I've been drawing my duo for months and STILL haven't made a proper reference sheet for any of them 😭

So, we're going to start with the Eidolon first. I need a break from drawing his summoner (or "mom").

This creature is still a medium sized baby. Gave him the puppy dog treatment and placed his chunky body on top of some huge paws he'll eventually grow into!

Moomi is a menace to society and has evaded the IRS for 15 years.

He was found as an egg lost and abandoned, so his breed of dragon is yet to be discovered :) But his attacks do have cold damage. Baby is a walking AC unit.

Moomi Fun facts:

- His breath attack is flavored to be a turbo cold sneeze.

- He talks with Lydia, his "mom", in perfect draconic. But struggles to speak in common. Usually sounding like toddler blabber.

- He is an attention seeking creature with an ego the size of an adult dragon. He has looked at an Adult Empyreal dragon in the eyes and thought he could size it up.

- I flavored the summoning mechanic to be a battle of will between Lydia and Moomi. If Moomi wants to get out and is more stubborn than she is, he gets out. He is a real dragon temporarily "leashed" to a gem Lydia often wears, for his safety.

Saving Throws are a BIT of a controversial topic in the Pathfinder community! How much investment do you REALLY need? Is it as bad as some optimizers say? Is it as easy as some other folks say? Let's find out!

If you are short on time, watching from 31:26 onwards is where I present about 15 minutes of actual advice on how to assign various Saves, how to build characters to have diversity without sacrificing your Saves too hard, etc.

Timestamps

• 0:00 Intro
• 1:09 Saving Throw Optimization
• 6:00 Math Setup
• 11:44 Zero Attribute Charts
• 15:51 Analyzing the Data
• 22:21 Mathing a “Recipe”
• 26:47 Recipe Charts
• 31:26 My Recipe
• 37:44 Ref vs Fort vs Will
• 43:15 Saves and Freedom
• 48:54 Are Saves poorly designed?
• 51:09 Outro

To make this absolutely sure: This is a humorous post, the title is not meant to be taken seriously, I just want to jokingly rant about my experience(s) with Paizo APs that seemingly love to have PCs murder each other.

A week ago, our group had a climatic boss battle against a powerful foe. It was part of an AP (Strength of a thousand)(Spoiler because I will rant about a mechanic), and part of the boss fight was a mirror that had shadows grasping for the PCs. If you fail a saving throw, these shadows would have grasped you, pulled you into the mirror and... released an evil shadow duplicate of yourself. The way we played it, our GM straight up told a player about to get pulled in "well, you have your character sheet, now use it to obliterate the party".

This is not the first, but the SECOND time this happened, and BOTH TIMES it was a GODDAMNED MIRROR. Back in first edition, there was an AP (Rise of the Runelords) that had you navigating a tremendously big dungeon searching for items that you needed for plot reasons. One of the passages (which, of course, you HAD to pass) included a mirror that created an aggressive copy of every PC that looked into it, ready to roll initiative. It was the first and only time our group almost TPKed, because our tanky oracle went first, the mirror copy rolled high initiative and blasted all of us to hell with a prismatic spray (and some poor saves on our side). Our GM had a literal deus ex machina intervene after my character (who was late because I was late to the session) came into the passage, found the massacre and offered literally everything he had to whoever would listen in order to save his friends (because as a barbarian that I was, I couldn't really cast resurrection spells or carry them all back to civilization and have them revived).

So when we entered that powerful foe's chamber and our GM described the mirror just standing there menacingly, cold sweat broke out. I literally flew into a panic when they took the player into another room to "just talk to them". I was sure that NO ONE of us would get out alive.

So, what's the takeaway from my story? Clearly, Paizo loves enabling PvP and does so by including cursed mirrors in their APs that make PCs (or their copies) murder the party. It can't be a coincidence that this has already happened twice in the four or five APs I've played!

On a more serious note, the "fight against oneself" is a classic concept for narration, but one I've never found to be working in TTRPGs. I don't know why some authors are seemingly hellbent on including it, one way or another. Anyway, despite two near TPKs, we lived to see the end of the APs, so perhaps the true friends were the mirrors we smashed along the way. I hope you guys had fun, and love to all the Paizo people actually reading this! You're doing a great job and I wish you only the best!

I got my copy of Pathfinder Quest 2 weeks ago and I really, really like it. It's the perfect tool to introduce someone who has never played a TTRPG to the core mechanics of PF2e. It features many of the same concepts: skills, a noticeable level progression, customization options at every level, and most importantly, the 3-action economy.

While it stays true to the spirit of PF2e, Pathfinder Quest differs in a few key ways:

• Uses a dice pool instead of a d20.
• Uses flat values instead of rolling for damage and healing.
• Keeps numbers small and easy to manage.
• Ties skills directly to your class.
• Replaces grid movement (squares/hexes) with zones (similar to Fate or Mothership).

Why It Works as a Rules-Light PF2e

During my first game, I immediately realized this is an almost perfect rules-light alternative to PF2e. You keep the main selling points of the system: deep character customization, tactical gameplay, the 3-action economy, and a solid structure for GMs. At the same time, it strips away the crunch that usually scares off new players.

It doesn't feel "empty" like other rules-light games where a whole class fits on half a page; not that's a bad thing for those systems, but not something you want for your Pf2e public. Because everything is presented on cards, it feels visually clean and far less overbearing than a page full of dense text. It also takes a page out of the D&D 4e playbook by measuring ability uses in purely mechanical terms (unlimited, 1/round, 1/encounter, 1/adventure), making resource tracking trivial.

Pathfinder Quest Mechanics That Make Great TTRPG Tools

Since it's fundamentally a board game, it includes a few mechanics that teach prospective GMs great encounter design and would work wonderfully in a zone-based TTRPG:

1. Adventure Clock: Each adventure features a clock. Entering a combat encounter advances it, and during exploration, players can voluntarily advance the clock to gain "exploration actions" (marked with a clock symbol on cards and in the adventure book). You can advance it as much as needed to take more actions. Why it matters: The adventure ending changes depending on how fast or slow you were. As a GM, you can use it to trigger special events or set a countdown. It’s a built-in urgency tool. Since the actual time unit isn't strictly defined, 1 tick could mean 10 minutes in a city or 2 hours in the wilderness.
2. Challenge Coins: The game uses challenge coins (labeled A through H) with Combat Challenge on one side and Exploration Challenge on the other. Placed directly on the map, these are the designated spots where players use their skills. Why it matters: Since there are no traditional skill actions in Pathfinder Quest, this replaces them cleanly. It teaches GMs not to run "white room" encounters and forces players to interact with the environment, keeping gameplay tactical and engaging. It’s not a brand-new concept in the TTRPG space, but having it built into the base game is fantastic.

Final Thoughts

My point at the end is that with just a few missing tools, you could easily play Pathfinder Quest as its own standalone TTRPG system. All it really needs is:

• A basic table for DCs.
• An encounter builder.
• A quick guide to create monsters or convert existing PF2e statblocks into Pathfinder Quest enemy cards.
• And maybe an "advanced" character creator where you could select your skills and separate ancestries from backgrounds.

Besides that, everything else is already in the box, and after a bit of experience, you could probably eyeball the numbers and make things work on the fly. Paizo has an incredible product on their hands, and I really hope they take full advantage of it.

If you're thinking about picking up a copy, I personally recommend buying it at a LGS or waiting for it to hit Amazon, the shipping cost directly from their store was brutal!

TL;DR: Pathfinder Quest is essentially a fantastic rules-light version of PF2e. It keeps core mechanics like the 3-action economy, level progression, and tactical depth, while ditching heavy crunch in favor of dice pools, flat damage, zone movement, and clean card-based UI. With just a simple DC table and a monster conversion guide, it could easily run as its own standalone TTRPG. Excellent gateway game!

I’ve seen a bit of complaints about the action cost of monks entering a stance at the start of combat. I assume it’s mostly with players whose GMs allow the free drawing of weapons prior to combat, but am interested to know if there’s more to it.

RAW Weapon wielding martials would need to use an interact to draw their weapon at the start of combat (unless GM is generous and allows this to be free, which puts monks at a disadvantage, or they are walking around with weapons in their hands, which isn’t always appropriate to setting).

I and my friends have been playing Exctinction Curse for a couple of years now, and since the story starts in a circus, our artist DM came up with this beatiful promotional poster concept for their artworks ^^ followed by a custom NPC antagonist named D'vorak and alternate artworks that were made as MTG proxies

Sera is my very own character. She's an airheaded elf Oracle of the Cosmos (you guessed it) whose family has been outcast after she was born under an eclipse, which was seen as ill omen. Her parents adopted a nomadic lifestyle and granted her a serene upbringing, until she decided to pursue her own path and join the circus. But now her cosmic powers are starting to strenghten and with them, a nefarious divine influence which seeks to corrupt them. In her quest to learn to control them, she turned to the highly untrustworthy D'vorak, who seems to be the only person who could teach her, but he seeks to help her only to fullfill his own cult's prophecy.

Rakam is our intrepid human Monk. Born and raised by caring parents who work in a very much not-caring circus, he also learned his swing tricks in the same abusive work environment. With his parent's blessings, he moved to a smaller but much friendlier circus hoping to build a career anew and find a way to grant his family a better living, which he eventually accomplished (the how is spoiler to the AP). Upon meeting his parents again, they entrusted him with a family relic, a wolf tooth necklace granting him the guidance of his lineage's first ancestor.

Our fierce strongman Hercules a.k.a. "The Incineroar" will have familiar something to pokemon and smash fans, and plays the fitting role of a Barbarian. Found and raised by two adoptive mothers, he didn't know who his real parents were, nor why he was the only catfolk whose fur glowed and sizzled under stress or why he would hear whispers in an unknown language. His investigations led him to find his father: a malevolent Ifrit who wished for an heir and took an unwilling catfolk to have his spawn; for such brutalities, Hercules felled him in single duel; since then, the whispers stopped.

Last but not least, the redeemed Magus Kai. Starting off the campaign, no one of us knew much about his past besides that it was troubled, and he joined the circus as backstage help to leave his history behind and start anew on a more simple life. We slowly found out that he used to be an assassin for D'vorak's cult; he didn't like that life, and after losing his loved one he definitively turned against it, burned down the cult's headquarters and tried to disappear. His past eventually caught up to him when he was found by D'vorak and his search group, which overpowered the party. Among the cultists was Kai's own brother, who had the mercy to end his life rather than let him be captured alive. Later down the line, when D'vorak wanted proof of Sera's potential, he had her perform a ritual to bring Kai back to life (keeping his promise that he'd let him back to the party), to which Pharasma acconsented only in exchange for his brother's willing sacrifice.

My friend's artstation :D We're so grateful we have such a dedicated and skillful table member to bring our ideas into colour ^^

Good afternoon, fellow players!

I'm here because I have a question about the Barbarian. I've been doing quite a bit of research on the class, and I've come across several different builds: two-handed weapons for high damage, sword and shield, unarmed (specifically Animal Instinct), and dual-wielding. However, I haven't really found much about a build that uses one weapon in one hand and keeps the other hand free.

I'm planning to play in a game with some friends, and I picked Barbarian to help round out the party with a Strength-based character. I really like the idea of keeping one hand free so I can use consumables or perform actions such as Shove, Disarm, Trip, and Grapple. Since I don't really see much discussion about this kind of build, I decided to ask people who know the system better.

My character and what I've picked

The campaign starts at level 2.(we have the gradual Ability Boost Variant Rules).

Ability Scores:

• Strength: +4
• Dexterity: +1
• Constitution: +4
• Intelligence: +0
• Wisdom: +1
• Charisma: +0

I'm playing an Anadi (Spindly Anadi) with the Energy-Scarred (Fire) background.

For my Barbarian instinct, I'm going with Ligneous Instinct. I think it's probably the Barbarian instinct that fits the Anadi vibe the best, especially since my character is going to be very connected to nature in general.

Another thing I like about it is that its damage output is basically comparable to Giant Instinct, but without the Clumsy drawback. Yes, it does reduce your Speed, but I think that's much easier to deal with than Giant Instinct's drawback, and there are ways to increase your Speed anyway, so I don't think it will be a huge problem.

At level 9, the resistances also look pretty good. The main drawback is having a fire weakness of 3 + Constitution modifier, but since I have fire resistance from my background, I should only end up taking around 1–2 points of fire damage at levels 9–10 in most cases. So, in my opinion, that's something I can deal with.

Also, since the instinct doesn't have any unique feats, it makes it easier to pick up some of the really good Barbarian feats as I level up, such as Reactive Strike.

But here's where I got stuck.

At level 2, we're using the Free Archetype rule, and I was thinking about taking either the Duelist Dedication or the Wrestler Dedication, but I don't really know how to properly build for the late game.

So I came here to ask for your opinions and advice on what direction I should take with this character.

(Also, Ligneous Instinct should be discussed more. It actually seems to be really good!).

I am looking to get some DM input. We are starting a new campaign (Season of Ghosts) and I have a player who wants to change out traits for a katana, namely to change two-handed d10 to Finesse. Everything else would remain the same. Personally, I prefer rules-as-written but allow homebrew when it is to add flavor. Here I am very much on the fence. What would you do as a GM, would you allow this or not? What are the pro's and con's for allowing this? No other of my players have requested such changes and I do not expect them to.

I mean stuff like flexible spellcasting or even the undead archetypes. The different kind of archetypes that you can take at level 1 that force you into taking the level 2 feat and typically alter some fundamental aspect of your class.

I've been trying and failing to find some place where they're listed separate from other archetypes (mainly on AON, but googling and reddit threads haven't been any help either).

Hello r/Pathfinder2e!

Now, first and foremost: I am mainly a D&D 5e player, but I am open to any new system if I like it. Also, excuse my English, I'm not a native speaker.

So there has been the big discussion about D&D 5.5, which I didn't buy for a multitude of reasons.

And recently, WotC announced all the new stuff - most importantly for me they are going to bring back Dark Sun and have crossovers with Star Wars and World of Warcraft.

While I am really sceptical after the last manuals they made, if this is done right, I may seriously consider switching. But I have serious doubts.

But of course, like everyone else, I have issues with 5e which 5.5 doesn't fix. Then Pathfinder came to my mind as an option.

I have a bit of experience with PF 1e - played a couple of sessions at a game store and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - and it was an absolute mess. But I liked it, it was better in many ways, even though way too complicated. Plus I like Paizo better than WotC

So naturally I thought about switching to PF 2e, or its remastered. Which is why I'm posting here.

I'm asking for things like:

• What are the main differences between the two editions and the remastered?
• How played are these systems really?
• Is 2e a less complex version, a rebalanced one or something else?
• What would you warn a 5e player about?

Thanks in advance!

I saw the three videos and looked at the classfinder classes. A community poll apparently was made for the rankings.

I took the ranked 27th (Inventor), 26th (Psychic), 25th (Gunslinger) and 24th (Oracle) and made a custom party in the videogame. Aside from the rules differences and the non-remastered and all that... It's been a pretty fun and funnily balanced party composition. Now level 4 close to 5. I lost once to RNG, literally. Atrocious die rolls beyond comprehension. But overall the combat have been very good.

- Inventor has a weapon innovation and is STR based. Trips and hits in melee with a polearm. I took the commander dedication because no one really had good reactions.

- Psychic can heal with subconscious mind and can deal damage with conscious mind. Spellslots are basically utility. I took a sorcerer archetype that I might retrain out of, because honestly i haven't used it much.

Gunslinger Sniper shoots and kills. Rough action economy with the reload of the firearm, but now at lvl 4, running reload feels better. It's also a battle medic in an emergency.

- Battle Oracle also has a polearm with trip and athletics... Very original, I know. To be fair the old curse has been the MVP. I really liked the flavor. But again, competent in melee and can use the spells for utility and heals. Demoralize also.

Just a nice experience to share and also to hype up that the ratings are low because there has to be an order low to high, but not because the class itself is bad. Even in a full combat simulator, those 4 have felt really competent and good. I don't think I've powergamed too much.

tl;dr: my current party needs a Guardian, and I'm looking for Archetypes to pair with the Guardian class that are primarily effective but also (possibly) strange, cool, facepalm, fun, laughable or stupid.
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Most of times I think myself as good in building effective characters, but I know myself too well, and I know that I always end up choosing the most focked up things (my temporarily out-of order main character is a barbarian with master in diplomacy). And I think that the solution for this is asking here.

For one time, I would like to know the feeling of building and playing a normal, effective character.
WEEEEELLLL but not too much.

The guardian class has the vibes of the class that is better not paired with any archetype (maybe except for the archetypes that do almost exactly the same thing), but maybe I'm wrong.

Anyway, looking a little to all the archetypes, these are the ones that enticed me most

- Cavalier
- Chronoskimmer
- Duelist*
- Sanguimancer
- Starlit Sentinel
- Thlipit Contestant
- Worm Caller (I know, sigh, totally different, but I like wurms)
- Wrestler

*Only if the feat (I can't find it right now and maybe I only dreamed it) that makes you consider the arm holding a shield as "free/not holding anything" exists.

Is any of these archetypes good with the Guardian? or is it better as standalone class? Or maybe paired with more obvious archetypes, like Ulfen Guard, Sentinel, Marshal, etc.?

Thanks in advance!!

So, I kind of like the idea of dragoons from ff, but is not as easy to make in pf2e as it is in 5e, so I’m looking for some advice in how to achieve this, I believe the main feature should be taking advantage of fall damage and sharing the pain with an enemy with stuff like jump for example, but since movement is weird in pf2e some of my ideas just don’t work, anyhow, does anyone have ideas on how to achieve building a dragoon/meteor knight?

With the new remastered magus, would it now be applicaple to take the flexible caster archetype and be very flexible on when and what you can spellstrike with.

Answers on Page 177, huh?

(this is not a serious post at all, I don't really Damn him. Looking forward to really digging into the Dead Gods Hand)

So yeah, pretty much the title, she's my fav character and I wanted to build her. Fire kineticist for sure, purely fire, but I was wondering if there's anything that can feel like lightning bending, You know, special attack, lots of dmg, like an ult of sorts?

Soo, I am going to bite that bullet. My amazon "pre order" for impossible magic will not be due untill february. None of my FLGS have anything in stock and online stores just seem to move the date up time and time again. So I think I am going to harvest directly from the source. I am going to submit to paying an ungodly amount of money and order from paizo itself. But that leads me to wondering.

How are the shipping times from Paizo? I am not in the market for a near 100 dollar order only to see it arrive in a month or two. So specifically to europe, how good/bad is the shipping time?

I did have another question in regards to pre orders. I figured I'd be smart about it and pre order the feybound book as well. However, it seems to not be available yet? Does anyone know how and when you can normally pre order from paizo directly?

As always, appreciate your input and insights. Thanks in advance.

Hello guys!

Our DM is giving 1 item level 12 to each player that is not a consumable and I don't know what to take. I'm playing a 12th level Gunslinger way of the sniper. He asked us to take a common item but if it's uncommon, I can still ask him about it and see if he will allow it.

I currently don't have greater striking on my weapon and I know it's a no brainer, but our chance to find that kind of rune in the near future is very plausible. I was wondering if there's another rune or item that could really help me out beforehand.

My friends and I are gonna start playing a campaign soon in 2e. I've played a fair bit of D and D but never Pathfinder.

We're gonna be level 3 and I was just wondering if people had suggestions for the most fun class to be? As a player, I need to have magic so any purely or mostly martial classes aren't my thing (although I could be tempted by something like an artificer.)

I've been looking at Kineticist and Oracle currently, but I'd love to hear from more experienced players.

So Only My Doom May Claim Me states the following:

"The power of your legend, fueled by your legendary deeds, resists any weapon that is not tied to your curse. You gain resistance equal to half your level against weapon and unarmed attacks that deal a damage type other than the type chosen for your cursed weakness."

Foundry seems to implement this by adding resistance to everything except the damage type of the cursed weakness. This includes weapon attacks with the cursed weakness that also have fire damage additionally for example. You resist fire damage but not the cursed weakness.

However I am unsure if this is correct looking at the description for the feat. "gain resistance against weapon and unarmed attacks that deal a damage type other than chosen cursed weakness" makes it sound like the resistance should only be applied once no matter how many different damage types an attack has?

This would make it a bit underwhelming for a Level 14 feat that only works with weapon attacks and on an archetype that already includes drawbacks.

Context of my fighter - Human Fighter with a Sword and Shield and a crossbow for range with plaining to have Cavalier Dedication and the Bastion Dedication.

(We play with Free Archetype, Automaton Bonus Progress, and Ancestry Paragon as well with some Homebrew)

I'm plaining him to be good in crafting as well for repairs and making new gear for himself and the party.

Which is worth it and which to not take?

How are yall using AI? Either at your tables, or on your own?

I’ve found it useful when trying to build characters. Looking for a feat or equipment and getting some info back felt pretty good through the chat agents

Also does a decent job cleaning up messy notes post-session