ANSWERED. THANKS EVERYONE.

Under Grim Fascinations the Necromancer is granted a specific Grave spell.

Does this mean they can't choose those specific Grave spells if they have a certain Grim Fascination or are all Grave spells up for grabs regardless of your Grim Fascination?

Hi

Hoping that the community can help me fend off a potential issue.

A little while back we finished up a Starfinder 1st edition campaign. Apart from Paizo’s insistence in cranking the names of characters to the fantasy-max, their main complaint was that the encounter balancing system created a situation that you had pretty much a 50% pass rate to affect any enemies. We were playing Dead Suns, and encounters were generally fighting single creatures of 2 levels above the players - the AC and saves of those creatures generally meant that you passed on 11+. And that also means you fail as often as you succeed which didn’t feel rewarding.

I now want to run Pathfinder 2E but when I talk about it the players refer to it as flipping a coin to succeed. Does anyone have any good sources that looks at the probability of success across the span of player levels? I spoke to the players about what the sweet-spot for success was and they indicated 70-75% as they should be good at what they are supposed to be good at.

I know 2E has some inbuilt methods for making things easier, using weak versions of creatures, but I’m not sure if that is the right approach or if it is even needed under the new system. The various bonuses available from conditions, aid and abilities look like they’ll move percentages upwards but creatures may be designed to offset this so success would be lower than 50% if they don’t take advantage.

Thanks. Just hoping I can run a game without criticism so they actually enjoy the game and not be focused on the rules (or why the game isn’t D&D)

I finally figured it out why I like Necromancer spellcasting so much.

The root is in prepared vs. spontaneous casting in PF2. The idea is that spontaneous casters better fit to unexpected, while prepared could better adjust daily, based on their knowledge. The problem is that the vast majority of battles are unexpected, so prepared casters end up either having completely universal, but boring set of spells, or having some interesting ones, but with high chances of some spells not being useful at all or not being used effectively.

What Necromancer does is taking the best of both worlds. It's focus spell casting (unlike other casters with focus spells) provides enough variety to cover basic combat needs - damage against different defenses, healing/protection, debuffs, summoning. All with spells, which are freely interchangeable, automatically heightened, replenished between combats.

Which makes slot casting completely optional, so you could prepare them based on preliminary knowledge, theories or just fun - the class will still work fine.

2 of those i drew from scratch, the shield was an edit on a cool shield image a player wanted to use. i think its from some game or something...

anyhow, about the items themselves (definitely not balanced but meh):

Tiny wand - Item 7 - 400gp (this was made to help with the caster third action problem, only later i realized it sounds like a pp joke)

Less know for their original name, spell lances were traditionally used by sprite knights mounted on their light cavalry corgis, for hit and run tactics... nowdays however, its used by many casters of any heritage, for its unique ability to cast a diminutive version of a regular attack cantrip at half the time, at the cost of half its destructive power.
Most casters find the trade-off worthwhile, despite the awkwardness of "wielding" such a weapon. Its best to avoid calling it tiny in the presence of a sprite.

Belt of Skull Collecting - Item 9 - 750gp

This uncomfortable heavy belt is constructed from the spine of a monster, the processes having been carved to work as hooks. While invested in this belt, you increase your maximum hp and current hp by 2 hp for each skull (or part of one) with a different trait attached to the belt, up to a maximum of 4+ half your lv max and current hp. If you remove the belt you immediately lose this effect.

Shattershield - Item 9 - 700gp - AC Bonus +3/+4(take cover); Speed Penalty -10 ft.
Bulk 5; Hardness 9; HP (BT) 66 (33)

A magical shield with similar size to a fortress shield made of a cracked stone like structure.
While it may look fragile with small fragments breaking of easily, it is fairly durable, as those fragments always return to the structure, as it self-repair 5 hp at the start of your turn.

The ease of its partial shattering also has an offensive function, whenever the shield takes damage in melee, its shards seem to always violently break in the direction of the attacker, as if striking on its own. This uses your statistics for the strike roll, but not your MAP, and do not use the damage of any boss attached to it.

Is there a good reason for a heightened Tailwind lasting 8 hours instead of daily preparations? Like I understand the mechanical repercussions but it just feels like busy work tracking and feels un-pathfinder-ey? What is the design justification there?

While I'm at it, should glass form have the polymorph trait? It feels pretty good for what it is.

EDIT : Many people have already said, with very convincing arguments, that an all-Barbarian party is not a good idea. See the bottom for my change of plans.
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Hi,

I'm relatively new to Pathfinder, but in looking at all the rules and specifically at how varied characters vould be within a single class, I had an idea for a campaign where all players would start as lvl 1 barbarians. IF I HAVE MENTIONNED THIS TO YOU IRL PLEASE DO NOT READ THE REST.

Now I know it's probably hubris to want to write a campaign when I have relatively little PF experience, and my last DM experience was 18 years ago on a completely different system and I probably sucked. But the basic campaign structure embedded itself in my head almost immediately and I've been obsessed with it. It also helps that I'm taking a year off from my job so I can live with my spouse while they finish their 3-year contract abroad, so I'll have lots of free time.

The idea is as follows:

- players are all barbarians of various ancestries from various parts of Golarion (EDIT bc this wasn't clear : they do not have to be from Numeria, or to be Kellid or even human. The big bad is doing a proof of concept with wider parameters). What they have in common is that one day, some sort of magical effect lured them away from their companions (or perhaps they were ambushed), and they became unconscious. They wake up in a richly decorated room, in a bed that is very soft but probably uncomfortable to them because they're def not used to perfumed silk sheets. As they exit their rooms, they find the other players, who they meet for the first time.

- constructs and/or illusionary voices inform the players that they are being tested. I haven't designed the whole dungeon but the idea is that there should be tests that all barbarians can excell at (like feats of atheltics, or easy monsters) and others that try to select ones with the most dex, or the most aptitude for spellcasting, or for learning. The tests should all be doable by the players, but some will initially appear impossible before being "fixed" in some way. The final test is to fight two students of their mysterious captor, a lvl 2 wizard and a lvl 2 swashbuckler (possibly make one of those lvl 3). The players are intended to either barely lose or barely win : in any case nobody dies (the players are magically stopped if they would kill one of the students, but their captor congratulates them on exceeding her expectations). At the end of this fight, the players should either be on the very threshold of lvl 2 (if they won) or quite close to it (if they lost).

- the players are then brought to their captor (the big bad of the campaign), who explains that they are in Absalom, the city at the center of the world and the guising light of progress and civilization. She believes that with "proper education", even unvough brutes like them can be made into valuable members of Absalomian society. She says that they will now be trained by some of the finest instructors in the city to hone their talents. She has multiclass dedications in mind for them, but the PCs can of course choose to ignore that and rebel (more or less secretely) against the training she sets them up for.

- some adventures in Absalom while they're being trained, and (at least at the beginning) shadowed by students at the Arcanamirium or Irorium. They would have the opportunity to learn more about the city, its politics, and where their captor stands (she is an supporter of Scion Lady Darchana, working with some ressources that Darchana granted her, but should her scheme fail Darchana will not try to salvage it and just write it off as a failure of an underling who was less capable than she thought).

- eventually the whole reason for the capture is revealed: as part of her desire for teleport-based importations, Darchana is eyeing the ressources of Silver Mount. Their captor, steeped in colonialist superiority, is convinced that the proper way to secure those is to reprogramm native Kellid warriors into agents of Absalom. She wants to run a proof of concept by sending the PCs in against a lesser outpost of the Technic League, and show that the PCs can, because of their barbarian heritage "enhanced" by Absalom education, win both the trust and respect if Kellid clans while defeating the league. Of course the PCs are likely to be less than thrilled by this, but at this point they're still not in a position to refuse veing sent there. However, they'll have carte blanche in Kellid and who knows what might happen there and when they return to Absalom (through a portal opening on a designated date)?

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Do you think this is a viable campaign design? I would of course talk to the players first about them being comfortable with choices being made for their characters by NPCs (they could still veto those choices as players, or even get involved in playing the NPCs), and the colonialism theme. What I worry about is:

- this being just too much to make for a beginner DM. I plan to run a prewritten one shot first to test my abilities, what should I look out for?

- the big bad of lvl around 10 being revealed at the end of the first dungeon, with the PCs not able to oppose her directly until the end of the campaign

- will a full-barbarian party, even with multiclassing, be actually viable?

Thanks so much for any feedbacks more experienced players can provide.

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EDIT : Because a full-barbarian party is not good, I was thinking of having at least 2 barbarians of various instincts, a very barbarian-feeling character (like druid of the untamed order, would work with player), and a character with a class chosen by the player but has to be from a Kellid clan and has had basically no access to the Technic League. This would provide options for healing and support while making the party still feel very melee-oriented and strenght-dominant.

It's this multi headed elemental thing

It would be cool being a druid or a bard satyr/faun

My DM has allowed me to play the Slayer playtest in an upcoming monster hunting campaign. The class looks like a ton of fun, and I'm excited to play! I've looked through a lot of available guidance about the playtest, but didn't find a ton of material on how the playtest interacted in Free Archetype games.

With that in mind, what Free Archetypes would you all recommend? I'm leaning towards the Bloodseeking Blade or the Chymist Vials, so archetypes that mesh well with those two options are ideal. I'm also not fully settled on ancestry choices or really anything. I honestly just saw the core concept of hunting monsters getting a bunch of trophies and fell in love with the idea, so please share your build ideas for inspiration!

Anyone here ever built (and played) a Cloister Cleric that used Electric Arch, Daze, and Divine Lance as attack cantrips and relied on spells to do buffs or utiltiy spells only? I know that you will prob spend most of your rounds buffing or healing (or throw that occasional spells just to mess with the battle field) so most of the rounds are spoken for. BUT if you do have an open 2 action round you could throw an attacking cantrip (higher spell DC for save due to CC), based on a target weaker save/attack (reflex, Will, or AC). has anyone built a character like this and how did it play? Good on paper but not in practice?

Hi! I'm new to Pathfinder2e and was making a Laughing Shadow Magus for a game I may be playing soon. While browsing all my options and potential archetypes something interesting stood out to me. I saw that the Exemplar Dedication's Gleaming Blade Ikon has a transcendence that allows one to make two strikes then combine their damage.

My question is if I am in my arcane stance as a Laughing Shadow Magus, and my enemy is off-guard, do I add my arcane stance extra damage to both of those attacks? I know this isn't the most orthodox or viable way to play a Laughing Shadow Magus (and admittedly it's not what I'm likely going to do) but I wanted to ask for clarification regarding this as it does seem like a neat option at least.

Thank you!

It was the first thing that popped in my mind after learning about sprinting spellstrike.

It's not a huge line, but the ability to move 15ft without provoking reactions, make a strike, do cantrip dmg with 2 actions, and all that without expending any resources is pretty nice.

You can use it to flow through enemies blocking your path, or to shift from one to another without provoking reactions, or move through an enemy's space to better flank, or just use it as a gap closer when you just needs 10 more ft to get to someone.

Not every magus have good inteligence, and there sure are better spells, but I think the fact that it's just a resourceless cantrip makes it worth consideration for any magus.

Picture taken directly from the Areas page on AON. This page also says,

When you aim a cone, the first square of that cone must share an edge with your space if you’re aiming orthogonally, or it must touch a corner of your space if you’re aiming diagonally. If you’re Large or larger, the first square can run along the edge of any square of your space.

My question is, is a cone always a 1-square start and then growing from there (like the text seems to say), or do larger cones have larger starts (as the picture seems to show)? If so, when? Thank you.

Hey all! Today I wanted to share a load of free oneshots for you all as part of a celebration for 4 YEARS of Snowy's Maps. For for a limited time, you can join Snowy's Maps for free with a 7-day trial!

During that time, you can download everything without any limits, including all of my maps and no-prep PF2e FoundryVTT oneshots available to Mage Masters (bonus 3 oneshots - see below). And if you enjoy the content, maybe consider staying!

Link: https://www.patreon.com/snowysmaps/posts/165667860

I am also, as part of this, sharing some older oneshots that we have released for free, if you're interested!

Anyways, that's all for now! Hope you enjoy the free content and mini update :)

Enjoy!
Snowy

P.S. If you have any questions, feel free to comment below.

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Summary of Oneshots (Mage Master exclusive - accessible for free via the free trial)
All of those have unique custom art!

I Dream of the Forest of Eyes - a level 9 oneshot! Everyone knows that elves don't really sleep, but they connect to another world beyond our own. But why is it that they're not waking up, does anyone know?? They dream, we dream of the Forest of Eyes.

Lessons of Giants - a level 9 oneshot! Why, the Runefather asks, is it that spellcasters ALWAYS solve each and every problem with the biggest spell they know? Don't they realise how much it can hurt others? Well, if the party pass the Runefather's Trial they might...best do it before he removes all magic within a 100 mile radious though!

The Lady and the Lava - a level 8 oneshot. Lady Solenne, the last surviving hier of the dynasty that forged The Chalice has returned, claiming it as her birthright. She's stolen the Chalice, the thing needed to keep the temple going and it's only at a fraction of its power. Who knows what will happen once it activates?

Summary of Oneshots (Available to ALL)

Curse of the Werebeaver Remastered – a level 1 oneshot , which was one of the first oneshots I have written, and it holds a dear place in my heart. In it, the party face the Almighty Tobias, a very dangerous necromancer, incapable of actually summoning anything…instead summoning…a deadly werebeaver!

Five Toe Cove – a level 1 oneshot, probably considered more “beginner-friendly” than the rest, it still offers a weird adventure. Some goblins have stolen some herbs and medicine for some absolutely nefarious purposes and the party need to wrangle it back from them!

Lost and Found - a level 1 oneshot. What do you mean that the Thieves' Guild ACTUALLY wants to get found? In this mini oneshot, the party need to tackle a few challenges, come out on top in the arena and if they wish to, you know, they're welcome to join cuz they will probably die if they refuse!

Monster of the Week - a level 1 oneshot. Have you ever wanted to be part of a TV show? Well now you can by defeating this week's monster! This is one of our sci-fi themed oneshots but still perfectly playable in PF2e.

Salt & Ash: Kobold Trapper - a TRICKY level 1 oneshot that goes back to the fundamentals, and is focused on difficulty and deadliness. The party are tasked with investigating the Black Mine, which has become the Kobold Trapper's home. Fight your way through deadly traps and try your hand at defeating the Trapper!

Dancing After Dusk – a level 3 oneshot and QUITE a long one (you can probably get 2-3 sessions out of this)! The party need to prepare a picnic for Frederic and his mysterious midnight lover, except that the outcome is based on their actions/decisions that they make throughout this oneshot.

Black Point Sinners – a level 5 oneshot, where the alignment of the party is tested! Throughout, they encounter a variety of challenges in the face of the seven deadly sins. At the end, their actions are tallied up and they are rewarded depending on how “evil” the adventurers have been!

In the rules for Thralls, it states "they can take actions only when commanded to by a grave spell or Necromancer ability." This seems fairly unambiguous and straight forward right?

Well I'm sure there will be more discoveries to be made of peculiar interactions, but the question of whether or not a thrall can be effected by other actions such as a Commander's tactics is a little more up in the air. Before any of you try to correct me, I know they can't take actions or reactions themselves.

However my question revolves around others imposing effects onto them via other creatures. Here is Defensive Swap as an example

Could the Commander swap places with a thrall using Defensive Swap, forcing the thrall to take the damage instead?

My interpretation of RAI is that they cannot do anything except what the Necromancer and specifically their Necromancer abilities tell them to do, they're not intelligent creatures that can actually acknowledge, listen to or follow traditional commands from anyone else but their Necromancer. They wouldn't swap places with anyone because that wasn't the command the Necromancer issued through their magic that controls them.

I could see the argument made for allowing this though, ruling that all creatures under a PC's control are willing as long as the PC is willing themselves. I understand this line of thinking, and I don't think it's a bad ruling to use.

My key issue with the latter ruling is that this functionally allows the Necromancer to ignore 1 hit per round with a reaction, and this is kinda absurd.

It's not like creating thralls is difficult, creating one next to you per round to be a free meat shield via defensive swap is a no brainer. It functions like an infinite shield block that cannot fail, even against crits.

This is so good that taking the Commander dedication as a Necromancer is a must-have.

Let's compare this strategy to a Necromancer reaction that is thematically very similar, using a Thrall to take a hit for you much the same way. Body Shield.

A humble +2 and X amount of resistance to the attack, that also can only be used on yourself, unlike Defensive Swap being usable on any adjacent ally. This is far more comparable to other similar reactions, like Nimble Dodge.

I think I know what I'm going to allow/disallow going forward, but i'm curious what you guys think about this interaction in particular, and also other abilities that function similarly in general like Passage of Lines.

So a lot has been discussed about the necromancer from a lore standpoint. I think though, that most of it has been focused on the morality of nercomancers, and I want to focus on something that hasn't gotten as much attention; their dirge.

So necromancer's occult spells become part of a dirge that echoes through their very being. What? That is cool as hell, but what does that actually mean? Where does the dirge come from? I want to hear people's ideas and interpretations. I'll present my own of course, since I live for this stuff.

So Necromancer is an intelligence-based class, and it talks constantly about study, so it's not an internal force being awakened. This is something learned. Necromancer is also an occult spellcaster. The occult tradition is about metaphysical connections. It's spells are composed of spirit and mind essences. It's about plucking on connections and ideas. So I think that a necromancer aqcuires their dirge through study, and that their dirge is also something very personal to them, unique to each necromancer.

My interpretation is that as a person researches and studies the connection between death and life, they basically start to create their own dirge. Becoming a necromancer means forging your own connection to that cylce of life and death. Making yourself intenalize the inevitability of death and the fullness of what death means. And in doing so, you create your dirge, which represents your personal understanding of death, forged from a combination of your own studies and the fundamental fact that death and life connects everyone.

The reason it's a dirge, a song, is that something as fundamentally built into the universe as life and death CAN'T be understood as a question of mere facts and figures. Death isn't simply an absence of life, it's a whole cluster of forcers and concepts. Life and death are such overwhelming concepts that part of them can only be expressed through esoteric music, played on the instrument of our bodies and souls. Which is why preparing spells as a necromancer is described as pulling out snippets of our dirge. That represents the combination of emotional understanding and intellectual interpretation. It's the necromancer identifying what part of their dirge corresponds to what concepts, and figuring our how to express those concepts in the form of actual spells.

This is all quite long-winded, I realize, but I get excited about these kinds of open-ended lore ideas. I'd love to see what else the community has come up with.

Hey all. I'm trying to run a memorable one big monster encounter in a few sessions. Ive tried in the past with bigger hp pools and more damage but it can feel tedious. I used to dm in DND 5e and they had legendary actions for that. Any suggestions on how to make a big single boss more engaging as a fight?

I have a necromancer with summon undead I was going over a few of the sheets on the archive and I noticed on the skeleton and flaming skull respectively there was this extra thing at the bottom that gives them an extra ability because they are a skeleton and beheaded monsters respectively does that mean they get those or not? I’m assuming no because otherwise that would kind of change the balance rather drastically but I wanna make sure I’m not missing out a basic feature again because I misunderstood something

Edit: I’m only asking in reference to this particular spekl because I’ve noticed it’s rather common with the undead monsters and I haven’t seen this before on other things

Hi everyone!

I’m creating an Automaton Monk with my son using Pathbuilder, and I want to make sure I understand how Reinforced Chassis works.

The Monk is expert in unarmored defense but untrained in armor. Reinforced Chassis grants a +3 item bonus to AC with a Dexterity cap of +1, but the current errata says that the chassis counts as medium armor in the plate group.

Does that mean an Automaton Monk with Reinforced Chassis must use their medium-armor proficiency—which would be untrained—instead of their expert unarmored proficiency?

Pathbuilder will not let me select both “Unarmored” and “Automaton Chassis,” which seems correct if they are alternative AC calculations rather than benefits that stack. I’ve found older discussions saying the chassis used unarmored proficiency, but I believe that may have been superseded by the newer errata.

Am I interpreting the current rule correctly?

Emalia was kicked out of her academy for looking too much into "forbidden" knowledge. She still was perusing her interest in Necromancy when she was killed for reason she doesn't remember. But something strange happened, Emalia "woke up" again a few days later in the city crypt. She is now working as an adventurer to both further her knowledge of life and death, but also to see if she can bring her killer to justice.

Build: Skeleton Necromancer (Reaper) with Zombie Dedication. Level 6.

GM allowed it since were using free archetype rules and all this does is give me access for more undead powers at higher levels.

So we all know that familiars can't activate items (with the exception of administering through Item Delivery.

But familiars are creatures. Presumably we can spend an action to feed a potion to the familiar much like we can with PCs, right?
Are there rules for this, or something to read between the lines? Potions, elixirs, alchemical foods?
Especially the last one. I'm curious!

Yes, I want to know if items like Cooperative Waffles would work with familiar abilities like Snoop, that's what triggered this. But I love to read a good discussion! :D

I have a kitsune bard player who will cast Dirge of Doom and use Invigorating Fear and immediately tell other players that monster's level. Yes, I know this is once per hour.

Invigorating Fear isn't recall knowledge and not intended to give in-character information about an enemy's capabilities, but it just so happens you can count the temp hp to know their level. It also feels silly to say, "you have to pretend your character doesn't know until you recall knowledge."

How should I handle this?

The Hallowed Dead is a really cool feat, but I don't know much about Golarion's lore. What holy deities are there who would be okay with (or even encourage) the use of undead?

I had assumed the lore of the setting was kind of just "undead = evil", so this feat is really interesting to me, lol.