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So there are a couple of questions about eidolons that weren't really answered last time I looked and I wanted to check if we had heard something since.

1st Can eidolon use mundane items (healers tools, thieves tools etc)
2nd What happens to afflictions on the eidolon when they are unmanifested (poison, disease etc).
3rd What happens when an eidolon is reduced to 0 hps by a death effect (does the specific rule that an eidolon unmanifest when reaching 0hps trump the general rule that creatures die when reduced to 0 hps by a death effect)

I was mulling over how I would build batman in pathfinder 2e and a funny thought occurred to me.

If you look at what batman is foremost respected for (or at least my impression) it's his detective skill (perception) and iron will (will).

So when making batman who you want to have an iron will and great detective skills and fast reflexes you would pick wisdom as one of his highest stats. Everything wisdom does in the game all of wisdoms skill (except perhaps religion) are vital for your batman.

But inherently when I think of batman the character I don't think of him as an incredibly wise individual, he makes reckless descions and puts others in danger fairly frequently and to a great extent he lets his trauma have far to much dominance of his life

I find amusing the interplay between wisdom as a game mechanic and wisdom as a concept. Though in truth all it really shows is the obvious fact that vague somewhat philosophical concept do not map onto rigid game mechanics. A fact that anyone remotely sensible ,(ie not me) wouldn't need to have spend 30 minutes of his life thinking about.

But are their any functional mechanics that don't quite map to the concept that vaguely inspired that have amused you recently.

I don't love the wizard class I don't like prepared casters and for the most point I find the classes feat to be fairly dull.

But I don't get people casting it as a
a weak class, it has the most spells per day over every class and access to a great list of spells from 1- 10 at later levels a wizard could easily have multiple encounter defining spells per encounter.

It is a class the particularly struggles at low levels before spells get good (all of its class power is in spells rather than unique actions and focus powers) but that isn't a unique problem for wizards and from level 7 plus it's one of the strongest casters in the game.

So while the wizard may not have the prettiest exteriors or be that fun to drive but it's motor is solid prescion engineering and will get you where you need to go.

To summarise the wizards fundamentals are fine it could do with some glitz and a fancy paint job.

I am not a fan of prepared spell casting in pathfinder since 1e I have ended up keeping a similar spell liar each day so I didn't drive myself mad trying think about the perfect combination of spells. I do that for spontaneous too but at least that's once per level only.

Wizards were and are the most prepared spellcaster in the game, they are to put it bluntly the highest effort spellcaster to run and if you got your preparations wrong one of the most frustrating to play.

But people like that about them. Any change that would make them less teeth grindy for me would deprive wizard players of their fun.

So who agrees with me that spontaneous casting is easier, funner and possibly more powerful because of the amount of choice you have for each spell slot on the spur of moment.

Or who likes micromanaging a big list of spells each morning to find the ultimate combination ?

Ps this is a mostly tongue and cheek post inspired by the anamist and kinetesist getting me thinking about different styles of spell preparation.

So there are a couple of quality of life changes I think would make the anamist funner to play.

First letting them you wisdom for thier granted lore skills will do a lot to see those skills used.

Second making them a 3 slot prepared caster who can sacrafice spell slots of equal level to cast apparition spells (like the Cleric could do for cure spells in 1e) would make the tracking a little easier rather than having two different sets of spell slots.

I think adding the flourish trait to some of the vessel spells would also stop people stacking earth's bile in an unsightly fashion.

So there is a big post about the nature of wizards and how they are balanced around the expectation that wizards can always target every defence.

I don't want to go to much into either the logistics of that both in terms of spell lists or the knowledge to prepare the right spell for the right day.

But if save jan-ken-pon is meant to be what wizards are about then I find it really frustrating that their are a lot of monsters with very similar defences so you can't really play the game to your advantage and also their are a lot of enemies with immunities to the majority of the things their weak save protects against.

For example I recalled on a monster and the gm informed me that will was its weakest saves which seems really cool and useful information apart from the fact the monster was mindless and immune to all mind-effecting effects which are 90% of all will saves (and all of the will saves I had prepared), which was a little bit frustrating and a near complete waste of action.

So what do people think, do you as a wizard successfully target enemies weak saves most of the time and how often do you manage to find a weak save to target ?

So I am not convinced by the tenth level animist feature that gives you a bunch more sustained spells at level 10.

I would rather the class had a consistent patter throughout. Its not a real problem but its a bit annoying.

As far as I can tell kinetesist's don't have anything that works on golems expect hoping they have the right element. As everything they do counts as magic ?

I suppose this wouldn't be a major problem expect I am planning to be part of a all kinetesist party and I was wondering what to do if we encounter a golem ?

So someone mentioned divine booms on another post and i didn't know that was a thing so I looked them up on nethys and they seem fun but also intentionally not balanced. Which made think how many people actually use them.

So in the name of curiosity and using a deeply empirical scientific method. I thought I would ask you on the paizo forums have you received (in game) a divine boon or have as a representative of the gods (GM) handed one out ?

So my reading of the rules on multiple Apex items is you can get the stat increase only once but you can also get the nice secondary bonuses of apex items more than once.

So at high levels of might be worth spending the gold to to get the sweet defensive feature of the Gorgon armbands alongside my belt of giant strength ?

So apart from the extreme spell slot scarcity of the first couple of levels one of the most frustrating times for a caster are levels 5 and 6 where your proficiency is a rank below your martial bodies and enemies saves and defences feel like they to have scaled assuming your getting that +2.

Those 2/4 levels always felt unecessary to me casters were nefed heavily from the last edition and those 3rd level spells are no where near the step change they were in pathfinder. It created in my mind an unnecessary pain point in the life and prolongs some of the frustrations of earlier levels.

So what do you think it achieves and why did the developers put it in.

So I noticed the pyro kinetesist has a capstone big area effect fireball that kills people it reduces to 0hps (turns them to ash) and has a really cool rider effect.

What I wanted to confirm is that all undead and constructs are immune to this impulse in its entirety (including the fire damage) because it has the death trait ?

Fire specialisation is fairly common thematically, your Zukos and Firestarters are a fairly common fantasy sci-fi trope. I have seen a few fire specialised casters whilst playing the game.

But traditionally in DND over fire specialists run in to trouble with a fairly large contingent of monsters who resist or are immune to fire. So if you only do fire you can end fairly useless in such encounters. Now these encounters are likely to be fairly uncommon but sometimes you can have whole dungeons full of fire elementals or devils etc. Which would be fairly frustrating to play through.

Now for most casters this isn't to much of a worry as their are only so many fire spells and there is no real benefit other than thematics for specialising that far.

But I am a little worried about kinetesist as they are rewarded for specialising (going of the playtest) could easily end up capable of only doing fire damage. So I wonder to people think that being very weak against fire monsters is part of the fantasy of the pyrokinetic ? Or are you hoping that the class gives the kinetesist some way to bypass resistance and immunity ? Or do you think that fire kinetesist should just pick up another element not to get stuck in those situations ?

So this is a tale of two games both pretty high level.

I'm the first game we encountered a a number of force blades doing their best poe impression and we used Disintegrate fairly wastefully to destroy the force blades.

In the second game with a second GM in a completely different ap there was hazard that sprung a force barrier up and could easily be disarmed from beyond that force barrier.

So first I threw a hammer at a monster behind this barrier not being told it exists. He tells me that my hammer bounces of the invisible barrier. I go great I have see invisibility so I would have seem the barrier.

Then he goes no this force barrier is not a wall of force so it's not necessarily invisible like that. So I go then I can see the force barrier because it's not invisible. He goes no it could be translucent. Now a translucent wall is by definition visible. But he is the GM so we moved on.

My ally tried to Disintegrate the invisible transclucent wall of force and the GM said that doesn't work you can't just can't solve hazards with the right spell. And I was like that is exactly how Disintegrate works it's says so quite plainly in the spell that it destroys force constructs.

In the end it's the gms game so we moved on, but it annoyed me because part of what I really value in good GM's is that they feel like a fair arbiter of the rules and he doesn't.

But besides venting a little frustration I just wanted to double check I was right about Disintegrate as long as the force effect isn't bigger than 10ft or specifically says that Disintegrate doesn't work on it then Disintegrate is your going to spell for taking down force effects ?

One of my gm's is doing a bunch of set piece battles with a vague arena theme and its been agreed we will alternate (eventually).

So I had two idea for set pieces ridiculous battles the first was just take a small city map apportion it into 5ft squares and stick normal size tokens down and throw a severe encounter at the party. With the flavour they and the monsters they are fighting are massive and they are fighting over a small city.

But I was debating how to sell the city theme I have been considering having some rewards (because multidimensional arena in Lilliput) for preventing massive collateral damage (maybe just tracking area effects and labelling some of the buildings as schools and hospitals so the players avoid those spaces). Anyone got any ideas how I could sell this.

I have another idea based on the evil dead of having the party aim to keep themselves and some teenagers alive against the possessing demons long enough to do an occult ritual to banish the demons but that is still very much in the drawing room stage.

So we are slowly making our way toward the big reveal of the 2e kinetesist which i have been looking forward to since the start of this edition.

My take from the playtest was that it was interesting and cool like the swashbuckler and like the swashbuckler it might not be that effective in practice.

But the post playtest post did fill me with increased confidence and I am very curious to see what they have come up with.

What are your hopes for the class and when do you plan to play it. I in a group that are talking about an all dwarf all kinetesist run of the sky kings ap.

I was wondering if anyone had any advise on how to build Vivi from FF9 (small black mage construct). For a level 13 game with free archetype.

I was wondering how someone would play a black mage in pathfinder 2e with at least some focus on elemental damage spells (your fire, cold, lightning).

Any one done such a build how did it work ?

Do the greater boots of bound enhance your ability to leap further than the normal boots of bounding ?

I was in an AP and we encountered an enemy that had immunity to unconsciousnes, immunity to death effects and regeneration Vs chaos. At that point we had no way of knocking them out or killing them beside disintegration which we didn't have. The GM had to have a passing cleric of a chaotic god show up to deliver the coup de gras.

That was incredibly annoying as encounter design goes. The lesson we took from this was keep a bunch of alignment ampules around with us at all times.

But in my opinion don't make enemies that can only be defeated by a set means that not all parties are likely to have.

Did we ever get any clarification if eidolons could use skills actions which they are proficient in (treat wounds, pick locks, crafting/repair) but that require tools ?

Could an eidolon with battle medicine feat use it?

As a somewhat dubious exercise I was thinking about if you had to have everyone in your party as the same class which class would work best.

Now obviously a mixed capacity party is better as it provides a flexibility of approaches. So for a a single class party to work best it would probably need to be as flexible a class as possible.

So my take of the top class for this would probably be the summoner (they do reasonable damage, are reasonably defensive and gain reasonable utility for spellcasting) so you would end up with four weak martials and 4 weak casters (who could cover all 4 traditions). You end up with all of your bases covered if none of them covered particularly well.

A party of 4 druids would be my second choice (very flexible, access to healing, blasting and some control, ok hit points and some defensive options).

So what is your take on which single class could make the best party ?

Can doubling rings apply the runes of a weapon drawn from a throwers bandolier to a second weapon. I was thinking of using this for a twin thrown weapon weapon (two light hammers) switch hitter ?

I have been playing outlaws of alkenstar and gotten a very wild wild west feel to the setting and the way it plays out. Wild Wild West is both a terrible movie with will Smith's which spawned an ear worm and an awesome old syndicated tv show. What I found amusing was that one of the important npcs for game was called loveless which may or may not have been a reference to the main villain from the movie.

So I was wondering are there any other spoiler free references made to pulp sci-fi and fantasy I am missing in some of the other adventure paths.

Because of the weirdness of hit points I kind of struggle to visualise what damage numbers are meant to mean in terms of real harm.

Take for example a humble fireball you could use that could destroy 20-30 peasants in a blink of an eye. But could do less than 1/5 of an adventures hit points, so it makes you wonder is a fireball a thing that melts flesh or if it is a minor hazard that you can rush through ?

Do you see your high level adventurers as people that can tank being hit by a giants sword head on ?

Your slight wizard being more resilient than the two tonne giant you killed half a dozen levels back ?

I was wandering if there existed any guides to being a blaster caster and how to be reasonably effective from level 1 to 10?

When people talk about the alchemist's strengths the thing that comes up most is your ability to prepare for problems.

So I was wondering how does their effectiveness especially their ability to prepare for a wide variety of situations compare to the king of preparation the humble wizard/cleric in this edition.

Are they as flexible as a wizard and do they have as many tools each day that they can prepare as they cleric?

How do alchemical items compare to spells ?

I was looking at building a thaumaturge and was looking though the implents and noticed the wand seemed pretty underwhelming until paragon.

I am possibly unfairly comparing it to electric arc but most of the implements give you really cool novel abilities that work well together and the wand gets you a pseudo cantrips that doesn't benefit from your main class feature.

Has anyone used it and how did they find it ?

I am building a campaign using 2e set in a fantasy 15 century holy Roman empire with intrigue based around the election of a new emperor.

Now I want other heritages but human to be an option but I was wondering how I should have heritages intersects with national lines.

Or if I should bite the bullet and say all heritages live everywhere regardless of national line and not worry.

So I was wondering does paizo have any information about heritage, Identity and nationality collide in Golarian ?

So on the other side of the fence on 5e land their has been a major reasonably sizable blow up about a new open gaming license. Were still in leaking and leaking territory with nothing verified. But assuming worst case scenario how much do people think pathfinder might be affected by all this ?

So I had a pathfinder 2e GM that had us all taking a set of challenges to earn the approval of the local leadership.

One of those trials was literally bearing a cross on a mountain hike. Now the way he set that up is we needed to make a standard DC for level 10 athletics check every hour to keep the cross aloft.

Now we had two non strength focused casters who hadn't focused on athletics in the group who were incapable of lifting the cross and so couldn't join the party on their hike for two weeks.

Now personally I am of the opinion this wasn't the best bit of GM I had ever seen but was wondering what he should have done differently ?

I am bard at level 4 and was thinking of arcytping into psychic to grab some offensive focus spells to give me a little more variety on my focus casting.

I have decentish AC (17+Level) so I was caught in condrum about what to take in terms of psychic cantrips, anyone have any recommendations ?

Hi I noticed people talking about harm blasters in another thread and suggesting they were good. I always thought harm was one of the weakest damage spells scaling poorly and vs fortitude which is one of the most commonly strong or extreme saves for monsters.

So I was wondering what I was missing ?

I am not sure this is a problem but single element fire kinetsists are very much shut down by enemies with fire immunity which at least in quite the few aps I have played seems quite common.

One example was an extended conflict with the forces of a fire themed God which had one fire immune enemy after the next. I can't remember anything else quite do intense but they are common enough that most aps have a few encounters where fire isn't a viable option.

Now obviously this is nothing new and was an issue in 1e too, but the fire kinetisist does seem the most vulnerable class to this issue in 2e, most spellcasters would need to select all spells that are entirley invalidated by fire immunity. Its doable but its very much an active choice.

Whereas the kinetesist really needs to make two choices (soul element and fire) to be in that situation and the pyromancer/fire starter is probably the most common trope of kinetesist (followed by your aether Carrie telekinetisist which is no longer an option in 2e).

Kinetic Aura especially damaging kinetic auras are mostly pretty weak and situation until 8th level when suddenly they are incrediable with the shape aura ability.

That feels like weird balance to me anyone played auras before and after the feat ?

I thought I would list the main issues with kinetic blasts as I could see them, this isn't about damage just some practicality issues I thought I could highlight in one place.

First they count as spells for all defensive features this means that golums are mostly immune entirely to kinetesist (apart from golums who effected by fire). The kinetsist doesn't at the moment have much alternatives to impulses driven offence and they have a lot elemental flexibility than the casters which help them counter golem.

Second melee kinetic blasts provokes, its minor but there seems limited reason to massive disentive kinetists from going into melee.

Third it doesn't benefit from haste because it's a separate action rather than a strike (even though it includes a strike).

I think the easiest solution to all of these is to simply consider a gathered element a weapon (with the statistics ofa kinetic blast) that you can strike with.

My favourite bit of the 1e kinetesist were the infusions that let you feel like you could fully customise your element. Currently their aren't any infusions in this new playtest do you recon we will see anything like infusions in the final product?

I was wondering does the target of flinging updraft provoke attacks of opportunity ?

Having devoured the playtest material I have found I really love a good number of the impulses.

But I have found one element has far more of my favourites and that element is air.

I love at will flight and getting from level 8 and being able to share it is amazing.

I love invisibility and getting it at will is also amazingly solid.

Ferocious cyclone is my pick for the best aoe the kinetesist gets a 10ft wide 60ft line is a large area of effect but I also find lines easier than bursts to avoid friendly fire and the damage is almost as good as the 3 actions abilities with less hurdles to jump through.

I also like spiked skin as a long duration damage mitigation and damage hat scales really well.

So what are your favourite elements and impulses.

My gut reactions to the kinetic blasts and the martial element of the class was that the damage was fairly low due to relatively low damage weapons (kinetic blasts), slightly lower than martial accuracy and no real damage adding features (rage, snaek, spellstrike, stances).

But I was wondering has anyone done the maths and how do the kinetesist do. More importantly has anyone go to the playtest bit yet and how does the kinetesist feel.

At the moment the kinetesist seams caught between caster and martial which would be an OK position to be if they like the magus and summoner had the action economy to balance both.

But lacking the action economy they end up feeling a bit mediocre at both separately, lesser than the sum of their parts.

Which has lead to a lot of debates on both their martial and caster accuracy/dc.

My critic is at the moment they seem to lack something that bring those sides together into a coherent whole.

I am hoping that for the finale release they get something to cross the streams.

Or get an option to focus on or the other, because if I am spending all my actions on gathering and using overflow actions I don't need master martial proficiency.

So unless I am misreading the class, apart from the 1-3 impulse feats you get at 1st level and the 2 from versatility at much later levels your class feats are doing double duty as class feats and also as spells for each of your class.

This means the kineticist scales more by feats than any class in the game thus far and thus have the biggest opportunity cost for archetypes.

My gut reaction is they probably need more more impulse feats independent of their class feats. But what's everyone else's take ?

I really like the Thaumaturge class it's my favourite class since the bard and in my humble opinion the best thing paizo has made since the core 2e book.

It's fun, powerful and really unique.

It is the only class in the game that managed to have a non accuracy key stat with good options to entirely mitigate that accuracy issue.

It also let's you at high level ride a sword like Mary Poppins with my favourite now you can fly feat.

How does everyone else rate the class and what's your favourite feat/implement (the flying one/tome for me).

So for my reading you should be able to combine implement empowerment with unarmed attacks without issue as unarmed attacks aren't held in your hand.

I was wondering you were holding two implements (say a tome and weapon) could you kick someone with your unarmed attack or do you have to use your fist?

Also if you have the monks powerful fist ability do you have to use your fist to gain the 1d6 damage dice?

So it's something I have seen a couple of times with magus and Eldritch Archer investigators is that they hunt for the most damaging focus spell to stack on the end of their attack.

Up until the psychic that focus spell tended to be Fire Ray (scales of 2d6)

Now on a whole I wasn't blown away by psychic focus spells but and imaginary weapon fell perfectly into that it was a great Melee spell on the chassis of a 6 hp no armor caster, using it to best effect to (Melee two enemies) puts you in melee with two enemies which 6/10 doesn't end well.

But what it does seem to be great for is the ultimate focus cantrip to archetype for as Eldritch Archer or Magus looking to pick up a heavy hitting encounter spell.

I was wondering if their were any other spells or class feats or powers that end up being more effective for another class by archytpe than their own.

I have been playing Strength of a thousand for quite some time (from level 10 - 16) and I noticed the only things that actually end up killing player characters are death effects.

We have had a few pc's die from death effects mostly from spells (phantasmal killer and wail of the banshee) and quite a few near misses.

Is it usual for you to find in the late game the only way your character dies is death effects or is that just my experience ?

So assuming your flurry ranger with agile melee weapons against a standard on level opponent will you end up doing more damage with two actions double slicing or attacking 3 times (hunted strike).

I was going to try and do the maths myself using a high level dc to see but suspected someone has already done it and I could reap the benefits by asking ?

So there was an recent errata that reduced mimble companion armor class by 2 from level 8 onwards.

So I was curious how tough do people find animal companions ? Do you feel they die to quickly or easily ?

Did nimble companions from level 8 onwards before this errata feel very tanky ?

For those who play companions how often do they go down and how often do they die ?

Scare to death was the best skill feat in the game capable of occasionally killing lower level enemies outright.

It had a reputation for being one of the most fun feats in the game and for being all kinds of overpowered and annoying some gms.

It has now been nerfed fairly substantially to the point thar your very rarely going to see enemies die from it.

What do people think , are you happy it was nerfed did they go far enough did they go too far.

My take is that is balanced now but a lot less fun (moving from actually realising its name to being a slightly empowered demoralise) which is fine if slightly disappointing for someone who likes big over the top feats.

Is scare to death post errata still thr best skills feat in the game ? If not which feats move up to fill it's spot (I'm looking at you reveal machinations).

So to avoid the rather loaded term of race in 2e they changed to referring to ancestories in 2e.

I have just noticed that the term ancestory rather presumes procreation and lineage and some of 2e ancestories can't reproduce themselves and have creators rather than parents.

I feel if we were to get a third edition we should call what we now call ancestories beings (as in human/Elf/dwarf etc beings) as this term doesn't assume any features of the creature types in question.

Also if they were to ever port it over to starfinder 2e then they could do a book called being's from out of space. Win win.