nick1wasd's page

I wonder how they'll handle the Ability Points variant rule, since "score" is going away, buying 14 -> 15 isn't a thing to keep track of.

Also, I am 100% for the "no +5 until 10th, no +6 until 20th" because it would work just like skill increases which is an already fine system in the game engine. So what if its leaning against the tight math? It isn't that big a deal if my players have +1 more than their current will save/perception if it means yeeting jank math that just looks bad all around.

Sanityfaerie wrote:

Mammoth Daddy wrote:

Does the planes of wood or metal have elemental lords?

Yep. Freeing them was a big part of what made those planes visible and available again.

Who are they? What are their personalities? Is there two per wood and metal or are they singular lords?

Two per, Metal has Ferrumnestra and Laudinmo. Ferrumnestra: The Lady of Rust is a giant Rust Monster ore louse queen, running around causing decay and eating up the metal of the land; vaguely Nurgle in edicts and anathema. Laudinmo: Sovereign of Alchemy is a thing? obsessed with chemistry and invention, vague Tzeentch feels in edicts and anathema, has a giant lab called Castle Amalgam guarded by terrain and traps, all about the MAD SCIENCE and stuff! No sanctification for either, new metal domain for both. Laudinmo's divine weapon is alchemical bombs, which is really cool!

Archpaladin Zousha wrote:

To be honest, I'm not sure of a way to roleplay the bugbear's love of inducing fear as a PC ancestry in ways other than the "serial killer" vibe they're mostly known for in their villainous roles a la Ironfang Invasion or by being the obnoxious prankster who spooks their fellow party members for giggles.

A heavy focus on intimidation checks, and causing fear in your enemies as a dominance display and demonstration of your own superiority? Maybe even make it quasi-religious... when you inflict fear on someone, you are taking something from them at an ineffable level. It is thus rude and selfish to do it to your friends and allies, acceptable against unfriendly neutrals, and laudable against foes.

Alternately, a sort of Halloween/horror movie vibe where they spook little kids in ways that said little kids find entertaining as much as actually terrifying. "I'm a big, scary monster coming to eat you up!" and all that.

So like the Monsters Inc. crew more or less? I can get behind that as a player facing suite of RP opportunity and featurettes.

I want light armor to get specializations, and give more classes armor spec due to this. Even if it's a measly 1+potency DR, it's still something that makes your choice in armor mean something compared to other pieces of armor with the same AC/Dex cap stats. Also more thrown weapons, they're too cool for us to have so few!

I really like the idea of picking betwix Lege AC and Lege To Hit, on top of FoB scaling like Flurry Ranger. Another thing that could be done, that no one else seems to be mentioning, is giving a mid and high level feat tree (or make it a feature) to spend multiple action to ORA ORA ORA like Impossible Flurry, since "many small hits" is an area the Monk lacks mechanically, that seems very on point for it's thematic potential, but is totally vacant for some reason. We have OIP/mmP for "one big hit" so that's a done deal, but tiny smacks is also something I want.

Additionally, I feel like Monks could use a Style specific version of Flexibility, but that's not really needed if other thematic/mechanical holes are patched.

Tactical Drongo wrote:

No comment from anybody on the fact that ability scores are gone?

I wonder how the (former) 18+ increasing of the scores will work now

.

We have known that for a long time and no one really cares that much because scores were useless, and Paizo has already told us the 18+ will work through same but hasn't given us specifics.

I think it would be simpler to treat it like skill boosts: "Give a stat +1, you can't have a total of +5 until level 10, and +6 at level 20." Makes it a little more forgiving that anything past +5 being worth 0.5 instead of 1 but not enough extra sauce to make a PC OP. At least that's what I would do if I were the design team...

The Positive Energy Plane—also called the Furnace,the Cosmic Fire, Creation's Forge,or The Fires of Creation.

The Negative Energy Plane—also known as the Void,Entropy's Heart, the Nothing, and the Final End.

Here are the other names used for the Eneregy planes.

Feel like The Furnace would be Plane of Fire, but Creation's Forge sounds so good.

I do wonder if we'll get endonyms for the elemental planes for their denizens, like "Raq'Thahar" for the Plane of Earth as per what the Terraen speaking earth elementals call it. Paizo fabricating endonyms is one of my favorite parts of PF2e, makes the world feel so much more 'lived in' if that makes sense.

(also hi other guy who uses Mythic Seltyiel as a pfp!)

I'm excited for the nails and hair to be combined into one feat, but I hope it does a little more than just mush those together and nothing else. I want some sort of scaling with int or more interplay with hexes and natural attacks; attacking someone with nails and afflicting them with a hex sounds awesome, but in practice it's a derpier version of Spellstrike.

Well, I weep for thee, denizens of the Darklands, who names shall not be uttered; mystery cultists who once worshipped the spider mother. Teal and lilac you then became, a false history for which you were blamed. I weep for thee, you redacted drow, exit stage left, after a bow.

On a more pointed note, the homebrewed world I run is unaffected by this, but it's sad we won't get a proper ancestry entry for Drow that have cha+ in place of int+ and a feat tree for minor magical shenanigans dealing with darkness and dusk. Guess I (or people on infinite) can just write their own, but it still would have been lovely for 'official' stuff. No idea what 'sekmin' is, but if they're the new tyrannical Darkland doods, I guess I'll familiarize myself with them at some point; any good spot to read about them?

nick1wasd wrote:

Bard and Druid seem to probably be subject to the least amount of work, but what minor stuff do y'all think they'll get? Bards are probably also getting nominal weapon proficiencies, muses made to be more iconic from each other; Druids might get some more interesting focus spells in their core Orders like Leaf and Animal.

I'd actually be surprised if Bards got expanded weapon proficiencies, since there's a subclass focused around that. Why would Bard be the only full caster with martial weapon proficiency baked in when they're already so good? Rogue being brought up to the level of other martials makes sense, as does Wizard being brought up to the level of other casters.

I should have specified, when I said "nominal" I was intending to mean "Simple only" instead of "Simple + Martial" but I guess that was not clear.

Drop their starting perception to trained, drop their starting number of trained skills to 2+int to match other full casters.

Every other full casters has a total of 4+int (except Wizards who are 3+Int for some dumb reason, and Oracles who mystery gives them an additional one), where as the bard is 6+int.

I mean, they were more skilly in PF1e compared to other casters, so I can see them maintaining that in PF2e; but I 100% agree on perception getting tanked, expert perception on a caster is a liiiiiiitle much. I could see 5+Int skills with Trained in perc/light armor/saves that aren't Will as starter proficiencies and that'd be pretty reasonable from my standpoint, although them keeping 8+Con HP is also a little outlier I think could use looking at

Squiggit wrote:

While I agree that MAPless finishers would be an extreme change, it's also kind of telling to look at SuperBidi's math and notice that even such a dramatic change barely pushes the needle into problematic territory, even on ideal turns.

It says a lot about where we're starting from.

But that's only when you account using them as second attack.

When you make them 3rd attacks the math breaks out the gazoo.

---

For the math to work out it would need to be "finishers don't advance map" rather than them being unaffected, since the only thing that his math is based upon is a single increase in MAP which is effectively the same as an attack not advancing MAP

Two issues with that, A. they can't swing 3 times unless they got panache last round, which makes them a 2 cycle attack class like Magus, who are still better at burst; B. Finishers lock you out of further Strikes, so them not advancing MAP is moot since you can't swing afterwards, unless you're saying to remove that little quirk in order to make them more functional, which sounds fine to me but seems like a core misunderstanding of your argument's starting point.

Me and my friend wrote up a templative character for when Rage of Elements comes out: Marshmallow, the goblin kineticist. He's a charhide goblin, with a mono-fire Gate, with the wrestler archetype, who specializes in setting himself on fire and then going in to "hug" his opponent; minicanal laughter highly suggested, but not necessary.

If only Monk had a way of picking a specific weapon and saying "this is a Monk weapon now." Then I could stick a nodachi on a STR Monk with Mountain and Wild Winds stance and viola, Vergil from DMC!

Also, we got dakka now for the gren boyz? YAY!

Is there a compiled list of leaks yet, like on reddit or something? I WANT TO READ THE THINGS BEFORE I PICK UP MY PREORDER, FOR ADDED HYPE!!!

I am so excited for this book, I'm curious when we'll get more concrete information about what's within it beyond Kineticist and the geniekin, elemental barbs and potentially eidolons(?), and GM stuff with the new planes.

When does that sort of stuff happen, typically?

insert Donald Glover with a pizza box gif

What seems to be the problem I can tell is that... Paizo seems to have gotten accidental foot-in-mouth with their blog post, with people accusing them of "pandering" in some way or another, much like an incident from last year involving something getting off-screened. We've all been more or less doubled baited in the past by topics like this, so we should in theory know how to handle ourselves at this point, no?

As a mechanical vantage point of "now all classes are viable for every race ancestry" is cool, but it does seem odd to yeet into the mix 3 years into the lifespan of the system, and does feel like a watering down of some of the more interesting nuances of character creation, but I don't explicitly hate it, just find it dull (glad it's optional!)

The blog post itself, and why they said they felt the need to do this did seem a little dubious and PRy, but I can chalk that up to a very averse to inflammation writing staff trying to preemptively quell the pitchfork and torch crowd (that were not quelled at all, it seems.) I think if they gave a different reasoning to why, it'd be a little less... contentious than it is now, but hopefully everyone can learn from this: paizo learning their fanbase is passionate and eager to jump at things that concern them, and the fanbase learning to not jump at the first sight of something nebulously inane like "hey, everyone should have fun doing The Thing, so math gets bonked to make The Thing more betterer."

Praying for some spooky radiation stuff on the Plane of Metal.

Pitchblend bullets! Pitchblend elementals! PITCHBLEND EVERYWHERE!

Or, as Golarian calls it, Abysium :P

I know elves had the elemental terrain heritages/feats, but is there any other Eevee-esc dynamic evolution ancestries that can diverge in manifested features while still being the same base species? Some of those would be fascinating to play

I would love Words of Power returned via the variable action system letting me play build-a-bear spellshop like Ars Magica 5th, using range words, effect words, meta effect words, and wackiness like that to weave a custom made thundery-fireball or acidic shocking grasp, conal healing and sniper rays of harm; I wanna go weird with my spells, and making my own on the fly is the best way to do it!

I'm on otherhand kinda baffled that we don't have shadow planar scion heritage

Yeah, I was expecting Fetchlings to be VH, not fixed ancestry; the second closest is tiefling with the Velstrac lineage feat. It's kinda weird, because shadow plane radiation is sort of a HUGE deal out of all of the inner planes

The more common concern with making them standard strikes would be tying into other attack types. Like, if blasts were unarmed attacks then you could MC into monk for Flurry of Blows on them, or other thigns of like nature. As soon as they open up the door to something like that, they *have* to balance them against every other weapon out there, at which point they suddenly get a lot more samey, while also requiring archetypes to use to full potential.

So... I admit that I'm not a huge fan of that.

At the same time, there really ought to be a way to throw around melee-range Elemental Blasts without taking opportunity attacks.

The simplest way to do that is just remove the 'Manipulate' trait of the basic Blast. That's the outstanding issue, if that trait went away everything would be smooth sailing. You can still have it on the bigger Impulses, but the most fundamental version, it could honestly stand without that trait and nothing would happen other than not provoking AoO anymore (maybe being usable with bound hands..? but that's not the hugest of concerns imo)

As far as popular media goes, I think the most iconic Inquisitor that comes to mind is Alexander Anderson from Hellsing. He has one job, and one job only... KILL THE PROTE-I MEAN VAMPIRE-N$#!S SO HARD THEY STAY DEAD THIS TIME! Knives for days? Knives for days. Can skulk in the shadows, but prefers not to, decked out in blessed equipment he's practically radioactive, and can quote scripture from memory like a lexicon (and doing so gives him supermode).

There's also Leliana from Dragon Age, she's sorta the more covert member of the church compared to Cassandra Pentaghast, so I guess she fits the bill as well.

My presently working concept for Burn that I've posted on Reddit a few times is just a free action Gather that hurts you for either your level or 1/2 your level.

I feel like action compression or action saving is a much better means of going about utilizing the concept of Burn, while also making it 100% opt in, and simple and straight forward enough to not cause a frick ton of math needing to be done.

Martialmasters wrote:

There is a single feat you can get at first level that let's you use finesse with earth/water attacks.

Thanks, I missed this. But I don't like having CON and DEX as my highest stats either - for me, the whole kineticist flavor screams WIS based to me, literally all kineticist PCs I imagine have high mental and low physical stats. In my fantasy they are the mental equivalent to the physical monk, and if they attacked with a mental stat it would make them so much cooler to me. I also can't stand the focus on versatility and AoE, I would prefer it if I could play a kineticist as a glass cannon magical archer, who can make powerful and accurate(!) single target ranged attacks and nothing else. There currently isn't a class in pf2e that can fulfill this fantasy, meanwhile we already have many different versatile casters who can heal, control and deal AoE elemental damage.

They were THE AoE class in PF1, if they lost that, it would be a war crime to the legacy of Kineticist and what most people love about them. If you want single target ranged attacks, Bow Magus or Precision longbow Ranger are what you want. Mental stats for attack I don't see happening, nor would I (or a decent number of people, as per the playtest forums have shown) appreciate that unless it was a Class Archetype or something.

Verzen wrote:

I honestly think legendary DC is absolutely needed here while maintaining mastery in normal kinetic blast attacks.

I seriously doubt this will happen as it straight up breaks 2e design philosophy.

How? Which design philosophy is getting broken? Full casters get legendary DCs, but martials don't? Because if that's the case, the Kine is in this weird middle zone like Magus where it's not quite one or the other, and I think if ANY class that isn't a full caster should get Legendary Class DC Proficiency, it's the gosh darn Kineticist! Like... What other class does it make sense on?

On a complexity scale of 1 to 5, how complex would you guys rate using the thaumaturge ? Where barb is 1 and Alchemist is 5 and a 3 would be bard/sorcerer/monk

High 3, potentially a 4. They're much like the Monk, in that you can drive up the complexity a lot, or keep it rather tame; but even at it's tamest, it's still pretty complicated compared to a fighter or barbarian.

The same abilities that let you raise or lower thermal energy also let you keep it at a safe medium.

Literally in Thermal Stasis's text, it says why it grants both resistance types, you're granting an insulator layer to your buddy. It seems like the class feature only cares if a spell is doing one or the other, but lets alone spells that are doing both.

That's my take away at least: If a spell has both fire and cold traits, oscillating wave's feature leaves it alone because it's already doing both. Should the text be clearer? Yes, but it seems clear enough to me to draw that conclusion.

Grankless wrote:

DnD psionics do not exist on Golarion or in pathfinder. They're not going to make a new spellcaster class (and yes, psionic classes were functionally casters) that arbitrarily isn't able to use all the spells they've already printed in the game. Reprinting all the spells but with slightly different names to be used for just six classes or however many there were in 3.5 was a bad use of page space, and it would be an even worse use of page space here given they're not printing a new splat every month to fill that roster.

Psychic magic and psionics are the same thing: it's magic that comes from your brain. There's no good reason to make the psychic less approachable just to repeat a weird design decision from a 20 year old game for something that, with the lore stuff that exists in Golarion, does not exist.

It doesn't matter really. Paizo still clearly uses "classic" psionics vibes: Power of own mind, over drawing cosmic powers (spellcasters). Not relying on verbal, somatic and material components (kinda still is on somatic, but that's fine). And hundreds of other features very clearly inspired by classic 3.5 psionics lore.

I think you mean standard psychic lore from various movies/comic books. WotC had to get their ideas from somewhere, and Paizo seems to have picked similar, and different sources from WotC, and not WotC themselves. And psionics, as a system (though I never actually touched 3.5) seemed like complexity for the sake of being complicated, with nothing of real value added except for people who hate Vancian casting. Would I like a points based caster in some way? Sure; Should it be explicitly bound to psychic casting for the sake of call-backs? FRICK NO!

Paizo is their own company, let them make their own legacy instead of grasping at the coattails of WotC

When is it shipping out to brick & mortars? I preordered it at my LFGS and am really excited for this book. I thought my excitement would plateau with SoM, but DANG if DA hasn't gotten me more excited than a new anime seasonal block announcement!

Not me, but one of the players in the table I'm running, recently 'ate' a fragment of an ancient evil being and is getting power out of it (relic style) and I'm probably gonna let him retrain into Living Vessel for free once I get the book in hand. One of the other characters might pick up Thaumaturge MC a bit later on if it fits with where the story takes them.

Casting Shield on someone else is a vector of mechanics the game hasn't super touched, so this makes me really love the idea of a Psychic that protects others.

I will say it feels more like a defensive version of a telekinetic conscious mind than it does dreams one, but since it's such a cool mechanical space to occupy and collectively there's a lot of dream vibes else where I'll take it with a smile.

I think combining this with the Catharsis Mage (whichever gives you an Emotional Support Person) would be a good backline buffer/support, sorta like a League of Legends Enchanter style of character. This class has so many build options, and we don't even know all the things it gets yet!

Archpaladin Zousha wrote:

It's probably been said earlier in the thread, but I can't wait for drow to become properly playable again, with maybe a half-drow versatile heritage thrown in for good measure. I got sooooo many ridiculous combos I wanna roleplay: tiefling drow! Aasimar drow! Oread drow! Maybe some kind of drorc or a drowarf if a GM is cool with it!

I know it would drive folks opposed to too much of a "main character" vibe up the wall, but a Drow Half-Orc is just the kind of indulgent fun I crave sometimes, and a Drow Tiefling almost as much. Maybe a Magus, to double down on feeling special?

*Drow-tiefling magus* Careful Sasuke, you might cut yourself with that much edge.

But seriously, Drow/Aasimar or Drow/Duskwalker sounds absolutely hilarious given Drow culture, maybe even Drow/Aphorite!

nick1wasd wrote:

Shinigami02 wrote:

The base is you get a weapon with one of four sets of stats, every day you get to pick if it's a sword (Slashing damage), Spear (Piercing damage), or Club (Bludgeoning damage), and you can manifest it as a single action like drawing any other weapon. Feats include stuff like a cone of Mental damage, ranged strikes, free runes, extra weapon traits, and the like. Oh, and a level 2 Skill Feat that lets you add +5 feet to your Leaps as a free action (which stacks with Powerful Leap to allow Speed-minus-5 horizontal leaps and 10 foot vertical leaps. Wall Jump-based Wall Running with this archetype is insane.

Maaaaaaaan, that sounds way more limited than I thought it would be. Guess it'll do for a UBW implementation, but I really wanted a straight up "I pick this thing on the weapon list, it's in my hand now" archetype. Guess balance says that's a bad idea, all things considered... Still, it'll let me get close to making EMIYA, which is what I've begged for since the APG came out a few years back!

What you’re describing is the Soulforger Archetype.

The Soulforger takes a specific weapon and binds it to themselves, hiding it away in a pocket dimension, and pulling it out when needed. UBW, if you're not familiar, is the ability to conjure any given weapon at any given time as circumstances change and needs arise. "I have a bow; now I have a spear; oh crap, now I have a hammer; now I'm dual wielding swords!" and all of that happens in one combat, across a few rounds. I was hoping the Mindsmith allowed the latter, but apparently it does not fulfil that specific niche quite as well as I had hoped from first impressions.

A specific theme I came up with was a Hellsing Alucard ripoff/homage of a human damphyr gun wielding Champion (Paladin) who's trying to cure themselves of their undead half. Oath against Undead, ranged retributive strike, and a little gunslinger/gun user archetyping to make more of a bang.

My first full release 2e character was an Angelic (later psychopomp) Sorcerer who freaking hated undead with a passion, and had positive and negative based spells in his repertoire in equal measure. Fun character, so sad his campaign ended early due to IRL nonsense...

Shinigami02 wrote:

So as part of the Paizocon reveals has come the Mind Smith archetype, also in Dark Archives. Second Edition version of Gloomblade or Mind Blade. Adding that onto Thaumaturge, the awesome stuff they've been hinting at with Psychic, Living Vessel... honestly this may just be the perfect book for me.

HYPE !!!

It seems now, that I may rest...

I am the bone of my sword.
Steel is my body, and fire is my blood.
I have created over a thousand blades.
Unaware of beginning,
Nor aware of the end.
Withstood pain with inconsistent weapons, my hands will never hold anything.
Yet, my flame never ends.
My whole body was still Unlimited Blade Works.

Hmm... I'd wager there was a poorly chosen wording here. Sounds like what was meant by attrition is the same as what others have described as 'all day blasting' with emphasis on not having limited resources but time and health (presumably the resources undergoing attrition in this understanding).

In any case, yes the best of kineticist is saying "I want to shoot stuff out if my hands and control it with my mind but without getting into spells and the caster trappings". The mechanic of burning away stamina to strengthen ones powers us also really cool so I want to see some form of it, but I also would rather it be possible to go for a standard blaster that doesnt burn.

Bit late to respond, but yeah you pretty much got my point. I want a class who's only limiting factor is their HP bar and time in the day that isn't just "fight with pointy stick!"

Burning your HP to finish off a big foe, or keeping it intact and just being the wave-clear guy in the endless tide of low level enemies. I'm imagining the way to replicate a manaless AoE caster from a MOBA/MMORPG. That is a pretty high power level concept for a TTRPG like PF2, but that's the first thing that comes to mind gameplay wise when I think of Kineticist

I want a war of attrition class, the "I can do this all day" character that just keeps launching volley after volley of pseudo-magical bombs at the enemy until they eventually die to chip damage (worst case scenario.)

I also want to be able to play elemental users like Shoto Todoroki and Katsuki Bakugo from Hero Aca, Iceman and Storm from X-Men, literally the whole non-normie cast of Fire Force, the slew of LoL characters like Annie, Zeri, Lissandra, Tahlia, ect. ect. And of course the ever-tropey AtlA, but that's ancillary to me at this point. I just want something that lets me be "dude with [fire/lightening/ice/some combination] powers who got them for reasons..." that isn't a re-re-re-re-painted Arcane or Primal slot caster.

Back to the original question of this thread. Kineticist are awesome because they fill a flavor hole that so many media love to use, that most ttrpgs that are not explicitly based on those pieces of media tend to fail to represent. They let you be "not quite magician who can yeet fireballs as good as the wizard, and do other stuff with fire he can't even dream of." They let you be the power house that walks up, summons a bolt of lightening on themselves before electrocuting everyone in a 50 foot radius. They let you be the nomad that wanders the tundra in a t-shirt and shorts and can summon the rage of the blizzard if you annoy them too much. THEY LET YOU BE A LOGIA USER FROM ONE PIECE! That's awesome, they're awesome, and I want them...

I don't have the document in front of me, but back during the first few months of PF2's lifespan I made a lvl 1-6 Kine class chassis. It was mostly a "short rest" limited class like the 5e Warlock or the PF1 Arcanist (to an extent, since PF1 didn't really LIKE short rests.) 1-3 actions to use a Blast that was either melee; 30'; 30' with more damage, and you had Infusion feats that worked like meta-magic and also counted for charging up actions for the Blast, but cost a Focus Point unless you Gathered Power or Burned yourself (Gather Power was 1 action, and you could Step during it, it had the Manipulate and Concentration traits. Burn was a free action that gave you a focus point that lasted until the end of your next turn while taking Drained. The Drained went away on a Refocus activity along with healing you of the damage it dealt.)

So a general turn could be:
1st Gather Power (and step away from the baddie)
2d Infusion a 15' Cone
3d Emperor Palpatine brand UNLIMITED POWAAAHHHH!!! (Burning Hands but with lightening typed damage)

1st Infusion for an EXPLOSION! 30' that's 15' wide away (while Burning yourself)
2d Charge the Blast
3d BIG BANG ATTACK! (120' range, 30' wide because you spent 3 actions charging it. Many d6 of fire damage)

1st Gather Power (stepping in)
2d Kinetic Blade (extra die size and removing AoO chance in exchange for melee only)
3d WITCH HUNTER (d8 or d10 positive damage)

So on and so forth.

Ravingdork wrote:

Well with Mark Seifter out of the picture, whatever we get with the kineticist will be well below expectations.

Why not take inspiration from D&D's Warlock?

In what way? That class is a mechanical and balance catastrophe in 5e compared to other classes. I love it, I've played quite a few, and it is the single most unstable, borderline fissile class in all of 5e hands down. The spells back on short rest is the Focus Point system, but done in a round about way. And conventional spells/slots is something everyone here has been more or less hostile to as in concept for the Kineticist to use.

If the Witch or Psychic worked like the Warlock, that'd be fine, but the Kine is a VERY different design space both thematically and mechanically.

I think something getting glossed over here is that the Psychic went headfirst into the Carrie/Eleven/Legion style occultic magician with the "hurt yourself for focus points. You have a nose bleed from too much strain" stuff. Thus leaving the Avatar/Hero Aca/other X-Men style elementalist user an unexplored field in class design, and most people's understanding of the Kineticist fills that unexplored gap. I really hope it's the next playtest announced at this upcoming PaizoCon, but I'm tempering expectations for it to be something else coming up next

keftiu wrote:

Perpdepog wrote:

I've been trying to convert over a 3.5 character now that Book of the Dead is out, and I've realized that I'm missing the land-based druid themes. Desert Druids, Tundra Druids, etc., mostly because that former character did a mix of healing the party, slinging some negative energy for themself, and blasting people with lots of sand. They're very desert-y themed, which is harder to achieve than I thought it would be.

The Mummy archetype actually gets some of this, which might help? They choose a terrain type and can get a number of linked abilities. It does feel like an obvious hole in the current Druid options, though.

I know I'd certainly like the sand Kineticist back from 1e.

I know they do. I'm only able to make that character now because Mummy exists, and to a lesser degree Lich depending on whether my eventual GM would be OK with stacking undead archetypes or not. I think it's mostly a hole presented by the fact that Divine and Primal are more separated than they used to be than the cleric and druid spell lists of 3.5/PF1E were. There are lots of sandblasty spells that are sadly not on the divine list, while all the negative energy he likes to sling around can't really be found anywhere else.

Not to mention that some of the domain spells perfectly fit the flavor of the character, but are inaccessible to the current druid, and very awkward to try squeezing in around the archetype I'm already planning for.

This is in part what the elementalist/geomancer caster archetypes in SoM were meant to address, giving most/any class the ability to mesh more environment focused effects into their kit and move spells around that have explicit elemental flavors to them. Worst case scenario, you might just have to multi/dual class to get everything that old character had.

I feel like a TWF Magus thread should be made unto itself, because that seems to be the things a majority of people here are jonesing for. I'll add my 2 copper in and say I would also love it, and I think Temperans' 3 action double-strike plus spellstrike -> crit on both hits seems like the most feasible if nothing else. Separate from that, I've noticed a lack of distinctly ranged options for Rogue. Sure sneak attack works with bows, but there aren't any feats that play with using a bow, even though one of the 'bespoke' weapons Rogues get are shortbows. Feels like a niche that could use filling, a sniper Rogue with a shortbow hiding in a tree and Legolasing people (Legolas seems a teensy bit more Rogue than Ranger from what I remember, but it's also been about a decade since I watched the movies.)

Incidentally this is also why I want to see it intermingled with a 'Shaman' because the two are *frequently* intermingled conceptually in real world cultures, and cover a wider range of practices, and therefore a fuller class. Many cultures don't draw a distinction between the concept of a shaman and the concept of a medium, Miko in Japan for instance.

At least in this regard, that's because the Miko are primarily dealing with Yokai, who (while divine in origin) behave very similar to Celtic Fae, what with being tricksters and maligning crops until you make them smile, or being easy to humor and blessing your business because your bread tastes extra good today. So seeing that concept in one big ball of class features makes sense: Dood/Gal who soothes the annoyed local non-people to stop them harassing the are-people. Fae, yokai, spirits of the dead, mushi, anima, spirits of nature, extraplanar annoyances... The more I ramble the more I like this idea! Wisdom based magical cleanup crew who specializes in dealing with Haunts and not-humanoids.

I know they're not their own Ancestry, because you can tack them on to any existing Ancestry, so you can be an Elf, Orc, Human, et al. vampire and they all work. Poppet vampires sound hilarious, and I'm really curious how that might work, such a shame it got delayed :'(

I cannot stand playing without FA now that it's been out for nearly 2 years. My first 2 characters didn't have it because the APG and GMG weren't out yet, and while they were fun, it felt a little stifling because there were a few different things that thematically I wanted to do, that in practice I couldn't/was impractical to do. I've made probably 6 different characters with FA and all of them felt like I could fulfil the initial character fantasy without much issue. I would be bored out of my skull during CharGen without FA, and half of my PC concepts would have to get thrown away.

I also DM for a group that uses it, and I barely have to change encounter difficulty parameters to match the party's skillset, and I can throw more skill challenges at them because they're more equipped to deal with them all. I haven't tried any other variant rules (other than Relics) but ABP and skill/ability points look quite fun, but no one is willing to try them with me :P

In my experience rituals work best in terms of "the players want to do something, and that thing is simply defined, but accomplishing it should not be so simple".

So something like "bring so-and-so back from the dead" or "travel to the Akashic Record" or "undo an environmental catastrophe" are things that players want to do, but are inappropriate to just have a spell or an item that solves it.

They could be abstracted with a victory points style subsystem though since they're rarely something that PCs are going to decide to do of their own volition.

I like the victory points angle, makes it feel more... like an ACTUAL ritual, that takes massive time investment and not much else. I have not personally seen rituals at play in any of my tables, so my experience of their workability is limited to theory.

Something I just realized that I'm a bit miffed about.

Why do the vehicles from Gamemastery Guide have immunity to crits and precision damage, while the ones from G&G and Grand Bazaar don't? Is there something about those models of machinery that makes them more easily crittable?
I had assumed that the reason vehicles couldn't be critted was so they could still be usable and relevant later on, but this seems to not be the case?

I believe that since GMG was the first time we got vehicles, they gave us all that they were immune for, and probably forgot precision damage was part of Object Immunities (but crits are not, apparently), so when they printed later ones they figured Object Immunities covered what they thought was relevant... is my best guess.

You can also use the "Pearly White Spindle" aeon stone as a metric: "When you invest this aeon stone, it slowly starts healing your wounds, restoring 1 HP every minute." On a 3rd level item seems like a good basis for scaling, you could ramp it up to 1 HP per round (or to put another way, fast healing 1) at say, level ~7, 2 HP per round at level ~13, and finally 3 HP per round at level ~17. That's just my idea without really thinking about it too hard for too long, but that is another (PFS legal I might add) item to use as a template.