RHoD Addendum: The Battlecry of Brindol!

RHoD Masterpost

Hey folks!

Paizo's newest rulebook Battlecry! recently released, and it's pretty cool! It has skirmish rules that essentially let PCs (and NPCs) take command of Troops of soldiers and streamlines some of how they interact to help simulate a larger battle! It's not a full-scale Battle in the sense of the Battle of Brindol (I tend to use the word the way Strongholds & Followers does), but it can work really well to zoom in on one specific front of that Battle. Since 

Prompted by others on the RHoD discord (no idea how long that link will stay live), here's my attempt to integrate the Battlecry! rules into Part 4: Enemy at the Gates (doc here). I'm going to broadly use the structure on p169 under "Quick Skirmish Groups."

Let's jump in!

Homebrew: 4e Minions in PF2

Hey folks!

Several years ago, before the Troop rules existed in PF2, I ported the rules for minions from 4e into PF2. It didn't feel perfect, and when Troops came out I figured that I should try the official version and see what all the hype was about. 

While there's a lot to like about Troops, however, I also had a lot of complaints! Chief among these:

• Troops feels more like fighting a normal enemy with weird resistances and abilities, rather than like fighting a large number of foes.
• Troops targeting reflex rather than AC feels odd, and leads to a situation where Rogues were better at leading their allies into battle than Champions, which feels ever worse!
• AoE damage isn't better enough against Troops when compared to single-target attacks. While that gets better when there are 3-4 Troops, it doesn't feel significantly difference than targeting 3-4 normal creatures.
• Troops are hard to physically maneuver on the table! In person, it's a ton of minis to manage, and if you have  multiple identical troops you need them to be different enough that you can tell the different units apart. Tracking is easier on VTTs, but it's almost impossible to get the level of movement flexibility that Troop Movement is supposed to allow. Same deal with using movement trays for IRL minis.
• Troop Defenses are hard to track! I don't know that I've ever remembered to check if a Troop was passing through 2 HP thresholds, and the stuff about single-target vs. area effects are consistently hard for us to remember.

These are all ultimately problems of fantasy - the rules for Troops work, but not in ways that feel right to me at the table. If you like the overall fantasy of fighting a Squadron rather than its individual members, however, feel free to take a look at "Fixing Troops" at the end of this article!

I'd previously used Minions quite a lot in 5e, and I know that I love the way that they feel when used correctly. Plus, in the interim, MCDM came up with incredible innovations that I couldn't wait to try out in PF2. So, over the past few years, I spent a long time crunching math and trying things out, and I am pretty happy with where we ended up.

Here's the full document. Let's jump in!

New Class: The Necromancer

Hey folks!

Cover of Harrow IX

I'm so excited to announce my first complete Pathfinder 2e class: the Necromancer! You can find the full document here. And oh boy, did I pick a tough one!

A year ago, Paizo released the Kineticist, and in many ways it revolutionized PF2 class design. It presented a version of spellcasters without attrition, with action-flexibility, and with fewer, reliable abilities rather than an exhaustive spell list. While I certainly don't think every spellcaster must follow this format, there was a big conversation on reddit about creating more thematic spellcasters that are tailored to a specific fantasy, rather than generalists. I started work on this class within the week!

Play a Necromancer if you want to bend hordes of undead to your will, unleash devastating theorems to wither your foes, or become the master of death itself!

Pathfinder Remaster: Expanded Spell Schools

The Pathfinder Remaster is here! It's got a lot of exciting changes, but one thing that I've seen a lot of folks be less excited about is that, as a consequence of Paizo removing the 8 traditional spell schools (evocation, conjuration, etc.) to move away from the OGL, the extra school spell slots are a lot more limited. While the book does say "Your GM might allow you to swap or add other spells to your curriculum if they strongly fit the theme" (PC 198), a lot of GMs might want more guidance. Plus, there are so many cool spells from SoM, DA, and RoE that deserve a chance to shine!

So, that's what we're doing today! We'll be going through each of the new Curriculums and giving suggestions for what spells (both from the remaster and previously existing material) GMs might want to add to each, with a focus on low-rank spells that will stay useful at higher levels (spell-blending wizards don't mind this, but everyone else does). Each list should end with 5 cantrips, 6 rank 1 spells, 2 rank 9 spells, and 4 of each other rank.

Note: there's also this semi-official Pathfinder Society version if you want another take!

Lost Omens: Mwangi Expanse Cover

Pathfinder Remaster: Revised Cantrips

Hey folks!

Today we're doing something a little bit different. Instead of converting or remixing an adventure, we'll be going through my proposed revisions to the Remastered cantrips. Here are my initial reddit post, my math spreadsheet, and my full conversion doc with all the new changes (both to remaster cantrips and the older ones).