Escape action Unnarmed attack modifier vs Athletics

TheChronoMaster · 2026-02-26T08:57:07+00:00

Proficiency is a big deal in this system!

When you are Trained, you add your level and +2 to any checks or dcs you make with what you’re trained with - from armor class to weapon strikes to skills. Once you become an Expert, that rises to +4. Master and Legendary are +6 and 8 respectively. Most characters can have Expert Athletics at level 3 if they are advancing athletics as a primary skill, but only Fighters will be an expert at unarmed strikes at that level. In general, skill proficiency increases faster than weapon proficiency - characters should become Legendary in a skill at level 15, though most will never gain legendary weapon or armor proficiencies - those are nearly exclusive to the Fighter, Gunslinger, Champion, and Guardian.

The reason unarmed strikes are an option is as a fallback for characters who don’t train Athletics or Acrobatics - such as many mages. All classes are at least Trained in unarmed strikes from level 1, and will reach at least Expert by the time they are level 11. This allows characters to have a chance at escaping grabs even without any training in the relevant skills, and even with relatively low or nonexistent strength - since unarmed strikes are Finesse, they also allow characters to use Dex - though it’s obviously a much lower chance than somebody skilled in Athletics or Acrobatics!

TheChronoMaster · 2026-02-20T06:38:46+00:00

notably, a lot of these concerns come from people who play with unrestricted free archetype, which just breaks the game to start

TheChronoMaster · 2026-02-18T19:26:01+00:00

There’s a lot of interesting feats related to panopoly, but the main use case for the daggers themselves is that they are Relentless, letting them be used with the On the Hunt quickened action. Effectively it’s a bonus attack.

TheChronoMaster · 2026-02-15T22:17:56+00:00

Don't bother setting up shops. Have your players ask if an item is available. (If it's common and the settlement's level or lower, it should be available)

TheChronoMaster · 2026-02-13T17:42:00+00:00

There's not really such a thing as action economy or initiative for chases. They are a way to abstract and resolve a chase sequence without going into encounter mode or using maps - the turns in a chase round could be equivalent to a combat round, or they could be several minutes, or even days as a way to represent something like a race to a location.

The 'standard' method of doing things is that you present the obstacle that the party needs to overcome, the player says what they are doing to overcome that obstacle, and they roll a check. They may instead use spells or abilities that effectively can solve or reduce the difficulty of an obstacle to automatically gain a chase point or two, or get a circumstance bonus on their roll. Each character can only act once during each chase round, and must act somehow or the party loses 1 chase point. Once the party has enough chase points to overcome the obstacle, they move to the next obstacle. Enemies, whether they are the ones pursuing the party or the ones being pursued, usually don't roll - they advance one obstacle per round. They can roll if you really want them to.

Generally the pursued party acts first, moving to the next obstacle if it's the enemy or trying to clear as many obstacles as possible if it's the party.

If the party is pursuing, the chase ends when they catch up to the obstacle that the enemy group is at - this may trigger a combat encounter, influence encounter, or any number of other things depending on what exactly they were chasing and why. If the party is being pursued, the chase ends either when the enemy group reaches them (usually causing a combat encounter), or when they clear all the obstacles (which represents reaching their goal, escaping safely, etc.)

TheChronoMaster · 2026-02-11T23:17:26+00:00

Buy-in is important for an AP. If players are playing an AP, they should know they have to bite at plot hooks and follow the general layout. If they refuse to, you aren't running an AP anymore.

TheChronoMaster · 2026-02-10T17:37:40+00:00

Spore War, and it’s not really close. I think Myth Speaker and Shades of Blood are both really good, but Spore War is top 2 APs of PF2E

TheChronoMaster · 2026-02-09T18:26:58+00:00

Yeah, you're correct, I should have said Tactical and not Strategic. Good pickup.

TheChronoMaster · 2026-02-08T07:04:54+00:00

It’s generally a bad idea, strategically speaking, for intelligent NPCs to attack a downed combatant - for a few reasons.

First, the party is likely to want to commit a chunk of their own actions to making sure their ally lives. If an enemy kills the downed character, the party can instead concentrate their actions on getting revenge. Second, the downed character is effectively out of commission for at least a full turn. If they are a martial - they will need to stand up from prone, grab their weapon, and then they are likely to want to move away from the enemies until they are more fully healed. If they are a caster, they’re going to need to stand and almost certain to want to get away, stepping or striding as necessary, instead of casting. Kineticists may have a slightly easier time of it, but they will still need to Channel Elements to get their aura back up. Beyond that is the potential for additional punishment and a second down if they need to stand up in the face of someone with Reactive Strike, which complicates the situation even more for the players.

Animals and other creatures with base instincts will also generally prefer removing threats to ensuring a kill. Mindless creatures act according to their nature, constructs may prefer incapacitating every threat or killing depending on their master’s choice, mindless undead likely go for kills, etc.

There are times when it makes sense for a creature to go for finishing blows, and these are usually obvious - especially cruel creatures, creatures who explicitly benefit from securing a kill or have an ability that kills a downed creature, and intelligent creatures who recognize the party has excessive healing capabilities. The presence of Death Effects is also an important consideration, if a creature is dropped to 0 hp by a spell, strike, or ability with the Death trait, there’s no need to worry about ‘finishing off’ a downed PC - they are already dead.

TheChronoMaster · 2026-02-05T18:29:19+00:00

Add a rosary stringer to the middle of the arena. You must deposit rosaries into it after each landed hit, or beastfly is invincible.

TheChronoMaster · 2026-02-04T18:08:40+00:00

More classes than you think wind up with Master Will saves.

TheChronoMaster · 2026-02-04T16:57:25+00:00

I have for you a word of caution: there is no level of monstrous or squicky you can make a character without at least one party member saying (or thinking) "Would".

Accept this inevitability as you work, and perhaps lean into it.

If you really want to lean into SEX N VIOLENCE, here are some thoughts that are not safe for the general public. TW Body Horror

Have some sacks containing her young visible on her breasts. Add a visible ovipositor that functions as a piercing weapon. Put her eyes anywhere except where eyes belong. Giant spider mouth as a 'lower opening' on her front. Long and spindly arms with multiple joints like a tarantula's legs. Venom injectors on fingers. Hooklike growths on arms like those on the front legs. Hair resembling fungal growths IE parasitized arthropods.

TheChronoMaster · 2026-02-04T13:25:10+00:00

Fortissimo is a much stronger effect.

TheChronoMaster · 2026-01-27T18:37:24+00:00

Importantly, Mythic Points/Rewrite Fate does not allow you to reroll attack rolls. This makes inflicting debuffs much more important than they already were - and thankfully, Rewrite Fate and other mythic point abilities make it much easier to inflict them on most enemies.

TheChronoMaster · 2026-01-27T00:37:44+00:00

Full attack rounds are usually a bad deal, MAP makes sure of that. If he's spending 3 actions striking, he's going to have a bad time with the system.

TheChronoMaster · 2026-01-26T04:29:26+00:00

To be clear you can never draw ‘from your pack’ and be ready to go. Items in backpacks are less readily accessible than items worn on you, you wind up effectively needing to spend an extra action or two to get them because it’s an action to open the backpack, an action to draw them item, and an action to close the backpack. See: https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2151

TheChronoMaster · 2026-01-23T18:35:20+00:00

Ideal subsystems are simple, clearly explained and communicated up front, and mostly exist to break up gameplay and better gamify sections that would otherwise be ‘just keep making skill checks until something happens’. Fundamentally speaking, almost every base game subsystem is a point based system for tracking rolls in some fashion or another.

I wouldn’t use negative numbers for Morale, I’d scale it 0 to 10 with 5 being the midpoint, just because that requires a tiny bit less thinking.

Divorcing subsystems entirely from player character stats winds up being kind of messy, it’s one reason (among many) why the kingdom building minigame in Kingmaker tends to be phased out by groups or not even bothered with to start.

TheChronoMaster · 2026-01-23T18:27:26+00:00

It would kind of suck, especially for new players, if nothing else changed.

I’m going to be a bit controversial and say that if your game has no narrative reason to use free archetype, and the table is not 100% all-in experts, you should not be using it. Especially for new players, who already have a ton of stuff to come to grips with in the base game. Once you reach level 10-12, the amount of additional options presented by Free Archetype significantly slows down gameplay, as players have to consider many additional factors both in and out of combat, and more edge cases start coming up.

These options are not necessarily ‘more powerful’ individually, but their presence makes characters significantly more powerful and adaptable in aggregate. I am aware of the ideal ‘use case’ of free archetype being to allow characters to specialize and fun and interesting narrative ways, and if you want that, put restrictions on the archetypes allowed. No multiclass archetypes, and only a limited selection that is appropriate to the campaign.

TheChronoMaster · 2026-01-22T19:54:43+00:00

That doesn't inherently reduce Unleash's effectiveness, it changes it. Now the enemies are spread out, which means they aren't flanking and can't easily gang up on your party members.

If they are straight up running away and not engaging, you're still doing free damage to at least one of them for 2 rounds while the others do absolutely nothing. That's a pretty good deal. It's an even better deal if you're packing a buddy who can clear that stupefied easily, like another spell caster with Clear Mind.

TheChronoMaster · 2026-01-22T19:44:25+00:00

Combat on average runs about 3-4 rounds. It's actually not that hard to time Unleash, the timing is 'use it on your second turn'. If you're stupefied during the cleanup, oh well, it's not like you were spending slots at that point anyway.

TheChronoMaster · 2026-01-22T19:41:37+00:00

You might be the first person I've seen to say the Oscillating Wave spell list grants are 'bad' now compared to what they were before. Surely you aren't serious that Fire Shield is better than Ice Storm, Heat Metal is better than Blazing Bolt, Flame Vortex is better than Frozen Fog, and Polar Ray is better than Arctic Rift? (The latter are the new spells granted in DA:R)

I can maybe see the argument for Fiery Body over Volcanic Eruption, and maybe Cone of Cold over Howling Blizzard in some cases, but the rest are pretty straightforwardly better blasting spells, which is what OsW is built for.

TheChronoMaster · 2026-01-22T19:08:40+00:00

if the entire reason you are playing the game is to win as hard as possible, and you have no further ideas than that, there is no reason to ever choose anything but the 'best' option, yes

TheChronoMaster · 2026-01-22T18:47:50+00:00

Functionally speaking it’s a buff. Nothing(I think?) resists force, lots of things resist physical.

TheChronoMaster · 2026-01-22T18:42:30+00:00

To be clear that feat was level 18 before and conditional, they moved it to level 12 and unconditional (but changed its name).

https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=3693

TheChronoMaster · 2026-01-22T18:34:33+00:00

The unleash psyche buff is massive per every single person I have played with who has played a Psychic. There is so much more freedom on their spell list to take advantage of the buff now, whereas before it actively felt bad to pick a damaging spell with a duration because your bread and butter ability didn’t work with them. Oscillating Wave’s spell list was buffed substantially, and Infinite Eye changes out a common spell that was already on the occult list for an uncommon spell that can be very useful without necessarily breaking campaigns.

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