moosher12's page

Perhaps I will look in to it, just need to convince my players to convert over for a oneshot perhaps

No need to convert. Starfinder ancestries are fully compatible. Devs said so themselves. They are designed specifically so they can be dropped into a Pathfinder 2E game.

And as a personal attestment. Before Awakened Animals were a thing, I had a player who wanted to play a humanoid crocodile, so I let them play a reflavored Vesk from the Starfinder Field Test 3 in a Pathfinder game. It worked just fine.

I mean, I have a lot of furries among my players, and when they pick awakened animal, they very much like to use assume they hailed from a community of animal people of their species, as if it was a preexisting species, rather than being an individual magical mutant.

For example, while the lore says animals find awakened animals unsettling, it does not have a mechanical expression in the statblock, so we simply choose to ignore it as it keeps them happy and it works within the mechanical bounds of the ancestry, if not the original lore.

You are right that it is fun to get something with a distinct Paizo-approved culture though. Telebuddy did not ask for a distinct crustacean culture though, they just asked to play an intelligent crustacean, particularly a crab. If all they want is to be crab, it's easy to say there is a whole race of crab people and represent them through the awakened animal. Or, if you wanna keep to awakened animal lore, you can just say the patient zero occurred so many generations ago that they propogated into a full species. I mean, that's how we got owlbears after all (before the retcon).

TLDR: Just because awakened animals can be weirdo outsiders, does not mean awakened animals have to be written as weirdo outsiders without a culture. Be creative with the implications granted by tools you're given, you'd be surprised.

For Guns and Gears Remastered Edition, there are some accidental OGL references.

Pg. 12: in the exposition paragraph, it references a red dragon, rather than a cinder dragon (or really any other Monster Core dragon)

Pg. 169: For the picture of what what should now be a Marvelous Miniature Bullet, it says Feather Token Bullet

Pg. 182: The Immovable Tripod makes reference to the Immovable Rod.

Awakened Animal is also an option.

That makes sense, I will refrain then.

Well, Nethys isn't update then, check it out:

https://2e.aonprd.com/Skills.aspx?ID=41&Redirected=1

The clause "Even if you're untrained in Lore, you can use it to Recall Knowledge." is only present on the Legacy version. Unless this bit of info changed to another rule, I don't think you can roll lore when you're untrained in it.

That's an error on AoN's part. I just crossed-checked both my Core Rulebook and my Player Core, and they both say that clause (Core Rulebook 247 and Player Core 241)

So on search:
Returned Background: Says you miraculously returned with knowledge of realms beyond death. Which implies this is hard to keep.

I searched "Mem" for memory/remember and boneyard. This is all I could find. Can't remember where the full bit was, might have been in a 1E book or something. Either way, I'll have to put my search on pause as I've a game to run in 30 minutes.

Huh, interesting. I was trying to see if I can track down the tidbit about losing memory in the boneyard when I found this. So this is from 13 years ago, but here's James Jacob's early comment on it.

TLDR: being allowed to be a free-roaming spirit, and reincarnation, were both on the table.

There's a certain amount of vagueness built into the process, honestly, because we want death and what happens after to be kind of spooky and mysterious. But here's some answers...

1) Pharasma determines what the final destination of a soul is. Things that play into her decision include the soul's religion, the soul's personality, the soul's alignment, how well the soul lived up to its life goals, how the soul presents itself to Pharasma, and more. There's not really a precise formula you can apply to someone to determine where they'll end up.

2) If a mortal converts to a new religion but doesn't really follow the religion, they'll probably end up being sent on to that religion's outer plane but manifest as a petitioner and stay a petitioner for a long, long time... perhaps forever. If their failure to follow the religion actually caused harm and disruption, they'll instead be sent to Hell or some other place in line with that religion's punishment preference.

3) Atheists either end up in the Boneyard, or they end up transcending into free-roaming souls who are allowed to drift through reality and expand their knowledge or explore. Ending up in the Boneyard is kind of the atheist version of being punished in Hell, while being granted the freedom to continue on as a disembodied soul (this isn't a undead monster... it's something that exists beyond statistics) is the big reward. Some of them might be reincarnated back into new bodies as well... although that's more common for agnostics than for atheists.

4) Who gets sent to what plane for punishment depends on a lot of complex things—see #1 above.

5) It's closed to keep daemons from being able to easily raid the Boneyard of its souls waiting in line to be judged. A soul can still be sent to Abaddon though; Pharasma can certainly open the door long enough to let souls pass through without letting anything else come in.

6) Note that some daemons have specific abilities to feed on souls—it's those abilities (such as the lowly cacodaemon's Soul Lock ability, or the thanadaemon's Soul Crush ability) that specifically destroy souls. When a daemon just kills a creature normally, that creature's soul is pretty much ALWAYS able to escape into the great beyond. When they don't... it's because of specific storyline reasons, in which case the captured soul may need a caster level check to be resurrected, or it might not be ressurectable at all. Again... those are elements that drive stories and adventures, not typical results from combat with a daemon.

7) The Horsemen have plenty of daemons working for them. There's more people dying than just on Golarion, after all... souls come from ALL of the inhabited worlds of the Material Plane. AKA: even if only 1% of the souls who come to Abaddon survive to become daemons, that's still a HUGE NUMBER. And after all... if a petitioner isn't canny enough to avoid being eaten, what Horseman in their right mind would want such a weak-sauce soul working for them anyway? It's supernatural selection at work (as opposed to natural selection).

Though of course there's room for some stuff to have been officially retconned.

From The Boneyard, Abaddon, and the Lifecycle of Souls

Archetype: Firework Technician
Rule: Firework Technician Dedication archetype feat
Problem:
-The Firework Technician Dedication feat grants advanced alchemy benefits, but does not explain how many daily consumables are granted per day.
-While the feat says you should spend your daily consumable to Launch Fireworks, it instead costs versatile vials.
-The feat is a bit inconsistent on whether versatile vials or daily alchemical consumables should be spent on fireworks displays, as it says both should work. But only versatile vials function for the purpose.
-The Launch Fireworks action refers to batches of infused reagents, which no longer apply.

Rule: Coughing Dragon Display archetype feat
Problem:
The feat has a cost of 1 fireworks display, which the allotment of which are not clear. This feat also still communicates costs in terms of batches of infused reagents.

Rule: Jumping Jenny Display archetype feat
Problem:
The feat has a cost of 1 fireworks display, which the allotment of which is not clear. This feat also still communicates costs in terms of batches of infused reagents.

Rule: Goblin Jubilee Display archetype feat
Problem:
The feat has a cost of 1 fireworks display, which the allotment of which is not clear.

Rule: Banshee Display archetype feat
Problem:
The feat has an optional cost of 1 fireworks display, which the allotment of which is not clear.

Archetype: Demolitionist

Rule: Demolitionist Dedication archetype feat
Problem: The Demolitionist Dedication references Calculated Splash in a clause, which was removed.

Rule: Controlled Blast archetype feat
Problem: The Calculated Splash feat can be removed as a prerequisite, as it is not included in the Remaster, and the Demolitionist no longer learns the feat. Additionally, Controlled Blast includes rules for using both Calculated Splash and Demolition Charge, which is also not in the Remaster.

Rule: Collapse Wall archetype feat
Problem: Also makes reference to Demolition Charge.

As far as I know, not without Paizo stepping in and making a swap, but I doubt that'd be done. The usual way things are done with Humble Bundle if you already have part of it is to give the extra codes to friends and family so that they can enjoy it.

In Starfinder books, it's even said that Pharasmins give Eox a pass because going on a planet-wide crusade is more trouble than its worth.

Also, until the new Secrets of Magic replacement says otherwise, it was well established that being powered by negative energy actually does make you develop a disdain for the living, not too how unlike a normal human naturally disdains bugs. And it is always a conscious effort to maintain classical humanity toward the living, that is bound to eventually slip away after several thousand years of seeing mortals rise and fall. Like, you can hold your humanity as an undead for years, centuries, even millennia, but it's usually not a matter of if you will lose that spark of humanity, but when. All a good willpower does is delay it.

There are of course, good liches that do great things. Geb was a pretty cool guy at times. But eventually they will start to see people less as peers and more as flock, and eventually just as assets.

Also Trip, I think you forgot the cold war situation that gods don't get to actually directly act near as much as they would like to. They can have their servants act in their interests, but they usually cannot act beyond that, as it tends to result in battles that are much more destructive than intended.

If Pharasma was that much of a hardbutt about reinforcing the no-undead rule, Tar Baphon would have ceased a long time ago, as would Geb. And, really any lich. Undead really would not be a thing. Because as much as Pharasma would like to, her hands are tied, especially as unholy forces would be willing to team up against her over it.

Now what I'm more curious is is what story led to Pharasma defiling your Cheerios. Because your hatred for her is so passionate it's frankly fascinating.

As for the boneyard it's frankly pretty cushy. Go to hell, you gotta work for Asmodeus. Go to heaven, you gotta work for the gods of the greater good. Most every aligned plane will expect you to abide by a certain creed once you enter. Boneyard is the only one that says you don't have to adhere to the will of another god for entry, nor will you be press-ganged to service as a psychopomp eventually for being in the boneyard. Seems as good a deal for an athiest as you can get. Heaven, Nirvana and Elysium are nice, but they come with expectations that might put Rahadoumi athiests off when their petitioners are eventually put to use in the very holy wars they despise.

Hey, congratulations!

Okay, I got a chuckle out of that one. And granting access to the clockwork macuahuitl? How kind! I left that one out on the account of rarity.

Well allow me to get my $0.05 in freelance editorial fees for this consultation:

You did not completely read the assignment. You forgot to include the clause that if the stats are for a Level 1 weapon, you have to pay the weapon's price. You also uncapped the limit, unintentionally enabling the exquisite swordcane, as yes, there are basic weapons beyond Level 1.

Lord Fyre is right, but I want to go a step further to include Stasian Technology. I want a book that specifically talks about Numerian and Stasian technology. Give me some 1920s-30s tech alongside the hybrid inventions that were invented from Numerian artifacts, along with lists of which Starfinder equipment is most common in Numeria (guess the more apt would be Uncommon, etc.) As for Stasian technology, it could also be a way to explore other artifacts from Earth such as smuggled European and American goods. Valash Raj would also be a pretty good place to focus on as they've also had to deal with alien tech a lot.

It's also a good place to add Starfinder class feats for Pathfinder classes without having to add them in Starfinder itself. I remember it was a question asked in the early stages of the playtest whether Pathfinder classes might get support content to make them work better in the Starfinder paradigm, and the response was along the lines of "if interest was sufficient." but giving some Numeria/Stasia-tuned gun and tech focused feats to Pathfinder classes would really be neat.

The fun news is James Jacobs has voiced interest in making a return to Numeria, so an AP seems like it's likely to be pitched for development. And who knows, if we get an AP, a Lost Omens or Core book might follow.

Rue: I wanted to open the floor to James talking about crossovers with Pathfinder and Starfinder in terms of like, what does that look like from the Pathfinder side of things as well.

James: Well that's kind of where it all started back with the Iron Gods adventure path and the Technology Guide. That was kind of the birth of a lot of Starfinder stuff cause people liked it. And from there we took a lot of that content and kind of exploded it up into the heavens into the future post beyond the Gap etc. We haven't been able to go back to Numeria because we didn't have Second Edition rules for that content. And so once those rules are available and once you know, we don't wanna jump right in immediately, because Starfinder getting a new edition is a big deal and it needs to be front and center awesome. That is something that I am personally really excited about. I've been talking here and there with people about Iron Gods for ages. And an adventure path I've had in the back of my head since the previous edition. But it's not on the schedule yet, so... But it can be now.

Yeah, an interpretation of Dolok Darkfur seems possible. He was the Sarkorian God responsible for leading the reclamation efforts as mentioned in Divine Mysteries. This new Sarkorian school of magic seems to be about supporting that reclamation and promoting traditions. Maybe they told the artist "feathered bear" and that was interpreted as winged.

God art can be inconsistent sometimes. Instructions can be vague instructions and uo to interpretation, especially for minor gods. In lore their depictions are usually malleable to the region anyway. Teki Stronggut, the new goblin God, has a head/nose like a Warhammer goblin and is the same fleshy ochre skin of D&D goblins. She doesn't look like a Pathfinder goblin at all.

I was actually going to bring her up until I saw you had posted her in the next sentence. I don't want to rip on the artist, as the artist's rendering of her was of pretty good quality, but it was really jarring when I turned the page and saw a goblin with such a pronounced nose. Somewhere along the line, the artist was never shown a Pathfinder goblin.

I think the XP budget change was intentional. It does make it easier, as being able to add a single 20 XP creature was rather nice when the encounter was 3 20 XP monsters.

This just in, the overgods are creating villains for profit. It was a conspiracy all along!

Not sure if this is deep lore or something but Instant Spy says it has the same mechanism as a "clockwork spy (Monster Core 2 70)." (P71)... The original Clockwork Spy listing is Bestiary 3, page 48, so ... is there a Monster Core 2 partially lain out somewhere in the depths of Paizo with Clockwork Spy on page 70? That makes for almost twice as many A-C entries as Bestiary 3 to push it to page 70... hmmm ... exciting

During Paizo's January stream, they announced we'll be getting cinder dragons which will be replacing red dragons toward the end of the year. Back when I heard this, it felt like a hint toward a Monster Core 2. I just checked the page on my Guns and Gears and looks like this is a more solid announcement of it. I left some quotes from Luis Loza on the matter.

This is the cover for Shining Kingdoms. Next big regional book. And that is a cinder dragon on the cover there. It's a dragon that happens to be red because it's related to fire. It happens to be related to fire but it isn't necessarily a red dragon. It's red, it does fire stuff. It messes with a lot of cool fire things, and happens to fill a similar niche to what red dragons used to, but it's a little Pathfinder twist. Our own take on the classical dragon.

...

I can give a spoiler before we go. Can we go back to the cover art there? Hey, I mentioned a cinder dragon, right? And I'm talking about the cinder dragon as if I know what the cinder dragon does, because I know what the cinder dragon does. And I'm just going to say, by the end of the year, you too will know the stats for the cinder dragon and get a chance to learn what the cinder dragon does. Where that will come up, I don't know. I mean I do know I will not say. I don't know when you'll learn about that. I'm just excited to tell people, hey, cinder dragon's coming. Look forward to that by the end of the year you'll have your cinder dragon stats for those who want to use them. But in the meantime feel free to use a red dragon.

If this is the case, I'm guessing we'll probably get Monster Core 2 either October, November, or December.

I'll concede I got a bit excited about the prospect of expanding the advanced weapon for Inventors to uncommon and rarer types. But I do feel this rule should be clarified, as I am likely not the only person who would have read through that entry and got similarly excited. While I might willfully be lenient as a GM in my interpretation, Pathfinder is a game praised for its specificity. So I'll submit an errata suggestion to clarify that bit to reduce the instances of folks getting their hopes up with the ability.

As for Starfinder and Pathfinder being completely separate systems to the point of compatibility not being commonly intended. After what news I've seen, I do find that sentiment dubious. I at least don't feel that the Paizo devs feel this sentiment.

From Paizo's January Stream.

...Everything compatible with Pathfinder 2E? And yes it is. If you have not heard the good news. Starfinder Second Edition and Pathfinder Second Edition are fully compatible!

In fact, in the GM Core...we have a section being written up called anachronistic adventures. Will have a bunch of great guidelines to help you use Starfinder content in Pathfinder and Pathfinder content in Starfinder.

This is again just more previews of what you can find in the Galaxy Guide. Ways to make cool characters for Starfinder or Starfinder and space-themed characters that you can play in a Pathfinder game.

When we did the playtest, we had some Pathfinder classes alongside the Starfinder classes, and it worked very well. There's minor changes that you might wanna do and so much of it is campaign dependent. So much of it is the kind of stuff that you should work out before and during your session zero, and the guidelines that we have in the book will really help smooth over that process.

Alex: What are the team's thoughts on Pathfinder content interacting with Starfinder stuff. Like, are you expecting people to mix them together. Are they build and sort of balanced to be working really well together. Obviously people can do whatever they want at their tables but what's your thoughts as you're the ones who are here?

Dustin: I'm going to be allowing the two at my tables as appropriate. There will always be certain games where no you won't be using a laser pistol or if you wanna play a soldier we're going to construct this new, I'll say it's a bunch of wands taped together into a flamethrower or something. I don't know why use flamethrowers when we probably have those in Ustalav. But you know, there are creative options. There are other classes just function like Solarion. Like, cool, you've got a solar weapon on Golarion, that's not gonna mess too many things up... But yes, you'd be fine playing a Skittermander Operative Red Mantis Assassin in either setting...It should work just great. 1:38:48: To finalize your question about Starfinder and Pathfinder and vice versa. In fact, if you still play our awesome playtest scenarios and download the tracking sheet at StarfinderPlaytest.com, you can unlock the Contemplative and Dragonkin ancestries from Starfinder Galaxy Guide and play them in Pathfinder Society. So, right there, there's your compatibility.

Rue: I wanted to open the floor to James talking about crossovers with Pathfinder and Starfinder in terms of like, what does that look like from the Pathfinder side of things as well.

James: Well that's kind of where it all started back with the Iron Gods adventure path and the Technology Guide. That was kind of the birth of a lot of Starfinder stuff cause people liked it. And from there we took a lot of that content and kind of exploded it up into the heavens into the future post beyond the Gap etc. We haven't been able to go back to Numeria because we didn't have Second Edition rules for that content. And so once those rules are available and once you know, we don't wanna jump right in immediately, because Starfinder getting a new edition is a big deal and it needs to be front and center awesome. That is something that I am personally really excited about. I've been talking here and there with people about Iron Gods for ages. And an adventure path I've had in the back of my head since the previous edition. But it's not on the schedule yet, so... But it can be now.

Ancestry: Automaton
Rules: Arcane Propulsion
Problem: An earlier errata pass made partial fly speeds available at Level 5 with the unlock for full flight at Level 9. Arcane Propulsion is still Level 9, and should be reduced to level 5, where Lesser Augmentation can unlock full flight at Level 9.

One of my players pointed out these giants look like the Maulers from Invincible and I cannot unsee it.

Jaw like that, time to make the Jotunborn gigachad. Mewing 24/7.

Starfinder 2E-side.

I started reading Alien Archive 3, and I now HAVE A MIGHTY NEED for Brenneri.

So impossible being like a super class heavy book with little of anything else ?

Guess it could be called Impossible Magics lol

On a 300 page book, there is room for classes, archetypes, ancestries, spells, feats, and items, and even some mild Lore. We don't need a Gazetteer for the Impossible Lands because we already have that as a Lost Omens book. But there is plenty of room for some spell treatises. The Player Cores prove there is room because they each have such content. As far as classes alone go. There is two whole classes worth of content (-30 pages) that normally goes into a Player Core for classes that can easily go into magical treatises, or really any other convenient content.

My tinfoil hat theory is that the Impossible Playtest might actually be a 300 page magic-themed book which will combine elements of Book of the Dead, Dark Archive, and Secrets of Magic. Basically on a scale of a Divine Mysteries book or a magic-oriented Player Core 3 of sorts.

Reasons for this lunatic theory:
-The Battlecry playtest clearly announced that the book it will tie into will be called Battlecry. But the Impossible Playtest did not announce a book name.

-The Impossible Playtest includes two heavily magical classes, being the Necromancer and the Runesmith. And the remaining four classes, Magus, Psychic, Summoner, and Thaumaturge are heavily magical.

-6 Classes would fit well in a 300-page book, of which both Player Cores 1 and 2 comfortably contain 8 classes.

-The Necromancer is a heavily death and occult-themed class, and would meld well with content options from both Book of the Dead and Dark Archive

-Book of the Dead, Dark Archive, and Secrets of Magic are all books that are heavily magic dependent.

-A relatively small percentage of both the Book of the Dead and Dark Archive is actually player-oriented rules content, so their player-side mechanical functions can easily be absorbed into any other book if adventures, bestiaries, and hazards are omitted.

-Book of the Dead, Dark Archive, and Secrets of Magic collectively contain treatises on magic that can be merged into a one-stop explainer on magic in all its forms.

-Omitting much of the exploratory and adventure content of Dark Archive and Book of the Dead maintains a reason to consider still purchasing those books independent of the new book.

-Skeleton can of course take up an ancestry slot, and there is an opportunity to add a host of other magically thematic ancestries on a book of this scale.

-Aside from Rage of Elements needing a reprint to bring it to Orc Guns and Gears style, this would put an end in one publishing all of the requests for remasters of book of the Dead, Dark Archive, and Secrets of Magic. By taking most of what's actually important to players and congregating it into one place.

Could I be completely wrong? Likely, but I've said why I think it'd make sense.

CharlieConspiracyBoard.jpg

I saw the brief of updates too, and they look amazing so far.

As I said earlier. As "unneeded" as some folk think that a Remaster pass is for the remaining 5 classes is, they would still be very much appreciated changes.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what magic Paizo can do with an ORC Magus, as well as with the Kineticist (only counted because while it was designed for remaster rules, it is still an OGL class), Psychic, Summoner, and Thaumaturge.

During the last Paizo Stream, it was mentioned that interest in bringing Golarion back to Numeria was there in light of Starfinder 2E coming out, so the good thing is, a technology guide as a lost omens book post Starfinder probably would not be out of the question to talk about how to integrate Starfinder content in Pathfinder.

Though the Starfinder GM Core is supposed to discuss intercompatibility between Starfinder and Pathfinder, so I'm not sure if everything to be said will already be covered in the Starfinder GM Core.

While a lot of Starfinder stuff can be spliced into Pathfinder, not everything has a place, and I'm not sure if the Starfinder GM Core will have enough pages to do it to a satisfactory level. Plus, it gives room to talk about Pathfinder innovations on Numerian technology (and potentially Stasian technology? A Technology Guide can also encompass Earthling 1920-30's tech), Who doesn't wanna do a heist in a rich irriseni collector to obtain a 1911?

That would not work for three reasons:

1. Weapon Infusion already functions as a continuous weapon for practical purposes. You can, for example, manifest an earth attack as a two-handed sledgehammer, if you wanted.

2. The character concept is a pure air kineticist. While they can make a weapon, it misses the visual concept if they cannot use a physical object. As I don't want one real fan and a fake fan made of air. I want two real fans. Due to reason number 1, I'd have just said I was holding one real fan and a fake fan, but that's not what I want in my character concept. I want actual fans. The visual inspiration point was for example Temari, but part of the appeal to the deesign is the fan. And a lot of the design appeal is lost when you lose the prop. A force fan just doesn't quite cut it. And I don't wanna be the one that says, "Oh, the air materializes a wooden object because reasons"

3. I don't even want a weapon like the bladed fans. I want dancing fans, which would be more akin to an instrument, which Weapon Infusion cannot produce performance tools. Just weapons.

I wish Kineticists had a way to use their abilities with their hands full, even if it was a feat tax. I was getting hype to make an air kineticist fan dancer that wielded two fans (not even the weapon fans, just basic fans), to tie into the fan dancer archetype, but I quickly got disillusioned when I realized that I cannot actually dual wield fans, losing access to most of the fan dancer abilities. Fringe case I know. But I wish their was a way to make it work.

In my case, I just implemented Flexible Spellcasting as a default rule. Though that went out to all prepared casters, not just the Wizard. Kept the spell repertoire limited, but I buffed the spell slots back to vanilla. Haven't had any complaints about the wizard yet in my home games with these rules. And it vibes well with my players, who are D&D fans.

Nothing really changed with the math with this approach, the players just don't get punished nearly as much for preparing a spell that they are less likely to use. As a player does not feel like they have to do extensive theory craft to calculate whether they should prepare 2, 3, or 4 casts of fireball today. It also just saves a lot of time because my players don't have to deliberate on their exact concoction of spell ratios every in-game day, nor feel rushed to decide on what to pick

For additional ancestry feats, the simplest solution is making Ancestry Paragon a default for Starfinder.

My only Legacy clinging point is I'd rather say Fairies speak Sylvan than Fey. (I think all of the other new language names are great, and happily use them.) Otherwise I've fully converted, and only use Legacy content if there is no clear Remaster replacement. Like I don't consider Monster Core's Dragons to be a good replacement for Chromatic and Metallic Dragons with the exception of perhaps the Horned Dragon. But the hinted what I would assume to be Monster Core 2 coming out later this year which has Cinder Dragons looks like it will potentially replace legacy chromatic and metallic dragons.

Down this path madness lies! I've seen it before! The Starfinder 1e boards were rife with 'Why can't anyone cast 9th level spells anymore? What's the in-world explanation!?' and 'Is god 'x' dead now?' posts!

More seriously though, mechanical changes between editions don't really need explanations. As far as the Pathfinder 2e characters are concerned, the average movement speed of each ancestry has always been what it currently is and there has never been a change. Outside of advancing the metaplot of the setting between editions, character have no other experience of the edition change as it mostly exists for us in the real world.

If you need an explanation for why the base movement speeds have been tweaked, then you also need one for why Bards are suddenly 9th level spellcasters, why alignment is no longer a thing, why a large and seemingly random selection of (WotC-owned) creatures are on the decline, etc, etc. Unless you want to be incredibly meta with the humor at your table, which can be a hell of a lot of fun in its own way, I wouldn't bother. If you are shooting for the incredibly meta humor, the more ridiculous the explanation the better.

Reminds me of when I heard a dev say that the reason Starfinder characters could not cast 9th level spells anymore was simply because their was not enough pages in the book to take spells up to that level.

Kind of amusing to imagine that the reason people lost the ability to cast 9th level magic, and suddenly now will have the reason to cast 10th level magic, has nothing to do with lore, but simply the fact a deific book that is the underlying law of the universe simply was too small to accomodate high magic, and now it suddenly is more than big enough to accomodate high magic.

There is precedent for monstrous ancestry archetypes in PF2E. That'd be the best approach I think.

Background would likely be too weak to satisfy, because the thing that the desired ancestry features are competing for is a skill feat. And I've seen enough Starfinder races at this point to know a lot of the stuff you'd want in one are more powerful than a skill-feat tradeoff. You'd likely need to sacrifice the skill and lore trainings, and potentially one of the attribute boosts to keep a similar power scale.

What happens when you point a flashlight at a disco ball?

Everyone gets a +1 circumstance bonus to Performance checks to boogie down.

Note that RK is an Untrained action.

Of course, I can attempt to recall knowledge on String Theory, does not mean I'll pass the check. Nor will I know what scientific documents are reputable to research it to get a bonus to the check. Of course I can try to acquire the skill after a long period of careful study, but by the time I know it well enough to use a reference document, then for practical purposes, I'll be trained.

Now, tell me I'm trying to recall knowledge on a mechanical/thermodynamic system instead, and I definitely know where to look to get the bonus.

Despite both types of documents being freely available to me via the internet.

In the words of some of my old professors: "Of course you could bring a cheat sheet. If you don't know what you're doing, you'd fail anyway."

As far as I can reason for the cone question, mostly it's an emanation because Pathfinder and Starfinder 2E don't really have heading mechanics for characters.

There is no behind the character to factor. And a character can attack two flanking enemies without penalty. So it's essentially an emanation because there's no rule saying the PC cannot just flag a whole 360 degree area with light, effectively being an emanation.

moosher12 wrote:

Errenor wrote:

moosher12 wrote:

Actually, having access to a magical wikipedia is a Level 1 spell. Pocket Library.

As if. It actively refuses to give any answers. +1 to a skill you already have can't represent encyclopedias. They should give a skill you don't have at least.

I know, I know you are joking and I'm picking on trifles.

Just because you can look up a scientific document does not mean you're initiated enough to understand it.

Look at this day and age where you can look up anything on the internet, yet look at how much technical knowledge is actually known by the average joe despite this.

Things that pf characters want to know about in the game almost always aren't comparable with advanced science. You can look up an elephant on wiki and you just get a trove of information about it: size, some anatomy, some biology, some behaviour - anything pf character would want to know about a creature and much more. And you don't need to be a biologist for this. Moreover you could know nothing at all about elepants before this - and now you know enough.

Yes, identifying would be a bit harder, but there are identification guides.

Identification is the first step though. I think you forgot to realize how privileged you are in this day and age to even know what an elephant is. There's a lot of things we take for granted to know in the fact that we live in a world-wide society and actually have gone to primary, middle, and high school, and potentially college, alongside growing up with copious professional educational media. You phrase things like you're looking for the animal knowing what the animal is.

But if I described a small animal with black fur with yellow highlights, hard spiked fur, and a long snout, that might give you pause for thought. But it's certainly an animal I've never heard of before looking it up to describe as an example here. I never even knew it's family name. Now you ARE trained in Nature, because you took various biology/ecology classes growing up. It's simply part of the modern curriculum. While you try to look it up, there are aspects of your Nature training that help to clue you in on what to search. Because there are associations you can make as a gift from your modern knowledge base to streamline this search.

In the end everything is identification. You cannot look up an elephant to learn about it without first knowing what an elephant is.

moosher12 wrote:

Actually, having access to a magical wikipedia is a Level 1 spell. Pocket Library.

As if. It actively refuses to give any answers. +1 to a skill you already have can't represent encyclopedias. They should give a skill you don't have at least.

I know, I know you are joking and I'm picking on trifles.

Just because you can look up a scientific document does not mean you're initiated enough to understand it.

Look at this day and age where you can look up anything on the internet, yet look at how much technical knowledge is actually known by the average joe despite this.

Just to be sure. By next year do you mean a few months from now or 12 months from now?

To answer my own question, the playtest will be in the Spring. This news is from the latest Paizo Stream.

Actually, having access to a magical wikipedia is a Level 1 spell. Pocket Library.

Both can be true.

While the playtest is over, that does not mean you cannot play the playtest scenarios either recreationally or for credit. It just means that if you submit feedback after that point, it's either not gonna be seen, or very unlikely to be seen.

For example, I'm winding up to finally run A Cosmic Birthday. Nothing's stopping me from running it. If anything, now that playtesting is over, I can use a lot of my Pathfinder home rules, because I don't have to worry about my home rules corrupting the data.

moosher12 wrote:

With Pactbinder seemingly being ported to 2E via this book, and Runelords being confirmed to be ported, that makes both Dark Archive and Secrets of Magic taken from.

It makes me wonder what will happen with reprints of those books.

I could see Dark Archives getting a remaster and the remaining parts of Secrets of Magic being folded into another “magic” book. Secrets of Magic would require an extensive rewrite whereas the Pactbinder is two pages. I’m thinking that both books and the four classes in them will be folded into another “magic” book or something like that.

I was thinking something similar. It probably would not be unreasonable to imagine a combination book of the two.

Dark Archives has a lot of fluff text, so a book that combines Dark Archives content into a Secrets of Magic style book would not increase the size much, I'm pretty sure you can squeeze most of Dark Archives mechanical content into Secrets of Magic without breaching 320, with potential room for more.

I don't want to get overly ambitious with the thought, but I'm beginning to wonder. I think there is room to speculate that with the Impossible Playtest classes being so magical. I can imagine whatever book contains them can reasonably contain the remaining 4 classes and magical subclasses.

Both Dark Archive and the Impossible Playtest classes would fall easily under a secrets of magic theme, (and the Necromancer would fit well with content from Book of the Dead). So I can the Impossible Playtest being the book that finally puts to end the remaining classes, and also does a biggest hits port of legacy content from among Book of the Dead, Dark Archive, and Secrets of Magic, alongside copious new content.

I don't wanna sound crazy, but this could be a potential Player Core 3. Granted, I might also just be letting my imagination become overactive. Either way, I look forward to seeing what comes of this. Seeing stuff spliced from Secrets of Magic and Dark archive to me is an indicator that the books are to be replaced with something new eventually, and that alone is good news.

Probably not Spring Errata, but I really hope Starfinder 2E's Traversal trait comes to a future Pathfinder 2E errata patch.

For those who are not keeping an eye on Starfinder 2E, the trait works as follows:

One new element we'll be introducing is the traversal trait. This new trait mostly applies to player-facing rules that reference Stride. When it applies, traversal allows the use of alternative movement types (burrow, fly, and swim) to be used in place of land Speed, akin to how Sneak works. Expect to see this greatly impact some abilities used by the envoy and solarian (to name a few).

The big question for 2025 is what in the world can Paizo do to outdo "The Gap" Is it even possible to outdo "The Gap"?

Paizo can always release the romantic comedy novel of the love triangle between Irori, Abadar, and Asmodeus.

Was thinking about it. And I just realized, what I want in a mesmerist is I want something that feels like an alternate bard, but it's replacing the martial skill and performance aspects with a wizard's versatility and magical focus.

Weaker physically, not meant to be close range, but more versatile in execution. Retains the bard's ability to do crowd control, buffing, trickery, and the like. Where a bard has a limited repertoire, I'd hope the mesmerist drew from a spellbook and could learn the full gamut with enough time and money. If anything, they could probably share their spell notes with Esoteric Polymath bards.

Guns and Gears already did a good job with mixing weapon upgrades with runes. And Starfinder really can just use that as a starting point. A flashlight or a bayonet really should not take the place of a rune-like upgrade.