What’s up PF2E people!

Before Reddit imploded, there was someone who made an incredibly detailed analysis of the utility of True Strike vs. Magic Weapon, with spreadsheets and all.

Well, I’m making a homebrew rule for armor in PF2E to make it so that armor provides provides both an AC boost as well as resistance to physical damage. This would also add multiple layers of armor, so different resistances apply depending on whether the opponent hits your plate, or else rolls a precise enough attack to hit the mail beneath it, or finds a gap to hit your gambeson, or bypasses your armor altogether with a clean strike to your squishy bits.

Obviously, this is a REALLY dicy proposition in a system that wasn’t built with such resistances in mind, but I have some ideas that could work well for people who enjoy fleshing out their character’s kit with a lot more flavor.

Anyone know where Balance Spreadsheet Analysis Guy went after the subreddit was purged? Is he here, walking among the lemmings?? Or maybe you’re interested in adding obnoxious layers of complexity to your Champion, for immersion’s sake? If you’d like to help me formulate these alternate rules in a way that is balanced and fun, please let me know!

Wednesday, September 27, 2023

Paizo Staff post on the top selling licensed "Infinite" products for August 2023.

What is Pathfinder and Starfinder Infinite?

Pathfinder and Starfinder Infinite is a program that allows you to create content (adventures and locations; monsters; character classes, archetypes, and backgrounds; fiction; etc.) based on Paizo’s intellectual property (IP), including Pathfinder’s Lost Omens campaign setting, and to make some money while you’re at it. Your work might even be recognized by the community and earn you an invitation into the Infinite Masters elite creator program.

Classy Dragons and Kitsune of Golarion are on my short list for purchase. Starfinder - Planar Powers looks cool too but I will wait for Starfinder 2e before I get anymore Starfinder products.

Pathfinder Lead Designer Logan Bonner further discusses changes to spells and spellcasters. The reasons behind the changes and what they hope to accomplish.

Wednesday, September 20, 2023

Design Manager for the Pathfinder Rules & Lore team Michael Sayre posts about the upcoming Pathfinder War of Immortals (which he lead on) and the classes Animist and Exemplar (the first Rare class). He also discusses an apparition and a spell that will more than likely be left out of the book but deserves an honorable mention.

Hopefully I got the link working in this post. :D

1. The DC to aid is the same as the DC for the skill itself, by default. (With flexibility based on the specifics. E.g. if using Deception to Aid a strike, the DC might be the enemy's perception DC.)
2. Instead of Crit success/Success/Fail/Crit fail being +2/+1/0/-1, it's +4/+2/+1/-1

Watch the video to see the logic Ronald uses to arrive at this.

Wednesday, September 20, 2023

An unamed staff member posts about new APs (Adventure Paths) and apparel. Also, Pathfinder: Gallowspire Survivors is in Early Access on Steam and 20% off right now (USD $5.59 instead of $6.99). It's a rogue-lite bullet-hell action RPG Pathfinder themed game with mixed reviews on Steam (52% positive at the moment.

Tuesday, September 19, 2023 Senior Designer James Case (he / him) goes over some of the thinking behind the removal of schools of magic from Pathfinder 2e and shares a new wizard feat.

Might be an oddly specific post, but I've seen this recommended, and I'm just not sure I understand how it would be used effectively. Surely an air/water kineticist should be acting as a ranged spellcaster most of the time, in other words, not being within 10 feet of an enemy and especially not of multiple enemies. Furthermore, this impulse doesn't discriminate, so even if you were within 10 feet of all your enemies, you'd probably be within 10 feet of your allies too, subjecting them to a bunch of slippery bullshit as well.

Am I missing something about what makes this useful / not a detriment?

I've never really run 2e before this except for the Beginner's Box, and because I worked that into Foundry myself I mystified all the items. But I see that the AV Foundry module doesn't mystify anything, which leads me to wonder if I should be making players identify items or not?

Obviously healing potions I don't, since they have encountered them enough to know what they are.

A lot of RPGs use a specific term for their game to refer to the gamemaster of that game. D&D obviously has the Dungeon Master; the Storytelling system (used by Vampire: The Masquerade) has the Storyteller; Call of Cthulhu has the Keeper.

If Pathfinder was going to have its own unique term rather than using the generic Gamemaster, what should it be?

I can think of grabbed, hidden, undetected, and concealed, and of course recovery checks when you're dying, with its weird rule where it's a flat check but not a set DC.

What else calls for a flat check?

We've got a busy week here at Paizo. Come to twitch.tv/officialpaizo on Thursday, Aug 31st at 4 p.m. Pacific for a special livestream to kickstart our Pathfinder Playtest. Join Michael Sayre and James Case as they talk about the design concepts behind our two new classes!

I have no idea what they would even be at this point, I've kind of got every class I want. They did show off the gorgeous new cards in a very recent blogpost though, maybe a harrower of some kind? I'd be super suprised to see the original version of the Medium that uses harrow legends instead of mythic legends.

The CRB has recommendations for number and level of permanent items by level, but how do you actually select what these are?

It recommends that in place of 1st-level items, giving out mundane stuff including weapons & armour, so would that be things like giving a shortbow user a composite shortbow? Other than composite bows (and full plate, which is outside the 10–20 gp price range it lists anyway), won't characters usually have started with all the mundane equipment they want?

What other options make sense to give low-level characters?

And as you level up to higher levels, are the bread-and-butter permanent items going to be runes for them to place on their weapons & armour? How do you decide what to give and how to balance the "necessary for balance" with "fun flavourful stuff"?

A level 5 rogue will quite probably have a thievery dc of 13, if they invest in it and max dex. The average lock has a dc of 25 and requires 4 successes. It takes a roll of 12 or better to have a single success, and will average about 9 rolls to rack up those 4 successes. With 9 rolls wherein you crit fail on a 2 or lower, the likelihood of breaking a pick is ~61%.

Should a level 5 rogue take a minute to open the average lock, and more likely than not break a pick in the process?

And let's look at a good Lock: DC 30, requiring 5 successes. The level 5 rogue will only succeed on a 17, meaning it will take on average 20 attempts to get those 5 successes. On one attempt in a thousand our Lvl 5 rogue will open this lock before breaking a pick, and will typically break 3 in the process.

Am I missing something?

To save time running a game I thought it might be handy to have a pre-generated list of die rolls to use during encounters. A spreadsheet like Excel seems to be an ideal place to do this, but my knowledge of this type of app is sorely lacking in just how to do this.

Please note the PFS tag. This needs to be a Rules As Written (RAW) discussion.

When a Druid uses Wild Shape they're using Polymorph to change, let's say into an Animal Form as an example.

First off Mark Seifter has previously confirmed in a How It's Played interview that you can use Handwraps of Mighty Blows to determine (from Wild Shape), "If your unarmed attack bonus is higher, you can use it instead." (With the caveat that it can't be the same, but must be at least 1 point higher than the battle form's attack modifier.)

The Polymorph traits states, "If you take on a battle form with a polymorph spell, the special statistics can be adjusted only by circumstance bonuses, status bonuses, and penalties. […] Your gear is absorbed into you; the constant abilities of your gear still function, but you can't activate any items." (Emphasis is mine.)

Please take a moment to look at Animal Form and note what's covered under "statistics" (the first bullet list), and what's listed under "specific abilities" (the second bullet list).

So that seems very clear that even if Handwraps allows you to use your unarmed attack bonus, its Item Bonus won't apply. But I have a few questions about other things:

• What about feats, like Fleet (+5 to your base speed)?
• What about Runes, like Striking or Crushing?
• What about magic items, like Goggle of Night (which grant the sense Darkvision)? (And remembering that magic items change size to fit the wearer.)
• (Plus things I'm sure I've not considered, so please mention them if applicable!)

To me it seems that:

• The "statistics" mentioned: AC, Temp. HP, Senses, Listed Strikes*, and Athletics* (*Both have a specifically mentioned override if your own is higher) cannot be changed unless it's by a Circumstance and/or Status Bonus, or a Penalty, since these are specifically called out. But,
• The "specific abilities" mentioned: Speed, Strikes, Damage can be changed since these are not specifically called out.

Does that sound right?

I just rebuild a 5th level character as a Wild Shape Druid and woo boy this stuff is a lot to wrap your head around. Thanks in advance for sharing your experience and insight on this matter!

2023-08-27 Update: I've found a Paizo forum post by Michael Sayre (Design Manager) about how to handle Battle Forms (https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43e5b?About-official-clarifications-erratas-and-FAQS#44):

"Battle forms? Is the number you're looking at granted to you by the spell? Then it can only be affected by circumstance bonuses, status bonuses, and penalties. It doesn't matter what the thing you're trying to add is, only that it's not one of those things. Is it a number you got from somewhere else, like your normal AC or attack modifier? Then it can be affected by the things that normally affect those statistics, including item bonuses from handwraps of mighty blows and whatever other effects you have that normally change that number or are called out in the effect that let you take on the form. Half the confusion on this front is specifically because Mark gave an "unofficial" answer outside of the FAQ and errata process that ended up being thrown around to muddy the waters, which is exactly why official answers like that are kept to FAQ and errata releases by policy."

So that clears up a lot of the questions I had about Battle Forms, and u/Spuddaccino@reddthat.com was correct in that everything listed is a "special statistic" as far as what can be changed.

However the thing you need to ask your GM about is anything (like a Fire Rune) that adds "additional damage" as that's not an official game term.

I'm GMing for a group where everyone (including myself) is entirely new to Pathfinder. We had our session 0 recently followed by a quick practice combat. The thing I noticed from that, plus a little theory crafting of building a low level character myself, is that people using ranged combat felt very underwhelming compared to melee weapon users.

• They couldn't add any modifier to damage
• They had far fewer feats upgrading them (particularly compared to dual wielders)
• They had fewer "third action" options
• Less ability to help out allies with things like flanking
• Can't opportunity attack

Sure, for all that they have the advantage of being safer from getting damaged. But it didn't really feel like a worthwhile trade-off. Does this get better as you level up? Is it just something caused by inexperience? What options can/should you take to make ranged combat feel more interesting and valuable?

For context, my party had a rogue and a ranged fighter as ranged users, as well as a barbarian and a magus in melee, and a druid and sorcerer as casters.

This is an encounter builder a friend of my and me developed as one of their pet projects.

Check it out if you are looking for some tools.

Also it's open source, if you want to contribute and make it better.

One of my players is an investigator who has taken the secular medic background. He is enjoying his character, but his one point of problem is that he doesn't have a way to use his intelligence or Lore: Anatomy to roll for treat wounds or battlefield medicine.

I understand the math in PF2e is very tight, so how 'breaking' would it be to give him the chance to take a homebrew feat that is basically the Crystal Healing feat but for Lore: Anatomy or Lore: Surgery? I'm thinking I would call it "Surgical Training"

Thoughts? Am I missing a feat that already does this? Please let me know!

At GenCon they announced that one of the core deities was going to die. What deity do you think it will be and why? Please try to avoid spoilers in your explanation.

Basically wondering if someone else has already done the calculations to work out when a lower damage attack with the Agile trait is better than a higher damage attack without it. Is there a good rule of thumb here?

The specific scenario I'm looking at is one of my players' Badger animal companions, which can take 2 actions. If it's in a situation where both those actions are going to be attacks, is it better to bite twice (1d8 without Agile) or bite and then claw* (1d6 with Agile). I am mainly wondering about the general rule of thumb though, if there is one.

* I'm assuming my reading on the rules here is right. If the first attack is not Agile, but the second one is, that's still only the -4 penalty, right?

I have a group that is very mobile and I want to start challenging them more/give the enemy caster a turn or two to get cooking. What are some good enemy frontliners? I realize I could just have the frontliners they run past just do the same thing and go after the casters, but that feels a bit chaotics and I like me a nice setpiece now and then.

If you're looking to add to any of your Pathfinder 2e or Starfinder products, there's a sale going on during Gencon at the Paizo store.

• First playtest packet available now at: https://paizo.com/starfinderplaytest
• Initial playtest packet available has a Laser Wolf enemy with a sidebar on how to tie it into Pathfinder 2e now! I've always thought Pathfinder needed more Laser Wolves, and now my dream is real.
• Full playtest starts August 2024

I think this also signals there's still a long future of Pathfinder 2e ahead of us. I can't wait to see how Paizo ties the universes together more.

Do we want to include links to common tools/websites in the Sidebar? I was thinking AoN, PF2Easy, Pathbuilder and maybe PF2Tools?