I agree that it should be an archetype. Part of me thinks that turning Shadowdancer into a Level 2 archetype, with the earlier levels adding the sorts of things we have been talking about would be the way to go, since pretty much everything in Shadowdancer could also be part of a ninja's skillset, and linking the Ninja to the Shadow plane (Umbral plane?) could be part of the explanation for the advanced stealth abilities.
Perhaps my vision of this class is best as a monk archetype that trades away flurry of blows and HP for a class feature that does interesting things when you successfully strike a foe with a condition. I actually think sticking to simple weapons would work really well for this class, as not receiving training in weapons banned from everyone but nobility is fairly historically accurate. This fits my vision best also. Probably also trade out the Unarmed Attack buff. I've essentially played this kind of Ninja with a Qi Spell focused Monk who also had Trick Magic Item and a good Nature skill. (Only wish Obscuring Mist wasn't a 3-action spell.) No one has mentioned Alchemist, but I could also see a ninja getting some sort of consumable usage like Versatile Vials but with a completely different list of consumables (Smoke Sticks/Pellets being obvious, but there are others)
Yes, exactly. A lot of scenarios will have a set Stealth DC necessary to enter a place without being noticed, and a guard unit that combat will be against if that DC isn't met. Avoid Notice (one roll for the party with Quiet Allies) determines if the combat takes place, and if it does, everyone rolls their own initiative. I see this so much, I think of it as standard for any Stealth mission. There are also setups where you can accrue something like "Visibility Points" if you don't successfully Stealth while doing other things. Reading through an adventure like Prey for Death (which includes a full-fledged Infiltration mission) can give you insight into how these are expected to work inside of an adventure.
I can tell I won't really understand what this means practically until it is live and I can engage with it. As someone with, frankly, a ridiculous number of subscriptions, my hope is that we can keep everything streamlined so that the usual stuff comes automatically. The reason that I subscribe is so that I don't have to interact with the storefront; friction on that end is more likely to make me cancel stuff than to make me engage and buy more. But I am satisfied that the new system will have a similar amount of "value" for me as the current one. Now this is more of a comment on how I would like subscription management to work (which I understand will be addressed later), but one of the things that I really appreciate about the current system is that I can manage things so that there is only one charge per month. Now that they are no longer free, I would hope that there would be a way to make it so that PFS and SFS subscriptions could be "side-carted" so that they fulfill at the same time as my other subscriptions, even though they don't techically "ship" in the same way. Keeping the cash flow similar means that I only have to review things monthly -- multiple monthly charges would be an irritant.
Have these sheets been altered / updated since the Remaster or do they still reflect pre-Player Core 1 and pre-Player Core 2 options?To answer this officially, no, we do not yet have a set of custom class character sheets like the ones in the Pathfinder Character Sheet Pack or the ones in the Pathfinder Advanced Player's Guide Character Sheet Pack that have been Remastered. But, it's good to know that's something you all would want! Suffice it to say, in my research on this, I've put it on the team's radar. Awesome! Thanks for sending that feedback along. I would absolutely love to have updated versions of these -- I still make all my characters on paper, and these are my preferred character sheets.
There was no doubt. They confirmed just a few days after the *last* round of errata that this was intentional. By now this is extremely old news.
When I was GMing Prey for Death, the party used it constantly. Of course. It was an infiltration mission. One additional advantage that no one has mentioned is that if you use Quiet Allies and fail, you can easily use a Hero Point to reroll. If everyone is rolling Stealth separately, it might suck up many many Hero Points.
2-3 hours is disappointing. Driving 30-60 minutes each way for a 2 hour game could be underwhelming. And it complicates simultaneous scheduling with PFS games. My hope is that they quickly settle in towards one end of that range of the other. If they're usually 2 hours you can run two games in a 4.5 hour block. If they usually run 3 there'll be enough there to be worth the trip.
as a mathematician I am aghast that you use fraction notation, such as "psychic: 2/3 occult" meaning 2 slots per level rather than 3 slots," in a posting that uses the same notation in a similar location for actual fractions,The meaning turns it into an actual fraction. The spell slot count is a designation that I am using to try and gauge the power level. The Psychic's 2/3 is the power level that I am assigning it. Magus doesn't have half the spell slots of a witch. The 1/2 that I am assigning them is an actual fraction. I understand how you arrived at this, but I think that methodology does the Psychic a disservice -- a Pyschic is not a 2/3 caster. It is a full caster, that diverts some of its power into empowering its cantrips. Since those cantrips are *also* part of the spellcasting tradition, I don't think that should lower its caster tradition rating.
I've had trouble answering some of these, because several of these assertions are mind-bogglingly different from how I play. There's no need for a golf bag full of weapons, because the shifting rune exists. I use the shifting rune *a lot*. I have had it literally prevent a TPK. That said, there's nothing wrong with a golf bag per se. If I'm not running shifting, I will usually have 2 fully runed weapons (1 melee, 1 ranged) and 1-3 partially runed specialty weapons. Have I ever used a special weapon dropped by the adventure, even though it is suboptimal for my character? YES!!! All the time. Not just with Fighters, not just with Rogues, but with full casters. As far as I'm concerned, Rule 1 of RPGs is trust the author/GM. If they give you a special thing, you USE THE THING. There is nothing more boring to me than just going through a checklist of most optimal choices. The whole point is to adapt to circumstances. The fighter has a great chassis for adapting to circumstances.
I want Nantambu to be the answer, but from my experience with Strength of Thousands (currently in Book 6) everyone in the University administration is incompetent, and if the PCs weren't around to fix things the city would have been subject to one disaster after another. My character is particularly disdainful of the lack of defenses. But I don't know how representative that is of actual Nantambu.
Game balance should always be secondary to fun and verisimilitude. That may be true about the games that you enjoy, but it is not a blanket statement that can be made for all games. It is a fundamental question of game design philosophy that has to be determined for each game separately. Once a game has defined its philosophy on these matters, it is a mistake to change it -- that's where things become disjointed. I'm a trained melee fighter who also happens to be ambidextrous. If I tried to poke holes in everything that RPGs got wrong with regards to two-weapon fighting, main hand vs off-hand, and ambidexterity, I wouldn't have time to do anything else with my life. If you are going to enjoy a game, you just have to let that stuff go.
Any character that needs a feat to do something a first month HEMA guy or novice martial artst will already being doing naturally - for example raising and blocking with a shield, firing a longbow directly, or entering a stance as part of making a strike - is playing like a chump regardless of their actual impact on the battlefield. The idea that any of these things should cost feats or actions is patently silly.It also doesn't address the other ways in which PF2 makes even high level martial characters play like chumps.Have you ever actually played a high level martial? Because "Play like chumps" are not the words that I'd use to describe the whirlwind of death that a high level martial actually is. This whole branch of the RPG tree is horrible if you are looking for something that matches how melee fighting actually works -- if you want to play D&D or Pathfinder you have to engage willing suspension of disbelief and just go with it, focusing on game balance rather than realism. If you can't do that, this game system just may not be for you. If you need a game with realistic combat, you should be playing something like GURPS Swashbuckler, where they truly focus on the swordplay mechanics.
Why not just use [i]Handwraps of Mighty Blows[/b] and fight with fists?Presumably because runeing up 2 different weapons is prohibitively expensive. Unarmed attacks are not "weapons" and are incompatible with many things, including the doubling rings. (though any GM can change that) Runing up two weapons is expensive, but it isn't *prohibitively* expensive. I think of it as the norm.
Yeah, for me Protector Tree falls into the "most overrated impulse" category. It's an AoE magnet, and it encourages poor battlefield positioning. It also doesn't scale well with damage outputs. Even levels where it is good, I usually find the kineticist places it poorly. Who needs protector tree more -- the champion on the front line, or the Rogue who has moved into flanking? It's the Rogue, who is going to be a target, but most people I play with place it by the front line where there are more people, even though they are already protected by the champion. ETA: Although I haven't seen it on a Summoner before. A Summoner's action economy does make it more spammable.
My experiences with archetypes that I have actually played. You should play them too! Bullet Dancer:
Runescarred:
Dandy:
Shadowdancer:
Gladiator:
Sniping Duo:
There's some Stasian Tech content in Rival Academies, including a Doctor Frankenstein archetype. FYI, we've gone to Irrisen a couple of times in this season of PFS. And unlocking the Russian language is on one of the chronicle sheets. :)
There's some Stasian Tech content in Rival Academies, including a Doctor Frankenstein archetype.
Is there a breakdown anywhere? I'm curious about runelord post OGL. Overall Runelord hasn't changed a lot -- *except* that the Sin Schools have changed, and have all new Focus spells. I don't have the eye for detail to really give a breakdown there, except that Pride (the Sin I have an existing Runelord for) seems to still have all the spells that I cared about at the the levels I expect to play, so I have no complaints. The big thing is that you are essentially locked into Staff as your thesis (your thesis is technically "Runelord" but you get the ability to use your Polearm as a free staff with your school spells in it, and eventually to merge an existing staff into your polearm to combine them). They also really foreground the Polearm in other ways -- you don't *need* to use it, but if you design a Runelord that *can* use their polearm semi-effectively you will be rewarded for it. They cover your opposed schools with thematic Anathema -- if you break that Anathema, it severely disrupts your spellcasting (must make a DC15 Flat check to cast a spell) until you atone. I said up above that Runelord was 4 pages -- really Runelord itself is 1 page and the detailed breakdowns of the seven sin schools and their new spells and focus spells are 3 pages.
I'm really only interested in mono-elemental Kineticists for thematic reasons, and then using Archetypes to flesh them out instead of additional elements. I have a Dwarven Earth Kineticist/Stalwart Defender who is the tankiest of tanks and has a nice selection of battlefield control. Everything else is theorycrafted -- next one on deck is probably an Air Kineticist/Monk, or a Wood Kineticist/Marshall.
It's the worst class in terms of skills and outside skills it doesn't have much outside mobility enhancers. From my experience, a couple Kineticists in a PFS party and you're doomed to fail most skill challenges. Experience will differ from table to table and how the GM handle skills, so useless is an overstatement. But it's not far from the proper adjective to describe the Kineticist outside combat. Kineticist is my poster child for the class that should absolutely take Untrained Improvisation at Level 3. I've actually seen Kineticists be quite useful in skill challenges in PFS *if* they are able to leverage their Basic Kinesis into an auto-success. (I once played three straight scenarios where the skill challenge was "putting out a fire" for instance, and our Fire Kineticist was MVP. Also a lot of the impediments in Chases can involve Wood or Earth.) Even if you don't allow auto-successes in those situations (which you should, because relevant Spells are generally granted auto-success) if you can argue for your Kinesis you can often argue for changing the check to a Nature check.
I've always considered Untrained Improvisation to be one of the better General Feats. It's a must take for me at level 3 for every non-skill monkey character. In addition to setting you up to auto-aid just about anything, it gives you a puncher's chance at any skill check that comes up that doesn't have a proficiency gate. If your campaign goes for victory point-based skill challenges (where number of success matters and is based on number of party members) it can easily make the difference between success and failure. PFS does this a lot, so I definitely consider it near-mandatory for a PFS character. Over the life of a campaign, there is a huge difference between "succeed on a 16-20" and "only succeed on a 20" (and at higher levels, "only avoid crit fail on a 20").
I've played beside a Wood kin who had their Drifting Pollen only impose Sickened once or twice at most across five or six sessions before they gave up on it. Well over a dozen foe saves of doing nothing. Some options are obviously bad like Living Bonfire, and others really seem like they should work out in play, but only result in aggravation, all the more so because it's the one aura they've got. Wow, that's *crazy* to me because what I have seen is Drifting Pollen singlehandedly shut down multiple encounters. This was in a medium-high level game (Lvl 11 - 14) and included PL+3 encounters. I don't think I ever saw an opponent make 4 saves in a row -- if they lasted that long and were in range they would be sickened & dazzled. (If not earlier.)
I would allow you to roll Dog Lore instead of Nature, but at the same DC. That way you would get to use your INT instead of WIS, but no other advantage.
Yes Aid for exploration is way more clear and easier to use and understand. Even the DC you can simply use the same DC of the chalenge. I wouldn't personally use the same DC as the challenge -- if the DC is the same, then they should just do the thing, instead of aiding the thing. I tend to go with challenge DC - 4. (Which rewards someone from being Trained in the skill or taken Untrained Improvisation.)
The trouble is that breaks some things. It does not feel intentional that someone who wants to play a flexible spellcaster is not allowed to ever take another archetype.Yes. When you choose a Class Archetype you also have to pick the dedication at 2nd level. I think the framing on this question is poor, and it really isn't an issue with "Class Archetypes" -- in general this is obviously true with Class Archetypes like Vindicator and Bloodrager. This question should be limited to Flexible Spellcasting and the other Dedications (like Curse Maelstrom) that premaster did not require 2 additional archetype feats before you could take another Dedication feat. Because premaster that quality was not particularly tied to Class Archetypes.
Good summary. Just to throw another way at ruling this in there. For me, you used an attack action, so MAP will definitely increment even if you failed the flat check. MAP increase is tied to spending an action with the Attack trait -- everything after spending that action is irrelevant. Sidestep wouldn't go off, because it never triggered. You never got far enough in the proces to roll the attack -- "the attack roll for an attack targeting you" never failed, it wasn't rolled. So you still have your reaction.
You can't "chain repositions" and since it's willing movement, it provokes. So I actually really like this point. I would extrapolate that to, if the target chooses not to resist and increases the success condition by one, then it is "willing movement" not "forced movement" and so provokes. (I know that wasn't the main point of your post -- the house rule you presented looked totally reasonable and usable, just not something I would use.)
I've run these types of scenarios before, and I will do it again, but if you are going to do it, the opponents have to *clearly* outclass the PCs, and there has to be something that the PCs can actually gain from the fight. (like delaying the enemies long enough that someone else can escape, or doing some damage that might weaken the enemies in the future). They must never be able to believe they have a chance of winning the fight. In PF2 terms that means I want there to be someone on the field who is at least 6 levels higher than the PCs, with lots of backup, and a way to demonstrate their clear superiority at the beginning. If they have scouted the PCs, they will have specific countermeasures (like a way to cast Revealing Light). You do this to set up a long-term nemesis, not anyone they can go against any time soon. You also get, at most, one enforced loss per campaign. (The most recent time I did this, the party of 4 level 7s was confronted by 4 level 15 psychics who opened by casting Rank 7 spells that were buffs or summons -- now the party knows what they were dealing with. In this case it was a modified chase, where they then had to pass skill challenges to get away from them or slow them down -- it was clear they couldn't fight. They escaped and when they come back to this city as level 11s, they will take them down one at a time.) As for rescuing this situation, if you can't get the player to agree to have his character surrender just to keep the story moving (complimenting him on great his character is in the process), I agree with the other suggestions of trying to do this in a 1 on 1 session so as not to bore the others. If you have to fight it out, here are some suggestions:
Hope some of that helps.
(I know anytime someone recommends Kingmaker and has actually run/played the PF2 one, its always caveated with "throw out or massively house rule the kingdom rules", and that's kind of a big problem.) I don't think that's a difference between them -- I've constantly heard that about the PF1 version too. I agree that it would be very useful to get information on the two versions separately, but given the methodology, I think disentangling that info would be difficult. (For that matter, I suspect it got some rankings based on the *video game* .)
To be clear, by RAW this is not true. A Weapon Infusion blast only lasts as long as the blast (ie instantaneously). So you cannot, for example, make a Reactive Strike with a Weapon Infusion, or use it to provide flanking. Not trying to talk you into something that doesn't meet your needs. Just wanting to be clear on how the rules work.
There were a lot of wild animal encounters in Reign of Winter meant to be combats that turned around completely thanks to our ranger and mammoth rider cavalier. The GM had to pivot a lot. Similarly, in our Extinction Curse game, every encounter with a wild animal or an animal companion had us "rescuing the animal for the circus". Between the Druid and my Animal Handling Rogue Cavalier we succeeded at that way more often than you would think.
A haunted radio fortuentelling machine sounds about right for lepidstadt. We know of an ancient radiation That haunts dismembered constellationsA faintly glimmering radio station...
Strength of Thousands definitely requires a bit of classic YA "the adults aren't actually up to the job" energy. Fortunately its a standard genre trope, and so easy to fold in. For Extinction Curse, I actually appreciate an AP that has an early exit window if the PCs feel they have completed the arc they cared about. Three books turns out to be a pretty good AP length, so if you think of it as two 3-book APs maybe it works better.
I have a long time PFS Character who is a Spinner of Fates Witch/ with Shyka as her Patron. Her familiar is an owl named Future. Now I have created a new character who is an Awakened Owl Cleric of Shyka, named Future. When asked about the Witch, his response is "Now there's a name I haven't heard in a very long time. How did you know her? Wait, what year is it again? Better I don't say anything else." (Shyka is a great one for timeline shenanigans.) We also have a person at out local lodge who has created an Awakened Animal character who is the Animal Companion of *different* player's character, and is playing out the adventures he is having while his "owner" isn't paying attention.
I've been playing PFS for ~12 years now. It serves many purposes. It is also basically a volunteer organization, and as such, your PFS experience is going to vary wildly depending on exactly who is running it at that location. I've been to PFS games that sound like your experience, and I've been to ones that are expertly run by professional-grade GMs. Every PFS location has its own flavor, so my suggestion is to try a couple of different places out, see which ones you like, and avoid the ones you don't. From Paizo's standpoint, PFS is marketing. It is a way to get new players involved in Pathfinder, and to keep existing players engaged. When I run PFS games at medium-sized or larger conventions, at least half of the players in the last few years have never played Pathfinder before. This is an opportunity to give them a taste of the system. Less often we'll get walkbys at a store who are curious, and we can hand them a pregen and have them start play immediately. (Or the store owner will tell someone the schedule so they can stop by on game night.) PFS also gives Paizo the opportunity to tell smaller, less focused stories in areas that will never get a full module or AP. I've played scenarios in Arcadia, Goka, Nex, Rahadoum, and Shadow Absalom. Also, even though they are one shots, they are often connected to each other -- either in an explicit arc, or by sharing a location. As an example, there are one or two scenarios every season that take place at the Dasilane Academy (a private school in Absalom for the children of Pathfinders) -- you get to learn the different students and teachers and become interested in their ongoing stories. PFS is best thought of as a weekly TV show as opposed to the movie that a full fledged Module is. As a forever GM in my home games, PFS gives me a chance to actually play characters, and to try out different character combinations in a low-stakes environment. (PFS games are, by and large, not particularly difficult. They get tougher at higher levels, but are still rarely "hard".) PFS is a social activity, like a book group. Right now I regularly play in 3 different PFS groups, and 2/3 of the people at each session are regulars. (In their town, with not a lot of overlap.) So it is an opporunity to make and maintain friendships. I have people I've gamed with specifically in PFS for 12 years. I have also used it as a way to get my son out of the house when he is depressed and isolating so that he can interact with real people in person. PFS is a great way for someone to break into GMing for the first time -- I have seen *lots* of new GMs get their start that way. It's low stakes, the structure of an adventure is fairly formulaic, so if they have played a few scenarios they intrinsically understand the rhythm. And since most places rotate GMs, everyone can help out with the rules so it is less intimidating from that standpoint. PFS is a way that you can play Pathfinder when you don't know anyone else in your area who plays Pathfinder. Even if you prefer home games, you can meet new people and then form a home game with the other people you like and gibe with their playstyle. This happens a *lot* -- my current home games are all with people I originally met playing PFS. I probably haven't talked enough about conventions -- PFS really is ideal for convention play. That's it from the top of my head. PFS is a particular flavor of game -- not everyone likes it. Don't feel bad if you don't.
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