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The long awaited second part of the Spring errata has arrived! (Along with an explanation of why it came in two waves- Player Core 1, GM Core, and Guns and Gear were getting reprinted, so their errata was pushed early so it would coincide with the physical releases)
The question of the Oracle's spells known was finally answered (4 per rank, in addition to your mystery and divine access spells), and Alchemists got some Quality of Life fixes, but the most controversial chamge is probably going to be the change to Resist All- It now only applies to the largest source of damage. This is a major change to the "Good Aligned" Champions, Amulet Thaumaturges, and Incorporeal enemies.
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I really like all the clarifications. Finally some thought behind those errata!
Longest outstanding resolution:
The Oracle's spells and some curses/cursebound things were addressed, e.g. Nudge the Scales adding targeting language.
Best resolved issue:
I also love that Draconic Sorcerers can now finally officially use their Specific Draconic Exemplar's damage type on their focus spells: A Rime Dragon Sorcerer no longer breathes fire, but cold!
Biggest letdown: The Battle Oracle's Weapon Trance spell now finally works, lasting for a minute without any sustain. But that begs the question: Why not just give Battle Oracles martial weapon proficiency and make an actually interesting focus spell?
Biggest rickroll: Devise a Stratagem no longer has the fortune trait – but since it's not a check you still can't use hero points on it. xD
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Biggest letdown: The Battle Oracle's Weapon Trance spell now finally works, lasting for a minute without any sustain. But that begs the question: Why not just give Battle Oracles martial weapon proficiency and make an actually interesting focus spell?
Because then the Animist focus spell, Embodiment of Battle, might get overshadowed and we cant have the newer books with the stronger stuff not sell. /sarcasm
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Most of the errata changes are awesome and I’m grateful for them, but the changes to Resist All make zero sense.
Resist All was effectively a shorthand for not having to write out every single damage type before, but now it means the Barbarian Level 20 feat is pretty worthless, Ghost Touch is a waste of money if you have more than one damage type, and Champions got significantly nerfed… and sfaik nobody was asking for that!
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Having just finished playing a Champion from 3 to 16, I won't be missing the old resistance to all rule. Getting the resistance once is good enough, and while it feels good as a player, it doesn't feel good as a GM to have an enemy be shut down because they dared to deal more than one damage type.
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The errata to Flames Oracle is mildly annoying. "You can't mitigate or bypass the drawbacks of any cursebound ability with spells or other effects" clearly meant you couldn't use fire resistance to block your persistent fire damage, and it was cool that you could be innured against other fires, but the raw power of your curse bypassed your resistance.
Most of the errata changes are awesome and I’m grateful for them, but the changes to Resist All make zero sense.
Resist All was effectively a shorthand for not having to write out every single damage type before, but now it means the Barbarian Level 20 feat is pretty worthless, Ghost Touch is a waste of money if you have more than one damage type, and Champions got significantly nerfed… and sfaik nobody was asking for that!
Eh the champion’s reaction nerf is justified, and done in a manner as to curb the worse excesses while leaving it intact in all other cases. Perfect example of a well calibrated nerf, really.
One time I had a party of 4 champion’s reaction users fight some monsters with even split down the middle damage types and this feels like justice for those monsters.
The resistance to all becomes a bit confusing to me.
If I have a level 6 PC with a Charm of Resistance (fire 5) and I get a Resistance to All from a champion (all 8) and I get physical (13) + fire (7) damage and electricity (8), what will happen?
— I will sum the damage and then reduce all of it by 8?
— I will reduce the physical or electricity damage by 8 and the fire damage by 5?
— I will reduce the physical and electricity damage by 8 each and the fire damage by 5?
— I will reduce the physical damage or electricity by 8 and the fire damage by 8?
— I will have to choose if I will reduce the physical or fire or electricity by 8?
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The resistance to all becomes a bit confusing to me.
If I have a level 6 PC with a Charm of Resistance (fire 5) and I get a Resistance to All from a champion (all 8) and I get physical (13) + fire (7) damage and electricity (8), what will happen?
— I will sum the damage and then reduce all of it by 8?
— I will reduce the physical or electricity damage by 8 and the fire damage by 5?
— I will reduce the physical and electricity damage by 8 each and the fire damage by 5?
— I will reduce the physical damage or electricity by 8 and the fire damage by 8?
— I will have to choose if I will reduce the physical or fire or electricity by 8?This is the relevant rules text from the errata:
"A single effect can activate more than one resistance at a time, but subtracts each of the subject’s resistances only once. If the subject has more than one resistance to the same damage type, they apply only one, usually the highest. For a resistance to a category including multiple damage types, like resistance to physical damage, to spells, or to all damage, if the subject is taking damage of multiple types included in the category, the subject can choose which damage type to use the resistance against."
In this case, you apply both of your resistances only once - but you apply them however you like, to reduce as much damage as possible. So in your example, your best bet would be to reduce the fire damage by 5 with your fire resistance, then you can choose to either reduce the electricity damage by 8 to 0, or the physical damage to by 8 to 5.
I don't feel like this is too complicated. I quite like it actually.
OK, I don't think that the mechanic is complicated. I only didn't understand the FAQ clarification.
Thanks for the explanation. Honestly, it's simpler and easier than the errata. :P
Oh I also need to point out that mutagenist improved a lot with its new field vial. Now it's feasible to be under the effect of up to 4 mutagens (up to 2 combined elixirs at level 13) and focus on disabling the worst effects. It still risks costing many actions, but it's now way better than before.
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So "Resist All X" has become more like "Resist Any X", where the creature choose X amount of damage to resist from any of the incoming damage, but no longer all of the incoming damage. This weakens many higher level creatures so their hit points might need calibration. That or create a "Resist Any Two X", though I don't think that'd be received well. Would some simply need to list out more damage types to reflect the designer's intentions? Hmm.
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So "Resist All X" has become more like "Resist Any X", where the creature choose X amount of damage to resist from any of the incoming damage, but no longer all of the incoming damage. This weakens many higher level creatures so their hit points might need calibration. That or create a "Resist Any Two X", though I don't think that'd be received well. Would some simply need to list out more damage types to reflect the designer's intentions? Hmm.
In practice, the old Resist All X always made too strong damage reduction from PCs (for example, in the old rule a Ghost Mage basically nullifies all the 2 non-ghost property runes and diminishes the main weapon damage).
I honestly doubt that many creature designers put into consideration the effect of Resist All put on PCs with many damage types in their attacks.
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Love the action economy improvements to Mutagenist and Toxicologist got to their very difficult to use field vials. It helps them feel like they have some things going for them that the archetype version doesn't.
Devise a stratagem received the following update:
“Devise a Stratagem had some changes. Remove the fortune trait from the traits line. Under Attack Stratagem, change the first sentence to “If you Strike the chosen creature before the start of your next turn, your Strike gains the fortune trait and you must use the result of the d20 roll for your Strike’s attack roll instead of rolling.” Replace the final sentence with the following two sentences. “When you make this substitution, you can add your Intelligence modifier to your attack roll instead of your Strength or Dexterity modifier. If you Strike with a melee weapon, melee unarmed attack, or thrown weapon, it must have the agile or finesse trait to benefit from the substitution.””
As written, this change might exclude bombs from being used with devise a stratagem. Depends on whether bombs count as thrown weapons - they don’t have the trait, but are stated to be thrown. Regardless this is a pretty big issue as there’s an entire investigator subclass based in large part on having bombs and it’s neutered without devise a stratagem accesses.
“The new wording applies to the same weapons as before, but also works on ranged unarmed attacks like the leshy’s seedpod.”
However, it also says this. And since bombs worked with devise a stratagem before, and there’s an entire subclass for them, that makes me think this is a simple error.
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This one might be my favorite:
Page 161: We created Create a Distraction as a diversion from Create a Diversion, but we have an aversion to putting the fencer in a pincer. This Create a Diversion version is a Create a Distraction erratum. In the fencer swashbuckler style, change “Create a Distraction” to “Create a Diversion.”
Any nod to The Court Jester (1955) is most welcome! Kudos to whoever thought of that one!
"The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle. The chalice from the palace has the brew that is true."
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I don't like the change to resist all. It should have never changed. It was fine as it was. I don't think this change makes the game more fun, more accessible, or more fair and thus I do not understand the reasoning behind the change. With this change, a character with a Mountain's Resilience and an Energy Aegis spell active has better resistance than a character with resist 5 all, even though both characters have resistance 5 to every damage type.
I think this change makes ghostly/incorporeal creatures much easier to deal with, lessening the need for specialized effects like ghost touch or the astral rune. I think this adjustment also massively buffs classes and feats that incentivizes multiple attacks like the Monk and Ranger, making classes and feats that prioritize large single strikes like the Swashbuckler and Gunslinger feel even more disadvantageous than they already did. I also think this adversely affects Champion and Barbarian in particular, with the latter's capstone feat Unstoppable Juggernaut being absolutely devastated.
I would encourage the design team to rethink this adjustment.
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Im just kind of bothered that such a massive change is being done in a spring errata and wasnt done during the remaster or something. Im not really a fan
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Overall not bad. Resist all change is huge but I don't necessarily hate it, there were definitely scenarios where resist all's value gets kind of insane.
I wonder if it's a rule at Paizo that every errata has to contain some odd minor nerf to something that was never really an issue.
Who was complaining about flame oracles? Or Investigators using boomerangs?
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Depends on whether bombs count as thrown weapons - they don’t have the trait, but are stated to be thrown. Regardless this is a pretty big issue as there’s an entire investigator subclass based in large part on having bombs and it’s neutered without devise a stratagem accesses.
“Bombs have the bomb trait, and have the thrown trait even though it isn’t listed.”
the 2026 spring errata for the GM core.
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Sometimes Paizo just can't win.
First you have people complaining they've been for too long for a clarification on instances of damage.
Then you get the people complaining that it's now been so long, you shouldn't clarify it anymore.
The issue is: Why doesn't Paizo know how their own game works, such that we have now had two wildly different versions of how damage works after two full releases of the game that never even attempted to explain how it works? Did the team ever have a clear vision for how instances of damage are supposed to interact with resistances/weaknesses?
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The way I see it, the first clarification was how they envisioned it in the first place, as it worked exactly how I read the rules since release. So the wildly different versions feels more because of how bad a reaction everyone had to being told it played differently than they thought, not because the developers don't know their game.
The way I see it, the first clarification was how they envisioned it in the first place, as it worked exactly how I read the rules since release. So the wildly different versions feels more because of how bad a reaction everyone had to being told it played differently than they thought, not because the developers don't know their game.
If we were sitting here in the first year of PF2's initial release, I might buy that. Here, years and a full remastering of the system later... Yeah, I just don't buy that. If they always knew why not errata it at any point before now?
I really like all the clarifications. Finally some thought behind those errata!
Longest outstanding resolution:
The Oracle's spells and some curses/cursebound things were addressed, e.g. Nudge the Scales adding targeting language.
Yeah it's nice to have clarity on this!
Biggest letdown: The Battle Oracle's Weapon Trance spell now finally works, lasting for a minute without any sustain. But that begs the question: Why not just give Battle Oracles martial weapon proficiency and make an actually interesting focus spell?
That's because mysteries no longer have mystery benefits, so there's no place in the class chassis to actually grant weapon proficiency without adding that back in (and then the other mysteries would need looking at again). They'd also still require an initial focus spell, so it'd need a new one if this was changed.
The mistake here was made in the remaster itself and it'd be a dramatically bigger errata if they tried to walk all that back. Making weapon trance at least usable is a much simpler change that at least lets it function without having to take Weapon Proficiency.
Errata can only do so much, at the end of the day.
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Sometimes Paizo just can't win.
First you have people complaining they've been for too long for a clarification on instances of damage.
Then you get the people complaining that it's now been so long, you shouldn't clarify it anymore.
You're not wrong.
That said, this part of it was clear. Resist All was the most explicit example of how the whole thing worked initially. It's surprising that it's suddenly changing now, after so long.
It's a significant nerf to the Thaumaturge in our party as Amulet is impacted.
The rest of the IWR errata makes a lot of sense to me and is similar to what I proposed. It'll work pretty well. This part of is just really surprising because this wasn't the part that was confusing.
We'll adapt and move on. It'll be helpful for PCs fighting Ghosts without Ghost Touch, for example. But in certain situations its a big hit to some classes defensive abilities. Maybe they felt those were too strong when that situation came up and it was suddenly blocking twice as much damage?
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I do want to comment that I think the Imm/Wk/Res changes had the best outcome I could have guessed.
I'm even more surprised that Paizo took the chance to bite a bullet and make an unneeded change with Resist All. They 100% knew the folks that benefit from it would strongly dislike the change, but I also agree that the mechanic was too disruptive/powerful.
PCs aside, that mechanic was mostly in the favor of the foes.
I think every single AP I've played has had a fight or two were foes multi-resisted the party's damage, and that alone jumped the danger level up substantially.
Very "savvy" of Paizo to use the rewrite that sets the I/W/R rules to the community standard as the spoonful of sugar, to help the 'medicine' of the Resist All change go down with minimal, if inevitable, fuss.
To be clear, the old version of Resist All was 100% dev intended. I just think the new blood in Paizo (imo rightfully) disagrees, and with the benefit of hindsight, sees that it's too game warping / powerful.
When parties do get to benefit from Resist All, it similarly changes the danger level of the encounters in the other direction, lol.
You do know the Alchemical Sciences methodology explicitly doesn't let you use its vials to creat bombs, right? You can only make elixirs or alchemical tools.
Devise a stratagem received the following update:“Devise a Stratagem had some changes. Remove the fortune trait from the traits line. Under Attack Stratagem, change the first sentence to “If you Strike the chosen creature before the start of your next turn, your Strike gains the fortune trait and you must use the result of the d20 roll for your Strike’s attack roll instead of rolling.” Replace the final sentence with the following two sentences. “When you make this substitution, you can add your Intelligence modifier to your attack roll instead of your Strength or Dexterity modifier. If you Strike with a melee weapon, melee unarmed attack, or thrown weapon, it must have the agile or finesse trait to benefit from the substitution.””
As written, this change might exclude bombs from being used with devise a stratagem. Depends on whether bombs count as thrown weapons - they don’t have the trait, but are stated to be thrown. Regardless this is a pretty big issue as there’s an entire investigator subclass based in large part on having bombs and it’s neutered without devise a stratagem accesses.
“The new wording applies to the same weapons as before, but also works on ranged unarmed attacks like the leshy’s seedpod.”
However, it also says this. And since bombs worked with devise a stratagem before, and there’s an entire subclass for them, that makes me think this is a simple error.
My bad, was confusing munitions machinist investigator with alchemical sciences. Not technically a subclass but de facto one since it’s a whole style of playing investigator.
Depends on whether bombs count as thrown weapons - they don’t have the trait, but are stated to be thrown. Regardless this is a pretty big issue as there’s an entire investigator subclass based in large part on having bombs and it’s neutered without devise a stratagem accesses.“Bombs have the bomb trait, and have the thrown trait even though it isn’t listed.”
the 2026 spring errata for the GM core.
Damn that really doesn’t sit at all with their “we expanded the weapon choice for investigators :)” comment. Losing bombs is a much bigger deal than gaining ranged unarmed attacks or whatever.
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It's rough, but I think I can stomach the change to resist all on my champion. Weird affects that gave you resist all 1 or a simila rlow value, however, may need to be revisited in a subsequent errata.
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Notably, the Devise a Stratagem change removing the Fortune trait from the action as a whole allows players to use Hero Points (or other Fortune effects) on rolls that Skill Stratagem gave a bonus to, which is fun.
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So, I think there's also a certain overreaction regarding the nerf to Resist All. In the vast majority of cases, it will change very little. Monsters don't usually have much more than 1 or 2 types of damage in their attacks; it's the players who tend to accumulate different types.
For example, from the player's perspective, a champion's Resist All reaction could reduce the damage from a Diabolic Dragon's bite twice, once for the physical part and once for the energy part of the damage. Now, the player tends to choose the greater source of damage, not doubling the effect.
However, if the player were to attack a Ghost Mage with a weapon with 2 property runes that are not among the exceptions, Resist All would effectively negate these runes and still considerably reduce the physical damage. Now, the Ghost Mage will only reduce the greater type of damage, letting the remaining runes take effect, thus decreasing the difficulty of defeating these creatures.
In other words, in practice, things shifted towards the middle ground, with broad resistances not being as potent as they were for both sides. In the end, I think it was a good change, although a little less intuitive, because in my experience as a game master these resistances acted very disproportionately for both sides. But it's still far from bad; it's still a resistance that works against all types of damage, even if it no longer multiplies, while at the same time it somewhat enhances characters with multiple specific resistances.
“The new wording applies to the same weapons as before, but also works on ranged unarmed attacks like the leshy’s seedpod.”
However, it also says this. And since bombs worked with devise a stratagem before, and there’s an entire subclass for them, that makes me think this is a simple error.
Indeed, it'd be great to get a clarifiaction on this!
Biggest rickroll: Devise a Stratagem no longer has the fortune trait – but since it's not a check you still can't use hero points on it. xD
And on this as well, I suppose :D
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Oh, great, now we got people complaining that Paizo is changing things with errata and not edition changes, after we got people complaining that Paizo isn't changing things with errata but only with edition changes. Very easy for Paizo to navigate this divide in fan opinion!
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Just wanted to voice my support and appreciation for the resist all change. I much prefer monsters to die faster and not purposely avoid feats or abilities that deal multiple types of damage.
My understood is that it will work like this example:
Some weaknesses can apply when a creature wouldn’t normally take damage, as determined by the GM. In such cases, you take damage equal to the weakness value when touched or affected by something with that characteristic. For example, a creature with weakness to water would take extra damage if it were targeted by a spell with the water trait or splashed with water.
So it will ignore the spirit damage but will take the holy damage.
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Notably, the Devise a Stratagem change removing the Fortune trait from the action as a whole allows players to use Hero Points (or other Fortune effects) on rolls that Skill Stratagem gave a bonus to, which is fun.
I wonder if you can now use a Misfortune effect on the Strike to cancel the Fortune and roll normally.
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Not a fan of the official ruling on Sticky Bomb... quite unsure if Persistent Damage of 2-4 points (4-6 for a Crystal Shards Bomb) is worth an 8th level Feat.
Quite ok with Investigators not getting Precision Damage with Bombs. Would be a fan of a similar ruling on Rogues. The image I have of Precision Damage just doesn't fit with a Bomb. It's not precise enough.