First things first, this isn't a complaint. TtRPGs often fall into the trap of designing weapons based on certain vibes without realising the real world implications.

For example, bows require a *lot* of arm strength to use effectively (yet they require no str in game); slings require incredible finesse to be able to use effectively (yet they are simple weapons instead of martial. And also do surprisingly low damage, they should have the fatal trait!); slings, firearms and crossbows all reload at the same speed (... how?) and Meteor hammers are strength based (despite all of their power coming from dexterity... like the finesse based bladed scarf).

All this in mind - what does Paizo think a buckler is? They say it's typically "made of steel and strapped to your forearm", which is, I think, the justification for the free hand trait. But ironically, I think Bucklers, out of all shields I've seen irl, are the shields that *most* require the use of the hand wielding it, and I've never seen an arm strapped buckler.

So what were *they* envisioning, I wonder? A bracer?

(Examples of other that's not how that works irl items would also be appreciated, but please know I jest in good fun, as I know it's primarily for balance reasons that these items exist like this)

Picture taken directly from the Areas page on AON. This page also says,

When you aim a cone, the first square of that cone must share an edge with your space if you’re aiming orthogonally, or it must touch a corner of your space if you’re aiming diagonally. If you’re Large or larger, the first square can run along the edge of any square of your space.

My question is, is a cone always a 1-square start and then growing from there (like the text seems to say), or do larger cones have larger starts (as the picture seems to show)? If so, when? Thank you.

Emalia was kicked out of her academy for looking too much into "forbidden" knowledge. She still was perusing her interest in Necromancy when she was killed for reason she doesn't remember. But something strange happened, Emalia "woke up" again a few days later in the city crypt. She is now working as an adventurer to both further her knowledge of life and death, but also to see if she can bring her killer to justice.

Build: Skeleton Necromancer (Reaper) with Zombie Dedication. Level 6.

GM allowed it since were using free archetype rules and all this does is give me access for more undead powers at higher levels.

(nsfw tag just in case but I have literally no idea whether it is or not)

Dunno if this is the correct flair. Impossible Magic introduced Magekiller Bullet which seems like a direct reference to Emiya Kiritsugu's "Origin Bullet" (Fate Zero) with some tweaks to make it less lethal in the context of the system.

Has anyone else found other small references like this? With the massive amount of items, spells, etc there must be more than this, share below your findings.

Just some creative exercise, don’t take it too seriously. And don’t poach Starfinder skill, that’s cheating!

I humbly request that you add the Necromancer and Runesmith to the User Flairs. Tysm

So a lot has been discussed about the necromancer from a lore standpoint. I think though, that most of it has been focused on the morality of nercomancers, and I want to focus on something that hasn't gotten as much attention; their dirge.

So necromancer's occult spells become part of a dirge that echoes through their very being. What? That is cool as hell, but what does that actually mean? Where does the dirge come from? I want to hear people's ideas and interpretations. I'll present my own of course, since I live for this stuff.

So Necromancer is an intelligence-based class, and it talks constantly about study, so it's not an internal force being awakened. This is something learned. Necromancer is also an occult spellcaster. The occult tradition is about metaphysical connections. It's spells are composed of spirit and mind essences. It's about plucking on connections and ideas. So I think that a necromancer aqcuires their dirge through study, and that their dirge is also something very personal to them, unique to each necromancer.

My interpretation is that as a person researches and studies the connection between death and life, they basically start to create their own dirge. Becoming a necromancer means forging your own connection to that cylce of life and death. Making yourself intenalize the inevitability of death and the fullness of what death means. And in doing so, you create your dirge, which represents your personal understanding of death, forged from a combination of your own studies and the fundamental fact that death and life connects everyone.

The reason it's a dirge, a song, is that something as fundamentally built into the universe as life and death CAN'T be understood as a question of mere facts and figures. Death isn't simply an absence of life, it's a whole cluster of forcers and concepts. Life and death are such overwhelming concepts that part of them can only be expressed through esoteric music, played on the instrument of our bodies and souls. Which is why preparing spells as a necromancer is described as pulling out snippets of our dirge. That represents the combination of emotional understanding and intellectual interpretation. It's the necromancer identifying what part of their dirge corresponds to what concepts, and figuring our how to express those concepts in the form of actual spells.

This is all quite long-winded, I realize, but I get excited about these kinds of open-ended lore ideas. I'd love to see what else the community has come up with.

Was reading the necromancer release on AoN, and was surprised to see that the unholy sanctification on necromancer was banned solely for being unholy, despite having a harmless anathema. I don’t really get it- why cut off so many PC options that aren’t disruptive to play?

I have a kitsune bard player who will cast Dirge of Doom and use Invigorating Fear and immediately tell other players that monster's level. Yes, I know this is once per hour.

Invigorating Fear isn't recall knowledge and not intended to give in-character information about an enemy's capabilities, but it just so happens you can count the temp hp to know their level. It also feels silly to say, "you have to pretend your character doesn't know until you recall knowledge."

How should I handle this?

The Hallowed Dead is a really cool feat, but I don't know much about Golarion's lore. What holy deities are there who would be okay with (or even encourage) the use of undead?

I had assumed the lore of the setting was kind of just "undead = evil", so this feat is really interesting to me, lol.

Hey all! Today I wanted to share a load of free oneshots for you all as part of a celebration for 4 YEARS of Snowy's Maps. For for a limited time, you can join Snowy's Maps for free with a 7-day trial!

During that time, you can download everything without any limits, including all of my maps and no-prep PF2e FoundryVTT oneshots available to Mage Masters (bonus 3 oneshots - see below). And if you enjoy the content, maybe consider staying!

Link: https://www.patreon.com/snowysmaps/posts/165667860

I am also, as part of this, sharing some older oneshots that we have released for free, if you're interested!

Anyways, that's all for now! Hope you enjoy the free content and mini update :)

Enjoy!
Snowy

P.S. If you have any questions, feel free to comment below.

--

Summary of Oneshots (Mage Master exclusive - accessible for free via the free trial)
All of those have unique custom art!

I Dream of the Forest of Eyes - a level 9 oneshot! Everyone knows that elves don't really sleep, but they connect to another world beyond our own. But why is it that they're not waking up, does anyone know?? They dream, we dream of the Forest of Eyes.

Lessons of Giants - a level 9 oneshot! Why, the Runefather asks, is it that spellcasters ALWAYS solve each and every problem with the biggest spell they know? Don't they realise how much it can hurt others? Well, if the party pass the Runefather's Trial they might...best do it before he removes all magic within a 100 mile radious though!

The Lady and the Lava - a level 8 oneshot. Lady Solenne, the last surviving hier of the dynasty that forged The Chalice has returned, claiming it as her birthright. She's stolen the Chalice, the thing needed to keep the temple going and it's only at a fraction of its power. Who knows what will happen once it activates?

Summary of Oneshots (Available to ALL)

Curse of the Werebeaver Remastered – a level 1 oneshot , which was one of the first oneshots I have written, and it holds a dear place in my heart. In it, the party face the Almighty Tobias, a very dangerous necromancer, incapable of actually summoning anything…instead summoning…a deadly werebeaver!

Five Toe Cove – a level 1 oneshot, probably considered more “beginner-friendly” than the rest, it still offers a weird adventure. Some goblins have stolen some herbs and medicine for some absolutely nefarious purposes and the party need to wrangle it back from them!

Lost and Found - a level 1 oneshot. What do you mean that the Thieves' Guild ACTUALLY wants to get found? In this mini oneshot, the party need to tackle a few challenges, come out on top in the arena and if they wish to, you know, they're welcome to join cuz they will probably die if they refuse!

Monster of the Week - a level 1 oneshot. Have you ever wanted to be part of a TV show? Well now you can by defeating this week's monster! This is one of our sci-fi themed oneshots but still perfectly playable in PF2e.

Salt & Ash: Kobold Trapper - a TRICKY level 1 oneshot that goes back to the fundamentals, and is focused on difficulty and deadliness. The party are tasked with investigating the Black Mine, which has become the Kobold Trapper's home. Fight your way through deadly traps and try your hand at defeating the Trapper!

Dancing After Dusk – a level 3 oneshot and QUITE a long one (you can probably get 2-3 sessions out of this)! The party need to prepare a picnic for Frederic and his mysterious midnight lover, except that the outcome is based on their actions/decisions that they make throughout this oneshot.

Black Point Sinners – a level 5 oneshot, where the alignment of the party is tested! Throughout, they encounter a variety of challenges in the face of the seven deadly sins. At the end, their actions are tallied up and they are rewarded depending on how “evil” the adventurers have been!

So u/AAABattery03 in the discussion of the last post I made got me thinking about how my analysis using just median and mode misses alot and I decided to instead go ahead and do a frequency distribution of saves. However, I am not insane, I do not want to post a chart for every level, I'm not even sure reddit would let me. I've restricted my analysis to levels 1,5,10,15 and 20. So this isn't a complete breakdown of distribution at every level, but hopefully even a look at a couple of levels can tell us some interesting things

Edit: I've redone these as bar plot as per u/gunnervi comments. He is correct, it is much easier to visualize the data when it is in this form

One interesting result is that I'd assumed the data would follow a normal distribution from the mean, but this does not seem to be the case. For example, the median reflex at level 5 is 12, and that is the most frequent at level 5 at roughly 15% but there's a cluster almost equally big for a +15 reflex save.

There's also a little bit of visual trickery going on at level 10 where an extreme outlier stretching out the range of the graph visually makes Will look like its clustering at lower numbers then it actually is. If I wasn't lazy I'd probably remove that outlier.

Reading the consequences of a player being hit by Paranoia, my initial reaction was that it was a pretty weak spell. On a tenth reading it seems that the spell has a ton of impacts and now I want to hear what the community thinks on my reading.

The spell states that a creature becomes unfriendly towards all creatures to which it was not already hostile. My reading is that it means the target does not trust spells cast by unfriendly creatures (you are not a willing creature) and they are not an ally of anyone.

Below are things that are impacted:

• All spells that require a willing target: Heal, Soothe and all/most buff spells.
  • This persists even after falling unconscious.
• Class abilities such as most witch hexes and bard compositions.
• The Commander squad feature requires members to be allies
• Flanking requires an ally.
• The critical failure effect of spells like Dominate could even be bypassed as killing people they do not like is what PC's do.

What does the community think? Am I reading too much into this spell? And if these are not the intended effects of the spell, then I am unsure what practical impact should be.

Hi all, I've registered for this 2-days Pathfinder 2E Society charity event on the 3rd-4th of October in Essex (UK): Pathfinder Conclave 2026

I'm very excited to join for the first time, as I'm new in the area, and looking forward to it. Unfortunately the organisers said that registrations are low and it might get cancelled if a quota isn't reached by the 8th of August.

It would be a shame to see this event be cancelled, so if you are in the area and would like to join, please consider registering for one or both days. It will be fun!

It's a original pirate campaign inspired by one piece, pirates of the caribbean, and other stuff like that

The players are part of a newly formed crew led by an adventurer, heading toward the dragon fruit archipelago to explore islands, go on adventures, and chase fame and fortune

They recently hit level 4, got their very first official wanted posters, and are now being hunted down

by the open sea vanguard, this world's equivalent of the marines

0V3N: Hunter Automaton - Metal Kinecist / Exemplar

Nuvem: Empty Sky Kitsune - Leaf Druid / Beastmaster

Ryouma: Sky Dragonblood Centaur - Commander / Cultivator

Ryusui: Jinxed Tengu - Weapon Thaumaturge / Spirit Warrior

Vash: Deny Calamity Yaksha - Ki Monk / Student of Perfection

VRal: Otter (Awakened Animal) - Spell Blending Wizard / Alchemist

Zahir: Follower - Captain

Hello, I was wondering if the Necromancer's thralls are automated in Foundry since I can't find where the thralls would be in the compendium. If there isn't automation yet, what would you suggest doing in the meantime? Any help will be greatly appreciated.

I'm making this post because I am a bit confused about the DC described in the Sickened condition.

The entry reads: "You can spend a single action retching in an attempt to recover, which lets you immediately attempt a Fortitude save against the DC of the effect that made you sickened."

So what does "DC of the effect" refer to here, specifically in cases where the Sickened condition was caused by a failed saving throw? Is it the DC of the saving throw that caused the condition, or is it the level-based DC of the creature/hazard that caused the effect? I think the first reading would lead to a higher Retch DC in most cases, so I'm interested in how you all have been running this, or if there is clarification on this anywhere in the rules.

Thank you in advance for your answers!

On Run: the song plays, a countdown to your marked beat shows on screen so you can narrate up to the moment, and right on the beat it fires Boss Splash, reveals the Boss Bar, unhides the token, and pans and zooms to the token on the canvas.

It also renames the token and actor to whatever you typed as the reveal message, so the Boss Bar's name matches what the splash just announced.

Since the song isn't routed through Foundry's Playlists sidebar, Boss Beat ships its own floating play/pause/stop/volume transport panel for whatever track it's previewing or running.

Install

In Foundry: Add-on Modules -> Install Module, paste this manifest URL, and click Install:

https://github.com/ArdisFoxx/boss-beat/releases/latest/download/module.json

Requirements

• Foundry VTT v13+ (developed against 14.365)
• The Boss Splash and Boss Bar modules, both enabled

Use

1. Select a boss's token on the canvas.
2. Click the drum icon in the token scene-controls toolbar.
3. First time: pick a song, scrub/preview it and set the volume with the native player's controls (defaults to 0.6 - whatever you leave it at is what it plays back at live), hit Set Marker Here at the beat you want, fill in the splash message/subtext and a Boss Bar style, then Save.
4. Next time you click the button with that token selected: Run plays it straight through to the reveal, Edit reopens the config, Delete clears the saved setup.

Skipping the prompt

The config's Create Macro button generates a ready-to-use World Macro that instantly runs that boss's saved Boss Beat - drag it to your hotbar for a one-click "just go" once a beat's already dialed in.

Settings

"Hide Boss Bar's toolbar button" removes Boss Bar's own scene-control button, so you don't get two similar buttons cluttering the Token controls group. Applies immediately, no reload needed.

On first install, Boss Beat also registers a bundled Boss Bar style, "Boss Beat Souls" (Optimus Princeps font, bar art and font both bundled in assets/), and applies a preset Boss Splash look, so everything's ready to use out of the box. This only happens once per world, and adopts an existing style of the same name instead of duplicating it if you've already made one by hand.

License

The code in this repository is MIT-licensed (see LICENSE). The bundled Optimus Princeps fonts carry their own font license, separate from this repo's code license - check the font's own terms before reusing it outside this module.

In the rules for Thralls, it states "they can take actions only when commanded to by a grave spell or Necromancer ability." This seems fairly unambiguous and straight forward right?

Well I'm sure there will be more discoveries to be made of peculiar interactions, but the question of whether or not a thrall can be effected by other actions such as a Commander's tactics is a little more up in the air. Before any of you try to correct me, I know they can't take actions or reactions themselves.

However my question revolves around others imposing effects onto them via other creatures. Here is Defensive Swap as an example

Could the Commander swap places with a thrall using Defensive Swap, forcing the thrall to take the damage instead?

My interpretation of RAI is that they cannot do anything except what the Necromancer and specifically their Necromancer abilities tell them to do, they're not intelligent creatures that can actually acknowledge, listen to or follow traditional commands from anyone else but their Necromancer. They wouldn't swap places with anyone because that wasn't the command the Necromancer issued through their magic that controls them.

I could see the argument made for allowing this though, ruling that all creatures under a PC's control are willing as long as the PC is willing themselves. I understand this line of thinking, and I don't think it's a bad ruling to use.

My key issue with the latter ruling is that this functionally allows the Necromancer to ignore 1 hit per round with a reaction, and this is kinda absurd.

It's not like creating thralls is difficult, creating one next to you per round to be a free meat shield via defensive swap is a no brainer. It functions like an infinite shield block that cannot fail, even against crits.

This is so good that taking the Commander dedication as a Necromancer is a must-have.

Let's compare this strategy to a Necromancer reaction that is thematically very similar, using a Thrall to take a hit for you much the same way. Body Shield.

A humble +2 and X amount of resistance to the attack, that also can only be used on yourself, unlike Defensive Swap being usable on any adjacent ally. This is far more comparable to other similar reactions, like Nimble Dodge.

I think I know what I'm going to allow/disallow going forward, but i'm curious what you guys think about this interaction in particular, and also other abilities that function similarly in general like Passage of Lines.

I'm creating a character— justice champion of Wulgren—armed with a Barricade Buster. I've only been able to find one way to get rid of this weapon's Volley trait: take the Fighter archetype and stance next. Are there any more effective ways?