Come and talk about them with me!
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What website is this?
Scribe, a tool to create pathfinder 2e homebrew
Yay new tools
I really like the change to giving more lore skills! It’s a really underutilized skill because of how narrow it is, and it’s almost never worth spending a skill upgrade on.
Also I had to reread the changed Battle Cry like 3 times because my dm has already let me play it that way (the written version would fizzle so often otherwise).
I don’t play with ABP but there’s a lot of cool stuff here.
Yeah, I’ll work on the wording on that later.
I might be misreading, but RAW Battle Cry seems to change the target of demoralise so it can always be used. Demoralise targets “a creature within 30 feet of you who you’re aware of”, but Battle Cry specifies you can “Demoralize an observed foe”, without range. I’ve always read that as specific overriding general, and it makes sense because the normal range limit on Demoralise is because you’re trying to get a specific person’s attention in the middle of a fight, whereas a Battle Cry is attracting attention before the two sides make contact.
Sometimes combat happens and I gotta roll initiative when I’m still in the other room and haven’t seen the baddies yet, but my DM lets me do it when I’ve actually entered.
Getting rid of the range limit is cool, but changing the trigger is even cooler.
Ah, ok, I see what you mean, personally I like that those kinds of abilities get disrupted like that - it puts more considerations on players for how they approach the unknown, forces communication and teamwork to synergise their abilities, and occasionally forces major changes of tactics in unexpected situations.
The thing is that players don’t really choose when initiative gets rolled, so this is just to ease them a bit on that front.
That’s exactly what I’m talking about - it makes them meaningfully engage with questions like party order and positioning, attempting stealth, and keeping the group together. If a fight breaks out where they can’t use it, I ask what they could have done differently beforehand that would have let them use it, and how can they use that knowledge going forward.
For me it makes diegetic sense too - it’s an instinctive reaction to a fight breaking out (rolling initiative) before they consciously react (their turn starts), so they can’t just save it for after they’ve consciously reacted. If the user is in another room to the enemies it’s not going to have the same effect as if they were having that scream directed at them personally.
It’s also worth considering how it changes the balance - by letting the fighter save it until their turn, it becomes more powerful against foes that act before the fighter instead of ones that act after. It’s not a huge change overall, but worth thinking about.
I meant it that you can only battle cry as free action the first time a foe is in 30 feet range, so it’s actually worse if an enemy runs up to you to strike as frightened is only for their turn then instead of until the end of their next turn if you gap close
Good point, that swings the balance in all kinds of directions - if the enemy acts before and moves in to attack it’s basically the normal effect, but if they’re ranged or a caster or something and the battlecryer closes the distance it becomes much more debilitating. It’s still weakened against enemies acting after the fighter if any of the party act before the fighter though.
It’s not a homebrew I’m going to use for the first 2 reasons I gave (and frankly my players don’t need the scales tipping in their favour), but I’d probably change the wording to “The first time in a combat that you have at least one opponent within your line of sight, you can yell a mighty battle cry and Demoralize an observed foe as a free action.” It keeps the unlimited range of the original version while giving that second chance with weird balance.
