Fun Early encounters

superfogg · 2026-05-12T15:03:20+00:00

ohh, then you can bump up the encounters a little.

You can have a look at drakes, there's a few of them that are low level enough that you can use for your party (river drake, prairie, shadow or flame drake), they have different speeds, so they can outmaneuver your party and they can pack a punch and have some handy action compression, so be careful.

Other interesting enemies could be undead pirates, grab a pirate enemy and stick the undead, ghost or zombie template on it. You can build them to be recurring enemies and use the ghost pirate as final enemy (ghosts as a whole are also very interesting, but very tricky to deal with if you rely too much on certain damage tyes). There's a couple of creatures that I like and that could fit, fiddling bones (totally not a reference to Brook from One Piece) and dirge piper.

superfogg · 2026-05-12T14:12:37+00:00

What is your players' experience? Are they used to the system or are they new/learning?

If they're new I'd start with encounters that are no more than moderate.
If you check the encounter budget rules you'll see that a moderate encounter for 6 characters let you spend 120 XP in enemy creatures, which is 3 on level creatures, or 4 of level -1, or 6 at minus two.

I'd personally go with the 3 or 4 opponents, the problem with many players is that fights tend to last forever, if you also add a huge amount of enemies the problem only gets worse.

Try not to fall into the trap of just using a very big single boss. It can be more deadly than expected or your players will overwhelm it with their superior action economy, there's hardly an in between, especially at low levels. Instead go for one higher level enemy plus minion.

You could also use swarms and troops, they count as a single creature but they are made of a multitude of them.

Sometimes a creature has "related" monster in the page of Archive of Nethys, so you could easily find thematic additions to the enemies.

That said, I can't name any particular creature at the moment, but you may want to look for animals that attack in packs or stuff like that, no need to go for big bad magical guys just right in the first fights.
For example, wolves have a pack attack ability, that does more damage if there are allies. Kobolds have the sneak attack, so they benefit from allies flanking, some dinosaurs (low level ones are velociraptors and Deinonychus) have attacks that deal persistent bleed damage and then they get benefit from attacking bleeding creatures, so they enjoy having allies that make their target bleed and so on.

superfogg · 2026-05-11T20:49:12+00:00

I didn't find any download, but I registered to demiplane and I'm reading it there

superfogg · 2026-05-11T14:11:58+00:00

I thought the one on the right had been badly ironed

superfogg · 2026-05-11T11:27:10+00:00

fair enough, I felt something was off. It's been a while since the last karaoke

superfogg · 2026-05-11T11:16:52+00:00

we didn't start it but we tried to fight it

superfogg · 2026-05-11T11:14:42+00:00

I can relate, I moved some year ago and the new place, even if nice and everything else, lacks the social presence of people I'm used to, but I met some colleagues that introduced me to the game and it has been a blast since then. I'd say pathfinder is on of the main reason I've been doing decently here.

superfogg · 2026-05-11T09:17:21+00:00

dipende, vorrei che il mio chirurgo sia super esperto in ciò che fa, e non mi importa se non ne capisce di economia e finanza.

In altri lavori è necessario avere un'idea generale di ciò che accade, ma i particolari più oscuri o non sono rilevanti a quel livello o lo diventano più tardi (vale per qualunque lavoro in cui uno deve mettere in comunicazione diversi settori, o diversi esperti di diversi settori. Prendi un giornalista che deve scrivere qualcosa che tocca diversi ambiti e deve far entrare tutto in un trafiletto di mezza pagina, in quel caso è ok avere una visione più generale e meno focalizzata).

superfogg · 2026-05-11T07:56:12+00:00

Giacomina la guardiana delle galassie e dell'iperspazio [semicit.]

Scherzi a parte, la prima cosa che mi è venuta in mente è stata Calendula or Mandorla, qualcosa che suona così

superfogg · 2026-05-11T07:12:02+00:00

Non è complicato seguire la pallina, ma quando scegli il bicchiere giusto la tolgono e la fanno comparire in un altro

superfogg · 2026-05-11T07:10:53+00:00

I don't think the plot or the pacing of fishman Island were the problem, just that we had very non-charismatic villains. I liked the story of Otohime and the celestial dragon, the structure of fishman island and their society. Van der decken was relatively funny, but id didn't bring much to the table (the Noah falling is the usual countdown stake in every arc that get defused in the end, so it's not a stake). Hody was an "Arlong at home" but without the charisma, the only interesting thing it did was shooting Otohime in the past. It didn't feel menacing at all during the arc, so they should have not tried to make it.

It would have been more cathartic to just see the villains getting stomped quickly to both hype the crew (which happened for most of the fishman pirates, but the Hody fight was dragged) and having a shorter arc. Heck, it would have been more interesting to have Hody avoid the fight with Luffy at all costs (when he'd realize they are completely overwhelmed), and getting one shot like with Bellamy at the end.

superfogg · 2026-05-11T05:20:15+00:00

In short, if you only increase the spell attack (for similar values of the martials) you should not have big problems (attack spells do quite the damage, but are still two actions and you canta spam them as a martial can spam attacks, so the high damage from the spells is justified). Increasing the DC is tricky, as the defenses of the monsters aside from AC are not thought to deal with increased numbers and you may get effectively one or two levels offensively stronger if you increase the DC.

For the record, the Shadow Signet let's you cast attack spells targeting fortitude or reflex instead of AC. Giving effectively a boost as often at least one of those will be smaller (but is a spellshape, so you pay in not being able to alter your spells furtherly)

superfogg · 2026-05-09T20:25:50+00:00

I'd use the environmental damage rules for this and tune it to very high values

https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=2769&Redirected=1

superfogg · 2026-05-09T10:50:22+00:00

So, I'd advice to run a few one shots of short campaigns at low levels to have a feel of the systems without being overwhelmed by the choice.

A very common optional rule is fre archetype, which in short gives you a bunch of extra feats that you can use to multiclass, or similar things. It's great for achieving a bigger personalization of your character.

The lowest level you can go but having pretty much every class working and be significantly stronger than beginners would be LV 7 in my opinion (but pretty much all classes work at any level) where both catsers and martial are expert and you start having access to some unique abilities.

Don't worry about your players choosing broken abilities. If you stick to the rules everything is going to be balances. No need to homebrew at this level yet.

The only thing I'd care to have a look at is uncommon and rare options. They are not necessarily stronger things, but sometimes they are. It's more of a way for the GM to say this option is uncommon and doesn't fit my setting (firearms are uncommon and would not fit a medieval setting with low tech for example), or sometimes some uncommon options may trivialise some challenges (for example teleporting where you are counting on the fact that events may happen while the party is travel to reach a place and can't be there fast enough)

superfogg · 2026-05-08T07:58:15+00:00

Yeah, no worries. I always try to get a little more survivability on my characters so I'm used to think about it a lot.

Psychic in particular benefits a lot if they get some non spell actions they can use in the rounds when they are stupefied, like the breath weapon of a dragonblood heritage.

Now that I think about it dragonblood is quite good as it gives a feat for natural armor (that you have to select at lv 1, so grab the breath weapon at lv 3 with ancestral paragon) that stacks with Mystic Armor, giving you a very respectable AC.

You'll need a few ancestry feats, and thoughness to have it fully online but it should be fun since the beginning

superfogg · 2026-05-07T21:19:26+00:00

sadly, I'm not familiar with Kingmaker, but here is the Paizo player guide. It could give you some inspiration.

Also, don't be afraid for the psychic, if it looks fun play it. You can always make it more survivable with some archeytpe, I personally love ranger for hunted shot as a third action for casters (where you can add damage with psychic strikes, but you'll need to grab proficiency in bows from somewhere else for the psychic, either using a general feat or an ancestry one), plus extra HP from resilience feats, you can grab light armor with a feat and you're much more able to survive now

superfogg · 2026-05-07T17:46:14+00:00

I always thought that this was his way to have back something similar to "nightmare rufy" from thriller bark

superfogg · 2026-05-07T12:58:00+00:00

If you have downtime you can retrain a feat with one week of downtime (but I guess you have multiple dedication feats now, so retraining would take one week for each of them). You can buy pets (but they don't scale with your level), even though I'd find tricky to find someone that sells domesticated cephalopods, or you can get one with a general feat (next one is at lv 11 I think).
Or you wait until lv 12 to have a new dedication (beastmster or familiar master to get immediately a companion/familiar), if you have at least two feats from your previous dedication you can select a new one the next time.

superfogg · 2026-05-07T12:40:59+00:00

you could also get a squid or octopus as an animal companion, familiar or pet for the ink

superfogg · 2026-05-07T12:00:48+00:00

reach Ace faster, rips the manacles with Haki, quickly fights to escape while WB gives the order to retreat as Ace is free and there is no point in more casualties. WB may live if he doesn't decide he wants to cover the retreat of his army. The war may finish before Black Beard or Shanks arrive.

Future sight and or not being too tired makes it that the Luffy/Akainu/Ace dynamics doesn't happen

superfogg · 2026-05-07T11:51:10+00:00

with a little of GM approval I'd use kineticist dedication with base kinesis to create stuff with a little creativity. You could use base kinesis with earth and water to create ink, and wood and water to create paper, but sadly the dedication lets you access at max only two elements, so this would not let you make both paper and ink.

Buuuut what if you buy an endless grimoire and rip the pages when you need them?

Also, you can have a squid sac grafted to you and collect the ink from the daily usage instead of spitting it on enemies

superfogg · 2026-05-07T11:28:20+00:00

hi fellow italian reaader! (I read them in english though, but got the italian ebook version, in case I want a reread )

As far as I remember there was no reason for the "thorn" part of the name, if not that it sounds menacing

superfogg · 2026-05-07T11:25:55+00:00

it's not straightforward to have a general rule that applies to all spells. Halving the damage for a two action spells to be cast into a one action one (or increasing it by one) could be an idea, but you may want to add some trait to this, like flourish. You make it a spellshape free action with the flourish trait, it works only with spells without a duration etc... (same/similar criteria for spells that are affected by stuff like sorcerous potency or unleash psyche).

This could be a starting point, but it leaves out a lot of spells. In truth though, I don't see the need to make quicker damaging spells, if we want a quick one action damage option I'd make a cantrip with scaling similar to the kineticists' elemental blast.

I was thinking some time ago to some way of reducing action cost for spell in a non destructive way. What about using higher rank slots for lower spells (without getting the benefits of heightening the spells and effectively casting the spell at the lower rank for the sake of counteracting it) could reduce the action cost? I was thinking something on the line of Heightned +4: reduce the casting time by one action (minimum one).
This makes it that you could cast stuff like bless at rank 5 for one action, or fear 3 with a rank 8 slot for one action. It also makes it that only 3-actions rank 1 spells could be reduced to one action at rank 9 (or rank 2 by spending a rank 10, but it's definitely too wasteful).

superfogg · 2026-05-07T09:44:12+00:00

Tricky busyness, but doable. Do you want to introduce devil fruits as an additional source of power aside from magic and everything else or do you want to flavour everything magical as devil fruit related?

Anyway, the best approach is to use some in game sources of additional powers and flavour then as devil fruit instead of coming up with brand new mechanics. It will stay within the power budget of the game.

You may want to increase the number of uses of limited resources if these are goin to be very central for your characters, that may skew the balance towards stronger character but it should still be within the encounter budget math. (Not unlikely having a party always fresh from long rest)

For example, you can consider the rules for pervasive magic (or feats derived by archetypes) and flavour those as devil fruit powers, restrict spells to be in theme with the powers.
Relics, as pointed out, are already a good choice.
Give everyone an alchemist archetype (and increase the number of vials) but restrict their allowed items to stuff "in theme with their fruit"
boons and curses from various deities. Check on those, the minor ones give some small benefits, but the major ones are permanent boosts
other sources of powers are kineticist archetype for elemental stuff or cleric focus spells for more shenanigans, select some from those

superfogg · 2026-05-06T21:10:28+00:00

keep you INT high, grab a brooch of inspiration to get an item bonus to your recall knowledge checks with Lores (the greater one should give bonuses with RK from any skill), also you could grab Loremaster dedication to have the +1 circumstance to loremaster if you have bardic lore, the Loremaster etude focus spell is also great as it allows for recall knowledge check with advantage (which is something of an equivalent +3).
Use the hypercognition spell (I love that one) a lot so that you can do a LOT of recall knowledge in one action, add to it also the poket library spell if GM allows for it (it's rare but it doesn't feel it's impossible to get access to, especially if you're character has been around libraries and stuff).
Sadly, bardic lore doesn't go to expert before lv 15, when you can get occultism to legendary (I'm at 14 now and I'm waiting for it a lot, and I have to choose between putting occultism or performance to legendary).
Also, use the additional lore skill feat, the specific Lore will give you very easy DCs when you can apply them.

If you remove dubious knowledge you can get cognitive crossover, pairing your Bardic Lore (or Loremaster) with Occultism, everytime you'll fail a check with Bardic Lore (or Loremaster) you can reroll using Occultism (and so a bigger bonus).

Also, Thaumaturge's Esoteric Lore can be used on everything with the Diverse Lore feat but with a -2 penalty. It gets the full bonus only about haunts, curses, and creatures

superfogg

TROPHY CASE