jdripley's page

Resilient Sphere:
You create an immobile sphere of force to either trap or protect the target, blocking anything that would pass through the sphere. The sphere has AC 5, Hardness 10, and 40 Hit Points. It's immune to critical hits and precision damage. Disintegrate destroys the sphere instantly. If the target is unwilling, the effects of the sphere depend on the target's Reflex save.

Fireball:
A roaring blast of fire appears at a spot you designate, dealing 6d6 fire damage.

I'm planning on using a Demonologist who has Resilient Sphere, and I'm contemplating its various uses. "Blocking anything that would pass through" seems very clear when it comes to things like weapons, characters, or even spell effects like Telekenetic Projectile or Acid Arrow or Lightening Bolt. Any touch spell, that's out as well.

But you could probably target through a Sphere with Fireball, yes?
How about Heal vs Divine Lance? Divine Lance specifies "a beam" but Heal 2 action simply gives a range without defining how the magical energy "gets there."

How do you all play this? If the spell doesn't specify any form of a projectile, do you allow it to target something in a Sphere? Or for someone in a Sphere to target outside of the sphere?

In short: Are you considered Undetected if you are out of Line of Sight of an enemy?

Practically: You are in a hallway that turns at a right angle. You are 10 feet from the corner. There is an enemy 10 feet past the corner. Neither of you can see each other, but you can hear each other so you know they're there, they know you're there.

It's your turn, and you want to sneak up because you're a Rogue. Can you Sneak to the square that allows you to see and target the enemy? Or must you first Hide, then Sneak?

Action economy is what's on the line. If you can Sneak then Strike, you can Stride away to make it harder for the enemy to retaliate. If you must first Hide, then Sneak, then Strike, you're twisting in the wind at close range at the end of your turn.

I've been thinking about running some arena style matches. Gladiator stuff.

The idea is to have two equal teams build characters then fight in an arena. PF2's combat system feels tight enough that this ought to work fairly well. I think the rules (aside from normal PF2 rules) could be pretty simple and straight forward... basically just have at it. But, I submit this here either as inspiration or in case somebody can detect a glaring problem that I've overlooked. Here we go:

Pathfinder 2 Arena Rules:

--Teams have equal numbers of characters - 1v1, 2v2, etc.
--All characters are the same level.
--Equip characters using Table 10-10 (core page 510)
--Only one character of a given class allowed per team - this rule does not extend to multiclass feats
--At the start of each fight, characters are assumed to have full HP, be free of conditions (other than conditions like the Giant Barbarian's Clumsy 1), to have all spells and daily abilities available, and to have ammunition loaded into any applicable weapons.

And that ought to do it for the rules, I think.

Beyond that, I think it would be advisable to have at least a few arena maps prepared and to randomly decide which map will be used AFTER teams are declared.

One map should be fairly open, one should have loads of walls and other obstructions, etc., that way your teams can't be built to capitalize on the opportunities or challenges of only a single arena (i.e. a map that is completely open but filled with greater difficult terrain would favor a ranged team and punish a melee team; a small map without cover would favor a melee team and punish a ranged team.

Arena designers are encouraged to craft them with an eye towards fairness. Starting one team on an elevated platform that requires the other team to Jump to get to while offering the other team no such benefit is not ideal.

Arena designers are further encouraged to get creative. Pits filled with fire, or spikes projecting from walls will encourage players to get creative with shoves. Swaying rope bridges will allow dextrous characters to gain access to areas that other characters may have difficulty reaching.

The new Wizard thesis from the Advanced Player's Guide confuses me as to what the benefit is.

Seems to me... you are getting an external widget that can only hold spells that you know... then you lose a spell slot in order to give charges to the staff.... why didn’t you just keep your spell slot in the first place...?

I feel like I must be missing something key here, it seems like it doesn’t do anything valuable for you...

So, my party went toe to toe with an Adult Black Dragon tonight. Epic fight!

And now they want to harvest the body because, as every adventurer knows, dragon hide makes good armor and their horns and teeth and all of that are good reagents.

Everybody knows that... but I have never read any rules on how to go about harvesting those things from a dragon.

So, does anybody know of rules for that? Or have any advice on how to adjudicate it?

Skills for harvesting?
Anything more interesting than “x GP worth of dragon hide?”

Hello,

Please cancel my Pathfinder Rulebook subscription.

Thanks!

Akin to Groundhog Day or the Dr Who episode Heaven Sent...

The premise is the characters are locked in an incredibly lethal dungeon but there are tricks or items that may not appear important at first but in hindsight will bypass/overcome/prevent something that is a hard block on their success. Each time the party TPKs, they all wake up where they started, and the whole thing is reset. Ideally each room in the dungeon is potentially lethal right from the get go so they have a chance to dive into the theme right away. I’m talking, you have 3 doors to open. One fills the room with fire and kills everybody. The other releases a too-powerful monster who kills everybody. The third door is trapped, but once they learn where the trigger is it’s easy to disarm and they can move on.

Clearly the party and GM need to REALLY trust each other for this, clearly there is a big danger of frustration.

But, I am here looking for deadly situations, and how to cleverly overcome them. Bonus points if they interact (such as, a room later down the dungeon has a monster weak to fire, if you can lure the creature into the 1st room and then use mage hand to open the fire door...

The key here is very deadly, but with a non-obvious but discoverable weakness that the party can learn to take advantage of over iterations.

Example: An alchemist has the formula for Alchemist's Fire.

Does that mean they know the Lesser, Moderate, Greater and Major versions of Alchemist's fire, and can craft the higher level versions as soon as they get to the appropriate level?

Or is it incorrect to say that they have the Alchemist's Fire formula, and it would be more appropriate to say that they know the Lesser Alchemist's Fire formula, and as they go along they can have the opportunity to learn the Moderate (etc) Alchemist's Fire formula?

I don't want to rip off my alchemist player by denying him knowledge of those higher level formulas... nor do I want to rip off my player by denying him the chance to be incrementally excited by learning higher level formulas along the way. I just want to get it right :)

The Bestiary has two templates for quickly adjusting the power of a monster.. Weak, which reduces most things by 2 and lowers HP, and Elite which increases most things by 2 and increases HP.

Fine, easy enough.

But... maybe I'm missing something, but there doesn't seem to be a clear instruction on how to adjust the level of the monster that you applied the template to..? Is that written somewhere and I just keep missing it? Or what?

So the context is that I'm noodling on an idea where skill in a game is represented by the die you roll, as well as how many you roll. But instead of adding the resulting rolls together, you're just hoping for ONE of the dice to roll high.

So clearly a d6 is better than a d4 because 1/3 of the time you will roll higher than the d4 can roll in the first place. And a d8 is better than the d6, etc.

And clearly if you can roll 2d6 and take the highest that is (mathematically) better than 1d6, as now you have two chances for a preferable number.

All of that makes easy sense and my brain has no trouble coping with it.

Here's where it breaks down for me and I'm struggling with how to figure things:

Say a character rolls 3d8 and takes the highest result. How do I compare the relative strength of that roll to some other combination? Is 3d8 better than 2d10, on mathematical average? Is 3d8 better than 5d6?

How should I set up the equation to figure out the probability of getting any particular number as the high result in a given pool of dice?

I know all about how the Core Rulebook says to add extra XP worth of enemies into an encounter depending on how many extras you have.

But I'm lazy, and I can't be the only lazy one out there.

Off the bat my inclination is to simply adjust HP up on all monsters according to the Elite adjustment table per each extra PC. That seems very easy, it doesn't mess with math at all, but it ought to keep the enemies in the fight a bit longer to compensate for the extra killing power of a larger party.

Thoughts? Other methods?

And a practical example using a spoiler from Fall of Plaguestone:

After actually working my way through that example, I'm less sure of my proposed method. The added HP according to the chart more than doubles the HP of many lower level enemies, which seems off. But.. it's super simple, which I like...

If I'm designing the encounters from scratch I'll use the core rulebook's method, but for canned adventures when the advantage is that you don't have to do a lot of work prepping encounters.... I'm looking for a convenient solution! Perhaps just adding one "minion" type monster is the ticket??

Let's use an Alchemist creating a batch of Lesser Alchemist's Fire here...

A batch is 4, Alchemist's Fire costs 3gp each, so the total cost is 12gp. In order to craft, the character needs to spend half, of 6gp.

They then spend 4 days of downtime, then they make their crafting roll. As GM I set the DC based on the item level (1 in this case as they're making Lesser Alchemist's Fire), and I set the DC at 15 for a common level 1 task.

Say the player gets a Success.

Now, they can either pay 6gp more to finish the batch right then and there (at a 0 cost savings, and the only benefit they receive is that THEY made it... perhaps there is not an alchemist's shop in town...), or they can spend more time.

As a level 1 Trained crafter they save 2sp/day they spend beyond the initial 4 that they must always spend. For maximum savings, 6gp, they need to spend 30 more days.

That seems... like a lot of time. Which makes me think maybe I've missed something? Who here is better at reading and math than I am? Am I understanding this, or am I missing something?

PLEASE if you respond to this with information from the adventure, use spoiler tags!!! Only you can prevent accidental spoilers!

I'm looking for a spoiler on rules support for one aspect of the adventure.

I heard somewhere, and now I can't remember where, that

If you've received your copy already, can you give a rough overview of what sort of rules support that aspect has? My group is interested in running an adventure using those sorts of rules, and my debate is between waiting for another publication that will give those rules, or dipping into Hellknight Hill in order to get those rules.

Thanks!

I would like to see attacks listed out with all of the possible numbers based on the multiple attack penalty.

I.e. the sewer ooze from the first Doomsday Dawn adventure has an attack listed as 6. Well and good, and it is not hard math to realize that the second attack will be at 1 and the third at -4.

In practice, I found that it was a lot to keep track of especially as you layered in combats with spellcasters and multiple types of enemies and different weapons, some with properties that affected the multiple attack penalty... I had to stop and do math when I really just wanted to roll dice and consult a number.

Then I recalled that in PF1 monsters with iterative attacks had them listed out for you... +6/+1 and so forth. So, why not do that in PF2? If a weapon is Agile or has some other “always on” way to reduce the multiple attack penalty, list the numbers accordingly. Something like Backswing or Sweep would not be factored in because it depends on circumstances that may or may not be present.

Anyways... I think it would be a good quality of life thing. Especially when switching between a monster's primary attack and a secondary agile attack, my brain slowed down while crunching the numbers.. all for the cost of a few characters added to each attack, which seems like a small thing.

I know it’s early to be making noise about this, but... as a good GM screen is a great tool especially when diving into a new edition, I think it’s worth talking about the GM screen(s) that will eventually be produced for PF2.

What should be printed on the GM side? What format do people prefer, landscape or horizontal?

Personally I hope that both vertical and horizontal will be produced, at very least in PDF format, even if it doesn’t make financial sense to do a whole print run in both styles.

I hope to see the DC table and the DC for static tasks (climbing...) listed.
I hope to see conditions.
I hope to see monster templates like “elite” and so forth.

We ran into a Power Attack crit with a +1 greatsword in our last playtest session. The crit dealt 8d12+16 damage. It took some time to churn through the math.

Then we got to thinking - this was a pretty slow moment at level 7, but this will scale into something pretty crazy!

With a +3 potency rune, that power attack crit looks like:
16d12+STRx4

With a +5 potency rune the power attack crit is now:
24d12+STRx4

That is... a lot.

Even standard attacks.. +3 potency is 4d something + STR and +5 potency is 6d something + STR. On a standard attack...

My concern is this: Potency Runes adding weapon dice is going to increase dramatically the number of dice you need to add up during your turn. Whether it's Power Attack or two single Strikes... even without the crits...

My understanding is that the increase in damage potential for martial characters is part of addressing the power level problem between casters and martial characters. I salute the effort to bring those power levels in line. But I'm worried that the increase in time spent adding will slow things and make higher level play laborious.

Personally I would be fine with lower HP pools and lower damage potential across the board, and would prefer that to increasing the math required at the table by increasing dice with potency runes.