Hi folks! Running SoG and my group is loving it. They're about to get to Chapter 2, and I'm a little confused about running it.

There doesn't appear to be a map for this particular part, just a list of about 20 locations and what happens in them. The map in the front of the book doesn't really show exactly where all these locations are.

I guess what I'm asking is, how do I present this chapter to them? Do I just give them the massive list of potential places to check out? Should I Jimmy up a map? I feel like it doesn't really set the scene. What did other GMs do here?

Appreciate any and all advice! Thanks all!

Basically the title.

I'm running a decently long homebrew game and the players recently reached Level 19. However after over a dozen combat encounters around level 17 and 18, i am running a bit short on new, fitting monsters.

Are there any 3rd party books/PDFs you can recommend with good high level monsters? Especially Fiends and Undead

These are extremely common scenarios in dungeons and buildings that keep popping up in games I run and games I play in.

Any RAW guidance for a GM to figure it out? Any RAI or even community consensus?

Here we go, assuming the images work:

Given Flame as an ally; does Athziri need to make a tumble through check against Bandit to complete this move or can she do so freely? If Flame was an enemy is there one check or two check to reach that destination?

Athziri tries to go past ally Flame and around a corner Bandit is maybe blocking?

Same question. But now the bandit is just blocking a door in a hallway open on either side.

Athziri tries to get out the door bandit is by, by going out diagonally

Another one. Assuming she makes the check as a success but NOT crit success to Reposition, can Athziri move Flame to the spot I'm pinging? Or is that a 7.5 or 10-footer?

Athziri tries to move Flame to her side.

Would this last one change if the spot to the left of Flame was blocked by a wall, or halfway blocked by a diagonal wall that goes down and to the right?

I'm currently planning an adventure and trying to find out how CR works to make more balanced fights.

The party is pretty big, 7 level 1 characters, and I will have all of them battling a version of themselves early to kick off the campaign. However I would like to have a decent challenge for all 7 as a group afterwards.

I was not sure what Creature ratings I should be looking at for that and the rules have confused me a little bit on how to read a creature rating, XP, and how to add more for more players on the same level. Any help with this is appreciated

Hello! I always come here when I need help recommending things for my players, so I will do it once again.

I am planning a homwbrew campaign in a few months, and most of my players have their characters almost done.

• A Fleshwarp Wizard who asked me if she can pay a class feat to get soothe to her Spell list at level 2
• A Swashbuckler Chronnoskimmer (ancestry not chosen yet) vaguely based on Johnny form Guilty Gear
• A Summoner+ (for synthesist) Azarketi with a Beast Eidolon who are both crafters

As a little (maybe important?) background, the world is "hell" and has 16 major cities-states and every player have to be the child (but not HEIR) of one of the rulers. This last player is from the country where all of them are machine-tiefling (automatons, technofleshwarps, and androids refluffed), and the player wanted his character to have an important background with this machine body, where she (the character) wanted to give her machine-parts soul, and instead got soul magic mega cancer or something.

I am relatively new to pathfinder 2e, but I've been playing 1e since i was 15. In that edition, the oracle used to have a Promethean curse, very tied with machine and could be fitting for his character as it gives mechanical value to her lore. However, this does not exist in 2e.

Is anything similar in this edition? So far I've seen the Shifter Prosthesis item and the Sterling Dynamo Archetype, however he'd like something more ranged.

Is there anything like the Sterling Dynamo but ranged, or the first edition Promethean Cursed Oracle?

thanks in advice and sorry for my english!

The majority of (or all of, as far as I can tell) resurrection abilities require Pharasma’s permission. What are the ones that don’t? The first one that comes to mind is bringing someone back to life as an intelligent undead, although that’s not really resurrection. Are there any others?

How would you guys rule Quickened if it doesn't specify specific actions?

I’m looking at granting a minor boon to a player and have run into Borrow Time, which specifies the following:

Effect: You point the relic at a creature within 30 feet, imbuing it with urgency. The creature gains the quickened condition for 1 round. After the condition ends, the creature is slowed 1 for 1 round and temporarily immune to this gift until you next perform your daily preparations.

The Quickened condition specifies:

Many effects that make you quickened require you use this extra action only in certain ways.

How would you guys rule this? Just a totally unfettered bonus action, i.e. someone affected by this could cast two 2 action spells? The Slowed downside is a pretty heavy cost, after all.

EDIT: This is in reference to Minor Gift for the Relic Aspect of Time. The unspecified quickened also exists on the Quickening Emotion Grand Gift from the same book, Treasure Vault.

I would imagine that I ought to treat the Quickened the same as it is in most other places, where you get an extra use of a single, one-action ability such as Stride, Strike, Step, etc. It should not be treated as having 4 raw actions. But, y'know, that's me interpreting it pretty heavily over RAW.

The current list of ranger feats doesn't include the feat "lighting snares". Ranger isn't listed on the remastered version, but it is on the legacy version. Further, the remastered version has dropped the requirement of having quick snares and snare specialist. I've not seen anyone comment on this. Just checking if all of this seems right--seems like a huge feat to remove from the ranger (the "snare class").

Which book to buy for learning pf2e? There appears to be: Pathfinder core rulebook Pathfinder player core Pathfinder advanced players guide, whats the difference between these?

My sister is interested to play with my group, so me and my boyfriend are creating her character. She want to be a devil and her backstory is that her family was part of the royalty but they get vanished because of the discovering her shapeshifting powers and she want to embrace them.

They didnt like that and they starting to fear her overthrowing the hierarchy. Now her goal is to became a queen of tge whole word trough her social habilities and her new powers.

What class would be perfect for her? A class that would based on Intelligence and Charisma, simce she wants to be able to manipulate people by talking to them (a social butterfly) She wants to gain influence and go to the top by her merits.

Since she wants her pathfinder ability to be the shapeshifting power (the power to transform into what the other person desires/ilusion magic) did she needs to be a magic based class too? If so what type of spells she can have? In my party we have 4 magic classes already (sorcerer wizard witch and monk?)

Edit: so she says that she made a pact with a godto have those powers, the reason beign her overtrowing the current monarchs amd rule alongside with said God.

So I'm planning to run QFTFF next week and was wondering about the maps. I wanna have them as image files so I can do what I normally do and put them onto a word doc to keep track of things, but I'm having issues with the PDF. when i try save as a jpeg it removes the maps and leaves me with white. If i try edit it tells me its password protected (anyone know what the password is?) not exactly sure what to do here. anyone got tagless copies of the map I can use? ideally with the grid on already. its just really odd that they'd put it out like this. otherwise anyone know how I can remove the tags and save it seperately. I've tried the chrome thing, but the buttons dont work and once its saved i can't click em.

Hi everyone! After running a couple of games for the Impossible Playtest, I decided to share some of the feedback here and see if it sparks some interesting discussion, if people have had similar experiences, etc. For the sake of transparency, the playtest was done at level 10, and the party was two Runesmiths, a Necromancer, a Fighter and a Cleric.

The first post about the Runesmith can be found here, and now to the Necromancer! I'd say this class had a more mixed reception in the group than the other one, but let's start with the positives:

• The focus spells, feats, and general abilities have this great gruesome feeling about them. Unfiltered death magic messyness. That's really cool!
• That one feat that lets you see everyone's HP was particularly praised for its usefulness and uniqueness.
• The way subclasses are structured is very interesting and fitting. Being able to choose between bones, flesh or spirits and then mix and match if you want to. It kinda reminds me of Diablo Necro.
• In maps and situations that favor you, the class can be a really grear space controller.
• Playtest Necromancer is pretty damn tough for a spellcaster, and that's very fitting.
• We really appreciate the attempt at a more significant gish support. It also really fits the class.

And now some of the downsides, pain points and things the group didn't like about the class:

• Overall, the minionmancer aspect of the class didn't pass the "vibe check" nearly as well as the gruesome flesh mage aspect. Thralls felt too much like non-entities. I do understand very well why, and wouldn't ever wish for each Thrall to have its own actions, but the fact that they can't move, can only attack once, and everything else they do instantly kills them makes them feel more like explosive statues than undead minions.
• Necromancer itself, ironically, can also feel like a statue sometimes, though in a different way. You're a full caster, so you want to be casting 2 action spells of course. And the pressure to always use your cantrip (Create Thrall) felt much higher than something like Witch, because everything you do relies on having and spending thralls, and you don't have something like Cackle. There isn't a lot of space left to Stride, RK, or do other things unless you're forced to.
• Due to the low-ish range on Create Thrall, tight action costs, and the stationary nature of Thralls, Necromancer felt kinda countered by... large open spaces. Everything you do is considerably weaker if there are no tight corridors and you have to constantly move to be in range of things.
• They are also very hard countered by enemies with passive damaging auras. And AoEs, to a smaller but still significant degree.
• More on specifics, Bone Spear being a spell attack felt pretty awkward. Normal issues with spell attacks nonwithstanding, you have to either not use Create Thrall alongside it, or use it but waste the attack that comes with it. Neither option felt super great.
• The implementation of the gish options didn't felt as good as the theory. Draining Strike scales quite poorly. Bind Heroic Spirit comes waaay too late. And the tight action economy makes Strikes a hard option to justify a lot of the time.

All that said, here are some overall suggestions we gathered. I'll leave them very open, as feedback tends to better be:

• Give us the ability to move Thralls in some capacity, but still trying to find a balance to avoid slowing the game down too much. It would be nice to have the option to either create new thralls or move and do stuff with existing ones, with each having its distinct upsides and downsides.
• Make more options that involve using your thralls without sacrificing them.
• Improve action economy in some way. It could be making Create Thrall more efficient, giving you ways to compress it with other actions, or a bunch of other things.
• Give the class some better options to play in big maps without tight corridors.
• Clarify how Thralls interact with Tumble Through.
• Improve the gishing options, especially the awkward scaling gaps in them.

Is it wrong to use -5 and beyond player level enemies?

I cant find any rules about using them beyond using them being should be very rare. Most of them can still potentially damage a player and they fill similar roles to low lvl player summons.

Ive used them and my players felt quite powerful + it made no sense for those particularly enemies to be powerful. I understand that troops can be used to power up weak enemies and im not using below -4 every encounter as that would be boring.

Do people feel is it reasonable to reward low xp for them?

I've been watching the streams that the Knights of the Last Call have been doing of tierlists of all the Pathfinder 2e classes. Basically their opinions are always "x class is just a Fighter class but worse, so it goes to D tier", and they have even gone to say that there is no point of having all of these crappy classes, that only Fighter Rogue and Cleric should be in the game pretty much lol...

So my question is, are there people out there that feel similarly to their opinion? There are some of you that prefer DnD5e style of having just a few classes? I know their opinions are quite unpopular and definitely not the majority of player feel like they do, but they haven't done a great job at explaining why they think that so I come here to read what ya have to say on this topic

I love PF2e for its balanced encounters and detailed character customization. However, one thing I’ve noticed is that most creatures, allies, and foes are often close to the PCs' level. While this is great for balance, it sometimes breaks immersion — where are the weak but brilliant sages, or the chance for a powerful fighter to be overwhelmed by sheer numbers?

Existing options like Proficiency without Level somewhat address this, but I enjoy the default encounter balance. So, I’ve been toying with a variant rule that allows for:

• Weaker but still relevant characters.
• A sense of mortality and stakes for most creatures/characters.
• Retaining power fantasies.

The idea: Power Points (PPs)

• Every character gets a pool of Power Points (PPs) that recharge daily.
• Spending PPs is required for most rolls (e.g., attacks, skill checks, saving throws).
• Once PPs run out, the character temporarily follows Proficiency without Level rules, reflecting exhaustion or their "true" weaker state.
• The PP pool size depends on level, so higher-level characters can sustain full power longer.

This system adds stakes without outright nerfing PCs — powerful characters shine in short bursts, but they’re not untouchable in prolonged challenges. Most NPCs would default to the "weaker" state, making them relevant in the world but less of a direct match for PCs.

Let there be problems

• HP Scaling and Damage Scaling: Proficiency without Level still inflates HP pools, and also the damage ceiling, potentially creating "bullet sponge" weaklings. Adjusting HP or decoupling combat stats from non-combat ones could help.
• Complexity: Tracking PPs means extra bookkeeping, and creatures effectively need two stat blocks (full and nerfed). Also, casters spending resources to spend resources. However, VTT might be able to automate some of that.
• Ambushes: Restrictions on how PPs can be spent in ambushes/assassinations are critical — otherwise, they become overly punishing/exploitable.
• Interactions with Full-Level Mechanics: Some checks, like a DC 40 door, would be nearly impossible in a nerfed state unless carefully managed.
• The list probably goes on

Why use this?

This variant rule gives GMs a way to introduce more realistic settings and high-stakes gameplay without just nerfing the PCs. It allows for a world where "normal people" coexist with heroes while keeping the gameplay dynamic.

What do you think? Could this concept work, or do you have ideas to refine it further?

Earlier, I played through four attempts at trying to fight the 21st-level Grim Reaper in Path/Starfinder 2e. We suffered four straight fails. It is still an egregiously overpowered monster that punches far above its printed level and XP value.

Of course, we still have the strange scenario wherein an equal XP value of 16th-level lesser deaths is significantly more dangerous. They are even stronger for their printed level and XP value.

What have been your own experiences with these monsters?

Heya. Sorry if this isn't the kind of promotion covered under rule 8. Just thought i'd mention i just made r/PF2E_LFG/ as a place to look for free online games. Absolutely no shade to the existing similar subreddits, i just found finding non-paid PF2/SF2 games specifically hard on them. So, if anyone has found the same problem, well, link's above. And if not, sorry to clutter your feed. Cheers!

Only got into Pathfinder in around the last 3 months or so and in that time have yet to see the announcement of new APs. What was a pretty extensive list of forthcoming adventures is now getting pretty sparse. Do they announce a years’ worth at a time? I’m particularly keen to find out what the teased follow-up to Seven Dooms will be, since I’m about to start running that for my group and would like to plant seeds early if I can

I'm the forever GM among my friends, we swapped from DnD to Pathfinder this year and the party is still low level (Lvl 2). I'm planning to throw some Wererats at them some time soon so pondering the obvious risk of Lycanthropic affliction.

If a PC gets the chomp and becomes afflicted, mechanically what's the best way of dealing with it? Do they receive the Werecreature Abilities (https://2e.aonprd.com/MonsterFamilies.aspx?ID=484) or should I be giving them the Werecreature Archetype?

The Archetype seems like it would make more sense if they wanted to keep the affliction long term, but if they just wanted to try and get cured it might be ok to just give them the Abilities.

Curious how others have handles this, thanks for any input.

Since it's the most recent damage type, while also working pretty differently than the old alignment damage, I wanted to ask how everyone that's played Spirit damage a lot feels about it, including anecdotally.

Mostly since when I see the damage type I keep getting mini-dopamine shots like "yay, my attack's gonna get resisted and immuned by way less things", like slightly better or on par with Mental, but I don't actually know how accurate that assessment is

So how do we generally feel about it?

A question came up in between sessions regarding carrying other creatures. We have the creature bulk rules, that's cool, but what if the creature is a PC with all of their gear on? Do you calculate the creature bulk + all of their gear bulk in, or just use the creature bulk?

Please ask your questions here!

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This month's main product release date: December 11th, including Triumph of the Tusk AP volume #3