In other words, what’s an official rule or interaction between different rules in Pathfinder 2e that you think is dumb?

A while back, when buying equipment for a new character, I figured out that I was trying to solve the same problems over and over again. I decided to put together basic sets of equipment that should allow almost any character to be well-equipped with the basics at first or second level, with a minimum of effort.

Today, I present these kits to you. Each kit gives both a gold and a weight total (for both Medium and Small creatures), and suggestions for how to use or modify the kit to suit your character. They include both a basic for-everyone kit as well as an extremely stripped-down version of the same, advice for distributing heavy gear, and suggestions for additional equipment to purchase as more money comes in.

I hope they're useful to you.

This is a guide to achieving durable total concealment in combat. Durable in this case means that the concealment does not end or degrade the moment you attack your opponent.

It was written years ago to answer a question about sneak attacking at range, and so it is mostly written from that perspective, but I have made some slight alterations since then and it could also be useful for other purposes.

Categories

There are four practical ways to become concealed from an opponent in combat in such a way as it will not wear off the moment you make an attack. They are as follows: Blind your target, utilise darkness, utilise obscuring conditions such as fog or smoke, or finally becoming invisible.

Blindness

Several spells can blind your opponents, including the 1st-level spell touch of blindess and the classic glitterdust. As a bonus, convincing a friendly mage to go this route should be pretty easy, since blinding your opponents is a great debuff anyway.

The dirty trick combat manoeuvre can apply blindness for a round. A familiar with the prankster archetype should be able to pull this off, though a friendly melee fighter can also build for it. Greater Dirty Trick is important here to make the blind last more than one round, and Quick Dirty Trick lets them do it in place of one of their normal melee attacks. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to reliably perform dirty tricks at range, so if you prefer to attack at range you will be relying on the melee combatants to do this for you.

Darkness

If your opponent doesn't have darkvision, but you do, a simple darkness spell (or other way to turn out the lights) will grant you total concealment. This is unreliable since so many of your opponents will likely have darkvision, but the night blindness spell can turn this off.

If you can get the "See in Darkness" ability, you can use deeper darkness to disable regular darkvision, which will work for almost all opponents apart from devils. Ways to get See in Darkness include the advanced rogue talent by the same name, getting a Rod of Shadows, or playing a tiefling and taking Fiend Sight twice.

Wielding a rod of shadows could be tricky. You could use a one-handed weapon or get an extra arm to hold it in. If you fight in melee, you could also use the spellsword spell, which has a good duration.

Obscuring Conditions

Very few creatures can see through effects like obscuring mist, so if you can get some way to see through such effects yourself, you can gain very effective concealment.

If you're playing an Ifrit, you can take the Firesight racial feat to be able to see through smoke, then find some way to fill the fight with smoke, such as using a smokestick, either on its own or as an alchemical power component for an obscuring mist spell.

Ashen path cast on you will allow you to see through not only magical smoke but also magical fog and mist and similar obscuring effects, while a Goz Mask will work for even nonmagical obscuring conditions.

Obscuring mist is the obvious way to create obscuring conditions here, but you could also get a Saltspray Ring (GM permitting, it is from an Adventure Path) and have as much mist as you want, and it follows you.

Invisibility

A very obvious option is to use greater invisibility, although that only lasts a very short duration.

If you play a ninja, the vanishing trick ninja trick will let you get one sneak attack as a swift action, and later invisible blade will extend it to the whole fight, letting you get full attacks with sneak attack on every hit.

An Amulet of the Blooded can get you Fey bloodline powers as a 9th level sorcerer, including the ability to use greater invisibility for 9 rounds per day. The action to do this is unclear; since it isn't stated, RAW it's a standard action, but based on the comparable Illusion Wizard school power, I believe it should be a swift action.

I was looking over an old character I've been saving for when our table revisits 1e. He's a medium, one of the less immediately powerful classes that operates around a very limited resource, but gaining extreme day-to-day flexibility. I like the class because it can access and flourish in all arenas of play, whether that's combat, downtime, or exploration. They can even access 6th level spells from wizard, druid, and cleric, in addition to getting a spicy Wish capstone.

When a medium hits 5 Influence by using one of his many, many influence accruing abilities, he becomes an NPC under the GM's control. Now, that sounds really bad, mostly because it is. But most GM's are... probably not going to want to fully pilot a full PC in addition to everything else, especially not one so complicated as a medium. For some tables, that's enough to just soft-ban the class, but others might find some balance between player & gm control to keep it going. That's not really the point of the post, however.

The medium doesn't have a cap for their influence points - they just become an NPC at 5 or more. If your teammates included a pretty good face to influence the NPC to tag along for the rest of the day, there isn't really anything stopping the NPC Medium from just... using all of the influence abilities at every opportunity.

You can only Spirit Surge once per round, but there are a few other abilities of note. A trickster NPC can steal the buffs from any and everyone. Marshall NPCs can Decisive Strike twice per turn to give your team an extra attack and an extra standard action every turn. Archmage NPCs could just use Arcane Surge to cast free arcane spells of up to 6th level every single turn forever. Legendary spirits have some tricks too, and are likely much easier to bargain with than a new spirit each time. Cyricas can provide AoE Freedom of Movement to your whole team all day long. Stavian can double up on AoE healing or deprive enemies of heals going their way. Darolnyr can swift action teleport you and give the free spellcasts from archmage.

This is likely in no way practical information, I just thought it's an interesting blindspot on all the medium discussion posts I've seen.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/20504393

I couldn't find a good character sheet that's fully customizable without digging into complex formulas and reference tables, so I made my own. Feel free to use it or give feedback.

You're in combat, you've attacked twice, or cast a two-action spell. Now what do you do?

Give me your favourite niche builds, or options that you turn to with regularity regardless of character.

Hey all, recently it was brought up that pathfinder.social seems to be down, and for some time. So I went ahead and created a local community for all your pathfinder needs.

For now, this is a catchall for pathfinder, both 1e and 2e, if the need arises, we can always create another community to split, but I don't think it's that important right now.