whew's page

Mystics NEED to see the party's health bars.

You always know ... their Hit Point totals

Mystics are entitled to see the bars with the numbers.

"look at me" characters, where the players were less interested in a cooperative experience than they were in showing off their super-special new characters and competing to be the center of attention.

Many "Living Greyhawk" players were veterans of "Living City", in which players voted for "Best Roleplayer" after each scenario. The winner got a cert that could be used once for a reroll by any of their characters. It was very obvious that many players did consider "biggest attention hog", "most annoying", or "most deliberately ineffective" to count as "best roleplaying".

EDIT: In D&D 2e, save-or-die was much more common, and rerolls were way less common.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

If someone is using a disguise to crash a party, they may need to stay for a while. It's not just PCs who use True Seeing, and it's not just NPCs who use illusions. Nearly-infallible True Seeing limits what stories can be told, which is why it can be counteracted.

Assumption: illusion disguises are a thing that can work sometimes, which isn't the case if the opponent gets to roll against them every round.

A fighter MC caster doesn't lose a turn sheathing their weapon and shield and pulling out a bow when they want to make a ranged attack.

D&D fans greatly outnumber the historians. It makes more sense to officially rename arming swords as longswords.

Unless I'm missing something, Explorer's Clothing does not allow either Resilient or Armor Property runes.

Explorer’s clothing can have armor runes etched on it even though it’s not armor

For spells like Heroism, I think it helps to have the GM tell when it changes a failed roll into a success.

I rate that as a perk of being a caster, rather than a flaw: I like being able to choose powers that just work without having to roll (except maybe damage). In PF2, PF1, and various D&D versions, I make casters who never have to roll to hit.

Watching the martials in PFS, I'm not seeing that PCs that get flurries of small attacks are more popular than the ones who get fewer, bigger attacks.

Unicore wrote:

... with true strike your odds of landing the hit or crit can be 75% or better, even against level +2 or 3 monsters. ...

If a spell requires the expenditure of a second spell to be a viable strategy then that spell by itself was not balanced to be an affective use of limited resources. And as a player wasting two slots to have one competitive slot (again, of a limited resource) feels mega bad imho. I just consider true strike a poor consolidation to try to pacify undertuned spell attacks. It's the one spell in the game that raises my blood pressure on sight unless it's...

True Strike is a first-level spell. What else are you going to do with that first-level spell slot?

It might encounter wandering monsters ...

Though the summons only lasts a minute, during that minute Comprehend Language can be cast, which lasts for an hour. During that hour, work on making a dictionary.

Quick Recognition lets a PC recognize spells as a free action, but only if they are a master of the skill they are using. With Unified Theory, the PC can use it for all spells.

This is totally 100% tradition-dependent. Anyone who says otherwise has a serious lack of ... something. (Speculating on what that something is probably violates the forum rules.)

whew wrote:

Skilled Human Heritage gives an extra Expert skill at level 5. Multitalented(rogue) at level 9 + Skill Mastery at level 10 or 12 and be Master at 4 skills at level 13. Levels 2-8 are free to multiclass in whatever you want (or not).

I realize that this is just going to add "I shouldn't have to play a human" to the list of what's 'wrong' with swashbucklers, but it's just not true that "they absolutely can't diversify at all."

“Swashbucklers have less flexibility on skill increases by orders of magnitude more than other classes to the point where it not only strains narrative choice, it actively punishes players for not increasing specific skills since failing to do so means your class becomes unplayable. It has a built in trap because it has no skill increase support but requires skill increases more than any class.”

Is that fair to say?

less flexibility - fair

orders of magnitude - no

trap - baloney: How can a player not notice that they're using a skill every round?

no skill increase support - you're replying to my post where I described one of the ways to get skill increases.

Skilled Human Heritage gives an extra Expert skill at level 5. Multitalented(rogue) at level 9 + Skill Mastery at level 10 or 12 and be Master at 4 skills at level 13. Levels 2-8 are free to multiclass in whatever you want (or not).

I realize that this is just going to add "I shouldn't have to play a human" to the list of what's 'wrong' with swashbucklers, but it's just not true that "they absolutely can't diversify at all."

Things my rogue has done besides stab with magic shortsword:
* throw javelins (using quick draw & potency crystals)
* medic stuff: battle medicine, treat poison, healer's gloves
* Using quick draw & doubling rings, try other melee weapons to see what beats DR
* throw beads from necklace of fireballs
* grapple a flyby-ing foe using a readied action
* cast shield cantrip

All of those things can be done with one hand, so a rogue never needs to drop their primary magic melee weapon or waste actions to sheathe or unsheathe it.

Things my rogue is ready to do in combat but hasn't yet:
* disarm a trap
* trick a magic item

Sure, the PF2 skill system is incredibly coarse in general (a level 15 character without Athletics that can't swim or climb for s#@%)

In the playtest, everyone advanced automatically in every skill. (A few?) playtesters complained repeatedly that they wanted to be able to make a character from the desert who never learned to swim.

Deriven Firelion wrote:

True enough. Those are legendary abilities. They look very cool in the mind's eye. Scare to Death ends the fight unlike those other feats and looks stupid doing it.

That is your take on it. As we have seen other people do not find it that ridiculous. And most of all, it does not make the feat broken in any way or shape.

Come to think of it, I believe we can find visuals for the other Legendary skill feats that can look pretty stupid too. Like Catfall always having you fall on your bottom, and maybe bounce a little up and down repeatedly before settling on the floor.

All as part of the visuals of course.

Yes, a player who insists on using the worst possible flavor can ruin any game.

PF1 had archetypes for fighter, gunslinger, and bard which were all called buccaneer. There was also Occultist (arcanist archetype) and

Default Golarion setting clearly has no problem with multiple things having the same name.

The Wild West really was a thing. Space Western was a thriving genre even before humans went into space.

Starfinder is D&D/Pathfinder in Space. Even a "civilized" place is going to have alien predators in the air vents, cyber-zombie outbreaks, etc. When the environment really is dangerous, carrying weapons makes sense.

Unlike some settings (and the real world), in Starfinder, a single hit from a pistol is unlikely to drop a foe. Also, armor is much more effective in Starfinder than in other settings. So heavier weapons and armor will naturally be more common.

If the GM wants to have a place where the PCs shouldn't start fights, all that should be needed is to make it clear that they will gain infamy for doing so.

People keep trying to argue for recall knowledge for a class specific third action when it's a universal again makes me head itch

Get past it please.

Wrong. If a character with low INT tries to use INT skills, they are much more likely to critical fail and get bad info.

EKruze wrote:

Martialmasters wrote:

Yes when building a character. I agree.

But not when discussing what a class is good at. A wizard doesn't overly excel at recall knowledge. A wizard lorekeeper does. Heck you could go a x lorekeeper is better at recall knowledge checks. You'd still be objectively accurate.

So you are missing the point of the discussion if you think it's still applicable.

If your only solution to wizard is don't...

This is such an unserious approach to the discussion. The Loremaster archetype takes the same investment (level 2 class feat) as it takes a Polymath, Maestro or Warrior muse Bard to obtain the equivalent effect. It should absolutely be part of the discussion.

A Wizard is uniquely suited to recall knowledge because a plurality of non-Lore recall skills (Arcana, Occultism, Crafting, Society) and all Lores are Intelligence based. Even skipping the Loremaster archetype a Wizard remains competitive with an Enigma Bard investing in Untrained Improvisation alone.

If a Wizard chooses to invest just a little they can certainly become one of the best classes at general Recall Knowledge abilities.

But that's not the discussion. The discussion is what a wizard is good at. Not what a wizard with loremaster dedication is good at.

Investigator is better without investment and without need to take a dedication.

Giving up spellcasting is a VERY heavy investment.

Unrelated question: How do you pronounce Bon Mot in english?

A la French? Or bonn mott?

It seems to be bawn mow in English and bone mow in French:

wiktionary
thefreedictionary

EDIT: audio

if wizards could get a good use of their third action as part of their thesis or something, out the gate without feat investment, that would be nice.

The Improved Familiar Attunement and Metamagical Experimentation theses do just that.

For the general RAW process of identifying items, see Aratorin's post.

You can speed it up by testing multiple items at once and repeatedly splitting the group of items in half when magic is detected.