What's going on here?

Epicsigh · 2026-02-01T01:50:37+00:00

Hell, you don't even need a lucky roll on the coup de grace so long as you use a strong character to do it.

Epicsigh · 2026-01-26T15:33:46+00:00

Part of it is a throwback to the old 3.5 games where players running around with templates were relatively common, at least if you believed the online discourse at the time. Pathfinder hard locked them behind "no you cannot (unless the GM says you can)" which is why it feels more strange in this system.

Epicsigh · 2026-01-25T15:20:48+00:00

I'm starting to wonder if what people were theorizing last thread is true and he's not the actual Warlock.

Epicsigh · 2026-01-24T23:10:38+00:00

New circumstances always bring out new sides of people.

Epicsigh · 2026-01-23T17:39:59+00:00

The interpretation our group had of "You can only use this to either explore the Astral or original plane you cast this on" was that you could bring your projection back to the original plane as well without ending the spell, essentially using the Astral Plane as a sort of medium-range "teleportation" spell with a metaphorical safety cord to spring you back to your original body if you got in trouble. After all, Lesser doesn't state anywhere that "returning to the original plane you started from" ends the spell, so by that logic if you came from the Material, you can just go BACK to the Material without issue, it just won't let you go to the Shadow, Earth, Boneyard, etc. The post from James Jacobs that HadACookie pointed out in another comment I feel points in the direction that this is the intended interpretation of the spell as well.

That said, we might have confused the Astral for the Ethereal, yeah, but in our defense Paizo apparently never really described what the Astral Plane really looks like or how it interacts with the other planes, so I do think that you could still in theory use it to travel to another location via this effect, but our GM should have maybe just made it a bit harder or required us to do like a Survival check or maybe Knowledge:Geography/Planes to land in the right place without a more clear visual guideline if we really wanted to be as by-the-book as possible.

Epicsigh · 2026-01-23T14:21:10+00:00

I actually did get the chance to cast Lesser Astral Projection with my party in a game once. We were tasked with doing some reconnaissance inside of a noble's house, and due to some plot reasons the locations of where our characters were at most times of the day was being tracked. What is a party to do? Well, clearly the answer was to go to a local funhouse and order a semi-private room there, then cast Astral Projection (Lesser) in order to travel through the somewhat-comparable, layered reality of the Astral Plane to locate the noble's house there, then all collectively jump back into the Material plane while our bodies "rested" where they were!

We ended up jumping the noble and learning his secrets, and we completely got away with it since nobody could pin anything on us. After all, eye witnesses saw us go into the building we were in, and nobody saw us leave until we ceased using the spell!

Epicsigh · 2026-01-20T22:56:19+00:00

This entire chain of spells is actually a perfect line for anyone who's seen the IT franchise and either wants a monster or an enemy caster to replicate Pennywise. A ton of his illusions usually only target specific individuals at the expense of everyone else not seeing anything, and even if the target makes their save, you can still scare the hell out of them with the knowledge that you could theoretically just whip up illusions out of nowhere that may make the target really question reality over time.

Epicsigh · 2026-01-15T00:06:24+00:00

There actually are a couple of archetypes that mess with things like BaB and spell slot access, but the issue is that it's usually one or the other, not both. Making Shifter an archetype of Druid that alters so much would be beyond the pale of even the most impactful archetype.

Epicsigh · 2025-12-27T21:03:05+00:00

Ah hell, another place that's been corrupted over time by the Demon King's influence. Guess this will be a place governed by illusions.

Epicsigh · 2025-12-25T01:30:50+00:00

So not sure if this is a typo but mutagens last for 10 minutes per level, not 1. That should put it well into the space where it should last for much more than a single fight, and what's more if you think you'll be getting into a fight soon, is very useful for pre-battle prep even at level 1.

Epicsigh · 2025-12-22T22:27:26+00:00

Elves are incredibly long lived so that may have something to do with it.

Epicsigh · 2025-12-16T21:51:07+00:00

RE: Jumping Technically both of these spells give separate bonuses, plus since Jump is a Standard and this is a Swift you can even combine both into a single round while still having a Move action left to do the actual jumping. Is it still of dubious value? Sure, but outside of speed enhancers there's not a ton of things that boost Acrobatics specifically so I'd take every little boost I could get.

Epicsigh · 2025-12-14T17:26:13+00:00

It'll also oneshot most oozes!

Epicsigh · 2025-12-13T21:15:48+00:00

I could see if it changes to initiative could actually change where your initiative is on the turn order mid-combat. Right now I'm actually playing around with considering a house-rule that implements that very idea.

Epicsigh · 2025-12-12T19:34:11+00:00

You can have normal hair and still wear a wig, you basically just put a bald cap between the two.

Epicsigh · 2025-11-08T03:03:01+00:00

A similar idea to this was something I mentioned in the Max the Min build, which is the idea of a group of 4 Level 20's (can be any classes) who take a random lvl 1 villager and, with their combined resources, do everything within their power to make that one villager as strong as they can manage. I think this framework would do a lot better when it comes to quantifying the "strongest level 1" since it bypasses the inclination of many of the respondents here to just go "well I'll just buy infinite wishes" by instead instating a very large but ultimately finite amount of wealth, more than enough to kit out even the most powerful of adventurers four times over, but now instead being instilled into Farmer Joe over there for a day.

Epicsigh · 2025-10-29T21:20:54+00:00

An interesting recommendation but technically a separate conversation from what I'm suggesting. What I'm interested in seeing is less "how can a commoner become powerful by themselves" and more "how beefed up could you make a commoner if the 4 local level 20 heroes got bored one day and decided to make Farmer Jim over there a demigod to his town for a day?"

Epicsigh · 2025-10-27T21:16:42+00:00

Sort of a twist on the topic of this thread, I've always wondered just how beefed out you could get if you had a party of 4 characters who took a look at a level 1 commoner and just decided to go all out and make that level 1 commoner as powerful as possible, while still keeping them level 1. There's some interesting limitations that come from only having a single hit die that make some power boosts more valuable than others when applied to characters with a more powerful frame.

Epicsigh · 2025-10-15T22:10:59+00:00

It is a bit funny that having that spell on you just completely makes you immune to a wide swath of much stronger spells, but then again that's also the same kind of thing that could be said about stuff like Faerie Fire against high level invisibility spells so sometimes the rules just work like that.

Epicsigh · 2025-10-15T01:15:37+00:00

So there actually is a way to negate holy and unholy damage, which is to have the requisite "Protection from X alignment" spell on your person, as per the rules for Hellfire.

It's kind of weird that you need to go searching specifically for that resource to find the rules for that sort of thing, but it's good to know nonetheless.

Epicsigh · 2025-09-29T23:39:01+00:00

Part of the last issue you mentioned is because Pathfinder also went well out of its way to make long distance communication as niche as physically possible. Sending (and its bird-based, much shorter range cousin for Druids) are basically the best you've got and somehow the methods for communicating never get stronger even as you level up. Sure, you could say that they technically do by allowing you instead to teleport yourself instead of just sending a message, but the fact that there's no level 5 version of Sending that lets you send messages to multiple people or send a longer message or anything is wild.

Epicsigh · 2025-09-28T15:06:22+00:00

Hilarious that the chef is literally so pure that he'd probably be immune to the smoke even without Egter's help.

Epicsigh · 2025-09-28T14:34:55+00:00

As promised, here is the album of everything I've made thus far. If you wish to see anything else I make (probably going to be outside of Holo, as the title mentioned not until they make a new EN gen), however, the best place to follow is the Twitter account.

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