PaizoCon 2020 AMA PF2 Questions and Answers

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G
1	ID	Last Name	First Name	Title	Team	Question	Answer

2	Lid1	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	What was a style guide or tone change that you championed or helped refine in the development of Starfinder or Pathfinder's second edition that you find especially gratifying?	I don't know that I can take full credit for any particular change—the whole process was so collaborative that all our changes were team efforts. Also my brain is like a sieve so I've forgotten lots of them, heh. That said, @James Case (OP Dev, he/him) and I spent a lot of time working with the design team and editors to clarify the language about actions. Originally "an action" could interchangeably mean "an action, which you can do three of on your turn each round" vs. "any of the [A], [AA], [AAA], [R], [F] your character performs on their turn or anything they do in exploration mode or downtime mode." We eventually settled on the terms "single action" and "activity" as specific elements within a larger "actions" umbrella so the rules and reader can distinguish them.
3	Lid2	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	How do witch patrons work in release version?	gasp Spoilers!?!? That's a great question to ask the APG panel at noon on Friday!
4	Lid3	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Hi Lyz! What do you think your time and experience as a developer and editor brings to the design squad? (not sure if Mark or Logan spent much time in those arenas professionally...)	I definitely pay a lot of attention to the specifics of wording and presentation, style, organization of information, and formatting. That's a nice perspective to have when the bulk of our work is really getting into the weeds on how something should work, and I think leads to a cleaner process overall and a better end product. (Fwiw Logan also came out of an editing background, just not as recently as I have, and we share some of those perspectives.)
5	Lid4	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Howdy Lyz! When giving feedback, what're your priorities, or how do you structure what you want to say?	It really depends on where the freelancer is in their career. For someone new, I'm going to look at big-picture, fundamental concepts and make sure they've got the building blocks in place - making sure they know the broad design parameters, the tools available to them, and the end goal of what we'd like to see. For more experienced peeps, I'll dig into details and more nuanced design ideology, since (presumably) you've got the basics down. I'll note smaller details (formatting, phrasing) only if they're widespread or you've really got your game together. There's also a pragmatic element - sometimes I just need to say "hey whoops this changed so I need to steer you in a new direction." As far as structure, I try to present overarching components first, but then I just go down the page (since that's how I"m writing it and how you'll be reading it).
6	Lid5	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Hello Liz. I was wondering, in terms of categorization, is it fair to say that a disease or poison that is bound to a specific creature should be considered the same level as the creature itself?	I think you're talking about things like the Viper Venom that the viper (Bestiary 302) has? For purposes of things like counteracting, yeah, you'll use the creature level. So the ones that are poisons aren't really designed to be standalone poisons, and you probably shoudln't encounter them outside of the viper's fangs Strike—they're certainly not things you can sell or probably carry around with you normally. There are a few cases where a creature's venom can be distilled into an alchemical poison with an item entry - I know there's one of these coming in Bestiary 2. Diseases are trickier, because they can show up in multiple places - filth fever, for example, shows up on the otyugh and the rats. I think ultimately those should also be considered part of the standalone stat block for the time being, which suggests we might need to release a generic standalone version for broader use.
7	Lid6	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Hey Lyz! Do you have any particular musical styles/artists/instrumentations that you think of as analogs for Golarion music?	Ooh good question. I keep trying to get @Luis Loza (he/him) to let me write about Golarion's music. I have some ideas. I think of Taldor in kind of baroque/early baroque western style—there's a mention in the most recent Taldor book about a virtuoso rebec player, and the baroque style lines up with the kind of over-the-top gilded nature of Taldor. Cheliax, of course, took it one step further and went full-on Verdi-style spectacle opera (see the Six Trials of Larazod, Huntress of Heroes, etc.) Fwiw western early and classical music is my speciality so I've put more thought into the areas where that would manifest. But Golarion is huge and I could map all kinds of interesting things - gamelan to southern Tian Xia, tabla and sitar in Vudra, lots of vocal and double reeds in Varisia. I should also maybe note here that I outlined and started some initial composition of an actual opera for the Six Trials a few years back..
8	Lid7	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Lyz! I know you like using music for your games. Do you have specific soundtracks or songs that are your go-to for gaming?	I haven't actualy gotten to use much music IN my games because we have players all over hte place and technology is already a huge struggle. We were using Syrinscape briefly and I loved it—10/10 would totally us if we were all in the same place.
9	Lid8	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Lyz - not sure if this is a question for design, but - there is a working errata archive for released products available somewhere? was reading through Show Must Go On last night and something jumped out at me. Wasn't sure where to look to see if it has been addressed.	We don't have a full public errata interface, but you can send your issue to me (lyz.liddell@paizo.com please) and I'll get it into the file.
10	Lid9	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Lyz, I recently played 1-05 First Mandate and I loved the isopod character - is there any chance of getting rules for playing that race, or one like it, in the future?	The symbiotic buddy! I really enjoyed writing that. You'd have to talk to some folks on the Starfinder team to see about creating a playable version of it - it's complicated because either you have two players who have to collaborate extremely closely, or you have one player controlling a separate body, which has some implications around action economy and also like consent and autonomy and so forth
11	Lid10	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	On average, how much stuff gets left on the cutting room floor for the rulebooks because of like, real estate constraints, and what's the likelihood of like, web supplements to help make that stuff available without having to delay it until another book or like an AP backmatter article? (and even if you probably can't reveal it, is there anything from a recent book that you worked on that you wish could have made it in, but didn't?)	One feat per polearm in the art. More seriously, it varies hugely. APG we ordered extra on purpose, and there are absolutely some pieces that have already found homes in other books. It's maybe like 10% of the book overall? There's one archetype in particular that we're in love with and just trying to find the right home for.
12	Lid11	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	When I grow up, I want to be like you. Any tips for aspiring Lyz Liddells?	Well I want to be like you, so we're even. (For serious, you are one of the most lovely and compassionate people I know and I would love to be more of that!) But as far as being me, it comes from a terrible fear of failure, a deep-seated desire to make people love me by being useful, and an intense instinct for organization and detail. But also, like, read and listen and pay attention and follow directions, and I think that'll get you pretty far
13	Lid12	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	what do you look for in a monster pitch?	Note that we don't accept unsolicited pitches, but sometimes in gearing up for a project we'll solicit pitches from specific freelancers. In those cases, I want to see that you have an interesting idea that occupies a space that isn't already filled in the game ecosystem, and that you have at least preliminary ideas for abilities that speak to that core concept and bring it to life. So if you tried to pitch me a level 3 undead that eats living creatures' flesh to stay alive, I'd probably pass, but if you throw me, for example, an isopod that can serve as a symbiote and control a willing host, but with an action that lets them decouple and treat one or the other as a minion, that could be way cool and I'd want to see more!
14	Lid13	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	You get to go back in time and add 1 full class to the Second Edition Core Rulebook. What class is it? Or, generally, what role does it serve in the game?	wow that's a hard one. I'd want to see a simpler spellcaster that handles magic at the same level of complexity that the fighter operates (very very low, with options to ramp it up for more experienced players). Something along the conceptual lines of the kineticist (but with a simpler presentation) or D&D's warlock (but leaving the whole patron thing with the witch as it goes in our setting). A way for new players to get into the game and use magic without having to deal with the "extra" componets of focus spells, druid orders, divine fonts, arcane schools, bloodlines, and related fussy bits.
15	Lid14	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	I know you won't reveal too much, but it was recently revealed that the Witch can use any of the four traditions, was that as close a debate in the survey feedback and in the design team as it was on the forums, vs that or reducing the number of traditions to just occult or occult/primal? I'm personally over the moon about it : )	I was really surprised by how many people had really strong opinions about witch traditions! We discussed a lot of options and ultimately settled on the one that we felt best represented the mechanical needs of the class and the role it plays in our setting. Join us on Friday to learn more about it!
16	Lid15	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	As the person in charge of oracle, how do you feel about how the final version of it in the APG? What was your favorite mystery from PF1? Are we going to learn anything about the new iconic oracle in the APG or sometime soon? Or about Alahazra (the PF1 oracle iconic)?	I am really happy with how it came out in the final version. If you look at the playtest version, you can see how we linked the curses and mysteries to one another. That let us do some really cool things because we knew what they were going to be balanced against in a way that we wouldn't have been able to do if they were separated like in P1. We took that and ran with it (while also adjusting for some troublesome factors that came up in the playtest). I actually never played an oracle in First Edition (scandal!) - I ended up working on the class when Jason Bulmahn got called up to do a bunch of work for the Knights of Everflame, and I was in a position to step up and make the oracle happen. So I did a ton of research into the class as part of the process, and I think my favorite mystery is actually Godclaw - not mechanically, but because it integrates with our setting in a way I super appreciate, and I also personally dig the Hellknights a lot so this was really neat to see. We're working up canon for the new iconic oracle, and that will be posted our our web fiction around the time the APG launches - it's gonna be rad, so keep your eyes on it. Alahazra hasn't left our canon; she's still around and lighting things on fire.
17	Lid16	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Does the new iconic have a name yet?	Hm, I do not think the new iconic has a name yet. We've been calling them "Whark" in the office as a kind of nickname/placeholder.
18	Lid17	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Does the new iconic have a religion and/or deity? Oracle makes such a fun class for some of the philosophies in Golarion who don't necessarily worship a deity!	Great question, and I don't know the answer! We've got another staffer working on the iconic's backstory, so it'll be up to that (fabulous and talented) staffer.
19	Lid18	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	What kind of characters do you like to play? do you have a favorite, or favorite niche/role to fall into in an adventuring party? Maybe something you identify with at all, I have friends that are always super attracted to rogues for instance.	I'm all over the map! I think if I have a "type" it's "not what I did last time." I played a character once that multiclassed 5 classes over 10 levels (BAD IDEA but fun experiment), a big dumb lovable oaf of a paladin, a social support inquisitor who talked our party out of several boss fights, a lovely dapper tiefling barrister (investigator), and a vigilante who is now Blackjack in the city of Korvosa. In my current games I've got a leshy alchemist, a dhampir barbarian (which I built largely to test drive the dhampir for APG development, and was invaluable), and a witch with an origami familiar. Those last three are all Second Edition characters. We have a staff perk of being able to play with rules that aren't out yet (though to be clear, the origami familiar doesn't have rules, and that's me exercising designer privilege to make some of my own stuff in home games).
20	Lid19	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	What was the biggest surprise for you about how your responsibilities changed when you became a designer?	oh my god, the task switching. As an editor, you sit in a cube and everyone leaves you alone and you work on something for like 6 hours and then you get done and you move on to the next task. As a designer, you sit down and everyone comes by and asks you questions and you're asking everyone else questions and you're trying to do a pass on one thing but then you need to work on this other thing and then there's a question and then someone needs to know how poisons work and then you realize that there's a bunch of erroneous poisons in the Bestiary and you have to log them as errata and then it's three hours past lunch and you've forgotten to eat and you still haven't gotten to the third line of that monster you were trying to do a design pass on.
21	Lid20	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	what’s a pleasant surprise you’ve encountered since joining the design team?	This is going to sound really silly, but realizing that I actually know this game and (for the most part) understand what I'm doing. First Edition was such an expansive rule set that it was really intimidating, and even when I got to a point where I was engaging with pretty intense stuff, I felt like I didn't really have a handle on it. So I kind of taught myself that I didn't "get" rules, but working on this team has really shown me how much I not only "get" rules but really have a strong command of them, understand the underlying principles, and ENJOY working with them!
22	Lid21	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	When I talked to you last PaizoCon you said that you were prepping to run Hell’s Rebels; how’s that going for you?	We had a blast! We ran through the first three books in First Edition, then switched to Second Edition for the fourth book but that was harder for folks to grasp than I expected it to be, so we've actually taken a bit of a break and are playing some low-level PFS scenarios to give my players an opportunity to understand the game and wrap their heads around it, then we'll dive back in.
23	Lid22	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	You said you were working on the next errata document - if you can't answer I get it, but can we expect some clarification around when to add Wounded values to Dying rolls? Our group's had more than a few conflicting opinions.	We generally don't get into rules FAQ here, but this one is pretty clear-cut. Here's the relevant text, from the definition: "If you gain the dying condition while wounded, increase your dying condition value by your wounded value." So it happens right when you gain the dying condition. So let's say you're wounded 1, you get dropped to 0 HP (not from a crit) and gain the dying condition. Normally you'd gain dying 1, but you add your wounded value immediately when you gain your dying condition, so you're dying 2 instead. If you got dropped by a crit and would normally go to dying 2, you still add the wounded value immediately, so you're dying 3 instead.
24	Lid23	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Taking my question from Logan and now passing it around to you and Mark. What was the most surprising feedback you received about the Witch and Oracle APG playtest? How did you approach it, if at all? Bonus points if it's NOT about the traditions part from the Witch.	I'll go with my not-traditions witch surprise, then, which was the reaction to Cackle. We saw how beloved the cackle hex was in First Edition and said "ok clearly that needs to be a class feature." People HATED it! Half of the readers were horrified that we were "forcing" them to cackle/play their witch in a certain way, and the other half were furious that it was such a small ability but "taking up" a class feature slot. (not that those exist.) So we definitely readdressed that issue for the final game.
25	Lid24	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	And any surprises on the Oracle front?	For the oracle, I was surprised at how fervently the playtesters dug into the conceptual "source" of the oracle's powers. I had built out some vague narrative framework about how an oracle might gain their powers and why that manifests with a curse, but I didn't go into great detail, assuming that players would want the flexibility to build their character in any of several conceptual ways. Again, I was heckin' wrong - folks were fighting on the message boards over the details of how they got their power and how it caused a curse! So that's an area where we settled on a consistent conceptual explanation and made it more clear in the text.
26	Lid25	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Did you get yourself anything to celebrate when the APG went to the printers?	I seem to recall we went out for Thai food during the last week. It was right around the shutdown so I don't think we were able to do a post-printer celebration, though. Alas.
27	Lid26	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Hi, Lyz! From the pics you posted there (amazing setpiece btw) it looks like you use hexes? How easy is that to work with in the 2E rules?	OMG I love hexes. Any maps I do myself I run on hexes because then you don't need to count diagonals. (Some spell shapes get weird). Everythign else works basically as written in the rules, so - yeah, very compatible.
28	Lid27	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	is there a significant difference between rules and character creation options you develop before and after a Playtest? Do you take a more conservative approach with post-Playtest additions?	Generally, yes, we try to be more conservative as we reach the final version - the playtest is our time to try out the wackiest version of something, because we can always dial it back safely, and it's risky to do the reverse. We also shift from broad, conceptual design to specifics — for the playtest version, we need to come up with a workable framework for the class and its abilities, but usually for the final version it's more a matter of building out more options within the final framework (more feats, more patrons, more mysteries/curses, so forth.)
29	Lid28	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	awesome! I'll be eagerly watching. I do want to say, I absolutely loved the tying of Oracle Curses and Mysteries together. As someone who might have been guilty of trying to gamify the system in 1e, it's nice to have that decision taken out of my hands and brought together in a neat way.	I hope others share that sentiment. I was definitely aware of how First Edition kind of incentivized oracles to choose the least burdensome curse, and how many players really liked that option, but when it came down to it, we felt that we could do a lot more interesting things bundling them together. And you can still play with different levels of risk based on which mystery/curse you choose and how willing you are to take on those higher curse levels.
30	Lid29	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Would these mechanics still allow for say, my GM and I to say, yes Pharasma IS my patron, without needing a strong mechanical backing? I dont want to pester on the topic, so you dont need to answer	Absolutely!
31	Lid30	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Do you have any favorite or unusual sources of influence for options for the witch or oracle?	That's a great question. I try not to rely so much on my own lore as I try to incorporate things I see from others who love whatever it is I'm working on, but I do really love the idea of the oracle's "all power comes with a price" concept - to the point where one of the other designers had to remind me that "oracles can have nice things, too"
32	Lid31	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	How are you feeling about the new Oracle iconic? Whark, I believe they said they're called internally right now?	I've been talking a bit to the staffer working on their backstory, and I'm really excited!
33	Lid32	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Is there any specific reason why Daji is no longer a red fox?	Nothing so specific as "a great wave of magic washed over the world and brought about a Great Change, and when it had passed, the creature known as Daji was no longer red, but white, and in place of his one majestic tail he now had nine, amplifying his majesty." But we wanted to emphasize that in a world where familiars are already more than a mundane animal (see the adorbs flying cat in the Core Rulebook!), a witch's familiar is a step above even a typical familiar, and Daji as a red fox wasn't quite conveying that goal.
34	Lid33	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	What was your biggest Surprise Take away that people have enjoyed in PF2?	Oo hard question. The biggest things people are enjoying are things we designed the game to do - easier learning, faster gameplay - so those are expected. I think I'm most pleased by the response we've seen to some very intentional changes we made to make the game more inclusive and representative - things like changing "race" to "ancestry" and including specific guidance about how to make a game table a welcoming environment. We feel that these are really important, and people have been seeing it and telling us how much they appreciate and value them—far more than people complaining—and so that's been really awesome.
35	Lid34	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Have you had any particular time you can think of where you designed a system, reviewed it, edited it, and it just never quite "clicked"? What's your process when it needs to print and that's where you're at, if you don't mind sharing?	Absolutely! I just had one this week as I was trying to wrangle some golems, where every time I tried to make a fix, something else broke. But the advantage we have here is that we've got a whole team, so if something really isn't working, we can bring in other eyes and perspectives and brains—so with my golems, it was a 10-min convo with the team and it all fell into place. Taking a day or two away from something can also help, assuming we have the production time. When things really hit the wire, sometimes you just need to accept "done" as the best you can do, but thankfully we don't hti that point often
36	Lid35	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	New questions: Who does your tailoring and can you become the president of my company? Adding: OMG hair is perfect	Jos. A Bank, evidently (I actually got it for a wedding), and I believe everyone should be open to new opportunities in their career paths! My quarantine hair wrangling has been a success! (it's like a full on inch longer than I prefer it :P)
37	Lid36	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	With the Animal Trainer Dedication in Extinction Curse, and the new Familiar Master Dedication you discussed in the APG, I'm excited to know about other class features that might be converted to Archetypes (without having to multiclass). For example, do you think there'd ever be space for a Wild Shape archetype?	Interesting question. I think some abilities make sense to make more available, but some are just so iconic to a class that it would be weird to have them outside of the class or its multiclass archetype. Like an oracle's curse - that's weeeeeird to try and put outside of the class, but something like bardic knowledge, maybe. I think the key there is "like" - there are some functions and ability styles that would expand well, but I don't think we'd want to give you exactly bardic knowledge outside of the class.
38	Lid37	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	What is your favorite Witch Lesson - Hex/Spell?	I think it's probably still the lesson of snow and personal blizzard because who DOESN"T want to make their foes get stuck in an icy eeyore storm??
39	Lid38	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	How much into detail are you allowed to go, Lyz? Could you give us any specifics on one of the curses? I'm really curious how tempest or battle oracle's curses look	I can talk in broad strokes, but I can't like post the full text. Since the battle oracle showed up in the playtest, that's probably safest. The Curse of the Hero's Burden makes you great in a fight, but it wears at you physically with some effects that call over to a barbarian's rage. Your senses and appearance are always overlaid with a hint of battle - you always hear the sounds of clashing metal, you smell faintly of steel and blood, and you look just super muscular. As the curse fires up, you start to take penalties whenver you're not fighting - so you'll have a penalty all the time, but you can suspend it until the start of your next turn by Striking. That effect scales up at higher intensities, but you also deal more damage, and then gain fast healing but also have trouble casting spells.
40	Lid39	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	I just wanted to say that the cantrip hexes were exactly the right decision. So excited!	We agree! Actually, to speak to that a bit more, we weren't so much feeling that cantrip hexes were a bad thing for the class, but we wanted to avoid creating a class that was too complex to pick up easily. Focus cantrips aren't the simplest concept out there, and the witch already has a LOT of moving components, but ultimately (based largely on playtest feedback) we decided that they needed it and we needed to find other ways to streamline.
41	Lid40	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Thanks for the great panel. I have a question about uncommon options. As a new GM, I find deciding whether uncommon option should be available to a player is kind of tough. In particular, setting or background specific archetypes can match up with some character concepts without providing access according to the rules (say, Lastwall Sentry for a character who's focused on shields, but not a Knight of Lastwall). Obviously as a GM I can just decide one way or another, but I'm interested in whether these options were designed with the idea of the rarity limiting their power, or whether that is intended to make them fit better into the narrative or certain types of game.	Great question! Rarity is never an indicator of power, so you won't be accidentally letting your players do something "broken" by letting them take an uncommon option. We use uncommon and rare traits to indicate things that don't appear very often in the setting - like leshies, for example - to avoid ending up with things that just don't make sense in golarion, like leshy nations or settlements. We also use them to indicate things that might take a little more player and GM flexibility and nuance - a GM might not want to deal with the added complexity of a vigilante player, for example, and so they might not allow that option, but you might be totally fine with the scrounger (MacGuyver) archetype and allow that. It really is just a tool so that you as the GM can keep a handle on what's coming into your game and build the story you want to tell with your players.
42	Lid41	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Great panel, Lyz! My wife and I agreed, your suit game is on point today! She is very jealous. Actual question: I know we're getting a beast master archetype with a lot of new impressive ways to work with your companion. Will rangers, druids, and champions get additional companion feats too? Or are the companions in the archetype trailing behind or otherwise limited like with the animal trainer in EC?	Thank you! Dont' be jealous, suits are awesome and anyone can rock them! Our philosophy when building these archetypes was to make them useful whether you already have a companion or not - so they're going to provide fun and interesting options that stand alone from the class - not "trailing behind" so much as a different take on the idea.
43	Lid42	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Lyz, May I ask about the fate of the Coven feature?	We like the idea, but it's ultimately pretty niche, so we decided this wasn't the book for it. Id' be really surprised if it doesn't show up at some point, though!
44	Lid43	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Wicked panel, Lyz. The new energy you bring to the design team is a huge plus for these kind of presentations, so rock on. While every reveal was cool, the words I remember most are 'Mystery of Cosmos oracle', as in of all the things I've heard I instantly want to play one. Can you tell a little more on what drives these characters, their mystery and their curse? Thanks!	I really dig the idea that the oracle is kind of accessing this concept of divine energy via some kind of unsanctioned backchannel, and that it comes with a price. Maybe a character sought out that power, or maybe it was thrust upon them - that's your choice to make! The biggest driver as you're playing is going to be the decision about how you engage with your curse. The benefits that come with higher level curse effects are pretty awesome, but they all have a price that accompanies them - so are you someoen who tries to "play it safe" and only dip into the hgiher curse effects when you ahve to? Or do you go all in and try to get there as fast as possble to reap the benefits, price be damned? This is compounded by the fact that you crank your curse up by casting your revelation (focus) spells from your mystery, and oracles can cast more focus spells than other classes (and have access to WAY more of them) so this power is out there, just asking to be used - but are you willing to pay the price for it? I'll just drop this teaser here: the Cosmos mystery is paired with the Curse of the Sky's Call.
45	Lid44	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Really stoked for all the new options coming out in the near future. I was just thinking how wildly expanded the game will be in just 2 years of existence.	We want to make sure there's a robust set of options for your game, btu we're cognizant of the ptoential to overburden folks with rules, so it's a delicate balance we're trying to maintain.
46	Lid45	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Did you work on the witch and oracle dedications too? Can you tell us what pieces of those classes come over with the dedication?	I sure did! I won't get into details, but I'll say it was tricky figuring out how to give you a dedication that felt like the class without being drastically too much material. I think we hit it and managed to keep them structurally in line wiht other spellcasting MC archetypes.
47	Lid46	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Glorious! The Witch is my primary class with Pathfinder and I am super excited to read the full version. I also wanted to say thank you for your work and dedication to the class's remake for 2E. I know its going to be awesome just from the things you revealed and teased.	Thank you for your support! Seeing how many people LOVED the witch in First Edtiion made this a challenge, so I hope you all find something to love in this one, too!
48	Lid47	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Could you say what the curses are called? Like Battle's is Curse of the Hero's Burden?	I'll drop a few here and there. I think my favorite is the Curse of Torrential Knowledge.
49	Lid48	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	I am really excited for witch. It has been always been my favorite class and it sounds like you guys really considered the feedback from the playtest. Was anything changed that you wish wasn;t changed or do you think it was changed for the better?	Well, since you asked... I actually still don't like divine witches. IMO if you're getting divine power directly from a deity, you're functionally a cleric. And also it made for interesting balance within the book (divine oracle, everything else witch) AND did a neat thing of having SOME but not all traditions available to a caster. But the feedback from the playtest plus a close look at our setting with our creative director James Jacobs brought be around to the fact that divine witches should exist even if I personally don't like it, so I think it's probably for better.
50	Lid49	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Just wanted to add that I feel like coupling Oracle mysteries and curses was the best call. It allows for so much more interesting design, and also roleplay depth.	meee toooooo!!!
51	Lid50	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Exactly right. I love how when I read names of abilities, I instantly get inspiration on cool ways to build and roleplay characters. That's how you KNOW you've hit the nail.	Names are a much bigger part of design than I realized when I first took this position!
52	Lid51	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Any Hex that you particularly had fun designing?	Many of them! Evil eye was a good exercise in converting a concept while maintaining balanced and avoiding replication; elemental betrayal was just fun, and of course figuring out what to do with Cackle. (tease)
53	Lid52	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Between the freaking out and excitement during the APG stream (oh god I'm so hyped), one thing I've seen some concerns, or maybe more like curiosity, regarding the Witch is that it is the only class so far to have the "cloth caster chassis" (6 HP, no armor proficiency) and effectively 3 spell slots per level now. Is that because of how strong the cantrip hexes are? Because of the lessons? Something else? A mix of all the above?	Definitely a mix of the above - since you have a lot of action economy working aroudn hexes (cantrip and non-cantrip), having the "full" spellcasting was too much on top of it. So the tradeoff became an increased emphasis on hexes with slightly lighter spellcasting.
54	Lid53	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	You mentioned something about the Godclaw, but the 8 listed didn't mention anything about them. How do the Godclaw tie into the Witch, then?	On Weds we were talking about First Edition oracle mysteries, and the Godclaw came up as one of my favorite examples of the kind of concept that we can really embrace in Second Edition. Alas, it is not in the Advanced Player's Guide, but I can definitely forsee more specialized mysteries and curses in future books. (As for the witch, I can also tease that there's already one additional specialized patron that is being printed RIGHT NOW, but you'll have to wait until it comes out to find it.)
55	Lid54	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Did playtest feedback seem to suggest that the curse drawbacks, even short of overdrawing to unconsciousness, might have been a bit overtuned? That was my impression last fall, but I am curious how widespread that impression was.	We did a lot of post-playtest careful balancing around the curse benefits and drawbacks, and also against the mystery benefits and focus spells. I don't remember the exact changes off the cuff (and I love you but I'm not going to do a line-by-line comparison for you), but it's something we had a careful eye on due to that playtest feedback.
56	Lid55	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Hey Lyz, quick rules question: for abilities like breath weapons that “can’t be used again for 1d4 rounds” does a roll of 1 mean they can be used immediately the following round or would it be unavailable until one full round has passed?	The practical answer is "whatever the GM at the table says," because really it's probably not worth getting into an argument about it. But this is a great question to put on the paizo.com forums FAQ threads, because I've seen similar questions and it probably merits a formal answer (which we don't provide in these channels).
57	Lid56	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Luis Loza put out an unofficial lost omens survey the other day and one of the questions I thought was pretty interesting - with Absalom getting its own Lost Omens book, what other cities in the world do you think deserve their own book?	Ooh, that’s a fun one. I think the most interesting ones would be those that haven’t gotten one yet (in either edition) or those that have changed drastically since their First Edition release. In the former category, Anthusis (capital of Vidrian) and Goka (huge city in Tian-Xia) come to mind as viable candidates, or literally anywhere in Vudra. In the latter, Korvosa might be interesting, or any of the major cities around Lake Encarthen affected by the rise of Oprak and the return of thenWhispering Tyrant - Urgir might be especially interesting, as would Caliphas.
58	Lid57	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Hi Lyz, As a previous editor does Paizo update the PDFs with the corrections from the errata? Thank You for doing a great job.	Typically when we update the publication files for a reprint, the PDF gets an update, too. We like them to be in sync based on the “xth printing” info on the title page.
59	Lid58	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	I meant the guy with wicked smile, black armor and horned helmet ;D	oh, he’s still around! We (good-naturedly) call him Stephen, after former designer (who did the original PF antipaladin) Stephen Radney-MacFarland.
60	Lid59	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	If I remember correctly, they provide the errata in its raw form, then depending on their other projects & time, they update the PDFs & subsequent books with it. It takes a lot to update & format the document.	that’s about right.
61	Lid60	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Who / what are the examples of Divine witches from the setting? Did the comment in the APG panel suggest that some pre existing published characters are effectively divine witches rather than what they were before?	Areelu Vorlesh was the case that won me over. She’s classed as a witch, and she’s very clearly in service to the demon lord Deskari. Note that her use of arcane magic preceded her agreement with Deskari, so she wouldn’t have been an arcane witch in Second Edition terms - but divine makes perfect sense.
62	Lid61	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	What is your favorite school of magic and why is it abjuration? (Alternatively or additionally: If you had the ability to cast one paizo published spell once per year as an innate spell-like ability, in our real world, what would it be? Let's exclude wish/miracle/shadow conjuration and the like.)	I dislike schools of magic as a concept, but I think I have to say evocation because it, like me, is very straightforward and doesn’t beat around the bush. If I could cast one spell a day it would be presto, because for serious, never having to do housework again? Sold. Whoops, misread the question. Once per YEAR??? I would have to think about it a lot. I’d like to have an innate serum of sex shift, but that’s not quite the same thing. Lemme get back to you!
63	Lid62	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	What kind of magical structure do you prefer, if any? Are there any RPGs that specifically capture your preferences?	I’m ok with traditions, I think the explanation of different essences and how they interplay is interesting. I find magic much more interesting in terms of where it comes from or how you utilize it - so like clerics using a divine focus while a bard sings magic into place, ideas like spell weaving and words of power and so forth. But schools to me are just a giant mechanical component that exists for the almost exclusive benefit of one class, and I get that it’s legacy but I don’t think it’s a great system.
64	Lid63	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Hello Liz. Do you have pets? And if you do, can you share a picture?	I found it! I have two cats that have been part of our family since 2003; they are now getting very old. The Office Buddy (formally named Cat.Tiff) shows up on my twitter feed quite often (@lyzmaytweet). The other is our princess, named Zoe - a twice-rescued abandoned and abused fluff who weighs just shy of 5 lbs. I’ll link pics!
65	Lid64	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	How are arcane witches different than wizards, mechanically? For example, what's the difference between an arcane witch and a familar thesis wizard?	The wizard will probably still have a school specialization, which the witch won’t, and the witch is going o have a lot of flexibility from their hexes (both cantrips and focus spells). Narratively, the witch is also going to have the patron component, which will factor into how they view magic and their own work, while the wizard’s narrative is (probably) more academic and lacks the questions of “who, why?”
66	Lid65	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Also can you tell us more about your background of atheist organizing?	Haha, sure! I worked for just over six years as the Director of Campus Organizing at the Secular Student Alliance, a national nonprofit organization working to support and organize nonreligious students on high school and college campuses across the US. That role led me to work closely with student affairs and interfaith organizations and professionals (ACPA, IFYC, etc) as well as the center for faith-based and neighborhood partnerships at the Dept of Education and the White House. I eventually left that position to lead the organization of the 2016 Reason Rally, a coalition event to demonstrate the value of science and reason, plus raise the visibility of nonreligious Americans. They were all great experiences and taught me a lot, but the rally in particular was a very difficult job and I needed to take a break from professional organizing and from being in charge of things. It was a lucky chance that Wes [Schneider, our former editor in chief] and Judy [Bauer, our managing editor] found a way for me to join the editing team full time despite living in Ohio at the time.
67	Lid66	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Thank you for the cat pictures :3	I am ALWAYS happy to share pictures of my cats. It’s probably half of what I post on Twitter (my feed is linked above).
68	Lid67	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	Hi Lyz, thanks for a great PaizoCon! You mentioned in a panel that you are working on compiling a lot more errata for the Core Rulebook, and that the next errata will be out in the next couple of months. I was wondering, is there an upcoming errata for other major books too, or are those still far off? I'm trying to decide if I should get the physical books now or if I should wait for the errata. I'm in no rush, so I don't mind waiting a few months if it means I will get a physical book with errata already included in the printing. But if there won't be errata for other books coming up for a while, then I'll just get the physical books now.	Waiting will always lead to disappointment - I’d go ahead and pick up the books you’re wanting now.
69	Lid68	Liddell	Lyz	Designer	Design	we are cat fosters. We had a cat get adopted in the middle of a game (sorry!), we had to break 2 games to bottle feed kittens (ack, thanks cool party members), and then we had a reunion of mama cat and her 4 kittens. 2 were without her almost 3 days. We might call the mom cat Paizo	I love it!! Fostering is a handful, thanks for doing it!!
70	Bon1	Bonner	Logan	Lead Designer	Design	So since ye are unlikely to answer APG questiosn before the panel, I instead ask: What class type of class you'd personally want to add to the game post APG?	The first ones that come to mind are P1 classes I want to bring forward. I'm hoping we can get more occult classes in sooner rather than later. I especially think the occultist has some potential that hasn't been explored yet!
71	Bon2	Bonner	Logan	Lead Designer	Design	So far, bar even the APG playtest materials, what has been the thing you've designed within PF2E that you were the most proud of, and what is something you've been incredibly frustrated with?	My favorite is probably the proficiency structure. The plain language of trained, expert, etc. makes it easier to understand, and it makes things like skill feats work cleanly and be understandable. Least favorite is the stuff we struggled with and did a lot of back-and-forth on. Dying and counteracting went through a lot of versions, in particular.
72	Bon3	Bonner	Logan	Lead Designer	Design	A bit of an off-topic, but a lifetime ago (Ult. Intrigue-ish), did you all ever get a goodie box filled with stuff from the East coast?	Answering this would incriminate me if I kept it all to myself...
73	Bon4	Bonner	Logan	Lead Designer	Design	During the development of PF2, how did you handle innovating while also not changing the system so much as to make it unrecognizable? Did any major mechanics get changed due to being too far from how PF1 works?	There were some things we decided to go farther on than we'd planned in the Playtest knowing we could scale them back. We found that people were generally pretty accepting of changes as long as they felt like an improvement or expansion. For example, the sorcerer picking a magical tradition was a risk, but was accepted. Most of the stuff that failed was more like resonance, which we dropped because it was too fiddly rather than because it was a change from P1. There were only a couple things that we changed back due to tradition. Breaking the treasure chapter down into sections was one of those that I wish we hadn't backed down on.
74	Bon5	Bonner	Logan	Lead Designer	Design	Hello Sir Bonner, I hope this electronical missive finds you well. Mayhap you shall answer a question or two for me. When did you begin your TTRPG playing and what was the first character you played (if you can remember)? Thank you, and I hope you like my question.	The first character I made was a dwarf cleric for AD&D 2E, but we never played. First game I played was BESM 2nd Edition, but I don't recall exactly what the character or game was. I think I ran a Halloween-themed game.
75	Bon6	Bonner	Logan	Lead Designer	Design	Loving Pathfinder 2nd Ed. It has brought me back to gaming like I have not game before. I am in at least 3 ongoing games right now. I have for the first time, am considering running a campaign in Darkmoon Vale region starting with Module D0. Is there any plans for a Darkmoon Vale Lost Omens update in the near future?	The Lost Omens line is more Eleanor and Luis's domain, so I'm not sure.
76	Bon7	Bonner	Logan	Lead Designer	Design	Will there be a slow down to continue to add new classes. You mentioned before the occultist liking them. I do agree to add more, but slowly please. I have had new players that love PF2 and stayed away from 1 because of the intimidating amount of content and rules.	Advanced Player's Guide is the book where we're really dropping a lot of classes. Putting out classes at that pace isn't really feasible long-term. We've got some expectations about how many we'll be putting out. We have demand asking for just about every class to come back, some louder than others, but we're really conscious of not overloading people with too many new rules too quickly. APG and Core are meant to establish the baseline of the game. Most folks playing should know this stuff. The rest we want to feel a little more... optional than 1E, and to have more room to develop in the book where it appears. A lot of 1E classes got short shrift, IMO.
77	Bon8	Bonner	Logan	Lead Designer	Design	What are some new things that can be done with the Society proficiency in the APG?	If you can make it to the APG panel tomorrow at noon, I'll try to talk about it there. Given that the investigator is in the book, there are quite a few new options for Society!
78	Bon9	Bonner	Logan	Lead Designer	Design	What was the most surprising feedback you received about the Investigator APG playtest? How did you approach it, if at all?	The investigator was one of the ones that took a bigger risk and went into more narrative space. My biggest surprise was that we got very little negative feedback on that. I was expecting more. The other stuff was less surprising, and the fixes for the rest I'm pretty happy with.
79	Bon10	Bonner	Logan	Lead Designer	Design	What are some other games (board games, tabletop RPGs, video games, etc.) that you think offer great insight into game design? i.e. What are some games that one can play to become a better designer?	* Powered by the Apocalypse RPGs. My favorite is Monsterhearts, but there are a lot of them to learn the structure from. Particularly the middle zone of results where you get a mix of good and bad results. * Legend of the Five Rings is my problematic fave. The new edition is really interesting and more narrative. The strength of the factions and their big, solid hooks are a great example for setting up a world and reinforcing it in play. Especially interesting because it's a strength the RPG sort of lucked into because the game started as a CCG and that faction structure came with that. * Love Letter for an example of how simple you can make a game and still have it be engaging. * Magic the Gathering for how permutations of rules and a smartly designed rotation of formats can enrich a game and keep it alive. I think I'll have to come back to the video games question another time or I'll never eat dinner.
80	Bon11	Bonner	Logan	Lead Designer	Design	4e DND was my first edition and my group and I really enjoyed it. I see some of the qualities in 4e in 2e Pathfinder (in a good way). Is there any concepts from 4e DND in particular you were happy to bring over (or even improve upon) into Pathfinder 2nd Edition?	Since Stephen and I both worked on 4E, we had a pretty solid idea of what worked and didn't. Monster design is the probably the most direct line, with some lessons learned about the right amount of non-combat abilities and their presentation. Though I think dropping the P1 monster creation system is a super obvious decision pretty much anybody would have made. The two games have a similar kind of modularity, which is something P1 really wanted to have but had to get to in odd ways. P2's not really meant to be like 4E, but we had some tools in our toolbox that we knew would work for solving similar problems during the system design.
81	Bon12	Bonner	Logan	Lead Designer	Design	For a question... what'cha having for dinner?	Last of the reheated Chinese food, I think.
82	Bon13	Bonner	Logan	Lead Designer	Design	How would you counter the "PF2 is just like 4e" argument that folks tend to launch into?	I haven't really seen that argument much, so I haven't thought about it. Maybe link them to the people saying it's exactly like 5E so they can compare notes and get to the bottom of this?
83	Bon14	Bonner	Logan	Lead Designer	Design	Unsure how many spoilers you're ready for. What's your favorite option for fighters in the APG, since some other archetypes are getting a bunch of fighter tricks?	Not really going to do a ton more spoilers, since the panel was the main place for that. I'll drop some stuff for the folks who already asked since we didn't establish that previously, but don't expect many more! For the fighter, there's a press that lets you drag someone around! I didn't work on the fighter a whole lot, so that's just one I picked quickly.
84	Bon15	Bonner	Logan	Lead Designer	Design	Will there be more spells with variable actions? The interactivity they bring is one of the main selling points of playing a spellcaster in 2E.	We aren't adding a lot of variable-action spells because there's only a very narrow window of ones that work well. We had a lot of other stuff we wanted to get into APG, but we're looking at ways to do variable-action spells in the future.
85	Bon16	Bonner	Logan	Lead Designer	Design	Will there be more modularity in shields, like shield runes? Or rather more specific shields?	There are a couple new shields. Shield runes would be a whole new rules concept, and we didn't do very many of those in this book because it's primarily an expansion on the concepts of the core. (Versatile heritages being a notable exception.) More "out-there" ideas should come later.
86	Bon17	Bonner	Logan	Lead Designer	Design	I’m also crazy invested in any additional shield info we can get. Love shields. I don’t think anything specific was mentioned in the streams (except that there will be more shields)	I believe we also mentioned the bastion archetype, which is all about shields.
87	Bon18	Bonner	Logan	Lead Designer	Design	If you could have any pie right now what pie would you want and how would you like it to be served (e.g. warm with whip cream, straight out of the Entenmann's package while laying in bed)?	Coconut cream, just one slice on a little plate.
88	Bon19	Bonner	Logan	Lead Designer	Design	is there an investigator feat named "galaxy brain"	There is not. Sounds like a suggestion for the Starfinder team.
89	Bon20	Bonner	Logan	Lead Designer	Design	I was trying to think of a way the evil Champions in the APG could fit into a mostly good or neutral party and thought of some interpretations of Frank Castle or Jack Bauer where they're NE or CE but restrict themselves to inflicting their wrath on other evil people. Can the evil Champion codes support such a character?	It's a pretty big stretch. We didn't design them to play well with neutral parties. Best bet would be an antipaladin with a deity whose tenets would support that play style.
90	Bon21	Bonner	Logan	Lead Designer	Design	Are monsters intended to ignore their spell components, or does (for example) a Marilith have to put down one of her swords to cast blade barrier, or a cacodaemon have a spell component pouch attached to it?	This is a bit too much of a rules question for me to answer here, but I'll note it for FAQ purposes. We don't like to give rules answers that aren't totally clear-cut outside of the normal channels because we don't want info in hard-to-find places.
91	Bon22	Bonner	Logan	Lead Designer	Design	Hello Logan! Do you have pets? And if you do, can you share a picture?	I don't! But I do have a forest outside my window and occasionally get visitors.
92	Bon23	Bonner	Logan	Lead Designer	Design	Can you ready a step action with the trigger "when I'm attacked" so that the attack fails because you're no longer there?	We expect this will somewhat vary by table, especially if people try to abuse it. But Readying has a pretty substantial action cost to try to cut down on shenaniganes. In my game, I'd allow it, but there's no guarantee your enemy won't figure out what you're up to and avoid attacking you. There's also an expectation that a trigger has to be something happening in the game world, so "If someone starts to attack me" or even "If someone tries to make a melee attack against me" are usually reasonable, but something like "If someone tries to use any effect for which me stepping 5 feet would remove me from the targetable range" or "If someone attempts to attack me with a melee attack and they don't have reach" are too specific.
93	Bon24	Bonner	Logan	Lead Designer	Design	If psychic comes back, would they be occult caster? Or would they cast focus spells or special combination of traditions(like how halchyon magic works)	I would expect they'd be an occult caster, since the spells they could cast align very closely with the occult list for obvious reasons. Psychic magic converts to occult magic very closely. We've also held off on some of those classic psychic spells that could have been on the occult list (tower of iron will et al) for a book with lots of psychic goodies in it.
94	Sei1	Seifter	Mark	Design Manager	Design	... you were researching Artifical Intelligence at MIT. So are you really Mark Seifter, or are you one of his escaped projects?	Does...not....compute!
95	Sei2	Seifter	Mark	Design Manager	Design	Love your work and your activeness on forum! :D What is your favorite setting area in Pathfinder and in Starfinder?	I got really into some of the places I've played and run APs, but other than that, I enjoy the First World and some of the other planes, in both.
96	Sei3	Seifter	Mark	Design Manager	Design	When will we get all the Sharkshasha subspecies (hammerhead looks to be the default, but we need tiger shark, great white, etc)?	You could run a sharkshasa from any kind of shark using the base sharkshasa stats on the Arcane Mark discord, but the amazing art from user Sheppi TS Rodriguez is for a hammerhead.
97	Sei4	Seifter	Mark	Design Manager	Design	Pathfinder 2E, since the playtest has been my absolute favorite system to play on only with initial content and balance back then. Great system! Also ArcaneMark is a great channel to follow. ^^ I was wondering for a long time as a Magus fanboi from Pathfinder 1e, do you have any ideas on whether it would come out and if it will, when we would hear about "the cool class" of the game would be released? Also as a person who played several different Maguses that has differing gameplays, can we have some hints on what kind of a class it would be if you started planning/designing it?	Unfortunately, we're not allowed to answer questions about potential future design.
98	Sei5	Seifter	Mark	Design Manager	Design	Mark, I'd like to know what are your favorite new character options from the PF2 APG and a brief explanation of why. Could be an Archetype, a Feat, a Subclass, a Spell. You could even say one of each if you're feeling generous xD	Great question; in fact so great that we're going to mention favorites at Friday's marquee PaizoCon panel, so don't miss it!
99	Sei6	Seifter	Mark	Design Manager	Design	Mark, can I ask you a PF2 rules question?	As the pinned post says "Ask me about whatever topics you like, but keep in mind I probably won't answer rules adjudication questions here." So you can, but keep in mind that I likely won't answer it.
100	Sei7	Seifter	Mark	Design Manager	Design	Did you enjoy Kingmaker? :3 (crpg or ap?)	Linda ran a game of Kingmaker that was incredibly epic, with tons of added content including a new region roughly the size of one of the hex maps in an AP volume. It was great. I've been meaning to look into the CRPG now that there's a turn-based version. When Paizo had an early playtest of it, my characters kept provoking tons of AoOs from everything and the spells I cast would go off at a point where they wouldn't help any more (or would blow up my own Amiri who decided to enter the AoE), unless I fiddled with pause/unpause a ridiculous amount of times per fight, so I was itching for an official turn-based mode. That's more on me and my playstyle though; while I do play real time action RPGs and usually on hard modes, for this particular configuration, my playstyle didn't mesh well with the real time mode.