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I just finished painting Reaper’s Henchmen & Hirelings boxed set, and it has the topic of hirelings on my mind more generally, and I was thinking about a Cleric hiring out of the Henchman’s and Hireling’s Guild.

But since my knowledge of the Golarion deities is a little sketchy, I decided to see who folks thought would fit that bill.

Has anyone statted up any NPCs that mimic the Kineticist class, impulse / Kinetic gate-based? Have any appeared in adventures or PFS scenarios one might point to?

I’ve not run across any.

Would it be too strong to let the Armor Training feat (or similar feats if they exist — I can’t think of any off hand, but I’m sure they’re out there) scale with each class’s existing armor training levels? So that if you have Medium Armor training through the feat, and your class advances your Light Armor proficiency to Expert, your Medium Armor proficiency gained through the feat would also advance to Expert.

The trait description for Undead states that "Undead creatures are damaged by positive energy, are healed by negative energy, and don't benefit from healing effects."

There is, additionally, a monster ability Negative Healing, which states that "It is damaged by positive damage and is not healed by positive healing effects. It does not take negative damage, and it is healed by negative effects that heal undead."

The Skeleton Guard, maybe the most basic of Undead creatures, has both the Undead trait and the Negative Healing monster ability. Is the monster ability necessary for the Skeleton Guard to work as described in the Undead trait, or is is the monster ability there as a sort of reminder?

I ask because in Sunday's session I ran an Undead monster that doesn't have the Negative Healing monster ability in its stat block. It never came up in the fight, so I didn't need to amke a call, but I'm curious what folks think.

The monster in question is

The Sarkorian Wolf “developed defenses against the Abyss.” The only difference I’m spotting between the state blocks of the Sarkorian Wolf and a plain Wolf is that the Sarkorian variety has “Resistances evil 5[/.]” The vanilla wolf has a neutral alignment, though, which means it’s immune to evil damage, but then so are Sarkorian wolves. I imagine there could be circumstances in which it’s helpful for a Neutral creature to have resistance to alignment damage, but i can’t think of any. Does anyone know of any existing rules interactions where the Sarkorian Wolf’s resistance 5 to evil damage matters?

According to the SRD, when you gain the Drained condition,

You also lose a number of Hit Points equal to your level (minimum 1) times the drained value, and your maximum Hit Points are reduced by the same amount.

What is the order of operations here? Do you lose current Hit Points and THEN reduce maximum Hit Points, or vice versa?

By way of example, a Bob is Level 1 with 20 maximum HP and no damage. Does he then have 19 out of 19 hit points (lose, then reduce) or 18 out of 19 (reduce then lose)?

Off the top of my head this question only seems to matter when a character becomes Drained while suffering no damage, though I may be missing some other corner case.

If one were interested in running a game focused on intrigues between noble houses or some other sort of organization, where on Golarion would folks suggest such a thing be set? What book or book would be a good source related to folks’ suggestions?

The sword Flametongue has this:

Activate Two Actions command, Interact; Effect You cast the produce flame cantrip from the sword as a 7th-level arcane spell, using your melee attack modifier with flametongue as your spell attack modifier.

Produce Flame’s damage is “1d4 fire damage plus your spellcasting ability modifier.”

1) What is your “spellcasting ability modifier for this purpose, particularly if you aren’t an arcane spellcaster otherwise?

2) Does Weapon Specialization apply to the Produce Flame cantrip from the sword?

You’ve learned how to inflict greater injuries with the weapons you know best. You deal 2 additional damage with weapons and unarmed attacks in which you are an expert. This damage increases to 3 if you’re a master, and to 4 if you’re legendary.

This doesn’t specify strikes, which would pretty clearly not include the Produce Flame cantrip, but it is still a use of a “weapon with which you are an expert” or above.

What about the Critical Specialization effect? That rule specifies that it applies “ when you make a Strike” so I think it’s clear it doesn’t apply to the cantrip, but does that argue that Weapon Specialization does?

Does multiple attack penalty apply to the Athletics check to use the Sleeper Hold feat?

The feat doesn’t have the Attack trait, but the underlying Grapple action does.

Some discussion of the Invisible condition in another thread got me thinking about the spell Drop Dead.

The target appears to fall down dead, though it actually turns invisible. Its illusory corpse remains where it fell, complete with a believable fatal wound. This illusion looks and feels like a dead body.

The Invisible condition, though, tells us “ If you become invisible while someone can already see you, you start out hidden to the observer (instead of undetected) until you successfully Sneak.”

I’m pretty certain the intent of Drop Dead is that the target is rendered undetected, and that’s how I have and will continue to GM it, but RAW, that doesn’t seem to the case because the target is almost certainly visible at the time of casting.

I generally GM with the assumption that bad guys don’t attack downed PCs, but instead focus on current threats. There are exceptions, of course, such as bad guys who have the Death Knell spell prepped, or otherwise get some sort of boon out of damaging a downed foe, and I’ve had animals try to carry off a downed PC rather than keep fighting the ones who are left up. But that not my general practice.

Yesterday I ran an encounter with an Aurumvorax, though, and a situation came up that hadn’t so far in my PF2 career. It had a PC grabbed and executed its Rapid Rake, which allows it four strikes for the cost of two actions, but all against the same target. It critted on strike 2, putting the PC at Dying 2.

Like I said, I don’t usually have a monster continue attacking a downed PC, but the beast had already “invested” actions on the activity and literally couldn’t do anything in its place if he stopped. Fortunately MAP kept it from landing both additional strikes.

Have folks run into this sort of situation where mechanics sort of guide you to choices you wouldn’t otherwise make?

Here’s a Mindflayer statblock I put together for my campaign. The PCs will encounter it in a couple weeks, so I figured I have time to solicit comments and advice.

The clawed gauntlet attack is because I’m using the Nolzur’s mini that has a Freddy Kruger glove, so I figured I’d reflect that.

I have a player for an eventual PF2e campaign who has expressed an interest in playing a Centaur healer, a Centaur for Disease Control, she says. Centaur seems like a pretty tricky ancestry to put together, so I wondered if anyone has given it a shot.

Is Magic Missile a single damage roll or is it X damage rolls where X is the number of targets?

Inspire Courage grants "a +1 status bonus to . . . damage rolls[.]"

Magic Missile states that "You choose the target for each missile individually. If you shoot more than one missile at the same target, combine the damage before applying bonuses or penalties to damage, resistances, weaknesses, and so forth."

So am I correct that if a PC under the effect of Inspire Courtage casts a 1st level 3 action Magic Missile, and targets one opponent he deals 3d4+4 damage, if the same spell targets two creatures it deals 2d4+3 to one and 1d4+2 to another, and if the same spell targets three creatures it deals 1d4+2 to each?

Can flanking ever render a creature flat footed against a ranged attack?

When you and an ally are flanking a foe, it has a harder time defending against you. A creature is flat-footed (taking a –2 circumstance penalty to AC) to creatures that are flanking it.

To flank a foe, you and your ally must be on opposite sides of the creature. A line drawn between the center of your space and the center of your ally's space must pass through opposite sides or opposite corners of the foe's space. Additionally, both you and the ally have to be able to act, you must be wielding melee weapons or be able to make an unarmed attack, you can't be under any effects that prevent you from attacking, and you must both have the enemy within reach. If you are wielding a reach weapon, you use your reach with that weapon for this purpose.

It's not uncommon for a PC to be capable of making either a melee attack or a ranged attack at the same time. A dagger has the "Thrown 10 ft." trait, so a PC armed with a short sword in one hand and a dagger in the other is "wielding a melee weapon" so assuming that PC is "flanking a foe" and decides to throw the dagger rather than make a melee attack, is the foe still flat footed? I think the answer is a fairly clear yes.

How about if, instead, the same PC has an empty hand and a dagger, and chooses to throw the dagger? The character is no long "wielding a melee weapon." But is the PC "able to make an unarmed strike"? A player of mine argues that because you can't make an unarmed strike WHILE you're executing the ranged attack, for that moment in time, you're no longer flanking. I disagree, but am curious what other folks think.

A large sized swarm is usually two squares by two squares, but can it reshape itself into, say, 1x4 line? Or any of the Tetris shapes, basically?

I ran a swarm encounter last week and the PCs all retreated into the 5 foot wide corridor and made ranged attacks. In 1e the swarm would have simply reshaped and followed, but in 2E I have seen no indication it can do that, so I didn’t have it happen.

Without this ability, a swarm could enter the 5 foot corridor only by using the (I think kind of ridiculous) squeezing rules.

The art for Captain Lavarsus on the cover and his interior art look like two different people. One of my players says cover Lavarsus looks like Christopher Guest in Best in Show, while I think interior Lavarsus looks like character actor Mike Haggerty, which may be appropriate in that Haggerty played the original captain on Brooklyn 99.

Does anyone have any other NPCs cast, or other thoughts for Lavarsus?

The success/crit results for the Shove use of Athletics are:

Critical Success You push your opponent up to 10 feet away from you. You can Stride after it, but you must move the same distance and in the same direction.

Success You push your opponent back 5 feet. You can Stride after it, but you must move the same distance and in the same direction.

Do “back” in Success and “away from you” in Critical Success have rules effect, or are they flavor? Do they have different meanings?

If my opponent is North of me, and I successfully shove, may I only move him North, because that is “back”?

If I critically succeed against the same opponent, so I now have the option to shove North East or North West, because they are both “away from” me?

Or, is this all flavor text, and I have the ability to move them into any empty space that is the appropriate distance from their starting space?

The various multiclass dedications provide cantrips, which scale and a spell list. So a 13th level Multiclass Sorcerer can Cantrips that heighten to 7th level, but has no spell slots of any level. Can that character use a Staff that requires the ability to cast spells of 7th level, assuming the tradition matches?

Assuming the persistent damage isn’t a result of the critical hit, is persistent damage doubled on a critical hit? The question came up in play today, and didn’t notice a clear answer in an at-the-table skim, and a google search didn’t turn up a thread in the 2E forum.

I haven’t really delved into the world of 2E Third Party yet, so I figured I’d start by asking folks what they’ve liked.

I’m on my first read through of the addiction rules in the GMG. If I’m understanding this correctly every time a character takes a dose of alcohol they make a DC 12 Fort Save to avoid addiction. Assuming no Con penalty every first level PC has at least a +3 Fort Save, which means they have a 60% chance to avoid addiction on each check, but that also means that every time that PC downs a drink there’s a 40% chance of addiction, which seems absolutely insane.

Fortunately the Commoner and the Noble in the NPC gallery both have a +6 Fort, so they only have a 25% chance of becoming addicted every time they take a drink.

The system seems sound in general, but the addiction DC for alcohol looks way too high to me.

Does firing a Reload 0 weapon have the manipulate trait?

I miss the old Fiendish Creature template from 1E, so I twisted it up and threw it into my session today on some animals that had invaded the Prime Material Plane from the Abyss and was pretty happy with the results, so I thought I’d share what I did, see whether anyone else had tried this, and get thoughts.

I simplified it to add darkvision (though that didn’t come up at all), resistance 5 to cold, electricity, and fire, weakness 5 good, and +5 evil damage on all natural attacks. For this I gave XP at +1 level but didn’t adjust other numbers.

What do folks think would happen if someone cast Stone to Fleshon a Wall of Stone?

Stone to Flesh can target a “ human-size stone object,” and a Wall of Stone is way larger than human sized, but Wall of Stone provides that “Each 5-foot-by-5-foot section of the wall has AC 10, Hardness 14, and 50 Hit Points, and it's immune to critical hits and precision damage,” so I don’t think I’d be out of line treating each 5 foot section as an object. The volume is the average human is about 3,783 cubic inches. The volume of a single segment of the wall is 3,600 cubic inches, and that looks close enough for magic.

So my thought is that Stone to Flesh affects a five by five section of wall, transforming it into “a mass of inert flesh (without stone's Hardness) in roughly the same shape.” At that point, I assume it could just be knocked over, but if someone wanted to damage it, I’d just use the Wall of Stone stats minus the hardness.

In the Playtest it seemed to be generally assumed that PCs walked around unarmed in Exploration mode, and if they wanted a weapon in hand, they had to spend an action to draw that weapon once Encounter Mode began. I am almost certain that the first time I played “actual” 2E, in a demo at Origins 2019, my PC, Valeros, had to draw his sword at the beginning of the first encounter.

On the basis of the Playtest and that Origins experience, when my group began playing 2E we continued to assume that characters entered Encounter Mode unarmed. A comment made in another thread made me question that, and I went to the CRB looking for answers. My latest read doesn’t seem to support the notion that characters are assumed to be unarmed, but it’s sufficiently ingrained at this point that when I mentioned it to one of my players, he wasn’t quite sure either, pointing to feats such as Quick Draw or the new Swashbuckler feat Swaggering Initiative, which seem to be aimed at that rule. So we played yesterday’s session under the “Unarmed Exploration” convention, and I’m only just asking this now, so we’ll probably play that way today as well, but I’m less and less certain that it’s correct.

So, to wrap this all into a question, any insight?

As written it can’t be cast because it’s a reaction triggered before the Oracle acts in Encounter Mode.

My initial read-though of the APG playtest made me look at the Parry weapon trait for the first time. It allows you, if Trained, to “spend an Interact action to position your weapon defensively, gaining a +1 circumstance bonus to AC until the start of your next turn.” The Interact basic action has the Manipulate tag. The Attack of Opportunity reaction is triggered when a “ creature within your reach uses a manipulate action[.]”

It already struck me as weird that drawing a weapon triggers Attack of Opportunity, but it seems nuts that using a weapon “defensively to block attacks” provokes an attack.

Or am I missing something?

The rules for the Unconscious condition state that “When you gain this condition, you fall prone and drop items you are wielding or holding unless the effect states otherwise or the GM determines you’re in a position in which you wouldn’t.”

Table 6-2: Changing Equipment draws a distinction between “Drop an item to the ground” and “Detach a shield.” I take that to mean that your shield isn’t going to fall to the ground when you fall unconscious, effectively that for an equipped shield “you’re in a position in which you wouldn’t” drop it, and I’m satisfied with that.

But if you use the Raise a Shield action, and fall unconscious, then are healed, do you continue to benefit from the shield? For that matter, while you’re unconscious do you benefit from the shield? The description of the Raise a Shield action states that “Your shield remains raised until the start of your next turn.” Nothing there states that you must remain conscious to continue to enjoy the benefit, and as I said before, I am satisfied that you don’t drop your shield when you fall unconscious.

What do you folks think?

If mounted characters fall unconscious do they fall off their mounts? In 1E there was a percentile roll based on the sort of saddle you were using, and if you fell to the ground you took damage. Saddles don’t even seem to exist in 2E, though.

What happens when a mounted character is grabbed? A grabbed character is immobilized, but when the rider is grabbed but the horse isn’t, can the horse move without breaking the grab? If so, does the rider stay behind or can the horse simply carry him outside the reach of the creature that grabbed him?

I’ve Googled this, but all the results seem to be from the Playtest, not for 2E proper. Does a character make the decision to use the Shield Block reaction before or after damage is rolled? The Trigger, “While you have your shield raised, you would take damage from a physical attack” doesn’t seem super clear to me. Obviously making the decision only when you know whether the damage rolled will break the shield, or that the damage rolled is in the sweet spot where the shield’s hardness will keep you alive would be stronger than deciding before damage is rolled, but that doesn’t seem so good that I can’t imagine it was the intended order of operation.

Between the new multiclass system and the reduced emphasis on magic items to maintain minimal competency, I think Pathfinder Second Edition may be the version that finally makes the fabled “low magic” campaign viable without major rule adjustments.

My initial thought is to ban the casting classes, but not their multiclass archetypes. Magic remains, but it’s an extra rather than the focus of any given PC.

We recently converted my home game from 1e to 2E, and one player has a Paladin of Serenrae who is missing his old ability to Detecf Evil at will. He recently multi classes to Sorcerer and picked up Divine Lance as a Cantrip. Since good damage only harms evil aligned creatures, he’s taken to shooting creatures with Divine Lance as a sort of poor man’s Detect Evil.

Putting aside the first time he did it, when he actually talked someone into consenting, which seems sort of crazy, but the target was sure he wasn’t evil, do folks agree that doing this unprovoked to a non-combatant is an evil act?

How are GMs actually determining the results of Recall Knowledge regarding creatures?

In 1e, I’d let everyone who had the relevant skill roll a check, then I’d let the player whose character rolled highest ask me one question on a success, plus one question for every five over the DC. Questions would generally be Special Defenses, Special Abiltities, Special Attacks, Weaknesses, Strong Save, Weak Save, Languages, and I’d basically just give whatever info the statblock included that answered it, or “None.”

In 2E are GMs letting the player ask a question, or are you just picking one or two (on a crit) bits of information?

Cayden Cailean’s anathema includes “own a slave[.]” Would purchasing a slave specifically to manumit him or her violate that anathema?

I see the term “negative heading” in a bunch of Bestiary entries, but I’ve not noticed a definition in the Bestiary, and searching my Core PDF I didn’t find that the term even appears.

Is it actually defined anywhere in the rules?

The Shifting weapon rune has the following effect:

The weapon takes the shape of another melee weapon that requires the same number of hands to wield. The weapon’s runes and any precious material it’s made of apply to the weapon’s new shape. Any property runes that can’t apply to the new form are suppressed until the item takes a shape to which they can apply.

What does “requires the same number of hands” mean? A scimitar has 1 for its Hands statistic. A lance has two for its Hands statistic, but has the jousting trait, which reads, in relevant part, “while mounted, you can wield the weapon in one hand[.]”

So if you’re mounted, can you use the Shifting rune to turn a one handed weapon into a lance, and then use it to turn the lance into a different two handed weapon?

When I click the link to Season 10 PFS scenarios from the PFS product page, the site is instead looping back to the main front page. It seems to be the same with several other links on that particular page, but I was specifically trying to get to Season 10 scenarios, so I haven't checked further.

From a pure balance perspective, would removing the slam attack that damages as one size category but adding a bite attack that damages at existing size category mess much with the Plague Zombie template?

What are other GMs' or players' experiences with Lucian Thrune in Dance of the Damned? I ran the Menador Keep portion of Dance over the past couple weeks, and Lucian Thrune seemed like a notably weak opponent.

Through careful use of Invisibility, Silence, and Shadowstep, the PCs managed to make it to the second floor and onto the ramparts before the alarm was raised. While the PCs were on the ramparts dealing with the soldiers, Lucian went to and mounted his Wyvern, then executed a flyby attack on the PC Wizard who was flying above the ramparts.

Lucian's Tactics entry say that he "uses Ride-By Attack while using Vital Strike with his greatsword." Is that even legal? Ride-By Attack requires that you "use the charge action" and the FAQ states that a charge action can't "be used in combination with Vital Strike." So the suggested tactic is useless. With a non-reach weapon, Ride-By Attack is also only an effective tactic once or twice before enemies get into position and start readying attacks. Arming Lucian with a lance, combined with the fact that his mount flies, would have answered this problem, as well as given him double damage when he charged, but instead he's flying around with a greatsword.

For all that, the ramparts appear to be the most advantageous location for Lucian to attack. If the alarm is never raised, the PCs are almost certain to find him in the war room without his wyvern and where he can bring none of his mounted combat abilities into play. Or, at night, there's a 20% chance they'll find him asleep, which admittedly leaves him even worse off.

I've tried a couple times to call with no luck. Are the offices closed today?

A neat rule in Vampire: the Requiem 2nd Edition is that in dramatically significant circumstances a player can voluntarily "downgrade" a normal failure to a "dramatic failure," which is that system's term for a fumble, and in return they receive a "beat," which is effectively 1/5 of an XP. From an in-game perspective, the character is learning from his mistakes. From a meta perspective the player is incentivized to spice up the drama.

That made me wonder about a voluntary fumble system for Pathfinder, where, in the event that a player rolls a natural 1 on an attack roll, the player can take a fumble in addition to the automatic miss (maybe draw a card from the Fumble Deck?), but also get something in return, like a d6 that can be added to any single d20 roll thereafter, or maybe even a reroll on any single d20 roll.

This would introduce the chaos an fun of fumbles, but leave the choice totally in the players' (or GM's, I suppose in the case of NPCs) hands, and that might remove the "punishment" feel that fumbles are sometims said to carry.

What do folks think?