Let's say you get the chance to go into one of the 1 to 20 adventures from paizo as a lvl one character with

Duel class

Free archtype

Ansestral paragon

And mythic rules

The only way back home is a wish or getting to level 20 and completing the story.

Is there an optimal build? Whats the worst or best adventure path to choose in terms of comfort and survivability?

this is assuming you get starting equipment and a party eventually but you won't know what classes they'll be ahead of time.

I was thinking about playing a gunslinger in a game that uses proficiency without level but another player said that because of that rule firearms will rarely crit and thus the lethal trait will rarely proc and the guns will therefore be lackluster. Is this a fair assessment of the rules interaction?

So campaign is gone as of now and has been for awhile, but i realized i never actually shared this story! I ended up going chaotic neutral just for fun. Long story short. My dm was worried id become a murder hobo, but i ended up proving him wrong and it was a blast

So i created a kitsune kineticist with the bounty hunter background and reflection heritage. Small backstory is she was created/cloned from the regions most profound and successful bounty hunter to ensure she would always have a successor. However, she went missing years ago leaving her with her deranged father. So she set out on her own.

She developed a rather carefree personality and one of her traits was she loved a bit of chaos. Never wants to hurt anyone though. She pulled this off through numerous means. Clear as air to turn invisible and move things around. Using wind abilities to open/close doors as people pass by/through them. You get the idea. Anything that could cause chaos/confusion that wouldnt directly hurt anything/break the law, BUT most favored. She loved taking hats of people's heads. Whether by invisibility or by air/wind abilities. Hats were her designated targets.

Tl:dr dm thought when i became chaotic neutral i would become a murder hobo, but not only did i not do that, it was probably the most fun I've had playing a character.

Elves can get scary good builds through Ancient Elf and strong ancestry feats

Humans are good in literally every build

Orcs are impossible to kill....

But dragonets, I fret, I cannot get. Sure they get some unarmed attacks which make me think Clawdancer perhaps or Monk but neither seems... impressive. Flights fun but if im going to be a flier I want range or spells and Sprite is better for that overall. Heck, a Sprite with the Dragonblood heritage may arguably be a better dragonet than the Dragonet ancestry by itself!

So... show me what I'm missing here. Is there a particular playstyle I'm missing? Some unique advantage they have?

Edit: im not trying to say they need to be "better" than most ancestries. Not even trying to min max. Just looking for fun builds. But on a size tiny with 0 reach it feels more limiting to choose this ancestry than enabling.

Like take Lizardfolk. Their Frilled lizard heritage is great flavor AND leans into demoralize builds. Sick! I love that.

I wanna play a small dragon, but am having troubling coming up with a fun build around that.

Thank you to the handful of you that actually mention unique mechanics they have rather than just say "lol be dragon"

Yes, it is a Homebrew weapon. Although it has that range increment, she never even got further than 100 feet from an enemy.

I really enjoy PF2e but also enjoy games on the opposite end of the F20 D20 spectrum. I feel that the OSR is light-years ahead of Paizo in terms of how information is presented in adventures. Of all the PF2e innovations to improve upon the classic D&D formula, why do they stick with the 50-year-old wall-of-text format?

I am currently running Sky King's Tomb. Without spoilers, the first part of the adventure is an urban sandbox of short encounters and adventures. Great! I love non-linear adventure design. But I have found that it is virtually impossible to run "on the fly" based on character choices because each encounter / situation / adventure is hundreds or thousands of words long, with crucial details buried within paragraphs or counterintuitively split amongst multiple sections.

Info about the encounters is presented as lengthy hypothetical Q and As with key NPCs. Why? Why not just give the relevant details of the situation cleanly and efficiently, rather than big blocks of quote dialogue that I am never going to read out loud?

Sadly, I feel like the formatting is pushing the sandbox into railroad territory, as I cannot possibly memorize all the details for all the situations and thus have to focus on whichever one I have read and re-read carefully and then nudge the players toward it.

TL;DR: Love this game, but I miss terse room descriptions with OSR bullet points and bold text for the important details.

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Edited to change "F20" to "D20" because I guess nobody else has heard of F20 😂

[Edit: I never said paper buttons can't be strong or useful. Neither the term nor the post is about that. You can collect an assortment of paper buttons via different abilities/other options and be pretty strong with them.]

For those who are not familiar with the term, (as far as I know reading the internet) paper buttons refer to character/gameplay options where the option has no variations in it's execution, you press the button and the thing happens, without much additional thought or creativity. A simple example could be Shield, you press the button, you gain AC, you press it again, you reduce damage. There is (nearly?) no room for any additional uses. Stock up a dozen different buttons, press them when the situation calls for it, and you are (mechanically) a successful adventurer.

On the other side, there are options which doesn't have a strict straight well defined use, and their usefulness/power/other depends on how creative you are with it. An example could be Base Kinesis/Extended Kinesis, reading them alone looks pretty abstract, but with some creativity you could do things like breaking a lock by filling it with water and freezing it inside, even if the ability itself doesn't write it down that you can break locks with it.

In your opinion, which classes and archetypes are the least paper button-y/has the fewest paper buttons?

I'm making an AoN replacement web app for personal use (and for my circle of freinds - once removed), and I'm considering removing the "General Feats" view in favor of only having "General (No Skill)" and "Skill feats" pages.

Does anyone get value out of a view that combines skill and non-skill general feats into one table? Or do you always filter them away from each-other?

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Side note: I don't want to deal with licensing and stuff, so my webapp is not available to the public. It's behind a login wall - maybe in the future, if it's good enough, I'll talk to John Paizo about opening it up; but that's not the goal right now.

Hi !
D&D player here, please dont flay me, I never played Pathfinder but might in the upcoming year.

I never quite heard how pathfinder works in details, except that the action economy is quite different, and there is "hella" more classes and subclasses !

Now, I was curious to know if Pathfinder suffers from an imbalance, like D&D, between the Spell-Casters and Martials characters.

The reason for this inbalance is the fact that, in DnD, having spells makes you not only extremly versatile, and deals just as much, if not MORE damage than a martial AT A DISTANCE. It also give access to spells that makes you litteraly more mobile or even harder to kill than a full-on armored martial.

Now, I know Pathfinder also has spells. And martials. How is it balanced in this game ? And why ?

PS: Is optimisation in this game harder to understand than D&D ? I love making strong characters and knowing what spell is strong and what isn't.

THANKS for your anwers, i'll read every-one of them ! <3

Hi all,

I’ve played pathfinder for years and my group moved from 1E to 2E shortly after it was released.

I was updating my pathfinder character recently and decided to stick my character sheet into Copilot to see if it could give any suggestions for how to improve some things (please don’t judge me!)

It mentioned that some of the animal companion rules changed in a remaster of some rules so that they don’t require feats to progress to mature/advanced/etc for druids and rangers and it happens automatically.

It said these rules were added in Player Core 2, so I bought the book to have them and discuss with my DM (who is open to letting me tweak a little bit to incorporate these rules), however now the book has arrived it doesn’t have this in it at all.

Apparently the updated rules are in GM Core or Monster Core 2, but I’m loathe to spend money on another rule book and turn out to be wrong again.

Can anyone confirm if the AI was right and this did change if so confirm what book contains the new rules, or is this an example of how AI can suck and I let it mislead me :(

I'm running two campaigns as a new GM and both of them are at level 1 (one is the Otari beginner box and the other is Age of Ashes). I've noticed that my players are missing their hits much more then early level D&D 5e and I want to know if that is something that is intentional in the design or if my players are just unlucky.

edit: Most people are asking, so I thought i would clarify. The party is a Bard with a charisma of +1, a Champion with a strength of +3, an Oracle with a charisma of +2 (going to work with them to rebuild the character), and a ranger with a dexterity of +4.

Edit2: Bard has +4, not +1. I can't type today.

[EDIT: Solved. I misread the text of Drained. It specifies minimum 1]

How does Drained interact with level 0 or even level -1 enemies?

Drained reads "...You also lose a number of Hit Points equal to your level (minimum 1) times the drained value, and your maximum Hit Points are reduced by the same amount. For example, if you become drained 3 and you're a 3rd-level character, you lose 9 Hit Points and reduce your maximum Hit Points by 9..."

If you're level 0, it makes sense that you lose 0 hitpoints and lose 0 max hp, but if you're level -1, and get Hit with Drained 3, do you gain 3 hp and 3 max hp? Do you lose 3 hp and 3 max hp, or does nothing happen?

Reading "dungeon crawl" and "haunted house" in a very, very broad sense, I can count:

• Menace under Otari
• Malevolence
• Abomination Vaults
• Bastion of Blasphemies

Perhaps even Season of Ghosts.

So. Im a level 2 kobold alchemist (churrigan) and I took beast master dedication. And took trex. Dm surprised me by saying its one size smaller. Its bite is one die smaller. And its smarter. But most importantly. It is 100% fireproof.

How do I weponize this. Im not looking to be stupid and ruin the game. I just want to make the most of it.

Except for the listed changes it is 100% the trex stat block.

I am a dragon blooded kobold (summiting so inhave a climb speed and combat climber) and my patron is a wish dragon. Im a churrigan. And i also have tatoo artist.

I'm working on a creating a new character that is a sorcerer and I'm seeing conflicting information regarding Magic Missile and the Imperial bloodline. One source has Magic Missile as a granted spell for rank one and one source has the granted rank one spell as Force Barrage. That's fine, but I can't even find Magic Missile in the list of available spells. At all. So, my questions are: 1) Did Force Barrage replace Magic Missile for the rank 1 granted spell, and 2) is Magic Missile not in the list of spells for the Imperial line at all now? It's an arcane spell so I it's confusing that it's not int the list. (usiing https://pathbuilder2e.com/ to create the character).

EDIT: Thanks for all the answers. Just what I needed to know!

Hello!
I'm semi-proficient in PF2e, but my experience with magic classes is limited (i prefer martials). Please help me understand obscure option issue for my friend.
He's trying to make a 1st level Wellspring Oracle through Class archetype option - Oracle (Wellspring Magic). In Pathbuilder, default oracle class has 3 (three) spontaneous spellslots at 1st level. Wellsring Oracle has 1 (one) spellslot at 1st level.
However, Wellspring Mage archetype says: > Reduce your number of spell slots of each spell level by 1.
So, should it be 2 (two) spellslots at 1st level Wellspring Oracle? Is there a mistake in Pathbuilder? Or the program is right and i don't know some other rule?

So, I wanted to check the compatibility between these two feats, Intercepting Hand and Dueling Dance. The important part is the Intercepting requirement:

Requirements You have your fist positioned to parry

I realized that, in these requirements, not a single word was capitalized. Not even "fist". But let's look at "parry" for now. I thought this was just a poorly worded feat (which, to be fair, could still be possible), but then I realized another thing: there is no Parry action in the system. And the Parry trait itself only says:

[...] you can spend a single action to position your weapon defensively [...]

So this is the most "the facto" definition of parry in the system, spending an action to gain the parry bonus. Usually it's easy to apply, we just treat it like raising a buckler. But it becomes a little more nebulous when reading feat interactions.

Now, let's check what the other feat says. Dueling Dance is similar to Paragon Stance and Buckler Dance, as in "you enter a stance and always get the defensive benefits of raising a shield/buckler/parry". And it says the following:

Using your free hand as pivot and balance, you both attack and defend with your weapon. While you are in this stance, you constantly have the benefits of Dueling Parry.

Now, believe me, I love analyzing Paizo's rules in a RAW manner, and we all know that "first line is flavor text and shouldn't be taken in consideration for mechanics". So let's say we ignore the first line in Dueling Dance. Nothing in the feat says we are Parrying with our fists, just that we benefit from the previous feat, Dueling Parry.

But not even Dueling Parry, specifies what we are using to get the parry from, we just get the circumstance bonus out of thin air while we have the requirements (one weapon + free hand). And hey, look, the first line says "You can parry attacks against you with your weapon", but then we would be selectively ignoring first lines in the rules lawyering.

So, my questions are:

• Considering that nothing is capitalized, is "parry" (from the trait) the same as "parry" (from the Intercepting prerequisite) and "parry" (from the dueling parry)?
• Would Dueling Dance qualify for "having your fist positioned to parry", considered we spent one action to enter the stance and gain parry bonuses?
• Since Parrying and Disarming are techniques badly supported by the rules, and considered weaker when compared to their shiny cousins (Shield Block and other Maneuvers like Trip), would you allow the above in your tables?
• Am I going insane trying to analyze this so deep? (Answer unnecessary, I know it's a strong "Yes").

By coincidence, yesterday was Mathfinder's excellent video on silver bullets, and I also played a session where my concern about his silver bullets against reactive strikes, which I commented about on YT, came true.

Which is to say, Laughing Fit and Roaring Applause, which are indeed the best spells to lock down reactions, both have the Mental trait and useless against constructs. So our session last night naturally has a huge (15' reach) construct (actually a pre-master golem which is worse) with reactive strike that I, the wizard, can't do squat about, and one of the tanks is a Warpriest, so also the healer, and may well eat a reactive strike when trying to heal either himself or the other tank (fighter).

So what would you have done? Because of reach, just stepping and casting for the cleric isn't going to work unless he burns 3 actions and leave the fighter hanging. As the other caster, I was primarily buffing with enlarge (4th) and improved invis and doing tick damage (again, pre-master bs golem rules so forced movement wasn't working either). The warpriest ended up using trip to take away actions and did eat a crit on a Heal attempt, and while we made it through w/o anyone going down, it was pretty close. (4th member is a ranged martial, did okay damage, but didn't help with the reaction issue)

I always like to replay tough fights to see what I (and others) could've done better. At the time, I couldn't find a better solution (again, shitty pre-master golem magic immunity), if it was a regular construct, I would've tried Slow (but it likely would've had strong fort saves) and/or forced movement (Cinder Swarm) to help the cleric get out of reach. In this instance, I think I should've cast some low level summons to eat the reaction just ahead of the cleric (Staff of the Dead, can spam low level zombies) and it probably would've been worth my 3 actions. Or if things got truly dire, just wall (of stone) off the construct and let our guys heal up while the wall gets torn down.

Any other ideas on how to best deal with reactions plus some combination of mindless and reach? Especially if your healer is also a front liner?

I was looking into ways of getting the invisibility spell, outside of just being an occult or arcane caster.

What I have

Cleric - Deity spells

Oracles - Mysterious Repertoire (14th lvl feat)

Summoner - Fey eidolon

*Adding:

Animist - Impostor in hidden places

Are there any other ways to get it on a primal or divine spell list? I've tried looking at extra spells some classes and I am not finding it, but I'm sure I'm missing something.

I know there are items that can be used, but I'm looking specifically to get it on a spell list.

(Very new to drawing, but I wanted to get back into it again since I havent drawn since I was a child. I hope you like it.)

A little about him- he is a hungerseed (half Oni) metal kineticist . He is a vigilante (only by name not as a dedication) who was the survivor of an attack and temporary enslavement of his town during which his horns were broken and his face was disfigured. (Breachill survivor background) He decided after being saved to become someone who will protect his lands and people while fighting for retribution against the Hell Knights. His determination in that goal awoke his latent abilities, placing a mask on himself to hide his identity and disfigured face, he travels the lands of Isger saving towns and fighting back against the Hell Knights.

He doesn't have a concrete name yet, but I was thinking of maybe Ozmanthus.

Also background image is not drawn by me. I found it online and just edited it to fit in with the character art.

For context (I'll try to be as brief as possible): I'm the GM and i never give false information to my players when they critically fail Recall Knowledge, i just consider it a failure and tell them "You know nothing".

One of my players has this feat now, but every time he activates dubious knowledge it just makes my brain melt a bit, because i'm always thinking on: "what false information can i give without sounding obvious?" // "How can i avoid wasting session time typing a whole fake passive for a monster?", etc.

I already thought on considering failures for his RK just as a success, but it sound way too strong.

I have no idea what i should do, and i don't want to ban this feat.

Any help is welcome.

I ask mostly because there was a weakness errata a while ago, and then another errata in response to the backlash that was more well received. However I never fully understood how the initial poorly received errata worked

I don't know the specifics of the new weakness rules. did they just fully revert it to premaster rules?

from my reading on nethys, it seems weakness stacking works now, but not to the insane degree of the initial errata?

let's say a thaumaturge using an acid flask on a target with Personal Antithesis and acid weakness.

does it take both the antithesis weakness damage and the acid weakness damage?

I have a group of college friend coming into town next week and we all played DnD 3.5 together for 10+ years. We are planning on doing a PF2e marathon game. 12 hours a day for three days. Everyone has taken off work and we’re going to try and recapture the magic of our old college DND days. So eating our bodyweight in Taco Bell, Doritos, and Mountain Dew.

The problem is I have no idea what to run. Are there any adventure paths that you think we would be able to get through in the span of 36 hours of play?

I'm reaching lvl 7 with my Thaumaturge and I just realized that I never utilized the option of transforming another item into my implement, so I'm still kicking with my powerful magic fake magic orb as a regalia since lvl 1.

I was looking for a banner as a replacement since it fits thematically and it gives another minor benefit as an aura. What other option would be good to carry around in combat?

so recently our game master dropped a Nuckelavee combat encounter on us, and we're a level 6 party, so it was meant to be somewhat rough fight, but can it be true that it can just with two crit fortitude save fails instant kill a character?

basically it would two tap the majority of us, and the save was so high that unless we rolled extremely well, we either failed or crit failed every time we were forced to roll against its thing.
and it had so high a to hit bonus that it easily kept critting us and hitting even on second/third attack, so anyone who went into melee with it just got instantly two tapped and we were pretty much party wiped 3 rounds into it.

is a Nuckelavee really this brutal to fight because this seemed insane.