Cast a Spell gains the Auditory trait if you make this substitution."

The Auditory trait states:

"An action with the auditory trait can be successfully performed only if the creature using the action can speak or otherwise produce the required sounds. A spell or effect with the auditory trait has its effect only if the target can hear it."

It is unusual for Cast a Spell to gain the Auditory trait, only for the spell itself to gain the Auditory trait.

It is obvious that the Bard must be able to produce the sound (of the instrument) in order to cast a spell. But does this also imply that the spell does not work on a creature that can't hear it?

It's normally touch, but you can give it range, and it doesn't specify the target object has to be unattended..

Edit: ignore, I'm dumb today.

Page 304: Some spells restrict you to willing targets. A player can declare their character a willing or unwilling target at any time, regardless of turn order or their character’s condition (such as when a character is paralyzed, unconscious, or even dead).

Does this imply that a character who is Controlled can choose to refuse these spells, even if they cannot choose their actions? (Because "Controlled" is just part of "their character's condition")

Page 353: The action to resist a Moon Frenzy has the Rage trait. An action with the Rage trait can normally only be used when raging. The text above says that the user cannot use any Concentrate action unless it also has Rage, but it does not explicitly say that the target counts as raging and can use Rage actions. Do they? (Ie, can a Barbarian use their other actions with the Rage trait while in Moon Frenzy?)

Per page 305, it is possible to hide from a spell's trigger that uses visual detection, and a "Stealth check to Sneak" can fool an auditory sensor.

This begs a ton of questions, I'm afraid:

* Does this apply only to spells, or to any triggered effect - in particular, Readied actions?

* When "Sneaking" to fool an auditory sensor, does this refer to the usual Sneak performed as part of a move action, or is it a special case of Sneaking used to specifically hide ambient sound (eg, breathing) that might trigger the spell?

* The spell "Alarm" refers to detecting creatures in the area, but does not have the Auditory or Visual traits nor describe this as a trigger. Does this mean it cannot be snuck past? Are characters aware of which spells this applies to?

The Veil spell has the following text for Heightening:

"The spell also disguises the targets’ voices and scents; it gains the auditory trait."

This seems to be a mistake, because gaining the Auditory trait actually has the effect of making the spell ineffective against those who cannot hear. (n other words, an observer who could see the target but not hear them would be immune to a heightened Veil with the Auditory trait, but not to a non-heightened one with only the Visual trait.

In addition, it does retain the Visual trait, meaning that someone who can only hear the target speak but not see them instantly detects that the voice is not who it sounds like.

This is obviously a mistake arising from the fact that PF2 has no way of creating an "or" relationship between traits instead of an "and" relationship. Perhaps it should be worded as ".. it loses the Visual trait"?

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.

Both regarding Prismatic Wall, on p360.

"The wall as a whole is immune to counteracting effects of the wall’s level or lower; each color must be counteracted by its specific spell, as described in chromatic wall."

Does the semicolon indicate a counterpoint, that is, that the wall as a whole can be countered by a Dispel Magic of higher level than the wall? Or does it indicate that (unlike Chromatic Wall) each of the spells cast to dispel colors of the wall must be higher level than the wall?

"You can pass through the wall and ignore its effects."

Is "blocking stuff" one of its effects for this purpose, ie, it does not block your spells?

When using Cloud Jump, a fast enough character could potentially jump 60' up. Presumably they then land without being harmed, so does that imply they can also fall 60' without damage if they have time to prepare for the landing?

According to page 452, alignment damage is taken only by creatures or characters that have "the opposing alignment trait".

This means that True Neutral characters and creatures never take any form of alignment damage, making this an obvious choice of alignment for PCs!

Is this intended?

Several monsters are listed as having "Motion sense", including an extremely dangerous encounter on the Age of Ashes Adventure Path.

But the only description of motion sense is a single line on page 254 of the Bestiary, under the "Sewer Ooze", which is the first creature with this ability.

It does not even mention whether or not Motion Sense is an imprecise, precise or vague sense. There is no default given in the main rulebook and the sense doesn't have (imprecise) after it. For monsters with no vision this is potentially a big deal - if they have only imprecise senses then everything they do has a 50% miss chance due to Hidden status, which dramatically changes their balance.

Plus, we don't know what motions it can sense. Is it just Move actions, or can it sense lips moving to speak, chests moving to breathe, heartbeats? All make a massive difference to strategy.

Is the player allowed to know if an Assurance result will be good enough to meet the DC of a check, or do they have to try it and potentially fail?

The description of regeneration includes the statement that "[the creature's] dying condition never increases beyond dying 3 as long as its regeneration is active".

This is a bit unusual since normally, a monster would not go through the Dying process at all, just dying at 0 HP.

In a recent session I assumed that regenerating monsters did go through the same process, which resulted in a bit of confusion; a PC downed a monster and made it Dying 1. In its turn it regenerated which gave it hit points so it was no longer dying. The next round, it was downed again (to Dying 2/Wounded 1) and then hit with a magic effect to shut down its regeneration, which killed it because of Wounded 1.

However, the next one was downed directly and became Dying 1. The caster immediately hit it with its weak element again and assumed this would kill the enemy immediately but because it wasn't wounded this time, it actually just made it Dying 2 and not able to regenerate for a round. So in order to actually kill it, two other PCs had to hit it that round to take it through Dying 3-4 before the end of the round when the regeneration block would shut off and it would return to having hit points! This made a fairly big difference to the action economy. Is it correct?

The text of the Invisible condition reads: "you can't become observed while invisible except via special abilities or magic".

However, the earlier section on senses notes that some creatures may have precise senses other than sight, such as hearing. The "special senses" section does not list precise hearing as a special sense, but does list scent.

Does this imply that a creature with precise hearing cannot observe an invisible creature, but a creature with precise scent can do so because they are using a "special ability"?

The text of retraining says: "you generally can't make choices you couldn't make when you selected the original option".

Our Fighter player initially chose Stealth, Thievery, Athletics and Acrobatics as his Trained skills. He later took Rogue Dedication. Rogue Dedication makes you trained in Stealth and Thievery, or if you already are trained in both - which he was - it gives you two free trained skills. He chose Deception and Diplomacy.

He now wishes to retrain his Thievery skill to Arcana.

Per RAW, he is not making any choice that he could not have made when he was choosing his initial Fighter skills. Nor is he retraining any choice that he made at the time he took Rogue Dedication.

So, is this legal?

I placed this order a month or so back for the Gods & Magic supplement, and it was accepted and delivered, no problem.

However, whenever I try to add anything else to my cart, instead of creating a new order, it gets added to order 12580595! This causes errors adding to cart, and if it does get to the point where I can submit an order, it simply re-opens 12580595, wrongly associates it with the payment I made for Gods & Magic, and then freezes with the order in eternal "Pending" status and no ability to submit it.

In previous d20 games, we've been used to Detect Magic being able to penetrate some surfaces, and D&D generally gave a list of what could stop it.

Detect Magic in FP2e gives no such list, but does state that it's a "30 foot emanation". Page 457 says that "in an area effect creatures or targets must have line of effect to the point of origin to be affected", which would give it no ability to penetrate any material at all. However it is still not quite clear because technically Detect Magic only has an effect on the caster and their knowledge, not on the objects it detects. If Detect Magic affects/target the objects that it detects this could have further strange consequences down the line, such as, for example, triggers for "when a spell is cast on this object" would activate when it was detected.

So does Detect Magic target the things it detects (especially in the 4th level Heightened version), and what materials - if any - can it penetrate?

Whenever I try to add something to my Cart, I get the message "your request produced an error." without any explanation.

In addition (in case this is related) Order 12580195 doesn't show properly in my Order History. It was for Gods & Magic for 2E, but it's shown blank.

Random nerd guess: is there a problem with Gods & Magic having an ampersand in it which is being misinterpreted somewhere in the software?

The Redeemer tenet reads:

"You must first try to redeem those who commit evil acts, rather than killing them or meting out punishment. If they then continue on a wicked path, you might need to take more extreme measures."

This seems relatively difficult to adjudicate, so I'm wondering how people do it.

1) Is simply inviting an enemy to surrender before attacking sufficient to have "tried to redeem" them?

2) Is participating in a group combat against an enemy also forbidden?

3) Is allowing a party member to kill an enemy who could potentially have been redeemed a tenet breach?

4) What is the judgment of what can and cannot be redeemed? Is the Champion required to try to redeem things such as Golems and Demons? While it might seem obvious that these would have either no free will or no good in them, both of these can experience Glimpses Of Redemption!

A random bit of confusion that came up last session.

Golems have the statement that they are "immune to all spells and magical effects except for their own", but then each golem type has a list of exceptions based on elements.

The question is how this applies where an elemental effect may occur that is not the result of magic. For example if an iron golem is struck by lightning in a thunderstorm, is it slowed (as per its Golem Antimagic entry) or does it take the damage normally because the lightning is not the result of anything magic? If an adamantine golem walks through a burning forest, is it still damaged by the fire rather than healed, becuase it's just regular fire, not magic?

My assumption so far has been to rule that anti "magic" effects apply to all elemental effects because otherwise it slows the game down significantly with arguments about what a magical effect actually does (ranging from whether a dragon's breath is magical or not to "no see, the Corrosive rune just makes acid appear in the wounds caused by my sword, but once it's appeared it's regular acid..") but at the same time, I'm not sure if this results in Golems being too powerful. In particular alchemical items would be much more effective against Golems if the "it has to be magical" rule is followed.

Is it intended that Wall Of Stone has no duration, so presumably once created the wall is mundane and can't be dispelled?

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 made the mistake of having the PCs sailing down a river on a boat, and attacked by some aquatic monsters as they went.

Why was this a mistake? Because it turns out there's nothing about boats in the book. In fact, only the magical swan boat even has a listed speed. Capsizing a boat is a special monster ability and can only be done by a Dragon Turtle or a Sea Serpent; even a substantial Water Elemental or an actual Kraken can't do it! Control Water can have no effect on boats; even if an effect isn't actually stated, an effect that could only impose the Slow condition on fish is presumably going to be too weak to affect any substantial ship.

So, are there any real guidelines for how to do combat where a boat is involved or are things just stuck? What should have been a thematic Siren-style encounter got reduced to daftness.

Is it legal to combine these two together to auto-succeed at Stealth at (effectively) +10 compared to your Assurance value? Or does the text "when you roll..." in Sneak Savant eliminate the possibility of using Assurance to convert a failure to a success when no dice was rolled?

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?

Say a PC has a +3 striking sword. That means that what they actually have is a sword with a +3 potency rune and a striking rune.

If this sword gets broken and the PC wants to repair it, the DC is based on the DC to craft the item, which is "set by the GM based on the level, rarity, and other circumstances".

So, does repairing this sword have the difficulty of simply repairing a sword (a level 0 item), or does it also require repairing the +3 potency rune (a level 16 item)?

We've run into this problem again, which was present in the playtest but hasn't been resolved since, and it seems to be caused entirely by some unnecessarily confusing wording.

Page 142: Table 3-12 indicates that at every even-numbered level, the character gains a "fighter feat".

Page 142: "Fighter feats" says that at every even-numbered level, the character gains a "fighter class feat", and that "fighter class feats" are listed on page 144.

Page 144: has that list, but it is headed "Fighter feats"; not "fighter class feats."

Page 143: Combat Flexibility states that, when you make your daily preparations, you gain one "fighter feat" of 8th level or lower that you don't have.

Page 219: "Select the archetype's dedication feat using one of your "class feat" choices."

Page 219, again: "For example, if you gained an ability at 6th level that granted you a 4th-level class feat with the dwarf trait, you could swap out that class feat only for an archetype feat of 4th level or lower with the dwarf trait." (There is no such ability, neither does any archetype feat have the Dwarf trait. However, this does establish that the fact that a feat is granted by an ability does not prevent it being swapped with an archetype feat.)

Therefore, all of the evidence seems to be that you can take archetype feats, possibly even dedications, with Fighter Flexibility.

Arguing that a "fighter feat" is not a class feat leaves it either impossible for fighters to take Dedications at all (because they get "fighter class feats" or "fighter feats", never "class feats"), or to take feats at all (because they get "fighter class feats", but have only a list of "fighter feats")

This really seems to be unnecessary confusion created by a tiny choice of word and seems a prime errata candidate, so could it please be clarified?