shroudb's page

it just is weird that a "pet hawk" cannot arrest a fall while a normal hawk can.

or that a "pet cat" can't grab an edge while a normal cat can.

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in general, a lot of "a normal animal can do it but as soon as it becomes a pet cannot do it" can be ruled in a per table basis to actually function because it's absolutely nonsensical to not baseline.

Teridax wrote:

moosher12 wrote:

Essentially, there are two strategies to buffing Imaginary Weapon I found. The first is keeping its niche as a high-risk, high-reward melee-only cantrip that deals large amounts of damage, and searching for a form of equilibrium with the original version when fighting a creature with a resistance. The second is changing its niche to support a melee-ranged mixed usage to make the subclass more versatile.

I like this approach, and both proposals come across to me as ways to make imaginary weapon a bit better in a way that can be largely agreed upon. Personally, I like the idea of giving the cantrip range so that the Tangible Dream Psychic isn't forced to put themselves in major danger to use their only starting damaging psi cantrip, and while I'd be in favor of even larger buffs to both the base cantrip and its amp, even just a slight bump in damage or a range increase I think could go a long way towards improving IW from its current state.

Isn't Warp Space already giving the range increase ?

if you're using Warp space for the range, you are not hitting 2 targets, at that point why even waste a feat and not do a ranged psi cantrip instead? A TP as an example would do the same damage but with double the range and better rider effects that a "warp space IW".

shroudb wrote:

I think people are overcomplicating stuff.

Having a developer who's responsible for rules/balance stuff, or even for a part of them, say to Maya and in turn they inform us here that (as an example here):

"I spoke with the developer who did the remaster of the Psychic, and they told me that their metrics showed the class as ok, hence why there weren't any buffs, and that the nerf to IW was because the framework for force damage had them lower the damage"

or "I spoke to the dev who wrote the monster mythic abilities rules, the reason Mythic Resilience is different than Mythic resistance is X".

would go a terribly long way towards alleviating a ton of the issues that frequently pop up.

Heck! we have whole threads dedicated to errata that one can peruse to get a list of questions, and then grab the relevant dev, to give us at least some answers.

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I'm not talking about more complicated technical issues, that would require a TON of work to actually fix (instance of damage), but even simple things are left in the void.

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Having absolutely no communication, not even aknowledging the issues that appear, is not the correct way to go forwards imo.

As a long time DM and player, I tend to disagree. Sometimes table fixes work better than anything Paizo might put out. A group that finds a problem comes up with a table fix that the group likes can often work better than an official ruling from Paizo.

I think the biggest problems I've seen in these games is when a rule is clear, but broken in some way either overpowered or underpowered with overpowered being a bigger problem is a player built his whole character to exploit the overpowered nature of something. It causes the DM headaches. Then quick errata can help because a lot of players don't enjoy a DM tired of some broken combination causing game issues. That's when an official ruling can really help avoid table conflict.

that works great when you are in a single table, but when you GM/play in multiple different tables, having different subsets of how the game is run can get confusing.

if there's an official ruling that a particular table doesn't like, you can always houserule it in a way that the table likes it more, but it's always better (imo always) to have a baseline of how things work as a starting point and change that if needed rather than having to rule for each table individually.

I think people are overcomplicating stuff.

Having a developer who's responsible for rules/balance stuff, or even for a part of them, say to Maya and in turn they inform us here that (as an example here):

"I spoke with the developer who did the remaster of the Psychic, and they told me that their metrics showed the class as ok, hence why there weren't any buffs, and that the nerf to IW was because the framework for force damage had them lower the damage"

or "I spoke to the dev who wrote the monster mythic abilities rules, the reason Mythic Resilience is different than Mythic resistance is X".

would go a terribly long way towards alleviating a ton of the issues that frequently pop up.

Heck! we have whole threads dedicated to errata that one can peruse to get a list of questions, and then grab the relevant dev, to give us at least some answers.

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I'm not talking about more complicated technical issues, that would require a TON of work to actually fix (instance of damage), but even simple things are left in the void.

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Having absolutely no communication, not even aknowledging the issues that appear, is not the correct way to go forwards imo.

i'm also towards the "quality did drop after the remaster" fence of the arguments.

while there were always some errors slipping through the cracks in the books, it looks to me that more and more of them pop up in the recent books.

piling in what other posters have posted about "fatigue" issues that simply pile up and Paizo seems to almost deliberately ignore (see: instance of damage) and an utter lack of communication from the developers (which is double more important in a system that is suppossed to be "read in casual language"), i am losing my faith a bit in the future products.

if important issues are not even aknowledged, much less answered, and the rate of their appearence keeps increasing, it feels as if the point when the tower of errors will crumble will be faster than it could have been, forcing a 3rd edition (and a reset of said tower) sooner rather than later.

edit: what also seems to be a massive problem, at least to me, is that books feel more and more like the people working on them do not communicate with each other. leading to leaving you scratching your head when you look some stuff next to some other stuff from the same book. Like, looking at the martial vs the caster side on the mythic rules, or to two different chapters of an AP feeling completely disjointed, or to some spells/abilities being massively disappointing while the next one is massively overpowered, and etc).

keeping in mind that because the VVs are specifically stored in your kit, you can actually use them in one action as they are (no need to "draw" them with a separate action):

if your table allows Exemplar Archetype it does actually solve a lot of the issues current alchemist has with action economy.

outside of that, the new familiar ability they got helps a bit as well.

but in short, from what i've seen and played, both pre and after remaster is that the fundamental difference is that:

new alchemist is very hard to not have "something" for a fight but will never have "everything" for a fight, while the old one was the other way around (if you had sufficient system mastery). Fundamentally that makes the new one better for longer adventuring days with lots of encounters and the old one better with campaigns that only had 1-2 fights per day. New one is also much simpler*. Bomber doubly so more easier.

overall, it's a net positive but not by a mile imo.

*a small caveat on the "simplicity" of the new alchemist is that it's indeed easier to do something worthwhile, but it's harder in the sense that if you really want to excel you do need to know a TON of the more niche items since you WILL be using Quick Alchemy much more than pre-remaster Alchemist.

Psychic has exactly one maybe worthwhile build. Shatter mind spam. Casting amp shatter mind 3+ times per fight for xd10 AoEs plus the occasional amp message and gathered lore Aid. It's a miniscule niche predicated on a damage type that isn't the most reliable, but it exists. Not that I'll ever play it outside of a one shot or something.

even that is not like completely unique.

a dragon sorc spammin dragon breath is not that different. 3d10+1d10/rank vs 5d6+2d6/rank is actually less damage for the psychic (outside of Unleash). and then the sorc can weave in actual spells in his rotations without running out.

ofc, there are some differences, like shatter only hitting enemies and being bigger, but in gameplay it's not really that different...

i *think* that the original idea was something along the lines of "since you make up the weapon from your imagination, you choose if you want it to be a slashing weapon or a bashing weapon" that would help vs specific enemies with resistances/weaknesses, but it still is ultimately a thing made out of force, so ghosts and such get hit normaly. While something like a force barrage it's just chunks of energy hitting stuff.

now, that said, it obviously has some holes how that is translated into game terms hence the change to be more uniform with other force effects.

And in that vein, Imaginary Weapon should probably do Mental damage! :P

nah... IW is Tangible dream which is:

You pull colors and shapes from the depth of your mind, projecting impossible creations into the world as tapestries of astral thread or sculptures of force and light.

aka, you literaly use your mind (hence imaginary) to create stuff made out of force and light (so physical entities).

in order for it to be Mental it would have to be Silent Whisper

I don't think it has a niche anymore. It's just like a worse sorc mostly unfortunately...

At my tables, we never played that the force trait was enough to bypass incorporeal because incorporeal explicitly calls out force damage, so that is a big part of why the change looked like side grade instead of a straight nerf. In retrospect, I agree that it feels like anything made out of force should hit a ghost, so even though I am not sure I buy that the rules as written work for the force trait itself to be enough, they probably should.

Honestly, if the intention is not to move all [physical] damage type with the force trait to just be force damage, than the damage type change feels like a need to me by itself, without dropping the damage type. I personally suspect that, since the only other spells that do this are also in the Dark Archives, and that you never see people talking about this or this interaction on the forums, that changing [physical] with the force trait to force damage was not done to mitigate the nerf to imaginary weapon, but is an errata change that will happen to the other abilities with out reducing their damage once those abilities get attention. We will have to wait and see if that ever happens though as it probably isn’t an issue that is causing noticeable issues at tables compared to other errata issues.

Having listened to people on this thread and looked at the bigger picture, I still do strongly believe the issue that lead to the damage nerf is solely “focus spells can’t do +2d8 heightening instant damage” is a game rule that was maybe just a suggestion at first but is getting firmed up in the final remaster changes. Attention on the issue was certainly increased by the magus and anyone asking “why is the magus so drawn to this one specific spell?” And the answer being, “It’s a focus spell that hits as hard as a spell slot 3 times an encounter and there is nothing else in the game at that level.”

So I hear why some people feel like the nerf is a hard pill to swallow for the psychic who only seems to have gotten boosted thus far in unleash working on durational damage...

Again, the "duration change" only applies to the very first initial damage when cast for Unleash. It does nothing for Sustain or repeated damage.

It's more of a fix so that you can actually Unleash with the spells you get, like Daze, simple damaging spells that simply were not eligible because they had a secondary, durational, effect, rather than some big counterbuff.

Specific bloodlines also do exactly as much bonus damage as Unleash, they are always on, do not stop you from casting spells in the middle of the combat, are active during the very crucial 1st round of combat, and etc.

If you want a damage based caster, why not go (as an example) Elemental Sorc, having the same bonus damage on ALL rounds, without a downside. Same damage Focus Spells, and Double the spell slots.

The only one referencing some hidden internal rule about maximum focus point damage is you since we have absolutely nothing from the developers saying anything about that.

End of the line is that one of the few good things, of the worst caster by far in the entire game got gutted by 20%, when the ONLY complain about said class was that it was underpowered.

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In short: Paizo writers really messed up (again, as in so many of the post remaster books...).

Bust-R-Up wrote:

The math and conversation about scaling only makes sense if we're talking about the amped version.

I think it is an incomplete view of the picture to ignore unamped. Because Paizo's logic of why the nerf happened the way it did is not within the amped version, but within the unamped version, you cannot understand what the logic of the nerf is without looking at the unamped version, and you cannot attempt to fix the nerf without acknowledging the differences in how both the amped version and the unamped version work.

Because what I have found is, the unamped change does have equity, while the unamped change does not. But you cannot fix the amped version in a satisfying way without understanding why unamped is fine, but amped is not.

That's why I came to my answer. Unamped is fine, because force and physical are seperated in such a way that force overcomes hardness, and becomes more powerful against a resistant apponent than the original. amped is not fine, because there is no sensation of overcoming resistance, therefore, raising the damage of force such that it can feel like an advantage over the old in most resistance situations is what's needed to make it satisfying.

We are ignoring unamped because it was always just a slight upgrade compared to common cantrips available to all casters (as it should, as a class unique option).

It used to be same damage as gouging claw but had the force trait. Having a bit more upfront damage vs a bit more sustained damage (d8 vs d6+1bleed) was a sidegrade. Overall, just slightly better single target (and much worse compared to multitarget cantrips like EA).

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So, the nerf here is of less importance since old IW already dealt comparative damage to common cantrips.

If you don't want to waste a focus point (as in your examples) you just use a different, common, cantrip (electric arc is still like the best option of a cantrip for such occasions).

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The big difference comes in the amped versions, because the only big advantage of (damaging) psi cantrips vs regular cantrips is their doubled heightening.

Hence why in a damage comparison, like we're doing in this thread, we're comparing where the change actually matters: when you want to do damage.

There is no much point about talking about unamped imo.

In that case it's just a bad gouging claw (less damage, same risk, same targets).

I am curious about Teridax's math when evaluating the devils. When I did it, in most cases, at least where the devil had hardness, you had to be a higher level than the devil to overcome the difference in damage from resistance. And they also brought up the chance of a crit, but in many cases, you also had to be higher level, and sometimes by multiple levels, to exceed the 5% of needing a nat 20 to get the crit.

To keep things as brief as I can manage, as the full scope of these calculations would flood the page, I just picked the devil in the middle of his post:
Levaloch: Level 7, resistance 5. Net -2 damage on the new IW.

Old IW is rank 2 at level 3 (party level +4; 160 XP), rank 3 at level 5 (party level +2; 80 XP), rank 4 at level 7 (party level; 40 XP), rank 5 at level 9 (party level -2; 20 XP), and rank 6 at level 11 (party level -4; 10 XP)

The average damage for 2d8 + 1d8/rank is as follows
1(9)/2(13.5)/3(18)/4(22.5)/5(27)/6(31.5)/7(36)/8(40.5)/9(45)/10(49.5)

The average damage for 2d6 + 1d6/rank is as follows
1(7)/2(10.5)/3(14)/4(17.5)/5(21)/6(24.5)/7(28)/8(31.5)/9(35)/10(38.5)

Average Spell differential
1(2)/2(3)/3(4)/4(5)/5(6)/6(7)/7(8)/8(9)/9(10)/10(11)

Which means a rank 2 spell is 13.5 (old), and 10.5 (new) (difference of 3), rank 3 spell is 18 (old), and (14 new) (difference of 4), rank 4 spell is 22.5 (old), and 17.5 (new) (difference of 5), rank 5 spell is 27 (old), and 21 (new) (difference of 6), and rank 6 spell is 31.5 (old), and 24.5 (new) (difference of 7) (The hardness turned out to determine the difference required, on this note. Hardness 3 requires rank 2, hardness 5 requires rank 4, hardness 10 requires rank 9, and hardness 15 is simply insurmountable)

This means that for the spells to be equal, you need to cast the spell at rank 4, which means the devil is at party level. And to have the old spell exceed the new spell on average damage per round, you'd have to cast it at at least rank 5, in which case the creature would be a party level -2 mob which is...

it's 2dx per rank for the amped version of the cantrips not 1dx.

PossibleCabbage wrote:

I think that if I was going to play a psychic, I would want to avoid Tangible Dream since my initial amps available are Shield, Figment (for flanking), and Imaginary Weapon (for melee damage). This might be worth it eventually, but playing a character one crit away from dying with that set of tools seems rough.

Like people regularly avoid the Sorcerer bloodlines that have focus spells that require touch, right? I've seen people avoid the Demonic Bloodline because of Glutton's Jaws, after all. I see no reason that's not going to happen with the Psychic.

Tangible Dream Psychic does not look like they should be in melee. Their version of Figment and Shield feel like they should be used to support other PCs who fight in melee. IW is definitely odd there, though amping it with Warp Space sounds good.

why?

just use a 30ft range spell instead. using warp space means that it only hits one target either way, and now with so low damage, it's better to simply use a normal ranged cantrip instead.

an amped TK as an example would have double the range of the warp space IW, deal the same amount of damage, and push targets even on a hit and it didn't cost you a feat to get :/

Yeah, 10% is still somewhat small, though enough to at least say that it is uncommon, rather than rare, but there are still a lot of encounters where it does not matter. I counted 48 encounters, but there are probably hundreds of encounters in the whole adventure path. A number I'd really rather not tally, so I think you'd understand that I keep that a vague statement.

And smart use of Recall Knowledge will of course let you evade it if you're willing to invest the action.

To me, it comes down to a personal decision. To some players, it's not worth it, and to some, it might be worth it. Not needing to bother with an action to Recall Knowledge, or to use RP opportunities to gather such data, might make it worth it to some, but not worth it for others. But I'm the type of guy who plays Monster Hunter using just raw physical damage to the complete ignorance of elements, and when the monster dies, it dies, lol.

But personally, I think points are being made that a tad more can be done to buff the new Imaginary Weapon to feel more like a fair trade. While in a strictly theoretical space, the math can check out for conditions, player feeling of those results is still important. If just force does not feel like enough to make up for reduced damage, maybe just force is not enough, and another buff would make it more palatable. I once listened to the Castle Superbeast Podcast where the podcasters had Edmund McMillen, creator of Super Meatboy, the Binding of Isaac and the upcoming Mewgenics, and he explained that sometimes, the math can be sound, but the game could still not feel right, despite the theory.

But, I'd not blame any GM for reverting it in their home games. Or better yet, allowing a psychic player to choose one or the other. I think in the meantime, homebrew side, letting players just choose which version they prefer would avoid a lot of strife, as if you're just a psychic, the math is fine within the psychic. They can just ban the old version for archetype, And if a psychic player would rather...

As highlighted in Teridax posts, it's not just the rarity of the cases it applies, but also the fact that in a lot of these cases, even if the force type does help, it only helps to bring it even with the preremaster damage. So it isn't even a gain on these.

Due to inherently lower damage, even if it ignores the resistance, it ends up in a very similar amount of dealt damage as it would have if it was higher damage that didn't penetrate the resistance.

That's why it's effectively a ribbon ability that does nothing to counteract a severe 20% nerf to output.

shroudb wrote:

fully resistant as in "resistant to all types of physical" not as in "immune to physical".

again, with almost being done with KM, the "resistant to all physical" NON-incorporeal enemies, that come in at least pairs, in close enough spaces, that do not murder you with reactions... how many are there really?

I genuinely remember 1, and that one may have been incorporeal (or at least it was some shadow assasins, not sure due to it being like a year ago)

Ah, fair enough. There are a few that come in as singles, which I would think still counts. I stopped counting at least 10 encounters with relevant resistances before it got late. Neither of them were incorporeal, though. But all of them were in the overworld, which was to say, easily missible, and they were all either a single enemy, or a group of the same kind of enemy, so there wasn't exactly an option to switch enemies. But I can give it another look. For the sake of sanity, I'll keep to overworld.

** spoiler omitted **...

See what I mean?

The vast majority of those are "if you pick the wrong type" which was my point, those you should already be good against with old IW. Especially since half the Psychics are Int based.

It is though indeed more than the 1 I remember, even if I play as a physical damage dealer, but still 8-9 encounters up to level 10 out of how many KM has shows how scarce they actually are.

It is more than the 1% I gave, but even 10% is still a bad percentage.

shroudb wrote:

Bluemagetim wrote:

I think you misunderstood what I have said form the begining.

I started from the position that the new version is a downgrade from the original. That force damage changes its lane. And that the the change made IW damage more comparable to other options rather than higher.
If you saw my earlier posts I said maybe they over corrected but that I also saw forcedamage as opening a lane for them. And that part I stand by. Constructs? bypassed. Undead? dont need to worry about what type. Devils? no problem. Adamantine dragon? ah damn not going near that thing. But you get the point.
Enmeis are immune to mental effects and resist physical? and your known spells are full of them? you still can contribute.
In my games I use devils and constructs and undead of many kinds and APs use them alot too. In fact when they are used they typically are the PL+ fights, they often have adds that can be hit by the amped version along with them. So i am not sure why we are looking at the full scope of creatures and saying physical resistance is rare when the frequency of their use pretty common or at least impactful when encountered.

because the whole point of IW was the risk vs reward.

you give the squishiest character in the game a melee option that requires him to be adjacent to TWO enemies and use an action that provoke Reactions and may be interupted as well by said reactions.

The reward was the higher damage.

now there is no reward, plain and simple.

giving a ribbon ability that triggers on a tiny subsection of creatures does not justify the risk any longer.

you still provoke from all enemies, not only the physical resistant ones.
you still need to be in the middle of the fray of all enemies.
but tyou are only rewarded a tiny fraction of the time.

OK lets take your claim that the old version's purpose was risk vs reward.

Clearly now that isn't its role right?
Its doing something different its mitigating situations where damage could be lost...

even if you do not agree in the frequency, you MUST agree that the amount of battles that you fight non-incorporeal physical resistant enemies is vastly less than the times you fight... enemies. Right?

So, unless you are saying that literally half the fights are vs multiple physical resistant enemies, then it is a strict nerf.

Or, to go with your analogy, it's like you had a race car that you had to slow down when you entered private driveways, now you have a slow car that you do not need to slow further when you enter those private driveways.

So, a nerf in the vast majority of your travel time in general.

There was simply no justification for that nerf, mind you, because in real play it didn't actually even gave new options. Occult already had ways to deal with those few encounters that would require Force damage the best out of any other tradition.

The more I debate it, the more I think that the one that wrote the changes really didn't have clue about what the problems with the class actually were... and that's just sad.

It is more probale that it was "IW-magus bad, let's disable that and nerf Psychic just to be certain, who cares, no one plays that class anyways".

I think you misunderstood what I have said form the begining.

I started from the position that the new version is a downgrade from the original. That force damage changes its lane. And that the the change made IW damage more comparable to other options rather than higher.
If you saw my earlier posts I said maybe they over corrected but that I also saw forcedamage as opening a lane for them. And that part I stand by. Constructs? bypassed. Undead? dont need to worry about what type. Devils? no problem. Adamantine dragon? ah damn not going near that thing. But you get the point.
Enmeis are immune to mental effects and resist physical? and your known spells are full of them? you still can contribute.
In my games I use devils and constructs and undead of many kinds and APs use them alot too. In fact when they are used they typically are the PL+ fights, they often have adds that can be hit by the amped version along with them. So i am not sure why we are looking at the full scope of creatures and saying physical resistance is rare when the frequency of their use pretty common or at least impactful when encountered.

because the whole point of IW was the risk vs reward.

you give the squishiest character in the game a melee option that requires him to be adjacent to TWO enemies and use an action that provoke Reactions and may be interupted as well by said reactions.

The reward was the higher damage.

now there is no reward, plain and simple.

giving a ribbon ability that triggers on a tiny subsection of creatures does not justify the risk any longer.

you still provoke from all enemies, not only the physical resistant ones.
you still need to be in the middle of the fray of all enemies.
but tyou are only rewarded a tiny fraction of the time.

shroudb wrote:

Bluemagetim wrote:

I would like you to consider another use though.

What about unleashing psyche so you can use a 1 action defensive benefit from your subconcious mind. Use a defensive amp like inertial barrier for DR. Now being in melee is easier to handle and ally assistance can actually keep you alive instead of being instakilled the first round you enter it. You still do non amped damage to a single target +2xspellrank thrown in as force.
And if the next turn looks like a favorable one to amp for full damage instead then do it. You can assess round by round on how defensive you need to be vs how aggressive you can afford to be.

you could do ALL oif that with old IW.

The only difference was that you would do more damage.

p.s. with only 2 rounds of Unleash, it's not like you really have the option to "assess round by round". If you do what you're saying while unleashed, you literally have a single round to "asses if you want to do full damage or nah" and then you have to bail and deal with missing 1/4th of your spells to Stupefy for the rest of the encounter...

Well when would you decide to go into melee in the first place?

Either the teamwork synergy has aligned and you want to get your attacks in(unleash move in and go with damage amp). or maybe melee came to you.
When melee came to you, and now you probably took one strike already. You either got team support and can stay in melee with defensive buffs or you cant at all and need to get out of there anyway. If it were me I wont use unleash unless I am getting something from it offensively or defensively or both.

and once again:

how does that change compared to the old IW apart from simply now just doing less damage?

aka less reward for the same exact risk.

as for the "when" you decide to go close, you most certainly do NOT Unleash just to do an unamped IW (or amped with a non damaging amp). You Unleash when you want to unload damage because the only thing that Unleash does is damage.

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the fundamental difference of old vs new IW is that:

with the old one, it was much easier to find "just two enemies close to each other that do not have reactions" compared to "two enemies close to each other that do not have reactions, and are also resisting physical while not being incorporeal"

in A LOT of battles, you will have 2 enemies without reactions close by, in a TINY amount of battles those same exact two enemies will be non-incorporeal that resist physical.

I wonder if the devs are reading this thread right now and saying "Oh sh*t" and hurriedly writing a Day 1 errata.

Psychics needed a lot more love than what a day1 errata can provide.

even if they revert IW back to d8s, it doesn't really help with the fact that they didn't address any of the major problems of the class, like half the feats being a waste of space, or how all of their point blank aoes hit allies, or how most of the feat amps are not worth even a fraction of a focus point, or how punishing Unleash is for how little it does in it's short duration, and etc.

the ship has unfortunately sailed, and the worst caster of the game will still remain the worst caster of the game.

it's mostly just venting frustration at the terrible job Paizo is doing with quality control ever since the remaster happenned at this point.

shroudb wrote:

having played kingmaker up until nearing its end now, the most notable physical resistances we've seen was with incorporeal, which are irrelevant since the physical damage of old IW worked normally and a few fey that were NOT in the conditions to benefit the new IW (not pairs of enemies clumped together)

i do remember a single fight with some shodowy stuff that ambushed us that it would help, but not sure if those were incorporeal or not, been a while since that fight.

again, we are not only searching for non-incorporeal fully resistant to physical enemies, but that also come in at least pairs of enemies that stay almost adjucent to each other for the "new IW" to actually benefit. Oh, and without reactions to straight up kill you if you try to cast a spell adjucent to two of them...

up until entering the home of the green big bad (to avoid spoilers as much as i can) which fights are you refering to thatyou count as "10 fights that it would be better than old IW"?

We are not looking for fully resistant, we are just looking for "resistant enough to make up the difference." Also, it's easy to miss many of them because it is Kingmaker, it's dependent on what optional places you chose to explore. So you had missed some due to not exploring fully.

fully resistant as in "resistant to all types of physical" not as in "immune to physical".

again, with almost being done with KM, the "resistant to all physical" NON-incorporeal enemies, that come in at least pairs, in close enough spaces, that do not murder you with reactions... how many are there really?

I genuinely remember 1, and that one may have been incorporeal (or at least it was some shadow assasins, not sure due to it being like a year ago)

3. Astral Rain's damage is lower than Imaginary weapon, or most instant damage focus spells, for sure, but with unleash psyche working with sustain spells and the damage happening to any creature that enters the area before the start of your turn, Astral Rain got a substantial glow up with these changes and should be what tangible dream psychics are excited about using as soon as they can get it. I mean, if a creature moves out of the area on its turn, and a martial can move it back in on theirs, it is going to be at relatively high level before a standard strike is going to out damage just shoving an enemy back into the area. one action sustain to move it also makes for a great 3rd action for the Intangible Dream Psychic.

it is my understanding that the remastered Unleash with Duration spells ONLY applies the UNleash damage on the initial hit.

a good change, don't get me wrong, but after the initial hit, the sustain damage, as well as any other damage like enemies walking in the area afterwards will be without the bonus.

correct me if i'm wrong.

I would like you to consider another use though.

What about unleashing psyche so you can use a 1 action defensive benefit from your subconcious mind. Use a defensive amp like inertial barrier for DR. Now being in melee is easier to handle and ally assistance can actually keep you alive instead of being instakilled the first round you enter it. You still do non amped damage to a single target +2xspellrank thrown in as force.
And if the next turn looks like a favorable one to amp for full damage instead then do it. You can assess round by round on how defensive you need to be vs how aggressive you can afford to be.

you could do ALL oif that with old IW.

The only difference was that you would do more damage.

p.s. with only 2 rounds of Unleash, it's not like you really have the option to "assess round by round". If you do what you're saying while unleashed, you literally have a single round to "asses if you want to do full damage or nah" and then you have to bail and deal with missing 1/4th of your spells to Stupefy for the rest of the encounter...

shroudb wrote:

Bluemagetim wrote:

shroudb wrote:

Bluemagetim wrote:

no i assure you I am not trolling. But to call my comments as claiming dev godhood is hyperboli. I never said they can't make mistakes, I have always tempered my statements because its not unreasonable to think they understand the game they are developing. Its clear they redesigned IW do do do something different than it did before. Its also clear its a downgrade in raw damage from before.

what does it do different apart from just being straight up weaker?

what did they give it in return of the straight up nerfs?

because to me it looks 100% exactly the same "design space" wise and just 20% weaker "power wise".

well maybe consider what having a way to apply force damage with unleash psyche adds to an occult spellcaster.

What situations does that open up for them over physical damage types?

consider how little enemies exist that have resistance to all physical that is NOT bypassed by Force (since old one still dealt full damage to those).

Now, take that handful of enemies from the entire monster collection, and you still need:

two of them in the same battle
almost adjecent to one another
none of them having a reaction to murder you when you try to cast right next to them

So, is this one or two battles in the entire AP collection (if there are even that many...) the entire "design space" of the new IW that makes it worth being 20% less effective in the rest 99.9999% of the fights?

While I cannot check other adventure paths, (Mostly because I I'd prefer to actually read them, before skimming their monsters), I can at least check Kingmaker (I technically could also add Guilt of the Grave World, which had a few, but that's beside the point) Going through the overworld in Kingmaker, I did count over 10 instances of resistance, of which some of those cases were repeatable. But that was skimming only half of a 642 page book.

Granted, there are some APs where it'll be...

having played kingmaker up until nearing its end now, the most notable physical resistances we've seen was with incorporeal, which are irrelevant since the physical damage of old IW worked normally and maybe a few fey (although most of them are not resistant to physical but rather weak to cold iron instead) that were NOT in the conditions to benefit the new IW (not pairs of enemies clumped together)

i do remember a single fight with some shadowy stuff that ambushed us that it would help, but not sure if those were incorporeal or not, been a while since that fight.

again, we are not only searching for non-incorporeal fully resistant to physical enemies, but that also come in at least pairs of enemies that stay almost adjucent to each other for the "new IW" to actually benefit. Oh, and without reactions to straight up kill you if you try to cast a spell adjucent to two of them...

up until entering the home of the green big bad (to avoid spoilers as much as i can) which fights are you refering to thatyou count as "10 fights that it would be better than old IW"?

shroudb wrote:

Bluemagetim wrote:

shroudb wrote:

Bluemagetim wrote:

no i assure you I am not trolling. But to call my comments as claiming dev godhood is hyperboli. I never said they can't make mistakes, I have always tempered my statements because its not unreasonable to think they understand the game they are developing. Its clear they redesigned IW do do do something different than it did before. Its also clear its a downgrade in raw damage from before.

what does it do different apart from just being straight up weaker?

what did they give it in return of the straight up nerfs?

because to me it looks 100% exactly the same "design space" wise and just 20% weaker "power wise".

well maybe consider what having a way to apply force damage with unleash psyche adds to an occult spellcaster.

What situations does that open up for them over physical damage types?

consider how little enemies exist that have resistance to all physical that is NOT bypassed by Force (since old one still dealt full damage to those).

Now, take that handful of enemies from the entire monster collection, and you still need:

two of them in the same battle
almost adjecent to one another
none of them having a reaction to murder you when you try to cast right next to them

So, is this one or two battles in the entire AP collection (if there are even that many...) the entire "design space" of the new IW that makes it worth being 20% less effective in the rest 99.9999% of the fights?

Well it doesn't matter how many enemies exist in the monster core with those resistances, it depends on how many exist in your game or sometimes more importantly the ones that do exist is having force damage doing something for your character the rest of the party is struggling with or has to be knowledgeable about and prepare for. Are you able to use your GP on different things because of your force damage.

It doesn't matter how many monsters exist in the "design space"" you are tooting as the saving grace of the spell?

I already highlighted that the use case that the spell is superior is less probable to even exist ONCE in a given campaign.

By the sheer definition of what "design space" stands for, the answer is only one: miniscule.

And again, Occult has the most Force effects in the game already, getting one more doesn't even widen said space!

shroudb wrote:

Bluemagetim wrote:

no i assure you I am not trolling. But to call my comments as claiming dev godhood is hyperboli. I never said they can't make mistakes, I have always tempered my statements because its not unreasonable to think they understand the game they are developing. Its clear they redesigned IW do do do something different than it did before. Its also clear its a downgrade in raw damage from before.

what does it do different apart from just being straight up weaker?

what did they give it in return of the straight up nerfs?

because to me it looks 100% exactly the same "design space" wise and just 20% weaker "power wise".

well maybe consider what having a way to apply force damage with unleash psyche adds to an occult spellcaster.

What situations does that open up for them over physical damage types?

consider how little enemies exist that have resistance to all physical that is NOT bypassed by Force (since old one still dealt full damage to those).

Now, take that handful of enemies from the entire monster collection, and you still need:

two of them in the same battle
almost adjecent to one another
none of them having a reaction to murder you when you try to cast right next to them

So, is this one or two battles in the entire AP collection (if there are even that many...) the entire "design space" of the new IW that makes it worth being 20% less effective in the rest 99.9999% of the fights?

p.s. and if anything Occult has i think the M?OST Force based damage spells already, no? I see 18 Force spells in Occult and 16 in Arcane...

I mean, to you and me it probably is the least of our concerns, but it seems like it's really important to whoever's in charge at Paizo for the page layout to stay exactly the same on these remastered books. I honestly have no idea why it's such a top priority,

i mean, that's simple. it's just much cheaper. you straight up remove the cost of designing a new layout if you keep the old one.

no i assure you I am not trolling. But to call my comments as claiming dev godhood is hyperboli. I never said they can't make mistakes, I have always tempered my statements because its not unreasonable to think they understand the game they are developing. Its clear they redesigned IW do do do something different than it did before. Its also clear its a downgrade in raw damage from before.

what does it do different apart from just being straight up weaker?

what did they give it in return of the straight up nerfs?

because to me it looks 100% exactly the same "design space" wise and just 20% weaker "power wise".

shroudb wrote:

Bluemagetim wrote:

Teridax wrote:

Bluemagetim wrote:

Thats is because Imaginary weapon was overtuned at d8s. It was a downgrade for system consistency.

Try that same analysis with contemporary focus spells for the ampted version of IW as it is now rather than comparing it to the d8 version we know was overtuned to the point magus players saw it as a holy grail of focus spells.

Okay, so by that standard, we should nerf gouging claw, which deals as much damage as imaginary weapon pre-nerf. Similarly, we should nerf fire ray, which was not far off from an amped imaginary weapon pre-nerf, and now deals as much damage while also having 60 feet of range and its bonus rider of creating burning ground, the latter of which occurs even on a non-critical miss. The argument that a d8 of damage is too much for a cantrip that is meant to be among the best in the game has, by my view, strictly no basis in fact.

I think graystone is right: whoever was in charge of this nerf likely saw all the Magus discussions, and decided to take this bazooka approach to balance where they turned off amp Spellstrikes (while also accidentally turning off reaction amps), which would've been enough to kill that combo, but then also nuked the MC archetype from orbit, and then overnerfed IW for good measure. The cantrip was never strong on the Psychic, an exceptionally squishy caster who would never normally put themselves within melee range of an opponent, let alone two. The Psychic was never going around doing too much damage, despite being designed to blast with certain subclasses, so I see no reason to nerf a cantrip they already synergized with poorly. I could have perhaps stomached the nerf better if the cantrip were given range or some other form of safety, but as of now there are options that deal equal or better damage without putting the class in nearly as much risk.

SuperParkourio wrote:

Is it really supposed to work like a

...

IW is straight up dealing less damage than gouging claw.

IW was already bypassing the usual stuff that force damage bypass because it was already a force effect., only now you cannot proc weaknesses with it.

that alone should at least hint you towards why it is SO bad now, like, really, really bad.

The only use case is basically when you want to retire your character cause you're putting one of the most fragile characters in the entire game in melee range of TWO enemies, and for that you still have to pay a focus point for it lol.

Paizo definitely wouldn't nerf the class itself unless they actually thought it was too powerful.

Does Psychic still get 2 Focus Points per Refocus? It's possible the devs aren't considering the style of play where everyone just spams Treat Wounds and Refocus out of combat to top everyone off before heading into the next fight. In situations where you only get 10 minutes between fights, being able to gain 2 Focus Points in 10 minutes could be a lifesaver.

wizard cries in a corner...

Teridax wrote:

Bluemagetim wrote:

Thats is because Imaginary weapon was overtuned at d8s. It was a downgrade for system consistency.

Try that same analysis with contemporary focus spells for the ampted version of IW as it is now rather than comparing it to the d8 version we know was overtuned to the point magus players saw it as a holy grail of focus spells.

Okay, so by that standard, we should nerf gouging claw, which deals as much damage as imaginary weapon pre-nerf. Similarly, we should nerf fire ray, which was not far off from an amped imaginary weapon pre-nerf, and now deals as much damage while also having 60 feet of range and its bonus rider of creating burning ground, the latter of which occurs even on a non-critical miss. The argument that a d8 of damage is too much for a cantrip that is meant to be among the best in the game has, by my view, strictly no basis in fact.

I think graystone is right: whoever was in charge of this nerf likely saw all the Magus discussions, and decided to take this bazooka approach to balance where they turned off amp Spellstrikes (while also accidentally turning off reaction amps), which would've been enough to kill that combo, but then also nuked the MC archetype from orbit, and then overnerfed IW for good measure. The cantrip was never strong on the Psychic, an exceptionally squishy caster who would never normally put themselves within melee range of an opponent, let alone two. The Psychic was never going around doing too much damage, despite being designed to blast with certain subclasses, so I see no reason to nerf a cantrip they already synergized with poorly. I could have perhaps stomached the nerf better if the cantrip were given range or some other form of safety, but as of now there are options that deal equal or better damage without putting the class in nearly as much risk.

SuperParkourio wrote:

Is it really supposed to work like a spellshape free action? I think if they meant to do that,

...

"design space"...

can't stop myself from laughing on that one.

What IS the design space for a low damage melee range focus spell pray tell?

---

Paizo indeed is the one making the decisions and in this case they regaly fumbled at the very minimum.

Paizo is by no means faultless, and in recent books it is more often wrong rather than right...

---

my pov is very simple, if they need to cut down their releases to half to get the quality that pf2 had when it first laucnhed, then so be it, but i see no reason to buy almost anything released after the remaster.

as Hammerjack said: conditions do not stack unless explicitly called out to stack.

reading 2 is the correct one:

original success text: for 1 round can't use reactions, and make a save at start of turn or slowed 1 for that turn

for failure, we change the duration from 1 round to 1 minute:

failure: for 1 minute can't use reactions, and make a save at start of turn or slowed 1 for that turn

for crit failure we remove the save (automatically slowed instead):

critical failure: for 1 minute can't use reactions, slowed 1 for the duration.

Enchanter Tim wrote:

So the Commander's own Step doesn't trigger the effect, but he can still benefit from others taking the reation?

Correct, whether the Commander steps or not doesn't matter, since whether or not they themselves end up adjacent to an enemy is irrelevant for the tactic itself. But the Commander will gain the benefit of the tact against all enemies an ally steps adjacent to, unlike his squadmates who will only benefit against enemies other squadmates end up adjacent to.

Easl wrote:

I'm not sure about the RAI here. It seems counterintuitive to demand PCs move away and then back in to get the benefit. As a GM it would be a reasonable handwave I think to say as long as you've designated them squadmates, they don't have to move if they're already next to the targets. But on the other hand, an argument could be made that the benefit is coming from the enemy not expecting the pincer, so in that respect if the squadmates all just stay exactly where they are, there's no surprise or lack of expectation on the enemy's part. Thus a GM could reasonably interpret the tactic as requiring some actual movement in order to get an opponent off-guard. It's up to your table; I don't think handwaving it would be OP but I think you're correct about that scenario and the RAW not giving OG to Enemy3 if PCs 2 and 3 don't move.

I think another issue here is that despite the tactic's name it doesn't actually require doing any kind of pincer.

If you have Enemy 1 engaged with Ally 1, and then 20 feet back you have the Commander and a block of 5 squadmates, all with ranged weapons, and the Commander calls for Pincer Attack...

Then Ally 1 Steps to still be engaged with Enemy 1, and your 5 squadmates use their Reaction to step 5 feet back (as does the Commander)...

Then Enemy 1 is now off-guard to the Commander and the Squadmate block until the start of the Commander's next turn, but Ally 1 gets no benefit.

That's not really a Pincer Attack so much as...

Depends on how your mind's eye pictures this I guess, because someone "stepping in" to close the escape route/limit the movements of an enemy, while a firin g squad aims for that moment to pelt them with arrows is in a sense a pincer maneuver, and this... is what effectively happens:

someone move in and because he ends near he makes the target off guard for the firing squad that waits.

shroudb wrote:

another thing to note with the hazardous terrain is that RAW the size of the creature really changes the effectiveness of it.

as it's written, the damage is for each squar you enter, and a huge creature (as an example) could get 3-5x damage per movement (depening if moving straight or diagonically) compared to that to a medium creature.

without resistances, using coral eruption as an example, it could mean that an enemy takes 9-15 damage per 5ft of his movememnt as oppossed to a different enemy taking just 3

3d terrain (like some impulses) can make it even worse, with a huge creature entering 9 squares simultaneously when moving even straight through it...

I think that isn't the intent, especially since Howl of the Wild states:

When a Large PC moves through hazardous terrain or a similar obstacle that causes damage based on the number of squares the PC moves through, they take damage only once for each 5 feet of movement—a minotaur shouldn’t take four times as much damage for crossing a burning field as a human!

Sure, this is talking about PCs, but it should realistically apply to everything.

it's nice to have a faq, i too don't think that the original intent of hazardous terrain was to melt larger enemies, but as written, it would make stuff more complicated for large/huge enemies.

that said, i think the intent is even more clear with what you posted.

another thing to note with the hazardous terrain is that RAW the size of the creature really changes the effectiveness of it.

as it's written, the damage is for each squar you enter, and a huge creature (as an example) could get 3-5x damage per movement (depening if moving straight or diagonically) compared to that to a medium creature.

without resistances, using coral eruption as an example, it could mean that an enemy takes 9-15 damage per 5ft of his movememnt as oppossed to a different enemy taking just 3

3d terrain (like some impulses) can make it even worse, with a huge creature entering 9 squares simultaneously when moving even straight through it...

Going just by the title, I'd say that the highest ranking mage of ANY school would be eligible for the title.

Something like Archmage of Magical Engineering, Archmage of Ars Grammatica, and such.

It doesn't have to be that different Archmages are of equal power though.

To me it's more of a title of station rather a title of power.

---

Similarly to the squire/knight example abovementioned, where someone may have been knighted due to pedigree, connections, and such, and barely know where to point the pointy bit towards to, and another may have been a battle hardened veteran of war that got the title from his achievements.

well... to start with, convincing the bard to at least switch to a finesse weapon instead of an axe with +0 Str could help.

But from the get go, with such a composition and such (as you put it) "negative mastery", the best you could do is working with the GM to convince him to target Summons more, and then use more Summons yourself as the sorcerer just to put extra bodies on the battlefield for the enemies to whack. Illusionary creature could work similarily.

but it still needs to gm to have the enemies focus more on siad summons rather than the squishy actual casters that are handling the frontline.

Foil Senses says that you take precautions against "special senses" and tells you to look at the sidebar to see what are those.

the sidebar for "detecting with other senses" tells you that it is about:

If a monster uses a sense other than vision, the GM can adapt ways of avoiding detection that work with the monster's senses.

Darkvision only enhances Vision, so Foil Senses shouldn't help there since it covers everything else except Vision.

It will help with stuff like echolocation, smell, lifesense, spiritsense, and whatever other weird sense a monster may have, but not with vision related things.

for me it also totally depends on the actual circumstances, like, the rock climber example you gave, hanging from a rock and jumping to the next rock... i would say that would be part of the climb check overall.

on a dangling from a rope and swinging sort of scenario, i might call for an acrobatics check, and etc.

What does a Sudden Leap used in conjunction with Cloud Jump look like?

They do not combine very well:

Sudden leap is 2 actions for a Long/High Jump + Strike.

Long Jump already has a Stride in it, so realistically, you are looking at Stride + Jump + Strike all in 2 actions, with the added benefit that you can also go Vertical.

And with double the limits on the distance jumped without adding actions BUT with doubling the jump DC to silly levels.

So, you could (theoretically with a high enough roll) in 2 actions move up to 3 times your speed and strike, or move your speed horizontally and up to double your speed upwards and strike.

Cloud Jump enhances your jumps, vertical or horizontal, with adding more distance WITHOUT increasing the DC (but with extra actions) for long jumps, and making your verticals go really high.

Cloud Jump is also a modification on the base jump actions, so you can combine them with whatever jumps actions you want to do, or with other jump modifications like Quick Jump.

---

So, overall, Sudden Leap is better action compression BUT only when you want to do all those things together. And to go over your speed in jump distance you start to get into ridicusly high DCs.

Cloud Jump on the other hand can be only 1 action for a very high jump, or more actions for a very long jump (up to 3 times your speed for 3 actions, while sudden leap is up to 2 times your speed for 2 actions).

---

The only "combination" I see is that if you have both, you don't have to increase the DC on the double distance jump on the sudden leap, which is something great when it appears, but not something that i think will appear often.

NorrKnekten wrote:

I'm not to sure on what it is exactly that want clarification.

But yes, Creatures automatically observe something in plain sight. That is a creature that lacks atleast standard cover or concealment. It is covered under senses under Perception and Detection

Player Core pg. 433 2.0 "Precise Sense" wrote:

Average vision is a precise sense—a sense that can be used to perceive the world in nuanced detail. The only way to target a creature without having drawbacks is to use a precise sense. You can usually detect a creature automatically with a precise sense unless that creature is hiding or obscured by the environment

This remains rather symmetrical with

Player Core pg. 244 2.0 "Stealth/Hide" wrote:

If you successfully become hidden to a creature but then cease to have cover or greater cover against it or be concealed from it, you become observed again.

So yeah, if you open a door and 20 orcs are hiding in the room, then those 20 orcs all need their own hiding spot. Barring any purple ones with Legendary Sneak.

I think the clarification I want is why is that rule there for Hide but not for Sneak? To me, that implies that Undetected has a higher threshold for detection than Hidden does.

Maybe Hide in particular is just a poorly written action? Perhaps the verbiage that says if you lose your concealment/cover is superfluous? To me, it seems to be put there with a purpose, and then it is purposely different in the Sneak rules.

NorrKnekten wrote:

There is a segment in the GM core in regards to how you set up the encounter and marching order to accompany characters attempting to be stealthy, but this does not seem like the issue here.

Yeah, not the issue here. That's also confusing and difficult to get through all the rules on it, but it is there and consistent. We may not have run it exactly correct here, but that wasn't really the issue.

Sneak is just the movement from place A to place B while remaining hidden.

That's why Sneak says that if by the end of the movement you do not have cover/concealment, you automatically become observed.

But on another's creature's turn, even if you manage to Sneak from behind boulder A to behind boulder B, if the creature moves behind the boulders, he can now clearly see you.

---

Hide/Sneak is very intuitive in the system once you get it once right. To put it in simple terms:

You are standing behind a boulder not tall enough to fully cover you:
You are observed by the enemy since he can see you, but you have some cover from the boulder.

You Hide behind said boulder on your turn: You are now Hidden. That means the enemy can't see you, but he knows you are there.

You stealthily move (Sneak) from behind the boulder you were to another point that the creature still doesn't see you. Assuming you roll high enough, you move without making noise and without the enemy seeing you during that move.

Now the enemy knows you are somewhere, but doesn't know if you are still behing boulder A, you moved behind boulder B, you are behind Tree A, tree B, or anywhere really: you are Undetected by the enemy.

The enemy never even knew you were in the room: Unoticed.

shroudb wrote:

MagnificentMelkior wrote:

shroudb wrote:

Razing applies "whenever" you deal damage to an object.

But as far as the OP question stands, things are indeed more murky. Imo, in my tables, I would say that the Corrosive rune is the one dealing the damage and not the weapon (since you would in fact deal 0 "weapon" damage to the item but only the acid damage of the rune).

IF the corrosive rune was instead somewhat different like "deal your weapon's damage to the object" then I could see the razing rune being applied, but not how it currently works.

But have you considered the rules that define weapon property runes? It says "Property runes add special abilities to armor or a weapon in addition to the item’s fundamental runes"

Therefore, the corrosive rune critical effect is a special ability of the weapon its attached to. Therefore, any damage dealt by that ability (which is the weapon's ability now) is dealt by the weapon.

Yes, I have. I gave you my opinion on how the Corrosive rune is worded. You don't do any "weapon damage" in my opinion. So Razing wouldn't work. Adding a special ability to a thing, whatever that thing is, doesn't mean tht the damage isn't still coming from said ability.

A lightning zap 10ft away by lightning rune wouldn't cause more item damage because the weapon said lighning came out from was a sledghammer either. Both are abilities triggered by the runes.

That's as far sa RaW goes from my reading. And that's what I would tell my player.

BUT on real actual play, I would also throw the player some bonuses when he's hitting stuff that I think that razing would help, to even out the fact that razing is indeed a weak Trait and it makes players feel good to do some cool stuff at times with their weapons. But that's not a Rules argument.

Razing doesn't require "weapon damage." though, so why are you putting that in quotes? Its irrelevant. Razing requires you to deal damage with the weapon, which is not the same thing....

because razing isn't some sort of magical thing, it comes from the weapon being able to do more damage to structures/objects because of what the weapon is/how it's built.

an axe is better at cutting trees. A bolt coming out of an axe, wouldn't cause a tree to take extra damage just because the bolt originated from an axe.

as a straight up game example, there are in fact enemies printed with "weakness to axe" because they are tree enemies. If a barbarian with a shocking greataxe crits and a lightning bolt flies from his axe to one such enemy, i wouldn't apply the weakness either.

so, when damage isn't coming from the weapon damage itself, for me it wouldn't activate it.

But if a player tried to cut a tree using an axe and not a sword, i would give them a bonus despite there not being something "mechanical" to show that axes cut trees better than swords.

Razing is the mechanical equivalent of "this weapon is built to destroy objects better". But that's not a magical effect, nor something supernatural. That "property" isn't transferable to stuff attached to the weapon anymore than the "versatile" property of a sword being able to both slash and pierce being trasferable to those runes.

if acid comming out of the weapon isn't becoming "sharper" because it comes out of a sword, i don't see how it becomes "more destructive" when it comes out of a sledgehammer.

shroudb wrote:

Razing applies "whenever" you deal damage to an object.

But as far as the OP question stands, things are indeed more murky. Imo, in my tables, I would say that the Corrosive rune is the one dealing the damage and not the weapon (since you would in fact deal 0 "weapon" damage to the item but only the acid damage of the rune).

IF the corrosive rune was instead somewhat different like "deal your weapon's damage to the object" then I could see the razing rune being applied, but not how it currently works.

But have you considered the rules that define weapon property runes? It says "Property runes add special abilities to armor or a weapon in addition to the item’s fundamental runes"

Therefore, the corrosive rune critical effect is a special ability of the weapon its attached to. Therefore, any damage dealt by that ability (which is the weapon's ability now) is dealt by the weapon.

Yes, I have. I gave you my opinion on how the Corrosive rune is worded. You don't do any "weapon damage" in my opinion. So Razing wouldn't work. Adding a special ability to a thing, whatever that thing is, doesn't mean tht the damage isn't still coming from said ability.

A lightning zap 10ft away by lightning rune wouldn't cause more item damage because the weapon said lighning came out from was a sledghammer either. Both are abilities triggered by the runes.

That's as far sa RaW goes from my reading. And that's what I would tell my player.

BUT on real actual play, I would also throw the player some bonuses when he's hitting stuff that I think that razing would help, to even out the fact that razing is indeed a weak Trait and it makes players feel good to do some cool stuff at times with their weapons. But that's not a Rules argument.

NorrKnekten wrote:

So it really does seem like shroudb has the correct reading in that Razing only applies when its the weapon dealing the damage. So I expect it to come down to wether or not a GM considers the runes on a weapon to be part of the weapon. and on a case by case basis I wouldn't consider the arc of electricity from a Shock rune to trigger the Razing Trait after all.

I know it's sacrilegious to some here but I would allow it, simply so as a GM I could say lines like, "As Gorgoth swings his mighty hammer across the Goliath's shield the heavy hammer bursts in power, the resulting corrorsive ichor seeping into the vulnerable metal, sizzling with zeal when combined with the massive weapons' blow. You shatter his shield in a moment of glory."

Narratvely wise, I do tend to give the more fringe case Traits (like razing) bonuses when I can just so that the player feels nice.

But I do not base such rulings on strict RaW interpetations, instead i more or less freeform/handwave big power boosts when they could have applied.

As an example, I recently allowed a player with a Razing weapon to straight up break a wooden ceiling without checking numbers or such, just because his weapon is suppossed to be good vs structures.

Razing applies "whenever" you deal damage to an object.

which does mean, that if someone shield blocks your strike, you will indeed do more damage to the shield than what you'll deal the person behind the shield (Scenario 3 in Kelseus post).

But as far as the OP question stands, things are indeed more murky. Imo, in my tables, I would say that the Corrosive rune is the one dealing the damage and not the weapon (since you would in fact deal 0 "weapon" damage to the item but only the acid damage of the rune).

IF the corrosive rune was instead somewhat different like "deal your weapon's damage to the object" then I could see the razing rune being applied, but not how it currently works.

I like how things are written in a more casual way in general.

But...

The writers MUST take extreme care to use keywords when keywords are relevant and not use keywords when not relevant.

Because, as an example, with the exact same authority, with the exact same spell, a different thread may pop out asking if the caster should roll for Concealment as an example:

While aoe are exempt from it "normally", the "flavour text" clearly says that the affected ones are "targets" which would run into Concealment.

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RaI is in the eye of the beholder, and my reading is that "whispering baleful secrets" neither discerns friend from enemy (it's not like you're walking next to an enemy and whisper in his ear) nor is it actually a "targeted" spell, despite mention of both foes and targets in the descriptive text.

They give you the Grab/Knockdown Action for that limb that you choose.

Grab:

Requirements: The monster's last action was a successful Strike that lists Grab in its damage entry, or the monster has a creature grabbed or restrained;

Effect If used after a Strike, the monster attempts to Grapple the creature using the body part it attacked with. This attempt neither applies nor counts toward the creature's multiple attack penalty.

The monster can instead use Grab and choose one creature it's grabbing or restraining with an appendage that has Grab to automatically extend that condition to the end of the monster's next turn.

Knockdown:

Requirements: The monster's last action was a successful Strike that lists Knockdown in its damage entry;

Effect The monster attempts to Trip the creature. This attempt neither applies nor counts toward the monster's multiple attack penalty.

It's still an Action to perform eithr of those (Improved Grab and Improved Knockdown instead are Free actions)

I had to improvise mechanics for harvesting raw materials in my campaigns. One factor that shroudb overlooked is that the Earn Income downtime activity is for a downtime job that typically spans weeks. Imagine someone with a job as a duskwood lumberjack. Duskwood trees are rare. Their locales are guarded: the Verduran Forest is tended by druids who make treaties with lumbering companies, Darkmoon Vale is inhabited by kobolds, dire wolves, and werecreatures, and the Screaming Jungle is a deadly jungle flanked by natives who dislike outsiders. Thus, seeking duskwood as a job would involve a great deal of time negotiating with the natives and then searching for a duskwood tree. Finding the tree is a jackpot, a payoff for weeks of work, say 5 weeks. Thus, 34 days of no harvest followed by one day of 35-fold harvest. An 8th-level master of Nature would earn 3 gp per day, so multiply that by 35 to get around 105...

my idea for the Earn Income was indeed somewhat different:

it reaches about the same 1 month plus something for a full duskwood item, which is priced at 350gp. Which would require a level 11-12 master craftsman to pull off.

Again, this is fundamentally different from putting it into an adventure as loot, in which case I'd only have to be careful about the amount I would give the adventurer's access to depending on their level.

shroudb wrote:

A simple branch of duskwood had the same hardness and hp as a full blown steel shield.

that would mean that if anyone wanted to "harvest" duskwood as a normal business, he would need extremely specialized equipment to cut and process it, let alone how difficult it would be to actually process it into an intricate and precise form like a weapon or an armor.

as for PCs getting some by smacking the branches with their weapons, you'd have to account for the actual damage they would cause to the actual product, how much they would destroy its value by not harvesting it properly, how small the market for such an expensive material is (it doesn't matter if you have a 2000 gp statue if no one wants a 2000 gold statue...), and etc

The way I would "handle" PCs trying to harvesting it for profit would be fairly simple: Earn Income, of a sufficient high level Task, with maybe a big circumstance bonus on the roll due to the availability of the rare material to begin with, and then the result would be simultaneously how much "usable" wood is both harvested and you found a buyer for.

also do note that the "branch" is not a small twig, given that a 1 bulk object (which is alredy processed) is only 350gp, it's safe to assume that the "branch" refers to one of the main branches of a tree at least.

If I came across a whole g!##@~n dusk wood tree and cut off some seven foot long hunk of branch, I would just quit if you told me I somehow only harvested 28gp worth of duskwood. If you’re going to b*~@*%#% that hard don’t have the f!~@ing tree in the first place. Don’t jangle it in front of me like shiny car keys and joink it away with some b&+$@%#& subsystem roll that doesn’t model the in world situation in the slightest.

my explanation was more about what's happenning in the in-game world to not have the economy collapse (which a simple duskwood tree is trivial if you think that there are actually items worth more than kingdoms as you level up).

no, if i put a tree for a party, the most probable outcome would be to either:
a)already planned to have that as part of your expected earnings/loot as you adventure/level up
or
b)have you struggle to find an actual buyer for a 7ft long hunk of wood (which would in honestly be totaly dependent on where you are trying to sell said loot)

i've been playing for long enough to be on both sides of the table when adventurers come across a "huge door made of adamantine" to know what's happenning next^^

I always like free booze, either for you, or for your friends/targets/npcs, so Bottomless Stein and/or Flask of Fellowship are always nice to have, even on a much higher level character.

A simple branch of duskwood had the same hardness and hp as a full blown steel shield.

that would mean that if anyone wanted to "harvest" duskwood as a normal business, he would need extremely specialized equipment to cut and process it, let alone how difficult it would be to actually process it into an intricate and precise form like a weapon or an armor.

as for PCs getting some by smacking the branches with their weapons, you'd have to account for the actual damage they would cause to the actual product, how much they would destroy its value by not harvesting it properly, how small the market for such an expensive material is (it doesn't matter if you have a 2000 gp statue if no one wants a 2000 gold statue...), and etc

The way I would "handle" PCs trying to harvesting it for profit would be fairly simple: Earn Income, of a sufficient high level Task, with maybe a big circumstance bonus on the roll due to the availability of the rare material to begin with, and then the result would be simultaneously how much "usable" wood is both harvested and you found a buyer for.

also do note that the "branch" is not a small twig, given that a 1 bulk object (which is alredy processed) is only 350gp, it's safe to assume that the "branch" refers to one of the main branches of a tree at least.

Errenor wrote:

>When a character uses Taunting Strike are they *using* the Taunt Action as well?

-Yes, but it's modified by the Taunting Strike: "you Taunt the target"

>Does that mean that a character uses Taunting Strike and with Group Taunt they get to pick three targets to be taunted?
-No. "you Taunt the target".

>Does a character who is Raging lose the ability to use Taunting Strike and Armored Counterattack? Shouldn't those feats then have the Concentrate trait as well?
-No, you can use them as they don't have Concentrate trait. But Taunts inside of them don't work. No, they shouldn't, you are free to use or not to use them as you like. Combined activities in the game don't get traits of subordinate actions (and shouldn't).

>Does a character with Shielding Taunt and Group Taunt choose three enemies when they raise their shield?
- No. "then Taunt a creature".

Group Taunt does not have an action, it's not discrete like Elf Step. "When you use Taunt". By your logic from answer #1 if they are Using Taunt then they get to pick 3 targets. If they are not USING Taunt then the action doesn't have the concentrate trait. Likewise by your logic when someone uses Spellstrike it doesn't provoke Reactive Strikes because the Spellstrike doesn't have the Manipulate trait. The Spellstrike can't be stopped by the Silence spell because it doesn't require speaking.

As much as I'd love for it to work like you say (my current character build depends on it) there are logical and lexical inconsistencies in your explanation.

This is an official rules question, I need the PFS answer for this so I'd LOVE to have a weigh-in from the authors or devs, but if anyone else can point out any other explicit interaction that accounts for this?

That concentrate trait on Taunt doesn't even make sense to me. Smashing your weapon on your shield and screaming provocatively seems less "concentratey" than giving explicit trained orders and those don't have the Concentrate trait...

As the rest of the posters pointed, but to make it a bit more clear how and why it works that way:

While an Activity doesn't inherit the traits of the subordinate actions, the subordinate actions themselves still carry them.

So, as a simple example:
Sudden Charge:
Sudden Charge doesn't have either the Move or the Attack Trait itself as an ability.
But the Strides within the Sudden charge have the Move Trait (and thus may provoke Reactive Strikes) and the Strike within it still has the Attack Trait (and thus progresses and uses MAP).

Similarily, when you do something like a Taunting Strike:
It has neither the Attack nor the Concentrate trait by itself, but the Strike will have the Attack Trait (and thus progresses and uses MAP) and the Taunt will have the Concentrate Trait (and thus cannot be used while raging).