These are all really good points that both of you make. Hmm… I have to say that being somebody who likes playing a rogue (or at least I like the idea of playing a rogue) my heart is really in favor applying Mobility to the Stride given by Nimble Roll.
That said, I hadn’t considered the stuff on Subordinate Actions. So it seems that this instance of Stride is definitely a subordinate action (Is it subordinate to an activity or subordinate to a reaction? And is a reaction an acitivity?)
I think the question in my mind now is whether Mobility applies to Stride as a basic action or if it also applies to Stride as a subordinate action. What is bothering me is that the wording in Mobility says “When you take a Stride action” and not “When you Stride”. Which, upon further reflection, seems to cast some doubt on the application to a subordinate action (at least to me).
Anyway this is a super ambiguous case and would’ve definitely been helped by a little more clarification in the rules as Cort already pointed out. On a personal level I would really prefer that Mobility did apply, otherwise Nimble Roll is potentially just going from the frying pan to the fire, but then again part of the fun of this game is figuring out what capabilities a monster might have and knowing how to respond. AoO is an uncommon but very powerful capability.
Thank you for weighing in on this @Cortillaen, and thank you @Rando for putting up with my never ending attempts to hack the system.
Anywho… at least rogues have come a long way since the days of needing to be at least 7th level to achieve basic competency in thieving: https://youtu.be/JeUjF0fsJ9c
The more I read the rules the more mad I get. I was pretty salty yesterday.
Correct me if I’m wrong (and at this point regarding Pathfinder 2e that’s almost a given), words like “Stride” and “Strike” are never defined anywhere. According to the appendix, a Stride is a single-action as defined on page 471; it’s one of the basic actions.
A number of class features, feats, etc, reference “Stride”. Most of those are already actions, activities, or reactions themselves and mention just the word “Stride” (like the barbarian’s Furious Charge, or the rogue’s Nimble Roll). But then Mobility (which isn’t an action unto itself) specifically says “Stride action” instead of just “Stride”. Do they mean the same thing? Is the presence of that word “action” telling? The fighter’s Shielded Stride is also a feat that mentions “Stride” without being an action unto itself. It doesn’t mention “Stride action”, it just says “Stride” like Nimble Roll or Furious Charge did. What does that mean?
Am I right in assuming that the writers/designers actually know what they are talking about and the presence of the word “action” under the Mobility feat is supposed to mean something?
Since Furious charge is an activity, the “Stride”(s) and “Strike” mentioned as part of the activity are subordinate actions. Similarly Nimble Roll is a reaction (or modification of the parent Nimble Dodge reaction), so the “Stride” mentioned would be a subordinate action. But Shielded Stride and Mobility are not actions themselves; the both modify “Stride” with the extra caveat that Mobility modifies “Stride actions”.
So my gut reaction (see what I did there?) is still that the mention of the word “action” under the Mobility feat means that no it does not work with anything other than the basic stride action as defined on pg 471.
That all being said, what if we instead choose to define words like Stride and Strike as keywords at our “table”. Strike and Strike action mean the same thing. And Stride and Stride action also mean the same thing. I don’t know how many other spell, magic item, class feature, and feat option interactions that’s going to open up. (I stopped searching for “Stride” in the .pdf after getting to Shielded Stride under the fighter…)
Well, I’m honestly fine either way on the question of Mobility and Nimble Dodge/Nimble Roll. I think it would be pretty awesome for a rogue to be able to do that, but on the other hand, I’m still scratching my head on what the authors really intended.
The main reason I brought it up is to just clear up the matter before possibly going with a rogue again and being disappointed down the line at some point in the future after having really invested time in it. (For us that would probably mean sometime late 2021 )
Hope the internet issues get resolved satisfactorily.
To me, having ambiguity in the rules is a way to let the players and GameMaster have more control over the game. If I remember one of the reasons for Pathfinder was that folks felt D&D had too many rules. Ultimately it is up to the GM to make a decision, and the player to realize that the next GM may not agree. My 2 cents -
I’m good with GM rulings on odd cases, but I dislike 1) games that lean heavily on GM rulings to the point that they basically require the GM to finish the system in order to run it (5e is awful about this as soon as you step outside of combat); and 2) requiring GM rulings because of confusing, imprecise language that makes the devs’ intentions impossible to determine. This is definitely a case of the latter because Paizo uses “action” to mean no less (maybe more) than 3 different things that are often interchangeable.
Shifting gears for a moment, I’ve been doing some background research for my “reimagined” character concept for Shine. Perusing the paizo forums, wiki, and reading Nightglass by Lianne Mersiel.
Nidal is a place that is really hard for me to get my head around from a lore perspective - like how does had a thousands year old country ruled by a mad god of pain actaully work? The best one line description I found on the paizo forum is “Clive Barker writes North Korea.” So I’ve also been reading some memoirs of North Korean defectors for good measure.
So what I’ve come up with so far is that Shine was born in a prison camp to parents who were allowed to mate for their good behavior (i.e. self mortification and snitching on other prisoners). In those conditions, a parent is more of a competitor for food than an actual loving parent. So Shine quickly took to stealing food from her parents when they weren’t around. So that explains how Shine became a thief and also her prisoner background. I assume that at some point in her early teens she managed to escape the camp and eventually befriend members of the church of Desna as well as possibly the pathfinder society. And that is how she eventually managed to escape that accursed land.
Shine is basically “good” but the circumstances of her upbringing have left her with confused notions of friendship and family that she’s had to untangle as an adult so her actual alignment in play is a bit closer to neutral. And her distrust for authority puts her firmly in the chaotic spectrum so she’s Chaotic Neutral. However, it should be emphasized that in Shine’s case Chaotic Neutral does not equal “Chaotic Stupid”. Growing up in Nidal, she has seen many examples of what happens to trouble makers and she does not steal or lie carelessly but only to ensure the survival of herself or those she trusts.
Also, side note. “Shine” has always been sort of a place holder name for her. I still can’t make sense of the linguistics of Nidalese names. They are all over the place. Some of them appear to be derived from old Norman, while others are Norse, and some are even Polish. Go figure. But “Shine” also feels like a nice ironic name for somebody from Nidal.
I also a found a new picture by an artist named Mario Teodosio that I like:
I’m going to be half an hour late today. Apologies, last minute thing came up. My bro’s vehicle is broke and he needs a ride to work this afternoon and I need to pick him up when he gets out, but I should be on around 8:30. Go ahead and start without me and if we have to fight something then just blast away with thems third level cantrips and send in the fur missile.
Man I am relieved I did not have to go searching for a new animal companion after tonight’s battle. Definitely getting some barding for Jago thanks for reminding me @Cortillaen!
Level 7 will be decent for me getting level 4 spells, guess I’m filling all my level 4 slots with Restoration to get rid of the drained conditions heh. Level 8 will be real nice getting another upgrade for Jago from mature companion to incredible companion. I have to decide to make him a savage animal or nimble animal and he gets a single action special maneuver called Knockdown which automatically prones his target if he successfully bit it.
Also I noticed while looking over my character between turns in combat that I completely missed something: I never added my skill feat for level 6 to my character, which was going to be Continual Recovery. So Sorry @Mithinar making Rasinar chain Medicine everyone, I’m supposed to have Continual Recovery as well, just forgot to add it to my character sheet.
There was something about this description that kept reminding me of something - just couldn’t pin it down…
The Echo Knight rushed headlong in alone and attacked.
The Echo was killed every round and every round the Grave Cleric cast Spare the Dying
Echo Knight has a new nick name…Chew Toy
Ouch! I’m getting a strange feeling that I should play Sif more cautiously.
I have been thinking for a while of swapping out her great sword for a glaive so she can attack with a little more safety. I still like flanking with her though because she’s really good at it: fast movement, high acrobatics skill, and immunity to flanking herself.
On a different note: For Rando’s for real campaign starting later this summer, I’m once again flummoxed about character choice after the news from Paizocon.
I was contemplating making a Rogue, but now I see that a player option for the Fetchling ancestry will be a thing next February and I don’t know what to do.
Sigh… it will probably be a lunch bag letdown anyway.
Honestly, i think we all kind of often do our own thing, and we all have our own play styles. For me whether video gaming or tabletop-I am a cautious player and prefer to scope tngs out before I go into an encounter. Its one reason i dont team up a lot when video gaming. Whether thru familiarity or different play style of the other players, I often find myself playing catch up.
Having said that, i will admit Tobey has rushed in a couple of times as well.
It’s an expression my wife uses. I’m not 100% sure what it means but I believe it’s like, there’s a thing that always ends up being underwhelming and you know it’s going to be underwhelming but even so there’s this eternal optimism inside you that’s hoping for something better but then the thing you were looking forward to happens and predictably turns out underwhelming.
So I was really looking forward to the Dhampir ancestry feats but then I saw them and was like “Well this is OK but definitely not great.” And now they’ve announced a Fetchling ancestry and again I’m hoping it will be great but in reality it’s probably just gonna be OK and hence a lunch bag letdown.
I can definitely understand Paizo playing it safe with this stuff though.
I forgot to mention, but that was a really neat boss encounter @Rando. Had I been playing more carefully, I would’ve taken the hint that the flesh eater might’ve had another monster in store for us. Plus, the way it tied in with the haunt from the couple weeks before.
So yep, I will try to play more carefully/cautiously next time. It’s a lot to ask from our healers otherwise.
There is no “Rando’s Campaign” coming this “summer”. All the extra time I have to make maps, tokens, write dialog, create magic items (and parcels), and create encounters is already being done for Entombed with the Pharaohs. After we finish this adventure, the APG will most likely be out. Yay.
So my plans are like this:
Finish Entombed with the Pharaohs
Take a month off to prep for:
Run the The Witchwar Legacy (the level 17 adventure that takes place in Irrisen)
Take a month off to prep for:
Run the new Agents of Edgewatch AP coming out this summer
Why a month off to prep for 5)? 'Cause I’m never buying a pre-made module for Fantasy Grounds ever again and will manually be doing the data entry, maps, tokens, etc.
Now assuming that Agents of Edgewatch doesn’t suck ballz™, we’ll continue with that. If it does suck ballz™ then we’ll move to plan (b) which is to run the modified/semi-homebrewed Curse of the Crimson Throne.
I’m really hoping the later is not the case, I actually want to save CotCT for Starfinder. More than one person has now expressed dissatisfaction with moving that adventure path from Golarion to the Forgotten Realms. Keeping it in Golarion sucks though because we’d have to do a bit of time travel anyway (it was the second AP ever released by Paizo in the days before there even was a Pathfinder 1e) and the BBEG* really is kinda lackluster.
Somewhere in there, @Ryuken will (maybe) have his Starfinder campaign running. After we get done the first module of that, I’ll re-visit the idea of running my own Starfinder campaign/adventure in parallel with whatever I’m running in Pathfinder 2e.
- BBEG - Big Bad Evil Guy, usually the main boss/villain/antagonist of a module/adventure path
Sounds not-bad, though maybe spend less time redoing maps and encounters you’ve already converted, eh? Depending on the timing, I might slip in a short run of something, too. Either PF2e or Mage: The Ascension.
Just a note for you: You were 100% correct about Age of Ashes’ book 2. Holy crap is it bad. The author seems to have no concept of what is and is not fun in a hexcrawl and constantly chooses the latter. And the encounter design is atrocious. The players get no realistic ways to gather information in advance about encounters, enemies have just plain broken stats, and several of the encounters feature enemies using abilities that actually break 2e design principles. That is, every turn using save-or-lose abilities where a single bad save (and often even a 10-14 on the d20) results in a PC being out of the fight or worse. As in, loss-of-player-agency worse, the cardinal sin of game design. And to top it all off, your “home base” for the book doesn’t accept money. Your only option is to trade in loot (which you don’t get any notable amount of for multiple sessions, so you probably have to trade in party gear if you really need something) for half its value in items and forfeit any leftover value.
Without massive GM intervention, AoA Book 2 is just plain not fun. Different author from Book 1 (which had its own issues, but nothing this bad except maybe the out-of-nowhere superboss), and one I will be watching to avoid from now on.
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Depending on the timing, I might slip in a short run of something, too. Either PF2e or Mage: The Ascension.