What are some classes you've really found mechanically, functionally, and narratively interesting, vs. ones you've found lacking in those departments that you've played or tried?

For me, Necromancer is a stand-out hit. Thralls are a huge level of flexibility, and there are numerous directions you can take the class with various themes and roles. You have multiple ways to approach (literally, even) an enemy and many ways to harm them, with several focus spells enabling reflex saves. You can even tool your necromancer to be a healer pretty effectively, and commanding /summoning a thrall gives you a very useful third action to weave between spells.

Commander meanwhile felt a bit less engaging to me. Range issues with the banner, coupled with running short on actions to actually use commands and reposition made things a bit of a challenge and led to a lot of turns where it felt like you weren't living up to your potential or fantasy. While I had a similar problem with Runesmith, at least runesmith made up for it with reliability, given its abundance of save effects.

Honorable mention for a bland design for me has been what little I've played of the Slayer playtest. While power wise it felt okay, its current iteration felt kinda generic in its rotations, especially since a lot of the trophy reinforcements are mostly passive effects. I'm hoping it shapes up a bit more during the playtest and gets more specialty actions. I often found a hard time figuring out what to do with my relentless action, especially when I needed to hold the front line.

Ability boosts can be spread a bit thin, especially at level 1. Sometimes a decent strategy is to shirk a boost in your KAS in favor of placing it elsewhere. I've personally seen this done with Monk in one of my games, but I've also heard of it being a strategy for thaumaturge, warpriest, and mutagenist. I'm curious how often people have actually done so and how it felt, and what classes felt the most okay-est to do so on. (Not just theorycrafting it.)

I'm also kinda curious how different the game would look if all classes could only start with +3 at most in any stats, instead of +4 in their key score.

There's also the angle of how long the campaign goes for: if it only reaches level 5, then the most you can get an attribute to anyway is +4, so you can plan around that.

Come to think of it, my very first character, all the way back in the playtest, was a champion who started with +3 in strength. I can't remember the precise reasons I did so, but I think it had something to do with full plate being out of reach at level 1.

What Lore did you find randomly useful in a game in a moment that nobody expected? Bonus points for funny class combinations. This isn't just whether or not your group used lore skills, but if a lore came from an unexpected source or was something no one expected to find useful.

For me: in one game I was running, the party was part of an undead mafia. The barbarian was a skeleton with the bounty hunter background who spoke like a 40k ork.

At some point they were reviewing contracts for purposes of cutting some protection deals with local shops, and lo and behold, the -1 int Barbarian had Legal Lore, complete with a 20 on the check, and was able explain how to fix any holes in the contract without even knowing how to spell the word 'contract.'

I've been workshopping some runesmith ideas, and Vital Compound Invocation caught my eye. In combat, it's decent healing and is a nice little bonus, but I realized that there's no limit on how often you can apply it, which makes it really effective out of combat.

>"You can invoke runes from traditions that manipulate vital energy to restore flesh. You Invoke two Runes—one must be a divine rune, and one must be a primal rune. In addition to the runes’ normal effects, one creature that’s within 30 feet of both invoked runes regains Hit Points equal to 5 + double your level."

For your 1st and 2nd action: trace a harmless rune. 3rd action: Vital Compound Invocation, healing someone for 5 + 2x your level (starting at level 6, this is 17 HP per round).

It's only single target, but as long as you have one or two support runes, especially ones that don't have a specific tradition, this seems like a great way to patch your party up. (While no Divine runes are available before level 9, as a reminder you can replace the Magical trait with a specific tradition.)

At least I'm assuming this all works--is there any reason it wouldn't?

I'm hoping someone might be able to figure out a slightly inconvenient behavior.

Periodically, when I wake my PC from sleep, my Scarlett Solo will fail to 'initialize.' I have to unplug and re-plug it back in for it to turn on.

I have it connected to a Baby Bottle via XLR, running with 48V enabled. PC specs if at all useful:

• OS: Win10 64 Bit Home Premium
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7700x
• RAM: 32 GB DDR5 (@4800 Mhz)
• GPU: Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti
• MOBO: ASRock X670E Steel Legend
• PSU: 750W gold rated

It works fine once I replug it, but this problem happens inconsistently. I'm wondering if anyone's encountered this before.

After just over 1.5 years, I finally finished running Blood Lords, for not one, but two groups side-by-side.

We played with Free Archetype, with any undead dedications being a one-time bonus on top of FA rules, should a player take them.

OBVIOUS SPOILERS AHEAD!

the parties

Group A consisted of 5 people:

• dhampir (later vampire) spellshot gunslinger. She ultimately became the trap, stealth, and arcana specialist (the legendary arcana feat is cracked, allowing you to substitute any other magic skill with arcana). Despite contending with reload, their ability to unerringly hit targets at range, and use spell woven shot, dance of thunder, or called shots allowed them to always have an answer to almost any situation.
• changeling starless shadow witch. The occultism specialist, as well as a skill crafter and the only full spellcaster in the group, with an emphasis on shadow magic (shadowcaster). They were the only non-void healing member in the party. Their mother was >!Nathnelma!<, and they had no fondness for her. Her Patron also happened to match >!Hyrune's,!< and said patron actually pitted the two against each other in a duel to the death. (She wound up using an occult dragon form and swallowing him whole.) Post-game, she requested Geb's help in freeing herself from her patron, and is now a seneschal witch.
• elf vampire fencer swashbuckler. Also with the alchemist archetype, they were good at crafting and were the big face for the party. They also doled out mutagens to buff up everyone for out of combat checks. They started as one of the Quick, but 'died' in the fight with >!Sahni!<. The mayor of the town raised her as a vampire as a favor to the party. (She wound up turning the dhampir into a full vampire as her first 'feeding frenzy' (I know this isn't really how this works but the gunslinger really wanted to become a full vampire). She wound up using her influence to open a casino.
• beastkin ghoul elemental barbarian. The hellhound, they were an excellent grappler and one of the heaviest hitters in the group. They also invested heavily into medicine and the medic archetype, as well as fire kineticist dedication (thermal nimbus is stupid strong as an archetype pick). They also started off as one of the quick, but in book 3, elected to ask one of the ghouls the party encountered to turn her, mainly as a path to functional immortality (so the swashbuckler girlfriend wouldn't outlive her).
• orc justice champion. They negated a ton of damage and, even with two reactive strikers in the team, held the record for most kills on the enemy's turn. They spec'd into intimidation and athletics. She was the most morally steadfast in this group, themed after a Dark Knight from FF, and hated injustice, even when it was 'lawful.' She ultimately bartered with Geb post-campaign to leave the nation and be released from her duties, which Geb allowed.

Group B was 4 people:

• vampire cloistered cleric of urgathoa. They specialized in medicine and occultism, and had a preference for being a blaster (not exclusively, but Divine Decree was their favorite spell). Their burst healing also turned the tides of some fights, and alongside the bard were the best haunt specialists. They frequently would use improved command undead to great effect as a force multiplier. They were originally turned by >!Hyrune.!<
• ghost poppet monk. They focused on monastic weaponry and clinging shadows stance. They would swap between grappling and using a kusarigama (reskinned to be a giant pair of scissors) and spent most combats grappling, giving barbarian from A a run for their money. They originally had no idea who they were in life (or if they even were ever alive).
• sprite changeling bard beastmaster. This player was a bit of a power gamer and very much liked finding or overestimating ways to compres actions and rider effects they had access to, however even when I ruled something didn't work quite like they thought (expecting things to work like in 3.5 for instance), they still were insanely effective. Surprisingly, they never used lingering composition, in favor of Fortismo. Their pet became super stacked, and used the whole gamut of spell types to the kind of effectiveness a min-maxer is known for. They worked for a Hag coven that was a rival to >!Graveclaw !<(since they came in in book 2) and kept a bag of holy symbols to pretend to be a member of any religion they encountered.
• changeling wood/water kineticist (and air as well at end game). They were very nature themed and idealistic, and found themselves a bit out of place in Geb. That said, when dealing with other factions, such as pharasmins or people from >!Holoma!<, they got along surprisingly well, despite no charisma skills. Overall they were a pretty solid blaster, and had defensive abilities like protector tree and mother's mindfulness to prevent some devastating hits to allies. They picked up beastmaster late game mainly cause they were really unsure of what archetypes to use as a kineticist. Cull the Hurricane also was a clutch AOE. Their mother was actually >!Sahni's !<sister (mainly in name, not by blood). They were by far the most empathetic person in the party, and wanted to try and make Geb a bit of a kinder (and greener) place.

As a bit of player advice, make sure that they make a character who is at least fine with Geb's concepts. It's an undead nation, so some people are eaten and death isn't really viewed as a big deal (on the surface). It's kinda a caste system. Additionally, a player who invests heavily into Nature and Survival, while they can have uses, will find they only come up on occasion.

tweaks

My big issue with the AP overall: the BBEG never even appears until book 6. I do have some changes I'd make if I were to re-run it.

Edit: totally forgot to mention the biggest change I did: anything that naturally did void damage would alter its strikes to have a spirit damage option. When doing so, this reduced the die size of its strikes by 1 step. This only applied to strikes that primarily dealt void damage; spells were unaffected, as were strikes that did a bit of void damage on top. This was so void immunity still mattered, but also so that some encounters could actually hurt the party (some had monsters that ONLY dealt void damage which... why even run the fight then?)

>!Have Kemnebi show up in Book 1. Have him talk about random Blood Lords matters with Berline, and be cordial and chill to the players. He vaguely knows of the poison plot but doesn't really care about what's going on on the farm, cause for him it's more about testing Graveclaw rather than the poison. He also knows that any reaction would potentially incriminate himself. Reveal he's the leader of the Blood Lords, and joke about how anyone can rise to fame if they put in the work, hinting to the party that they may be the next ones.!<

>!In book 4, after the party gets flimsy evidence that Kemnebi is the perp, have him knight the party personally, as requested by Geb. Have him do so with a shit-eating grin, implicitly telling the party "No one will ever believe you. You answer to me, now. Behave." He still has to abide by the Blood Lord rules, in that he can't personally interfere with the party's doings, but make it clear that some of the difficulties the party faces is coming from people loosely tied to Kemnebi.!<

>!For book 6, buff Kemnebi a decent bit. I had the traps activate a bit slower (1 new shadow tendril becomes active each round), but Kemnebi made a shadow clone of himself that had reactive strike and Clinging Shadows stance. When Kemnebi was defeated, if his shadow was up he could, as a reaction, absorb the shadow to become quickened and recover half his HP. The two otherwise share spells and reactions, but he gets 2 reactions. Let him pre-buff too; I locked the door so he was able to detect when the party was coming, and had a few rounds to caste fly, haste, heroism, and false life.!<

That aside, read up on how Haunts work, cause you may still want to do things differently at some points. There are some parts feature back to back solo-haunt encounters (especially in book 3) which REALLY drag and just become attrition based rolling. Lean on narrative ways to dispel haunts on top of skill rolls, or maybe try to think of longer lasting consequences for failure instead of just HP damage. Adopt a fail-forward approach where you can.

Also, I added in bonus perks for high faction rep in book 6. Try to think of thematic rewards to make it feel like farming faction rep paid off. Some ideas may be spell access, consumables, unique temporary buffs, cohorts, or gear discounts.

thoughts on each book

As far as each book went, this is overall how I felt about them, from fav to least:

Book 4: >!The best of the set. Hyrune is a fantastic foe and gets more development than Kemnebi. The party's interactions with his minions can also change a lot. He also was easy to integrate into some players' backstories. Prior to all that though, the parties had the option to forego the parade, or do it AFTER being knighted as Blood Lords to gain the support of a faction. The fight at the docks was also one of the most memorable combats I've done for my players, and the influence system with Kortash actually feels like how it's supposed to be handled.!<

Book 5: >!The party gets to participate in a play which leads to some back-to-back combats and performances that make for an interesting experience, since the skills influence aspects of the fight and they don't get to rest between the otherwise minor combats. They also get to navigate some dangerous caves to get to the big McGuffin, which had some juicy encounters along the way.!<

Book 6: >!The party journeys to the Boneyard, then goes on a collection quest to re-connect with various NPCs and decide their fates, until finally they go through the final dungeon to fight Kemnebi. The collection bit was very fun; depending on faction rep, they got to skip past some challenges. I also had each faction provide the party with an additional support boon, if they had enough rep (e.g. some bonus spells to learn and scrolls provided, a crystal from Ghiasi to one-time summon her as a merchant in the Shadow Sanctum, etc.)!<

Book 2: >!The party deals with hags. If you set expectations, this leads to a variety of encounters and is quite fun. Taviah is a memorable boss, and all hag encounters feel very distinct. One party had a member related to Nathnelma, while the other party had one who Sahni was their 'aunt.'!<

Book 1: >!The intro; some early encounters can be a bit rough, especially when the party is so fragile. The first chapter was honestly really solid; try to encourage creative approaches to deal with the cow (like repurposing the spring gate trap.) Pesaghi is an annoying nutsack.!<

Book 3: >!I liked the Hollow Flesh Market section. Tracking down Taviah takes a while, and the party has to deal with some people from Holoma. This book relies a bit too much on the Influence system, but is a good way to introduce some of the neighboring nations and allow 'nicer' or more nature-focused characters a chance to establish some bonds. This book as well as half of book 2 are great chances for crafting characters to really help, since shop access is sparse.!<

Overall, it was pretty good. You definitely need the right group / player mindset for it, but it's a very good "morally questionable" AP that has room for various concepts to work alongside one another.

If anyone was planning to run it and had some thoughts or questions, I'd be down to answer them too.

I don't just mean having two frontline martials in the group, but rather two characters who have a very significant overlap in their roles. E.g., two monks, two druids, a champion and a guardian, an investigator and a rogue, etc. You sometimes get this when two people both decide on their classes from the outset and lock them in immediately. Both want to be the "dexy skill monkey" or the "frontline defender."

What kind of overlap did you guys have, how did it feel to have that kind of redundancy (both positives and negatives), and was there anything your group or individual players did to help make everyone feel like they had a niche?

For specific examples, I'm especially curious who's played an investigator and rogue side-by-side and how that felt.

I've had an idea for echo management that I feel would alleviate a lot of the pain on the inventory bloat side of things. I've suggested it a few times in the surveys, but I was curious what other people thought of it.

One advantage Wuwa has with their echoes is that, before they're upgraded, they're all 100% blank slates. Outside of the main stat and the sonata set, two echoes of the same type are totally identical to one another, and there are a very finite number of permutations you can get.

Instead of making each echo take up its own inventory slot, the idea would be that the inventory is split in two: upgraded echoes, and stock echoes.

Once an echo gets experience, it becomes a unique item and goes to the upgraded inventory, taking up a slot as it does presently. Before that point, it would be a stackable item depending on its limited identifying factors.

If you have 13 Atk% tick tacks in the Havoc set, they'd count as a single type of item that you have 13 of, like other resources. If you throw them in the blender, you just have to specify how many you want to put in (like when adding XP materials to anything in game). When discarding or locking, you could modify a whole stack at once, but theoretically a filter that discards all but a set amount could also be implemented. (Like if you have a surplus of one echo type, and you just wanna keep 5, this could be an option added to echo management.)

This would be a format that would be much better equipped to handle future sets and expanding rosters of echoes.

As I said I've been trying to suggest this idea to them in the feedback surveys, but I'm also curious if anyone might foresee any issues with it, have ideas to add, or even if they just think it's a good idea or not.

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)