whew's page

When I played "The Cyphermage Dilemma", set in Riddleport, I was disappointed that there were no riddles or cyphers. So, I made a puzzle brochure for tourists:

Tourist Brochure Puzzle

Alas, the table did not make.

Sometimes a rule could be interpreted multiple ways. If one version is too good to be true, it probably is. If a rule seems to have wording with problematic repercussions or doesn’t work as intended, work with your group to find a good solution, rather than just playing with the rule as printed.

Claiming "plain english" is "not clever" when you're deliberately choosing a dysfunctional interpretation of the rules.

So was Adam Smith "anti-capitalist"? Or did you misspeak? Because it doesn't seem like you can have it both ways.

I'm guessing that calling Adam Smith "anti-capitalist" was a joke.

Quench

Wait, the Imperial bloodline can do what?!

Perhaps when I rebuild my PFS sorcerers, they will no longer be multiclass psychics!

(PS: my PFS wizard also has a multiclass, but is not getting a remaster rebuild because that would of course be a downgrade.)

If you can re-use it, then you should immediately test it right after you make it and get your focus points back. There would be no need for text about not regaining focus points. If they meant to allow multiple uses, they would have worded it differently.

You can’t regain the Focus Points you spent to create the annotated composition until it is activated or loses its magic.

When you activate it, it uses up the focus point(s) used to make it. It is not intended to be used more than once.

In the current Starfinder rules, when they say "technological", they mean "electronic". An "analog" weapon shouldn't have a computer (or a battery?), but does have advanced materials, weird science, or whatever to make it not "archaic".

In my opinion, if EA was so valuable that martials would invest character budget to acquire and cast it over their Feat/Class enhanced MAP 2 & 3 Strikes, that's a SEROUIS red flag.

You don't just get EA for that feat. You also get Ray of Frost or Shield, the ability to use True Strike scrolls with 1 action and no skill check, and now qualify for feats that give higher-level spells.

There are rank-1 spells that don't say "I am out of juice and am not pulling my weight" in high-level combat:

1-action rank-1 arcane spells: true strike, jump, kinetic ram, buoyant bubbles, pet cache ...

reaction rank-1 arcane spells: air bubble, feather fall, interposing earth, Schadenfreude ...

Rank-1 scrolls are indeed cheap, but that doesn't mean that they're good in high-level combat. Free hands are a very limited resource.

Rather than continuing to think unkind thoughts about Paizo staff and the competence of all NPC wizards throughout history, I have come up with IC explanations for why the battle magic school has those spells:

1) (for APs) They're worried that students are going to move to the boonies and not have good access to new spells. Thus, it is more important to have good high-level spells.

2) (for PFS) You have great access to new spells, and some of your fellow PCs know and use the pre-remaster schools! However, you trained at the Arcanamirium, whose new management has an agenda ...

The old D&D Monster rules said something like: by default, all creatures have darkvision unless they are serving a PC.

The shadow signet also lets you ignore cover. In my experience, it's pretty common that allies give cover to my foes.

My elemental sorcerer is one scenario away from getting a signet to use with Elemental Toss. I'm not sure that any of my other caster characters will ever get one.

My melee soldiers in current Starfinder use a reach weapon with Opportunistic weapon fusion. The enemies eat Attack of Opportunity if they misbehave.

My soldier1/mystic is sometimes more dangerous when it's not my turn!

AestheticDialectic wrote:

You can't have your cake and eat it too.

I wonder if people realize how facetious this turn of phrase is.

Like the idea that you can have a cake but you're not allowed to eat it is not a commentary on trade off it's a description of insanity.

The whole idea that you need to be 'punished' to somehow counterbalance having something good in your life is absurdly toxic nonsense.

No, it means that after you eat your cake, you don't still have that cake.

DF's houserules and advice are good for campaigns with super-long adventuring days. But he hasn't been adding that qualification all along, so his endless repetition that wizards are "boring" just looks like unhinged wizard hate. I haven't counted, but it feels like he has more anti-wizard rant posts than everyone else combined.

To me, one of the perks of playing a caster is that I can easily make a character that rarely has to roll to hit.

Some spells work better for prepared casters. Some spells on scrolls work fine even if you have to spend an action to draw them (and some don't). A very few spells are best used in wands.

If a combat spell doesn't work better for spontaneous casters, it's probably too situational to be very popular. It's totally reasonable to prefer spontaneous casting.

The spontaneous caster handles common situations better. For the prepared caster to possibly be better, there needs to be a variety of adventures that aren't just a-bunch-of-close-combats-in-the-same-day:

* Extreme environments, like under water?

* Defending a town from a horde that arrives in a few days so you have time to make barriers and traps?

* Solving a murder mystery? (maybe not a good example, as charisma skills will likely be helpful)

* The villagers ask you to kill X for them, so now you know you are fighting X.

* a PC has died, and now you need a bunch of copies of Gentle Repose? (Yes, a spontaneous caster can get a wand, but it's still easier/cheaper for a prepared caster.)

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It takes more work and talent to make a prepared-casters-shine-often campaign, but it's going to be a less repetitive, more interesting campaign.

AestheticDialectic wrote:

... focus spells which auto heighten are not equivalent in power to the highest tiers of slotted spells

I disagree that they aren't as powerful.

I don't know why you keep making this claim. How do you back it up?

Once again, what are you doing with your slots that I can't do with a focus spell combined with my slots? Show the proof.

Elemental Blast is shapeable. It's a focus spell that does up to 18d6 bludgeoning or fire and you choose the shape of it when casting.

I'm picking this one because Elemental Blast is easily compared to Fireball, and is mostly useful in the same situations.

Elemental Blast does 2d6 less than Fireball of the same rank, so that makes it effectively one rank lower. It loses another rank (approximately) worth of damage because Focus Spells don't get Dangerous Sorcery. In the rare event that a line or cone would work better than a burst, I can cast some other spell, so shapeable doesn't make up for the lost damage.

Necklace of Fireballs doesn't require a feat or archetype to use. It does need a free hand, so while some common fighter builds can't easily use it, rogues, monks, and casters-whose-tradition-doesn't-give-fireball often can.

For most spells martials care about / actual utility spells, your spell casting modifiers don't matter at all.

By that logic, for most spells casters care about, spell attack modifier doesn't matter at all.

That's because, in both cases, people naturally avoid spells that won't work well for them.

Requirements You are holding or wearing alchemist’s tools

You use Craft and alchemist’s tools to identify an alchemical item

Yes, a fighter with wizard MC is better than a magus with no feats. However, the magus can also take the wizard MC, and will then have more spells than the fighter.

My PFS inventor's companion has full construct immunities, and it doesn't break the game if there is just one. I suppose it might if there were several at the same table.

Having both positive- and negative-healed characters at the same table does generally make it harder for the PCs, especially in Org Play where the other PCs may not be built to support it.

The PFS bards that I have seen tend to have Lingering Composition but not Harmonize. No-one has ever complained.

Next level, I will see if anyone is upset that my bard doesn't have Inspire Heroics. It's beloved on these forums, but it looks like a trap to me: I don't want to be perma-slowed by not using my focus points for Lingering Composition.

I do understand that optimized-for-PFS is not always the same as optimized-for-APs-with-lots-of-combats-in-the-same-day.

In addition to not being in the gear section, arrows also aren't listed as "arrow (10)", which is the format that would indicate that the bulk was for one arrow.

Berserker makes me think of 3e "frenzied berserker", which I hated.

I'm confident that the new "core" books will have a paragraph or two on their back covers clarifying what is in them and what other books (if any) are recommended. Furthermore, online booksellers like Paizo and Amazon will also have that same text (or more).

Previous Paizo rulebooks have this. My 5e hardcover Player's Handbook has it. Every ebook and most other things I've bought from Amazon have it.

PF1 had the Selective Spell metamagic feat and metamagic rods. Being able to exclude allies made Fireball much less situational.

It doesn't take metagaming to know when your target has cover.

My most-often-used roll-to-hit spell is my elemental sorcerer's focus spell: Elemental Toss. Its big advantage is that it's a one-action spell, so it doesn't fit well with True Strike. However, a shadow signet would work fine.

A fey or draconic sorcerer could learn fireball as a non-signature 7th level spell and would then only be able to cast it as a 7th-level spell.

If you get knocked unconscious, you don't drop it.

About skymetals, does it mean that they conjure them or that there are skymetal caves within absalom?

Or it's all about giant organizations traveling the space in search for previous materials?

Perhaps the skymetals are left over from that time when the machine mage Karamoss attacked Absalom.

If magus archetype is bad because it doesn't get enough spells, then magic warrior is even worse. Further, unlike the magic warrior, the magus can choose any (arcane) spells they like, and pick different spells every day.

The magus also gets Master Spellcasting Proficiency from spending those 3 feats.

Finally, if arcana is nearly useless, then the magic warrior dedication's expert-in-arcana-and-mwangi-lore surely isn't as good as getting 2 cantrips which can be used with spellstrike.

If you take any two spellcasting archetypes, then OF COURSE you can end up with more spells than if you just took either one by itself. Since spellstrike keeps low-proficiency cantrips usable at high levels, magus archetype is especially good for characters with two spellcasting archetpes.

But my concern is that if the spellcasting progression of Magus archetype was improved, then why would the Wizard archetype even need to exist? What is its niche?

MC Spellstrike and Dimensional Assault only work in melee. MC Wizard's niche is characters who aren't melee martials. Also, the wizard refocus is less silly.

Indeed. No need for an errata. You've got the feat twice.

If you have the feat twice, then you can retrain one of them.

Healing 1 HP at range on a dying person can be quite useful.

I'd say it should work like using other second-printing toolkits: just 1 hand is needed, and if any stable surfaces are involved, using them is already included in the 3 actions (or 1 action).

I agree that the ground usually counts as a stable surface.

If you're using Gale Blast with Expanded Spellstrike, the tiny area is often more desirable, and not having range is irrelevant.

Furthermore, you cast focus spells using a special pool of Focus Points—you can’t prepare a focus spell in a spell slot or use your spell slots to cast focus spells; similarly, you can’t spend your Focus Points to cast spells that aren’t focus spells.

The charges on a staff can clearly be used to cast spell-slot spells. Therefore, there's nothing that says they can be used to power focus spells, because focus pool points are not the same thing as spell slots and they're not interchangeable.

I don't see anything that would prevent using Handwraps of Mighty Blows with the Nails.

EDIT: It's also a matter of balance. Giving some classes extra 10th level spells while others simply don't have any ability or feat granting extra slots would be a bit ridiculous.

Here's why I think that balance requires that things that auto-heighten need to go to level 10:

1) Hit points keep increasing after level 17.

2) Major striking runes are level 19.

The FAQ says to add the text in three places, in the paragraphs for Miraculous Spell, Primal Hierophant, and Archwizard's Spellcraft. That means it applies to only those spell slots. That is the official ruling.

How can I be sure of that? 1) Any alternate interpretation requires reading just a sentence fragment and ignoring the rest and is thus clearly inferior. 2) Using my interpretation, there is nothing wrong or incomplete with the wording as-is.

Bardo_RS wrote:

The talent tells you exactly what to roll against, and it doesn't ask you to treat wounds, it just asks you to use DC and heal the corresponding result. If they wanted you to use the treat wounds effects table they would ask you to simply roll the corresponding action just once per day per target and not remove wounds.

They did not write it that way because there are many things (notably feats) that specifically affect Treat Wounds (an exploration action) and not Battle Medicine (a combat action).

Me, I use the same DC as Treat Wounds and use the same success table too, including critical.

I think a big reason that BM isn't just Fast Treat Wounds is so that if you did one of them recently, that doesn't stop you from using the other. It makes it much safer to Treat Wounds in a place where you might get attacked, and you don't have to wait another ten minutes (or hour) after finishing treating wounds before continuing in the dungeon just so you can use BM.

EDIT: I also use the same DC as Treat Wounds and use the same success table too, including critical.

You are making a wrong read of the rule, all these feats effects a actual action roll, and not are new actions, thus they follow their rules as normal. Battle medicine is a new action who only use the DC and some things of treat wounds as refer, but you not roll treat wounds.

Now you're just making up rules out of nothing. "New Action" as you are using it is not mentioned anywhere in the CRB.

Using Bardo's interpretation, these are just some of the feats for which you ignore critical successes and failures when making their associated checks: alchemical crafting, ancestral paragon, bargain hunter, battle cry, cloud jump, combat climber, continual recovery, courtly graces, experienced smuggler, experienced tracker, foil senses, group coercion, group impression, hobnobber, impressive performance, intimating glare, intimidating prowess, magical crafting. That can't possibly be RAI.

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You are skilled at learning information through conversation. The Gather Information exploration activity takes you half as long as normal (typically reducing the time to 1 hour). If you’re a master in Diplomacy and you Gather Information at the normal speed, when you attempt to do so and roll a critical failure, you get a failure instead. There is still no guarantee that a rumor you learn with Gather Information is accurate.

The master version of Hobnobber does less than nothing if the trained version already eliminates the criticals, so that is clearly not how it works.

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The correct way to interpret these feats (and thus Battle Medicine) is that if the feat tells you to make a check and that check has results for criticals, then the feat also counts as having results for criticals.

Touch of Charity has the Healing trait, so yes it does restore hit points.

Things my primal sorcerer can summon:

Character Level 5:
leopard - can pounce, moving and attacking as a single action. So the range of my summon spell is effectively 90'. Also has grab.

giant bat - flies and has echolocation. The primal list doesn't get See Invis, but with the bat it will be easy to target a Faerie Fire or Glitterdust.

crocodile - can function underwater, where my fire spells don't work.

Character Level 7:
snapping flytrap - can make two improved-grab attacks with 10' reach with no MAP (requires 2 targets)

(other things) - fly, tremorsense, knockdown, acid cone

leshy - has hands and speaks common

Character Level 9:
Argh, it looks like the devs want me to summon elementals now instead of animals and plants. So my primal evolution feat won't work well at levels 9-10, unless I buy more bestiaries.

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I'm not seeing one supreme animal that I should just summon all of the time - several of the critters have niche uses.

The summoning gives me something to do when I can't get 2 targets in a fireball or electric arc, but there isn't a single "boss" opponent who would be a good target for Slow.

Since primal evolution gives me an extra spell slot that can only be used for summoning, summoning can be less powerful than other spells of the same level, but still good for me.