pH unbalanced's page

After reading through the Tian Xia World Guide, here are a few panel discussions I would love to see.

Topic: When the Love is Over
Participants: Calistria, Lady Nanbyo, Naderi
Moderator: Shelyn (or Pharasma)

Topic: Executing Contracts
Participants: Achaekek, Dammerich, Yaezhing
Moderator: Abadar (or Asmodeus)

Topic: <redacted>
Participants: The Lady of the North Star, Norgorber, Sivanah
Moderator: Zohls

Note: Attendees should expect to be visited by Anaphexia agents in the next week to ensure their satisfaction with the event.

Topic: Self-Actualization
Participants: Aakriti, Phi Deva, Shyka
Moderator: Zon-Kuthon

And then, no panel, I just want to be in the stands once Kurgess, Marishi, and Sun Wukong start trying to one-up each other (with Irori as the judge, of course).

I just discovered the Draxie heritage (Sprite ancestry, descended from Faerie Dragons) and now I desperately want to see them integrated more into Dragon content.

To bring another fun rule oddity to the table, you can shoot a bow at somone on the other side of an obscuring mist without issue. The mist only conceals when the attacker, defender, or both are in the mist.

The spell doesn't, but is there a more general Line of Sight rule that does?

I would probably rule in the moment that it provides Cover (+2 AC).

I'll be honest here -- at this point I've played so many systems that have roughly similar LOS rules that I don't try and keep them straght any more.

TheFinish wrote:

I know, and while I understand that it'd be nice if this was clarified (especially if you do PFS), my group and I just ignore it. Only direct hostile actions matter, because if we start bringing in "indirect" into the mix it makes it more complicated for exactly no gain.

I agree with you and probably the best way to deal with hostile action is just consider the direct consequences of your actions but notice that this indirect is there for a reason. To prevent you to do things like Summon a creature and make it attack your enemies without loose your invisibility/sanctuary.

My main problem with ajudicating the rule is that I have a hard time figuring out what they intend the in-world trigger to be for breaking invisibility. I don't think the spell includes a monitoring AI trying to figure out if you have broken the "non-violence TOS" you agreed to when you cast the spell.

Earlier versions of D&D had invisibility break because of kinetic energy overcoming the cloaking power of invisibility, so that was always part of my innate understanding of the system which helped me develop rules of thumb.

In PF2E, I'm going with intent. The test I use is two part: did your action *actually* cause harm that you observed? If not Is the primary *intention* of the action to cause harm? If either of those are true then psychic feedback overcomes the ability of the spell to mask your presence. I can wrap my mind around and adjudicate the metaphysics of that.

I understand that might be too simulationist an approach for some, but I need the simulation layer so that I can make quick judgements about the model and explain it to people who aren't going to try and parse the code.

Pretty sure this thread is now at Wounded 1 -- but at least it finally got to its turn in the initiative order.

As far as Base Kinesis goes, Water and Wood are probably the most obviously useful, but all of them have some stuff you can do with them.

I played in 4 straight PFS scenarios where "putting out a spreading fire during combat" was a mechanic, and having a fire kineticist with us who could just use their base kinesis for auto successes made a huge difference.

Will there be pawns?

I don't know...but put me down as someone else who would buy them if there were.

What if a PC followed through, but then later retrained out of Druid Dedication? Do they really forget a whole language somehow?

It's impossible for them to forget it, because their Windsong stays on their mind.

For those of you who aren't old

pH unbalanced wrote:

I've never said that, but if I were going to make that argument it would be because Barbarian is one of the classes that new players are always drawn to

Is it? Or is it because people push new players toward Barbarian.

My experience is that new players play a bit of everything and it's only when they ask "What is easy to play?" that they are pushed towards Fighter and Barbarian.

People are absolutely drawn to the Barbarian on their own. I even told my story about how people specifically *love* Amiri. I always try to push them towards Valeros or Merisiel but a lot of them make a beeline towards Barbarian.

To be fair, once you take casters out of the mix, there aren't that many choices. And remember that a good number of people are picking based on the picture, and Amiri has this *cool enormous sword*.

There's also another point I'd like to raise: In this discussion, some players state that the Barbarian should be "easy to play", if not "easier than everything else". I question why?

I've never said that, but if I were going to make that argument it would be because Barbarian is one of the classes that new players are always drawn to, so having them be one of the easier to play classes would be nice for that reason. I hate steering newbies away from classes they want to play for reasons of complexity.

(Kind of a tangent, but something that has happened *multiple* times at public PFS games I have run is that we'll have a new player sit down at the table, and when I hand them the folder of pregens, they look through them for a while and then stop, and look over at me and say, "Wait. Is this THE Amiri?" and when I nod they immediately choose to play her. In case you were wondering what sort of affect the Pathfinder: Kingmaker CRPG has had.)

I don't know in which situation it could be useful or important to count stuff fast during an infiltration, or rather, why doesn't the system or GM allow that with the rule of cool instead of forcing a tax feat? The characters are already capable of doing superhuman feats of strength, why a particularly smart character wouldn't be able to do really fast math in a second if they were smart enough? That's the problem of most skill feats; the vast majority of them are things that any sensible GM would be able to handle with just skill checks or just allow it to happen with rule of cool and these skill feats should instead be guidelines in a sidebar rather than options you are forced to take to "make your character feel unique".

If you are doing espionage-focused missions, you normally don't want to "Rule of Cool" away the dice rolls -- that's when you get to have your investment in your skills shine. Rule of Cool means letting the investments that your character *does* make count more, so that they feel smart for having done that.

Some advantages that Eye for Numbers could give you are:

No Perception roll necessary to count things -- which I would include counting generic people so you know things like troop deployments and such. So it's like Assurance for Perception, which is not something you can ordinarily get Assurance for. Most GMs would force Perception rolls to get the amount of detail you often want.

No time necessary to count. Normally the Perception check would take at least an action. Since this is actionless, as a GM I would give a circumstance Bonus to Stealth or Deception checks around this since you don't have to spend time studying the things you want to count so you are exposed for less time and/or are less obviously since you didn't have to noticeably pay any attention to the subject.

Generally speaking, I don't think most skill feats take away the *possibility* of people doing a thing without it. They just take away the possibility of doing it without a dice roll. And it rewards the person who wants that to be their shtick.

All that said -- Eye of Numbers is extremely situational. In most campaigns it won't be worth much.

And I don't talk about just a little suboptimal options, see the mentioned Eye for Numbers. I can imagine a lot, but I can't imagine any situation where it could be used and having or not having that feat would change anything for a story (without the GM being insufferable jerk). Well, +2 to Decipher maths has at least some substance, I guess.

Eye for Numbers is a great feat if you are doing heists or infiltrations. You get a lot of good info during the scouting phase automatically and quickly (kind of like Assurance for Perception).

If those aren't the kinds of missions you tend to play...then yeah, not particularly useful.

Maybe just remove the monk trait from weapons altogether.

Make flurry only useable while in a monk stance first and then provide each stance with weapons useable with that stance. You become trained in any weapons useable in that stance along with the unarmed attack it provides.
I am feeling pretty strong on this splitting up weapons into stances thing. This way you never have a monk using a weapon that was not balanced for a stance or flurry of blows but you can remove the monk trait from weapons entirely. It does mean all monks will have an action tax to get into a stance before they can actually flurry.

Most existing stances that add the ability to flurry with specific weapons *removes* your ability to flurry with unarmed. I really like your idea, but I don't see them changing that part.

Squiggit wrote:

Reminded that in another tabletop I play (Lancer), the equivalent of RK on a creature just gives your their entire statblock for free with no check and it's still considered a mediocre use of actions and only used by people who tend to specialize in that kind of thing.

Obviously that's another extreme but I feel like in general this trend toward making it difficult for even RK specialists to get useful information is clearly not helpful or necessary.

Honestly I'm just going to give that a shot. Crits give moveset as well or something, fails and crit fails do nothing because f$@! coming up with believable lies on the spot. Just make RK give as much value as it possibly can for spending an action. I bet it'll still be niche as reasonably experienced players can guess where the important facts are like weak saves.

My SOP in my home games is to give characters the information that their character would most likely have studied. Saves and immunities to control casters, elemental weaknesses and resistances for blaster casters, AC and attack info more warriors, etc. As well as the thing the creature is most famous for. Also name, creature type, and alignment (RIP). And often the parameters of things they have already observed.

After reading through this discussion, the general rule that I will use at my table is that Reactions will generally follow the triggering action, unless they crit, in which case the reaction was close enough to simultaneous that it prevents the triggering action from being completed.

But I like the fact that the rule explicitly gives the GM room to change this on a case-by-case basis, if that makes more sense.

Bluemagetim wrote:

Lelomenia wrote:

Bluemagetim wrote:

Wouldnt you be able to start the game with skills at expert by doing that part of character creation after picking skills from class if int provided skill increases?

no, that would make Int worthwhile. Class and Int only make you trained and you select them at the same time.

“Trained in a number of additional skills equal to 2 plus your Intelligence modifier” etc

I realize that what int actually does. I was saying if it provided a skill increase instead of just giving trained you could start with expert in skills.

I doubt Paizo would want characters to start with expert skills. The fact that rogues and investigators have expert skills 1 level early than most classes is kinda of a big deal and not even classes with auto-scaling skills have that.

In many ways the best thing about the Dandy archetype is that it allows you to get 2 skills to Expert at level 2. (Deception & Society)

Question. Does everyone playing a non fighter martial feel like they are not optimal because they have 2 less to hit?

Honestly? I always feel happy for the fighter that they get to contribute after they failed all the skill challenges in the first half of the adventure.

After reading through this thread as a whole, I have to ask another question. What about having your KAS starting at 16/+3 instead of 18 when you make a character? Would any of you consider such a bold move in the end? Is there any benefit to not having a 18/+4 in your KAS?

Most of my characters start with two 16/+3, rather than having one 18/+4. It works great.

Now, there might be some GMs that don't use VTTs or use generic enough or unique enough tokens that it is impossible to tell if all the creatures are the same type or not. That is an example of table variance that is a good subject for a session 0 discussion. Many tables wont have that conversation and players will just have to decide for themselves whether they should trust that the same art/mini/token means the same creature type or different art/mini/token means different creature types, and if that is fair or not will only come into discussion if people at the table ever bring it up.

If there is an encounter against 4 skeletons, I will usually pull the pawn for, like, a Skeleton, a Skeleton Warrior, a Mhorg, and a Bone Golem so that I can easily tell them apart since they will have separate initiatives. I'll tell the PCs that they are all the same thing, but not which one of those things they are. *Usually* the correct pawn will be in the mix.

If there are more than one kind of creature there, I'll *always* tell the players which pawns are similar to each other. (2 of one kind, 3 of another).

They can make whatever assumptions they want, but without RK they won't be sure.

pH unbalanced wrote:

I agree with Easy for the core 20. They were saying they should be automatic (no roll necessary).

Indeed I did. Just like I wouldn't require someone to roll Society to recognize an orc.

Well, again, in Golarion, I'd set that based on common races by character's homeland/where they've spent the most time. If orcs are common there, then sure, make it automatic.

But I wouldn't otherwise assume that someone could distinguish, say, an orc from a half-orc from a hobgoblin automatically. (That said, if it isn't important to the game, I probably wouldn't bother. But if it *is* important, I would require rolls.)

"Core" is about player knowledge/availability, not character knowledge.

The Core 20 are the most well-known deities in the Inner Sea Region. So, yes most people there at least know of them and an easy RK feels appropriate to recognize their symbol.

BTW RK can be done Untrained.

I agree with Easy for the core 20. They were saying they should be automatic (no roll necessary).

You might also consider giving everyone Free Archetype: Monk, especially if you also give them Ki Rush for free.

Finoan wrote:

“This is the symbol of

Urgathoa, a goddess of disease, gluttony, and undeath.”

As a side note, I would not require a roll or even Religion proficiency to recognize the primary holy symbols of gods common in a character's home culture

I agree with this.

(which for most Pathfinder characters would be the "core 20").

But not with this.

Every region lists "Common Religions" for that region: Desna, Erastil, Iomedae, Pharasma, Rovagug, & Urgathoa for the Eye of Dread; Abadar, Cayden Caillean, Desna, Gorum, Lamashtu, & Nocticula for the Saga Lands. So I'd give free Recognize checks to the common religion for their Home Region and/or a god they worshipped (and if they worship a defined Pantheon, all the ones in that Pantheon) but outside of those require a check.

EDIT (These are from the Lost Omens: World Guide, but I'm sure they're listed other places too. I'm also sure that individual Countries or Cities have their own entries, but part of what is standardized is that the listing for "common religions" is always exactly 6 deities.)

I'm just surprised at all the people here claiming Sense Motive was a popular skill. As someone has mentioned, only the party face would take it in any of my games. I'm currently building a "raised in the wild" socially inept character and would love to differentiate between the two, so I guess I'll have to homebrew with the GM

I have to push back on this. I've never seen the party face take Sense Motive. The party face takes Diplomacy, Deception, and other Charisma-based skills and blathers on and on about what they want to do without caring what the target is actually thinking.

Meanwhile, the party Silent Support Guardian (ie Cleric, Warpriest, Monk, or Inquisitor), who actually has points in Wisdom, takes Sense Motive and monitors the situation, making suggestions when necessary.

:) :) :)

Updated analysis Player A

A wanted to be a pirate-type character, so we naturally settled on a Drifter with a shortsword and a slide pistol (adjusted to 1 bulk and reflavoured as a larger pepperbox). In the beginning he was fairly happy, but his fun dimmed considerably when he was constantly overshadowed by literally every other martial in the group.
...
Overall, he had very mixed feelings, trending towards negative. That he didn't have very good luck while rolling his pistol attacks certainly didn't help.
...
He also didn't feel like his playstyle had sufficient support, even with ABP.
...
He also found out the hard way - with zero hints on my part - why I think the Drifter is poorly designed in general. You can't throw a ranged character into melee and then still treat them completely like a ranged character. Same with the two other melee-heavy Ways - if you do that, you have to compensate them. If you don't, you have the current dilemma of them being constantly outdone by both other melees and ranged characters.

We had a player in my PFS group playing a Drifter, who was so frustrated at his inability to do anything meaningful that he ripped up his (Lvl 4) character and chronicles at the table. He was not poorly built, but if his dice were not on fire (and let us be clear...his dice were *never* on fire) he was completely ineffective.

The Drifter is most definitely in a bad place.

My gun-using character is a Bullet Dancer Monk. She fills, basically, the exact same niche as the Way of the Drifter Gunslinger, but is more fun and does it better. Pistol Shot plus Bayonet flurry with Stunning Fist proccing if either attack hits is better than anything the Drifter can do. And the Monk chassis gives you great saves and AC, so being in melee is not an issue. The biggest problem she *does* have is reloading, but since you can Flurry just fine with melee attachments your weak turns are still adequate while you are setting up your strong turns.

I would never argue that Bullet Dancer is good compared to a base Monk (though it is a lot of fun) but it is good compared to the Gunslinger.

Dubious Scholar wrote:

Fuzzy-Wuzzy wrote:

Megistone wrote:

What happens if a minion has persistent damage going on and you don't spend an action to command it? A literal interpretation of the rule would be that it doesn't take damage this round.

A non-acting minion is no different from an non-acting PC. Does a PC who is slowed 3 or stunned or outright unconscious stop taking persistent damage?

Not quite - the question is when the minion's turn in initiative is to begin with. A PC who can't act still has a turn come around.

Minions don't get their own initiative, they use their master's. "Your minion acts on your turn in combat" makes that clear.

I think the confusion comes into *when* in your turn does the familiar act. At the beginning? At the end? Does it need to take all its actions together or can it alternate those actions with its master's.

The rule I use is that at some point during the PCs turn, they spend an action to command the familiar, and the familiar then takes two actions before the PC takes another action. But something slightly more formalized would be helpful.

Regarding Trained skill actions: The Player Core has also nerfed the Skilled ability slightly, it apparently gives no more than +3 now.

Not true, it adds the Masters spellcasting mod.

Skilled: Choose a skill other than Acrobatics or Stealth. Your familiar’s modifier for that skill is equal to your level plus your spellcasting attribute modifier, rather than just your level. You can select this ability repeatedly, choosing a different skill each time.

I think you were getting that confused with the verbage under the Pet feat which gives a flat +3 to the default skills Pets get. (But the familiar rules modify those so that *familiars* get the spellcasting mod as a bonus instead of the +3 if it is better.)

For Perception, Acrobatics, and Stealth, you can have your familiar use your spellcasting attribute modifier + your level instead of 3 + your level if it’s higher.

pH unbalanced wrote:

Anathema: let your emotions dictate your tactics, hunt felines for sport, permit others of your rank or lower to calculate tactics on your behalf

At the beginning of every session, announce, "Hey, please don't make tactical suggestions to me. If you do, I'll be forbidden from performing it, and have to do something else. Ask, don't tell. Except for the party leader, of course."

Or you could declare yourself the lowest-ranking member of the party... ;-)

True...but one of your edicts is to try and *take* charge. ....:)

Edicts: study the art of warfare and strategy, strive to take and maintain control of your situation, hunt and slay hounds of Tindalos

For my Cleric of Suyuddha, The Warrior Queen

Anathema: let your emotions dictate your tactics, hunt felines for sport, permit others of your rank or lower to calculate tactics on your behalf

At the beginning of every session, announce, "Hey, please don't make tactical suggestions to me. If you do, I'll be forbidden from performing it, and have to do something else. Ask, don't tell. Except for the party leader, of course."

Any other fun ones out there?

What's funny is that, yes, [caster] with shortbow is better than [caster] with cantrips, but in any encounter that actually matters a caster isn't using cantrips or weapon strikes at all. They're casting real spells and using single action abilities like your metamagic/spellshapes, bon mots, one for alls and certain focus spells. Or moving.

In my experience they are using that single action to maintain an existing spell, to cast a Hex (if a Witch), to cast Shield, or to cast Glimpse Weakness (if you are the right kind of Psychic). Or move.

Out of curiosity, what is your pick for best sf show of all time?

Full series, so the show has to own its worst season, and unfinished shows don't count?

First I enshrine Star Trek: TOS in the Emeritus slot so that it gets its kudos while acknowledging that it is of a different time.

For me, it's a contest between Person of Interest and The Expanse. And those shows are so different I don't even know how to compare them.

Deep Space 9 is in the conversation, as the best of the completed Trek, and Babylon 5 is in the conversation (but ultimately falls flat mostly because of how structurally warped the last 2 seasons were in service of finishing the story when they were perpetually in danger of cancellation). Buffy probably deserves consideration. I'd entertain a motion for Avatar: The Last Airbender. I don't think Mr. Robot counts as sf, but would consider it.

And then there are a lot of really good shows that either never finished or had 1 or 2 dreadful seasons mixed with the great. The best seasons of BSG and Westworld were really good, weren't they?

In progress shows that could have a chance someday include Severence and Andor, and *maybe* For All Mankind.

Calliope5431 wrote:

If you're looking for examples of cosmic chaos and cosmic law the best you'll get are the shadows and the vorlons in Babylon 5. The vorlons look "good" until they start using planet killers on innocent people.

Indeed, not familiar with the show but serial television always has a problem with staying within its focus thanks to getting pushed past the intended progession and having to make content for the sake of publishing.

Babylon 5 is actually *the* example of a genre show that started with a five year script, and lasted for exactly five years. Its pivot from "Good v Evil" to "it's more complicated" was always planned.

(Definitely well worth watching if you can...first season is a little slow, as is often the case for '90s shows. It's not my pick for best sf show of all time, but it's in the discussion.)

I've been gaming a looooong time. One of the bedrock principals of virtually any game I've played or run is that the gameworld always runs the same way. For gameplay purposes, we develop certain conventions for how we want to measure and organize things, but the gameworld doesn't know whether or not we have rolled for initiative.

With PF2 that has changed. Exploration Mode and Encounter Mode are distinctly different and do not function the same way. That isn't bad, it's just different, and can take some time to wrap your head around all the implications.

It does definitely simplify how to handle a lot of things that happen out of combat, so I can see it being really helpful for helping newer players understand what is going on.

pH unbalanced wrote:

TriOmegaZero wrote:

I'm still at a loss to find a story that is Law vs Chaos where the two sides aren't just Good and Evil in masks respectively.

Fey (or sometimes goblins) vs stodgy villagers.

Isn't that usually the plot of a horror film?

You're right, it totally is. But I just ran "The Great Dasilane Prank War," so I was thinking more zany than gruesome. (Though if Mr. Clompyfeet got his way...)

pH unbalanced wrote:

The movie Footloose.

ETA: Your stereotypical Hallmark Movie with the boring boyfriend vs the exciting lost love. Arguably the first half of Fiddler on the Roof.

I mean, I know plenty of parties that would love to beat the BBEG in a danceoff. They are definite Chaos and maybe only a little Evil.

Any self-respecting BBCG should agree to that. Or a fiddle contest. Would be epic.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off

(sorry having too much fun with this)

Honestly, a whole lot of fiction in genre's *other than* sf&f could be classified as Law vs Chaos, because there often isn't anyone who is "Evil". Most romances. A lot of comedy. Anything where "the plucky upstarts" are "overturning how we've always done things". An awful lot of YAs with clueless parents and hypercompetent kids.

Law vs Chaos is also behind a lot of culture clash stories, although to the extent to that those involve Colonialism (they don't have to, but often do) that can get problematic, and recontextualized as Good vs Evil.

In fantasy, Chaos foremost starts with Fey (or other trickster beings), especially anything that unites Summer and Winter courts.

You can absolutely write an epic AP level story that is about Law vs Chaos, but the problem is that the player base will be much more likely to split over what the "correct" outcome is if you don't shade one side towards Evil, and so it probably isn't a good business move to do so.

I'm still at a loss to find a story that is Law vs Chaos where the two sides aren't just Good and Evil in masks respectively.

Fey (or sometimes goblins) vs stodgy villagers.

The movie Footloose.

ETA: Your stereotypical Hallmark Movie with the boring boyfriend vs the exciting lost love. Arguably the first half of Fiddler on the Roof.

They accidentally added the line,

Quote:

it can use trained skill actions for skills for which it adds your spellcasting ability modifier.

instead of giving a proficiency rating.

Seriously?

Is that line in the Remaster? I don't see it. What I see in the Remaster rules is:

For Perception, Acrobatics, and Stealth, you can have your familiar use your spellcasting attribute modifier + your level instead of 3 + your level if it’s higher.

which is a reference to the rules under the Pet feat:

Your pet’s save modifiers and AC are

equal to yours before applying circumstance or status bonuses or penalties. It uses 3 + your level as its modifier for Perception, Acrobatics, and Stealth, and just your level as its modifier for other skill checks. It doesn’t have or use its own attribute modifiers and can never benefit from item bonuses.

I agree with you, though, that Familiars do not appear to have their own proficiencies.

pH unbalanced wrote:

YuriP wrote:

But my main complain still in the mechanics. Its just worse. The spell old style every spell was obligatorily classified into one of the schools auto-incrementing the number of spells available to them whatever the was added. The new system locks them into a static subset of a small number of spells (about 2 per level) that's fixed and can easily broke (with spells that need to be heigned to be efective locking an entire spell rank) due this small number or bad spell list and the wizards players now will have to wait for new curriculums to be release in order to get new options of templates or ask the GMs to edit them or play as universalist.

For me, this is root of what I don't like about the new system. No matter how you want to define them, every spell that exists should be assigned to at least one school.

Totally fine with additional, specialist schools, but if a spell exists there is somewhere that it needs to fit conceptually.

But the arcane list is bigger than wizards. It is really of infinite potential breath. The schools of Golarion are not trying to categorize all magic. They are trying to build a body of spells that make particular sense to their philosophy and suggest that these few spells are the best for people who truly understand X.

If an arcane spell exists, someone had to research it. If they researched it, they presumably had a field of study, which should represent a school.

(But, you say, what if the spell was spontaneously generated via Sorceror evolution, or invented whole-cloth by a powerful Witch's Patron. Well, I would say, those also sound like fruitful fields of study.)

It is obviously a huge *mechanical* change that every spell does not fit into a Wizard school. But it is also a huge *cosmological* change.

Which is to say, what you say may be *true* in the remaster, but it was *false* before the remaster. That change may be motivated and defensible, but I profoundly dislike it. It opens up some new storytelling space, but there are exisiting ones that it absolutely destroys.

But my main complain still in the mechanics. Its just worse. The spell old style every spell was obligatorily classified into one of the schools auto-incrementing the number of spells available to them whatever the was added. The new system locks them into a static subset of a small number of spells (about 2 per level) that's fixed and can easily broke (with spells that need to be heigned to be efective locking an entire spell rank) due this small number or bad spell list and the wizards players now will have to wait for new curriculums to be release in order to get new options of templates or ask the GMs to edit them or play as universalist.

For me, this is root of what I don't like about the new system. No matter how you want to define them, every spell that exists should be assigned to at least one school.

Totally fine with additional, specialist schools, but if a spell exists there is somewhere that it needs to fit conceptually.

Amped Figment is drastically inferior to Amped Dancing Lights and represents a serious nerf to Tangible Dream if you go with that.

Especially because Figment requires CHA investment and Psychic is supposed to be a class that works for Cha OR Int, but even beyond that - providing a single attack of flanking with a sustain, with the requirement that you don't fail Create a Diversion (which probably doesn't help you much anyways either, depending on your spell selection)... it doesn't feel comparable to a 120' range AoE flashbang spell. I've gotten so much mileage out of just opening any fight by throwing Dazzled onto half the enemies, basically always negates an attack or two (and in one memorable instance... a boss critically failed and lost two turns to Fascinated and then Dazzled basically)

Honestly, I'm going to miss the *non*amped altered Dancing Lights. Having 4 independently mobile light sources was really helpful in Exploration Mode.

So...Discarded Heritage Fleshwarp says:

The biomancers and mutagenists who warped your form labeled you a “discard on discovery”—a euphemism for destroying you on sight. An anomaly among anomalies, your body stubbornly repudiates the efforts of fleshcrafters seeking to mold you to their grandiose visions, and your immune responses blunt the worst effects of unwanted fleshwarping attempts. If you roll a success on a saving throw against a transmutation effect, you get a critical success instead.

With schools gone, what does that do now?

(My suggestion would be to have the saving throw effect on effects with the Morph or Polymorph traits.)

We've been running with a Resentment witch since we got the PDFs, 3-4 days a week, and the problem so far is that the balance for it being so powerful is blasting the familiar out of the sky as quickly as possible before there are there are too many debuffs on a particular monster, but that's leading the witch player to feel targeted. The argument for the Resentment familiar being so strong has been "well, magical effects are obvious and familiars are pretty fragile, so a reasonably intelligent creature can kill it or have their allies kill it." I try to let it shine by not having the familiar get killed, but 7/10 fights with anything other than a swarm of -3-4 level enemies starts with the familiar getting killed in the fist two turns. I do feel bad, but the response to Resentment being so strong has just been "lol just kill it."

Sounds like the "Resentment familiar" is well-named.

I mean, as a quick glance at the Aasimar feats, most of them are already in PC1. The only ones I don't see replicated are the niche liniage feats from the Ancestry guide (Emberkin, Ibyllkin) and the feats with them as a prerequisite.

The only other ones not reproduced or replaced is Celestial Resistance, Healer's Halo, Celestial Strikes and Radiate Glory.

Except for Celestial Resistance, all of these feats are from the Ancestry Guide. There is no reason they can't be used as printed, with very minor modifications (not proficient in Sylvan, but Fey, etc.).

Except for an Errata pass to change to new spell names, I wouldn't expect there to be significant reprints of contents of Lost Omens books like the Ancestry Guide.

FYI, for what it is worth, PFS called out Celestial Strikes and Fiendish Strikes as no longer legal for play.

Bluemagetim wrote:

Attacking a downed PC is an evil act for an intelligent foe.

It might be, but it's definitely something damn near every PC would do if unconscious enemies got back up nearly as often as unconscious PCs do.

I had this issue with a player in one of my most recent games. Her character was CG and using coup-de-grace routinely on downed foes (like town guards), to the horror of everyone at the table. Soon figured out that she had picked up the habit from the Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous video games.

Culture definitely varies by table on this, but also by campaign. Had to point out that she was definitely making a bad impression on the townsfolk.

As far as what *monsters* do with downed foes...it's usually pretty clear from the tactics in written encounters. I had one recently where the tactics were to down the weakest, then take the body back to their lair. Came very close to killing the character downed on a crit (1 hp away from killing outright with massive damage) because getting in healing range was so difficult.

I want to figure out how to make a witch who is 15' from danger who does not die instantly.

I take a lot of "you really don't want to hit me" spells.

Like Blood Vendetta and Needle of Vengeance.

But also False Life, Blur, and Sanctuary (yes, multi-classed cleric) to avoid damage.

I'm sure there are others, but you gotta start with Know Direction, yeah?

Kelseus wrote:

especially Gnome Obsession, since you can change the lore category with one day of down time.

OK, run that past me again?

I'm seeing Gnome Obsession as an ancestry feat. But it doesn't say anything about switching the category with downtime. Unless that was also something added in Remaster.

So retraining a feat takes a week at baseline. Again, unless that is a change in Remaster.

Yes, they updated it.

You might have a flighty nature, but when a topic captures your attention, you dive into it headfirst. You gain the Additional Lore feat (page 252) and the Assurance feat for the chosen Lore. As gnome obsessions can come and go quickly, you can retrain Gnome Obsession to a different Lore subcategory in 1 day of downtime.

Gortle wrote:

Dark_Schneider wrote:

Probably all parties want to have Stabilize cantrip. Beyond that there is no much discussion, as in all other cases is the same than currently

I still don't see the value there. I don't want to be lying on the ground at -6 to my AC. Are you sure the downed PC is not going to be targetted?

In most cases it's a bad idea to waste actions on double-tapping a target that is not an active threat, from a mechanical perspective.

Sure, the first time you drop them. The second time you dropped them, now that you know they are at least Wounded 1, you only have to hit them one more time to be sure they are dead. (Going by the new rules.)

I also see opponents hit downed characters with their 3rd action which due to MAP would normally be crit-fishing, but actually has a good chance of hitting a downed character.

pH unbalanced wrote:

The verbage on Untrained Improvisation has been cleaned up, and it is now strictly better than before at low levels.

For me, this is almost a must-take feat for low skill point characters, especially in PFS.

What language was unclear in the original version?

The original told you to halve your level for your proficiency bonus, which *always* led to discussions about rounding up or down. The new version has static -2 and -1 (and -0) penalties.

pauljathome wrote:

Gortle wrote:

darkvision ... is an important dimension of some stories but for many groups and most adventures it just gets lost in this game.

In fairness, there are LOTS of things that are important dimensions of stories that don't work well in gaming.

My favourite example is the ability to speak lots of languages. This can be pretty much the central contribution of a character in a story. But after a few minutes of linguistic fun language problems are generally just boring as all XXXX in a role playing game.

But there are many others.

I actually can't think of many stories where that's the case. It's much more common for fiction to handwave away language barriers.

Off the top of my head, David Brin's Uplift Trilogy and CJ Cherryh's Channur series. (Both *highly* recommended, by the way.) Oh, and Janet Kagan's novel Hellspark which has probably faded into obscurity since she died so soon after writing it, but is an absolute *joyful* romp of a novel.

I will stop derailing here, but linguistic differences having strong story effects is very much a thing in sf&f fiction, even with Tolkien tied behind your back.

ETA: Removed unecessary Offtopic statement