modus0's page

Is this a serious functional compass, or is it a toy compass like you'd find at Walmart or other big-box outdoors/camping section that would be dangerous to rely on?

According to the Kickstarter page, it's a fully-functioning compass, made of a brass and zinc alloy.

Animism wrote:

Are the Risucho from the Forest of Spirits a namedrop for a new potential 'squirrelfolk' ancestry?

Risu does mean 'squirrel' in Japanese, & we already have kitsune ['fox'] & (soon-to-be) tanuki ['raccoon dog'], so...

???

The suffix -cho tends to imply leader. It might have been the head of the squirrels instead of a squirrel ancestry.

Penanggalan squirrel perhaps?

For those also wondering, yes, that's Runelord Xanderghul on the mirage dragon for the GM Core. We've put a runelord and their dragon buddy on the previous two GM books, after all.

What are you guys going to do for the GM books of Pathfinder 7th and later edition?

For the Visualizer Chamber, do spells cause masses of black dots to form around a spellcaster's hands and spell effects when they Cast a Spell?

Hanish seems awfully cavalier about entering into an empty shop that smells of blood, and deciding to deliver a package from someone who may have been murdered...

So, seriously ticking off Irori turns you into the Grey Fox?

I wish we could get 2nd edition multiclassing back, still my favorite.

Are you talking about demihuman multi-classing, human dual-classing, or both?

David knott 242 wrote:

Thomas Keller wrote:

Fallyna wrote:

Thomas Keller wrote:

Where is that quote from?

p2 of her character sheet, in the Iconics pack on the Paizo website.

Is there any way to access that without buying the pack?

Isn't it available for free?

Looks to me like you have to buy a download.

Does it have a price listed for it?

Mutants & Masterminds did away with showing ability scores for their 3rd edition, just using the ability score modifier.

They did keep the cost (system is entirely point-buy) to raise an "ability" the same: 2 points spent for a 1 point increase in ability rank.

It's actually rather functional.

For Pathfinder 2, I'd go with each ability boost increasing the "ability" by 1, unless the ability is +4, then it would take two separate ability boosts to increase the ability by 1. Essentially, the same way you'd advance ability scores now, just that you're only recording the ability score modifier.

Just a few of my thoughts below.

Commune: Granting all your focus points back at once seems a bit too powerful, especially with being able to change the damage type of the eldritch blast. And having an ability that grants you 3 focus points to start with is too good, no other ability does that.

Eldritch Blast: Would probably work better as an innate spell, as a cantrip. You could either add a class ability or class feat to allow it to be heightened to your level instead of 1/2 your level.

You mention that the patron chosen will determine the warlock's spell list, but you don't list spells per day, nor is there an entry about warlock spellcasting or information about how many spells a warlock can know of each level.

Archfey Pledge: I feel the requirement of giving an interesting secret or item every day is both unsustainable, and far too dependent upon the GM whims.

Fiend Pledge: Having to refuse heal spells is a bit problematic, despite the increased ability to receive non-magical healing outside of combat. And then there's the fact that, since Heal doesn't have an alignment trait, evil-aligned clerics and champions can still cast it. The punishment seems rather severe as well, equivalent to cutting your maximum hit points in half for 5E's Instant Death calculation.

Hexblade: I'd remove the Medium Armor training, and probably limit the training in a single Martial weapon chosen by the player (akin to the Cleric and weapon preferred by their deity).

Class Features
Weapon Expertise/Weapon Specialization: Unless the Warlock's main attack method is intended to be weapons instead of their Eldritch Blast, these should be higher level, like the bard. Instead consider granting expert spellcaster.
Pact of the Blade: Just an idea, but what about flavoring it so that the pact weapon is essentially a blade-shaped eldritch blast?
Pact of the Chain: Gaining two extra familiar or master abilities each day is better than the Improved Familiar Attunement until 12th level, maybe use that as a basis for a Warlock-focused ability, like how the Fighter's Double Slice feat and the Ranger's Twin Takedown feat are similar.
Energy Resistance: I'd reduce this to 1/2 your level. Also, does this require a special commune with patron session, or can it be part of the daily preparation session?

Instead of focusing on a more martial-based warlock, maybe allow them to cast spells (and get spellcasting proficiency increases), with the tradition either dependent on the patron, or always Occult. You could even allow the Patron to add an appropriate spell of each level from a different tradition to the Warlock's spell list. The 5E Invocations would be handled by feats that add Focus spells.

She looks very bow-legged. Has she been riding around too long?

I think the issue is that her feet appear to be further apart than the width of her shoulders, without anything dynamic in the pose to make it a reasonable stance to be in.

My advice: Wait until the full final rules have been released next August before converting.

According to the dictionary (and Warhammer for a slightly less authoritative example) the two are indeed both pronounced Dee-mon.

And according to Paizo's James Jacobs, it's pronounced "Day-mon", and given that it's their system...

Also, you need to realise that Paizo has placed a hard cap on Ability Scores of 24. The current system allows a character to start with an 18 in their primary stat, increase it at every chance (getting no benefit at 5th and 5th levels), then add a +2 ability score boosting magic item to allow them to get up to that 24 in a single stat.

Allowing stat increases to continue improving by +2 after 18, would mess with what I'm guessing is their carefully curated math, allowing a character to have a non-magically boosted ability score of 24 at 15th level. And if the hard cap on ability scores is kept, then you're very likely to see several ability scores above 20 at 20th level, when the default method means you're more likely to spread some of those boosts to less useful ability scores once the more important ones hit 18.

modus0 wrote:

Jason Bulmahn wrote:

This sort of change might seem like an extra thing to learn, but it can also be seen as about 100 things you don't have to learn.

How does removing part of the spell entry, in favor of yet another keyword, equate to not having to learn 100 things?

You now don't have to read every single spell that does the exact same as every other spell multiple times to make sure it actually does the exact same. That means you don't have to learn whether each spell does something outside the ordinary because if it does it will have entries for that and if it doesn't it won't.

What's clearer for you: "this spell does half a thing on a successful save, no things on a crit save, a whole thing on a failed save and double the things on a crit failed save" or "this spell works like Fireball but it's cold damage"? Or put another way: Would you like to have a table for each spell explicitly stating whatever it doesn't do alongside whatever it does?

Only, now I need to read every spell description to find out if it does damage so that I'd know how to handle the saving throws, instead of quickly looking at the save results list in the spell's description.

And I don't know about anyone else, but I don't tend to memorize spell entries, so I'd be looking up each spell to figure out what exactly it does regardless.

For your question on what clearer, the first example. Because it's right there in the spell entry, and I don't have to bounce around the book looking up how a fireball spell works, then having to look up how basic saves work, just to understand how the spell interacts with saving throws.

This sort of change might seem like an extra thing to learn, but it can also be seen as about 100 things you don't have to learn.

How does removing part of the spell entry, in favor of yet another keyword, equate to not having to learn 100 things?

Thing is, though, that a lot of crit success and crit fail effects read "as a normal [success/failure], plus [some additional condition]." You need to have the basic success/failure before the crit versions so that the crit versions can refer back to their lesser versions.

No, they don't. There are about 200 entries with a Critical Success section, and only 15 of them don't either paraphrase, directly restate the Success section, or have their own description independent of the Success section.

Those 15 entries rather inconsistently reference the Success section, using "Per a success" (10), "As success" (3), or "As a success" (2).

Your bulk is determined by your Str, not your Con. It doesn't make any sense (the charge I can carry all day long without fatigue is determined by my ability to break doors instead of my endurance? dafuk?), and yet everyone is OK with that because the game says so.

Except carrying over your Bulk doesn't inflict Fatigue, but the Encumbered condition, which lowers your ability to move. So it's OK because Encumbrance is determined by your ability to lift great weight/large objects, not how long you can run.

Manual dexterity (the ability I use to pickpocket) happens to be exactly the same as corporal flexibility (the ability I use to squeeze, dodge or move silently), that doesn't make any sense, and yet everyone is OK because the game says so. And this is the same ability I use to make a ranged attack, it still doesn't make any sense (using a bow isn't the same as pickpocking, it doesn't uses the same corporal qualities).

While I do agree that Manual Dexterity ≠ Agility, there is the consideration of how far from its D&D roots the devs are willing to have Pathfinder stray in regards to that. Mutants & Masterminds 3E splits the two, but that system took pains to deviate from the more d20-focused M&M 2E.

As for ranged attacks using Dexterity, I imagine it was intended so that Str wasn't the be-all-end-all of non-magical characters, allowing Elven archers to be effective without needing to pack on the muscles.

I don't even know what ability I should use for musical virtuosity (or pro gaming, since it's more or less the same thing: small finger moves with high impact). Cha, because musical virtuosity is under Perform? That doesn't make any sense, and yet everyone is OK because the game says so. Nor does it make sense that pro gaming uses the same ability as archery (or diplomacy, if it's under Performance?).

Medicine is tied to instinct instead of knowledge, that doesn't make any sense, and yet everyone is OK because the game says so.

etc.

And now "strong guy is tough" in "OMG unrealistic?"

...

Rules are abstractions, their...

Yes, rules are abstractions. And when playing a game designed by others, one must accept their abstractions, either because the game's overall theme is what is wanted, or because making things too realistic is likely to dramatically reduce fun.

And what about the Pathfinder 2E Playtest idea that your sense of self directly influences your ability to use magical items? Wouldn't tying Resonance to Con make more sense than Cha? Have your magic-limit be tied to how much your body can handle instead of how self-confident/attractive you are.

Rusty Ironpants wrote:

Thoughts?

Con should be removed (and its effects included in Str). The game isn't D&D, they can kill as many sacred cows as they want.

If they do remove Con, then what will we use to determine if one can resist a disease or poison? Or how long you can run before getting tired. Or how long you can hold your breath or resist the effects of a hot environment. None of those make any sense being handled by Str.

A high Str does not necessarily equate to someone possessing great endurance. Just because you may be able to lift 300 lbs. in weight does not mean you can run for 2 hours non-stop, and vice-versa.

Weapon proficiency granting bonus dice is not a good idea. A Cleric, for example, who gets no proficiency upgrades after first level would never have their dice change. Barbarians and Rogues would fall far behind the other martial classes with more proficiency upgrades. Weapon dice are the majority of damage dealt with weapons in PF2, so making that vary across classes just picks winners and losers.

If that's a real issue,then maybe the answer to it would be reducing the amount of HP monsters get, and/or allowing the martial classes to get more weapon proficiency increases. For Barbarians you could have rage increase damage die; and Rogues have a damage die increase in their sneak attack ability, though maybe it could do with another die increase (say, increases at 5th, 9th, 13th, and 17th).

According to the 5th-level pregenerated iconics stats, Increasing Con retroactively increases the number of bonus HP you get, which is how increasing Con worked in Pathfinder 1E.

Or, to put it another way: When calculating your character's HP, take the points granted by your Ancestry, add Class HP x your Level, and add your Con modifier x your Level.

As an example, the 5th-Level Valeros (Human, Fighter) has the following HP breakdown

Ancestry (Human): 8 HP
Class (Fighter): 10 HP/level
Constitution 14 (+2): 2 HP/level

For a total of 68 HP (8 + 50 + 10).

Can I use Reactive Shield to cast Shield?

I would say no, because you'd be using a Reaction to cast a 1 Action spell.

Without a feat that specifically allows casting a spell as a Reaction, you can't otherwise cast a spell without at least spending an Action.

My question regarding the stat generation is: What makes Elf Rogue A different stat-wise from Elf Rogue B?

Why wouldn't I use 10, 18, 16, 8, 12, 14, or 10, 18, 16, 10, 12, 12 for the stats on every Elf Rogue I create?

This was brought up and addressed as a readability issue - in quite a few cases, the Critical Success is based on the Normal Success, and it's weird to have that above the normal success. It just doesn't flow that well. It may seem a bit odd this way right now, but it's ultimately better.

Only it seems that for the majority of entries, the Critical Success line either paraphrases or [/b]downright repeats[/b] what the Success entry states, then adds its own info.

• Success: The creature resists being banished.
  
• Critical Success: The creature resists being banished and you are stunned until the end of your next turn.

Searching the PDF gives almost 200 entries for "Critical Success", and 10 of them have "Per a success", 2 have "As a success", and 3 have "As success" in them.

That's 15 entries where the Critical Success entry references the Success entry. Not nearly enough, in my opinion, to justify listing Success first.

Wizard Weapon proficiency lists "light crossbow", which doesn't exist in the table of simple ranged weapons. There's a "crossbow", "hand crossbow", and "heavy crossbow", but no "light" crossbow.

Given the damage and Bulk values, I'm inclined to think that either the light crossbow or the hand crossbow is miss labeled.

without better guidlines we could have 100s of different lores...

I think that was actually the intent, since the Acolyte background makes you Trained in "Your Deity Name" Lore. Not to mention Alcohol Lore, Labor Lore, Desert Lore, and Swamp Lore.

They seem to want characters to have an incredibly specific, narrow focus "knowledge" skill, to replace the rather broad Knowledge skills of 1E.

Do you really need a summoned monster to hang around for more than 10 rounds though?

And while the Concentrate action might take up 1 of your actions, you still get 2 other actions yourself, and 2 actions for the summoned creature, effectively giving you 4 actions per round.

But the whole point of this playtest is for thousands of non-Paizo people to play through the game as it is, figure out what doesn't work, what does, what doesn't feel right, and then refine things to try getting something that pleases the greatest number of people.

So play some casters during the playtest, get some actual experience in how spellcasters work (or don't work), instead of just "theorycrafting", and then provide your feedback based on what happened in the game sessions.

I couldn't find for the love of me how a Barbarian can be a group healer, as we were told by one of the devs. At least not if you want to do more than one encounter per day, that is.

That was eventually clarified in that the Barbarian in question had multi-classed into Cleric.

So it wasn't really that a Barbarian can be a group healer, but that a Multi-Class Cleric can be a healer. Which should have been stated outright by the dev, not presented as "any class can be a healer" like it was.

The thing is, I can actually see a potential with the current system, if they divorce themselves from the idea of "balanced" races and treat the Ancestry Feats as Traits from 1st Edition.

Have dwarfs start out with their normal poison resistance and magical stunting stubborness, maybe a connection to stone. Then have the Ancestry Feats work as a way to flesh out the culture and/or heritage of said dwarf; did he come from a clan of dwarven warriors that habitually fought with giants?? Take Weapon Familiarity and Giant Bane!
Maybe he grew up in a mountain valley that was raided from time to time by duergar and orcs? Take Rock Runner and Ancestral Hatred.

That would work so much better, than the current "Evolve-into-1E-dwarf-over-17-levels" deal that they are currently going for.

Race should be a very big impact on your character, not just a difference in +2 hit points vs +5 movement speed.

So essentially placing the "biological" features of the race back in as defaults, and leave the things that could be "cultural" as Ancestry Feats/Heritage Feats?

I have to admit, I am really, really confused about why we have resonance, X times a day effects, duration tracking, and charges for magic items. Yikes! This feels like a lot of unnecessary complexity and balance redundancy to attempt to make most magic items work like they did in PF1 without spending the time to reconfigure them to a new system. I'd much rather have less magic items at first and have them balanced around not needing x times a day or charges, and then let more items trickle in in supplements.

Didn't they state that one of the reasons for Resonance was to get rid of X/day on magic items?

If it's not doing that, and PCs aren't really ever at risk of running out

Except for a particular time when my playtesters explicitly tried to see if they could get away with saving money on CLW wand spam despite being high level adventurers who could afford a better wand, and a few extreme stress test situations where I told them "This is the only fight today. Nova your heart out," my playtest group never really hit hard against the resonance caps, even the ones with lower Charisma.

, then what exactly is Resonance good for?

I'm not exactly keen on weapon and armor magic properties being "Runes", though the idea of being able to swap out properties or move them to a better weapon is nice. No need to carry an axiomatic holy weapon and an anarchic holy weapon in case of demon or devil fights, just one weapon with a holy rune, and spare axiomatic and anarchic runes to use as needed.

I can honestly say that if you use more then 35 rounds of rounds. Either you have done something wrong, or your GM has.

That's what, 3.5 minutes of rage?

In my opinion, if you don't need your full 35 rounds of rage (7 5-round combats) in a day, either you or the GM are doing something wrong.

Let's try to keep from further insulting differing play-styles.

But for my question: Was it factored in for that every round the Barbarian isn't raging, he's not getting the benefit of +8 Str and Con, +4 to Will, but also doesn't suffer the -2 AC penalty?

One question OP: Have you taken into consideration that the bonuses the Barbarian gets from rage aren't "always on" while whichever bonuses the Fighter gets usually are?

I may be missing something here, but I don't see anything in the spell that references line of effect (unlike Project Image), so I don't believe the spell would be affected by that; though I could be wrong on that.

Chernobyl, thanks for your service. I was stationed aboard the USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) when I was in the Navy back 95-96. I was an electronics tech and had to go all over the ship to maintain different electronic systems.

As Fletch said, small world. I served on the Vinson from 97-01, in A-Div.

One question: How would that work for a party of Mythic characters?

Would they all be constantly on edge due to "Mythic Sense" triggering off each other, or would it not count the members of the party?

Changing an event that has already happened isn't precognitive.

It's allowing you to roll again, after the results are known.

If it allowed you to reroll before the results are revealed, and take the better roll, then you could make an argument for precognition.

No, you've got two different instances of the spell, not one more powerful instance.

What it would do is require anyone within the area of overlap to make two Reflex saves for each spell, which would slightly increase the chances of them failing.

I've got a question: If the world is ending at the end of the Mayan calendar, why haven't any of the other ancient calendars marked the same point in time as the "end?"

Surely if the Mayans were prophetic enough to figure out when everything would end, wouldn't at least some of the other ancient cultures have as well?

And if it's a single, definitive date, shouldn't they all agree on when it happens?

And what do the quatrains of Nostradamus have to say about Dec. 21, 2012?

Regrettably, I find myself currently unable to afford to continue with the subscription, so I'd like it canceled.

The important part of the DR is the "and" part. In short, if the DR is X "and" Y, you need to fulfill both requirements. For the solar, it must be a +6 unholy weapon.

For a vampire, you need a weapon that is at least a +1, and made out of silver (or with silver applied alchemically).

In contrast, if the DR has X "or" Y, then you only need to have a weapon of one of the types. For example, a Dretch has DR 5/cold iron or good. Having either a cold iron weapon or a holy weapon will suffice for bypassing the DR.

Yes, they're listed under the Class tab, Archetypes for those with the APG dataset.

Aura of Forgetfulness from the APG sounds super neat . . . but I have no idea how this would work in combat? Is the part about losing your memory just flavor text, or what? How would a creature function in combat if it can't remember anything from the last few seconds?

It doesn't state that you forget everything each round, it states that you don't remember the time within the aura.

So unless the cleric is popping the aura every other round, no one's forgetting anything while the aura is up and they're within it. They only lose their memories once the aura goes away or they leave the area.

If a cleric of Zon-Kuthon engages the PCs and activates the aura, everyone within it acts normally for the 8+ rounds the aura is active, regardless of whether they make their saves. Once the cleric drops the aura, either voluntarily, due to spending all his available rounds, or death, everyone who failed their saves suddenly has expended spells/items, wounds, and possibly a dead man in front of them that they don't have an explanation for.

The hard part would be getting the Players to separate their personal knowledge of the events from the knowledge that the Characters would have.

Diehard could also give you an extra round to disengage and regroup with the party cleric for some healing, instead of lying on the ground bleeding out hoping the cleric can get to you quickly enough.

But Epic Level Handbook *is* borked, and that's a fact. And it *is* unpopular, look at how many epic-level adventures did WotC and Paizo produce during the 3.0-3.5 life cycle.

WotC has a habit of not supporting books after release, just take a look about how much material was expanded on from the Complete series, Heroes of Horror, Heroes of Battle, the Tome of Magic or the Book of Nine Swords.

Claiming that it isn't popular because WotC didn't do anything with the material in the book isn't exactly looking at the whole picture.

And I think a few of the adventures that WotC squeezed into non epic should have been epic, like Expedition to the Demonweb Pits.

As for Pathfinder epic rules? I'd prefer at least 40 levels (symmetry, 20 pre-epic and 20 epic), and a framework that builds upon and enhances the existing 1-20 level rules. I don't want my character to suddenly "reset" when they hit 21st level.

TheChozyn wrote:

Geistlinger wrote:

Purple Dragon Knight wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

Dorje Sylas wrote:

Just for clarification, I assume Roads are the same as Roads/Trails in chapter 7 of PFRPG Core and not Highways? (Possible area for rules expansion?)

I'm really enjoying these rules so far and look forward to running some kingdom based games even if I don't actually get players to run through Kingmaker proper.

Correct. Roads are roads. Highways are something else entirely, and are beyond the scope of the rules as they currently stand.

I'm on a highwayyyyyy to Hell!

Life is a hiiiiiiiiiiighway! I wanna riiiiiide it all night long!!!!

[please feel free to continue finding song-bits related to highways.... :P]

On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair

I am not your rolling wheel... I am the highway

Highway song.. you sing it on and on.. on and on..

Highway song.. is as lonely.. as the road I'm on..

On a long and lonesome highway

On topic, what kind of effects would having a desert hex cause for a kingdom?

Would you be able to build farms in them, or would they be little more than a resource sink?

Along these same lines: Never ever let a dog or cat even get close to antifreeze.

We had someone poison one of the neighborhood dogs that way. He was never caught. Apparently many dogs and cats love the smell of the stuff. They'll lick it off the driveway if they can.

It also tastes rather sweet, IIRC, making them less likely to realize it's not something they should eat.

Normally, this error is associated with either a file corrupted during the download or a corrupted copy of Acrobat Reader.

Therefore, please repersonalize and redownload your PDFs, and then try opening them again. If you get the same error, please try updating and/or reinstalling your PDF reader.

Okay, opens fine using Foxit, but I kind of have to wonder how Acrobat could get corrupted without having this show up with other pdfs.

I'm having an issue with the pdfs of my current order (Pathfinder #30) as well.

Cannot extract the embedded font 'QXJDF+SteelMagnolias'. Some characters may not display or print properly.

I think Pathfinder can learn a lesson from Wizards and DDI, and license a solid character generator. I am not sure how that hits the bottom line in regards to selling hardcopy rule books, but it is the last remaining piece for me to decide to play any roleplaying games.

IMHO, Hero Lab has that covered pretty well. At least enough to make Paizo expending their precious time to make something similar almost redundant.

And it seems to easily handle house-rules.

Edit: Blast, ninja'd by Lisa... ;)

The 3.5 Book of Erotic Fantasy had a 3 level prestige class called the Metaphysical Spellshaper that had a similar ability.

Only that one allowed the character to take ability damage to any single (per metamagic feat to be applied) ability score equal to the spell level increase in return for spontaneously applying the metamagic feat.

The biggest advantage (and possibly a rather unbalanced one) is that it allows the character to improve the spell beyond what they'd normally be able to.

For instance, a 7th level spellcaster would be able to cast a maximized fireball using this class ability.

On the downside, the ability damage from the class ability can't be magically healed unless the healer succeeds on a DC 20 caster level check.