Wereweasel

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vestris wrote:
rknop wrote:
Erik, a request: please don't have crucial updates and explanations only on a video feed somewhere. Text is faster to process, and far easier to refer back to or point somebody else to. You can also skim it if there are parts of it that aren't relevant to what you're looking for. Having to watch video to get crucial information is just too time-consuming.
The twitch thing is just a weekly spoiler for said document.

Be nice to have a brief summary or time code for the rulesy stuff, though, for those of us chomping at the bit. But really, I’m more interested in what the format of these updates is going to be. If there are a significant number of new changes even every month, iterative errata style updates would become a bit difficult to keep up with.


Making some major changes? Possible. Changing the essential design philosophy? Unlikely. I mean, if they were going to do that, wouldn't that require them to write a 2.5 E Playtest, so that they can gauge reaction to the rewrite? That seems like a lot of lost momentum.


Yossarian wrote:

It partly comes down to the question: How much should choices matter?

Hmm. I was thinking that a lot of the disagreements people have with PF2 is that they viewed PF1 as a skill based system. You got 20 skill ranks over the lifetime of a character and the skills had names like "Fighter, Cleric, Wizard".

bugleyman wrote:


We're what...nine days in? In that time, the often farcical level of histrionics around the new edition has driven me from from sympathy to ambivalence to frustration and annoyance. And thus snark is born.
Yossarian wrote:


In PF1 the Snark was just a CR 1/4 creature. Clearly for the new edition it needs to be buffed!

Agreed. I understand why they made it an archetype instead of a creature but the three feat tax Ambivalence, Frustration and Annoyance is a little too much to ask.


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AndIMustMask wrote:


5. the caster/martial disparity: yes, i said the magic words! i'm sure some will completely disregard my post for bringing this up, but it needs addressing: every single class gets roughly the same amount of class features, class feats, skill feats, and general feats to help build their character in the direction they like, and then casters get spellcasting (multiple powerful, thought-provoking options) on top of that. non-caster classes should get something that doesn't cost feats or proficiencies of around equivalent value, be it stronger class features on average, or more interesting and flexible class feat selections, or some equivalent set of actions that they can do instead (DreamScarredPress's martial stances and maneuvers from "Path of War" was one solution: allowing martials abilities to target various saves, inflict different status effects normally impossible, smooth out the clunkier actual maneuvers like disarm or feint, and more. Though I don't think it is the only oway to solve the problem, it was a solid attempt). I repeat, whatever the solution may be, it cannot, must not require a tax, because the entire point is to give them something "on top" to even things out in comparison (and martials don't have a feat advantage with which to pay those taxes).
the point isn't that we should hammer down casters, it's to elevate non-casters to a rough ballpark of similar flexibility and narrative impact.

Thank you! Completely agree. The interesting options/feat combos for martials seem to be needlessly limited and (like most of the system) suffer from a dearth of numerical benefit. For instance, look at Nimble Dodge/Nimble Roll. That's a very interesting option, but the fact that that base +2 that powers it doesn't scale means it's probably not going to proc all that often. Now if it scaled up to, say, 10 at high level and you were allowed to see the attack roll before spending your reaction-that would be something.

I'm reminded of one of the many stages of the Fighter in the 5E Playtest wherein Fighter Dice were first introduced. That idea had an incredible amount on potential-a solid attack benefit that could alternatively be spent on a variety of combat maneuvers and regenerated every round. As I recall 5E's designers nerfed it into its release form because it made the Fighter "too interesting".


AshVandal wrote:
Beast Weener wrote:
AshVandal wrote:

To be fair, Magic Missile has very strange wording that is hard to understand. Can it be heightened multiple times, or only once? If only once it becomes a 3rd level spell capable of firing 6 missiles for 2-5 damage per missile or 12-30 per spell, average damage of 3 per hit or 18 for the spell...

Huh. I read it as: Memorize as 1st level spell- you get one missile per casting action, 1-3. Memorize as FI 3rd level spell you get 2 missiles per action, 2-6. Memorize as 5th you get 3, 3-9, and so on. Based on what Memorized Heightening says in the beginning of the spell chapter anything that says +Level is cumulative and can be done multiple times. Don't see how you got to 35 missiles later in your post, I'm thinking it maxes as 5 per action for 15 as a 9th level spell.

Heightening in general seems to be quite limiting in some circumstances, even moreso for Spontaneous types, given that you have to learn a spell multiple times at different levels or rely on the spontaneous heightening features.

I fully believe and expect my interpretation of the wording to be incorrect, but that's why I pointed out that the wording is a little hard to understand. In 1e, spells that have variables like MM does has the iterations spelled out in the wording of the spell, so there is no confusion. It seems that 2e does not benefit from this, probably in interest of saving space. This should be rectified in later printings, or thousands of tables who don't regularly visit forums for rulings will likely be playing these spells very differently.

None of that however, rectifies that MM is nerfed in 2e. It has an optional buff at 1-6th level of play that carries a cost the spell didn't have in 1e, but beyond that the spell is straight nerfed.

Agreed. It's quite hindered by the new action economy as well. A caster can no longer move and then cast MM in one round and get the full benefit of the spell.


AshVandal wrote:

To be fair, Magic Missile has very strange wording that is hard to understand. Can it be heightened multiple times, or only once? If only once it becomes a 3rd level spell capable of firing 6 missiles for 2-5 damage per missile or 12-30 per spell, average damage of 3 per hit or 18 for the spell...

Huh. I read it as: Memorize as 1st level spell- you get one missile per casting action, 1-3. Memorize as FI 3rd level spell you get 2 missiles per action, 2-6. Memorize as 5th you get 3, 3-9, and so on. Based on what Memorized Heightening says in the beginning of the spell chapter anything that says +Level is cumulative and can be done multiple times. Don't see how you got to 35 missiles later in your post, I'm thinking it maxes as 5 per action for 15 as a 9th level spell.

Heightening in general seems to be quite limiting in some circumstances, even moreso for Spontaneous types, given that you have to learn a spell multiple times at different levels or rely on the spontaneous heightening features.


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Gorbacz wrote:
Beast Weener wrote:
Gorbacz wrote:
Beast Weener wrote:


Good point. The question, though, is how far they leap into the detail-soft side of the ruleset spectrum. 5E really has that staked out and they also have the only mainstream name recognition in all of RPGS. This Pathfinder player base, at least as far as I can conjecture, are mostly still-hardened edition warriors who preferred the detail and character differentiation of 3.5 over 4E. I think they'd be willing to follow Paizo to a PF1 - 5E midpoint with PF2, but the playtest seems to be a little too far afield. There's a lot of concepts in the Playtest that smack of some of the big 4E Sins people fled from. And if you don't keep enough of the base, who's going to lead the wayward 5E children back home?

Brutally speaking, it's only the shrinking PF1 base that cares about where WotC touched them in 2008. New players don't even know something like 4e existed.
Don't think that's brutal, just honest. Accurate, too, but it is what paid for the house. To go back though, if you lose that base completely and you can't differentiate sufficiently from 5e to get new players that leaves you with...who? I dunno. It's not like our armchair market research is founded in hard numbers. How much of the base really care about X over Y. I guess that's why they're spending a year on this.

Well, I have the advantage of working with The Industry on occasions and I am aware, in a very general sense, just how far ahead did 5E overtake PF1. While the actual bite taken off PF1 wasn't quite fatal, the almost total domination in attracting new players is deadly in a long run.

The question "how to capture new people ahead of 5e" is a very good question and I'm curious how Paizo will handle it, but I sincerely doubt that "let's give them a tweaked iteration of 3.75" is anywhere close to a solution.

And you wouldn’t say that 5e helped substantially grow the market as much or more than consolidating players under its storefront? I mean, that is the common nerdmedia narrative. But yeah, would agree that a slightly rounded 3.x is unlikely to be the path forward. Hmmm. So, just to be clear, you don’t believe that FAQ statement that Paizo doesn’t “need” to do this?


Gorbacz wrote:
Beast Weener wrote:


Good point. The question, though, is how far they leap into the detail-soft side of the ruleset spectrum. 5E really has that staked out and they also have the only mainstream name recognition in all of RPGS. This Pathfinder player base, at least as far as I can conjecture, are mostly still-hardened edition warriors who preferred the detail and character differentiation of 3.5 over 4E. I think they'd be willing to follow Paizo to a PF1 - 5E midpoint with PF2, but the playtest seems to be a little too far afield. There's a lot of concepts in the Playtest that smack of some of the big 4E Sins people fled from. And if you don't keep enough of the base, who's going to lead the wayward 5E children back home?

Brutally speaking, it's only the shrinking PF1 base that cares about where WotC touched them in 2008. New players don't even know something like 4e existed.

Don't think that's brutal, just honest. Accurate, too, but it is what paid for the house. To go back though, if you lose that base completely and you can't differentiate sufficiently from 5e to get new players that leaves you with...who? I dunno. It's not like our armchair market research is founded in hard numbers. How much of the base really care about X over Y. I guess that's why they're spending a year on this.


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Gorbacz wrote:

You missed the part where WotC offered PF players an unfamiliar 5e and took them away from Paizo in droves. I mean, 5e is far cry from PF, yet it ate Paizo's market share for breakfast.

So, Paizo is now left with a rapidly shrinking base of PF1 players. They won't get new ones. WotC has a sleeker, more accessible product with beholders, Drizzt and Critical Role. Were I to be a new player and choose between PF and 5e? 5e it is, no contest.

Faced with that, your choices are either to watch the PF1 Titanic sink slowly and your "super loyal, will stick with Paizo no matter what" players ultimately going away because their group switched to 5e, or trying something else entirely. I'm no business analyst, but I'd rather go with leaping into the unknown than watching the Titanic sink.

Good point. The question, though, is how far they leap into the detail-soft side of the ruleset spectrum. 5E really has that staked out and they also have the only mainstream name recognition in all of RPGS. This Pathfinder player base, at least as far as I can conjecture, are mostly still-hardened edition warriors who preferred the detail and character differentiation of 3.5 over 4E. I think they'd be willing to follow Paizo to a PF1 - 5E midpoint with PF2, but the playtest seems to be a little too far afield. There's a lot of concepts in the Playtest that smack of some of the big 4E Sins people fled from. And if you don't keep enough of the base, who's going to lead the wayward 5E children back home?


exoicho123 wrote:
Beast Weener wrote:
exoicho123 wrote:
its absolutely ridiculous that we don't have clickable hyperlinks yet.
In this free of charge rough draft document that's 400+ pages long.
free of charge? its a play test. We're not benefiting from this more than THEY ARE.

If it is a mutually beneficial relationship, that still doesn't entitle us demand something that would cost them money and man hours for a document that's not going to go to market. If it's a play test, then it's not a finished product. Can't have it both ways.


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Mechalibur wrote:
I agree with OP for the most part. The underlying system seems pretty good to me, but a lot of the options appear subpar.

This was my response to a lot of the high level feats in particular. I just don't understand the reasoning behind putting big limitations on high level martial class abilities. Look at Savage Critical. I read the sentence "This doesn't make a natural 19 automatically hit" and thought...why not? I mean, this is an 18th level character. Why not give the Fighter a nice toy? Is it game-breaky? Yes, but so is Teleport, so is Mindblank (they did a nice job, by the way, on rebalancing the spell lists). Higher level characters begin to get game breaky abilities-they should.


JardelBeserk wrote:
can everyone do multiple attacks with their three actions or just the fighter using whirlwind strike?

Everyone. Attacks past the first get an increasing penalty, off-set by certain feats abilities and item qualities.


Dekalinder wrote:

Needing a 4th level fighter only feat like Dual-handed Assault to do something so basic like pulling more weight on a single attack without needing 10 second to do it is absolutely revolting. Being unable to increase your proficiency in armors and weapons through feats also is an embarassment.

I may be misunderstanding you, but that feats only necessary if the weapon doesn't already have the quality, right? My biggest problem with it was that they didn't name it "Bastarding"

You can feat your way into both that and weapons/armor with the fighter archetype, too, right? It ends up being a three feat tax if you're at all interested in other archetypes, but think that's working as intended. The designers definitely decided that they wanted to give Fighter more of its own toys and that if others wanted to play with those toys they had to make a significant investment of resources.


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exoicho123 wrote:
its absolutely ridiculous that we don't have clickable hyperlinks yet.

In this free of charge rough draft document that's 400+ pages long.


KuniUjito wrote:
Access to only one book and not a full book at that for a playtest can make a lot things feel kinda of samey.

Oh whatever, I'm not on that ridiculous rant about there being "Not enough options". My point is that I see very few peaks and valleys between the character types' relative strengths and weaknesses. It's clearly a design choice to limit the differences between character mechanical bonuses in regards to Proficiency level and attributes. That's obvious from about two pages worth of material. It's a choice resident in the base mechanic and no additional material or lack thereof is going to change that, the only thing that might is the decisions made by the Pathfinder team in response to the playtest.

And really? Not a full book? The things' a monster. 400+ Back in the day you'd have to pay $100+ for this much material spread out among a dozen books. I've got some issues with the current choices but there's a lot of great interesting hard work in here and really, it's amazing that they put out something this size for free and then solicited customer opinion on it. Even if I never end up agreeing with the direction of the thing or deciding to run it I'm probably going to end up buying the eventual product.


Mechalibur wrote:


Now let's look at level 10 in PF 2. A fighter is an expert in martial weapons (+2 hit), while a rogue is trained (+1 hit). At level 13 the fighter will be master (+3) while the rogue is expert (+2 hit). A fighter can get some higher bonuses on their iteratives with Agile Grace and some of their press abilities, but in general, they're only at 1 higher accuracy. Giving rogues the same Sneak Attack progressing in PF1 would be absolutely insane in this edition. (There's a good chance I'm missing something, though, so please let me know if there's anything else I'm not considering in 2E)

You have to account for the edition changes before declaring something underpowered.

Very small thing, only since you asked-Trained is +0, Expert's +1, Master +2 and Rogue doesn't seem to have a way to get past Trained Proficiency in a weapon until 13th level (unless I'm missing something, which is also very possible).

Regardless of the exact math, though, your point is well taken, although I think you're missing another big point in your favor-the attack rate for a high BAB/higher level character is also decreasing. Or rather, the relative attack rate, since the rogue can now take his three shots, too, at every level and the difference between multiple attack penalties are going to be slimmer. Not gonna try to run the math because I've already been in and out of anydice a couple times tonight, but I think that since the average amount of attacks for any character are going down, high damage attacks will be at more of a premium and therefore they decided to chop his damage.
So, yeah, agreed. Really, though, what I was going after above was the impact of the change in look and feel in amount of dice. +1d6 every other level feels straightforward and powerful, and that levelup joy is kind of a driving force.


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GameDesignerDM wrote:

They limit it because it was the design decision to make the game overall a less high-powered game. Characters are more even as heroes in relation to each other, which they should be.

Character balance is a good objective, but sometimes in this system it feels like it's coming at the cost of character differentiation. I definitely like the "past 18 a boost = +1" rule, but it would be nice to have some variance between stat maxes between character type. But these are hardly the worst examples of bonus deflation. I mean, at this point it seems like the best way to improve your character's capabilities is to level up and buy good equipment. An 8th level fighter with a normal sword and an 18 strength has got a +14 to hit, which is dead even with an 8th level Rogue with a 18 dexterity and a +2 shortsword. Maybe that's progress but it feels kind of samey to me.


HWalsh wrote:


1. Record the number of skills challenges your groups participate in. Make a note of all of the classes being played. This would be better with non-pregens. Make a mark on each skill check where each class rolls with a Proficiency Bonus of +0 or better (for low level 1-5), +2 or better (5-9), +3 or better (10+). Be sure to record the levels of the party, especially with mixed levels.

2. Record also the number of times in these skill challenges each class had the highest total bonus (rather than proficiency bonus) at the table.

This will let us get some decent data on skill usage.

Might want to look at how often the difference between a -2 and a +3 is actually statistically significant. Guessing you'll find that that's only 25% of the time until you reach (all other stats being equal) a DC of Level + 20, at which point it sharply declines.


Odimeer wrote:
its like someone spelled assassin wrong at some point and made it rouge

pun intended? Anyway, Assassin, if I'm reading the current arc of the system correctly, would just be an archetype. Which would make it a feat tree. Mostly for Rogues who wanted death attack and more damage. So yes, I agree, that should be an option.

Now all they have to do is take all the stuff they gave the Rogue instead of damage and take the training wheels off, especially the high level things. I mean, look at Hidden Paragon. Great idea, you just need to mark through that part that says "Frequency once per hour". It's a 20th level character for god's sake, leave the weak sauce in the bottle.


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RafaelBraga wrote:

Like even a +1 weapon having an IMMENSE impact on character damage more than high level fighter abilites, for example.

Yeah, the math, more than anything, is what's setting my head to shaking. It's like an unholy baby made of 5e bounded accuracy and 4e "Add your level to all rolls".

I mean, I was playing Pathfinder to get away from things like that.


Class Features

Nerf Attack
You deal somewhat additional damage to flat-footed creatures (see page 322, you know, if you can get the bard player to stop turning to page 201 and talking about his shiny new 7-10th level spells). If you Strike a flat-footed creature with an agile or finesse or padankadank weapon when it's dark on Tuesday except at night, an agile or finesse unarmed wait a minute seriously that's a thing how many ways are there of making a fist ok whatever, or a ranged attack, you deal 1d6 extra precision damage. For a ranged attack with a thrown weapon, that weapon must also be agile or finesse or whatever just make sure it has a low base damage die.

As your rogue levels increase, and I do mean increase, so does the number of damage dice of your nerf attack. Gradually, so as not to frighten the other classes, increase the number of dice by one at 5th, 11th and 17th levels. That maxes out at 4d6, which is really not that bad when you think about it. So says your friend the max level 4E Rogue, but even he has 5d6 and you worry that he's just trying to make you feel better. You would ask the 3.5 and Pathfinder 1 Rogues, but they never seem to want to hang out with you.