The other option is to take field commissioned agent which gives you extra downtime days but no additional items. Field commissioned agent is situational, it usually isn't beneficial to take it over the schools.

I would also venture that scrolls/spells/swords is situational as well, just less so than field commissioned agent. You take those if they have a skill/feat offering that aligns with your character, or if there are specific items that you want.

If none of that jumps out at you, then generalist is probably the best option (in my opinion it is the best school and I almost always end up taking it unless there is something really completing offered by one of the others).

There is no real downside to taking a school/field commissioned, the downside would be if you decided not to take any of them.

Remember, you can retrain your school, it just takes time or Acp.

Mostly flavor, but some mechanical. You won't be casting wish in combat any more.

From the Ritual entry on AON (emphasis mine to highlight the changes from Wish as a spell):

A ritual is an esoteric and complex spell that anyone can cast. It takes much longer to cast a ritual than a normal spell, but rituals can have more powerful effects.

When you take charge of a ritual, you are its primary caster, and others assisting you are secondary casters. You can be a primary caster for a ritual even if you can’t cast spells. You must know the ritual, and the ritual’s spell level can be no higher than half your level rounded up. You must also have the required proficiency rank in the skill used for the ritual’s primary check (see Checks below), and as the primary caster, you must attempt this skill check to determine the ritual’s effects. The primary skill check determines the tradition. Rituals do not require spell slots to cast. You can heighten a ritual up to half your level rounded up, decided when the ritual is initiated. A ritual always takes at least 1 hour to perform, and often longer. While a ritual is a downtime activity, it’s possible—albeit risky—to perform a ritual during exploration with enough uninterrupted time. A ritual’s casting time is usually listed in days. Each day of casting requires 8 hours of participation in the ritual from all casters, with breaks during multiday rituals to allow rest. One caster can continue a multiday ritual, usually with some light chanting or meditation, while the other casters rest. All rituals require material, somatic, and verbal components throughout their casting time.

Considering that Wish is supposed to be the end-all-be-all of spells, it makes sense that it would be a ritual rather than just a quick "wave my hands and say mumbo jumbo" cast as an afterthought. It now takes at least an hour, requires gathering other spell casters, multiple checks, and it fits the description of a ritual in that it can have more powerful effects than a normal spell.

Edit to add: I may have misunderstood your question. The adjustment I was referring too was the change from a spell to a ritual, not that rituals had been adjusted.

Paizo originally wanted to get rid of ability scores and just use modifiers with 2nd Edition, but they were afraid of a D&D 4th Edition schism happening and didn't make the change when they were releasing it. Now they have the perfect opportunity to make the shift without angering the playerbase.

What I have heard is that they haven't quite finished working out how the change from attributes to modifiers will be implemented, but it is something being handled with the official changes of the remaster. What they have said so far is that we will still have the ability to raise ability modifiers above 18, we just don't know how it will work yet.

Honestly, I think that makes more sense now that Paizo has proposed the adjustment.

It's true that PFS is pretty hard to figure out, especially if you don't have a well established and consistent lodge near you.

Each region definitely has it's own style of doing things, and even playing in different regions can yield vastly different experiences. I occasionally play in a different state when I head into my jobs main office, and while the base game is still the same, it's not the same experience as when I play with my home lodge.

The best advice I can offer you is to google "

<local area>

If you have specific questions, I can try to answer them, or at least get you in touch with the VC (or one of the VAs) at my lodge and they might be able to help you out.

In addition to what @[email protected] said, we also have [email protected] and [email protected] that I'm hoping will be more geared towards GMs rather than players.

The Pathfinder Society will automatically take care of this for you during your downtime. You can see the rules on it in the Organized Play Guide.

The Pathfinder Society takes care of its members by removing most ongoing nonpermanent negative conditions and repairing agents’ damaged gear to the condition it was in at the start of the scenario.

The following conditions are not automatically removed and must be cleared from the character before the end of the adventure or the character ceases to be available for organized play:

• Death
• Permanent negative effects, including polymorph or petrification
• Curses

Note that repairing damaged gear does not include resupplying consumables such as ammunition, potions, or talismans.

I think the closest thing that exists currently in PF2e official APs would be Blood Lords. I haven't played it, so I don't know how close to gothic horror it is, but it's the only really undead-themed one out right now.

There is also Malevolence and Night of the Grey Death, which are both horror themed. Based on the descriptions, Malevolence is more haunted house themed and Grey Death is more culty-themed. I haven't played either of these as well.

You might also look at the case files in Dark Archives; while not a full blown adventure path, they do hit on more of that Cthulu-esque dark fantasy.

I run a throwing magus, so somewhat related, and the biggest two things I can point out are action economy and MAD. I'm not very familiar with thaumaturge's action economy, but with magus having a 2 action mechanic that is essential to it's operation makes deciding what my third action is very tough. I took the rogue dedication as well, for the same reasons and it definitely helped out.

I don't think you can adjust much with your stats, and I'll point out that you are getting the +4 in dex and your class attribute, so you're already better off than the magus I have. Spells with saves are tough for me to use with a lower int, but you shouldn't have as many problems. I will say not to reduce your constitution modifier any more because operating within the 20-30 feet range means you're one move action or less away from most things, you will get hit, and it will hurt a lot.

On the weapons, I'd suggest throwing a couple of bolas in there, especially if you can take assurance on athletics. They're cheap, provide nonlethal and bludgeoning, and have ranged trip. Get more than one because even with a returning rune, if you use them to trip, they do not return unless you miss. You've got a couple of thrown weapons that can be used to threaten at melee range in there, so remember that if you can't avoid close-quarter fights, you can still set up flanking to help out your party members.

When I spun this instance of Lemmy up, I think there were only two other communities out there. Most of them were inactive, I think the high number of communities on this instance and the timing of it are what got us the increased visibility. I'm happy to work with admins/mods/users of the other communities on aggregating here, or at least facilitating cross-posting and sharing of resources.

Looking at the Feddit Community browser, I see these communities that aren't a part of this Lemmy instance, they all look pretty inactive so far:

• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]

I think they're gearing up for it. I think the Starfinder Remastered is their way of pre-playtest playtesting before they actually announce anything.

That being said, as someone who grew up on 3.5 and PF1e and now plays PF2e, I loathe the ruleset for Starfinder, not because it's a terrible ruleset (it is), but because I can never keep track of which system the rule I need in the moment is supposed to be from. I love the writing of their PFS scenarios and APs, though, so I'm really hoping for a polished SF2e to be announced soon.

I've never heard of it, but some google-fu leads me to a podcast about a PF1e game. I've never been able to get that into lets play podcasts, but podcasts are generally hard for me to focus on. Lately, I have been driving a lot so maybe giving something like this a chance is a good place for me to try again.

Any recommendations on where (or which podcast) to start?