yarrchives's page

Divine Access does this at level 11. I don't really like how it works in that you have to pick a domain, then pick a deity with that domain, then you get spells. Finding what the spell options actually are is a lot of page flipping since some of those domains have quite a few deities (even more if alternate domains are valid).

Yeah, which I wish they just stuck to it if they were going do it later down the line anyway. Especially now that the old Divine Access is no longer available at 4th level. The free spells are truly appreciated but if they are not to your liking, getting a key spell from your domains before 11th level is missed by several mysteries.

I'm a little unsure how to evaluate the Bones curse. By "You can be hurt by both vitality and void damage even if one or the other normally has no effect on you", does that mean both Heal and Harm damage you no matter your healing alignment? That's pretty huge for a cursebound 1 effect, but if not, the curse is one of the more manageable ones.

I do think it's a missed opportunity they gave the mysteries a set of 3 granted spells instead of letting them choose the 3 spells from a deity within their given domains à la Cleric/Divine Font.

This is kind of a follow up to my previous blood magic question. Feats like Blood Sovereignty and Blood Ascendency call for “two different blood magic effects” to benefit from. Do blood magics with choices (most of the bloodline given blood magics) count as two different blood magics for each choice for this purpose?

For example, could Fey get both its perfomance bonus and concealment from Blood Ascendency or could Elemental both gain an intimidation bonus and deal extra damage with Blood Sovereignty? Would they otherwise need to have a completely different blood magic from a feat (Propelling Sorcery, Crossblooded Evolution, etc.)?

Then, do they really mean to forbid two blood magic effects working at once? And if the targets are different? As you wrote, that sentence in the side box in not nearly clear. There's literally nothing on this in the 'Reading a Bloodline Entry' section. All the bloodline feats mostly deal with receiving two blood magic effects from the same activity, it's not about blood magic from consequential activities. Maybe only Blood Rising hints at the intention: 'You generate a blood magic effect you know, even if you are already under the effects of blood magic'. So maybe they really did mean to forbid two lasting blood magic effects at once.

Which still doesn't convince me that instant blood magic effects must turn off previously activated lasting one.

Looking through the actual "feats and abilities may change this" it does seem to refer to how many blood magic effects you get on a gift or bloodline spell, at least imo. Blood Sovereignty and Blood Ascension both say you "benefit from two different blood magic effects you know" specifically "when you would benefit from a blood magic effect."

That sentence in Blood Rising does throw a wrench on something unanimous though.

Blood Magic: Casting a sorcerous gift spell granted by your bloodline or a bloodline spell allows you to benefit from a blood magic effect you know. You can typically only benefit from one blood magic effect at a time, though some feats and abilities may change this.

When it says you can only “benefit from one blood magic effect at a time,” does that refer to how many blood magic effects you can get from a single gift or bloodline spell or blood magic effects in general that’s active on you?

What I’m trying to see is if the 1 round buff blood magic effects can all be active on yourself at the same time provided I cast at least two gift or bloodline spell in a turn. For example, can I get Angelic+Draconic or two Imperial blood magic effects active on myself by casting two appropriate spells to get a status bonus to both AC and saving throws?

As far as incantations and gestures, I'd assume without other text that all spells have them, just that Manipulate-tagged spells have elaborate enough gestures that it can set off reactions and Concentrate-tagged spells just require mental concentration and thus aren't available when you're using Rage. And Subtle spells suppress most notice.

As far as I've read, there are no direct mentions of the incantations and gestures being attached to specific traits unlike how verbal and somatic were before the remaster. I think that makes the most sense on how it works then, especially in context with how the Subtle trait works. As in, Subtle doesn't interact with traits either.

The casting of a spell can range from a simple word of magical might that creates a fleeting effect to a complex process taking hours to cast and producing a long-term impact. Casting a spell requires the caster to make gestures and utter incantations, so being unable to speak prevents spellcasting for most casters. If your character has a long-term disability that prevents or complicates them from speaking (as described in GM Core), work with the GM to determine an analogous way they cast their spells, such as tapping in code on their staff or whistling.

Or does manipulate and concentrate dictate the need for gestures and incantations respectively?

I was reading the remaster witch focus spells and pg. 385 conveniently had a spell for each trait combination.

-Elemental Betrayal only has concentrate
-Life Boost only has manipulate
-Malicious Shadow has both
-Patron's puppet has neither

None are subtle so they all have obvious and noticeable manifestations, but I was wondering if the gestures and incantations are dependent on the spell's traits.

Yes, you can.

You never declare anything up front in PF2, actions are meant to happen one after the other. So you wait for the resolution of the previous action to choose what action and who you target with the next.

Thanks!! I was definitely overthinking it but had to make sure to tie up all possible loose ends in my head.

SuperBidi wrote:

Still, there's a catch with Act Together which is that you have to use the action with the various cost first. So you need to use Electric Arc before your Eidolon Strike.

Could you please direct me to where this kind of rule is stated? Because in the Act Together text I read that one does one thing, and (not then) the other does another thing. There's no order implied.

I never got the impression there was an order implied either, both in the Act Together description and the examples. The order description from the playtest, which is where I get my bias from I guess, is missed here.

Natural Medicine actually showed up in one of the previewed pages of the Remaster from the GenCon Stream. It now reads---

You can apply natural cures to heal your allies. You can use Nature instead of Medicine to Treat Wounds, including higher Nature proficiency letting you attempt more difficult checks. It doesn't replace Medicine for uses of the skill other than Treat Wounds or for feat prerequisites.

Ravingdork made a post made a pdf of these pages. It's on page 28 of the pdf.

Can I do this?

Two-action Act Together
- Summoner casts Thundering dominance on eidolon
- Then eidolon immediately uses the Thundering Roar action given by the spell

Weird thing is the eidolon doesn't have the Thundering Roar action until AFTER the spell is cast. Can the eidolon legally take the Thundering Roar action for the Act Together single action even if it did not exist until well after I already committed to Act Together?

Okay, so maybe the better question is this---
Do I declare the exact two actions I plan to take when I take the Act Together activity, possibly the exact targets and other decisions for those actions, OR do I simply commit to a number of actions to Act Together first then choose the appropriate actions to fit as I go?

For a more general example, let's say I two-action Act Together planning to summoner cantrip and eidolon strike a target. I resolve the eidolon strike first and it unexpectedly crits and kills the target. Do I waste the cantrip as it no longer has a target, do I still cast the cantrip but instead choose a different target, or do I have the freedom to choose any other two-action activity to complete the two-action Act Together?

Thanks in advance!!

Huh, I always thought you cast a spell to activate the item instead of the otherway around. Then again, I don’t think I realized the there was a difference until now so I have to pay attention to that more in the future.

Thanks all for clearing me up on psychic spellcasting!

Looks like I never paid much attention to that part about staves. Although does that mean spells from other magic items can’t normally be used with metamagic?

I forgot to add this but I also wanted to confirm something related. This component substitution exclusiveness to psychic spellcasting is basically the same exclusiveness on what spells get the bonus damage from Unleash Psyche, correct? The spells I could sub components on are the same spells I could get bonus damage from Unleash Psyche (provided it also deals damage with no duration) and vice versa?

Referring to this passage in particular

You access the vast well of power that resides within your own mind, calling forth psychic magic with nothing but thought and will. You can cast occult spells using the Cast a Spell activity. You alter some of the standard spell components when casting spells you know from your psychic spellcasting. Instead of speaking, you substitute any verbal components with a special mental component determined by your subconscious mind class feature. This represents how you exert your mind toward your intended effect. Any of these components impart the concentrate trait to the spell you're casting. You also substitute any material components with somatic components, though these tend to be simple movements of the hand or head compared to those used by other spellcasters. Your spells still have clear and noticeable visual and auditory manifestations, as normal for a spellcaster.

If I understand correctly, I can only make the component substitutions for cantrips and leveled spells I exclusively acquire from the Psychic class. For any other spell, like those from archetypes and items, I would have to provide verbal and material components as normal. This is distinct from other casters that can also do component substitutions as those casters can make component substitutions on any spell.

Is that right? Asking for a friend and that friend is me with a shiny new spellheart.

FWIW, I looked back at the playtest Psychic and it recovers focus points more like the standard "must spend at least 2 focus points to recover 2." It being changed indicates some intention to make focus point recovery easier for them in general while still promoting psychic focus point usage.

Hypothetically if this “loophole” is unintentional, how should it actually work?

Needing to use 2 focus points only on psychic abilities to get 2 back is how I figured it worked initially since it parallels the focus feats the best. That does leave it open to accidentally locking you into 1 focus point for the rest of the day should you squeeze in a non-psychic focus spell in there before refocusing properly. That feels just as janky and unintended.

Sorry, I see how my second question is confusing.

I meant the “up to your maximum of 2” part as adjusting, not the focus point recovery. I know you only ever recover 2 focus points from Refocusing as a Psychic unless you get the 18th level feat the 3 focus point recovery.

I’m asking if the “up to your maximum of 2” is just reminder text for your default max at level 1 or mechanically relevant to only allow you to recover up to 2 focus points even if you get your focus pool to 3. I assume it’s only reminder text but I just want to be certain since it doesn’t appear in the focus feats of other classes, which is what I’m more familiar with.

Psychics can recover 2 focus points Refocusing without having to spend 2 focus points beforehand. They only need to have spent 1 to exclusively amp a psi cantrips. Does this mean they can, given the extra Refocus time, recover all the way up to 3 focus points from 0?

The feature also says you recover 2 focus points “up to your maximum of 2” when you Refocus. Does that adjust once you bump your focus pool to 3 or should I be reading that as what prevents me from recovering back up to 3?

Thanks for the responses and examples.

I think I was taking way too many extra steps to justify an effect opposing another effect anyway. Now I see it's the wrong approach since otherwise, I bet I can justify just about anything as opposing any curse's effects in someway and just make nothing work at all. That doesn't seem right.

Anyway, I'm sure to suggest Diehard to our Oracle next session, or at least to also keep the Regenerate spell handy.

The major curse of the bones mystery makes you wounded 1 and the extreme curse makes you doomed 2. This means you die when you hit 0 HP since doomed 2 makes you die at dying 2 and wounded 1 brings you to dying 2 at minimum. However, with the Regenerate spell, your dying value can't increase to a value that would kill.

Now my question is, does this count as violating that curse feature that prevents you from ignoring your curse? In this case, the major curse wounded condition?

This specific scenario almost happened the other day when I cast Regenerate on our bones oracle who was at critical HP and extreme cursed. Thankfully, we were able to end the fight before she actually went down, but I wonder if this was even legitimate play if she did.

Battle Cry triggers “when you roll initiative.” If successful and it frightens the target, would the target be frightened for their initiative roll or has the initiative roll already happened by this point?

I just learned about it, it is apparently from grand bazaar: https://2e.aonprd.com/AnimalCompanions.aspx?ID=30

The legchair inspired this thread, it is just wild! Gives me strong witch hat atelier vibes which I really like!

I really like the idea of an inventor who rides their construct, sounds like a fun playstyle!

Oh wow, I did not know about the legchair, and I'm sad I didn't know about it earlier. It's still technically an animal, right? Nothing about it seems to change that.

My top 3 are:

A Fungus/Decay oriented Druid order.
A Barbarian Instinct that replicates the Aberrant Bloodrager, we can already get big and turn into dragons, so why not "weird anatomy and stretchy arms."
Calamity/Apocalypse Oracle Mystery, with the corresponding thematic curse.

If anything and everything could have a fungus/decay subclass, I would be so happy.

I never noticed the spellcasting ancestor bonus added to healing. That's less boring than when I thought it was just a damage boost.

Oh cool! That helps me a lot for visualization.

Also, I should've clarified the +2 only being there on the major curses, which would only be available at 11+. +2 on the moderate curses would be insane for a spellcaster!

Though while Battle Oracle gains their status bonus at 11, the Ancestors one gains their own at level 1. I noticed I feel very relunctant to get Bless as I would not benefit from the bonus myself.

Hm, I just checked to confirm but I always thought those major curse status bonuses were +2s all this time for some reason. Oops. I just don't run into those two much I guess.

If those bonuses were +2, it would 'solve' these common +1 overlaps. Getting Bless or your Courage Inspired is still nothing for you but it's less feels bad energy with the better personal buff.

Here's the catch though, I'm not familiar with this kind of balance. Is a +2 too much here? As in, how close is it to stepping on martial territory?

EDIT: +2 bonus on the major curses

I think I heard Undead Master will be like beast master but undead, so that is probably the most exciting thing for me. Getting to use the animal companion rules for undead is something I've wanted to do for a while.

Really? If true, I'm a lot more excited for it than before! If not, excitement is still really high.

I'm looking forward to skelly ancestry the most, but this thread has just made me realize all the cool undead art we're going to get. I'm all sorts of excited for that.

I'm not sure anyone was complaining?

Anyway, here's another fun thing you can do with mystery conduit. Once overwhelmed, you can't cast revelation spells, but since mystery conduit spells aren't revelation spells and just progress your curse like one, you can still cast those while overwhelmed.

You're overwhelmed. You refocus to regain focus points and reduce your curse level from your max curse level to minor. You're still overwhelmed. You can't cast revelation spells, but you can cast a 5th level spell with mystery conduit to progress your curse from minor to moderate. You're still overwhelmed.

Heh. That is an interesting bug.

And yeah, it is obviously a bug. The intent being that 'overwhelmed' is a state of the Oracular curse that can be progressed to. So anything that progresses your curse (not just Revelation spells) can progress the curse to the overwhelmed state.

It’s actually written like the aforementioned Divine Inspiration which indicates it recovers focus points like refocus without actually refocusing. In this case, the spell is a revelation in function but not in name.

Yeah but without lowering your curse you can't cast too many without getting overwhelmed. So even if you regain focus points you can't cast too many cursebound spells.

That reminds me of this interesting quirk with the Mystery Conduit feat that someone pointed out to me the other day.

It turns <5th level spells w/ no duration cursebound. NOT turned into a revelation spell, just gains the cursebound trait. This is important because the only act that makes you overwhelmed is casting a revelation spell. Since those spells aren't considered as revelation spells and only mimics their functionality through cursebound, they technically shouldn't overwhelm you or be disallowed to cast while overwhelmed.

I think it's an obvious bug, and the intent is that it's supposed to count as a revelation spell as far as curse rules go. I also posed that you technically shouldn't be able to advance your curse once maxed out or already overwhelmed.

Oh wait, you made me notice something. The spell has a duration. I've only attributed that to the success result and the opportunity for creatures entering later on. Everything else about the spell seems to be an instant, one-time effect.

Could it be the duration is also applied to the prone condition? It would make the failure results unanimously superior. I have my doubts, since I expect it would point out being unable to end prone by standing. It's also a level 1 spell.

In the end, it might just be, like you said, re-entering re-triggers the spell's conequences.

Gust of Wind's success result is "The creature can't move against the wind." It doesn't carry over to failure or critical failure. So if cast in a 5-ft wide corridor, it's vastly superior if the enemy succeeds, no? They can't move towards you at all during their turn.

There are maybe some cases that isn't true, but I even thought about the critical failure result. It's a 30-foot push back + prone, but even that is less restricting than the success result for most creatures.

Is this a correct reading on it? It's a curious interaction for a very specific grid layout.

Found it on the blog post about the playtest survey analysis :

"Our plan is to disentangle Esoteric Antithesis from Recall Knowledge (with a feat, like investigators’, to pick up a free Recall Knowledge if you want that)"

I think I forgot what I read in that playtest after so long, because I do remember esoteric antithesis and find flaws being directly dependent on a recall knowledge. I don’t know how I erased that from memory and reimagined it as only recall knowledge adjacent.

Good to know though. I should read that playtest analysis.

I wonder if the release of Thaumaturge will come with additional recall knowledge rules/options/clarifications. I did not have much time to look at the playtest but I heard it’s a very recall knowledge heavy class.

I think you're right based on the negative healing trait. It treats you as if you are undead. Malignant sustenance is pretty good then for bones.

In fairness, it’s not totally clear as written, but aggregated context clues from different passages point to it working like that afaik. It’s also less convoluted that way so I’m biased.

Gaulin wrote:

I really like malignant sustenance for a bones Oracle too, fast healing along with temp HP and damage resistance is awesome.

Needs an undead creature to work. Bones oracle isn't technically undead, just has negative healing.

Isn't this the same concept as Harm needing a willing a undead creature as a target for its healing? Yet I'm sure most of us allow Harm to heal a dhampir.

Our GM always ruled if you remembered a bonus you forgot to add, or something similar, he'd let it go as long as it was the same round. But once it gets to your turn again, it's done. And he'd only get strict if people were constantly forgetting things. Continually chiming in, "Oh. Would 27 have hit? I forgot the bard's performance bonus," for the 4th round in a row. When he kept having to rewind and say you hit after all, he'd say no.

Same for us for the most part. As long as it's understandable to forget something in a hectic round or two, our GM is reasonably lenient. As players, we're also receptive to our GM having to retroactively fix something in his end so it fairly goes both ways.

I hope this gets a clarifying errata the first chance it gets. Until then, I'd allow this for the simple fact that mundane items allow even more customizability for the eidolon.

I played in a game with a summoner and their medic eidolon and they integrated their healer's tools as various healing fruits that grow on the eidolon. It makes me want to roll a construct eidolon and deck it out with all the tools.

Here's something I found browsing through the pregens and reminded me of this thread. This is in Korakai's curse description and its example is different from the APG description.

You can’t mitigate, reduce, or remove the effects of your oracular curse by any means other than Refocusing and resting for 8 hours. For example, resist energy can’t be used to reduce the weakness to electricity from your curse. Likewise, remove curse and similar spells don’t affect your curse at all.

I'd gather short examples like this distributed among the other subclasses would suffice for more clarity.

Frankly, I didn't think gaining resistance via resist energy would count as reducing the weakness from the curse. I thought it would simply be additive like bonuses and penalties yet here we are. I am unsure on its integrity as official ruling, however. It's an official character sheet but I remember a few of them having several mistakes fixed with errata.

I’ve only played a cosmos oracle and never felt the need to get divine access. I was content on being laser focused on getting the second revelation spell Insterstellar void and felt peachy.

I’ve been there though, recognizing how it would be more problematic for the other subclasses. I remembered looking through the divine list for damaging air and water spells for the tempest mystery and not finding any until 5th level or so and abandoned the idea. I reconsidered it when SoM came out with all the new spells. I was disappointed divine access couldn’t access any of them but that’s more of a deity problem than an oracle one.

I certainly agree with your point, OP. General Feats really feel a bit... lost. And the balance between them is really not that great: I almost always see the same 4 or 5 being picked by everyone in slightly different orders.

The different orders hits really close to home, although I do like how flexible those good ones are.

When was the last we got a handful of new general feats anyway? I’m anxious for more options.

I'd like to see some higher level general feats to boost skills or weapon training.

Higher level general feats in general even.

Just a little suggestion if you play live and have a GM screen: initiative trackers in the form of 'tents' on top of a GM screen work really well especially in PF2 when you change initiative order regularly. Like these here: image. On your side ini and stats, on the player's side names of PCs and monsters.

Sorry if you don't use a screen and it's irrelevant.

This is how my GM did it for my very first tabletop game. I always thought it was just done that way and we never called it anything so seeing referred to as ‘tents’ made me chuckle. Real talk though, it’s been a great way to keep track of initiative or any other important character info for us and the GM. Suggestion seconded.

I don’t know which is more likely/realistic. Leshies having more support for the fungus heritage or just having a completely new fungus ancestry.

Anyway, I’d be happy with anything that adds more fungus.

What upcoming book do you think is our best chance of getting new deities with new spells from Secrets of Magic?

I was building a cleric with one of the new non-divine spells in mind. I didn't realize until later I was out of luck with no deities with the new spells.

The Plant Eidolon's ability Field of Roots forces a Reflex save but does not say against what DC. Other Eidolon abilities do like the Dragon Eidolon's Breath Weapon which specify the Summoner's spell DC

Since immobilized from the crit fail overwrite each other, my first instinct was the damage is overwritten too, but I think the condition and damage are independent of each other in this scenario so the damage from each instance continue to coexist. Does that sound right?

the ability also fails to say what the reflex DC is based on.

Nice one, I didn't notice that. Your spell DC does seem to be the standard. Psychopomp eidolon also has an ability that uses it like the dragon and demon.

I wonder if the crit failure effect stacks. If an enemy crit fails three times, are they taking three instances of damage at the end of each round?

Usually there's a claus that addresses stacking damage like that, huh? The same goes for the failure effect too but less practical without immobilized. Maybe that's why it only deals half damage on failure and full damge on crit failure?

Two questions on the Plant Eidolon's Field of Roots:

Your eidolon extends its roots underground to entangle and possibly damage all foes nearby. All enemies within your eidolon's reach take damage of the same type and amount as your eidolon's most damaging Strike, depending on their Reflex saves. Any ongoing effects of the save last until the enemy either Escapes or leaves your eidolon's reach. After using Field of Roots, your eidolon is immobilized until it takes a single action, which has the manipulate trait, to detach from the ground; this also ends any remaining effects on enemies from Field of Roots.

1. Does the eidolon have to uproot to use Field of Roots again after it used Field of Roots to root previously?

2. Does area affected by Field of Roots count as containing plants for effects like Entangle?

After having read it more carefully, I don't think there's anything stopping you from using Field of Roots back to back while still rooted as long as you don't mind not being able to move. The ability also doesn't create an actual field of roots; the roots just aim at each enemy. The first time I read it I thought the complete opposite for each so I just needed to be sure.

Thanks for the reach info. Sounds like a lot of fun albeit limited to one Eidolon type.

And yeah, if Evolution Surge remained intact from the playtest, being locked into a size shouldn't be too much of an issue.

Ranged eidolon attacks come from a level 2 feat

Are there more feats that further upgrade that attack? Like adding more traits and whatnot?

I heard about increasing eidolon size and reach is a thing. Any unarmed attacks have reach or feats that add it? I wonder how much reach I can stack on it.

Death effects states : "If you are reduced to 0 Hit Points by a death effect, you are slain instantly without needing to reach dying 4. If an effect states it kills you outright, you die without having to reach dying 4 and without being reduced to 0 Hit Points."

If reduced to 0 hit points with a death effect, doesn't the condition for both instant death and banishment (reaching 0 hit points) happen at the same time? Is there a ruling determining order of events when two or more events occur simultaneously?

This can also happen if you summon a creature whose death trigger is reaching 0 hit points (instead of dying or being slain). Calathgar is one example.

Good to know about death effects though and I wasn't even aware of massive damage.