magnuskn's page

As a reminder, also, the Access entries in the Firebrand feats in Celebrity and Acrobat etc. are not Prerequisites. [url]https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=1411[/url]

It just means they aren't considered uncommon.

It still should be mentioned, because as usual with uncommon and rare options, they require arbitration with your gamemaster. And there are those two absolutely will read an entry which, for example, says you need to be a second mark with the Firebrands and will require the player character to be part of the organization.

Hot dang, this has about everything I'd want from a module and AP. So much looking forward to this, especially the Nocticula article.

I'm sorry to be blunt, Magnuskn, but you made a preremaster Swashbuckler guide. You missed the changes of gameplay generated by the simplification of Panache generation. You kept an iconic feat like Flashy Dodge (Nimble Dodge in the past) orange and old go to feats like Acrobat Dedication blue.

And as a matter of fact, the feat that embodies the new Swashbuckler, Get used to Disappointment, is, through some Freudian slip, not rated.

The preremaster Swashbuckler gameplay is compatible with the remaster Swashbuckler, but it's now rather weak. You can produce much more effective builds now. And you also have much more freedom in how to build a Swashbuckler, the class is really for tinkers like myself. But it is still a really advanced class, best used by tactically-savvy players.

I very much did not miss the changes made by the Remaster, thank you very much. The entire guide is written with the easier generation of panache kept in mind. I also started playing Pathfinder second edition with the Remaster and didn't know much about the class before it, other than people were always complaining about Panache generation being too hard, so the assertion that this guide was written for the pre-Remaster Swashbuckler is doubly ridiculous.

Flashy Dodge competes with much better feats which use your reaction, and triggers only for one attack you have to announce its use for before the roll is made and therefore deserves its rating.

The Acrobat is absolutely worth a blue rating. Autoscaling Acrobatics for the dedication alone and an extra effect on a critical success for Tumble Through make the dedication by itself amazing and some of the follow-up feats (which include one good easy to take skill feat and another even more amazing one (Quick Spring) locked behind a Firebrands requirement) are also still good candidates to take later on.

I noticed Get Used to Disappointment not having a hyperlink and rating before your feedback post, when incorporating some (much better delivered) feedback from Reddit, it has now both the hyperlink and a green rating.

And thanks for trying to gatekeep a class, which is absolutely for everyone, to "more tactically-savvy players" (like yourself, you think, I guess), which is not true. My least technically-minded player in my Abomination Vaults group is playing a Swashbuckler and is doing pretty great with it.

I guess thank you for the feedback, but not in the least for the tone in which it was delivered.

Nice find! Now added to the guide. :)

My guide to the Remastered Swashbuckler has been updated, taking into account feedback in regards to styles and class feats, with an expanded weapon and archetype section and new sections for magic items and sample builds. Hyperlinks and a side index have also been added.

It's basically a forum tradition, when you get your first e-mail you (if you choose to participate) say "Now my watch begins" and when you get your second e-mail (which is when you can download the PDF and your items have gotten shipped) you say "And now my watch has ended".

It's a Game of Thrones thing, back when people still cared about the show because it was good back then.

I want to make a few comments here:

First, Gatewalkers. I have run this, and while I do have an issue in that there are not enough Deviant powers for a group of four, and they are so non-impactful that they don't get used much if at all, it is not a bad AP. In fact, outside of the deviant power issue, it's fun and flavorable and has some interesting twists.

The people that complain about it complain about Sakuachi, and 'It's her quest, not ours.', which is not true. Yes, she has a role to play, but the PCs have the biggest role to play as they can <spoiler>

Second: SKT. SKT is a great lead into Spore Wars. Why? Because as Highhelm points out, *Kyonin*'s Government approached Highhelm's with a 'Hey if you help us if Treerazer attacks, we will help you if Tar Baphon attacks.'

It makes absolute sense that heroes who have proven themselves in Highhelm are sent to a conference to help with Kyonin's security to show that Highhelm is serious about that offered alliance.

As for Curtain Call: Every adventure leads into it. AP. Homebrew. Whatever. Your group is literally asked to make a play about *their own adventures!* What can be easier as a lead-in? Your very own actions directly lead into the AP and it does not matter what those actions even are.

To address those points:

1.) Gatewalkers is also widely seen as a bit of a misdirect, since the group is supposed to be paranormal investigators and that plot is resolved in the middle of book one (source: Tarondor's Guide to AP's 2025). The AP veers into a completely different direction then. The general recommendation for the AP is to rewrite it completely, which is the exact opposite reason why I buy AP's in the first place.

2.) Sky King's Tomb quite clearly is the "dwarf AP". Yes, you prove yourself in that AP as competent, but that the (probably) dwarf heroes are then sent to Kyonin where they (pretty arbitrarily, I might add, by winning one battle) are chosen as diplomats for the elves by the elf queen to help organize the outside nations help to battle Treerazer is thematically very difficult for me to personally work with. I mean, to me "let's play the elf-AP with an all-dwarf party" sounds like the beginning of an RPG Horror Stories reddit thread.

3.) The problem with Curtain Call is that the theme of the AP is, by its nature, very theatrical, i.e. you'd expect characters with an large emphasis on skills and performance to show up. Few 1-11 AP's really feature that. Most focus on fighting and maybe a bit of problem solving of the mystery kind. Having a low-level AP with a more entertainment/theatrical focus would really help with that particular AP follow-up.

We do have some plans for more direct sequels in the works. I'd hoped Curtain Call's lead-in would help it be a sort of evergreen sequel, but it sounds like folks want more direct thematic follow-ups. So... yeah we have something like that in the works—in particular, the Seven Dooms for Sanpdoint and Revenge of the Runelords having strong thematic links.

Believe me, I look forward very much to Xan-Xan's revenge for us letting him burn on that scale. And Seven Dooms for Sandpoint does seem like the perfect lead-in. :)

Sometimes it's okay to start a high level Adventure Path with fresh characters. Sometimes it's a breath of fresh air to not have to do the grind through lower levels again just to get to the adventure you and your group REALLY want to play, especially if by the time you get there, the group has broken up for whatever reason. Which, judging by the sell-through rates of all previous 1st to 20th level Adventure Paths, happened a lot. Hence 3 part ones. People buy and play part 1 of an Adventure Path far more often than any other parts, regardless of what level that part 1 is for. And so it makes sense from a financial standpoint and a customer satisfaction standpoint to sell more part 1s in a year.

Well, as a possibility maybe it'd be possible to make two three-parters (not even consequently, but maybe one year apart?) which "rhyme", i.e. indirect sequels, as The Raven Black just pointed out? For the people who do prefer playing 1 - 20?

Not only do the shorter ones sell better (in large part because there's twice as many opportunities to "get in on the ground floor" of the story), but they give customers twice as many opportuniteis to get excited about an Adventure Path (since we do four a year instead of two). The amount of time it takes the typical group to play through a 3 parter is generally more than 3 months, so by the time they're wrapping up, there's even MORE choices of where to go from there.

Also, while I do understand folks wanna play a pC from 1st to 20th level (that's my preferred method of play), many MORE folks are eager to always be building new PCs to try out new character concepts, in part because we continue to publish so many interesting and intriguing new options for new characters (ancestries in particular are VERY popular, and you can't easily switch your ancestry over on an established character). More opportunities to start a new campaign plays better into that sort of player mindset, I suspect.

For the time being, 3 part Adventure Paths are here to stay, in other words.

I can live with it, since the points you make are quite true. However, one thing I got to say, having AP's like Spore Wars, which pretty clearly is the "Elf AP", without an appropiate lead-in is a bit annoying.

I look at the 1-11 AP's on offer currently and we have Abomination Vaults (which I am already running and Fists of the Ruby Phoenix is the already agreed-upon follow-up), Gatewalkers (which is widely seen as one of the worst 2E AP's) and then Outlaw's of Alkenstar, Quest for the Frozen Flame, Sky King's Tomb and Triumph of the Tusk, which are all pretty inappropiate entries into an elf-centric AP. Warden's of Wildwood would probably be much more doable, but ends at level 13, which makes connecting it to Spore Wars quite hard (except if I would tell my guys that they don't level for the first module and rewrite all encounters, too).

Curtain Call also seems to have not really have an AP which leads well into another AP which is a lot about heavy roleplay and theater.

Again, I get the advantages you guys see with 3-parters, but it'd be nice to have the RP-heavy low-level AP which connects quite well (both in terms of theme and levels) to the high-level RP-heavy AP. Same with the elf-centric war AP.

magnuskn wrote:

Also, for athletics maneuvers the Gymnast Swashbuckler is very comparable to other frontline classes and pulls away after level 10 due to Derring-Do.

I agree here, Derring-Do looks quite awesome. If you want to play a grappler or trip-based controller, there are lot of other options though that don't need 10 levels to "come online".

The Gymnast is missing the strength key attribute option and playing catch-up with strength martials - including the Ruffian. I find it baffling that they did not include this option.

I think swashbuckling is awesome, but flavor is free and game mechanics are not - for a lot of swashbuckling there are better mechanical options, and especially thief rogue being so synergistic is relating a lot of possible builds to a "okay, i played everything else already" place.

I said "pull away" for Derring-Do, not "comparable". The Gymnast already is comparable from level 1 due to +1 circumstance bonus you get to Athletics, which later becomes a +2 circumstance bonus. I'll assume that you'll start with a +3 in STR, though.

Class feats like Flamboyant Athlete and Agile Maneuvers already give you advantages to the use of Athletics before level 10. There is high synergy with the Clawdancer archetype as well for the Gymnast. With Combination Finisher you can also include Finishers with a good chance of hitting in your rotation, although constantly generating Panache for Derring-Do is something you need to build for.

The time I felt most frustrated with the finisher system is with the gymnast where your gymnast mechanics mech terribly with your finisher mechanics so I endwd up frequently ignoring finishers in favours of trips and grapples and derring do. If you take reactive strike and have a fighter or ranger worth standstill in the party your be fine damage wise but ignoring a main class feature is a little sad. But that was with the old edition haven't played a remastered on yet.

As far as I am aware, Gymnasts are supposed to not be build around finishers, due to Derring-Do. They have great synergy with the Clawdancers archetype, though.

I don't see those as optimal builds. The One For All is better as an archetype feat on a bard or charisma caster than on the swashbuckler.

Yeah, but at that point you are not playing a Swashbuckler, but another class entirely and maybe you wanted, y'know, to play a Swashbuckler and not a Bard who would be occupied doing his buff / cast routine anyway. You only get three actions in a round.

Also, for athletics maneuvers the Gymnast Swashbuckler is very comparable to other frontline classes and pulls away after level 10 due to Derring-Do.

At this point you are kinda putting down the class unnecessarily, because you didn't discover the secret sauce which miraculously makes it as good as a Rogue or Fighter in dealing damage. It has other advantages over them in areas which you are clearly not even concerned with, as laser focused as you are on DPR comparisons. Even when SuperBidi came up with a rough build including spellcasting, you just dismissed that. I personally wouldn't want to play such a build either, but since DPR is your own god-king of premises if its even worth playing a class, it was at least a valid attempt by SuperBidi to fulfill that premise.

magnuskn wrote:

AJCarrington wrote:

I don't expect manufacturers/published to absorb these taxes...so, prices are going to go up (especially for those of us here in the US).

Actually even more for us abroad, since Paizo will need to raise their book prices for everybody and then our own customs will tax the more expensive books even more. On the more expensive months (i.e. the ones with two hardcovers), I usually already had to pay an extra 30 Euros in import taxes on the books, this will now go up even more, depending on how Paizo handles the whole thing.

Of course the situation is still in basically daily fluctuation, but at some point Paizo will need to ship their monthly stuff. I think they are holding off for the moment in hopes that the tariffs may be suspended for another few months, but we'll have to see.

Why would they need to raise the price for everyone? They can just ship from China to somewhere in EU for shipping and fulfilment. It's just the US which would suffer higher prices once they adjust their operations.

I think they would need warehouses in the EU for that, which is a thing which they don't have at this point, which was addressed in the comments of the rebuild of their webpage blog entry.

Sounds all good. I hope the 15% discount is still at four suscriptions and wasn't moved up to six suscriptions.

Is the may shipment coming out later this time due to convention craziness?

I rather think the tariff crazyness situation has more to do with it, especially since it seems to change daily.

I don't expect manufacturers/published to absorb these taxes...so, prices are going to go up (especially for those of us here in the US).

Actually even more for us abroad, since Paizo will need to raise their book prices for everybody and then our own customs will tax the more expensive books even more. On the more expensive months (i.e. the ones with two hardcovers), I usually already had to pay an extra 30 Euros in import taxes on the books, this will now go up even more, depending on how Paizo handles the whole thing.

Of course the situation is still in basically daily fluctuation, but at some point Paizo will need to ship their monthly stuff. I think they are holding off for the moment in hopes that the tariffs may be suspended for another few months, but we'll have to see.

Again, if you have a near-useless third action, it is because you did not take the "do something useful with your third action" feats, like Elegant Buckler and Elaborate Parry. There are options there, not everything has to be about DPR.

No, they don't. Reactive Strike or Opportune Riposte don't get finisher damage, but the rogue gets their sneak attack damage. They heavily out damage the swashbuckler on reaction attacks. It's not even close.

Fighter offsets rogue damage with high chance to hit and high damage weapons. Barb with high damage weapons and rage. Swashbuckler offsets it with nothing.

And the rogue doesn't miss and miss and miss. They get flat-footed very easy and master weapon proficiency. Their Opportune backstab is much easier to activate as well as being able to apply Flat-footed as a debilitation for a thief or a ruffian can apply a weakness to a damage type they are using.

I don't even think you could prove the damage is close.

It very much sounds like you don't know how much random dice rolling when using an agile weapon like a shortsword can hit quite a bit against debuffed, off-guard targets for the rogue to really tear them up. It's not miss and miss and miss. It's hit quite a bit attacking 3 and 4 times a round with haste and an easily activated reaction that also benefits from sneak attack damage.

Like I said, the rogue and fighter are two of the highest damage and most effective classes in the game. I'm not even sure it's close for everyone else except maybe a giant or dragon barbarian or an imaginary weapon magus.

Alright, all good points. I truly had forgotten that the extra damage is completely not applied to Reactive Strikes. Probably something for 3E.

Then Mr. Swashbuckler is watching the rogue attack again and again and again

...and miss and miss and miss and miss again, oh there was a 20 between all those misses...

then reaction Opportune Backstab for often 6d6 as well. And the fighter just hammering away. And the big old raging barb is also.

Then Mr. Swashbuckler does a Reactive Strike or an Opportune Riposte and says "Huh, that works as well".

magnuskn wrote:

You must be one of the only people I've ever heard refer to the Swashbuckler in 1E as "overpowered". ^^ It was a dip class, take the interesting stuff from level 1 (to maybe 3), then take levels in a better class. The overreliance of the 1E Swashbuckler on swift actions for multiple things the class wanted to do and the only one good save, which was Reflex to boot, made the class unattractive as a single-class character for high level gaming. I can tell you that from experience playing a Swashbuckler from levels 14 - 15, after which the character died because he had run out of Charmed Life rolls for the day and met a lich.

The 2E Remastered Swashbuckler is a much better designed class overall.

Am I missing something? Wasn't the 1E swashbuckler the one that gained +1 damage per level and really good AC?

The AC was decent enough (though not overwhelmingly so compared to other classes, except at the very high levels when DEX builds pulled away, anyway). You would do better taking a few levels in Swashbuckler and then going for one of the absurdly good classes like Alchemist if you wanted really good DEX-based AC.

The +1 damage/lvl was nice. But that damage was precision damage, which was not doubled on a critical hit like in 2E and otherwise suffered from the same limitations as precision damage suffers from in 2E (i.e. immunities to it). Oh, also crit immunity items also made you immune to it as well. For a high damage build, you normally still went to two-handed weapons and other classes, because of the normal limitations of a single one-handed weapon build in 1E.

You must be one of the only people I've ever heard refer to the Swashbuckler in 1E as "overpowered". ^^ It was a dip class, take the interesting stuff from level 1 (to maybe 3), then take levels in a better class. The overreliance of the 1E Swashbuckler on swift actions for multiple things the class wanted to do and the only one good save, which was Reflex to boot, made the class unattractive as a single-class character for high level gaming. I can tell you that from experience playing a Swashbuckler from levels 14 - 15, after which the character died because he had run out of Charmed Life rolls for the day and met a lich.

The 2E Remastered Swashbuckler is a much better designed class overall.

As you stated, random dice rolls and being able to attack more often during a round. A swashbuckler maxed out at 6d6 and a rogue at 4d6 with a thief rogue able to up that to 6d6.

Then the rogue has gang up and Opportune Backstab which often gives them flanking without needing to flank and a second no MAP attack.

Swashbuckler has access to Reactive Strike and Tumble Behind, so they also have easy access, if wanted, to off-guard for their enemies and an additional attack at no MAP.

Their damage is tied to a single finisher strike that if it misses, their damage is terrible and they cannot attack again hoping for a better roll like a rogue or another damage class.

They don't have any reactions that activate as easily as Opportune Backstab.

Reactive Strike is pretty consistent, I've found, since enemies normally move around a lot. Also, at least Swashbucklers get some damage if they miss, which the Rogue does not get. To the best of my knowledge, I could be wrong and there is some ability which gives damage on a miss.

Yes. We do weight towards optimization.

I'm asking for people experienced with optimizing the swashbuckler. If you have fun playing it, that's fine. But I need to know what you do when a variety of factors negatively impact the swashbuckler more than other classes.

The magus as an example may have a similar big single hit problem, but it's single hits can be absolutely nutters. They have focus spells that allow them to recharge and guarantee some damage like force fang

The swashbuckler has confident finisher which guarantees some damage. Do you switch to something like this against high AC targets?

Do you start using regular attacks then maybe working in a confident finisher to guarantee damage?

Would this be a better strategy to put more consistent damage against higher AC targets?

Let's say you swing once with extra precision damage for a normal strike, then do a Confident Finisher with your second attack with guaranteed damage on a failed strike with with a feat to enhance this to full finisher damage on a regular failure.

Does this produce better results than trying to land a big finisher every round? Has anyone tried this?

In practical play my group isn't that far yet, but mathematically it would make more sense to switch to Confident Finisher and get Precise Finisher to do your entire finisher damage on a miss. Or you have enough teamwork in your group to make consistent hits more likely, so using Bleeding Finisher would make more sense. As usual with PF2E, it depends on your campaign and how well your group works together.

Also, if your player who plays a Swashbuckler hates so much the feeling of missing his one big strike per round, maybe he is playing the wrong class in the first place. I don't know if swinging for the fences and maybe hitting one in ten attacks with MAP would make him feel better, though. Maybe he should just play a Fighter with Exacting Strike if that is his problem.

2. finishing so soon?

Now that you still get temp panache on a failed bravado check, it's actually really really easy to end up with a leftover third action. You can use Tumble to get to an enemy and try to get panache. If you succeed, you move through their square. If you fail, you stop in front of their square, still within reach to perform a finisher. The key thing is that you compress the action to move within reach, with the action to gain panache. So you end up with a third leftover action because finisher locks you out.

You could spend the third action to gain panache, but you don't truly need to. Because then the next round you'll end up with even more leftover actions. You could do something like Demoralize, but tend to run out of targets.

I think this is a solvable problem, but it's not always directly obvious that this is a problem you ought to be solving. When you're building a swashbuckler there's no explicit step in making the character that says "now pick a favorite third action that's likely to be useful every round". But if you do, it could be really helpful.

Raise Shield is a candidate. You could use bucklers or regular shields. Reinforcing runes make bucklers even plausible with Shield Block if you like.

Feint and Bon Mot are also candidates. I feel like Feint is a bit overshadowed by how easy it is to get off-guard through flanking though.

Finally, just moving back out of reach is an option. Swashbuckler is a plausible class for actually kiting enemies. If you're only gonna do one attack per round, then why should you end your turn next to an enemy and give them multiple shots at you? But that does mean you're probably not gonna be the one in your party who shields the squishies from enemies coming close. (In that sort of party, maybe the Shield Block build makes more sense?)

In summary: I think the class has a lot of room for system mastery to play a role, more than is apparent at first look..

The Swashbuckler, in my experience, has rather a pretty tight action economy, due to its multiple class feats which grant a benefit with your third action, some of which are part of your style gameplay.

Wit Swashbucklers will Bon Mot or One For All as often as they can with their third action, but many other Swashbucklers styles use Elegant Buckler or Extravagant Parry to get a +2 to AC. Also, the Swashbuckler lends itself to a skirmishing style of play, where your third action often is used for moving out of reach of an enemy (or the first is moving back into reach). Action compression abilities help the Swashbuckler just as much as they do most other classes.

How do your swashbuckler players do against high AC targets? Do they just get frustrated and watch the casters and martials like the fighter or rogue take them out or is their an adaptive strategy that involves swinging more to gain hits due to the random nature of die rolling?

How do Rogues do any better against high AC enemies than the Swashbuckler? Fighters, as established, have a flat +2 to attacks better than any other class, so they are the outlier class here, compared to all other martials.

If you have a under 40 percent chance to hit on your first attack, then a single big hit class would hit every other round maybe. Does this match the damage of say a fighter or barbarian taking two or three swings a round to try to rely on random dice variation to do some damage?

How is the swashbuckler adapting?

Debuffing, flanking, the usual stuff all other classes do.

I'm asking because the swashbuckler player in my group almost rage quit. It seemed that the one big hit style really hamstrung the swashbuckler compared to the fighter and rogue who landed more hits just due to rolling more often.

When the swashbuckler did land, it really didn't do that much damage compared to the rogue or fighter.

I'm starting to feel they set the swashbuckler damage dice a little too low or maybe the designers expect a playstyle other than finishers every round.

Has anyone tested what provides better results?

I think this reflects more on your playstyle, which (according to your posting history) is heavily weighted towards high optimization. If your average enemy in your combats always sports high AC, then of course "one big hit per round" classes like the Magus or Swashbuckler are bound to me more frustrated. My combats sport normally a boss monsters and minions, so the Swashbuckler has a chance to shine. The Swashbuckler in my Abomination Vaults group usually gets in one or two big critical hits per session and hits very reliably.

I'm not worried about fun in this instance. I'm worried about results. My player plays the class because he enjoys the concept and play-style, but he is super frustrated with performance. He really tries to do well, but bad dice rolls and low damage even when hitting can make the player feel pretty terrible combined with the sheer number of rolls for the class to operate. If he gets a nat 20 on the acrobatics check, then next random die roll is a miss on the finisher attack it feels really terrible.

Basically, you are complaining about the random nature of dice rolling with a D20. That's a fact of life with the entire system and especially in 2E you cannot build your way out of randomness (where in 1E enough optimization often resulted in "hit on anything but a 1" in high level games).

Also, don't forget that with Confident Finisher you do half your precise strike damage even on a miss (full damage with Precise Finisher). That's low damage, but it happens even when you miss your attack. Of course, if you take a DPR enhancing finisher like Bleeding Finisher, you change fully to a risk/reward style, where you have to live with the randomness of the D20 and just try to mitigate that by doing the usual buff/debuff stuff.

As the guy who wrote a guide on it (which gets an extensive rework after the easter holidays, when I have a week of vacation), I love it. :)

The almost assured panache generation makes the class an excellent skirmisher, the different styles make for a different play experience as well, the class is very good with skills, especially if you take the Acrobat dedication at lvl 2 and the flavor of the class is awesome as well. Only thing I don't vibe with is precision damage, but that is rather a system-specific complaint. I think adding a type of damage which nerfs certain classes for no good reason against some types of enemy is outdated design and should be relegated to the dustbin of history. Maybe in 3E it will.

I've noticed that against high AC enemies the swashbuckler damage really drops badly. The fighter is the king martial for dealing with high AC targets. Single big hit classes really have their damage reduced against high AC targets. The Swashbuckler in particularly really suffers with the single big hit strategy.

I mean, yeah, "the Swashbuckler isn't as good at hitting enemies like the Fighter is", is kind of a self-evident statement. The problem with high AC enemies is generally that the second and third attacks probably won't hit, either. Unless you are a fighter and get that extra +2 to attack that other classes don't get. That changes at higher levels if you have proper support from your teammates (Heroism, flanking, grappling, etc.), but then the "one big hit" classes will more reliably hit their first attack as well.

So as we just announced over on Paizo Live on Twitch... the fourth adventure path for 2025, coming out this October–December, is "Revenge of the Runelords." This is a high-level mythic Adventure Path...

...and is the thing I've been hinting at for a while now at "What would be a great campaign to play after your players finish 'Seven Dooms for Sandpoint'".

And I did plan to run Curtain Call after it. Oh, well. Not exactly unhappy to get a proper Runelord AP to run after dealing with all the Sandpoint stuff.

Also, called it on the retun of Xan-Xan! :D

That being said, I kinda find myself now without proper lead-ins for Curtain Call and Spore Wars. Would be reaaaally nice if we got low-level AP's which more properly connect to these two. ;)

Hah, I called it, it's the return of Xan-Xan! :D

Most excellent, I've been craving Runelord content. Although now I'm worried about Sorshen. I hope nothing bad happens to her, she's one of my favorite characters from the setting.

I haven't really looked at the mythic rules, but from what I've gotten through internet osmosis, they are not the system breaking terror they were in 1E. I'll get to them when the time comes in a few years to play this AP (we still got to get to Return of the Runelords as a 2E conversion, currently still on Strange Aeons). If necessary they can be removed and the AP run as as normal. Luckily in 2E it is very easy to adapt encounters.

I hope Xan-Xan finally comes back. :)

Errata: This thread.

Thinking it might have been better suited to the Rules Discussion section of the forums rather than General Discussion, based on the descriptions of those...

General Discussion is more visible, because it gets more views and this thread is meant to be viewed by the developers as a ressource to find rules to errata.

Please keep long discussions out of the thread and make your own thread if you want to discuss this topic at length.

Well, I assume you are talking about "what brought you into Pathfinder 2E". But to recap shortly what brought me to Pathfinder in the first place:

I was a happy D&D 3.5E player, with the Forgotten Realms as my favorite setting, when the developers at Wizards of the Coast decided to radically change their game system with the 4E edition and blow the Forgotten Realms up, i.e. kill off a lot of fan-favorite characters, advance the timeline a lot, change the setting drastically for the worse.

And luckily the people at Paizo were ready with their new edition and their great setting, Golarion. I've been here ever since.

Now, as for what got me into 2E:

I was one of the people who resisted going from 1E to 2E for a long time. The system was radically different, the setting was left intact though. I'd been playing quite a lot of 1E since 2019, when 2E was released. But in that time my players and I discovered even more synergies between feats and other aspects of 1E, making player characters even more overpowered at high levels. Which, after GM'ing high-level games for more than two decades, was finally enough to make me look elsewhere, because it really is demoralizing that upping the AC of the BBEG by 10, upping saves by 10 and giving him well over 1000 HP still results in him getting obliterated in 1 1/2 rounds by the ping-pong teamwork feat Outflank and two-weapon fighting characters with kukris.

In any case, about that time Rage of Elements released and I got my first look at the new Kineticist, a class I was naturally drawn to as a big fan of The Legend of Korra and Avatar the First Airbender. And that class was so elegantly built and is, by my reckoning, the best build class I've ever seen in a game, that it convinced me to give the game a try. So, I got some books, started playing in Pathfinder Society and convinced enough of my friends to try out the system that we are running an Abomination Vaults group on every second Sunday (tomorrow is the next session, they are at and on level three) and we'll change to 2E after the current GM finishes with Strange Aeon in the Tuesday group as well. Sadly we got a player in our two Friday bi-weekly groups who is adamantly against the system, so there we'll have to see where we go in a few years, when our current AP's end.

I'd vote Hermea.

Of course! The Computer Mengkare is your friend!

I presume at some point you'd get a visit from the priests of Abadar explaining the concept of "inflation" to you (see the Traveler's Guide how the church of Abadar keeps prices stable). Forcefully, if necessary.

Yeah, please make your separate thread if you want to have a long discussion about the topic. This thread is for posting issues for the developer team to look at as possible errata.

We are missing a lot of context here. How do you not do any damage with damage spells of 04th / 05th level over two rounds? Was it using spells which try to hit AC or maybe not recalling knowledge and trying reflex save spells against high reflex save bosses? A bit more detailed explanation would be very helpful for good responses.

I'm not seeing how this is a change. A PF1 Longsword had no benefits for being used two-handed.

I think Messy is talking about that in 1E, when you used a one-handed weapon with two hands, you got 1 1/2 your strength modifier on damage, instead of the normal x1. This advantage has been removed completely in 2E and all the extra damage has been moved into the bigger weapon die you normally have for two-handed weapons.

I'm seeing a whole lot of declaration of favorite archetype, but not enough selling it!

Please tell me WHY you like the archetype(s), and explain why I should too.

Alright, alright. As for Acrobat:

- Free scaling to legendary for Acrobatics, getting the dedication at level 2 also gets Acrobatics to Expert before anybody else but the Rogue and Investigator (if they choose to skill increase Acrobatics at that level).

- One (or two, if your GM is generous or you are joining the (hurrrkk...) Firebrands) good skill feats, i.e. Graceful Leaper for using Acrobatics for jumping and Quick Spring for absurdly good action compression. Quick Spring is actually a bit too good, IMO, which makes it being uncommon handy, because I'd probably not allow it.

- More action compression with Tumbling Strike and Tumbling Opportunist.

- And, as mentioned by Claxon above, a very decent reaction with enhanced AC and movement, i.e. more action compression.

I highly value action compression in 2E, so the Acrobat is a top-tier archetype for me.

When did you ever need to make a check to see the sun?

Well, with 1E rules you never would, because nobody ever has seen it anyway. ;)

If anyone is curious why the specific rules for how far perception can go were quietly omitted from the rulebooks, this thread is shaping up to be a good indicator.

It is probably something best left up to the GM and the table for each specific circumstance and scenario that comes up during play.

I mean, technically, in 1E nobody had an idea what the sun looks like. It's just too far away to spot, with it's huge negative distance modifier... ;)

I love Swashbucklers (hence my guide), so Acrobat.

I loved Jade Regent and ran it twice for two different group of players. Didn't really hear a complaint from them that they felt like secondary characters.

magnuskn wrote:

It absolutely is possible to publish more impulses and I dearly wish Paizo would just get on with it. :)

For whatever reason, Paizo is sort of allergic to print more class specific options for most of the lifespan of PF2. Back in PF1 we would have a new sorcerer bloodline every other month in APs and player companions, but now I think they've added like 4 in non-rulebook sources. There's a great many things that could use more feats for them (most uncommon ancestries are pretty limited here) and they just don't print them.

I assume the reason for this is that they'd rather print a player option that appeals to more classes than just one, so they'd rather do archetypes than class feats, but still there's a bunch of classes I'd like to see more stuff for.

Well, I can only hope that they'll do a big book of specific class options one day. It'd be more interesting to me to have broader way to build the many classes already out than to get more and more base classes, since we will be almost at 30 of them once this year is over. IMO, they should slow down a bit with that and focus more on broadening options for what already exists.

Yeah, the forums and the blog are my main venue of information about Paizo stuff. Although I've begun to hang out on Reddit the last year as well, though mostly as a reader, rather than someone who posts regularly.

I will absolutely still push quite hard for Paizo to actually buff/fix the ~20% ish existing impulses/junctions that are crap, because this is not like a spellcaster where you can just publish more options to "fix" things.

It absolutely is possible to publish more impulses and I dearly wish Paizo would just get on with it. :)

Are you talking about from the player's or character's perspective? Because I suspect most characters would take the Darklands over adventuring in literal Hell, for example.

Honestly not sure which I'd find most appealing from a player perspective, myself.

Okay, Hell or the Outer Rifts are of course bad interplanar destinations, so I agree with you there. But there are a lot of planes which are just fascinating, some of them being also completely benign (to good-natured characters, at least...). The planes are also in many cases morally color-coded for your convenience, so you know what you can expect when you go there. For interplanetary adventures, visiting Castrovel or Nocturne would be super interesting as well, not to mention other star systems, see Starfinder.

The Darklands is full of mostly (formerly fully) evil-colored societies, natural dangers, aberrations, fleshwarps and mind-warping monsters like the Seugathi. And each layer gets progressively more dangerous. Maybe that will change when the inevitable new Darklands book gets released one day, but so far a long journey through the Darklands would be full of dangers you cannot easily anticipate and some of the worst fates you can imagine for your character, like getting transformed into an Irnakurse for an elf.

magnuskn wrote:

(apparently going on an interplanar adventure is super interesting and happens all the time! ^^).

Or an interplanetary or interstellar adventure, or a Darklands adventure. . .

I'd specifically say that the Darklands adventure sounds the least fun of all of those options. :p

Class: Kineticist
Rule for which errata is needed: Incapacitation for Solar Detonation
The issue: By a strict reading of the impulse, the incapacitation effect on Solar Detonation applies to all components of the impulse, i.e. the damage component and the blinded / dazzled effect on a failed save.

It would make more sense to have the incapacitation effect only apply to the blinded / dazzled effect, since normally incapacitation is not used for damage spells. If this is the actually intended way the impulse is supposed to be read, as I suspect, it would be necessary to clarify the impulse text to make clear that the incapacitation effect only applies to the blinded / dazzled part of Solar Detonation, not the damage part.

Yeah, since the adventurers who complete adventure paths are an amorphous mass of classes which cannot be pinned down to certain classes, all those potentially high level heroes existing on Golarion are politely ignored or written out of the setting (apparently going on an interplanar adventure is super interesting and happens all the time! ^^).

Morhek wrote:

As I recall from Lost Omens: Travel Guide, the reason why teleportation circles aren't used en masse, at least for goods, is that a.) governments don't like it when people have a way to bypass their toll and tax gatherers or register their arrival for their records

This doesn't actually suffice as an explanation. If you have the means to avoid tax collectors, you have the means to avoid cops.

If the cops are high level clerics from the church of Abadar, it ain't that easy. ^^

And, yes, that is the actual explanation from the Travel Guide, that the church of Abadar takes care to keep prices stable, prevent unlimited supplies of precious metals from the elemental planes and put tariffs on teleported goods. Which, with the way you need to squint and not look to closely to make fantasy economics work, is for me sufficient to keep immersion somewhat not broken.