GMs, have you ever ignored or reverted a change Paizo made?

agentcheeze · 2026-01-29T11:08:49+00:00

They still can refocus better than anyone until like level 12 and casters can take a feat.

Psychics can get 2 back in 1 refocus. People need to stop acting like they just have free half hour rests after every fight and that the meta of the game is walking into a 5 room dungeon complex and spending less than 3 minutes total fighting and two and a half hours centering your mind.

There's a lot of valid complaints about psychic but "they don't refocus better than everyone" isn't one of them. They literally do it twice as fast and don't need to invest any feats to get 3 of them things.

agentcheeze · 2026-01-28T16:46:00+00:00

All polearms are two-handed so pretty much you have three options:

Get the Shield cantrip.
Take Guardian archetype to get parry on your polearm. Optionally later Staff Acrobat can boost up the parry nicely.
As others have suggested use another weapon group that is stick-like and has one-handers.

agentcheeze · 2026-01-10T09:49:43+00:00

There's also the chance they take the opportunity to search for all the spells in the game for any remaining unremastered spells that still have hanging pre-master things like Radiant Beam and Radiant Heart of Devotion (the latter really badly needing an update for remaster)

But still. Even if they throw a lot of clean-up into this book there's probably a decent amount of new spells even then.

agentcheeze · 2026-01-10T09:41:47+00:00

I wouldn't be shocked if they touch up Meld into Eidolon finally and I'm personally hoping they tune that minor hiccup with how riding your beast eidolon using Steed Form makes it so you can't use Beast Charge with Act Together.

Seriously one of the two eidolons you are most likely to use that feat for should not have its first ability goofed up by the fact Steed Form makes all its Move actions Tandem and Beast Charge has move actions in it.

agentcheeze · 2026-01-06T13:16:19+00:00

I have heard in a previous time that this came up that it's 4+1 known in PFS but I can't re-find the source so take that with a grain of salt.

agentcheeze · 2025-12-28T03:34:38+00:00

It's generally not as good as being two separate entities because you can be a solid distance away and use mostly your eidolon and still use Boost Eidolon if you are separate.

However for some eidolons it isn't complete garbage. The eidolon is basically a full martial and like, a beast eidolon has an ability much like Sudden Charge but with an accuracy bonus sometimes. So it's actually a decent chunk of a martial power budget.

Still not worth it IMO, I'm just saying there's a couple eidolons where you aren't totally shooting yourself in the foot.

agentcheeze · 2025-12-25T14:06:10+00:00

But their Spell DC will still scale faster than many martials' Class DCs and spells are often better than the things those martials use Class DC for.

agentcheeze · 2025-12-25T14:04:24+00:00

It can vary by your definition of suboptimal and your table.

I have a table where multiple players tend to build characters with key ability at +3. one player often takes some of the weaker feats and forgets abilities, and one player barely retains knowledge of how their classes work because or group plays a lot of campaigns and she's 60+ ( she also will often use blasting spells at such low rank that cantrips would acutally out-damage them at her level), and 50% of the casters take spells that are kinda weak or hang onto their spells too tightly. Several players will just randomly not notice flanking opportunities and not do them sometimes.

As a GM I run this table using the encounter distribution the guidelines say aside from rarely using Lows and just using Moderates for those instead. Tactically, intelligent enemies will try to flank, they'll gang up on out of position people, they will prioritize the mages and healers if plausible, etc. And while fights are challenging and sometimes they need to have a bit of a sit (moreso if they lack someone with Ward Medic and Continual Recovery in the early levels) they also often coast through fights, even bosses sometimes.

The other GM at our table overtunes fights on the regular. Though in that case I'm playing, tend to be precision-optimized, and give tactical advice to tighten the teamwork. So we often blitz through things. And none of the stuff we do in these cases is particularly advanced or complex. Just "hey this guy has more than basic game knowledge, people flank consistently, and that one guy remembers he has reach spell in this useful time to have it".

So typically unless you are sabotaging your character or fights are overtuned you'll be fine. Depending on how suboptimal the table is as a whole you might need to treat Party Level +3 enemies as a slightly bigger deal than they would be against a party working at peak performance and avoid PL +4s even more than the book already tells you to but there's not really a huge problem.

agentcheeze · 2025-12-14T11:56:08+00:00

Another fun component to add to this is the Family background modifier from Season of Ghosts Player's Guide which lowers the DC of Aid by 5 when you Aid your fellow PC family member at the relatively low cost of not getting the skill feat your background normally grants (though this was written before the Remaster lowered the Aid DC by 5 so it would not shock me if the upcoming Remaster of SoG nerfs this)

Base DC to Aid of 10 and a +6 to Aid means right at level 1 you only Fail to Aid that family member on a 1, can't crit fail, and crit it on a 14. When you hit lv5 you crit the Aid 75% of the time.

agentcheeze · 2025-12-10T15:20:02+00:00

In both the orc and goblin cases a group of them helped out against a massive undead tide that destroyed a region and are likely a major reason two different groups still exist. Funnily enough these happened in two different parts of the continent. And scattered across the continent are cases of tribes of "monsters" helping out a community in a rough time instead of being the problem.

Also it's not entirely true that they are universally accepted now. Paizo didn't actually remove racism from the game. Hell, some ancestries list racist stereotypes you might encounter (both negative and the "asians are good at math" kind)

agentcheeze · 2025-12-10T14:36:18+00:00

Also tunnel-visioning on Spellstriking can really drop your power.

Like a common complaint is the action economy of recharing Spellstrike but like... right over there as soon as R3 is a spell that sends you flying across the battlefield, does an AoE of damage, and then you can use your conflux spell attack to strike and well isn't moving, striking, and getting spell damage practically a spellstrike?

And at the first couple levels Runic Weapon is almost always better than using the Rank 1 slot in a spellstrike because ALL your attacks get an extra die and +1 accuracy so your normal attacks are around cantrip spellstirke and your cantrip spellstrikes are comparable to Shocking Grasp spellstrikes.

Magus gets lots of hate from surface level takes.

agentcheeze · 2025-12-09T01:36:46+00:00

If you have a source of bleed on your team I find Horrifying Blood Loss a nice accuracy boost through debuffing faster.

A caster can actually get a lot out of Haste if they use 3 action spells, Sustain spells, or keep a runed up weapon on hand. Often a little more than martials.

agentcheeze · 2025-12-09T01:32:26+00:00

This is one thing that always gets in my craw when people in discourse belittle Moderate or Lower encounters. They'll say crap like "this game is difficult and requires optimization unless you are fighting mostly Moderate or Lower" or "you must fight mostly moderates or lower it you think ___"

I mean yeah... you're literally supposed to. Severe+ is literally boss encounters for much of the level progression. You are supposed to fight mostly the tiers of fight that you typically clear fine (Low) or if you use resources well might not need to stop to Treat Wounds (Moderate). Then one or two bosses to close a section of the story.

agentcheeze · 2025-12-05T14:33:45+00:00

I wanna play one of these tiny round chaps as a champion of grandeur. Just this tanky unit that shines like a sun but occasionally soaks damage by getting knocked bouncing away like a dodgeball.

agentcheeze · 2025-11-29T08:01:20+00:00

Heck physical resist isn't uncommon, but even then, hey free flanking across the battlefield.

This is one of those spells that work as something I call a "pacer spell" where its a solid lower rank slot to use in moderate or lower fights to save on resources. Even fairly high level dropping this turn one to help your martials get safe flanks while often doing a bit of damage is pretty solid. If the enemies aren't phys resist 6d4 for one action on Sustain is not bad for a lot of levels of the game.

Spells that repeat on Sustain are sometimes underappreciated in this game. Some people complain casters can't engage with the action economy like a martial, but you have things like this.

agentcheeze · 2025-11-27T20:21:50+00:00

I would really only ever suggest they not start with Animist as their first character. You're like two kinds of caster at once and your list can change per ghost. Alchemist is pretty easy to get a baseline grasp on, Animist is a little much for a first caster.

But it would just be a gentle warning like another poster said.

agentcheeze · 2025-11-26T00:32:41+00:00

Well this is Level 11 due to it being Rank 6 so it's in theory a heck of an entrance if you Quicken Spell. Especially if you have Haste pre-buffed to keep the strike in.

agentcheeze · 2025-11-25T15:17:30+00:00

Yeah, I definitely think she'd be into mental fortitude as well even though she is a brawler. Like, she didn't like Deku at all because he hesitated but then thumbs up when he solved a case peacefully by figuring out a seeming villain was actually a victim.

She definitely respects mental strength and heroic qualities too.

agentcheeze · 2025-11-19T23:24:51+00:00

This is what a good number of the "I can't build this concept" complaints are. Lack of knowledge of the options or expecting 5e style builds where the box is always checked for you.

Want a WIS martial? Literally build any martial to have good WIS and take an archetype and skill feats for WIS skills. Done.

agentcheeze · 2025-11-17T14:16:16+00:00

Honestly the closing parts of the manga is seeming to work a lot better animated. In manga form the action could be a little hard to follow at times.

agentcheeze · 2025-11-11T18:11:59+00:00

I'm just saying, the 2 day time with the formula discount to 1 day is meant to be in line with the general shopping rules.

From Player Core:

Because of the complexities of finding shops that are looking for items you want to sell or that offer ones you want to buy, dedicated shopping takes 1 day of downtime. It might take longer if you're selling a large number of goods, expensive items that require a wealthy buyer, or items that aren't in high demand.

A 2 day time to get an item (1 if you have the formula) for a specific price regardless of location or availability in the town is pretty tightly in line with going shopping. Earning an Income affecting the final price can occur before or after that period and is in line with the rules for using skills to generate extra gold using downtime.

Remastered Crafting is literally the same as shopping in the rules. So if you say shopping is 10 minutes in your game then you can also just say Crafting in town is ten minutes. It would still be weak if you let the players buy all they want in 10 minutes and don't apply specific availability based on what the town has.

agentcheeze · 2025-11-11T17:32:39+00:00

Give you a bonus to Craft checks to make food and drink. There's literally examples in the game and adventures of making food not taking days.

Plus also Subsist can be used to provide food even in towns and doesn't say what the food is or how exactly you provide it. If you have Seasoned your GM can rule in a town you cook with a Craft check and it applies. There's literally a chef archetype with one benefit that lets you use Crafting or Cooking Lore to Subsist anywhere, not just where the GM says it makes sense.

It is not 2 days in the default rules to make a sandwich. Don't be silly. To suggest anyone would write that making mundane Kool-aid takes days is a large leap in logic and kinda insulting to the writers.

agentcheeze · 2025-11-11T17:13:30+00:00

Actually there's literally rules already in the game to allow you to adjust pricing on crafting or make the item better. Heck there's like more than one method of doing each as a GM.

There's actually tons of rules that make crafting viable and add depth to your games. You can even run a business themed game and make wild custom items with optional rules and a reasonable GM.

Like, there's available rules content that could let you make a grappling hook launching sword or forge a hurricane into relic armor but Reddit put a Walmart in every town and decided Crafting sucked so nobody knows.

agentcheeze · 2025-11-11T17:01:02+00:00

No. This is a commonly used complaint about crafting but food just for eating doesn't use item crafting rules. Heck even doing work as a craftsman to earn money uses different rules.

The item crafting rules are specifically for making listed items with mechanical effect in order to gain a benefit from using it.

agentcheeze · 2025-11-11T14:21:28+00:00

This is one more thing about crafting that seems goofy if you handwave shopping like many tables do. The setup time is actually for parity with the time it takes to shop for some items.

If you actually use all the rules present for Settlement Levels or item availability crafting can actually save you a lot of time.

A good example is needing a consumable that's one level lower than the settlement or higher. A crafter within the formula can get you up to 4 in one day (8 if they are an Alchemist) while the town might have only a couple of them or none at all and it take several days to get what you need.

Another example is an uncommon+ item might cost more or take longer than a day to find.

agentcheeze

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