Pathfinder 2e General Discussion

I have a 4 player party that will be level 7, intended level of this boss is 10. I have a fighter, gunslinger, magus, and monk.

I haven't been able to find a witch npc, so I created it using pc rules as the gmg suggests. He has an ac of 28 and 118 hp.

Does this seem too low? My fighter could crit and potentially take him halfway down in one hit.

Also, does anything on the spell list or feats/actions seem too strong?

A YouTube video I watched recently claimed that summoners might have been considered a bad class in second edition. However, it doesn't seem like that at a glance - there's opportunities for various creatures and beings to stand by your side, such as a plant monster kinda like Blossomon, a stegosaurus, dragons, and so on. Also they come with a nine level magic collection on top of the Eidolon - and the Eidolon can learn spells too with the correct feats. So you could make a druid like character with lots of magic but their main aspect being able to summon a giant sunflower, as a result of acquiring lots of Druid archetype feats for magic casting and feats related to the Eidolon casting magic themselves. Or you could make a stegosaurus man who summons a powerful stegosaurus that knows a lot about nature and fights for them. Sounds like a cool class to play, but I haven't tried the game much to see how any of this would work in gameplay.

In games like Magic the Gathering, you're building your decks less around cool singular abilities, creatures and spells, and more about orchestrating a moment of critical mass where you can overwhelm and guarantee victory. Pathfinder 2e has some similarity to this kind of building, where the idea is less to make a situation where every time you X, Y happens, which triggers Z procs, and more to stack bonuses and penalties to artificially create critical successes for your team, then figuring out which ability or spell to best make use of that setup. For example, the ideal combat set-up against a boss fight on a balcony might be Heroism 9 on the fighter from the cleric, Synesthesia on the enemy from the bard, a Gust of Wind from the wizard to inflict prone, all culminating in a Brutish Shove off the ledge from the fighter.

However, the big appeal for TTRPGs for me is that not everything you can do needs to touch combat like in a traditional RPG video game. I'm particularly interested in strategies that help you traverse environments, interacting with people you wouldn't ordinarily be able to get a word in edgewise with, and bypass dangerous encounters entirely.

In this vein, I think Protector Tree and Shape Wood are a great couple of spells for any primalist to learn and prepare on the regular. Protector Tree creates a really nice damage mitigation tool in combat, but it also sprouts a permanent (unworked) medium sized tree! That's only kind of neat, but becomes a valuable resource when paired with the Shape Wood spell, which just so happens to require a bunch of unworked wood to be useful! Now, so long as you have both of these spells in equal measure, you can fabricate wooden items that you ordinarily wouldn't be able to bring with you on adventures for dirt cheap. Ladders, steps, platforms, wheels, axles - you've basically got a low-tech Garry's mod at your disposal! If you need a cart to move massive loot, a few casts and some basic assembly and a Form-Retention'd Wildshape will get that Mithril Door from the dungeon back to town.

Are there any spells, items, or abilities you've found useful when used together like this? I'd be eager to hear them!

I have a party of 4 PCs at level 6 (just hit 6 last session), and the treasure table says they should have about 2k gp total value. Is that per PC, or for the whole party? Right now they've got about 1k gp each in total value, between having gold, 1-3 upgraded weapons each (depending on class), a few magic items of various levels, and plenty of potions and what-have-you. Am I showering them in loot, or way behind?

Has anyone set up a place for GMs/DMs/etc to gather and swap stories/advice yet? I took a quick look around and haven't seen one. Might make one, but I'll have to research how.

Edit: Thanks for the info everyone! Gonna start posting some of my questions here and get the ball rolling on engagement.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1028124

So I understand that until you get your first magical staff. you make do with the makeshift one you created.

Questions:

• Do you have to have to expend a spell slot in order to cast cantrips from the makeshift staff? The linked rule says you don’t have to expend any charges, which seems to imply that the staff must have a charge in order to cast any cantrips.
• I assume that once you add the cantrip and 1st-level spell to the staff they can never be changed. The text on page 142 of the APG doesn’t say that you can, but I’m new so don’t know if there’s some other text elsewhere that allows this.
• If true, and considering that these spells can never be changed, I’m thinking of Shield and Mage Armor as my spells. However reading through spells True Strike also seems to be a good option. Although not sure how good that would be for my Illusionist specialist (with Enchantment as other spells I’m focusing on). Thoughts?

Thanks in advance for any guidance you may have!

After taking a (well-deserved) jab at summoning, I think it's only fair I dive into what I believe is a subgroup of spells that serve the purpose people incorrectly pin on summoning. You've seen the title: I'm talking about illusions

So illusion, unimpressive right? sure it might be cheaper, but giving the enemy a free save to completely ignore "the thing" I just created sounds like a big drawback, right? Well no, wrong, unless the spell specifically calls out a save on spell cast, the "default" rule for illusion effect is

Disbelieving Illusions

Sometimes illusions allow an affected creature a chance to disbelieve the spell, which lets the creature effectively ignore the spell if it succeeds at doing so. This usually happens when a creature Seeks or otherwise spends actions to engage with the illusion, comparing the result of its Perception check (or another check or saving throw, at the GM’s discretion) to the caster’s spell DC. Mental illusions typically provide rules in the spell’s description for disbelieving the effect (often allowing the affected creature to attempt a Will save).

If the illusion is visual, and a creature interacts with the illusion in a way that would prove it is not what it seems, the creature might know that an illusion is present, but it still can’t ignore the illusion without successfully disbelieving it. For instance, if a character is pushed through the illusion of a door, they will know that the door is an illusion, but they still can’t see through it. Disbelieving an illusion makes it and those things it blocks seem hazy and indistinct, so even in the case where a visual illusion is disbelieved, it may, at the GM’s discretion, block vision enough to make those on the other side concealed.

Now that sounds like cheating. The usual summary of illusion effects without save is "it's real until proven otherwise" and proving otherwise MUST take an action. Ramming through an illusory wall doesn't count as disbelieving the illusion meaning it can still be used to cover or hide.

After this brief summary and after a cursory read through the spell list, you might think that no-save illusion spells aren't probably that common, or otherwise on the weaker side that designers didn't feel the need to make their combat use impractical, well, you'd be partially correct, very few illusion spells are saveless (and therefore, real until proven otherwise), however, those are everything but weak. I have made a short selection to prove my point:

• Ventriloquism + Invisibility 4
• Silence 4
• Illusory creature (the REAL flank buddy)
• Illusory object (the REAL body blocker)

Ventriloquism + Invisibility

Not weak and ventriloquism? isn't this spell just a gimmick? Arguable, in most cases, but that's excluding its interaction with the undetected status provided by invisibility. Using invisibility makes you undetected, but a creature can seek to try and pinpoint your location by sound or other methods, but what if you've been chanting all your incantations 30ft away from your real location? At the very least, this will prevent you from having your condition downgraded to hidden from casting spells, or if the GM is generous, allow you to remain undetected while the enemy believes you're hidden in a square you're not and waste actions trying to interact with something that's not there! Plus, it's a 10-minute 1st level buff, so just get a cheap wand for it!

Silence

It stops almost all spells from being cast, drop that on the barbarian with No Escape and observe as you've just effectively incapacitated the enemy spellcaster, with no save nor incapacitation trait

Illusory creature

If you like summoning for its flanking, blocking & soaking buddy potential, then that's the spell meant to do that. It only costs 2 actions upfront, can be sustained forever, so you can realistically ENTER every combat with it, and has scaling offense and defenses matching your spell DC instead of PL-5 statistics at best. Sure, it dies when hit, but that's significantly harder due to higher defenses, and so do most summons, or it can be disbelieved, but that's ALSO an action and only "kills" the creature for the disbeliever, leaving it free to harass everyone else

"I cast wall of stone" Illusory object

First spell rank/level wall of stone, that's it, I said it. Sure it can be disbelieved as always, but that's eating an action, and until said action is taken, the wall is real until proven otherwise (plus, I don't know about you, but if the boss wastes an action on a 1st level spell, that's a slowed 1, worth it). You can probably be even more creative with it, but at the very least, you can get an insane amount of battlefield control right from character level 1 instead of having to wait for level 9

Do note that all of those effects DO NOT HAVE the mental trait, and therefore work even better on mindless creature if your GM roleplay them as mindless (not "animal intelligence" mindless means mindless, as in, about the same level of awareness as a Roomba) then they would be extremely unlikely to try to disbelieve your illusions unless programmed to do so, which I would likely call bullshit on, so yeah, you can probably just turn the floor into lava and "win" knowing that the creature doesn't have the mental capabilities to know there isn't actually lava there and is probably programmed not to kill itself by, you know, jumping into lava

So if you guys haven't been using save-less illusion spells yet, you really should. Especially if you're occult and have access to virtually all of them. If that feels too strong to be true, probably, but it has survived since the release of the game without errata, we'll see in the remaster of course, but it seems like illusion was meant to be a very (the most?) powerful tool in a caster's arsenal so don't sleep on it!

Thoughts?

Granted, not everyone might see them as good, and a lot of people's opinion probably comes from other people talking about them rather than experimenting with them in a real game.

Without going into details, and save for the few early levels, during which you might have seen a few skunks being conjured to great effect, a top-level summoning slot brings up a creature between 4 and 5 levels below the party.

Due to how encounter math works, a creature of this level is counted as between 0 and 10 XP in the rules for building an encounter as its chances to hit are too low to matter against the player (-5 to hit against +5 to all defense at a minimum, often more from proficiency upgrades).

Of course, that's for abilities targeting defenses, surely I just have to pick things that don't target defenses or satisfy myself with spawning an annoying flanking/body blocking buddy? This is correct, some very select support-oriented monsters, like the Satyr or, in an undead campaign, the Deathless Acolyte can give an amazing boost for their level in a vacuum; but that's before considering what truly seals this pan of the game for me

It's woefully action intensive for the caster. A good way to see it is to say that you're spending 3 actions to slow 1 yourself in order to add a level -5, stunned 1 monster on your side of the board, and if the support action of a Satyr might feel pretty good, is it really compared to other uses of 1 action for the caster, like using a composition cantrip, an appropriate metamagic, or using a well-chosen skill action like bon mot or demoralize? and that's excluding the initial 3 action opportunity cost you could have spent on a more potent spell

In short, there is a reason why level -5 creatures don't count in the encounter budget, and while a well-chosen one might impact the fight positively, 2 of its actions are almost never going to be better than 1 action of a creature 5 levels higher;

Of course, that doesn't mean the spell is useless, out of combat in the blood lord adventure, for example, a single cast at 4th level of animate dead can be used by the Wizard to heal everyone for 20 + 3 x (2d8+16) to distribute on the most injured in a minute with a deathless acolyte; that's amazing, and notably way more than the 0 a wizard would be able to provide otherwise. Similarly, if you know something is booby-trapped and you don't want to risk your rogue, a Crawling Hand will happily eat and "disarm" it for the party for the cheap price of a 1st level spell.

Summoning was specifically defanged in combat, probably as a design concern about minion spam that was prevalent in previous editions, so just... don't use it in combat and demoralize/bon mot every turn instead, you'll be doing more good for your party

I just found this community today and figured I'd kick off some discussion about what people are playing!

As for me, I'm running a cosmic horror campaign with some homebrew insanity rules. The players are stuck in an area with multidimensional beings, and a murderer who's killing those trying to help the players escape.

When you're making a character, do you prefer to start with the mechanics, backstory, or aesthetics first?

(Shamelessly stolen from !dndnext@ttrpg.network.)

The Hack & Slash ARPG developed by BKOM based on the Abomination Vaults adventure path is now 100% funded on Kickstarter

I am running a campaign where my characters need to destroy a roughly cylindrical stone, about a foot in diameter and a couple feet tall, with a hardness of 7 and 28HP (14 before it is broken). Hardness seems to act like resistance in general, but I would have thought that stone would have even greater resistance to slashing or piercing damage, than to bludgeoning damage. Is there any support for this in the rules, or has anyone just done it anyway?

Just finished a PFS game and my PC is Enfeebled 2. How do I get rid of this before my next session?

Thank you!

Hi all! Relatively new (or new to PF2e) GM here. Last night one of my players who is playing a Summoner raised the question of whether he can attempt Treat Wounds twice every hour instead of once since his Eidolon is a separate target (ie. Someone treats the Summoner's wounds and then immediately treats the Eidolon's wounds). I ruled in the moment that I didn't think that sounded right, my reasoning being that they share a health pool and the PC shouldn't be able to double its benefits solely because of which class it is. Can anyone tell me what the RAW is here, ideally with an AON reference I can point him to?

Edit: I found this thread which seems to suggest that I made the wrong call. I'd love to have a more official answer, but I think the idea that healing is supposed to be trivialized by certain combos makes sense.

Hello, for the last 3 years I’ve been running a Dnd 5e campaign, due to recent events with wotc we’ve decided to stop supporting them and switch to of 2e. Are there any good resources for switching? I’m under the impressions that some systems are similar while others are completely different.

Does something like a switching guide exist or is it best to just start from scratch and learn as we go?

Well, just ran the first 3 rooms of it, at least.

It's my step-son's 10th birthday this weekend, and for it he requested that we play "D&D". I... I've not been an active player since the pandemic started, and the whole debacle with the OGL really made me decide I didn't want to spend money on the 5e DMG. So, with his blessing, I went with Pathfinder instead.

There were six of us, three adults playing iconic, two 10 year olds playing custom characters, and me behind the screen. Of us all, only the 2nd kid - my step-son' s cousin - was an active D&D player. The rest had dabbled over the years, but hadn't played in a while.

I'm surprised how well the 10 year olds took to it. I've heard people complain about the game being a little more frustrating for people with less patience, due to the abundance of described mechanics, but the 3 generic action point system made combat... Well, not a breeze, since the oversized party still struggle deith the first encounter, but much less co fusing than the "3 separate action pools" of 5e.

I did hand wave away a few rules, just because I wasn't about to tell the birthday boy that circumstance bonuses don't stack when he and the party are struggling to make contact with some ROUSes, but for the most part it went spectacularly well.

It took 3hours to get to the end of the 2nd encounter, but the kids seemed to have a blast, mad were putting up a fight when told we had to pause the game for bedtime.

Ok the whole, I'm very impressed with the whole experience. I can't wait to continue the box!

This post contains major spoilers for Night of the Gray Death!

My players are about jump into ch3 and I have some concerns about the final fight with the Conquerer Worm, mostly that I've read it can be a bit of a pushover for lvl 19 characters. Does anyone have any experience with this fight? If the fight is too easy, would it be a more exciting/challenging with extra spell buffs or minions?

Paizo has confirmed that the Centaur and Minotaur ancestries in the upcoming Howl of the Wild book will be large size by default, with a heritage each that make them medium.

Now thematically, I think that makes sense, 5e's ponytaurs always seemed like a cop-out. However mechanically, large size has the benifits that it allows you to reach more squares, even without additional reach, and makes it impossible for small creatures to grapple you. So I'm wondering if that's powerful enough to require some kind of downside to balance it out.

What do ya'll think?

I'm going to be running the Beginner Box for the first time for a few friends. I'm thinking I want to flesh out Otari, but I don't have Troubles In Otari, which I plan to buy and run later. Should I worry about creating conflicting elements of Otari, or is it as sparse on details in the other two APs as it is in the beginner box?

Hi all!

My spouse and I play PF2e as a co-op gm-less game together (or maybe it would be considered a co-op co-gm game?). One of the things we allow is dual classing when we're playing this way to round out our party of two a bit better.

So here's the thing, I'm playing a Wild Druid and I can't for the life of me figure out what other class pairs well with it. It seems like a lot of classes don't work with Wild Shape too well. I've never had this issue with previous class combos, but I'm struggling with druid.

My spouse is playing a champion/sorcerer to give an idea of the party dynamics.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Reposting some Google Docs from the other site which compiled spoilers about the remaster from PaizoCon, so we can discuss them here. I am not the author and take no credit for any of these.

Discord spoilers

Live writeup

Announcement compilation

Overall, I like most of the changes, and I'm interested to see how alignment removal plays out.

Minor spoilers for Stolen Fate.

I like that. More permanent items should be usable forever and hard to obsolete after you gain them. What's the point of questing for Excalibur if you have to retire it after a single adventure?