worldhopper's page

worldhopper wrote:

Wait, really? Can you link me that? I was betting on ZK or Shelly this whole time based on Zon-Shelyn, so looks like I goofed.

Starfinder Second Edition is Coming!

Quote:

Now an adult, Chk Chk has become a devout worshipper of the amalgamate deity, Zon-Shelyn, and believes in channeling suffering into artistic expression.

EDIT: Or if you mean the part where Starfinder has no bearing on which deity will die, Luis Loza:

Quote:

Starfinder canon has no bearing on whether a god will live or die. If a god exists in Starfinder, it does not guarantee that they will live. If a god doesn't exist in Starfinder, it doesn't mean they are among a "short list" of gods who could die.

Ahhhhh, gotcha, yeah, that second part was what I was looking for. I was really betting it'd be one of the twins dying, resulting in the other "absorbing" them/their spheres of influence & thus creating Zon-Shelyn. Rats! Foiled again.

Nervous for a lot of my favorites still on the block here. How many more of these will we get, again?

OmegaZ wrote:

Oh man, there goes my bracket!

I was figuring Zon-Kuthon's death would be to merge with Shelyn. Comedy and Tragedy together, as divine pathos (like theater masks).

You might be interested to know that there's a "Zon-Shelyn" of some sort coming to Starfinder 2e, but it's been said that's wholly separate from and unrelated to all of this.

Wait, really? Can you link me that? I was betting on ZK or Shelly this whole time based on Zon-Shelyn, so looks like I goofed.

Was a bit concerned until Michael confirmed rangers aren't back to being spellcasters by default.
Do not love the new Crossbow Ace... feels worse. Admittedly, my main crossbow user is a rogue/ranger, and if they just added Hide on there in addition to Take Cover and Create a Diversion I wouldn't hate it at as much... but rn it just feels like a damage loss AND a worse action economy.

Interesting to see Society limitations with alignment disappearing.

This is definitely what I want to know. Will I finally get to make a Cleric of Lamashtu devoted to celebrating the ugly and outcast? Pleasy pleasy?

Oh, excellent news! Glad to hear Paizo management decided to do this the cordial (and easy) way. Congrats to everyone at UPW - you're absolutely incredible and a true inspiration!

Sounds like this merits a trip to my FLGS for the new releases I've missed...

Well, I had a lengthy, carefully thought out comment on this earlier, but I guess it got obliterated in the mod sweep earlier despite my deliberately not engaging with the transphobic concern troll, so that's cool.

Anyway, I'm glad steps are being taken (and that some of the complaints have already been addressed), but they seem pretty minimal. I sincerely hope this is just a start, and they will be expanded upon later. I also think some public accountability is needed for the more serious allegations of abuse and transphobia.

Finally, I'm a little concerned by the focus on complaints from 3-4 years ago compared to the minimal space devoted to the issues that are clearly ongoing given recent departures.

I noticed Zova made a surprise appearance in one of the illustrations for the Mwangi Expanse book - is the Shifter getting another chance, perhaps?

Personally, I'd love some kind of "Primal Power" book with the Shifter & Kineticist, focusing on elemental and natural stuff.

I'm still sad we're losing Alahazra, but at least she has a worthy successor!

And as someone who came home from seeing Thor: Ragnarok wanting desperately to build a storm oracle - and then immediately ended up drafting a Storm mystery upon discovering there wasn't one - I greatly approve of this backstory :)

Last we heard from Lost Omens World Guide was back in october 30th blog, where it was mentioned that it might get sanctioned "in a few weeks". Is there any chance of seeing this happen before christmas, or should we set our expectations on january?

Came here to ask the same thing... I'm very excited about the options in the Lost Omens Character Guide, so seeing that even the World Guide still isn't up over a month after the October post is pretty disappointing.

I know there've been some turnover & workflow issues, so I understand if there's a further delay. It's just I have a bunch of character concepts waiting on those books getting okayed, so I'm waiting with bated breath for more updates!

*gasp* Bill Nye meets the Mythbusters as a kasatha amputee lady? I... I think Bug Dad might have just been replaced as my favorite iconic.

(the human-esque eyes /are/ weirding me out, though.)

Prestige Archetypes, neato! And scaling traits and items! What a lovely way to cap off PF1.

I do not want to downplay the work of Wayne Raynolds, who is a big name in the industry.

but recently I have not liked much more of his drawings.
This kyra shows well what I do not like ... the feet are strange and the depropercionality between trunk and legs is something that I do not like.

I'm not sure I'm hugely into his newer style either, although for me it's more that the values are kind of flat. Which... could contribute to characters looking wider, now that I think of it.

I do like the brighter colors and the pants, though. Also, even though it's still structurally the same, her headscarf seems more evocative of a hijab now, which IIRC was always the intent? So that's a nice touch.

Awesome to hear. I'm hoping polymorph rules will get looked at as I've had some pretty disappointing experiences with it.

One of our players went for a Wild druid for Heroes of Undarin and has independently registered basically all of these complaints, so I second this.

I have an animal order druid (w/ bear companion) as my primary character for the playtest, and honestly I've quite liked the action economy for pets.

My concerns with companions right now, having played at 1 and 9, are the low AC & saves, the lack of scaling, and the mount tag.

The AC issue I think could be easily solved by allowing magic barding to exist.

The scaling... it hasn't been an issue yet, but I'm concerned that at higher levels the animal companion will lag further and further behind, since the stat boosts beyond Savage/Nimble are fairly small (and unless you're an animal order druid, you can only have 1 specialization). I feel like damage, in particular, is going to feel increasingly weak starting about level 12, when players are starting to get +3, +4, +5 weapons and animal companions continue to be stuck with 3 dice (unless you shell out 2 actions for Magic Fang at the start of every combat).

And the mount trait... I hate the mount trait with a burning passion. It's arbitrary, it restricts a lot of fun fantasy ideas (and especially smarts given that small characters could take a wolf mount in PF1, an option now restricted to a goblin ancestry feat). Of course, if you're a druid or a ranger, you can ride your pet without the tag - but paladins and cavaliers flat out can't select non-mount pet options, and regardless, it causes problems with exploration mode. Just go back to the "one size category larger" situation and call it a day.

Also, as Freagarthach mentioned, it's currently unclear whether animal companions simply die at 0 or follow PC dying rules; we've been running it as the latter, but it's a really significant question to leave up to GM fiat.

LOVE:
1) Action economy
2) TEML
3) 4-tier success system

HATE:
1) "The GM sets the DC"
2) Short duration on most buff spells
3) +Level

HOUSERULE:
1) Action scaling on more spells: baseline 1 action for most single-target buffs, add components to increase duration or number of targets.
2) Choice of Vancian or arcanist/5e-style prepared casting
3) Free action to change grip

we're removing the concept of signature skills from the game.

HALLELUJAH!!!

Also very glad to see that animal totem barbarian can use weapons outside of rage now, as that was some of the feedback I was going to give once I finish Pale Mountain (I was actually just gonna ask for ranged weapons or even just alchemical bombs, but I'll take it!).

Also THANK YOU for the black & white character sheet. Those colorful ones may have matched the aesthetic but they were not great for something that's going to be repeatedly erased.

I think the playtest is moving at WAAY too fast a clip.

I'm in 3 groups for Pale Mountain; GMing 1 and playing 2 others. The one I'm GMing hasn't even had a chance to meet yet due to scheduling issues. Both of the groups I'm playing in (1 4-player, 1 5-player) only got to the entrance by the end of their first sessions (both about 4 hours long). The 4-player group met again today, short a member, and made it through one pair of elementals before nearly TPKing on the water/earth team and calling the session for time.

I understand that the scheduling is based on when the book needs to go to print, but I'm honestly expecting that more and more groups will fall behind and the last few scenarios will have significantly fewer testers than the first ones.

Seems like a nice space saver. I still suggest also shortening the actions section to something like "2 actions (Somatic, Verbal)" too, though.

I was taken aback by this feat as well. I understand the intent, but it's actively harmful to trans and nonbinary folks and thus runs counter to the book's assertion that "Pathfinder is for everyone."

Just noticed this issue and was really frustrated by it. Sorcerer seemed like a good candidate for a Magus type, what with the various bloodline powers that grant melee attacks and the feats to make it easier to cast in melee - but they have so few feats, there's not a lot of room to go into Fighter MC.

I guess the whole "bloodline power = feat" thing makes sense... but it's a bizarre design decision given that the other full casters all have similar abilities tied to a level 1 choice (cleric domain, druid order, wizard school), but they're given the freedom of whether or not to take them. Maybe they're going off the idea that it's inborn and inescapable, but it's an odd direction given how much PF2 has done to get rid of prepackaged suites of abilities.

Goblins as paladins (especially the one presented in the playtest) or members of knightly orders (which aren't in the playtest yet part of the cavalier's class) are *also* pretty weird though.

You have to admit Gob Quixote is a fun concept, though.

The mount trait isn't necessary to ride an animal as a mount. The only thing I can find it affects is whether or not you can use an animal companion's "work together" ability while someone is mounted on it. If it doesn't have the mount trait, you can't use "work together" while it's mounted. If it does have the mount trait, you can.

Yes, but it *is* required if you want to take the animal as a mount via the Paladin class feat or the Cavalier archetype (barring GM intervention). And currently, the only animal companion with the mount tag is Horse.

It's just kind of bizarre that there are these specific mount-granting class features, plus a mount-based ancestry feat that specifically calls out two particular creatures, but said creatures aren't designed to be mounts (and thus make subpar options for such).

I noticed this problem in Starfinder, too, although with lower damage numbers. Gave me a good laugh as someone who grew up in SoCal, where it's rarely below 90 in the daytime in summer and easily hits 110+ during the worst months.

The cold numbers are fine (can verify, currently live in Minnesota), but the heat numbers could use a bit of tweaking.

I actually quite like the concept of signature skills - they remind me of the old Might & Magic games a bit. I'm cool with everyone not being able to be the best at all things all the time.

That said, I do feel like people should get to add a little bit more customization to their signature skill choices.

My thought was maybe adding a signature skill or two to the backgrounds in addition to the lore skill, which would serve a second purpose of making the backgrounds feel more significant and essential to the character. Perhaps do it like the stat boosts, with 1 free and 1 choice of 2?

For example, the Criminal background could offer a free sig skill, plus a choice between Thievery and Intimidate.

(Given the glossary, this seems like it might have been considered and then dropped for some reason? But it's worth giving a second look, IMO)

I hate being the person who cries realism but yeah, speaking as a former competitive archer (didn't shoot longbow but knew people who did), this makes no sense. It'd be better, both from a believability standpoint and a fun standpoint, to just try and make shortbows more appealing rather than arbitrarily nerf longbows.

Was very confused by this while trying to build a wizard and looking at the Mage Armor spell.

Hope it's just an oversight and we'll get a clarification after GenCon.

I definitely got stuck for quite a while trying to figure out what, if any, Lore skills I could take. There will need to be a list for PFS anyway, I'm sure; might as well put it in the book (or at least example categories).

I'd also really appreciate a space on the character sheet to write what Lore I have, the way the PF1 sheet has a blank after Craft/Perform/Profession.

This is a concern I have as well. I was severely disappointed when I got around to looking at the Feats section and found only a handful of non-skill feats - and even more so when I realized that almost all of them were the boring flat boost feats I made a point of avoiding in PF1. I have a feeling the list is far from complete, but I'd hoped we'd get more varied options to play with during testing.

I was also struck by how necessary the Fighter multiclass felt to most martial-based builds. I'd been planning on doing a Ranger/Fighter already, but I found myself adding the Fighter archetype to my Paladin and Druid as well, because so many basic attack options were bound up in Fighter feats.

Honestly, I'm not sure how to go about fixing this, short of a) cutting general feats entirely and leaving non-skill customization to class feats, or b) transferring a lot of combat options into general feats and significantly reworking the fighter's options. I suppose option (a) could mesh with your idea; simply redistribute class feats (and possibly more ancestry feats?) into the void left by general feats and provide lots of archetypes to encourage using at least one.

I was very excited to see this change. Adding a reach martial to my "to test" list...

I really don't understand why we need a feat for sign language, and agree with Smaugnolia's points about sign language not directly corresponding to the associated verbal language. It's overcomplicated, indicates a lack of understanding of how sign languages work, and makes it unnecessarily difficult for a hearing party to communicate with a Deaf party member.

Just add sign languages to the language list with the same availabilities as their associated spoken languages. It worked fine in Starfinder.

As worded, a hilariously wide range of things would work as a mount...

Related: Shouldn't stats for a Goblin Dog be in the core book?

Strangely, the stats for a Wolf *are* in the book... but without the mount trait, and no indication of how a non-horse AC could ever acquire it.

I'm excited to see multiclassing being shaken up, but I'll have to see it in action in the playtest before I know whether or not this is an improvement.

I do like that the whole VMC concept is being iterated on. It was a nice idea that was painfully underpowered aside from like 4 very strong options, and even those usually had at least one level that was incredibly "meh." By working in the new archetype system where you can stop and start as you please, it's eliminated the "man, I really want the level 7 ability, but the level 3 and 11 ones are absolutely not worth a feat" problem.

Not sure I'm a fan of the stat requirements? Brings me back to the earliest editions, and not in a great way.

Really wish we could get MCs for all the classes in the core, but oh well.

WRT the whole 1 action to get 2 thing, it seems like an understandable balance thing? Because the whole problem with ACs/eidolons/etc before was essentially doubling your action economy.

That said, it'd also be cool to have higher-level abilities that increase the granted actions and/or remove the action cost (maybe just for specific actions?), to represent you bonding more closely with your companion.

Ooh! Still hate prepared casters, but the animal druid is calling my name...

Animal companions look great. I really like the Work Together ability - negates the old "welp, my animal companion can't hit/damage this thing" problem in an elegant way. Bear hug looks fun too.

Leaf druid seems neat, but I really wish that metamorphosis entry was a little more clearly broken up into "passive" and "active" sections. It took me like 3 readings of it to process that half of it was a permanent transformation and half of it was an active ability (and I'm still not 100% on how it works?).

Wild druid... I know people who will love that. Would have appreciated knowing more about how polymorph spells work (hopefully lessons were learned from the Shifter...), but maybe that'll be on Friday?

Storm druid seemed the least exciting, but still a flavorful option to have. That power seems cool! I see room for player/GM arguments about the anathema, though - it's a bit rough having all kinds of storm/weather powers but having a fairly vague anathema about their use.

I can't say I'm super excited about Leyline Conduit. It's like that one sorcerer ability, except more limited, which feels bad for the druid and also makes the sorcerer's ability feel less special. But we'll have to see it in play.

I'm confused about the attack mod on Ezren's Acid Splash. I thought I'd read somewhere that PF2 was moving to the 5E style of applying your caster stat to spell attack rolls instead of Str/Dex. Was this (a) changed at some point, (b) only for some spells/classes, or (c) just something I'm completely misremembering?

Wow, bards look great! I like that performing is more active now, and that Countersong works on visual effects too! Agree that the Lingering Composition wording is weird, though, and that status effects like quick should probably be capitalized or something to set them off.

I also notice, between this and the character sheets being released at ENWorld, that most buff effects seem to be conditional bonuses now? Which presumably means they don't stack. Bless in particular is looking kinda sad next to Inspire Courage! (Sure, it lasts longer, but it doesn't affect damage, lost its bonus on saving throws against fear, had its AoE reduced, AND still eats a spell slot while IC now consumes no resources besides actions...) As someone who's been playing a support oracle in RoW, I can appreciate not having to spend multiple rounds casting nearly-identical buffs like Bless and Prayer (I hope the former scales into the latter, now?), but it would still be nice if different classes' support abilities played well together.

Also, if we're renaming the occultist somewhere down the line (please do bring him back! he was a cool concept, if over-complicated), my vote is for "ritualist." And that's only 60% because I spent all my teen years playing one in Guild Wars...

This looks like a reasonable enough system. I'm already mentally mapping out the assignments for various ancestries/classes/etc in my own (much-neglected) setting, so it's definitely a great tool for GMs.

On the other hand, as with everything that starts repeatedly mentioning "talk to your GM," I immediately start worrying about PFS. I know this was brought up upthread but it is definitely something I wanted to highlight because it's something I run into frequently!

One big thing I'd hope for is a character option for "regional origin" - independent of ancestry - that helps determine rarity and languages. In PF1, a lot of this is tied up in racial traits, which causes issues when you're creating a character from a non-Avistani region that isn't a member of a race or ethnicity unique to/dominant in that region. To draw on the example from the article, in first editon, Tien humans and half-elves, as well as tengu, can start with proficiency in the katana, but a tiefling (even if they were born to Tien parents) cannot. Or, for a more mundane example, ethnic languages are only available as bonus starting languages to humans and half-humans, meaning that a halfling born into slavery in Qadira must invest a point in Linguistics to speak Kelish. This is easily fixed in a home game, of course, but in PFS it can prove frustrating. With fixed lists of what is common, uncommon, etc in each region, it seems like PFS2 could easily remedy the problem with such an option.

Okay, so dealing with the casting. I'm going to be blunt - this concern about "decision paralysis" that Mark has brought up in the comments for several blogs / threads now is WAY overblown. You are talking it up into hugely more of a thing than it actually is. I've run 3.5 / Dreamscarred psionics, which is way more freeform than freeform heightening would be, mostly with newer players who aren't rules gurus that innately know the best options. It has uniformly gone excellently with them, so I can say this with confidence.

When a player has their turn come up and goes to cast a spell, they aren't going to be laboriously poring over every spell they know and agonizing over what level to cast it at. They are just going to pick an appropriate spell and cast it. Is it a group of enemies? They'll pick fireball or whatever and just cast it. They won't spend much time worrying about what level to cast it at either. I don't see decision paralysis come up with psionics, it's not going to come up here.

But you know where it does come up? It comes up when a character has a ton of scrolls and wands and stuff. So it's painfully ironic that you guys are pushing the sorcerer leaning on such items to supplement their hugely debilitated spells per day, while wringing your hands over decision paralysis from their actually class-granted spellcasting. The decision making process has me utterly flabbergasted here. Especially when the GM having to explain to the player that they have to learn the same spell three times at three different spell tiers is going to cause infinitely more confusion and frustration than any confusion you think might come about from free heightening!

The more I've been thinking about a solution to the whole heightening problem, the more I agree with this. When games grind to a halt in my group, it's because people are digging through their inventories (or chronicle sheets) for some kind of half-forgotten consumable that could turn a situation around.

Are some players gonna get hung up on their spellcasting? Yes. They're also probably gonna get hung up even if they have 3 spells. In my experience, people who take slow turns take slow turns, regardless of how complicated their character actually is.

I also think that there's a weird conflation of systems mastery situations here - generally newer players have one or two tactics that they are comfortable with and aren't going to be hunting for the "best" spell solution, while experienced/high-optimization players probably mathed it all out while they were still level 2. I understand having balance concerns, but the idea that the majority of players are going to be freaking out at the table trying to find the "optimal" use of their casts seems unlikely.

I keep going back to 5e. 5e uses spontaneous heightening, yet to my understanding it's been successful as a system almost entirely because of how accessible it is to newcomers. If anything, the proposed PF2 system seems to sacrifice clarity in favor of reduced at-the-table decisionmaking, which seems off to me.

Hmm wrote:

I don’t share the same assumption that near-nudity equals confidence. While I do like women to own their sexuality, I also like it when adventurers are dressed in clothes that allow them to adventure. Her garments are still a bit unwieldy to me — long enough to trip upon — but at least she won’t fall out of her outfit in the middle of battle.

Fair enough. I'd rather have a confidence-based power fantasy than worry about how trip-prone an outfit would be in reallife.

It's not the lack of clothes itself, but her obvious confidence in that state. Compare the strut and posture of PF1 Seoni to the slumped defeatest posture of the artwork above, her face says "I'm waiting in line at the DMV and someone just farted. All I can do is give them a sour look. I'm powerless to otherwise act."

Funny, because at least 2 women in this thread have pointed out it sure didn't feel like a power fantasy. [insert that Shortpacked! false equivalence comic here.]

Also, 1e Seoni looked like she was about to fall on her dang face.

worldhopper wrote:

Crayon wrote:

Dragon78 wrote:

Also Seoni's new look is horrible.

Apart from the drawing itself being incomplete, she looks identical to her PF1 version to me. What's changed?

It's more of an actual dress and less of a "piece of fabric with a neck slit and a belt." She's at far less risk of a wardrobe malfunction now.

It's an awesome drawing, and I'm a big fan of black-and-white (or something close like this) drawings :)

It is also just a better drawing, yes. She looks significantly more proportionate now (I always thought her original art looked oddly serpentine), and she's got a more assertive stance. Overall just a lot more like an adventurer, and someone I'd actually feel comfortable playing.

Dragon78 wrote:

Also Seoni's new look is horrible.

Apart from the drawing itself being incomplete, she looks identical to her PF1 version to me. What's changed?

It's more of an actual dress and less of a "piece of fabric with a neck slit and a belt." She's at far less risk of a wardrobe malfunction now.

Occult spell list! I thought as much, that’s so fantastic.

Sorcerers getting a spell-list based on bloodline is the coolest of beans.

Having to choose two specific spells at the beginning of the day to heighten isn’t great (why am I preparing anything? I’m a Sorcerer! Improvising is what I do!)

I’d much rather it just be: You can choose to heighten any spell you know up to your Charisma modifier times per day.

Or even two spells a day each spell is chosen when you choose to heighten the spell.

So a Sorcerer who knows Magic Missile, Dispel Magic and Burning Hands might face a powerful ghost early in the day and spontaneously heighten his Magic Missiles as high as possible. Later she faces the necromancer stirring up the undead and spends her second spontaneous heighten to Dispel the necromancers buffs. At this point the Sorcerer can only spontaneously heighten these two spells until they complete a long rest.

I'd be okay with either of those options. I definitely agree that having to prepare anything at the start of the day feels counter-intuitive and un-thematic for the sorcerer.

Logan Bonner wrote:

Rek Rollington wrote:

I was concerned when I heard you needed to know a spell at a higher level to cast it there so spontaneous heightening is a relief. But what is the logic behind them not being able to do this all the time? Is it too much of an advantage over a wizard or does it present too many options to a player when selecting which spell to cast?

Those, with the latter slowing down play at the table immensely. Plus it really pushes you to choose spells that have heightening effects, distorting your spell selection too much. Also, spontaneous heightening can be really strong with certain spells, and we wanted you to have to pick and choose a couple to focus on at a time rather than having all that access always and outpacing prepared casters.

If spontaneous heightening were available to all spells for spontaneous casters, would have been good enough for prepared casters to function as Arcanists, that the spells prepared for the day can be cast as many times as slots are available?

I was just thinking this. Arcanist-style preparation would have helped solve this problem (and also it's just good and no I'm not going to let this go ever).

Another possibility that interested me was if your bloodline allowed you to spontaneously Heighten thematic spells.

So the Ifrit bloodline would let you Heighten spells with the Fire descriptor in addition to one or two spells of your choice.

There are probably many flaws with this idea but if the Developers like it feel free to steal it.

That would be cool, and would kind of make up for the loss of arcana.

Heck, even just having spontaneous heightening at will on all bloodline spells (and bloodline spells only) would be a better fit, I think.

Part of what's putting me off, at least, is having this weird daily preparation thing on a character whose abilities aren't supposed to stem from daily preparation but are just part of who they *are*.

worldhopper wrote:

Mark Seifter wrote:

worldhopper wrote:

I think Mark's explanation of the flaws of undercasting is fair, but it's still less awful than this system (where you will STILL have to blow your top level spells known on existing spells if you want to be able to heighten them and are using SH for something else).

That comparison leaves out an important point, though: Sure, if my character wants four heightened spells in the spontaneous heighten system, rather than just dispel and summon, I need to spend my new two spells to do that, but the undercasting character has already run dry after dispel and summon; they don't have more spells known left to spend, even though they now get more spells known of their top level than sorcerers once did.

But again, say there's a new sorcerer with the spells you listed and the demonic bloodline. She's probably going to want to use her SH on Slow and Disintegrate, since she's otherwise incapable of heightening them (unless I missed something with bloodline spells?). But when she gets 7th, 8th, 9th level spells, she probably still wants her Dispel Magic and Summon Monster to be good, right? So she'll still need to take those when she gains the new slots, meaning yes, she has more spells she can cast at her highest level, but she's still not going to be taking anything *new*. And unlike the undercaster, she doesn't even necessarily get to pick new lower level spells to replace them, since presumably she still wants to be able to cast them at a lower level, and thus has to keep them as spells known at that level.

I mean, I still feel like being able to spontaneously heighten at will is the best option (or at least one that should be playtested externally), but undercasting still feels like a more intuitive and elegant alternative if that's completely out of the picture. I guess we'll see come August how it plays out.

The undercaster simply can't have a top level 7th-9th slow, disintegrate, summon, and dispel at the...

Is a demonic sorcerer allowed to take slow as a 6th level spell known? Are bloodline spells from other lists treated as being added to your class spell list in addition to being added to your spells known at the given level? If so, that's something that could be clarified in the blog post.

worldhopper wrote:

I think Mark's explanation of the flaws of undercasting is fair, but it's still less awful than this system (where you will STILL have to blow your top level spells known on existing spells if you want to be able to heighten them and are using SH for something else).

That comparison leaves out an important point, though: Sure, if my character wants four heightened spells in the spontaneous heighten system, rather than just dispel and summon, I need to spend my new two spells to do that, but the undercasting character has already run dry after dispel and summon; they don't have more spells known left to spend, even though they now get more spells known of their top level than sorcerers once did.

But again, say there's a new sorcerer with the spells you listed and the demonic bloodline. She's probably going to want to use her SH on Slow and Disintegrate, since she's otherwise incapable of heightening them (unless I missed something with bloodline spells?). But when she gets 7th, 8th, 9th level spells, she probably still wants her Dispel Magic and Summon Monster to be good, right? So she'll still need to take those when she gains the new slots, meaning yes, she has more spells she can cast at her highest level, but she's still not going to be taking anything *new*. And unlike the undercaster, she doesn't even necessarily get to pick new lower level spells to replace them, since presumably she still wants to be able to cast them at a lower level, and thus has to keep them as spells known at that level.

I mean, I still feel like being able to spontaneously heighten at will is the best option (or at least one that should be playtested externally), but undercasting still feels like a more intuitive and elegant alternative if that's completely out of the picture. I guess we'll see come August how it plays out.

rooneg wrote:

So is the Imperial bloodline approximately the same as the old Arcane bloodline?

More like the Vestige bloodline from Blood of the Ancients. Although, it could probably cover the Arcane bloodline for the purposes of the playtest.

Being as this is just the playtest, I imagine the final CRB will have a longer list.

Or possibly the Imperious human-only bloodline? Though Seoni *was* Arcane before.

I assumed the name change was mostly just because more than one bloodline will grant the arcane spell list and they wanted to avoid confusion.

Sorcerers are looking great. Well, 90% great, at least? Bloodline powers look solid (that bite looks better than most of the old level 1 powers), love getting spell lists from the bloodline... kinda wish the arcana was still a thing, but it did make dipping a bit too strong.

That spontaneous heightening thing is the most hideously kludgy mess I've seen in a while, though. If you do have to actually take a spell as a spell known at every level you want to be able to cast it (assuming you're not selecting it for SH), that's going to be horrifically unintuitive and I'm dreading explaining it to new players. Also, as one of my current players pointed out, if some bloodline spells are still from other lists beyond the one you have access to, you're basically going to end up having to use spontaneous heightening on those spells only, since you actually can't learn them in other slots.

I think Mark's explanation of the flaws of undercasting is fair, but it's still less awful than this system (where you will STILL have to blow your top level spells known on existing spells if you want to be able to heighten them and are using SH for something else). Alternately, I have trouble seeing how unlimited spontaneous heightening caused that much of a balance problem vs wizards, given that sorcs and wizards still have the same number of spells per day. Wouldn't it just help close the versatility gap between the two?

Also, this is a less immediately pressing quibble, but I sincerely hope the ability to be a divine sorcerer isn't meant to replace the oracle. Oracles were never just divine sorcerers.

I never liked how Favored Enemy and Favored Terrain basically asked you to guess who and where you're going to be fighting for the entirety of the campaign. Sometimes this is pretty doable, but it's a bit of a big ask.

I can do without "good choices for favored terrain/enemies for this campaign include" in Player's Companions.

Fair. I don't think it needs to return in its current iteration, necessarily, but I'll be disappointed if rangers don't have any real terrain mastery stuff. Maybe instead of selecting from a list, just a feat that gives different thematic bonuses in different terrain types? I feel like I remember 5e doing something like that for rangers or druids, although I don't have the book on hand to check.

I do agree that spell point casting for rangers should be an option in core. I don't know if I'd use it, but enough other people like it and it's got enough of a legacy that tacking it on in a later book feels awkward.

Also, I can't believe I'd completely forgotten Favored Terrain. That one *does* seem weird to lose, as it's much more thematic with the archetypal ranger, and (unlike Favored Enemy) outside of PFS it was fairly easy to pick a terrain that you'd be in for the majority of an AP or module. Really hope there are class feats to bring back some semblance of that.

Agree with the suggestion upthread that Hunt Target should provide some bonuses while actually *hunting* the target, in addition to in combat. Dunno if it should be baseline, or a feat, but I love the concept of being able to use Hunt Target just from a footprint or a fallen feather or a stool or what have you, and get bonuses to track it/the ability to make knowledge checks in advance without penalty.

Wonder if we'll get an animal companion post next? Seems about time...