pathfinder

I'm working on a campaign that starts at level 1, and once the players reach level 2 I want to give a cursed party item along with each player receiving a powerful item that carries 2 curses. The intent is that the item becomes their signature symbol and grows with the player. There seems to be very few curses in PF, so I had to homebrew, modify, or borrow some curses from other sources. I feel like I've achieved a solid balance for benefit and hindrance, but I'm a new GM and need help. These were the items I'm thinking:

1. (intermittent backbiting) +2 greater striking cold-iron Warhammer. Lvl-1 free hits with +2 greater striking per day, 20% chance to activate after free hit, chance to activate increases by 20% every 2 lvls and intermittent curse vanishes at lvl 10. Backbiting has a 60% chance to roll dmg against self on crit fail, chance decreases by 5% every lvl until min of 10%

2. (notorious) +2 thievery Greater Charlatan Gloves. Gloves will always etch the wielder's name on the nearest surface to the item, including on worn fabric, if it is not returned within 10 minutes. Unbeknownst to the wielder, the teleport feat will instantly reveal the item stolen, true name, current appearance, and precise location of wielder to the victim, regardless of distance from the item

3. (ravenous and arsonous) lvl4 Wand of Elemental Toss. A randomly selected ally within 30ft takes 1d10 fire dmg. If no allies are near, the dmg will target the wielder with a 30% chance to ignite the environment instead. The next day the wielder must consume 10x normal food intake or they starve

4. (restless arrow attracting) +1 ready cold-iron Chainmail. lvl+1 ranged attacks per hour which miss an ally within 120 feet of the wielder makes them the next target. Once the arrow attracting curse is revealed, the wielder must always wear the armor which causes a minimum of fatigued 1 at all times and unconscious AC is calculated as if the wielder was unarmored. Sleep will allow fatigue to reduce to minimum

5. (Erastil's bloodthirsty haunted) +1 wounding longbow. The weapon must be used 10 minutes after it's wielded (drawn, readied, whatever) or the wielder takes 1d8 dmg. Every time a creature is killed with the weapon and not honored as a sacrifice to Erastil, the wielder is surrounded by an illusion of all creatures they've killed with the weapon and must make a will saving throw to dismiss the illusion. The Haunted effect only occurs after the second unhonored kill, and immediately ends the wielder's turn as well as prevents the wielder from taking any action on subsequent turns until 1 minute passes or the illusion is dismissed. If a creature is honored to Erastil, it must be buried without eating or looting the corpse, otherwise the effect will last for 1 hour and cannot be dismissed. The number of creatures in the illusion can be reduced by 1 when asking for forgiveness from a creature on a crit will save, and will not occur if there are no creatures that have not forgiven the wielder

6. (dreary crepuscular) minor reinforcing silver spiked buckler. 1d6 silver shield bash. Only gains the effects of minor reinforcing between 1hr before to 1hr after twilight. The wielder always has a personal stormcloud that rains heavier as the wielder gets happier, disrupts sleep, soaks cloth within an hour, and ruins paper within 10 minutes

7. (raucous) spacious bag IV. The bag is a backpack of 2 bulk, which can carry 150 bulk. Every time a person opens the bag they are compelled to yell, all non-allies within 50 feet are compelled to look at the affected person if they aren't already, and everyone within 50 feet instinctively knows what item(s) is being grabbed or stored

Wrote a blog post over on my forum. There are interpolation issues with Markdown between it and Lemmy, so I'm reproducing it in full here here. The original post can be found at: https://wanderingadventure.party/topic/120/what-is-a-grapple-anyway

Over on Reddit, user u/eCyanic asked a question that generated all of the usual noise:

If a Small enemy is grappling you and you use Oni Form, does grabbed end now that you're Large, and outside of grapple size range?

As is r/Pathfinder2e's wont, this simple question was flooded with responses from people racing to be the first, fourth, or fifteenth person to proudly announce that they knew the rules! "No!," they said in a wave, overwhelming any interesting discussion, "The Grabbed condition doesn't say anything about size differences!"

While strictly correct by the letter of the RAW, this unyielding collective reflex completely misses the point, and is emblematic of a broader issue in the online PF2e community: a dogmatic dedication to rules regurgitation as a form of gatekeeping, at the expense of fictional context, narrative sense, or even a basic curiosity about why the rules are as they are.

It's Lawful Neutral Paladins all the way down. The community has a Judge Dredd problem: No judgement, just enforcement without understanding.

Game Engine vs. Story Engine

Let's acknowledge that, yes, purely Rules-As-Written, there is no rule stating a creature loses the Grabbed condition simply because it grows larger. Under a strict board-game interpretation, the enlarged creature merely gains a better modifier to the Escape action on its turn, improving its odds of getting away, should they attempt to do so.

If you treat Pathfinder 2e purely as a tactical engine -- as Fantasy XCOM -- that procedure works. "Grapple" and "Grabbed" exist purely as functions and statuses. If you use the system as a story engine, however, where rules mediate actions to determine outcomes that make sense in the fiction of the world, that interpretation becomes completely untenable.

By definition, a grapple is a hand-to-hand struggle for physical superiority. If a creature becomes so massive and powerful that it can simply ignore your hold, the contest is already over. You haven't grappled them; at best, you have voluntarily anchored yourself to a moving giant.

User u/i_tyrant highlighted this design blind spot in the original thread:

It will never stop being weird to me that both 5e and PF2e went this route of “invalid targets due to size”, instead of just changing how it works.

All it would’ve taken is one extra sentence; “if the target is more than one size larger, they do not have the grappled (or whatever) status, instead when they move you move with them.”

Boom, done, now grappling even has a use vs really big enemies, you can climb dragons in flight n shit with it, very thematic for the genre and you don’t have to deal with these questions at all.

What Does a "Grapple" Actually Represent?

Something else that caught my eye in the comments of the Reddit post: The seeming total lack of understanding of what the Grapple action and Grabbed condition actually mean, in universe.

For all of the flexing that goes on in the subreddit, these demonstrations of system expertise often seem to ignore any text that doesn't tell you how many points you gain or lose on a roll. The consensus seems to treat a Grapple as something akin to a bear hug, or a collar-and-elbow tie-up, but the actual game text is highly suggestive of it being so much less than that:

    Grapple [one-action]
    [Attack] 
    Source Player Core pg. 235
    Skill Athletics (Untrained)
    Requirements You have at least one free hand and your target is no more than one size larger than you.

Notice the details:

    It requires only one free hand.

    It can be attempted while Untrained in Athletics.

You're not bear-hugging anyone with one hand, and you're not doing tie-ups or martial arts holds without training. In-universe, a basic Grapple, at best, is little more than gripping someone's wrist or forearm, or at worst snatching their belt, or grabbing a fistful of their cloak.

This is why the Grabbed condition still allows the target to Strike, Trip, Shove, or even Cast a Spell -- it simply means they can't move away freely without breaking that single-handed grip. A firmer hold is represented by the Restrained condition.

If a player is going to insist they are putting an enemy in a full bear hug, that choice carries fiction-first consequences: I'm not going to let them use weapons to Strike if they don't make sense (no, you can't attack with your Longsword, unless you're just weakly beating the target on the back with your hilt), and they've sacrificed the use of their hands for other actions -- bear hugs are commitments! And if the player is trying to do things like strike at the target's back, that also means they've loosened their grip, and the Escape DC is going down -- possibly way down!

Using the Whole Toolbox

Pathfinder 2e provides all the tools necessary to run a game that is both mechanically sound and internally consistent with its physical world. The mechanics are meant to support a fictional reality, not override it!

The Rules-as-Written provide a baseline, but applying them blindly without considering narrative leads to absurdity. And absurdity is a choice.

The distant call of seagulls and the gentle crashing of waves can be heard near these City Docks, where sailors from faraway lands and merchants visit. These docks are always busy, as ships are loaded up with shipments both mundane and rare...

Welcome to the City Docks! This map features a busy port in a city, featuring warehouses, a tavern, inn, and various other buildings next to the sea. Ships large and small line the docks, and a lighthouse sits at the far northwestern point.

I also included Night, No Ships, Polluted, Ruined, Storm, Under Attack, and Winter variants. Foundry VTT modules with pre-built walls and lighting are available to patrons.

Download this map in high-resolution for free here.

Want to see more maps? Check out my archive here.

Paizo had their annual GenCon Keynote where they announced a number of new products.

Lost Omens: Saga Lands: A source book dealing with Varisia, New Thassilon, the Lands of the Linnorm Kings, the Realm of the Mammoth Lords, and Irrisen. Scheduled for release in May 2027.

Starfinder: Beginner Box: An adventure set on a Kalistradian funerary ship. Also releasing May 2027.

Pathfinder: Invaders from the Dark: A Starfinder cross-over AP, running Level 1-10. Set in Numeria, leverages Starfinder rules to showcase the compatibility between the systems. Coming June 2027.

Starfinder: Galactic Arsenal: Corporations, factions, starships, equipment, and more. Sounds like a Treasure Trove-like book for the stars. GenCon 2027.

Pathfinder: Tome of Dungeons: Adding options for Delvers, Dungeons, and Denizens, including GM-facing rules and options for dungeon building, new monster statblocks, and the Daredevil and Slayer classes. Oh, and Awakened Ooze and Gargoyle ancestries! Releasing GenCon 2027.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/50533811

I've been thinking about the necromancer since getting my book and I think theres a lot of serious potential in the class.

Thralls strike with your spellmod which leads to many shenanigans including:

• Instant flanking with puppeteer (create thrall lets you command them to strike)

• Aiding yourself, esp. through gunslinger's Fake Out! https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=3161

• Essentially being a legendary striker like gunslinger, operative, and fighter, but with delayed progression

The subclasses are interesting, but I think the top two are definitely Spirit and Blood. Blood helps you heal so you aren't a burden on the party. Spirit converts thrall damage to spirit damage, which is extremely nice if you get a Shining Symbol https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=3109

The potential for the class is immense, as said, you are essentially a legendary striker (via thralls) with legendary spellcasting at the cost of less spells. The big issue is its hard to modify your thrall's damage.

Some archetypes I think will be good with necromancer:

• Marshal: go dread marshal to buff spell and thrall damage

• Beastmaster/Cavalier/Undead master/Captain : A nice, pale horse would be useful as necromancers are actually quite strapped for actions. They have tons of reliable 3rd actions and most spells will cost 2 actions and a mount will give some mobility. Sharpshooter follower would be great too, ask your dm if they can be a skeleton.

• Commander: There's a lot of synergy in the low level tactics and feats. I wouldn't say to go too hard on the dip here. The tactics that stand out to me are Passage of Lines https://2e.aonprd.com/Tactics.aspx?ID=5 and End It! https://2e.aonprd.com/Tactics.aspx?ID=9. Passage of lines has pretty good use cases, you can put a thrall behind an ally to yoink them from harms way. Imagine if you use 'ready an action' to make the passage of lines to go off once an enemy is winding up for a strike, poofing your ally. Commander also has some choice feats, especially DEFENSIVE SWAP https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=7798, which lets you sacrifice a thrall to take no damage from an attack. That one has immense potential and is an extremely strong effect on a necromancer. I think plant banner https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=7796 also has utility use for keeping your allies up.

• Gunslinger: As said, you can lean into an aid build and go gunslinger for fake out. This is an extremely effective way to crit enemies early in the game, I would go gunslinger if my party was short on strikers. I don't think the other feats are very worthwhile, I'd probably take defensive armaments. We don't really want to be striking ourselves (only through thralls), a gauntlet bow will suffice for fake out. Plenty of ancestries help facilitate aid bonuses.

• Bellflower Tiller: Tiller's aid https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=933 gets you something similar to Fake Out at a much later level.

• Spellcasting archetypes like Hedge Mage and Wizard: These let you diversify your spell choices a little. There are many great new spells and I will share my idealized necromancer spell list here in the future. However, Hedge Mage is a new archetype and really stands out. I'll let the dedication speak for itself

At level 14 they also get community needs, which is an interesting way to steal an upcasted fireball or heal spell on some classes.

When it comes to ancestries, you'll have a wide variety of choices. I think the best ones for necromancer will be ones that help buff aid.

• Human: Is a top tier choice just for natural ambition https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=4478 to grab Reach of the Dead, possibly one of the best feats in the game and gives necromancer insane flexibility. It also has a number of feats that buff aid, especially Cooperative Nature https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=4475

• Elf: Has a lot of movespeed and flexibility if you do not have a mount.

• Nagaji: Has a good aid feat.

• Skeleton, Corpsefulk Heritage, Revenant background, Dhampir: Negative healing lets you take advantage of Necromancer's mastery of life and death AOE harms easily and it also means you are unharmed by your necrotic bomb

Starfinder has some interesting options too

• Skittermander (funny) : Has overly helpful https://2e.aonsrd.com/feats/1191-overly-helpful

• Formian: good aid abilities at 1st and 5th, additional reaction https://2e.aonsrd.com/feats/1449-called-to-help

• Vlaka: increments aid bonus by 1, or 2 on a crit https://2e.aonsrd.com/feats/219-gifted-mentor Kinda nuts, especially if you get cooperative nature from another ancestry.

• Shirren: free reaction for aid https://2e.aonsrd.com/feats/345-eager-assistant

• Skittermander: one free action prep for aid https://2e.aonsrd.com/feats/361-helping-hand

I will share my spell and feat suggestions on necromancer soon.

Last week, both Paizo and the Archives of Nethys released statements concerning the end of our commercial license agreement. These statements were met with an outpouring of community confusion, concern, and displeasure; that sentiment has been heard on all sides.

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs8gfbh?YOU-CAN-PLAY-WITH-JIMOTHY-NOW

Our very own Jason Keeley has granted us all with the greatest gift; a JIMOTHY companion! This was just for a bit of fun, but now you can take Jimothy with you on your adventures in Pathfinder AND Starfinder! Scoop that little guy up!

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/9046627

Putting this one out here cause everyone is clutching their pearls over Paizo going broke and they're 'good boys' and we should be very sad. No! They abused their workers which lead to the creation of the first ttrpg union. Every corporation must die, and IP theft is a moral necessity.

Enjoy the free pdf, the classes are alright. Necromancer still has the spell battery issue where the thralls don't move a lot, but it still looks fun. Runesmith was tuned down a little and but still offers massive burst on turn 1. Reminder to have ublock installed before visiting the link as free upload sites have a lot of ad spam.

https://multiup.io/c528ce35bb4a11854483fe5291b7487e

We have been told the reason for this decision is that our website has not produced royalties for Paizo.

Archives of Nethys will continue offering the same rules access as it does today under the Community Use Policy.

Licenses take resources to manage—lawyers to review and follow up on contracts, finance employees to review and enter royalty statements, and licensing staff to provide assets and other support. Those resources must be balanced against other business demands.

The use of Paizo artwork on the web also created ongoing confusion about what assets are allowed under the Community Use Policy. Archives placed a legal notice explaining that they had a license to use artwork and other elements, but other sites routinely copied those assets and used them for themselves. That created additional work for our legal and licensing teams to draft DMCA and cease‑and‑desist notices.

Bundle Link

The PF2e subreddit broke out into Yet Another Discussion About Feats and Improvizing, and this time it caught Mark Seifter's attention. So, I thought I'd reproduce his post here:

> Hi everyone! Mark Seifter here. > >I've seen several threads this past weekend about the video Linda and I made about improvising actions in PF2 (I actually found out about this by following a trail from a large spike in the video's views on Saturday when I checked the analytics today). The OP of the first thread that started the conversation summarized our video in a way that was (likely unintentionally on their part) turned out to be a bit provocative, a bit confusing especially for those who hadn't seen the video, and made a harder and harsher case than what we were trying to say, so I thought it might be helpful to give some tips here in text form. Some of these are in the video too, but not everyone wants to watch a video. Some notes about improvising in your games: >Caveat > >First and foremost, only do this if you and your group want to do it! Yes, I am one of the original creators of PF2 and I worked on the rules involved here (the improvising rules were mostly written by myself and Logan), but so what? It's your game. Never let the statements of one of the game designers make you change something that is working for you and your group (not even this statement... well wait a minute...). If you don't like the improvisation rules or you feel they create issues for your group, you don't have to use them in your game. If you feel they actually don't go far enough and you have a bigger or more sweeping solution you like better, use that (the video mentions that too). The existence of the improv rules and the advice for how to use them is not meant to stop you from making an even bigger change or to convince you that there's no need to do so (I guess that video title would be "Don't Let the Improv Rules, or Designer Statements, Stop You From Running the Way Your Group Likes"). Everyone who said "This is just something Mark said, we don't have to listen to it and my group does it differently" has my full support! Honestly there's a reason I try to caveat everything I say and why I try not to weigh in too often when a rule is legitimately ambiguous (even if I felt like I could clear it up), but mostly just when there's clear rules to point to, since I know that people who agreed with what I said already might use my statement more aggressively than I'd like, and those who disagreed aren't likely to be convinced anyway, so it's not going to necessarily help. >How to Use the Improv Rules > >If your group is open to using the improvisation rules to handle situations where the player wants to try something that the rules does not say their character can do, some folks were worried that the next step is to memorize every feat in the game or at least do a deep-dive to find any feats similar to the current situation so you can analyze them and present a carefully nerfed version of them to your player. That's very much not something I would recommend. Instead, treat the situation by its own merit. Whether you know about any feats on the matter or not, is this something you think they should be able to try? If so, what feels like a good and fair way to make it work (the improv rules have some good starting points but they are open-ended to allow you to decide). > >Once you've made your call on whether to allow the attempt and how to make it work, potentially using the improv rules as guidance, you might later discover a feat that does something similar. Technically it might happen at the same time you're making your call if you suddenly remember the feat (or you always remembered it because you are a rules encyclopedia, huge respect!), but that's fine either way. If the feat lets you do the same thing but better, faster, or more easily, then you probably don't have to do anything. But what if it doesn't? What if you essentially allowed the feat for free, or your improv rule was actually stronger than what was in the feat to start? At that point, you'll want to think about the way you adjudicated and the feat and make a decision. Maybe involve the players too. Think for a moment about why the feat might exist and see if there's any merit in it for you and your players' enjoyment of the game. Maybe the player was using one skill to do the role of another skill and the feat being a gate helps preserves the second skill's niche. And this analysis might be enough for you to decide you want to nerf your initial improv ruling the next time someone tries it... but if it isn't? Just stick with the improv ruling as an official houserule and cut the feat. If someone doesn't know about this houserule and takes the feat later by accident, immediately refund it once you find out. >How Not to Use the Improv Rules > >Important aside: the way this works, we starting by deciding whether you wanted to allow the thing they were attempting in the first place. "Don't Let Feats Stop You From Improvising" (not just skill feats by the way, another common thing to improvise is some kind of much smaller jump and less efficient leaping attack than the powerful class feats for it) does not mean that you are obligated to let players try anything they can find written in a feat without the feat. It means that if you would have allowed an improv anyway without a feat or any rules for it, then you should. One of the most obvious examples of this are feats that give you a bonus or better action economy for something that is already in the rules. The base rules for those actions exist already. > >For example, several people in the weekend's discussion gave an example of actions like Battle Medicine that they said they would never allow someone to do without a skill feat, since it allows quite a bit of healing for 1 action when you normally would need to spend 10 minutes to heal that much out of combat. In that case, don't allow it. Aside: This is not to say that the people mentioning Battle Medicine were wrong or making a mistake to do so; because of the way the first thread's OP summarized the video, it made it seem like every feat (or at least skill feat, but the video was about feats overall) was fair game, even math boosters and action economy compressers. In fact, folks who brought that point up were (in my mind at least) right to do so. >Last Thoughts > >I feel like a lot of people were making very good points this past weekend from multiple conflicting perspectives, but also getting a bit heated with each other in part because some had watched the video, others were relying on the summary from the first post or a comment made partway through the discussion. I hope this post helps clear things up a little and explains what Linda and I meant when we were referring to the improv rules (several people kept wondering why they were relevant to the conversation, but they are absolutely foundational to the concept, so I hope this post makes it clear exactly how we might suggest using them and why). > >I'll end with the same caveat as I started: as always, don't use this advice if it doesn't work for you and your group, and on the flip side, even if you really like this advice, please don't go around using it as an arrow in your quiver "against" people who don't. It's not meant for that, and as much as I know it's inevitable that statements I make might be weaponized, I'd prefer if they weren't to the extent we can avoid it. The other view is a valid one; different groups play the game in very different ways. But do feel free to share it with people who might not have thought about this topic or decided one way or the other to help them along the way! > >EDIT: Adding this link to the video at the request of one the commenters! (here and up top).

I am running my Pathfinder group through Troubles in Otari, they have cleared the fishing camp. The group is looking to hire laborers to renovate the place, they found that in the Core Book, but I do not see anything in the Player Core.

We are also looking for prices for mundane items such as lumber, bedding, mattresses, furniture, etc. Still being new to the system, i have no idea what is even fair to guesstimate for this stuff.

Anyone have any ideas on finding this stuff? Or input on pricing?

I know this is not Pathfinder, but there is no Starfinder community. Hopefully it is welcome here.

I just started running a Starfinder game, so looking forward to seeing it grow.

Direct link

I'm trying to compile class features, spells, or items that let you use your gear as additional health pools. Effects like Armored Sacrifice allow you to deflect damage to an item you're wearing and I'm aware that there are more but I'm struggling to find them because the way they are worded or the effects that trigger them are not consistent. Like I'm certain there's another in 1e that let's you do the same with a weapon or a shield you're wielding in response to an attack. Spells, item mastery feats. It's an inconsistent mechanic but it comes up in a number of ways

If you know of any from either edition or phrases I could search to find them, please tell me

While the Player Core has straightforward prices for what it costs to hire someone to cast a spell, I've always struggled with what it would cost to hire ritual casters.

After all, rituals have rather big differences from ordinary spells:

• They take a lot longer to cast
• They usually require multiple casters
• Unlike with most spells, success is not automatic (and the more casters you need, the more difficult it will be to succeed)

So how do you price hiring NPC ritual casters? It would make the most sense to scale their daily fee depending on their skill bonus, but what is appropriate here?

And do they get paid for "time and material", or do they only get paid for successfully casting the ritual? The latter is far easier to calculate, while the casters will require a considerable "risk premium" for their service, and they might refuse to even make the attempt if the ritual is particularly difficult.

What are your thoughts on this?