[Finished] PF2 - Entombed with the Pharaohs - one off adventure (Thurs 8-11 EDT)

I think all the initial “[race] Weapon Familiarity” feats have things like this:

For you, martial halfling weapons are simple weapons, and advanced halfling weapons are martial weapons.

That clears up Rando’s issue with them since a martial (except for Rogues with racial Advanced weapons) can take that one feat and be good. The later feats, the ones giving critical specialization and Expert proficiency, are mainly for casters. Rogues don’t really want to use any Advanced weapons since they lose their full progression (Rogues go to Master in their set of weapons). All non-Wizards at least get Simple weapon proficiency progression to Expert naturally (at 13th-level for casters, incidentally), so they can use the racial Martial weapons with that first feat and grab the second feat if they need the crit specialization. The third feat is only needed for non-Wizard casters using racial Advanced weapons or a Wizard using any racial weapons.

Sorry to keep bugging y’all on this but just a quick follow up on the falling damage thing :see_no_evil:. I asked in the Paizo forums for further clarification and the consensus appears to be 0 damage in this thread: https://paizo.com/threads/rzs431qe?Cat-Fall-and-Falling-Damage

Before reading the thread, I was leaning towards my interpretation. After reading the thread I was um still leaning towards my interpretation.

It was the arithmetic and order of operations that was throwing me off. Your interpretation (and the consensus of the thread) seemed a little off in the order of operations to me.

Then I thought about it like this. In the general (falling) sense, everyone is treated like the have 5 feet of Cat Fall, i.e. the first 5 feet they fall results in no damage. Then we apply Cat Fall on top of that.

Fall Distance - Damage Immunity
5’ - normal person takes no damage
15’ (5 + 10) - Cat Fall and trained in Athletics takes no damage
30’ - Cat Fall and expert
55’ - Cat Fall and master
(><) - Cat Fall and legendary

As for the rounding down thing. I don’t even remember reading that, and the “playing the game” chapter is one that I’ve actually read. Y’all are going to have to keep reminding me of it, 'cause every other edition of the game has always rounded up.

I feel like this is the Pathfinder equivalent of the purple dress meme that had the internet in a tizzy a couple of years ago. To me, the words “Treat falls as 10 feet shorter.” are unambiguous. But as per the norm, I seem to be the minority opinion in our group. (I’m not bitter!)

I think there are two questions here:

  1. Does the character take falling damage?

  2. If so, then how much damage do they take?

It sounds like you and Cort are on the side of “Treat falls as 10 feet shorter.” only applying to 2) and not to 1) whereas I am saying that it applies to both.

This is how bored I am…

So I was doing falls like this:

integer iFallHeight = 0; 

if ( player.IsFalling() )
{
	iFallHeight = environment.GetFallHeight( player );

	if ( iFallHeight > 5)
	{
		if ( player.HasFeat( “Cat Fall” ) )
		{
			switch ( player.GetSkillTraining( “Athletics” ) )
			{
				// case 0 of the enum for Athletics would be untrained
				// which is impossible cause the player has the Cat Fall feat
				// and thusly has to be a minimum of trained, enum = 1
				case 1:
					iFallHeight -= 10;
					break;
				case 2:
					iFallHeight -= 25;
					break;
				case 3:
					iFallHeight -= 50;
					break;
				case 4:
					iFallHeight = 0;
					break;
			}
		}

        //this is the big break in my logic
        //I've already checked if iFallHeight > 5, why am I checking again?
		if ( ( iFallHeight > 0 )
		{
			if ( iFallHeight >= 1500 )
				player.ApplyDamage( 750, “bludgeoning” );
			else
				player.ApplyDamage( iFallHeight / 2, “bludgeoning” );
		}
	}
}

Which is “wrong”! The way you check Cat Fall (which is in agreement with the those peeps in the thread) goes like this:

integer iFallHeight = 0;

if ( player.IsFalling() )
{
 	iFallHeight = environment.GetFallHeight( player );

    if ( player.HasFeat( “Cat Fall” ) )
    {
	    switch ( player.GetSkillTraining( “Athletics” ) )
	    {
		    case 1:
		    	iFallHeight -= 10;
			    break;
		    case 2:
		    	iFallHeight -= 25;
		    	break;
	    	case 3:
	    		iFallHeight -= 50;
	    		break;
	    	case 4:
	    		iFallHeight = 0;
	    		break;
    	}
	}

	if ( iFallHeight > 5 )
    {
    	if ( iFallHeight >= 1500 )
    		player.ApplyDamage( 750, “bludgeoning” );
    	else
    		player.ApplyDamage( iFallHeight / 2, “bludgeoning” );
	}
}

Which is right and as you can see makes more sense.

P.S. neither bits of code are checking for any other falling damage mitigators like unbreakable goblins

I salute your coding skills @Rando! It sounds like we’re in agreement now… I think? I don’t actually know what’s true anymore :joy:

False is true, black is white, up is down.

Just to clarify, since it sounds like my last comments on this (after pulling up the relevant rules) got missed in the crosstalk, I think your interpretation makes the most sense to use. Cat Fall just says to treat falls as X feet shorter. No qualifications about “for the damage number” or anything, so the simplest interpretation is to reduce the fall distance before all falling considerations, including whether you take damage at all.

In any case, the whole thing affects only 3 damage in an uncommon scenario, so it’s not like the more generous interpretation is going to break anything.

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Did the Barb scratch a nail falling 5 feet? Can we just heal it up (paint over it) and get to the next thing to kill? Jago is itching to bite something. :smirk:

If a hit point is wasted, Pharasma gets quite irate.

Additionally when you do take falling damage you also end up prone like a chump so there are issues of style here beyond Sif’s nails!

PS - I am so ready for the long weekend to start it’s not even funny.

So the interwebs was flaky again this morning. I get semi-fed up and actually contacted a support agent (via their website portal chat channel thingie).

Went through the regular rigmarole:

  • power cycling the modem
  • checking lights on modem
  • plugging the power adapter of modem directly in wall socket/outlet instead of power bar
  • bypassing my privately purchased router and directly plugging computer into their provided cable modem
  • having support agent run line tests
  • everything looked good on their end

Interwebs as been working all day today after contacting agent. Still have no idea what the problem is/was. Or even if it’s “fixed”.

P.S. Been using this internet provider with their provided modem and my private router for 7 months with the modem and router plugged into the power bar instead of directly in the wall socket.

At the pace we’re going, I’m thinking the APG might actually be out before we get to the lvl 17 adventure.

I had that thought myself.

Also on your internet connectivity, if it comes back after all you did. I would check to see if you have any kinks or bends in the ethernet cords. I’ve run into sporatic disconnections and slowness at work and it turned out it was one of the ethernet cables that was either failing or had been bent or crimped somehow.

Mith

I’ve been thinking a lot about the rogue class again.

The thing that bugged me about this class the first time around is that it felt very “jack of all trades and master of none”. But I recently watched a critique of the rogue class on youtube and there was a section on the different roles the rogue can play which changed my perspective.

So… I went and did a thing. Here is my level 20 character sheet for a reimagined Shine: Shine - Level 20.pdf (362.7 KB)

This build doubles down on the scout role. I added all of the stealth and perception related feats I could find. So damage is a little bit lower (but hopefully still okay). I’ve also pretty much abandoned the idea of being a face with this character but still have some skill points in deception.

Aside from that, I’ve enormously scaled back my expectations regarding stealth - i.e. splitting the party only ever occurs < 0.1% of the time.

Well in the Saltmarsh campaign I just started running, the party split up once they reached the first adventure location in the game.

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Say I have a rogue with the following feats: Nimble Dodge and Nimble Roll.

Suppose they are adjacent to an enemy which is using a strike action to attack them which then misses and I use my rogue’s Nimble Dodge + Nimble Roll to stride 10 feet away.

As I understand it, this stride will trigger the enemy’s Attack of Opportunity.

However, now suppose that my rogue also has the Mobility feat in addition to Nimble Dodge and Nimble Roll and their speed is 25.

The mobility feat on page 184 of the CRB says:

The Nimble Roll feat on page 187 says:

If I’m reading this correctly, the 10 ft movement provided by Nimble Roll is a stride action that results in a move less than half my rogue’s speed. Therefore it should benefit from the Mobility feat and not trigger the enemy’s Attack of Opportunity.

Thoughts?

Nope.

Pg 461 of the CRB makes it ambiguously clear that a single action (like a single stride action) and a reaction are not the same thing.

There are four types of actions: single actions, activities, reactions, and free actions.

Nimble Dodge isn’t giving you a Stride action, it’s saying you can Stride up to 10 feet as part of the reaction.

Their verbiage saying that you can “also Stride” and “the reaction gains the move trait” under Nimble Dodge are there to say yes you will provoke attacks of opportunity when you do this.

I can’t see a way to get all three feats to work together.

Strangely (?), Pathfinder 2e doesn’t put a restriction on who’s turn you can use your reaction on. Unlike other editions of the game you can use a reaction on your own turn, if the triggering conditions are met. So you could provoke an AoO via movement (not using Mobility) and then Nimble Dodge/Roll on your own turn for extra movement and AC/Reflex against that AoO you just provoked. But there’s no way to get Mobility to work with it and not provoke in the first place.

Yes, but it only makes it clear that they are different kinds of actions. They are both actions and they are both Stride actions (note the capitalization on page 187.)

The mobility feat says: When you take a Stride action to move half your Speed or less

It doesn’t specify whether said Stride action has to be a single action or reaction.

Pg 471, a “Stride” is a single action.

The TL;DR: It’s ambiguous because Paizo flubbed Technical Writing 101 and uses the same word to mean multiple things. I would give it to the player since I don’t think it hurts anything to say the nimble Rogue rolling out of danger also avoids taking any AoOs in the process.

The Stride as part of Nimble Roll (I assume that’s what you meant to reference) will already provoke AoOs normally. Giving the reaction the Move trait is really just a reminder of that not specifying something new. Otherwise (ie. if we normally ignore the traits of subordinate actions), what is the point of the MAP comment in Attack of Opportunity on p.142? If we ignore the traits of that Strike, it’s not an Attack and thus doesn’t interact with MAP to begin with.

Also, check out the text of Desperate Finisher (a Reaction) on p.152:

You throw everything into one last press. Use a single action that you know with the press trait as part of Desperate Finisher. You forgo the ability to use reactions until the start of your next turn.

The relevant text here is the Subordinate Actions section in the sidebar on p.462, which I’ll reproduce below:

Subordinate Actions

An action might allow you to use a simpler action—usually one of the Basic Actions on page 469—in a different circumstance or with different effects. This subordinate action still has its normal traits and effects, but is modified in any ways listed in the larger action. For example, an activity that tells you to Stride up to half your Speed alters the normal distance you can move in a Stride. The Stride would still have the move trait, would still trigger reactions that occur based on movement, and so on. The subordinate action doesn’t gain any of the traits of the larger action unless specified. The action that allows you to use a subordinate action doesn’t require you to spend more actions or reactions to do so; that cost is already factored in.

Using an activity is not the same as using any of its subordinate actions. For example, the quickened condition you get from the haste spell lets you spend an extra action each turn to Stride or Strike, but you couldn’t use the extra action for an activity that includes a Stride or Strike. As another example, if you used an action that specified, “If the next action you use is a Strike,” an activity that includes a Strike wouldn’t count, because the next thing you are doing is starting an activity, not using the Strike basic action.

And then the bit on p.461 that was noted above:

There are four types of actions: single actions, activities, reactions, and free actions.

So Reactions are actions, and actions can include other actions. Great. That Stride in Nimble Roll is the Stride action described on p.471, but only kinda, and you have to do some inferring about whether something that happens “when you Stride” only happens when you spend an action to Stride or any time Stride is invoked. Hence the ambiguity.

To me, the fact that both Nimble Roll and Mobility include the “You can use this with other movement types” call-outs says they are using the same concept of Stride, and Mobility should thus apply to Nimble Roll.

Someone might say to this, “The second paragraph of Subordinate Actions clearly means a subordinate action never triggers things triggered by using that action itself.” Okay, then the Strike as part of AoO cannot critically hit, neither can the Strikes in Twin Slice, Rogues can’t get Sneak Attack on their Opportune Backstab, and a dozen other things. Some things have to be able to trigger on subordinate actions or everything goes wonky. The interpretation of that paragraph I’ve seen used is that anything specifying a sequence (like the example in the paragraph saying “the next action you use”) usually won’t work since the “next action” is the containing action/activity/reaction/free-action, not the one specified. But anything that just applies to the action without regard for when or how the action is performed applies even when it is a subordinate action.


Unfortunately, Paizo uses “action” to mean 2 different things: a sort of currency you spend on your turn to do things, and various things you can do (which includes “Single Actions”, “Activities”, “Reactions”, and “Free Actions” per p.461). These 2 things frequently overlap, and Paizo’s use of “action” often means “an Action [currency] spent performing a specified Action [thing you do]”, but it also often refers to only one or the other of the two meanings. A good example of this confusion is Barbarian’s Mighty Rage, which is a Free Action with the Trigger of “You use the Rage action on your turn” and says:

Use an action that has the rage trait. Alternatively, you can increase the actions of the triggering Rage to 2 to instead use a 2-action activity with the rage trait.

Notice how they use “action” 2 completely different ways there.

They should have better separated the two and avoided using the combined form, in my opinion. “If your next action is a Stride” should have been something like “If the next Action you spend is to Stride”. Better yet, since it’s already pretty game-ified, just replace Action [currency] with “Action Points (AP)” instead. You get 3 AP each turn to spend on actions and activities (another term they are not consistent about using), but those actions can also be taken under special circumstances, such as Nimble Roll, without spending any AP.

Then they could specify that only things saying “spend AP on an action” requires the action to be used on its own, while all other phrasings that don’t mention AP, like “take an action”, apply to all contexts the action is used in, such as it being a subordinate action.

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Well, I’ve stopped reading the CRB and GMG hardcovers I bought, 'cause they’re meaningless. I’ll just work on maps and tokens and shit instead.