pauljathome's page

Not a clue about deathclaws but I think the stance you’re thinking of may be from the clawdancer archetype.

Seems like an awakened animal may also work

But if I'm sitting down to build out a character I'm going to be playing about once a week for the next two or three years, yeah, I do actually usually need both a bit of the class feats and something else to have a good time.

Note, I'm NOT trying to say you're wrong in any way. You get to decide what makes a good time for you. Just expressing my own personal opinion.

I have a significantly different opinion on this. While I agree that lacking Free Archetype can make a small (very small, in my view) number of character concepts unachievable (or at least not achievable in a fun way) there are still zillions of character concepts that actually ARE quite achievable.

If I'm playing in a non FA game I just choose one of the concepts that I CAN build. And there are still a great many concepts that are fun (to me) AND that I haven't played before. Heck, there are still classes that I've never played.
.

Are strength bonuses when halved …. Rounded up or down?

Down

Now granted, we don't have to outright get rid of greys I don't think.

I think maybe we do.

To use an analogy, even after these many years (decades?) I STILL basically equate 1/2 lings with hobbits. All the attempts to give them a different culture, a different appearance, etc etc etc haven't completely worked with me. When somebody sits down at a table with a 1/2 ling my mental image is still Sam or Bilbo or Frodo or Merry or Pippin.

And I know that at least some others share this to at least some extent as jokes about hairy feet or rings of invisibility occur.

It can be ABSURDLY hard to change peoples concepts of something (ancestry in this case).

pauljathome wrote:

I think that is some serious hyperbole and exaggeration.

Someone's experience being different than yours doesn't mean they're lying.

I never accused you of lying. I accused you of hyperbole and exaggeration. I stand by that.

Unless you think getting an extra 9 hit points at level 6 as a wizard counts as "an almost non-existant" power up.

Obviously, with ANY option player choices will determine how powerful it is and the range of power for just about ANY option always hits "almost non-existant". But you can't evaluate an option based on players not using it to gain power when you're trying to determine if it does, indeed, potentially add power to characters.

I'll again reiterate that I do NOT think it adds a huge or game breaking amount of power. But, in at least some circumstances, it very very clearly adds more than "an almost non-existant" amount of power.

It's just fundamentally a better way to play Pathfinder. It opens up choices dramatically, allows for a significant increase in build variety, greatly helps classes that are otherwise expected to draw on their own feat pools for power, all while being extremely manageable in terms of vertical power increase (i.e. almost nonexistent).

It can be a little bit much at first, but after playing around with it becomes pretty clear that Pathfinder just suffers as a game without it. There's basically no reason not to.

I think that is some serious hyperbole and exaggeration. As a player I like it as much as the next guy, as a GM I'm wary of it (partly for power reasons, partly because it can lead to serious analysis paralysis with some players). If I give it out as a GM I usually give it out in a fairly constrained way.

But to say that Pathfinder suffers as a game without it is just sheer exaggeration. It does just fine without Free Archetype. Its almost as if the game itself and all the published adventures (bar one that I'm aware of) are intended to be played withOUT Free Archetype :-).

And to claim that the vertical power increase is "almost non existent" is sheer nonsense. It is very definitely quite noticeable if the players choose options for power. Note, I'm NOT saying that the power increase is necessarily a huge problem but it most certainly is a whole lot more than "almost non existent".

As a new GM I'd recommend NOT giving this out, at least at first. You can always allow it later once you have a better feel for your players, characters, and your own sense of comfort with the rules.

If players are allowed free choice it WILL increase their power level. Not by a huge amount but they will be stronger

heads up Paul, *They*

I made the same mistake.

Thanks for pointing this out. I apologize. I assure you all (ESPECIALLY Maya should they read this) that I just didn't realize their pronoun. No disrespect or insult was intended.

I think it makes the most sense when you view the Starfinder 2e classes as standalone classes trying to explain a game to the audience.

The Solarian is also the "Totally not a Jedi, really, completely different, honest" class. Every game needs one of these :-)

But I think that your basic point is that Starfinder 2e classes should be analyzed only with other Starfinder 2e classes in mind. This is presumably going to be the case for the vast majority of campaigns and is almost certainly what Paizo is primarily concerned about and is balancing around.

And with just the starfinder 2e classes the Solarion seems pretty cool and useful to me. Whether or not a Pathfinder 2e class covers more or less the same territory (possibly better) is pretty irrelevant

we also have the incredible Maya on the Paizo Team (whom I got to meet at GenCon. Amazingly, they're even nicer in person!)

Hmm

I find that INCREDIBLY hard to believe as she is so very very nice on line I wouldn't have thought there much room to be still nicer :-).

My personal suspicion is GMs still traumatized by PF1 and thinking that they have to nerf anything that the players come up with in order to not have the players optimize all of the challenge out of the game.

Maybe. But nearly all of us have an issue or two where the unreality of the rules REALLY bugs us and we are at least tempted to make a ruling.

By the rules when in encounter mode a non mature animal companion does NOTHING unless ordered unless the GM decides that it does something.

Most GMs, for example, would have the animal move out of harmful terrain even if not ordered. But many would NOT have the animal automatically accompany you as that is a significant advantage for you to get for free.

Now, if the companion is mature it gets 1 action for free and that is quite often used to just keep up with you.

Basically, the action cost to command aan animal is an important factor in balancing the animal, especially at lower levels

In exploration mode things are much fuzzier.

I am super excited to play a skittermander in PF2, but I still haven't decided what to play. Obviously, Time Traveler background will be fun, but I don't know what else I want to do!

Bard, rogue and thaumaturge all have their appeal with this ancestry - but I have made several bards and thaumaturges before, and at least one rogue.

So I think I'll be diving through archetypes and finding something weird that I want to turn into a character.

I'm pretty sure mine will be a swashbuckler. Doing a lot of aiding with One For All, of course. And the image of this little toothy 6 armed furry thing swinging into battle just amuses the heck out of me :-).

Hello everyone.

What I'm about to say may be a bit convoluted, but here goes.
The Primary Target feature literally says:

"Before you make an area attack with a weapon (such as from the Area Fire or Auto-Fire actions), you can make a ranged Strike as a free action with the same weapon against a single creature in the area, who's selected as your primary target."

In my opinion, there's a subtle difference between that ranged strike and a ranged strike action.
Let's all remember that a strike is nothing more than an attack roll, and a strike action involves the attack roll and damage.

I think Primary Target is designed to implement a debuff, not a free attack, but of course, this is just my opinion.

I suppose we'll clear up any doubts when Paizo releases the errata.

I'm sorry if the text may be difficult to read. I used Google Translate; my English is very poor.

I don't think you're right. That is WAY too subtle an implication to expect people to get. If Paizo intended that they'd say something like "That does no damage" as they do in other cases.

I also think that would weaken the soldier too much. They'd go back to basically not caring very much about their to hit number.

Thanks for the thoughts everybody. Appreciated.

My conclusion is that I should expect very little and to expect considerable table variation. And make sure that I can live with that variation.

Wendy - I've read your other thread and while I see where you're coming from I find it hard to believe that, in practice, any GM is going to be so draconian as to say you can't even hold a weapon in your other hands.

When I was looking at the animist, I was interested in the Medium Practice. That practice looked pretty cool. Once I read how the vessel spells work, it became apparent the only viable Practice was Liturgist. Any other practice was going to have serious problems with action economy with the vessel spell sustain.

Its not quite that bad. It is hardly a disaster if on some round or other you don't sustain your vessel spell. Its only 1 action to recast it and you pretty quickly have 3 focus points.

The Liturgist IS definitely best, no argument there. But the other practices are definitely viable. Well, probably not with your groups play style but they're viable for the more usual play styles.

It’s legal in PFS if you play a SFS game before Sept IIRC

I’m building a Skittermander in PFS and would like some advice on how to take advantage of the 6 arms.

Since it is PFS I don’t want to go anywhere close to anything ambiguous, just stick with the stuff that is CLEARLY legal.

Can the recharge weapon cantrip exceed the usual magazine size?

This is especially important for weapons with a magazine size of 1.

I don't think Recharge increases your Magazine size. I mean, it would be nice if it would, but I don't think it does. Also, the bipod takes up an upgrade slot, so especially later on I'd rather take the hit and have +2 Strength.

I think recharge maybe does increase magazine size. Its magic, after all. But I see nothing to make me sure one way or the other. I think this needs clarification.

As to the upgrade slot vs the +2 Strength I can see it going either way. It would depend on how desperately I wanted to spend that +2 on something else.

One pain point I haven't seen brought up is also scaling.

The sniper gets some pretty good scaling as they level up.

It is only a level 2 purchase to get an advanced bipod. So, at level 2 you don't need to invest any Str because of kickback. Very few games spend a lot of time at level 1 so that is pretty much your entire career.

As early as Level 5 the Operative can have access to a 3rd level recharge. So at that point their turn becomes
Aim - Fire- Recharge Reaction hit or gets to fire twice a round a fair bit.

At level 11 they now get 3 shots between reloads which gives them a fair bit of flexibility.

And while fatal D12 does get a bit less powerful relatively speaking as you scale up it is ALWAYS very, very, very nice to have.

But at least we can all agree that nobody would lose out if a balanced Sniper with a larger magazine came out, right? People who prefer the 1-Mag Snipers can just keep using those.

It would depend a lot on what that "balanced" weapon looks like. I think we can all pretty much agree that with an Assassin Rifle with a magazine of, say, 10 just about all operatives would be snipers using an Assassin Rifle.

So, how much do you knock off that to make it "balanced"? Obviously, on the low end, it has to be better than the existing non sniper weapons.

So. balanced is somewhere between those 2 extremes. Not actually a huge amount of room there.

Its a bit difficult to do the math as it is going to depend greatly on circumstances, but I think that some of the time the sniper just doesn't bother to aim. That fatal D12 is VERY attractive for the first shot, but it is kind of very nice to get your reaction in once the reaction triggers almost all of the time.

If the target has cover then you DEFINITELY aim. Removing the penalty to hit is far more important than the extra damage. But a lot of the time the reaction attack is going to be worth more than the Aim extra damage.

So, I think you do
Round 1 : Aim (probably moving too), fire, reload
Hair Trigger
Round 2 : Reload, shoot, reload
Hair Trigger

a lot. You also do the Aim/Shoot/Reload thing a lot too.

In sum, I think a Sniper is a fine specialization in general. You get a useful feat. If you have another character or two supporting you with recharge weapon then you do a boatload of damage. And all the other Specializations are fairly meh (well, Striker is literally game changing :-)) anyway so the opportunity cost of not picking one of them is pretty low.

There is no access to the last sheet

In my head canon you're sorta aiming the gun while swinging it wildly through an arc and trying to compensate for recoil. If your targets are close you're holding the trigger, if they're far apart or there is only 1 you're firing short bursts,

But let's be honest here, there is nothing remotely realistic about guns in Starfinder. They shoot far more slowly and do way less damage than our modern day guns. Heck, they do the same damage as Pathfinder guns.

I REALLY want to like the released Envoy but I'm having difficulty in doing so.

Part of my problem is that the Pathfinder Rogue has spoiled me. I now expect to be able to be BOTH a kick ass martial AND a skill monkey. Admittedly, the Pathfinder Rogue is arguably too powerful for EXACTLY this reason and reducing the combat power of the Envoy for its skill utility SHOULD seem like a decent tradeoff. But, as I say, the Rogue (especially the remastered one) has just spoiled me so that no longer seems fair.

In the right group it can shine but it is really open to the group composition making it largely redundant.

Get Em (the bread and butter that the class is basically built around) is done better by a Mystic with the Anthem Epiphany spell (ESPECIALLY if it is a Rhythm Mystic) or maybe with just a Bless spell.

The various options the Envoy has to give out reactions are great for characters who don't already have good reactions. But Starfinder characters get LOTS of good reactions and so the value of these reactions is also very group dependent.

And if Pathfinder 2 classes are in the mix its kinda hard to like the Envoy over the Rogue (if you love skill monkeys) or over the Commander (if you love really helping your allies).

If you're in a group where there actually is a session 0 and everybody is aware then the issue more or less goes away. You play the Envoy, nobody takes the Anthem Epiphany. Nobody is taking the Rogue and making your skill monkeyness way less valuable.

But I hope to play a fair bit of SFS. The odds of my walking up with an Envoy and being not particularly useful seem very, very high.

The other issue that I have is with the playstyle. It seems to REALLY incentivize just using a 2 action Get Em every darn turn. Oh, you'll have other options but they'll just rarely be as useful.

If you go the Size Up route you'll often be doing the Lead By Example Get Em as 1 action. But then what do you do as your second and third actions? I mean, you can shoot with an area weapon or just shoot with your piddling little damage but that isn't all that exciting if the group has a soldier or an operative.

I think the class would be SO much better if you could use more than one directive a round. But you can't.

There are definitely combinations that become quite good at mid to high levels. For example at level 13 with Watch Out and That'll Show'Em you suddenly get REALLY interesting. 2 reactions, twice a round you get to both help an ally AND make a reaction ranged attack.

Or you can dip into Soldier and at level 10 with Guns Blazing Ready Arms! you're rocking.

But these are L10+ options. I want to be good at low levels too :-)

I really want to be convinced that I'm wrong and that I'm missing something. So, PLEASE tell me why I should love the Envoy, especially in a group with a Rythym Mystic, a PF2 Rogue or a PF2 Commander

Deriven Firelion wrote:

I still think Embrace Nothingness was a pretty big monk buff to Qi spells. Read that spell now. It's nuts. Combine that with all a monk gets and they get ridiculous.

I think a lot of people sleep on it because it doesn't come until level 17, but it's an absolutely WTF tier focus spell if your game goes high enough level to get it.

I hadn't realized it had changed. Wow, its very, very good now isn't it?

Although I suppose at that level flight is almost universal and invisibility very likely to be bypassed somehow. But even ignoring those it is still very very good.

Monks were shafted indirectly (they remained static while everyone else improved).

Monks sort of got a buff.

Their flurry of blows is no longer poachable so ONLY monks get to do it.

Pre Remaster, any unarmed build (and quite a few others) would dip into monk to get flurry.

So, their niche is now THEIR niche.

I would count down in hours but I'm not actually sure the time I'm counting down too...

I'm hoping 12:01 am Pacific Time.

But travel to Earth is intergalactic,

Do you happen to have a citation for Earth being in a different galaxy? I don't remember that from playing Rasputin

Funny thing is that DnD 1st ed had several such war-trickery spells that were often unhelpful or overkill at party-level scales, but could change a troop battle via terrain illusions/alterations, fortifications, hidden masses, etc. I wonder if some of those spells have returned.

I still remember with glee discovering that fireball expanded to fill the volume. Meant as a limitation, in the hands of creative players it turned into "Resist Fire. Boom. Next dungeon please"

You could also even have a narrative about the first warring nation that produced this item, and the subsequent attempts to steal it, the knowledge of its creation, it's eventual "leak" to become "common" for countries at war to posses at least a few.

I think I'd actually maybe play that Adventure Path :-) :-). Of course, it probably has to span about 10 years elapsed time in total :-(

Let think about how this item potentially impacts PCs and NPCs, especially NPCs in war.

Absolutely everything you have said is

The key is going to be what the GM (more or less arbitrarily) decides is the reasonable level of detail

So I think this would be a big spoiler if you got it at the start of a hexcrawl campaign. But getting it partway through might be okay.

Good point. But it would have to be done with extreme care.

For example, I'm currently running Book 3 of Quest For The Frozen Flame. Characters are 9th level. And this would completely change the second third of the book. In a way that would arguably make it better (ie, much shorter) admittedly :-)

Well, if you really think Paizo's text as written changes the face of warfare,

I do

and that "a reasonable level of detail" means this 3-mile-per-inch map shows every level of a dungeon and can be used to see details down to 5' squares

At this point I've almost decided that you are very deliberately trolling me and misinterpreting me.

I've never said anything that could remotely be honestly interpreted as saying that.

I have said that its functionality in this respect is very unclear. That is ALL I have said

, then I guess as a GM you can always fall back on 'uncommon' and not make it available to characters without some appropriate questing.

I've already stated that is exactly my intent in any game that I run so thank you for your permission I guess.

pauljathome wrote:

Tridus wrote:

but the idea that you can be sitting in Absalom and this thing will show Gauntlight Keep and then also show every floor in detail below Gauntlight Keep is just not how paper maps work.

Maybe. Its unclear. Some maps absolutely do show multiple layers

map of Titanic

More of the massive table variation

On this magical map, the titanic would be 0.05 inches long.

I agree with you - sort of - about table variation.

Uh, I was just showing the first example I could find of a 3D map, NOT claiming that this particular magic item would map the Titanic that way. I vaguely recall Undermountain was several miles on a side. Or we could take the Mines of Moria.

As to table variation, just look at this thread for the many (presumably good faith) interpretations of what this map does. One person thinks that ALL it does is give a +1 to survival checks, others like me think it basically changes the face of warfare. Some think it would show all of a dungeon, some think it would show the entrance as a dot, some think it would show nothing at all. This thread already demonstrates the massive table variance there will be with this item.

On the positive side, if it was changed to a L15 unique (or very rare) item the map makes a wonderful McGuffin for an adventure or even campaign.

Gotta make sure the bad guys don’t have it or they will win the war.

but the idea that you can be sitting in Absalom and this thing will show Gauntlight Keep and then also show every floor in detail below Gauntlight Keep is just not how paper maps work.

Maybe. Its unclear. Some maps absolutely do show multiple layers

map of Titanic

More of the massive table variation

I was curious so I took a look at a map of the Peak District (UK) I have. It has a scale of 1/2 inch to the mile and is slightly smaller than the Arcane Map (covers 56 by 38 miles).

At that scale it shows individual buildings and plots of farmland.

It also uses cartographic techniques such as colour shading and contour lines to show heights. Would be useless without those so presumably Arcane map does something similar.

Also worth noting that reading a map like this is NOT automatic and obvious. It takes at least a little knowledge and training.

It does show roads not to scale with different colours to indicate importance. Another cartographic technique that may or may not be present on the magic map.

Just looking at this map shows how incredibly useful it would be, even in the absence of enemy troop positions. With any troop positions shown every 24 hours (or more often with multiple maps) the value would be insane.

I stand by my position. Owning such a map is a force multiplier. And both sides having them changes warfare a lot

Since all sides will have one, they will even out.

Every side having access to planes and tanks evened out (eventually as different nations adopted them at different rates).

But they sure changed warfare.

Everybody having guns (eventually) evened out. But they sure changed warfare.

Admittedly, this map won’t have quite the same effect as wide scale adoption of guns. But it will still greatly change warfare.

And, from a gaming perspective, in a bad way

Major roads, check. Forests, check. County borders, check. Your house? No. The number of people standing around outside (i.e. army size)? No. The 10' diameter entrance to some cave? Absolutely not.

You think a major road would show up but a dungeon wouldn’t. But most dungeons are a LOT bigger than a road in Golarion. So, why?

There is going to be an absolutely huge amount of table variation with this item. I hope PFS, at least, outlaws it for exactly that reason

I guess since I play the high level game so often, I see this scaling weakness in certain classes often. The core classes are the best scaled classes from 1 to 20.

I think its a combination of the high level game and the high optimization game.

While PF2 has done a MUCH MUCH MUCH better job than other versions of D&D in balancing classes across all levels it is still the case that differences in optimization become more apparent at higher levels.

So for your games I think it IS true that
1) Some classes and builds significantly underperform
2) Your group notices and is bothered by that underperformance more than many groups would be.

Your appraisal of the Kineticist, for your games, seems pretty much spot on to me.

Its unfortunate but unlikely to really get addressed much. You're a bit too much of an outlier for Paizo to spend a lot of attention on.

I think most of the non-core classes that haven't been remastered well like the kineticist and psychic could use some scale up remastering for the higher levels along with the kineticist using some single target tools.

I think the psychic does very well at high levels as long as they get to refocus a lot. Your games don't allow that which just destroys high level psychics. I know I was doing just fine with my psychic at L19-20 even when we had 2 encounters back to back. Wouldn't have been able to handle 3 or more though.

pauljathome wrote:

And it has massive gaming implications. Hexcrawls just got very, very seriously affected. Hidden dungeons just vanished from the world.

I do not get what you mean here. Why would it be so ?

And it's Uncommon, so if the GM says No, it's No.

Hexploration is quite different when you have (at least) the basic features in a 3 hex radius from where you are every day.

And, depending upon assumed granularity, most dungeons would probably be large enough to show up on the map. Admittedly you'd then have to actually find the entrance but knowing approximately where to look is a huge thing.

Yeah, its uncommon. And incredibly vague and up to GM fiat. Which means it becomes an insanely rare plot device in any game I run with lots of restrictions. But it substantially changes the world for any GM who lets it become fairly common in their world in a way that may not be at all obvious to the GM. And gives a MASSIVE advantage to the one side if the GM allows only one side to get it.

I'm just justifying why I, personally, loathe this with a fiery passion. Not really trying to convince other GMs that they should ban it too :-).

I think you guys are SERIOUSLY underestimating the value of accurate maps especially when combined with troop deployments. In anything approximating real world pre Ww1 warfare this is a game changer, a massive force multiplier. There is a reason that accurate maps were considered valuable military assets.

And it has massive gaming implications. Hexcrawls just got very, very seriously affected. Hidden dungeons just vanished from the world.

pauljathome wrote:

And there a whole bunch of PF2 monsters to be stolen and reskinned which also helps a great deal

I disagree. The main game has barely any ranged enemies, which doesn't work well if you're trying to make a starfinder game with ranged meta, large battlefields, and cover that matters.

I was curious. I arbitrarily chose to look at the first 6 monsters listed as L8 on archives when I sorted by level.

Bulette - melee only, But stealth monster and leap monster so works moderately well with starfinder meta
Erinys - flying ranged fits PERFECTLY into starfinder meta.
Young Green Dragon - Breath weapon and fly speed for ranged attacks, sufficient speed to hit and run. Seems to fit in fairly well
Young Copper Dragon - same as green dragon
Bida - melee only but one heck of a good "Ambush the PCs" ability
Xulgath Stoneliege - Ok, this one would be a pretty poor fit for starfinder.

So, out of my random selection of 6 Level 8 monsters 1 is perfect for starfinder (either unchanged or reflavoured), 4 can easily be made to work, and 1 is a quite poor fit.

As an aside, I think I absolutely loathe this item with a fiery passion.

In a traditional warfare campaign one of the things PCs often do is act as scouts. And suddenly that possibility is eliminated by a 7th level item.

Even worse if the granularity goes down to a level of, say, 4-6 characters or, say, a platoon or so led by PCs the other thing that PCs traditionally do (act as a either a Special Forces unit or the nucleus of one) suddenly becomes much, much more difficult,

I haven't gotten the book yet but if there isn't some way to fool/foil this the entire face of combat just got massively changed, Even large scale surprise attacks can be detected via a few spies/outposts/ships with these items. Goodbye Pearl Harbor.

Milo v3 wrote:

I think the main lack in the launch is npc/monster support, so I'm abit disappointed to hear people in this thread saying the monster book will be smaller then most when the monster building system of PF2e seems a lot slower and less GM friendly then the alive archives system and that we are going to need to be using it a lot given how melee focused the existing monster pool is.

While it is a bummer to hear Alien Core isn't going to be as big as Monster Core, and hopefully we get a big book of NPCs relatively soon, I wouldn't say building monsters is all that difficult.

And there a whole bunch of PF2 monsters to be stolen and reskinned which also helps a great deal

I think it does have combat uses, though. If the enemy fails a Will save, they get a -4 status penalty and -2 circumstance penalty to AC against one Strike.

Also fall prone and drop whatever they're holding. And, depending on turn sequence and how the GM handles things, MAY lose a turn

any big changes to the Solarion? That's the class I'm most looking forward to.

There is some information in this reddit thread

And there's something fun about overcoming challenges with a team including a champion of Caiden Callean, a tiger style monk, a wizened old witch and an outwit ranger. Feels like you deserve your victory more somehow.

This is pretty much where I am at. I enjoy casual games, I enjoy more mini maxed games both as a player and GM. I enjoy low, mid and high level games as long as the game supports it. I'm also a jaded old fart with a bit over 45 years of experience.

The only games I tend to find problematic are the ones where not all of the players and GM are on the same page. Both as GM and player I want everybody to be contributing to the success of the group more or less equally (ideally with different characters shining as MVP from time to time).

One thing I really really like about PF2 is that it does an amazingly good job of helping the GM balance things while allowing for an amazing variety of play styles, character builds, etc. Definitely not perfect but much better than any other version of D&D.

I think that I'd have a lot of fun in Derivens game. But I also have a lot of fun at most PFS tables trying to make the current assortment of mismatched misfits work.