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Assuming you're ok with walking into the next fight with the cool down timer still running, sure. But 1d6 healing is probably better reserved for getting someone back on their feet after a knock out. That's probably the main use for this elixir.I vastly disagree. When you want to get someone back on their feet, you don't want them to have just 1-6 hit points, you want them with a sizable chunk of hit points to (hopefully) survive at least one hit.
Remember that we are speaking of the Chirurgeon, someone who should have a lot of meaningful healing options.The 1d6 points of healing are just there to complement other forms of healing, especially when you can't take (quite) long rests.
You're right that giving 1d6 should never be your primary solution, but I've seen the Chirurgeon exhaust their healing before. It never hurts to have a way to heal people in a pinch, even if is just so they can retreat.
It also creates an interesting role-playing tool for NPCs, since there's no limit to the number of people you can heal. Like, if you want to bring a captured enemy back to interrogate. (Though Battle Medicine already provided a solid option there.)
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Assuming you're ok with walking into the next fight with the cool down timer still running, sure. But 1d6 healing is probably better reserved for getting someone back on their feet after a knock out. That's probably the main use for this elixir.I vastly disagree. When you want to get someone back on their feet, you don't want them to have just 1-6 hit points, you want them with a sizable chunk of hit points to (hopefully) survive at least one hit.
Remember that we are speaking of the Chirurgeon, someone who should have a lot of meaningful healing options.The 1d6 points of healing are just there to complement other forms of healing, especially when you can't take (quite) long rests.
You're right that giving 1d6 should never be your primary solution, but I've seen the Chirurgeon exhaust their healing before. It never hurts to have a way to heal people in a pinch, even if is just so they can retreat.
It also creates an interesting role-playing tool for NPCs, since there's no limit to the number of people you can heal. Like, if you want to bring a captured enemy back to interrogate. (Though Battle Medicine already provided a solid option there.)
My disagreement was on the fact that (I quote you) "1d6 healing is probably better reserved for getting someone back on their feet after a knock out. That's probably the main use for this elixir.". Now, I fully agree that there are some niche uses besides the little bit of out of combat healing it provides.
So,one of the interesting possibilities with Perpetual Infusions Elixirs of Life is the Merciful Elixir and Greater Merciful Elixir feats. The Minor Elixir of Life won't do any good, but the Lessor at L11 is a different story (Merciful Elixir coming in at L10.) Merciful Elixir is like Clay Golems and Mutagens: it uses the Item level for Counteract checks, not level/2. So the 5th level item can conceivably Counteract up to an 8th level spell, and as it uses Class DC -10 for the roll modifier it has a chance.(Not a great chance, but a chance.)
The Moderate Elixir at L17 would be decent Counteract fuel against anything, affecting Level 9-10 effects on a success and everything else on a fail.
Plus, the cooldown period would not apply to this type of use. Niche, but then again, a lot of Healing can be said to be niche. 😀
Merciful Elixir is like Clay Golems and Mutagens: it uses the Item level for Counteract checks, not level/2.
Nope, doesn't work like that.
Clay Golem states that the Counteract level is the Clay Golem level.Merciful Elixir tells you to use the item level to determine the Counteract level, and to determine the counteract level of an item, you take it's level/2.
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I wonder when they're going to get around to the wand of slaying. It's still Illusion rather than Necromancy :P
Death is an illusion! Clearly it's a phantasmal killer wearing an illusory disguise :p
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I'm very curious to see if it is eventually errata'd, it being a major kick in the nuts is fairly consistent with other versions so personally I wouldn't be surprised if it never changed.
To a degree, yes, but not quite to the extreme degree that it is now. Like, it'd totally fit the theme for it to have a counteract level 1-2 higher than normal for its level, but not 5 higher.
There's almost nothing in PF2 that causes conditions that you really can't undo with level-appropriate (though sometimes pricey) means.
This looks more like a forgotten bit of numbers reconciliation when the counteract system was first being written. After all, it has that weird divide by half on things graded on a 1-20 scale (creatures, items) but not things graded on a 1-10 scale (spells).
It's funny how easy it is to interpret things differently. Sinew-Shock and Focus Cathartic don't mention Counteract Level at all, so I've always gone with the basic Level/2 rules. Merciful Elixir and the Mutagens description specifically say Item Level so I've always looked at it as a case of specific over general and for those cases you use the full Item Level instead of Level/2. It's likely I've just been looking at it wrong.
One thing's for sure: I hope Treasure Vault has a bunch of Healing Elixirs and Mutagens because neither Chirurgeons nor Mutagenists have good candidates for their Perpetual Infusions items once they get their Perpetual Potency ones at L11.
Bombers, on the other hand, make out like a bandit with the new rules, because there are a number of Bombs that, while their damage will lag, they still have nice side effects. I'm planning on leaving Bottled Lightning as a Lesser Item, taking Alignment Ampoules as my second Perpetual Infusions item, and going Moderate Acid Flask and Alchemist's Fire for Perpetual Potency items.
(Yes, a Lesser Alignment Ampoule only does 1pt + Splash (Currently 6 pts) but as Alignment Ampoules do *nothing* without a Weakness to Alignment damage, that's not really a big deal. Alignment Ampoules are fantastic with Sticky Bomb, and Perpetual Infusions means infinite Sticky Bombs...)
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Another thought on the chirurgeon after messing around a bit.
The changes are really good, but I'm hoping Treasure Vault has some missing piece of the puzzle here, because I feel like most of the improvements work around some of the core problems the research field has.
Poor action economy, weird scaling on elixirs, a lack of an obvious or effective combat routine.
It sort of feels like they've cleaned up the Chirurgeon a bit, but only in the peripherals. Like a car with a new paint job, detailing, new seats, and air conditioning but no one checked the engine.
Also the clay golem is almost certainly an error, but that would be a matter for errata for a different book than this one.
If the clay golem were an error, it would be fixed by now. I think it is an homage to the clay golem from very old school D%D when it was that hard to heal a clay golem's wounds. If you were low level, you weren't able to heal the clay golem's wounds. It's what made them a unique and dangerous creature.
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Another thought on the chirurgeon after messing around a bit.
The changes are really good, but I'm hoping Treasure Vault has some missing piece of the puzzle here, because I feel like most of the improvements work around some of the core problems the research field has.
Poor action economy, weird scaling on elixirs, a lack of an obvious or effective combat routine.
It sort of feels like they've cleaned up the Chirurgeon a bit, but only in the peripherals. Like a car with a new paint job, detailing, new seats, and air conditioning but no one checked the engine.
Yeah, that's the conclusion I came to too. A good start but needs more work done under the hood.
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Also the clay golem is almost certainly an error, but that would be a matter for errata for a different book than this one.If the clay golem were an error, it would be fixed by now. I think it is an homage to the clay golem from very old school D%D when it was that hard to heal a clay golem's wounds. If you were low level, you weren't able to heal the clay golem's wounds. It's what made them a unique and dangerous creature.
Bear in mind that of all three Bestiaries released for 2e so far, only one of them has received an errata pass and it's not the one in which the clay golem appears. For that matter, no matter what the developers think of the cursed wound's counteract level, we wouldn't know about it at this point unless somebody chose to go off record on the forums or a video.
Likewise, Golem Antimagic, an ability which I think very few people will say is completely without ambiguity or need for clarification, also remains unchanged from its publication.
Hopefully both of these things will be addressed in the next errata pass now that we don't need to wait for the Bestiary's next printing, but as past errata has shown, even if they get missed it doesn't necessarily mean that no developer thinks there is a problem--merely that a correction wasn't issued at that time whether because it was missed or no consensus was found before the errata went out.
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Also the clay golem is almost certainly an error, but that would be a matter for errata for a different book than this one.If the clay golem were an error, it would be fixed by now. I think it is an homage to the clay golem from very old school D%D when it was that hard to heal a clay golem's wounds. If you were low level, you weren't able to heal the clay golem's wounds. It's what made them a unique and dangerous creature.Bear in mind that of all three Bestiaries released for 2e so far, only one of them has received an errata pass and it's not the one in which the clay golem appears. For that matter, no matter what the developers think of the cursed wound's counteract level, we wouldn't know about it at this point unless somebody chose to go off record on the forums or a video.
Likewise, Golem Antimagic, an ability which I think very few people will say is completely without ambiguity or need for clarification, also remains unchanged from its publication.
Hopefully both of these things will be addressed in the next errata pass now that we don't need to wait for the Bestiary's next printing, but as past errata has shown, even if they get missed it doesn't necessarily mean that no developer thinks there is a problem--merely that a correction wasn't issued at that time whether because it was missed or no consensus was found before the errata went out.
I don't want it addressed. I like the homage to the old clay golem when creatures were dangerous and scary. I like having it so player's feel frightened of a clay golem because it is so hard to heal it's wounds. When we first fought a clay golem, we thought it was very cool that the clay golem was a throwback to the old 1st edition clay golem. In 1st edition you had to be a 17th level caster to heal a clay golem's wounds. When we compared what a it took to heal a clay golem's wound in PF2, it would take a 17th level caster using a 9th level spell and getting a success on the counteract check.
Some game designer at Paizo that either played or knew about 1st edition clay golems tossed in an old school scary element of the clay golem.
I think it's cool and don't want it changed. Let Clay Golems be real scary.
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In D&D 2E it took a level 6 spell to heal clay golem wounds. There wasn't any challenge rating on monsters at all then so there was no advised level on when to encounter them. But clerics got level 6 spells at level 11. And once you get there, it's auto success.
In 3.0 it's a CR 10 creature and requires Heal or a level 6 healing spell to fix. You might run into it at say, level 7 as a boss monster which is pretty bad, but that's overall fixable. You can fix it yourself from level 11 onward.
I don't have a 3.5 monster manual at hand.
In PF1 it takes a DC 25 caster level check to cure and it's a CR 10 creature. If you ran into it at level 7 you'd need to roll an 18 on your caster level check to overcome. That's probably not happening mid-combat, but given a few days to recover, you'll eventually succeed. If you're level 11, that still needs a 14 on the caster level check, so unlike previous editions, they stay scary for longer.
In PF2 it'd be a level 10 effect so you need a crit on a level 7 spell to counteract at the very earliest (so level 13). Only by level 17 when you only need a regular success on counteracting do they become easy. Meanwhile, XP tables suggest that you could run into a clay golem as a severe encounter at level 7.
This is so far apart and so out of character for PF2 that I think the much more reasonable explanation is: the clay golem was written into B1 early on when they didn't have many monsters with stuff you needed to counteract. So they thought they were being helpful and wrote in explicitly what you needed to counteract. Then later on they revised the counteracting system to work on a 1-10 scale instead of a 1-20 scale, and didn't remember to go back and fix the golem.
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The idea that healing potions or elixirs are "supposed" to be the workaround doesn't fly for me. Making a condition on the one hard so absurdly hard to fix, and on the other hand making such a super easy fix based on a technical wording, I don't believe it. We've seen with the Soothe/undead healing thing, that it's much more likely that left hand doesn't know what the right hand is writing.
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I'd revise the golem next printing by:
* Giving it a counteract level 2 higher than normal for its level, so typically 7. That means that a level 8 party running into one can only remove the wound with a crit on counteracting, and actually that's still the case for the level 10 party. Only when your party level is higher than the golem can you remove it on a normal counteract.
* Cleaning up the language to apply to all healing, not specifically spells.
It's funny how easy it is to interpret things differently. Sinew-Shock and Focus Cathartic don't mention Counteract Level at all, so I've always gone with the basic Level/2 rules. Merciful Elixir and the Mutagens description specifically say Item Level so I've always looked at it as a case of specific over general and for those cases you use the full Item Level instead of Level/2. It's likely I've just been looking at it wrong.
One thing's for sure: I hope Treasure Vault has a bunch of Healing Elixirs and Mutagens because neither Chirurgeons nor Mutagenists have good candidates for their Perpetual Infusions items once they get their Perpetual Potency ones at L11.
Bombers, on the other hand, make out like a bandit with the new rules, because there are a number of Bombs that, while their damage will lag, they still have nice side effects. I'm planning on leaving Bottled Lightning as a Lesser Item, taking Alignment Ampoules as my second Perpetual Infusions item, and going Moderate Acid Flask and Alchemist's Fire for Perpetual Potency items.
(Yes, a Lesser Alignment Ampoule only does 1pt + Splash (Currently 6 pts) but as Alignment Ampoules do *nothing* without a Weakness to Alignment damage, that's not really a big deal. Alignment Ampoules are fantastic with Sticky Bomb, and Perpetual Infusions means infinite Sticky Bombs...)
I kinda disagree with this; bombers can put stuff like tanglefoot bags and such in lower slots, but with maxing out at expert, you're only getting one attack and want the damage
Meanwhile, mutagenist gets to keep their favorite two in the top slot while keeping niche options in the lower level ones that still have nice effrcts; like cognatives RK crift fail into a fail, drakeheart letting you give your melee a 1/combat spend one action get two strides as an opener to close distance, etc. Chirugeon does need more healing items though, but mutagenist is easily in a better spot than bomber
(My bomber uses tanglefoot and acid flask for their level 1s; Tanglefoots are still solid at level 1, and sticky bomb acid flask is actually pretty decent for destroying objects)
For me, it's all about the circumstances. Alignment Ampoules are a very circumstantial Bomb... they will do *nothing* unless the target has a Weakness. Still, a lot of things have a Weakness to Alignment damage... just about every Fiend for example.
Persistent Damage is fantastic with Weaknesses because it is guaranteed you will hit the Weakness twice. So I have used Sticky Bomb @ full cost (1 Batch pre-Errata) with Alignment Ampoules to great effect.
Now I can use one of my Lesser Perpetuals instead. Yes, I will do a little less up-front damage... 3pts compared to a Moderate AA Alignment Ampoule. (I'm comparing with Moderate as I can't Sticky a Greater Bomb until 13th level.) However, I'm doing 7 pts + Weakness on the initial Strike, and another 6 pts + Weakness at the end of the target's turn, with the potential to keep going... and I don't have to risk using a Batch on a miss. That, IMHO, is a great use for a Bomb slot that I won't be using a *lot*, because yes, I do tend to focus on one strong Strike per turn.
Similar reasoning for keeping Bottled Lightning as my second Lesser Perpetual. Most of the time I'm going to be focused on damage, and Acid Flask & Alchemist's Fire are definitely two of the best damage Bombs in the game. If I throw a Bottled Lightning, it's going to be because tactically I want to flat-foot the target. Now, I'm going to be 11th level, and Greater Bombs will be on the table, so a lot of the time I'll just Quick Bomber a Greater Bottled Lightning... but with LBL in that Perpetual Infusions slot I will always have that tactical option (plus an option to pile on another type of Persistent Damage, which is something I love to do.)
I'm definitely going to have to keep Tanglefoot Bags in mind for the annoyance factor though. I fully intend to take Perpetual Breadth @ 14th, so I will eventually have four Moderates and four Lessers as Perpetual Infusions.
For Mutagenist: I find Lesser Mutagens are in a weird spot, mainly due to the duration. I took Cognitive and Silvertongue for my Lesser Perpetual Infusions, because the "no crit fail" rider is great. The question is, what to do when Perpetual Potency comes into play? This is all speculation, because 11th level is still 3 levels off for my Mutagenist.
I believe I'm going to want the greater duration and Item Bonus for both Silvertongue and Cognitive, so I will promote them (as I would have had to pre-Errata). But what to put in their place?
Your idea of Drakeheart is an interesting one, but taking a Drakeheart per minute during Exploration isn't really feasible... it would basically become my Exploration Activity and I don't think it really holds up as an Exploration Activity. Plus, I want to have Bestial up as soon as possible, and Flashback is only once per day... doing a Final Surge into Combat and then drinking a Bestial doesn't strike me as a great way to go. My third action would probably be Raise Shield, so there I am, out in front, waiting for things to come smack me.
Lesser Serene has fallen behind Bravo's Brew at this point, and Bravo's Brew has no Drawback, and doesn't interfere with other Mutagens.
Lesser Bestial is an absolute joke by 11th level, as is Lesser Quicksilver. I mean, you could use either to give the peasantry a boost in a Seven Samurai type scenario, but how often does *that* come up?
So I'm hoping that Treasure Vault will have some new Lesser Mutagens that would actually be worth using at 11th level +.
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The idea that healing potions or elixirs are "supposed" to be the workaround doesn't fly for me. Making a condition on the one hard so absurdly hard to fix, and on the other hand making such a super easy fix based on a technical wording, I don't believe it. We've seen with the Soothe/undead healing thing, that it's much more likely that left hand doesn't know what the right hand is writing.
Well, we have precedent of a kind with the Light cantrip automatically counteracting the Darkness spells.
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The idea that healing potions or elixirs are "supposed" to be the workaround doesn't fly for me. Making a condition on the one hard so absurdly hard to fix, and on the other hand making such a super easy fix based on a technical wording, I don't believe it. We've seen with the Soothe/undead healing thing, that it's much more likely that left hand doesn't know what the right hand is writing.Well, we have precedent of a kind with the Light cantrip automatically counteracting the Darkness spells.
Fair, but Light doesn't defeat Darkness by technical wording. Light is a light effect, which explicitly counteracts darkness effects. An effect that can only be cured by magic healing being circumvented because it happens not to mention item-based magic when describing how it interacts with spells is a step beyond, particularly since the reader is forced to draw the conclusion themselves whether items are even intended to ignore the main part of the ability.
I do hope they try to keep it in mind and design all new ancestries going forward as 2 boost, 1 flaw, 1 free as that actually provides something mechanically different. As it stands all the 1 boost, 1 free ancestries might as well not have a set stat.
It's worth keeping in mind, +Stat +Free ancestries were *not a thing* until after the CRB, which is the only thing the errata touched for now. It wouldn't surprise me if those later ancestries got an extra boost and flaw in errata, with the new option in mind. ¯\_('•')_/¯
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Personally, I wouldn't read too much into that twitter statement. They clarify that it was from the marketing team, and they don't know the intentions of the design team. In other words, all they did was point out something done recently prior to the change without providing much additional insight to the situation.
Considering Impossible Lands was released in November and likely finalized/shipped to print prior to then - there is a time gap that they may not have known this new errata would exist.
Overall, I'm hopeful that they errata the later ancestries to be 2 boost, 1 flaw, 1 free as otherwise those ancestries may as well not have a stat spread.
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Fair, but Light doesn't defeat Darkness by technical wording. Light is a light effect, which explicitly counteracts darkness effects. An effect that can only be cured by magic healing being circumvented because it happens not to mention item-based magic when describing how it interacts with spells is a step beyond, particularly since the reader is forced to draw the conclusion themselves whether items are even intended to ignore the main part of the ability.The idea that healing potions or elixirs are "supposed" to be the workaround doesn't fly for me. Making a condition on the one hard so absurdly hard to fix, and on the other hand making such a super easy fix based on a technical wording, I don't believe it. We've seen with the Soothe/undead healing thing, that it's much more likely that left hand doesn't know what the right hand is writing.Well, we have precedent of a kind with the Light cantrip automatically counteracting the Darkness spells.
You are right. But really many people just cannot believe a high enough Cantrip (ie no spell slot used) can beat a spell cast using a slot, even though that is exactly the RAW. Because they feel it is far too easy for parties that have the Light cantrip while being far too challenging for parties that do not have it.
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I remember PFS1 and we were running some old season scenarios and the new player was the only one without darkvision. And this was like the third scenario in a row with an enemy casting darkness as their big surprise gimmick.
I don't really miss it that 2E doesn't lean so much on darkness spells as an "original" gimmick.
I very much like that light as a cantrip is worth a spell slot in PF2. There are a lot of other ways to cover seeing, but if you don’t have a hieghtened light source, you might end up in trouble if someone casts a 4th darkness spell or higher.