Over in the basement, prolific poster u/Killchrono asked the question: What encounters have you enjoyed the most in PF2e?

The answers given are interesting and insightful (a lot of them focus on terrain, twists, and knife-edge scenarios that broke in the players' favour), but they're also over there. I'm curious to know what the Fediverse's favour encounters have been!

My new Pathfinder group started The Menace in Otari adventure from the Beginner Box yesterday and i am looking for an adventure path for them starting after this. I have read Trouble in Otari is a good next adventure, but also that it is still fairly basic. So we may want something more advanced.

I have been looking at different APs but not all have their starting level listed. Is there a compiled list of all of them with the level ranges? So far my internet searches are not turning up anything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw3UoN6ZWu4

Utkarsh posted this video to his Patreon last week, and I've been looking forward to folks' responses to it since. It's good stuff! Give it a watch.

I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about the balance mandate in Pathfinder 2e -- thoughts and feelings that seem to go against a trend in the discourse around the game. Thoughts that often get me labelled an unquestioning white knight of a fanboy.

I've gotten to actually play very little PF2e, as a player. Like 90% of my experience with the game has been as a GM -- originally a trepidatious and uneasy GM, unilaterally pulling my table away from 5e after the OGL nonsense a few years ago -- so I have to admit that my pain points have been very different from many players.

But I've come to identify those players' pain points not as the system, but as their GMs. At least for the ones who I think have valid frustrations. I've come to understand that a significant number (a minority, I hope) of Pathfinder 2e GMs functionally run the game as if they are just a computer code interpreter. Too many people are seeing the robust support the system gives them and, apparently, deciding that they don't have to do any actual thinking.

"The spell/feat/action does what the spell/feat/action does, no more, no less" is a common thing I see said, as I look on in horror and disappointment, realizing that a lot of my peers in this space -- both GMs and players alike -- get their fun from bureaucratic middle-managment. And while their fun is valid (as is yours), they seem to think that I should be getting my fun from the same thing, and worse, that pages spent on anyone else's fun are just "bloat".

But what came out of this video -- or, at least, the comments on the promo post on Reddit -- is that a lot of vocal complainers are really just feeling aggrieved because they want to be more powerful than the other creatures at the table, players and enemies alike.

u/Killchrono put together a really good response about the bitter feelings that opened my mind to some folks' feelings about player-dictated power scaling. Or, rather, the lack of it in the system.

I get that this is a big part of what power-gaming was in 3e (and therefore in PF1), and to an extent what it is in 5e, but I have always found this element of the games to be kind of gauche. I mean, I totally get it from a theorycrafting perspective -- I like puzzles, and build optimization is a kind of puzzle -- but bringing this kind of thing to an actual live table says a whole lot about someone as a person (assuming, of course, it's not an explicitly gonzo table). So the fact that the designers decided that Level was going to be the measure of character power in PF2, and that that measure was going to be as accurate as possible has been a huge gift to me. Theory-crafters get to keep their lane, but their monster trucks don't get to squish my little Honda Civic, as it were.

For a while now, I've had this feeling that a lot of complaints about "balance" were coming from a place of players being used to break the level curve, but not being able to be honest with themselves that they are, in practice, playing a character that is 2-3 levels higher than everyone else around them. This is not a popular opinion among those who feel held back by the game's guardrails, of course, but the hollowness of their push-back has kind of solidified my feelings on the issue.

But I was not at all prepared to see people crawl out of the shadows to say, out and proud, that they resented not being able to be more powerful than others at the table. And, while it was only a handful of people being so brash and mask-off about it all, they came fast, and hard, and kind of all over the place.

To plagiarize myself from elsewhere: I was totally blindsided by some people popping in to say the quiet part loud: that they should be allowed to be the main character if they know the magic cheat codes.

It's going to take me a little bit to shake that one off.

Victory Points systems often feel disconnected from the core game experience. SBG discusses some possible reasons why.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnzUVjjQPYY

We are soon planning our 0th session for a Kingmaker campaign in PF2e. Are there people who already ran it, or are running it, and have tips'n'tricks? There will be four players (plus me, GM), classes and ancestries not yet decided.

I've been copying the portraits of NPC's out of the book, and now I'm linking them with their statblock (if applicable). But that's a work worthy for the Titans, so if somebody has already done such a thing, feel free to share.

@pathfinder How does Gifted Power from Dedication work with spells already in your spell list like on an Arcane Sorcerer?

@pathfinder Is Shed Spirit from the Spirit Familiar feat a witch or familiar action?

As we near session zero day my group is asking questions about ancestries. My question to you is regarding rare Ancestries. Not info about the ancestries themselves, but rather the (rare) tag.

I found this info (PC2) about uncommon ancestries and heritages, and rare backgrounds.

But does something like this exist for a rare ancestry? I was hoping the Ancestry Guide would have something.

I posted a few months ago that my group was starting Pathfinder, and it turns out we really are now. Session 0 is in 2 weeks.

cross-posted from: https://aussie.zone/post/654981

The TL;DR of the rule is:

The 6 classic ability scores are (allegedly) not well-balanced among themselves. So the attempt is to fix that by:

• Combine Strength and Constitution
• Split Dexterity into 2 (basically, Dexterity: the stuff with your hands; and Agility: the stuff with your feet and body)
• Charisma becomes the stat for Will saves, instead of Wisdom

---

In short, do you agree with the stated goal of the system? Whether or not you do, do you think these particular changes are a good way of addressing that goal?

Have you ever tried out this variant, how does it go in practice?

@pathfinder Does Stay down proccing on an enemy standing up prevent Reactive Strike of another character from working on that same enemy? Does Topple Foe from Marshal archetype attempt to Trip an enemy before or after the Reactive strike if the trigger was a reactive strike for re-prone pseudo-Stay Down purposes?

Setting the Class Boost is supposed to also set the Class DC to use that ability. This works fine for classes with multiple Key Ability options defined by the class, like the Champion and Monk. But the rogue sets its Key Ability to either Dex or something defined by its Racket.

In the past this has caused the issue that Pathbuilder would allow you to set any of the abilities that any rogue could get. So a Ruffian Rogue could set Intelligence as their Key Ability. This seems to have been fixed, but now your Rogue DC is based on Dexterity, regardless of what you set your Class Boost to.

1. Double dice on crits. Instead of (1d8 + 4)×2, roll 2d8+8.
2. Aid uses the same target DC as the main check instead of 15, and because +4/+2/+1/-1 instead of +X/+1/+0/-1. Bonuses to Aid, like Cooperative Nature, are halved.
3. Recall Knowledge is automatically made using the best/most appropriate skill, not asking players which to use. Identify the monster using its level DC. Answer basic questions using an appropriate DC, for example, if they ask how to bypass a level 10 Ghost Mage's incorporeal damage resistance, the DC will be set based on the lowest level creature with the same resistance: the level 4 Ghost Commoner. Ronald adds even more details in the video.
4. Changes to the Investigate, Defend, and Scout exploration activities.
5. Disallow critical success on the automatic "Grab" ability some monsters have, if it is at a higher level.
6. Give out XP, but by "feel" rather than the precise numbers in the rules.

7–11: Nerfs or bans to specific spells and abilities Garden of Healing, Timber Sentinel, Tailwind, Spiritual Anamnesis, Familiar of Ongoing Misery.

12. If you recover from unconscious, you can act immediately.
13. Leap action reduces fall distance for the purpose of fall damage by 5 feet.
14. One action to automatically find an ally who is Concealed or Hidden.
15. Allow the Mature Animal Companion feat to give birds the ability to "fly" without actually moving, to stay in the air, without costing an action.
16. Fascinated only ends if a creature takes hostile actions against you, not your allies.
17. Keep the optional Voluntary Flaws rule which was removed in the remaster. 2 flaws for 1 boost.
18. Monks get "dodge" action which works like raise shield.
19. Give Conceal Spell feat to Psychic class feat list.
20. Automatic Bonus Progression, but only for fundamental weapon and armour runes.
21. Gradual Ability Boosts. Instead of 4 ability boosts at 5th level, get one at 2nd, one at 3rd, etc. But no +5 until level 10, 2nd +5 until level 15, and no +6 until level 20.
22. Free Archetype, but first archetype is at level 1 (delaying expert proficiencies until level 2).

@pathfinder What happens if I use Adopted Ancestry (Halfling) so I get Cultural Adaptability to get another adopted ancestry?
As I understand, adopted ancestry can only be taken once but pathbuilder seems to allow this particular combo.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/35472904

cross-posted from: https://aussie.zone/post/1840902

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?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ-u5JRijFY

Narrative Declaration runs several Pathfinder 2e-based Actual Plays, most notably its flagship show Rotgrind. This is an animation of a scene from one of their episodes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6j25U6F9t0w

SBG talks about why so many people get cranky about the Wizard, and how assumptions about what makes for good and bad adventure design impact players' perception of Prepared Casters in PF2e.

Spoiler: The big factor is whether people actually prepare for their encounters or not, and whether they're even given the opportunity to do so.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOLNLAXakY4

A good and fairly short discussion on new player expectations when it comes to slotted full casters, and class baselines.

Considering the last few posts are about stealth and detection I might as well kick this off:

I skip and short circuit stealth/detection as much as possible.

None of my players have built a stealth based characters - probably also because of the complexity with detection and the seemingly bad action econ when dealing with "actually getting Hidden".

I have two main problems with it:

• comparison explosion? Whenever you have to resolve who sees who (esp at init) you have to at worst compare a roll for each character on one side to all the perception DCs of the other side and this gets really slow for me [^1]
• tracking who currently sees who / at what detection levels they currently are to others

Any tips and tricks very much welcome:)

[^1]: Both me and PCs track chars digitally (pathbuilder) and it is definitely slow to gather this information quickly on a laptop. A sheet of paper with highlighted bonuses/DCs for both the party and NPCs would go a long way for this but our play table is rather small and already pretty packed :/

Man the guadian seems awesome and a better tank than a paladin. Commander to but im up in the air of its support vs a bard.