u/zedrinkaoh

When Magic+ released (by Teams+), the big ticket item was Essence Casting, but I haven't seen much discussion about Aspect Summoning and Forms.

Aspects are basically a set of abilities and templates that you can combine to get the specific creature you want when using a battle form or summon. For summons, this means you don't have to reference the bestiary to find what you want to summon, though you don't gain access to the unique, signature abilities that you'd get out of the bestiary. For battle forms, this means you pick what template and abilities fit the creature you want to use, rather than the current MO of picking a specific animal from various similar options. The templates often grant unique actions themselves as well (which is something I felt was missing from a lot of battle forms in the base game), and then the abilities that you can choose add another layer.

However, there are a LOT of templates and abilities in the book--14 pages with 2 columns per page, with 3-5 options per summon/form spell. Reading it over is kinda intimidating.

I'm curious if anyone's tried it out and what their experience with it was like.

There's a weird interaction that I think I noticed. Say you gain an unarmed strike stance, like Crane Stance, and you don't already have powerful fists (e.g. you picked it up from Wild Mimic). Am I correct in assuming you'd actually need to take the -2 penalty that monks and martial artists specifically get to ignore to make strikes lethal?

Late game (like near level 20), a lot of DCs for skills really expect you to have fully invested into a skill to be able to even meet them, still with a significant chance for failure.

I'ma point out some hazards for as examples: late game they often already specify that Legendary proficiency is required to disable, ergo anything less typically locks you out by default, though a lot of people handwave this to allow for it anyway. But, it can potentially be a DC of 50 to disable.

In an AP I've been running with multiple traps like this (level 20 hazards, dcs between 46 and 50), the only player to invest in thievery in the group only went to master. With all modifiers, he's sitting at a +33, so the 50 dc hazard is doable with a roll of 17 or greater, and it's gonna take a minute and result in a lot of failed attempts, even with aid. (There's a discussion to be had about attrition style rolling like this but that's another topic, not what I'm trying to get into here, nor am I asking for advice on running traps.)

Comparatively, a character who's only trained in the skill can't disable the trap on anything other than a natural 20, if you allow them to even try.

Or an example of a hazard that WOULD allow them the lip service of trying: look at the Glimpse Grave: this level 20 haunt says "DC 50 Occultism (trained)" for some reason. If you're only trained in occultism at level 20, with a proficiency of +22, you'd need over +8 from intelligence, circumstance, and item bonuses to even be able to hit that DC 50 on anything other than a 20.

This isn't me saying that trained should always be enough for these challenges, nor is this a thread about traps and hazards or me asking for help in how to run them; obviously a legendary level challenge should require high investment, these are just examples. Other examples might be recall knowledge: if you're only trained, level 20 vs a level 20 creature, your failure chance is pretty high even if you are able to attempt it, to the point that you gotta wonder if it's worth using at only trained.

Obviously trained skills still at least work for simple uses that don't scale with your level, like swimming, climbing, balancing, etc., or when dealing with creatures significantly below your level. But a lot of skill actions, like recall knowledge, sneaking, disable device, grappling, etc. are measured against creature or hazard DCs.

tl;dr

How useful do you find just being 'trained' at late game? Are there any skills that you find more serviceable at a trained level over others? (Like, to me, athletics still feels useful even at just trained to climb and swim, even if you're not grappling or tripping, while thievery feels like it's only useful if it's fully or nearly-fully maxed out.)

Edit: worth noting for this discussion, trained vs level-based DCs is definitely possible, even if it's difficult at times. However, a lot of challenges don't use level-based DCs: it's often much higher (sometimes 10 points higher). This is a lot more common if the source of the DC is from a statblock (like creatures or hazards). Which, that kinda factors into answering the question: how much does a skill see use against a statblock of some kind, vs for general challenges?

Justice champion is really good, since reactive strikes in general are strong. When I see build ideas for unique champion ideas, however, justice is far and away the most popular choice.

What're some concepts that you've found mechanically and/or narratively interesting for other causes, factoring in archetypes, specific ancestry feats, etc.?

I recently picked up the OG, and I'm finding that the game is running at full-tilt during cutscenes and in-world. The CPU and fan usage plummets when I go to the game menu, and oddly also drops when I run at X3 speed. The problem is definitely with the game or processes itself, not my hardware.

One fix I saw was to enable 'efficiency mode' but I believe that's a Windows 11 exclusive feature.

My system is definitely more than enough to handle this game: R7 7700x, 3070ti, 32 GB ddr5, Windows 10. I have Nvidia configured to cap FPS at 60 so it's not a case of runaway framerates (and the x3 speed interaction shows it's something else going on).

Does anyone know of any patches, mods, or settings I can adjust to fix the issue?

See title. Anything that you make a conscious effort to avoid or always try to include, specifically for in-combat. While houserules are welcome, I'm also curious about how people make NPCs behave, when they opt to handwave things, philosophy of how they budget encounters, etc..

Some of mine:

• complex traps / hazards should be paired with an actual fight or time sensitive event (like a chase). In isolation, they're too swingy and it's kinda limited who can interact with them (and even those who CAN interact with them often are super limited in what they can do), and sometimes it's easy to 'cheese' them and avoid their routines while still disarming them. Simple hazards meanwhile work fine in isolation.
• When reinforcements arrive, if they weren't originally in the turn order, at minimum their first action is entering the scene. More actions may be used as necessary, e.g. moving, opening a door, etc., and usually they're not gonna start in a good position; or their presence is somehow announced ahead of time. If they roll initiative after they appear, it's giving them way more action economy than warranted.
  • Some context: I was once in a PF1 game where an NPC walked into the room at the end of round 2, then rolled initiative, rolled well, walked up and crit the bard with a scythe and brought them from full health to nothing in one hit. It was funny, but also felt like "Okay there was no planing for this," mainly it felt like the guy got to double move after opening the door.
• Enemies don't automatically assume a player has reactive strike (or any specific class feature) until they see it happen, unless they are somewhat familiar with the players. Dumb enemies might continue to trigger reactive strike. (Like a skeleton soldier, despite being mindless, might assume everyone has it, cause they're a soldier and that's part of their routine. But an average zombie will trigger it again and again.)
• At the end of a round, if the party clearly has the fight solved (everything's restrained, confused, sickened, quandry'd, no more resources, etc.), I ask if they wanna call it or roll it. They can simply describe how they end the fight (if the target isn't surrendering), or they can continue rolling their attacks and dice if they wanna see Big Number.

I feel the need to gush a little bit, my bud and I have just arrived in Veilwater Basin and this zone is fantastic.

The water in this game looks amazing and feels good to move in, adding a new layer of complexity to exploration. The Drak enemies are different from prior encounters and are satisfying to fight, with variability in their attack patterns and gap closers that actually feel interesting (instead of just a default bum-rush). The environments are beautiful and interesting, and progress has felt very tangible.

While I don't think the mountains were bad, there was a lot of difficulty getting past certain mountain passes, as well as constant rain and poor visibility and a really frustrating final boss. Veilwater has been a breath of fresh air by comparison. One of the Drak Leaders made for an awesome midboss fight so far.

I originally put this game down early in its EA cycle cause it clearly needed more time in the oven, but now it's really evolved and improved since its initial release.

Today's update had a lot of crash fixes. For me, I was having an issue with the game running stable at 60 fps, but then dropping to 45 fps every few minutes for like a minute at a time. I haven't really noticed that while playing today.

My friend has also been dealing with frequent crashes, sometimes every 3 minutes, however, in 4 hours of play today he didn't crash once.

Overall, the update has been solid performance wise for us at least. I'm curious if anyone else has had similar luck or if they're still having issues.

(r7 7700x, 3070 ti, 32 gb ddr5 over here, unknown friend specs but he's running in potato mode usually)