Category Archives: News & Updates

Philly-Specific News

January/February is a slow time for Philly PFS. Our next major convention will be in the spring, and I hope to have more information about that soon. However, while we aren’t having another convention for a couple months, our neighbors in New Jersey will be. They have DREAMATION 2015 coming up in February. Sign-ups will be open soon!

But of course, while we may not have conventions coming up in the immediate future, we’ll still be running PFS at all of our locations as usual. Also, there might be some modules or other events scheduled on the side – pay attention to the Redcap’s PFS mailing list for these opportunities if they come up! (I know I’m going to be working on getting a group together for the Seeker Arc version of Wardens.)

Pathfinder Society General News

Two new 64-page modules have been sanctioned. The brand new module Plunder & Peril has been sanctioned, along with the long-awaited Wardens of the Reborn Forge. Plunder & Peril is split into 3 parts with a bonus chronicle sheet if you apply all 3 sheets to the same character, and you can play it both in sanctioned module mode and campaign mode, much like Dragon’s Demand and Tears at Bitter Manor. Wardens of the Reborn Forge is also split up into 3 sections and can also be played in sanctioned module mode or campaign mode, but there’s a third way that you can play it – Seeker Arc mode. If everyone is 12th level, then you can play straight through the module, earning chronicle sheets as you go and leveling up mid-module. This is the way you get the bonus chronicle sheet for Wardens.

Plunder & Peril‘s sections are levels 3-5, 4-6, and 5-7, with the bonus chronicle sheet being levels 6-8. Wardens’ sections are levels 11-13. 12-14. and 13-15, with the bonus chronicle sheet being levels 14-16.

Pathfinder General News

RPG Superstar is in full swing! We are currently in the middle of voting, and I would encourage everyone to vote. Voting on items is a definite learning experience about what makes or doesn’t make a good item, and while Philly certainly had a good turnout of entries this year, I would love to see an even bigger Philly turnout next year.

FAQs

Now that Mark Seifter has gotten the reins on the Pathfinder Design Team messageboard account, he’s been issuing a new ruling every Friday for the past couple months. What follows below are the ruling that the account has made since the last news post. If you want to stay up to date, check in with the Pathfinder Design Team’s Paizo messageboard account.

Skalds have perform(wind) as a class skill and can use it as a versatile performance. Nothing was broken here, just that it was super unthematic that these were missing. (FAQ)

The skill bonuses that a slayer gains with favored target increase by level along with the hit/damage bonus. This wasn’t written clearly enough in the slayer writeup. (FAQ)

Pummeling Style only works with unarmed strikes. The intent was to give monks something nice for a change, not to give every weapon user pounce. (FAQ)

Untyped ability bonuses don’t stack. Compared to the previous three, this one is a little more complicated. What this means is if two sources add an ability modifier to something, and neither of those sources specifies a type, then they don’t work together. The clearest example of this is a multiclassed Lore Oracle/Paladin that has taken the sidestep secret revelation. When calculating his Reflex save, sidestep secret is replacing his Dexterity modifier with his Charisma modifier, and the paladin’s divine grace adds his Charisma modifier to all saving throws. Neither of these specify a typed bonus, so they don’t stack and the paladin’s Charisma modifier only gets added once. On the other hand, when you look at the paladin’s AC, sidestep secret also replaces the Dexterity modifier for Charisma, but this time smite evil adds a deflection bonus equal to the paladin’s Charisma modifier. Since one is untyped and one is a deflection bonus, they stack. (FAQ)

Dragon Ferocity and Tiger Claws work. Both of these feats were intended to add a stat more than once to something, but thanks to the previous FAQ they broke. The PDT promptly fixed that. (FAQ)

Grab, pull, push, rock catching and trip all work off of your turn. As written, these are free actions and therefore only work on your turn, but rock catching makes no sense if you read it like that, and the others should really be able to trigger off of attacks of opportunity. Now they do. (FAQ)

A reach weapon can be used as an improvised weapon without reach. Can you physically hit someone with the butt of a longspear? Yes. Is it designed to do that? No. But just because that the longspear is a weapon doesn’t mean that you can’t use it as an improvised weapon. (FAQ)

If an attack can bypass magic DR, then it can also harm incorporeal creatures as if it was magic. This was the bane of monks. Thanks to their ki pool, their fists counted as magic for the purpose of bypassing DR, but thanks to the wording not actually making the fists magic and amulets of mighty fists often getting special abilities before getting enhancement bonuses, the monk was often really sad against incorporeal creatures. Now they don’t have to be! (FAQ)

Sleeves of many garments are illusory. The sleeves of many garments state that they “transform her current garments,” but it was unclear whether it would physically transform the current garments or just the appearance. Many people were using these to transform into a swarmsuit whenever a swarm came up under the assumption that the sleeves transformed the clothes physically. This clarification says that it is not the case. It just transforms the appearance. (FAQ)

Boar Style doesn’t try to bleed a bleeding target. Boar Style reads like it does 2d6 bleed damage, but Boar Shred, a feat later up the feat chain, does 1d6 bleed damage, and usually bleed damage doesn’t stack. That’s because the damage that Boar Style deals isn’t supposed to be bleed damage, but rend damage and it was just written badly. (FAQ)

Hats of disguise don’t last forever, but you can reactivate them before the previous duration is done. Items like the hat of disguise and the ring of invisibility are command word items based off of spells that have durations. People play as if you cast it and they’re up all the time, even though technically these spells have durations. Basically, this FAQ says that we haven’t been doing it wrong, just as long as you renew the duration before the previous duration ends. (FAQ)

Despite the fact that a hat of disguise has a duration, when you take the hat off you are no longer disguised. The effect is still tied to the hat, not like if you cast the spell yourself. (FAQ)

Crane Wing now no longer requires you to guess which attack you’re blocking. When they errata’d Crane Wing, they changed it so that you had to declare it before the attack and it just gave you a +4 bonus to your AC against that attack. They’ve determined that they overdid it, and have decided to tweak Crane Wing a little to try to make it a little more powerful. Now you choose one target and you get a +2 bonus to AC versus all attacks made by that creature for 1 round. (FAQ)

A reach weapon can attack something 2 diagonals away. In 3.5, there was the reach exception, which said that something with 10-foot reach could attack something 2 diagonal squares away from it even though that square is 15 feet away. It’s a little ugly, but it’s better than reach weapons getting shut down by diagonal hallways and enemies manipulating the grid to close with a reach weapon user without taking an attack of opportunity. Pathfinder tried to fix that by creating an “invisible square” that the enemies provoked from, but that turned out to be super clunky. This is the PDT putting the 3.5 reach exception into Pathfinder. (FAQ)

We’re proud to announce two new locations where Pathfinder Society will be taking place in the Philadelphia area!

The first is Allied Hobbies, a game store up in Northeast Philly. They’ll be holding PFS games every third sunday of the month, starting on October 19. You can check out their Warhorn, and their address is up on the Venues page.

If you’ve been following the Paizo site, you know that the RPG is not the only game in town. Paizo is trying to start an Organized Play system for the Adventure Card Game as well. It’s been a little rocky getting off of the ground, but it looks like everything will be available in October, and 7th Dimension will be the first location offering the Adventure Card Game in the Philly area. They’ll be hosting it every Saturday in October – if you’re interested check out our venues page and calendar page for more information.

More information related to the ACGOP will be arriving on this site, so stay tuned!

Philly-Specific News

We have 3 conventions coming up over the next couple months.

The first is Unseelie Court 2014, a 3-day convention hosted by Redcap’s Corner. This will be on October 24th-26th and will feature the first 6 levels of the Emerald Spire along with the big interactive special, Legacy of the Stonelords.

After that. on November 7-9 will be Nerdvemberfest. Events aren’t up yet, but I’ll send out an email when they are. This is not a PFS-only convention, so feel free to come and play a slot or two of PFS while trying out other things as well.

Lastly November 14-16 is MEPACON, a 3-day convention held out in Clark’s Summit, PA. While not technically in our area, there will be a number of Philly people there and Jason Schimmel usually does a good job with PFS. I’d recommend that you take a look!

Pathfinder Society General News

John Compton posted a large amount of clarifications to issues brought up by the Year of the Sky Key. Normally I would try to break them down and explain each one, but John did a good job of that, so I’m going to link to that post and do a quick summary here:

• The Guide overrules Additional Resources when it comes to Warpriest retraining due to the playtest. (You know, what we all figured was going to happen.)
• Playtest shaman who took features for summoning can retrain those since the summon spells were stripped off of their list.
• We have retraining synergies for all the ACG classes now! I made a table for those of you who find that a little confusing. (Although I’m waiting on a couple clarifications, so this may be updated depending on the response from the powers that be.)
• You hold onto stuff from your previous faction. If you were a Hellknight before, you’re still a Hellknight, even though there is no Cheliax faction.
• The nation-based factions basically morphed into the ideal-based factions. If you’re a former Andoran, you don’t need to spend that character’s free faction change in order to switch into Liberty’s Edge.
• If you were a member of the Risen, you don’t get a free faction change, but if you became a member of the Risen before Season 6, then you can pay to switch factions. On the other hand, if you got it afterward the start of Season 6, then you’re stuck.
• You need the Technologist feat for skill checks involving technology.
• Creatures with hardness don’t take half damage from energy attacks.
• Investigators can craft like an Alchemist.
• The Ratfolk and Samsaran sections from the ARG are legal to play if you have the boon.
• If a deity grants a domain, it grants that Warpriest blessing as well.
• You cannot pick any language you want for a ring of eloquence.

Pathfinder General News

While I don’t highlight every product that Paizo puts out, there is one I would like to highlight, and that is the Iconic Heroes Miniatures. Getting involved with buying miniatures can be a very expensive hobby, but getting a full set of the Iconics can be really useful, especially if you do a lot of GMing and people need minis for the 4th player pregen they’re bringing (or a new player at the table is using a pregen.) They’re coming out in 2015, and you can see the first two sets previewed here and here.

Due to personal reasons, maintaining the news fell by the wayside. However, that just means that we need a big news recap! Let’s see what’s new in PFS for the past couple months. For those of you who follow Paizo’s site, some of this may be old news, but here’s everything that happened since my last news post (at the end of January)

Philly-Specific News

We have a convention coming up next weekend. If you haven’t signed up for Seelie Court yet, you should. It’s 4 days of module and new scenario goodness! Also, if this is your first time going to a convention, you should check out this post written for our last convention to get what we expect.

Also, DEXCON 17 has been announced for 4th of July weekend. There are no games to sign up for yet, but keep the date free (if you’re not doing anything else 4th of July weekend).

Pathfinder Society General News

John Compton released a new reward for GMs. It is a chronicle sheet that you can attach to one of your characters to give them various bonuses depending on how many stars you have and what level your character is. You can get it from the product page for the sheet, or check out this blog post and discussion thread on Paizo’s site for more discussion on how to use them and what they do.

Carrion Crown has been sanctioned for AP play. No word yet on when Warriors of the Reborn Forge or Tears at Bitter Manor will be sanctioned.

We’ve received the names and factions for all of the scenarios for the rest of the season. Our Factions page has been updated with the appropriate information and links to the new faction letters for the appropriate scenarios. As a reminder, if you are running a scenario from Season 5, then you should be taking a look at the appropriate faction letters beforehand so you understand what the faction missions are for that scenario.

The call for GMs for GenCon arrived about a month ago. There may or may not be spots left, but I wouldn’t be hopeful. However, there is one interesting piece of information there. We now know that there will be 2 specials released at GenCon along with Bonkeep 3 – but we also got a spoiler of the name of the first 3 scenarios in Season 6. Looks like we’ll be headed to Numeria!

Pathfinder General News

Sean K Reynolds, one of the three people on the Design Team of Pathfinder, left Paizo back in February. His presence helped to shape Pathfinder in many ways and it is sad to see him go. Paizo is still in the process of finding a replacement for him.

We’ve found out our first information about the Iron Gods adventure path! It’s looking really sweet so far, and I’m hoping to either play or run it when it comes out! Robots! Gods! Sci-fi in fantasy! Woo!

We also know the name and cover of the Free RPG Day adventure – Risen from the Sands. It looks like the adventure will contain pregens of 4 Advanced Class Guide classes, so that will be our first opportunity to see how those classes have changed since the playtest that we participated in. This module will be likely to be PFS Sanctioned, and we will certainly be running it in various places throughout the region, so keep your eyes open when we announce when and where we will be running it.

FAQs

Animal Shaman Druids Get Wildshape at Lvl 6 – Due to how the wild shape ability of the various shamans was worded, it wasn’t clear whether or not a druid with an animal shaman archetype (saurian shaman being one of the most famous) could actually wildshape at level 4 or not. The answer is no, you need to wait until level 6. But then you can start wildshaping into your specific animal early. (FAQ)

It Only Takes a Standard Action to Throw a Splash Weapon – This may seem obvious, but it stems from an entry in the action table in the combat chapter in the Core Rulebook. People saw that entry and freaked over whether or not we have been playing splash weapons wrong. The Pathfinder Design Team clarified that the “prepare a splash weapon” entry in the combat chapter is there for items like a flask of oil, which aren’t usually splash weapons to be made into a splash weapon. Your alchemist fire still only takes a standard action to throw (plus whatever action it took to get it out in the first place). (FAQ)

The Ice Tomb Hex Got Clarified – Ultimate Magic introduced a major hex called ice tomb, which didn’t give a range, duration or really any details besides the fact that there was a tomb made of ice around the target. The Pathfinder Design Team came in and clarified the restrictions on the ability. (FAQ)

An Amulet of Mighty Fists Doesn’t Add to Grapple – There was a big question about whether or not bonuses to unarmed strikes added to grapple maneuvers or not, especially since a lot of bonuses to unarmed strikes also said in the text of the bonus that it also applied to grappling. The PDT came in and made a post clarifying that they did not because grapple is not a weapon-based maneuver, and the amulet of mighty fists only applies when using unarmed strikes in a weapon-based maneuver. (Forum Post)

Philly-Specific News

Just another reminder about DREAMATION. Also Seelie Court and Mepacon.

Pathfinder Society General News

Two new scenarios are out! The first is 5-12: Destiny of Sands, Part I – A Bitter Bargain. Amenopheus and the Society want to gain information regarding other Jeweled Sages, but there’s only one person with that information. If you have an Osirion, Sczarni, or Qadiran character, they should be interested with this scenario, especially the person who has that information… Note that this is the first scenario of a 3-part series with different level ranges. The first 2 parts are 1-5, and the third part is 3-7. These will be coming out 1/month until March, so get ready for an interesting delve into Osirion!

The second scenario is 5-13: Weapon in the Rift. There’s an old tower with a really big weapon in the Worldwound. All you have to do is go in and reactivate it. Sounds easy? Think again. The worldwound never makes things easy, especially since not everything seems to have gone as planned the last time it was activated. Also, this scenario has a hard mode much like 4-26: Waking Rune (minus a certain 9th level spell we all know and love…), so bring your most ferocious 5-9 characters and get ready for a tough challenge. Silver Crusade characters are encouraged to play this scenario.

Pathfinder General News

Ultimate Combat has been reprinted! As is the case when any book is reprinted, Paizo takes the time to errata a bunch of things that need fixing. You can download the errata from this page.

If you have something on one of your characters that needs to be changed, pg. 27 of the Guide to Society Organized Play can help you out as to figuring what needs to happen. Most of the UC errata results in minor changes at best, but there is one big change to note.

Crane Wing. The single best style in the game has been deemed by Paizo to be too good and has been nerfed heavily. When you are using Total Defense, the feat works the same, but if you are only fighting defensively, then instead 1/rd you may apply a +4 to your AC vs. any one attack before the dice is rolled. If this breaks your PFS character, then you may retrain the feat as allowed by pg 27 of the GtSOP. Normally this wouldn’t allow you a free retrain of any higher style feats, but John Compton has decided that if you have Crane Riposte, you can trade that for free as well. However, make sure to note this FAQ to Crane Riposte before you do so – the FAQ changes the Crane Style feats from almost entirely defensive to an interesting balance.

Also of note – People of the Sands came out, and with it brought a new version of the Living Monolith* prestige class. The Living Monolith was already a solid prestige class, and the update brings with it more versatility and a wider range of PCs who might want to take it. It also bring with it stricter requirements for qualifying for the class. According to Additional Resources, if you already have levels in Living Monolith from the old Osirion book, you can keep it. Otherwise, you must now use the one from People of the Sands.

Also, Round 2 of RPG Superstar voting is up! Be sure to check out Brian Lefebvre’s Waterway Mistress! It looks awesome – let’s hope he makes it to round 3!**

* Note that at time of writing this goes to the old version of the Living Monolith prestige class. As far as I can tell, the new version isn’t up online anywhere. Trust me, it’s sweet. I’m heavily thinking of making a magus living monolith now…

** This message paid for by the Friends of Brian Lefebvre and is not endorsed by him in anyway.

Philly-Specific News

We had a very successful Winter Gameday this past weekend.15 tables went off, including 4 tables of Library of the Lion. Things are back to usual for a while in Philly, with regularly scheduled games at the Strat, 7th Dimension, and Redcap’s.

Pathfinder Society General News

Library of the Lion is finally out! If you haven’t played it yet, grab your Investigators and get ready to infiltrate a secret Taldan library for hints from the past that might help our future. It contains faction missions for Cheliax, Grand Lodge, and Taldor and is a scenario designed for characters from levels 1-5.

Also, Carrion Crown has just been sanctioned for PFS play. Details are available at John Compton’s blog post. Also according to that blog post, Wardens of the Reborn Forge will be sanctioned most likely around the end of the month. We’ll keep our fingers crossed.

Pathfinder General News

There’s only one more day left in voting for round 1 of RPG Superstar. Check out all the cool custom items created by members of the Paizo community and vote to help your favorites advance to the top 32!

Philly-Specific News

We have a bunch of conventions/special game days coming up in the near future. On January 11, we have the Winter Gameday, February 20-23 is DREAMATION over in Northern New Jersey, April 4-6 is MEPACON, and April 17-20 is Seelie Court. All the links go to their respective Warhorns for signing up (except MEPACON, which doesn’t have signups available yet). If you’re available those weekends, we’d love to have you.

Pathfinder Society General News

We have new content! Well, at the time of writing this, we have one piece of new content – 5-10 Where Mammoths Dare Not Tread, a 7-11 scenario set in the Realm of the Mammoth Lords with no faction missions. I’ve run it already, and it’s a pretty sweet scenario. Fair warning to GMs though, it’s a lot to prep. I already put my prep for it on the Google Shared Prep Drive, and I would highly recommend you take a look at it. There’s a lot of stat blocks in the scenario.

The other December scenario, 5-11 Library of the Lion, got delayed and is due to come out January 3rd. It has to do with Taldan history, which obviously means it has to be good. There will be faction opportunities for Cheliax, Grand Lodge and Taldor.

Also, Wardens of the Reborn Forge came out this month! It takes place in the mana-dead/primal magic city of Alkenstar with guns! It looks to be pretty sweet, and it looks like it’s going to be sanctioned for PFS play much like Dragon’s Demand was. The most interesting part is that the module is designed for 12th level characters and will take them to 15th, potentially making it a pseudo 2nd retirement arc for PFS characters. The chronicle sheets haven’t come out yet, so if you want to run it for PFS credit don’t start yet. You can, however, certainly pick it up and start preparing if you want to GM it.

Pathfinder General News

The time to submit your RPG Superstar wondrous item is coming to a close. You have until January 1st at 5pm Eastern to submit your item!

FAQs

Presumably the Pathfinder Design Team has been hard at work on the Advanced Class Guide and hasn’t had much time to address FAQs. There are no new FAQs to report.

Philly-Specific News

Winter Gameday is coming! Make sure to sign up on the warhorn here to reserve your slot!

Congrats to Benn Roe on his fourth star!

Pathfinder Society General News

The playtest will soon be ending. I’ve had a lot of questions about what this means for Pathfinder Society. The answer is pretty much nothing. You can keep playing your playtest characters from now until when the book comes out. Once the book comes out, you have to update your characters to the new version of the class, changing only what has changed between the playtest and the final version. As usual, make sure you pay attention to the playtest forum during the final days of the playtest to see if there are any changes to the class from the pdf they released. (For example, they fixed one part of the Investigator since the last update.)

A recent blog post has posted the schedule for the first 3 months of 2014. Get ready for a 3-part series in Osirion!

Pathfinder General News

RPG Superstar 2014 has been announced! RPG Superstar is a competition Paizo has every year to gain new freelancers. The winner writes a module for Paizo, and the rest of the top 4 each write a PFS scenario. All you have to do to enter is to come up with a wondrous item and submit it to the linked page! Check it out and start designing those wondrous items. You have until the end of the year to submit your item.

FAQs

Let’s see what the Pathfinder Design Team has done in the past month!

The magus must use a spell in a magus spell slot with spell combat (unless he gets an ability that says otherwise) – As with any build focused on spell damage, a level dip into crossblooded orc/draconic sorcerer can do wonders for magus spell damage. However, this FA clarifies that you can’t use the spells granted to you by that level for spell combat by default. (Like usual, broad study lets the magus get around this restriction.) (source)

A weapon can get multiple bane enhancements, but their bonuses overlap – Pretty much what it says on the tin. A +1 elf bane human bane longsword only gets +2 to hit and +2d6+2 to damage when used against a half-elf. (source)

Celestial Servant only changes the type of the animal companion, not anything that would change because of the type change – Celestial Servant changes the type of your animal companion to magical beast. Magical beast, like any other creature type, defines what kind of hit die, BAB, save progressions, class skills, and other abilities the creature has. This would change a lot of things about the animal companion (including needing to rebuild 1/2 the animal companion table), but it has been clarified that the feat doesn’t do that.

Claws on your feet? Four legs good. Two legs bad. – Turns out the difference between talons and claws are actually something to pay attention to. The FAQ breaks down when you’re allowed to put claws on your legs and the reason for doing so. (source)

Clerics with outsider subdomains can actually use their planar binding spells – Normally, in order to use planar binding, you must make a magic circle spell of the same alignment to trap it. Unfortunately, all the magic circle spells have alignment descriptors of the opposite type of the creatures they trap, which means that clerics cannot prepare them if they are of the same alignment of their subdomain. This is off, so the FAQ lets them do the binding without doing the magic circle. (source)

Vestigal arms don’t grant you an extra attack – This is right in the wording of the discovery, but this FAQ clarifies what that actually means. Vestigal arms are still really useful, but they don’t actually give an extra attack in a full attack. (source)

Half Orcs can’t select the Acute Darkvision as a racial trait unless they kept their darkvision – RAW, you could trade away darkvision and get it back by taking Acute Darkvision. RAI, Acute Darkvision is supposed to be an upgrade for regular darkvision, not an ability that gives you darkvision in the first place. This FAQ makes RAW match RAI. (source)

Philly-Specific News

Honestly, there’s not much new on the local news front. Just a reminder that there are two conventions coming up – MEPACON and Nerdvemberfest. Other than that, things are back to normal in Philly, with our gamedays happening back on schedule after the momentary blip that was Unseelie Court. As usual, check the Calendar for more details!

Pathfinder Society General News

Two new scenarios have come out! 5-06: You Have What You Hold is a exploration into the city-state of Tymon, where gladitoral combat is the great equalizer. Someone’s messing with Pathfinder shipments, and it’s up to you to figure out who. Sczarni members won’t want to miss this one!

5-07: Port Godless is Pathfinder Society’s 2nd trip to Rahadoum, the country of atheists. At least this time, you won’t be smuggling in clerics into a godless nation. However, you still need to watch out for those Pure Legionnaires. Can you make it through and save the Riftwardens that have been captured there? Members of the Cheliax, Osirion and Qadiran factions won’t want to miss this!

Also, while we were at Unseelie Court, John Compton, head developer for PFS, had a video chat with one of the VCs for Atlanta, Nani Pratt. During that chat, he took questions from the audience and said a lot about the direction of PFS over the course of the season. You can find that chat here.

Additional Resources was updated for Blood of the Moon. While the skinwalker race isn’t freely available, all the equipment and magic items are open. Check it out!

FAQs

There’s a lot of FAQs over the past two weeks, so here they are in one post to keep track of them. Most of them are relatively minor, although there are some changes to archetypes that players of that archetype should really pay attention to.

Weird Words – Our first FAQ is not actually an FAQ, but the Pathfinder Design Team suggesting a fix to an ability.The Weird Words ability of the Sound Striker Bard Archetype has pretty bad wording. It can be read one of two ways – either all the words could hit one target and then it’s pretty strong or the words had to target separate targets in which case it was pretty weak. On top of that, no matter how you read it it required about 30 dice rolls to resolve, which was just too much. (I ended up going out an buying color-coded dice for my Sound Striker at GenCon). The Pathfinder Design Team ended up suggesting a fix to it, and that’s what the link to the side is for. If you have a sound striker, or if you just want to see this ability work, feel free to comment on the thread linked. (source)

Crossblooded/Wildblooded Don’t Work Together – The title of this one basically says it all. You can’t combine the Crossblooded and Wildblooded Sorcerer archetypes since they both replace the same class features. This FAQ reinforces that although the wildblooded bloodlines look like alternate sorcerer bloodlines, they are in fact archetypes and behave like archetypes (unlike say, subdomains). Another side effect of this is that it’s really hard for crossblooded to stack with any sorcerer archetype, which honestly is fine since crossblooded is already pretty strong. (source)

You Can Lose Actions During Your Turn – If you get reduced in the number of actions you can take in a turn, then that reduction is applied immediately, even if it means you no longer get the action you are currently attempting to do. The easiest example of this is if you provoke an AoO from a monk, and he uses Stunning Fist and you fail your Fortitude save, you stop where you provoked from and lose the rest of your turn. (source)

Black Blades Can Be Sundered – The Bladebound Magus Archetype allows the magus to gain an intelligent weapon called a black blade with its own arcane pool and its own abilities. One of those abilities is Unbreakable, which makes the black blade immune to the broken condition and making the blade unconscious when it would be broken. This FAQ clarifies that while you can’t break the black blade, you can still destroy it. Unbreakable is apparently not undestroyable. (source)

Eagle Shamans Have the Ability to Become Medium and Large! – Eagle Shamans were hindered from fully using their abilities by the availability of stat blocks of Medium- and Large-sized birds. This FAQ tells those druids how to find appropriate shapes to turn into. (source)

Sohei Monks Can Flurry of Blows With Light Armor – Sohei is a Monk Archetype that, among other things, grants the monk armor proficiency but still wants it to use flurry of blows, which is an ability that doesn’t work if the monk is wearing armor. This FAQ fixes that, and makes sohei an even stronger archetype for monks. (You still don’t get the monk AC bonus if you’re wearing armor though. That would be silly.) (source)

Prestige Classes Which Advance Spellcasting Only Advance Spellcasting – When your prestige class says that it advances spellcasting, it advances your caster level, spells per day, and spells known if you are a spontaneous caster. No bloodline spells, not mystery spells, no patron spells, nothing besides what is written in the spells class feature of your class. (source)

Metamagic Spells Count as Their Effective Level or Original Level, Whichever is Worse For the Caster – Say you have a dazing intensified fireball. (First of all, holy crap, you have a dazing intensified fireball. That’s pretty sweet!) You want to cast it defensively? That’s a DC 29 concentration check since it’s a 7th level spell. You want to use a selective metamagic rod on it? Hope you have a greater version since the lesser and normal versions won’t work on it. However, you will be sad when you try to make that spell go through a globe of invulnerability and it doesn’t work since it counts as a 3rd level spell for that. (source)

Clarification on How Mithral Pricing Works for Non-Armor Items – You use the item’s weight, not the new weight once it becomes mithral. Yeah, I know, not exciting. Not every FAQ is. (source)

If a Weapon is Made Out of Multiple Materials, Use the Lower Hardness for Sunder – The basic idea behind this FAQ is that if you are taking the time to sunder a battleaxe, you would be a fool if you tried to break the hard metal head instead of the softer wooden haft, so you use the hardness of the wood rather than the metal. This means you should really have the description of your weapon with you when you play a character so that the GM can quickly adjudicate what kind of materials the weapon is made out of. But of course, you’ve been making sure that you have your additional resources with you whenever you play that character, right? (source)

The Bastard Sword is Either One-Handed or Two-Handed, But Not Both – The bastard sword is a weird weapon. Anyone with martial weapon proficiency can use it as a two-handed weapon, but if you burn a feat on exotic weapon proficiency (or you’re a half-elf who took the ancestral arms racial trait), you can use the bastard sword as a one-handed weapon. The question then comes up with feats like Power Attack which care if it’s a one- or two-handed weapon. The answer is that if you’re wielding it in one hand, it’s one handed. If you’re wielding it in two hands, it’s two handed. (source)

Alchemist Confusion Bombs Require a Saving Throw – The alchemist discovery Confusion Bombs allowed the alchemist to auto-confuse someone who took a direct hit from an alchemist bomb, but he had to trade away 2d6 damage to do that. This effect was ridiculous, and now there’s a saving throw to bring it back in line with, say, actual confusion. (source)

Temporary Bonuses to Ability Scores Work Like Permanent Bonuses, Except They Are Temporary – In the glossary, they had to save space when referencing what temporary bonuses to ability scores do. This FAQ clarifies that it was only to save space, but they should still do everything that full ability scores do. (For instance, temporary increases to strength will increase carrying capacity.) (source)

Feral Combat Training Allows You to Use Your Monk Increased Unarmed Strike Damage in Place of the Natural Attack’s Damage – The basic rule is that natural attacks and flurry of blows don’t mix, unless you have Feral Combat Training. Since it says that all effects that apply to an unarmed strike apply to a natural attack, this includes the monk’s class feature that increases their damage. I’m sure there’s some ridiculous build that comes from this – so monk optimizers have fun! (source)

If Your Familiar Delivers a Touch Spell For You, it Doesn’t Break Your Invisibility – The trick here is that you aren’t the one making the attack, your familiar is the one making the attack. Not an big leap of logic, but one nice to have written down. (source)

Alchemists With the Chirurgeon Archetype Can Now Use Their Archetype to “Cast” Breath of Life on People – At 10th level, Alchemists with the Chirurgeon Archetype gain the ability to prepare breath of life as an extract and give it to other people. The problem is that usually the action economy of feeding other people potions doesn’t work out that well. Normally this doesn’t matter, but the action economy actually prevents breath of life from actually being cast on anyone. This has been fixed. (source)

Augment Summoning Now Works on Summon Monster or Summon Nature’s Ally Spell-Like Abilities – Continuing Paizo’s recent trend of spells = spell-like abilities, summoners can use Augment Summoning to improve the summoned creatures off of their spell-like abilities just like their spells. They still can’t use it to buff their eidolon though. (source)

Local News

We’re in the middle of Unseelie Court right now, and we’ve had an awesome turnout! We have a five table Siege of the Diamond City going off as this post is being written. Defending Nerosyan is tough work, but they seem to be holding off the demons for now!

In other con news, MEPACON signups are open. Sign up soon to make sure the tables you want are available!

Pathfinder General News

Weapon cords have been errata’d. Now you can retrieve the weapon tied on the other end of them as a move action (as opposed to a swift action). FAQ here. Note that due to rules for retraining in PFS due to rules changes/clarifications, you may sell weapon cords back at their full price, but you may not change anything else about your character.

If you are a divine class with a deity whose favored weapon is unarmed strikes, your deity now gives you the feat Improved Unarmed Strike. Previously this only worked for Clerics, but not other classes that worshiped a deity. Inquisitors of Irori rejoice! FAQ here.

A couple answers on retraining. First, when you retrain something, it only matters if you meet the prerequisites now – not when you gained the feat that you are replacing. For example, you can have a rogue take Skill Focus (Craft (pie)) at first level, then retrain into Weapon Focus at 2nd level, even though the rogue didn’t have +1 BAB at first level, he has it when he retrains and that’s all that matters. FAQ here.

Also on retraining, there was an idea floating around call “bootstrapping,” where you retrain levels of the classes that you used to qualify for a prestige class into more levels of the prestige class, using the other prestige class levels to qualify. The hammer has come down on that practice. FAQ here.

Spell Mastery is no longer a wizard-only feat in Pathfinder Society. Back in the days of the Core Rulebook, the only arcane prepared caster was a wizard, so the feat only references wizards. Since then, we’ve had alchemists, witches and magi (plus who knows what coming out of Advanced Class Guide!), so John Compton has PFS house-ruled it to also apply to all other prepared arcane casters. (For people who are reading Spell Mastery and wondering why people would take it, it’s a prerequisite to get into Magaambyan Arcanist.) Messageboard post here.