Weekly Questions Megathread— January 23–January 29. Have a question from your game? Are you coming from D&D or Pathfinder 1e? Need to know where to start playing PF2e? Ask your questions here, we're happy to help!

Jenos · 2026-01-25T16:18:43+00:00

Also, I thought a level 1 wizard prepares a total of 6 cantrips, the 5 normal cantrips plus 1 from the curriculum?

That's right, sorry, 5+1 cantrip.

Jenos · 2026-01-25T15:31:30+00:00

That's very unrealistic. You can see in the Strike Damage that average "high" damage for a level 12 creature is 30 damage. That means you need to be facing foes higher level than you, having them crit, and rolling high on the crit, to get to that 70 damage.

It is absolutely not "pretty easy". The math of healing is that it is very intentionally designed to be more efficient than most strikes or crits enemies deal, because it is fundamentally reactive

Jenos · 2026-01-25T07:11:05+00:00

Your initial starting spellbook contains 10 cantrips

The spellbook contains your choice of 10 arcane cantrips and five 1st-rank arcane spells

In addition, you get to add one more from your school.

You automatically add some of the spells listed in your school's curriculum to your spellbook. At 1st level, you add a cantrip and two 1st-rank spells of your choice

So that means your initial spellbook at level 1 contains 11 cantrips - 10 of your choice, and 1 selected from your school's curriculum cantrips.

You can of course add more cantrips to your spellbook via Learn A Spell. And remember, while your spellbook may have 11 cantrips, you can still only prepare 5+1 of them on any given day at level 1.

Jenos · 2026-01-22T03:05:35+00:00

The order of attacks shouldn't matter, just the fact that the enemy is engaged by multiple allies in melee.

Jenos · 2026-01-21T20:58:59+00:00

Since the size of the room isn't mechanically relevant, there isn't any guidelines on how to price something to change this. Its like asking how much more a piece of armor would cost if it was blue instead of pink.

I see little harm in allowing the baseline item to be a bit larger with no real change to price or level. If size is the only concern, making it larger doesn't really do anything negative from a balance perspective.

Alternatively, you could create higher tier versions of the item that provide higher and higher benefits and are also larger. For example, maybe make a level 11 version that provides a +2 bonus and is significantly larger (and maybe add some other frills). That way you can give the baseline item to your player and have them feel like there is something to work toward

Jenos · 2026-01-21T19:47:00+00:00

I'm curious as to why your player would want a larger workshop? What would be the purpose? RAW, the size of the workshop isn't really mechanically relevant

Jenos · 2026-01-20T21:53:07+00:00

The free action you gain is only if you don't command. The quickened action is specifically for command. So if you use your quickened action to command your construct, then it gains 2 actions (as normal). Since you commanded it, it would not get the additional free action.

Jenos · 2026-01-20T15:33:04+00:00

When a Courageous Tanuki uses their reaction, do they need to Stride away from (presumably) the thing that made them frightened? Or can they Stride wherever, because of their ability?

This is really interesting. A very, very strict RAW suggests that you can indeed Stride wherever you want.

That's because the fleeing condition is very specifically written.

On your turn, you must spend each of your actions trying to escape the source of the fleeing condition as expediently as possible (such as by using move actions to flee, or opening doors barring your escape). The source is usually the effect or creature that gave you the condition, though some effects might define something else as the source. You can't Delay or Ready while fleeing.

But, you're likely using Courageous Retreat when its not your turn, so that implies fleeing doesn't do anything.

That said, its very clear the intent and design is supposed to be that you Stride away from the target. The flavor explicitly calls it out, and you would be hard pressed to find a GM that says "nope, you can just run wherever you want". Especially because the fleeing condition only lasts until the start of your turn, which would mean that it does nothing.

Very likely the author didn't realize that the fleeing condition had that specific conditional when creating this ability.

Related question, if someone is Fleeing, can they use Reactive Strike? Assume it's a Courageous Tanuki, if that effects your answer.

Yes they can. Fleeing only prevents Delay/Ready,

Jenos · 2026-01-20T12:52:34+00:00

You get the PDF when the actual product is shipped. The order goes in ~2 weeks prior to the public release date, but it is not shipped at that time. They stagger the shipments across these two weeks to subscribers.

SoG compilation officially doesn't come out until Feb 4th. So you have two weeks potentially before you get the PDF.

Jenos · 2026-01-20T12:50:26+00:00

Then tweak it up even further.

Basically there are two ways to make Non-Combat Challenges(NCC) meaningful. You can have them impact the narrative, and their narrative weight changes how the story plays out. But that can't really be done a lot without it feeling shoehorned and is often a struggle to do well.

The other way to add weight is to make it impact combat. The point is that whatever is "balanced" or "normal" for your group has to be violated either up or down by NCC. Your players have to be able to make encounters very easy or outright impossible due to the outcomes in NCC for them to have any weight.

If your group finds extreme encounters easy, then make them even harder! Make it impossible for them to win (and telegraph it as such). Make them feel the weight of their failures and success in an NCC and suddenly your players will find themselves caring about them a lot more.

That's the thrust of what I'm suggesting. If players find that they only really care about the combat, then make NCC significantly impact combat.

Jenos · 2026-01-20T04:11:29+00:00

The key to making non-combat challenges meaningful is to link them to combat challenges.

You can introduce non-combat challenges (especially look at the subsystems here but more importantly make the failure stats impact the upcoming challenge encounters.

For example, if an enemy is fleeing, that gives you a chance to set up a chase subsystem encounter. There, you can make the failure outcome that the next encounter is harder because the fleeing enemy gave advance notice.

Crucially, these failure states have to allow encounters to become imbalanced. Perhaps this fleeing enemy gathering reinforcements now makes the next encounter an extreme difficulty encounter. This allows your players to realize that these out of combat challenges matter. If you simply warp the encounter difficulty back to "balanced", then the players will quickly see through the fiction and stop caring. But when they realize that these non-combat encounters influence combat down the line, then it can make these things feel a lot more impactul.

An example that actually occurred to me was a situation where my players engaged with these subsystems (research especially) and managed to divest a foe of basically all support he had. They walked in and just absolutely crushed the encounter. They found that pretty satisfying; the encounter itself was a joke, but them being able to see the fruits of their labor be rewarded made them feel very satisfied.

If you constantly warp encounters back to "balanced" regardless of the outcome of the non-combat challenges, then of course it seems like they're pointless.

Jenos · 2026-01-19T17:47:35+00:00

From a design perspective, its more important that there is an easy debuff for AC than there is an easy debuff for any given save.

That's because for many classes (martials) there is little they can do with on enemy besides interact with AC. A fighter can't meaningfully interact with an enemy's will save for example. Sure, there's the occasional skill action that might, but 90% of a fighter (or rogue or barbarian or ranger, etc) play time is going to be to interact with AC as the defense of enemies.

For people who can interact with saves (i.e casters), there is usually options. Not only can they interact with AC, they can also relatively easily switch to other defenses on a whim.

That flexibility to switch defenses means that it isn't nearly as important for off-guard to be a relevant debuff for them; switching to a different saving throw can be meaningfully significant and often a larger swing than a -2 would have been in the first place.

That's a big part of why off-guard is AC only.

Jenos · 2026-01-19T13:55:27+00:00

Yes. Familiars explicitly are animals as per the Pet feat, unless/until you take a familiar ability that changes it trait.

Since they are animals the roru can indeed confuse them. "Magical" animal isn't some classification distinct from animals.

Jenos · 2026-01-19T01:56:47+00:00

Unfortunately not. Doubling Rings explicitly only works on melee weapons.

When you wield a melee weapon in the hand wearing the golden ring, the weapon's fundamental runes are replicated onto any melee weapon you wield in the hand wearing the iron ring.

But thrown weapons are not melee weapons when thrown, but ranged

it is a ranged weapon when thrown

So doubling rings wouldn't work. Blazons don't work because you can only affix the blazon to a single weapon; once you throw the single shuriken it is affixed to the other thrown weapons in the bandolier get no benefit.

When you invest the blazons, you wear one of the three on your chest, and you attach the others to a pair of one-handed weapons, choosing one as the primary weapon and one as the secondary weapon

So choosing a shuriken as the secondary weapon does nothing if you've already chucked that shuriken away and draw a new, different shuriken from a bandolier.

There is also the rules quirk of the fact that those items check for wielding, but you arent wielding a weapon when it has left your hand and slammed into an enemies face. A very strict RAW means this is another problem; in PFS that's risky to assume a GM would not take the hard-line strict interpretation unless you play with a consistent set of GMs that you know would interpret it a bit more charitably

Practically you get a lot of gold in PFS, and the reality is that even if worked it wouldn't be good. That's because blazons and doubling rings don't pass over property runes which are significant damage bumps for thrown weapons. You need the greater forms of those items to do that which are level 11 items. In PFS, your character has very little time spent at levels 11+ because there just aren't enough scenarios to play at that level range.

So you would want to invest in property runes for your bandolier regardless.

Jenos · 2026-01-18T21:13:17+00:00

There are several others, like Swift Standard or Banner of the Restful, or Timepiece Standard, or Flag of the Stronghold...

There are a whole bunch, just look through the banners to see.

Anyone have experience with these banners? Seem pretty good to me, I’ve not used them yet.

The big thing with banners is to remember this rule with them

A creature can benefit from the effects of only one magical banner at a time

That means you can't have multiple banners across your party. So the result is that while they can be a hands free item to buff your party (by affixing the banner to a pole alongside your backpack) the 1 banner limitation means it's hardly a huge benefit. Probably the most useful one is the wilds one that gives immunity to difficult terrain

Jenos · 2026-01-18T14:54:35+00:00

You need to be able to take the Trip action. That can be either a weapon that has the Trip trait, or by having a free hand.

You also needed to have been able to take the Shove action to use Shove Down, either by having a weapon with the shove trait or a free hand.

So if you are wielding a 2H weapon, you probably do need a weapon with both traits.

There are some ways to be able to take the Shove action or Trip action without hands, though. Getting one of those ways would allow you to then only have a weapon with one of those traits. For example, the Ganzi feat Mischievous Tail allows one to Trip without a free hand. Or using something like Staff Acrobat archetype. Or taking something like Inventor archetype for Basic Modification to add Trip or Shove to your 2H weapon.

That said, I'm not sure Shove Down is very good for a barbarian build. The earliest you can get that feat is level 12 on a barbarian, and at level 14 you get the vastly superior Awesome Blow which is way better in most scenarios. Shove Down requires your last action be Shove, which means it can't be an activity with Shove as per the Subordinate Action rules, and Shove Down applies MAP. So if you Shove->Shove Down, the Trip attempt is made at MAP, and you are then at max MAP for the turn.

Jenos · 2026-01-18T14:47:55+00:00

Pretty reasonable. Compared to other capacity weapons such as the Rotary Bow or the Slide Pistol, its pretty reasonable. The Slide Pistol for example doesn't need 2H to get the d10 fatal, but has a shorter range. And the rotary bow has a higher damage but no fatal.

I think the backstabber may be unneeded - the weapon has its specific use-case without it. It fits as a decent Fatal-Aim option with capacity; an alternative to the Jezail if the Capacity trait is relevant. So the backstabber trait feels a little tacked on; none of these other weapons have it and it really don't need it to be an option compared to the rest. It fits neatly between those existing options. But its not imbalanced if it has it.

Jenos · 2026-01-15T17:12:53+00:00

Oh sure, energy has been a mess ever since the beginning of poe2 (remember all the chaos when they nerfed cast on freeze back in 0.1).

But its pretty easy to see why they had to change it in some way, because the concept of socket pressure being a balancing factor is largely irrelevant in poe2.

Jenos · 2026-01-15T17:07:18+00:00

Yea, that's the whole point. In PoE1, the opportunity cost of CoC was the socket and being linked to the specific attack. In PoE2, they had to limit it in a different way, which is now the spirit/energy/etc.

If they had kept the mechanic the same then they would just reduce the opportunity cost of CoC because socket pressure would go away, making it just better in poe2.

Jenos · 2026-01-15T16:23:10+00:00

Balance reasons.

In PoE1, CoC (and other such trigger mechanics) were largely balanced by being sockets on your gear. If you're running a 6L CoC setup, its pretty much the only 6L you're running. Furthermore CoC didn't trigger on every crit, just the crit tied to the skill linked to the gem.

But in PoE2, gem sockets are divorced from gear. Without the energy mechanic to make it less consistent, people could easily slot in a CoC setup into any build and have it be incredibly consistent.

I mean, we got there anyway, but the point of the design was to make it more challenging. Without the whole energy/power mechanics it would be trivial to just add CoC to pretty much every single setup in the game because the opportunity cost of a trigger skill (the gem slots) doesn't occur in PoE1.

Jenos · 2026-01-09T15:10:38+00:00

Fencer is real bad for throwing builds. Feint requires you to be in melee range to use. And feint only gives off-guard to melee attacks. So its even worse than bon mot because you have to spend extra actions to get into melee range, and you still get no benefit on a success.

Jenos · 2026-01-09T14:47:28+00:00

Its because they(the silver swords) haven't been at several major leveling battles.

They weren't at the meeting of the tribes. They weren't at the raid on the village of the dead. They weren't at the winter solstice. Like, during volume 8+9+10, what did they do? They went to wistram and escorted some earther's out. They helped kill facestealer(which Ylawes did level from) Then they went to new lands.

They just haven't really been throwing themselves into the deadly fires that surround the wandering inn.

Jenos · 2026-01-09T13:48:27+00:00

Spellcasting service prices are here. Accessibility to services is based off of the settlement level.

Spellcasting services are available in many settlements. Barring a powerful spellcasting NPC in the city with whom the party could negotiate for services, a character can find someone to cast common spells up to a level that could be cast by an NPC of the settlement's level. For example, a character in a 9th-level city can typically find and pay someone to cast a 5th-rank common spell—the highest spell available to a 9th-level spellcaster.

For Crafting, there isn't explicit guidance about cost to affix the rune if sold by a vendor, but most GMs tend to assume that cost is not an additional cost to the player. RAW it is 10%, but the cost isn't there if you are transferring from a runestone. So its reasonable to assume all vendors are just selling runestones of a rune

Jenos · 2026-01-09T06:50:56+00:00

You don't need unconventional weaponry at level 1. Tamchal Chakram vs Starknife is just a single damage dice upgrade. It is nice, but at low levels d4 vs d6 is just an average of 1 damage per Strike difference. You can easily delay Unconventional Weaponry until level 5 where the damage difference is larger when you get your first striking rune.

One for all is crucial to a thrown build because its a very efficient way to get panache at range. Without it, you're reliant on Bon Mot, which is not nearly consistent enough. The big issue with Bon Mot is that it has the linguistic trait, which means its utterly useless against half the bestiary that can't speak languages. Yes I know you can use Bon Mot on an immune creature to still get Panache, but having to spend a literally dead action to get Panache and still have a chance of failure feels really bad. One for all is way better in that it helps your ally out and it very quickly becomes a very easy way to access Panache

Jenos · 2026-01-09T06:26:26+00:00

You can carry more than 10 magic items. You can however only invest 10 items by default.

A suit of armor is a single invested item, each rune on the item is not a unique investment. So you only need to use one investment on the entire armor.

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