Leveling Up!

Monday, March 12, 2018

With the Pathfinder Playtest, we're looking to level up the entire Pathfinder game. And that means leveling up... leveling up! Gaining new levels and the toys that come with them is a core part of Pathfinder First Edition, and we want to make it more rewarding in the new edition. So how do you level up?

Well, first you're going to need some Experience Points. You can get those XP by fighting monsters, encountering traps, solving puzzles, and accomplishing goals. Once you hit 1,000 XP, you level up! (That's for every level, so whenever you have 500 XP, you'll always know you're halfway to leveling up again! And if you have any extra Experience Points after leveling up, they count toward the next level.)

Once you have enough Experience Points to level up, you'll increase your proficiencies, then get some more Hit Points (8 + Constitution modifier for a cleric, for example), and then get to make the choices for your new level. What choices? Those are all covered on your class's class advancement table. For instance, at 2nd and 3rd levels, the cleric gets the following:

2Cleric feat, skill feat
32nd-level spells, general feat, skill increase

(Wait... what if I multiclass? We'll cover that in a future blog, but let's just say you'll still be referencing only one advancement table.)

One thing we knew we wanted to include in the new edition was a good number of choices for all characters. In first edition, this could be pretty unequal. Even though over time, the game incorporated more ways to customize any type of character, we wanted to build in more robust customization into the structure of every class. That's why every class gets specific class talents (which include spells for spellcasters) at 1st level and every other level thereafter, increases to skills every other level, and feats at every level!

Illustration by Wayne Reynolds

Feats Feats Feats!

How does gaining feats at every level shake out? Every class has special feats just for them, which you gain every other level. When your cleric hits 2nd level and gets that cleric feat, do you want to become a better healer? Learn another of your deity's domains? Turn undead away from you? Your class feats give you these options, so you're not locked into the same path as every other cleric.

On any level when you don't gain a class feat, you gain a skill feat to change the ways you can use skills, a general feat that's useful to any character regardless of class, or an ancestry feat that reflects the training or advantages of your people. Skill feats are part of the general feat category, too, so if you really want to invest in your skills, you can drop 15 feats on improving them!

Many of your feats—especially class feats—give you new actions, activities, and so on that you can use. They have a special format to tell you how they work with your three actions and one reaction. Formatting them this way means that it's easier to tell whether a feat is something you can always do or a special action you can take. In Pathfinder First Edition terms, this would be like the difference between Weapon Focus and Vital Strike.

One of our goals with feats was to make them easier to choose and to use. Most feats require very few prerequisites, so you won't need to worry about picking a feat you really don't want in order to eventually get one you do. Any prerequisites build off your level, your proficiency, and any previous feats the new feat builds onto.

The Best of Your Ability

You'll also amp up several of your ability scores every 5 levels. The process might be familiar to those of you who've been playing Starfinder for the last several months! There are, of course, a few tweaks, and we made all ability boosts work the same way instead of being different at 1st level. Learn it once, use it in perpetuity.

Second Chances

So you get all these choices. Let's say you make a few bad ones. It happens!

Retraining your abilities is now in the game from the get-go, covered by the downtime system. You can spend your downtime to swap out choices you made for other ones. (Though you can't swap out ones that are a core part of your character, like your ancestry, unless you work out a way to do so with your GM.

Some classes give you ways to retrain your choices automatically. For instance, some spells get less useful as you go up in level, so spontaneous spellcasters get to replace some of the spells they know with other ones when they get new spells.

Leveling in the Playtest

The playtest adventure will have you playing characters at various levels, and tells you when to level them up (or tells you to create new characters for certain chapters). Our goal has been to make your options expansive and satisfying, but not overwhelming. We look forward to you telling us which decisions you're making, trading tips with fellow players, and agonizing over two feats when you really want them both.

Logan Bonner
Designer

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Mark Seifter wrote:
Dαedαlus wrote:
I can live with that. I still would prefer that ability score caps applied before racial mods, though, so that the smartest elves would be smarter than the smartest gnomes (except for Bleachling ancestries, anyway), and the fastest halflings would be more nimble than the nimblest dwarves, and so on. Especially since ancestry seems to be a bigger part of characters now (what with Ancestry feats and all), it would be nice if that applied to ability scores as well.
That is sort of true and sort of not true, in that barring the optional dice rolling method, there aren't explicit "caps" per se (instead, just like in PF1, there are effective caps in that the method will only generate stats up to a certain value). As I said, it's not really similar to the Starfinder initial ability score generation method, despite sharing the level up part.

Optional dice rolling method? I think 60% of my ability score worries just went out the window.

Darn you, Paizo! I keep trying to find a reason to not like PF2, but you keep foiling me! ;)
EDIT: Except for Core goblins. I am not a fan of Core goblins.
And resonance. Especially with potions.

Designer

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ThePuppyTurtle wrote:

I hope this doesn't come at the expense of SF's tendency to be forgiving toward unconventional race / class combinations? One of my favorite things about that game is that I don't have to pick my race primarily on the basis of which class I intend to play. I can even pick specifically suboptimal combinations like a vesk engineer and not feel like I'm being punished that hard.

Meanwhile, Pathfinder point buy slaps you hard in the face for daring to play a Dwarven sorcerer. I hope that doesn't continue to be the case.

Would you believe that it still manages to be drastically more forgiving than PF1 towards nonstandard ancestry/class combinations? We absolutely did not want to say "Alchemists and wizards who aren't humans or elves are always behind" or the like. You still might be behind a little bit if you pick an ancestry that traditionally has a penalty, but not nearly as much as a dwarf sorcerer in PF1 (which would have 4 less Cha than a human, halfling, or gnome who spent the same effort). It all comes down to the extra customization inherent in ancestry. If it seems like this might be impossible to achieve alongside the other features I mentioned to Daedalus, it wasn't easy. We worked really hard cracking this nut and had to reject many false starts before we found it.

Silver Crusade

Dαedαlus wrote:
ThePuppyTurtle wrote:
Mark Seifter wrote:
Dαedαlus wrote:
Mark Seifter wrote:
Dαedαlus wrote:
Mark Seifter wrote:
Dαedαlus wrote:
I personally don't terribly mind the SF leveling-up method (it just means you get your +1 to an ability a bit later, and get extra abilities as a bonus), so long as we keep PF-style ability score generation. I don't want an arbitrary cap on my limits- just make higher scores cost more and it works out fine. The 1-1 ability score generation just further encourages min-maxing your important ability scores, rather than spreading points out a bit more.
We are not using that generation method. As Logan hinted in the blog itself, the stat generation is more organically tied to your character concept and helps you spread around your ability scores if you like. As it so happens, you also wind up with slightly higher overall starting stats, than in Starfinder mainly in your less important ability scores that you're fleshing out for RP purposes, though I'm considering using the PF2 statgen system the next time I run a Starfinder home game as it's more generous to multi-stat classes at low levels, like solarians.

Interesting. I'm looking forward to seeing it, then. I've been wanting to play a barbarian that pretended to be stupid while actually being quite cunning for a while, but point buy always cut me short. If P2e will help that, well I suppose I'll have to give it a go.

I'm definitely warming overall to P2e, but still hoping it doesn't end up just being 'fantasy Starfinder'

You should be much more able to build a 1st level barbarian with 18 Strength and secretly 14 Int that you pretend is lower, say, than doing that with a 1st level soldier in Starfinder (where you would run all 10s in the other stats if you did that). You'd still have some other positive stats in PF2 in that case.
Hmmm.... I mean, I'm still not a fan of SF's ability score generation as a concept, and anything
...

But what if I want to play a dwarven sorcerer? It'd be nice if I wasn't objectively worse than everyone else at the table.


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Really, all of this just has me itching to get my hands on the playtest and figure out how it'll all work out. If you can make the people like me (who like for things like 'this race is very smart' to actually mean they are smart) happy while also making people like ThePuppyTurtle (who like to play things that aren't always the best combination stat-wise) happy, you will have my deepest respect.

Scarab Sages

ThePuppyTurtle wrote:
Dαedαlus wrote:
ThePuppyTurtle wrote:
Mark Seifter wrote:
Dαedαlus wrote:
Mark Seifter wrote:
Dαedαlus wrote:
Mark Seifter wrote:
Dαedαlus wrote:
I personally don't terribly mind the SF leveling-up method (it just means you get your +1 to an ability a bit later, and get extra abilities as a bonus), so long as we keep PF-style ability score generation. I don't want an arbitrary cap on my limits- just make higher scores cost more and it works out fine. The 1-1 ability score generation just further encourages min-maxing your important ability scores, rather than spreading points out a bit more.
We are not using that generation method. As Logan hinted in the blog itself, the stat generation is more organically tied to your character concept and helps you spread around your ability scores if you like. As it so happens, you also wind up with slightly higher overall starting stats, than in Starfinder mainly in your less important ability scores that you're fleshing out for RP purposes, though I'm considering using the PF2 statgen system the next time I run a Starfinder home game as it's more generous to multi-stat classes at low levels, like solarians.

Interesting. I'm looking forward to seeing it, then. I've been wanting to play a barbarian that pretended to be stupid while actually being quite cunning for a while, but point buy always cut me short. If P2e will help that, well I suppose I'll have to give it a go.

I'm definitely warming overall to P2e, but still hoping it doesn't end up just being 'fantasy Starfinder'

You should be much more able to build a 1st level barbarian with 18 Strength and secretly 14 Int that you pretend is lower, say, than doing that with a 1st level soldier in Starfinder (where you would run all 10s in the other stats if you did that). You'd still have some other positive stats in PF2 in that case.
Hmmm.... I mean, I'm still not a fan of SF's ability score generation
...

That's why you have things like Empyreal bloodlines. Tools that you can use to tinker with your character and build the idea you want within the constraints of the game.

Or embrace the character concept and don't worry about 5-10% differences. Or go all in with a ridiculous character. I may have a 2 hp, 2 CON wizard...


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In regards to the ancestries and optimal/sub-optimal class choices, I hope that there are, for the non humankin ancestries, multiple ancestry options that change stat modifiers. In example, if there was an ancestry option for an elven culture that's known to practice druidism much more often than wizardry, granting a +2 in wisdom instead of intelligence, or an option for dwarves who grew up putting much more emphasis into alchemy over religion, giving a +2 to intelligence instead of wisdom, or even (hypothetically) an orcish ancestry option where the orc in question was trained since birth to be a shaman, losing the (hypothetical) +4 to strength, but in exchange got a +2 to wisdom and intelligence and only a -2 to charisma.


ThePuppyTurtle wrote:
But what if I want to play a dwarven sorcerer? It'd be nice if I wasn't objectively worse than everyone else at the table.

Play in a non-hyper-optimized group (or just go Empereal, but I'll ignore that for now)? In one of my games, there's a sorcerer with 16 CHA. She focuses more on buffs and less on saves, and can keep up pretty good combat-wise. Really, it would just be like in real life: work to minimize your disadvantages while maximizing your advantages. If you don't focus on pumping DC super high, you can get away with a charisma as low as 15, not have any stat-boosting items, and still be able to cast 9th level spells as soon as you get them. Just avoid SoS spells, and focus more on buffs, battlefield control, and no-save spells. It's workable, it just needs a bit more ingenuity.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
Scias Starset wrote:
Well I am going to do my best to make Glorfindel.

Well, first you have to kill him and then resurrect him millennia later, so it’ll take awhile...


Dαedαlus wrote:
ThePuppyTurtle wrote:
But what if I want to play a dwarven sorcerer? It'd be nice if I wasn't objectively worse than everyone else at the table.
Play in a non-hyper-optimized group (or just go Empereal, but I'll ignore that for now)? In one of my games, there's a sorcerer with 16 CHA. She focuses more on buffs and less on saves, and can keep up pretty good combat-wise. Really, it would just be like in real life: work to minimize your disadvantages while maximizing your advantages. If you don't focus on pumping DC super high, you can get away with a charisma as low as 15, not have any stat-boosting items, and still be able to cast 9th level spells as soon as you get them. Just avoid SoS spells, and focus more on buffs, battlefield control, and no-save spells. It's workable, it just needs a bit more ingenuity.

Alternatively, you could go Sage and build like you would a wizard, if the flavor of the Empyreal bloodline doesn't sit right.

I once theory-crafted a dwarf sorcerer with the rakshasa bloodline, and I came to the same conclusion; focusing less on spells relying on saving throws and more on throwing buffs and effects that don't allow saves is a good approach for when your charisma is so low.


Tarondor wrote:
Scias Starset wrote:
Well I am going to do my best to make Glorfindel.
Well, first you have to kill him and then resurrect him millennia later, so it’ll take awhile...

Makes for a cool background for your character: you are the reincarnation of someone who died thousands of years ago, perhaps on a quest very much like this one....

Maybe if there are ancestry feats that deal with supernatural heritage, this would be a great way to explain them.


I mean, there are builds for wizards that give Strength higher priority than Intelligence. If you really wanted to do it, you could pull off your dwarven sorcerer. It just won't be a typical sorcerer. Three fewer spells per day and -3 to your DCs really aren't an issue if you just don't focus on DCs.


So how exactly does Starfinder do ability score increases by level? Also how similar is PF2E's version?


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Pathfinder Adventure, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Dαedαlus wrote:
I mean, there are builds for wizards that give Strength higher priority than Intelligence. If you really wanted to do it, you could pull off your dwarven sorcerer. It just won't be a typical sorcerer. Three fewer spells per day and -3 to your DCs really aren't an issue if you just don't focus on DCs.

I have a PFS CORE bard with a CHA of 12. He's an Archer and mostly just avoids spells that have a DC. He's very effective.


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Helvellyn wrote:

I know this may come accross as paranoia but I am a little concerned about the mention of special formatting to describe how the feats work.

One of the areas where I felt Pathfinder was better than its competitors was that descriptions added flavour to the abilities which tended to inspire and place the ability in the contect of the pathfinder setting.

As I said, probably paranoia on my part and the text will be flavour as well as rules, but it would be a shame if we went from inspiring descriptive text to just cold, hard rules.

I'm a fan of separating flavor and rules as much as possible: as such I'm hoping for "cold, hard rules" in the rules section and "flavour" in the flavor sections. You can save a LOT of space by removing the non-rules text from feats and instead take that room saved and make MORE feats in that space.


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Elfteiroh wrote:
vagabond_666 wrote:
Mark Seifter wrote:


This is a good insight. I'm going to tell you an exciting way you can expand that concept even further, also in one sentence that would fit right after your sentence: "You can even vary the XP level by level to change the rate of advancement." So if your group wants to accelerate into the level 7-11 range, stay there for a good long time, and then accelerate up to a level 20 finale, you could require fewer XP to level for each level up to 7, then more XP to level from 7-11, then fewer again up to 20. And it's easy to tweak those knobs because 1000 is an easy number. Want 50% more content in a level? OK, 1500 XP it is!

Why on earth would you do this, when you can also just apply the multipliers to the XP you handed out?

If I want levels 1-4 to go three times as fast as usual, levels 5 -7 to go four times as slow, levels 8-10 to go one fifth as slow, and level 11 to go one third as slow, before returning to normal progression

What XP is required to reach level 12 if you change the XP level up numbers?

What do I need to multiply or divide the XP I hand out by at any given level band if I do it the other way?

Why would you do this to yourself?

Calculating 130% of 1000XP needed to level up is way easier than calculating 70% of 25XP gained.

Also, changing the XP needed to level up is more transparent to the player than changing the XP gained. Also, it could end up making strange events, like a Dragon that would give less XP than the Orc you killed a couple levels befores, even if the challenge was similar.

Okay, granted I am assuming some things about how XP is going to be handled, like that they want to keep the ~20 encounters per level, and so a CR equal encounter will be worth 50 XP, and CR -2 will be 25 or 12 or something, and CR +2 will be 100, and that this will be consistent across all levels. This means a couple of things:

1) The math is fairly straight forward, because if you're doubling it or halving it you'll do it once for an obvious set of 4 or 5 numbers that will remain static until you decide to alter progression rate again.

2) You are never going to get away from "but an Orc was worth 50 XP when we were level 1, and now trolls are worth 12 XP?"

If this is totally not how it's determined what the XP for a monster is, then sure, my way is harder and you're probably better off ending up losing your nice clean "A level every 1000 XP" in exchange, but if that's the case I'll be pondering why determining XP for encounters is now needlessly complicated instead.

Scarab Sages

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I really like the talents idea. Curious to see how multi-classing will work. I'm really hoping it's a "You use your total class level to determine the effects of talents, but you only qualify for talents depending on the level of the class that gets it," so a Fighter 5/Wizard 5 counts as 10th level for his talents, but can only choose talents available to a 5th level Wizard or Fighter

We'll see, though.


Threeshades wrote:

Is there going to be some sort of mechanic that accounts for XP gained from overcoming greater challenges, such as defeating higher CR monsters?

I presume that CR itself will no longer be tied to an amount of XP rewarded since that would mean players would level up faster at higher levels.

I'd be very thankful if someone from the team could enlighten me on this.

Also, with class feats and such will there still be any fixed class features aside from maybe spellcasting? Like will all rogues still have sneak attack, and all barbarians have rage, or are even these optional features now?


Pathfinder Adventure, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Davor wrote:

I really like the talents idea. Curious to see how multi-classing will work. I'm really hoping it's a "You use your total class level to determine the effects of talents, but you only qualify for talents depending on the level of the class that gets it," so a Fighter 5/Wizard 5 counts as 10th level for his talents, but can only choose talents available to a 5th level Wizard or Fighter

We'll see, though.

This is more or less what I'm hoping for also. Maybe your non-class levels still count for half? Like a fighter/wizard 6/6 could pick talents as an 8th level wizard or fighter.


I wonder how multiclassing is going to work with casters if "you'll still be referencing only one advancement table." considering spellcasting seems to be part of the advancement table.


Milo v3 wrote:
I wonder how multiclassing is going to work with casters if "you'll still be referencing only one advancement table." considering spellcasting seems to be part of the advancement table.

Maybe they spend 'spellcasting class' feats for spell levels.


Hmmm...I was kind of hoping we'd get the feat progression from 4th Edition (aka a feat at 1st Level, 2nd Level, and then at every other even level) but this sounds interesting too. Will we be able to turn Skill Feats into General Feats as well as turning General Feats into Skill Feats? Also, what is the max amount of class levels one can reach? Is it still 20 or can our PC's actually go as high as 30 this time?

Sovereign Court

Pathfinder Starfinder Society Subscriber
Milo v3 wrote:
I wonder how multiclassing is going to work with casters if "you'll still be referencing only one advancement table." considering spellcasting seems to be part of the advancement table.

Well, the advancement table you'd look at is either your Fighter class advancement table or your Wizard class advancement table. I'd expect spell progression is only on your Wizard class advancement table.


willuwontu wrote:
Are things like power attack and deadly aim remaining feats then?

On this, I really liked how Mutants and Masterminds let everyone do power attack/accurate attack, but without the feat you were limited to +2/-2 while those with it could go to +5/-5 (For the numbers note M&M is a system where your damage+to hit will total 20 in a standard game)


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Dragon78 wrote:
So how exactly does Starfinder do ability score increases by level?

Every five levels you get a +2 to four different stats, up until ability score 17. Anything after 17 is only a +1.

Really cuts down on the MAD/SAD problem.


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graystone wrote:
Milo v3 wrote:
I wonder how multiclassing is going to work with casters if "you'll still be referencing only one advancement table." considering spellcasting seems to be part of the advancement table.
Maybe they spend 'spellcasting class' feats for spell levels.

Maybe they're copying one of the few things 5E got right and casting ability of multiple classes is additive instead of separate. There you add your full caster levels together (Wizard ect.), 2/3rds of the your 1st-6th caster level classes (Paladin) and 1/3rd of your 1-4th caster (Fighters and Rogues that picked Eldritch Knight and Arcane Trickster) and have a single casting ability. In 5E this meant you wouldn't have higher level spells and had to cast low level spells in higher slots, but that doesn't need to be maintained.

bookrat wrote:
Dragon78 wrote:
So how exactly does Starfinder do ability score increases by level?

Every five levels you get a +2 to four different stats, up until ability score 17. Anything after 17 is only a +1.

Really cuts down on the MAD/SAD problem.

And makes the result of raising scores of 15 twice exactly the same as raising a score of 14 twice (15>17>18 vs. 14>16>18) except that having a 15 costs you more than a 14, which makes no sense in the slightest. I'm really confused how that got past a writer, editor, playtest, and final edit without it being noticed.


Benjamin Medrano wrote:
I will say that the only problem I see with using Talents instead of Feats (from my perspective as an author) is that it's two letters longer. That might not be much at the moment, but when you're talking about a huge book where it's going to be referenced dozens or hundreds of times, that could add up to quite a bit of space.

I could definitely understand the decision to call them feats if they're being called feats because of rules/abilities that specifically interact with feats, specifically, as opposed to other abilities/rules/etc. or for some rules-related reason related to how feats work that makes it more useful/convenient for class abilities to be rolled into feats. It might also be interesting to see how--if at all--class feats are balanced against general feats--or vice-versa.


KingOfAnything wrote:
Well, the advancement table you'd look at is either your Fighter class advancement table or your Wizard class advancement table. I'd expect spell progression is only on your Wizard class advancement table.

That would mean if your a Fighter 1 and then take levels 2-20 as a wizard, you wouldn't get any spells ever so I really really doubt they'd do that.

The idea of a 19th level wizard who cannot cast a single spell is so friggin pathetic there's no way Paizo would be that dumb to overlook it.

Sovereign Court

Pathfinder Starfinder Society Subscriber
Milo v3 wrote:
KingOfAnything wrote:
Well, the advancement table you'd look at is either your Fighter class advancement table or your Wizard class advancement table. I'd expect spell progression is only on your Wizard class advancement table.

That would mean if your a Fighter 1 and then take levels 2-20 as a wizard, you wouldn't get any spells ever so I really really doubt they'd do that.

The idea of a 19th level wizard who cannot cast a single spell is so friggin pathetic there's no way Paizo would be that dumb to overlook it.

No...

You use the Wizard table for all those wizard levels. You'd only use the fighter table for your first level.


Arctic Sphinx wrote:
Benjamin Medrano wrote:
I will say that the only problem I see with using Talents instead of Feats (from my perspective as an author) is that it's two letters longer. That might not be much at the moment, but when you're talking about a huge book where it's going to be referenced dozens or hundreds of times, that could add up to quite a bit of space.
I could definitely understand the decision to call them feats if they're being called feats because of rules/abilities that specifically interact with feats, specifically, as opposed to other abilities/rules/etc. or for some rules-related reason related to how feats work that makes it more useful/convenient for class abilities to be rolled into feats. It might also be interesting to see how--if at all--class feats are balanced against general feats--or vice-versa.

However, having starting stat of 17 >19> 20 compared to 18>19>20 would be even more broken! So yeah, you get to choice between badly spent 1-2 points or 3+. They went for the low one.


As a Pathfinder fan who's busy and always stuck with GM duty, I am excited to see that they've adjusted the scaling so that level ups happen every 1,000 experience points. I say let Paizo work their fancy mathematics if that means that I don't have to spend so much time balancing an experience balance sheet for every single encounter.


KingOfAnything wrote:

No...

You use the Wizard table for all those wizard levels. You'd only use the fighter table for your first level.

So you'd lose everything fighter gave you at first level?

Also what if you keep swapping between the two classes every two levels? If you only use one table, and you end on say Fighter that would mean you get no spellcasting at all, despite being a level 10 wizard/level 10 fighter.


ChibiNyan wrote:
Arctic Sphinx wrote:
Benjamin Medrano wrote:
I will say that the only problem I see with using Talents instead of Feats (from my perspective as an author) is that it's two letters longer. That might not be much at the moment, but when you're talking about a huge book where it's going to be referenced dozens or hundreds of times, that could add up to quite a bit of space.
I could definitely understand the decision to call them feats if they're being called feats because of rules/abilities that specifically interact with feats, specifically, as opposed to other abilities/rules/etc. or for some rules-related reason related to how feats work that makes it more useful/convenient for class abilities to be rolled into feats. It might also be interesting to see how--if at all--class feats are balanced against general feats--or vice-versa.
However, having starting stat of 17 >19> 20 compared to 18>19>20 would be even more broken! So yeah, you get to choice between badly spent 1-2 points or 3+. They went for the low one.

Which means the idea has a fundamental problem. The idea of getting an extra point buy points every so many levels seems like it would work if they dropped 1 to 1 point buying and restricted it so you can only dump half (rounded up) these extra points in one stats. Creates a need to "bank" points though.

Sovereign Court

Pathfinder Starfinder Society Subscriber
Milo v3 wrote:
KingOfAnything wrote:

No...

You use the Wizard table for all those wizard levels. You'd only use the fighter table for your first level.

So you'd lose everything fighter gave you at first level?

Also what if you keep swapping between the two classes every two levels? If you only use one table, and you end on say Fighter that would mean you get no spellcasting at all, despite being a level 10 wizard/level 10 fighter.

You only use one table each time you level up. You keep things from column A, and add things from column B just like multiclassing works in Pathfinder. You just don't reference a separate "am I an odd level?" table for general feats.


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KingOfAnything wrote:
You only use one table each time you level up.

That's the first time I've heard that interpretation of Paizo saying "you'll still be referencing only one advancement table". Especially since that interpretation requires more than one advancement table.


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I thought it meant that all classes use the same advancement table and that spellcasting was now incorporated into the feat structure. So that spellcasters would be picking class feats enabling them to cast the higher level spells at the same time that noncasters were instead picking feats specific to their class.

Sovereign Court

Pathfinder Starfinder Society Subscriber
Milo v3 wrote:
KingOfAnything wrote:
You only use one table each time you level up.
That's the first time I've heard that interpretation of Paizo saying "you'll still be referencing only one advancement table". Especially since that interpretation requires more than one advancement table.

I guess we'll see. Multiclassing in PF2 could end up being much closer to variant multiclassing than I'm expecting. Which would be radical, and probably awesome.


Steve Geddes wrote:
I thought it meant that all classes use the same advancement table and that spellcasting was now incorporated into the feat structure. So that spellcasters would be picking class feats enabling them to cast the higher level spells at the same time that noncasters were instead picking feats specific to their class.

The blog post above shows Spellcasting as being separate to the feat system.


I took “second level spells” to be the third level class feat/talent/whatever (ie that they were presenting a summary of the table, not an excerpt).

I’m not following things that closely, so take it with a grain of salt. I’m pretty sure that nothing we say now will have any impact on the playtest book anyhow, where things will be clearer.


Steve Geddes wrote:
I thought it meant that all classes use the same advancement table and that spellcasting was now incorporated into the feat structure. So that spellcasters would be picking class feats enabling them to cast the higher level spells at the same time that noncasters were instead picking feats specific to their class.

I'm pretty sure spells are not part of the advancement table. However, I do agree that all of the tables are parallel. You always get class feat at X, skill feat at Y. So I guess you could technically swap class back and forth and always get the class feats of 1 of them only and other stuff from the second class. Spellcasting probably requires an auxiliary table based on caster level on top of this.

Grand Archive

Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

I get the feeling the spells will be a lvl 1 feature that get better with your levels. If there's now 10 levels of spells, it would mean you could have a simple rule of "You can cast spells of level up to half your level, rounded up", skipping the need of a spell table. Isn't the number of spells you can cast now based on your stat or something? It's weird to have mainly an audio only live game as a source for the rules... You see the results, but not the full rules. Eh.


Can't wait to see how this pans out, it sounds pretty good(with a few concerns that sound like they address themselves as X might become a problem because of Y, but Y already appears to be getting altered or changed into Z)


Leyren wrote:
The True Monk wrote:
I'm on board with everything except the 1000 XP for every level. The three advancement tracks were great for choosing how fast a GM wanted their group to level up, and I'm sad to see that go. The system could be altered without abandoning it entirely, and I fear this new system could be restrictive for homebrew games that don't have a premade dosage of encounters pre-balanced to have PCs level up after a set number of challenges. It sounds like the Starfinder Society's "1 xp per adventure, 3 xp gives you a level up", but not all gamers like that.
The 1000xp rule is so good because your issues can be resolved with one sentence, e.g. "if you want your players to level faster, they gain a level at 800 xp. if you want them to level slower, they gain a level at 1,250xp instead of 1,000xp."

There is a serious and major disadvantage to the "1000xp for every level" thing. Catching up.

In 3.5, I joined a group and started at 1st level. The group was level 5. OMG, how sacriligious to not have everyone at the same level! Your gm should be hanged and quarted! [end sarcasism] I had lots of fun and the level difference was never a problem. Probably because we didn't play it like a video game.

Anyways, I was 4 levels behind, well I didn't stay that way. I gained ldvels faster because I was lower. It didn't take long for me to catch jp to the group.

But, if every level is the same cost in xp, then there is no catch up emergent behaviour, and therefore, the result will either never catch up, or will need a tacked on additional rule to explicitly add a catch up effect, probably by giving bonus xp to the lower level characters.

The other option is a table of xp rewards based on the level difference between monster and character. This only feasible if xp is standardized so everyone gets full xp regardless of how many are in the party.


I imagine the assumption is that the party is the same level, but it would be trivially easy to- say- double the EXP a weaker party member gains from struggling to contribute alongside stronger allies against stronger foes.


TheAlicornSage wrote:


There is a serious and major disadvantage to the "1000xp for every level" thing. Catching up.

Just give the lower level people lower level-up cap's. Instead of requiring 1000 to catch up, you can feel free to lower it to 250, 500, or 750, depending on how fast you want them to catch up.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Just reduce the xp required? So simple and falls back on GM choice, just like it was the GMs choice to have you roll a character at any given level.

While I would never make a player play something below the party level, unless they specifically wanted to do so for a story reason. If I did I would resolve it by that character needing 100 less xp to level per Level behind they are. So at four levels behind they'll only need 600, then 700 when they are 3 behind etc.


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The ability to rule 0 a fix does not change the fact that the problem exists and needs a fix.

Silver Crusade

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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

How about you wait for the rules to see if and how they address the problem?


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TheAlicornSage wrote:

The ability to rule 0 a fix does not change the fact that the problem exists and needs a fix.

It's not rule zero though. Mark has said about how that was one of the intended benefits of the system.


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
TheAlicornSage wrote:

The ability to rule 0 a fix does not change the fact that the problem exists and needs a fix.

Oh where in the rules does it say when a new character joins the group they need to do so at level 1? Citing rule 0 to fix a problem caused by rule 0 is totally fine. If it isn't, then the number of problems in any system approaches infinity. Presumably your GM made adjustments to accommodate the lvl 1 character in the PF1 game you mentioned, or else used their fiat to, say, never target them with something that would otherwise challenge the rest of the group.

A huge amount of your problems with the system are problems that you would have in PF1 by the sounds of it. You also seem to have a bit of a "the way I role play" high ground, despite it being fairly common way for many people to run/play their games.


TheAlicornSage wrote:
The ability to rule 0 a fix does not change the fact that the problem exists and needs a fix.

It's not objectively a problem, though, and thus doesn't require any kind of "fix." This is an edge case that is easily dealt with. Indeed, the numbers are far easier to manage so it's a simple matter to provide 250, 500, or even an extra 1000 XP so the lower-level character catches up as necessary. There's no need to go back to the far more math-heavy, cumbersome system to accommodate a rare edge case like this one.

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