SilverliteSword's page

Given the new focus on critical hits, I think that at least one totem needs a tanking focus. Since Animal Totem focuses on unarmed attacks (which will never be as good as weapons), I think that the Animal totem should focus more on taking hits. Since you're giving up damage, perhaps Animal Totem should gain AC, and instead of shapeshifting requiring that no armor be worn, making the shapeshifting barn completely helpless on the off-round, perhaps the barb gets some kind of "natural armor" that's always active even when in humanoid form. Like "the animal never really leaves you" sort of deal.

Since they're already unarmed, some grappling focus would be nice, too. Tanking and grappling, It would make for a fun Barbarian.

I think I see where Paizo is going with these rules. In real life and in fiction, shields break. Cool. So, the obvious solution seems to be that wooden shields should be treated as consumable items. Shields made of more durable construction should, of course, be a little less disposable.

I think that having a "wood vs. steel" choice could be cool: you can buy a cheap, light shield that will break or a sturdy but heavy shield that can take a few hits.

Ultimatecalibur wrote:

I think that part of the problem people currently have is that they are only seeing total bonus and are not understanding what the proficiency levels mean.

Imagine the following, a party contains 5 characters each with a different level of proficiency in Religion. They encounter a magic pool and all Succeed on the (lets say DC 20) Religion check to identify it.

• Untrained - The character identifies it as a holy pool, identifies any untrained uses for the pool and has an idea if there might be something those Trained might be able to use it for, but not the pool's name, the god or holy spirit it is consecrated to, its more esoteric uses, its intended purpose, nor its history.
  
• Trained - The character identifies it as a holy pool consecrated to a general type of god or holy spirit, identifies trained and untrained uses of the pool, learns its common name and history, and has an idea if there are things a Expert might better understand.
  
• Expert - More specific and uncommon knowledge and uses.
  
• Master - Esoteric and rare knowledge and uses
  
• Legendary - Know pretty much all there is to know about the holy pool and how to use it.
  

That's certainly how it was advertised in the blogs, and how I think it should work. But it's not how the rules work. Apart from gating feats, levels above Trained don't do anything (according to the Skills rules themselves) apart from the numerical bonus. So it doesn't matter how Legendary I am, I can't actually do things someone merely Trained can't do. For example, a critical success in Survival provides food and shelter for 2 people, even if untrained. Exactly the same for Legendary - only 2 people. And so on.

There are ways to get it higher than that, but you need a feat to do it. It seems like only the feats scale with increasing proficiency.

There's a reddit claim that the developers said at a GenCon panel that everyone is intended to be trained in unarmored. Expect clarification this week.

Thanks! It would seem to mirror that everyone is trained in unarmed fighting.

Asuet wrote:

p.16: To calculate her AC, add 10 plus her Dexterity

modifier (up to her armor’s Dexterity modifier cap), plus
her proficiency modifier with her armor, plus her armor’s
item bonus to AC and any other bonuses and penalties
that always apply.

Technically you add only proficiency modifiers for armor. Not for unarmored. If unarmored defense was a thing to be taken into account for every class then they would have added that bracket on the character sheet.

You'd think they would. They didn't. Unless explicitly said that they are proficient in it, they are untrained. Animal companions are trained in unarmored defense. Monks are expert at it. All other classes are unspecified which means they are all untrained.

For example, under unarmed strikes it states that everybody is trained in unarmed strikes. There is no such wording for unarmored defense.

Unless I hear from Paizo otherwise, I'm going to assume they intended for everyone to start as trained in unarmored defense. It makes the most logical sense.

Beefriedrice 2 wrote:

Asuet wrote:

Technically you add only proficiency modifiers for armor. Not for unarmored. If unarmored defense was a thing to be taken into account for every class then they would have added that bracket on the character sheet.

The mage armor spell explicitly uses unarmored proficiency.

Basically Wizards and Sorcerers should just throw on some magical armor because its gonna be superior to not wearing any.

Bracers of armor are still a thing, starting at 35 gp for constant 2nd level mage armor and going up to 65,000 gp for 20th level. Not that Mark Seifter hasn't said he's looking forward to people trying out heavily armored battle mages (now that ASF is gone), but it's not a necessity.

It is if you're untrained in unarmored defense. You're better off grabbing light armor training and using that, especially if you're not worried about dex.

p.16: To calculate her AC, add 10 plus her Dexterity

modifier (up to her armor’s Dexterity modifier cap), plus
her proficiency modifier with her armor, plus her armor’s
item bonus to AC and any other bonuses and penalties
that always apply.

Technically you add only proficiency modifiers for armor. Not for unarmored. If unarmored defense was a thing to be taken into account for every class then they would have added that bracket on the character sheet.

If you didn't add any proficiency bonus at all, you wouldn't get +level to AC unless you were wearing armor, which is a while lot worse than being untrained.

Beefriedrice 2 wrote:

Asuet wrote:

Technically you add only proficiency modifiers for armor. Not for unarmored. If unarmored defense was a thing to be taken into account for every class then they would have added that bracket on the character sheet.

The mage armor spell explicitly uses unarmored proficiency.

Basically Wizards and Sorcerers should just throw on some magical armor because its gonna be superior to not wearing any.

Bracers of armor are still a thing, starting at 35 gp for constant 2nd level mage armor and going up to 65,000 gp for 20th level. Not that Mark Seifter hasn't said he's looking forward to people trying out heavily armored battle mages (now that ASF is gone), but it's not a necessity.

Are they required to multiclass into monk then?

The Monk is listed as being given expert proficiency in being unarmored defense, but there is no mention of being trained. Other characters are also not mentioned as being trained in unarmored defense. Do all characters get automatic trained proficiency in unarmored defense?

Well apparently it doesn't work like that on Golarion. I guess you are the one who misunderstands sign language in this context.

I think you're missing the point. Paizo didn't have to include sign language, the fact that they tried means that they're going for inclusivity. If they'd like to be inclusive, they should make an effort to actually include the people they're trying to include.

Deadmanwalking wrote:

General Feats seem to be the ones you can use for almost anything (they can also be used for Skill Feats), so I'm not sure this means much.

I have to imagine that moving from a specialized list with limited access to a general "use for almost anything" means the ceiling is much, much, much lower.

Deadmanwalking wrote:

And the Ancestry Feats we've heard of (including the whole Gnome list) all seem pretty solid.

I was hoping for unique and special and that not something you say about something you pick up with something called "general".

KingOfAnything wrote:

You can only spend General feats for level 1 Ancestry feats, as I recall. Higher level ancestry feats can still be awesome.

I haven't heard any of this so I have no way to judge how right/wrong it is.

The whole "general feat" thing is like this:

At first level you may select a vegetable, a meat, and a plate.
At second and fourth level you may select a grain and a plate.
At fifth level you may take a free food from any category (but not a plate).
At ninth level you may select another vegetable.

The existence of the "take a free food" option doesn't make vegetables less special, it just lets some players have two vegetables and some have three.

I think that Fighter dipping into Wizard gets more out if it than Wizard dipping into Fighter would. The main reason for this is the untrained/trained/Expert/Master/Legend scaling system.

In other words, a fighter who picks up scaling cantrips is going to be better off than a wizard who gets weapon proficiency that doesn't scale. If the wizard wants to be as good at fighting in melee as the fighter, he will need to dump all his feats into weapon proficiency, which might leave him weak in armor. If he picks up armor too, then he's weak in spellcasting.

By contrast, the fighter gets a magical spell that is always on - level and doesn't expend resources to use. The most powerful cantrips for a fighter are probably going to be utility cantrips, since they are already pretty good at killing things. Scaling debuffs are probably also a good choice.

I'm imagining a rogue that's got Detect Magic and some form of invisibility... that sounds frightening.

CorvusMask wrote:

Tamago wrote:

I like the orders, but the Anathemas seem overly restrictive to me. I tend to GM more than I play, so my first thought when reading the Animal anathema was, "You mean I can't make an evil druid who dominates the animals around him and beats up his animal companion?"

I get that it's not something a good PC should be doing, and I even see how it makes sense from a class design and flavor standpoint. But I also really like the villain concept of an evil druid who blights the land and the PCs need to go stop him. Making these "out of balance" things into anathemas seems to nix those concepts. Unless we get an "anti-druid" class/archetype/whatever down the road, I suppose.

In that case you would create non-animal order druid with animal companion. I mean, no matter how you put it, it doesn't really make sense to create character that has deep respect for animals and abuses them <_<

I could easily see a wild order druid that has a feral predator inside and is absolutely vicious to animals she dominates, including her own companion.

Yeah, nature can be kind of cruel. I think as a GM I'll allow Druid players to tweak their own anathemas provided that the new anathema is a decent plot hook. After all, you guys did say that the only "mechanical" anathema was Superstition Totem, right? So I shouldn't be afraid to play "fun and loose" with the anathemas?

(P.S. At my table, if a player picks an anathema, it's guaranteed to come up when it's dramatically interesting <Chandler ' s Law>. Which anathema is less important, because it will come up regardless.)

Mats Öhrman wrote:

Mark Seifter wrote:

2/3-3/4 pass rate is indeed quite lovely for such effects; in fact, the fact that Trivial DCs provide those kinds of odds for a more middle ground character is another of their advantages and reasons to be included on the chart. Once it's 75% success for worst-character, though, that means nobody else is really engaging with it, which is possibly useful in some situations but sounds more to me like using a lower level challenge to spotlight the fact that worst-character might fail even though everyone else make it 95% of the time and can't critically fail. Hmm, it may be the case that a different column head than Trivial would help explain this concept better, particularly in absentia of the rules and just the chart excerpt.

Doesn't feel like it handles "all five rolls must succeed" situations well, like when all five in a party must climb the same rope for the entire party to make it up the wall, or a climb is long enough that you need to roll five times. Then a 75% success rate rapidly feels quite challenging...

As for one character being behind not meaning others are not engaged - my experience is that team members do engage in this, increasing their DC to lower the DC of the character in question through various more or less clever solutions. Especially if you don't want to leave someone behind when climbing that rope...

A climb is a little bit different of a check than it seems. You've actually found the final one of the main powerful uses of a trivial DC. Climbing just to get to the other side is a "Succeed before you critically fail" check, not a success/fail. That means the schlub character with a 50/50 success chance actually has a greater than 90% chance to succeed before critically failing (it's 10/11, succeed on an 11 or higher, crit fail on a 1, ignore 2 through 10 and roll again). If the DC goes up even a little beyond that, the chances of the schlub character to succeed before a critical fail drastically decrease.

Neat! However, that seems kind of long and drawn-out so I probably won't require a roll unless that particular climb is dramatically relevant (rising floodwaters, a pack of ravenous wolves hot on their tail, breaking into someplace where falling means making sound and being detected, etc.). It's really no fun when you are climbing a tree to pick some apples with no real pressure and the GM makes you roll anyways.

SilverliteSword wrote:

Aratrok wrote:

Mark Seifter wrote:

The playtest rules thoroughly define each category. Trivial basically means if this is the DC and the whole party can try it and only one person needs to succeed, it would be incredibly unlikely that no one succeeds. For instance, even an untrained 1st-level character with 10 in the stat, likely the worst you have, is 50/50 at the level 1 trivial (a trivial task of a level is actually roughly defined as "Something a totally uninvested character of that level would be at about a coin flip to do"). Even if an entire party of four was built that way with no one invested at all, it's still only a 1 in 16 chance they don't have someone make it. Trivial DCs are relevant enough to be on the chart because someone probably will fail it if everybody has to roll it and all who fail experience some interesting result of failure.

Why is the easiest possible level appropriate task a coin flip for average untrained creatures? This still results in a world where the most basic tasks in a category (climbing a braced rope, asking for directions, preparing a simple meal, noticing tracks in deep mud) are comically difficult for normal people.

Ooh, ooh, pick me!

It's because anything easier than what's listed should just be automatically given to the players as a success. If there's pretty much no chance of failure, you don't even bother rolling.

That said, I would prefer that the name "trivial" be reserved for things you would gloss over in such a way, and start the actual DCs with "moderate."

As you have cleverly guessed, there is a class of things you don't even bother rolling, and that actually can scale with the PCs' level. It's explained in the Playtest CRB.

Welp, Mark replied to my post and called me clever. I'd best quit while I'm ahead.

Igwilly wrote:

Not very exciting, but good articles nonetheless.

I just want to know the playtest's final boss, but I guess I'll have to wait :P
The downtime rules are going to get my attention. I've never thought much about using these kinds of rules in my games. I'll check that out.

Quadratic W wrote:

So it's the scaling DCs of 4e...but with a static DC table too. One based on a "how difficult is this?" back of the envelope question rather than a "let's add up all these modifiers and see what comes out" approach.

Honestly, that's so elegant I wonder why 4e never thought to use it.

WotC's 4e was worse than 4e :P

But enough talk about editions! Now we fight like men! And ladies, ladies who dress like men! For Gilgamesh, it's morphing time!

(I hope anyone gets it).

P.S.: Why this avatar image popped up here, it's a mystery.

The forum detects variations on the word "smurf" and replaces your normal avatar with a smurf avatar when you use it. It probably detected "s morph" from "it's morphing time" as a variant of smurf.

TIL. I like smurfs, this is the best thing ever. : )

Mark Seifter wrote:

The playtest rules thoroughly define each category. Trivial basically means if this is the DC and the whole party can try it and only one person needs to succeed, it would be incredibly unlikely that no one succeeds. For instance, even an untrained 1st-level character with 10 in the stat, likely the worst you have, is 50/50 at the level 1 trivial (a trivial task of a level is actually roughly defined as "Something a totally uninvested character of that level would be at about a coin flip to do"). Even if an entire party of four was built that way with no one invested at all, it's still only a 1 in 16 chance they don't have someone make it. Trivial DCs are relevant enough to be on the chart because someone probably will fail it if everybody has to roll it and all who fail experience some interesting result of failure.

Why is the easiest possible level appropriate task a coin flip for average untrained creatures? This still results in a world where the most basic tasks in a category (climbing a braced rope, asking for directions, preparing a simple meal, noticing tracks in deep mud) are comically difficult for normal people.

Ooh, ooh, pick me!

It's because anything easier than what's listed should just be automatically given to the players as a success. If there's pretty much no chance of failure, you don't even bother rolling.

That said, I would prefer that the name "trivial" be reserved for things you would gloss over in such a way, and start the actual DCs with "moderate."

Aratrok wrote:

For example: I can't tell what Paizo thinks a task being "trivial" means, and it doesn't jive at all with my own personal definition. A 1st level trivial task in this setup is failed by a trained specialist of the same level (+4) 25% of the time, and an average attempt from an untrained character (-2) fails 55% of the time. This is almost certainly going to translate to comedy of errors gameplay at the table, with party members regularly failing the easiest possible tasks the system defines.

If I'm reading things correctly, this also means that Trained Assurance only applies to 3 possible tasks; level 0 trivial and low, and level 1 trivial.

Hm. Based on this progression (if it stays the same all throughout), you'll hit DC 30 (Legendary assurance) at lvl 14 extreme, and at lvl 20 the only thing you'd be 'assured' at are trivial things. I like assurance as a concept, but I'm not sure how I feel about these DCs.

I like that there are only full casters and non-casters, with magical options available for hybrid concepts. It just makes sense.

I'm also very hopeful about the alchemist, and I can't wait to play one.

The Raven Black wrote:

Are Exotic weapons even needed now ?

They're defining 'Exotic' weapons as those that are statistically superior to martial ones. Since some people want 'better' weapons, that seems a valid niche.

I'm not entirely sure about calling them 'Exotic' at that point, though. 'Superior' feels wrong, however, and I'm legitimately unsure what other term to use.

Simple, martial, elite?

For spontaneous casters it's even easier then wizards to reward rare or unique spells.

"You fought a mighty dragon, have a dragon spell."

Ah, yes, the Skyrim method.

What would happen if the sorcerer class could spontaneously heighten all spells known? Would this have to be balanced by restrictions the sorcerer to only a few spells known?

I honestly really like the 4e alignment system where you basically had "principled good" and "generic good" (also "principled neutrality" and "DGAF neutrality" as well as "evil you could maybe reason with" and "evil you absolutely cannot reason with.").

Paladins should honestly only belong to principled versions of alignments.

You can be principled without being reasonable, and vice versa.

Ooh, snares and better iterative attacks! I'm really looking forward to playing this class!

Thing is, flavor wise majority of paladins in 1e had a deity, but rules wise 1e paladins didn't actually need a god despite being divine casters and all.

Like with ranger and druid it makes sense since they get their divine power from nature itself, but with paladins apparently they just got divine powers from being uber goody two shoes?

Anyway, yeah, I've always preferred "Warrior of deity" paladin to "I'm super knight of goodness" paladins. I do gotta admit that warpriest is bit weird in that it overlaps flavorwise a lot with clerics and such, like idea is that warpriest are militant priests, but clerics depending on build and domains can also be mainly melee characters instead of mainly wizard like "stay afar to cast spells" characters.

With the new Cleric chassis, there may not be a need for a separate Warpriest class. I, for one, am going to attempt to build the "knight of a specific deity" concept with a cleric. If it works, I may never play a Paladin, four corners or otherwise. I'll be a "priest of the order of battle" or something like that, which is really more where I feel like Paladins should fit anyways (members of of the church that focus on fighting).

PossibleCabbage wrote:

So the one thing I really hope is not gone from Pathfinder 2nd Edition is Archetypes which interact with, replace, or change class features which are not feats.

A lot of the time I might want to pick an archetype because I Wanted to get rid of some class feature which did not fit my concept for my character. For example, a gentleman rogue who would not stoop to stabbing someone in the back (phantom thief), or a lady with an blade of pure energy who does not just blast people at range (kinetic knight.) Sometimes just changing the key stat of a character is really helpful for a concept- like if I imagine my Magus is charming but impulsive not very thoughtful the Eldritch Scion archetype does nicely.

So I hope upon hope, though they may not be in core, that we get some archetypes which fundamentally change a specific class and not just occupy feat slots; though I admit printing a universal "pirate" archetype or "gun" archetype is vastly superior to a dozen different "Uses boats/guns" archetypes.

Considering that most class features are now class feats, I'm not sure you are going to get what you want.

Yeah, but can you get rid of sneak attack or flurry?

Folks,

I think there are a lot of interesting thoughts about resonance that we are going to need to fully consider as the playtest proceeds. How wands work is one of those questions. How resonance applies to over one use consumables. Whether or not the system is doing the work we want it to do. These are all valid questions are one of the biggest things we will be looking at in the playtest.

Hang in there, we will look at this in depth once the full system is revealed.

We are all eager and willing to playtest away : )

Captain Morgan wrote:

On key abilities: I wonder what they will do for the Paladin. The obvious key stats are strength and charisma, but if someone wants to make a dex based paladin they need that. But dex and strength only feels wrong. Then again, I would have said not including wisdom as an option for the monk would have felt wrong before the preview.

I feel like this is a thing you can manage via archetypes. Just like how there were archetypes in PF1 that changed a casting attribute (e.g. eldritch scion magus) if you made a PF2 Paladin archetype like the Virtuoso Bravo, you could just change the key attribute to dex. Likewise if you wanted to do an especially mystic monk (like the serpent fire adept) you could change the key attribute to wisdom.

Another thing to bear in mind is that just because it's not the key stat for the class that doesn't mean you don't need it. Monks shouldn't dump WIS just because the key stat is STR or DEX.

This thread has been slightly derailed, but I would like to point out the one thing that if fixed would illuminate the real problem with wands of CLW: time constraints.

Many PF APs provide the illusion of time constraints, but there isn't any real consequence for doing things on the side. I don't prefer to railroad my players too much, so in custom campaigns I usually write up a "schedule" for how far along the Big Bad will be in his dastardly plan. If the PCs get to him sooner, he will be less prepared and possibly with less traps or minions. Dally too long and he either completes his plan or gains some huge advantage that makes the PCs task much, much harder.

It's not an unreasonable time constraint, but they certainly don't have time to "sleep it off" after every fight. Healing and attrition actually matter because time is a resource. It works wonders.

However, spamming CLW doesn't allow for attrition and actually creates the sort of rocket tag that I'd personally like to avoid.

Imagine you had an item that was going to let a 5th-level sorcerer cast 9+ copies of a spell in a given day, every single day (and then pass it on and get even more uses from the other PCs); what level spell should that be to not completely overshadow her actual spells? Does that match your expectations for when a character might first receive a wand of that spell level?)

Well, we already have spells that can be cast all day, they're called cantrips. It (probably) wouldn't be too overpowered to give a 5th level sorcerer an item that casts a 4th (spell) level cantrip at the cost of resonance. It's a more attractive option than existing cantrips, hence the resource cost, but it won't overshadow spell slots.

The real use for cantrips in such an item, however, would be in casting a cantrip you couldn't cast before (either because you don't have access to it or because you didn't learn it). Assuming a non-caster could still use the item, it would really open up magic use to other classes.

Assuming it was an actual spell and not a cantrip, I would expect it to be a much lower spell than the player could cast, or, the resonance cost to cast the spell would be prohibitive enough that it couldn't be cast that often. Assuming that the 5th level Sorcerer has access to a item that's casting a 3rd level spell, you wouldn't want her to cast it more than once or twice per day, as that's effectively extra spell slots.

She's probably got nine or ten resonance, so if it cost one resonance per casting then she'd get nine or ten castings of a spell of the highest slot she has. However, if each casting costs 6 resonance (spell level * 2), then she can only cast the spell once. In 2 or 3 levels, she'd be able to cast it twice, but only if she didn't use resonance for anything else.

Cantrips would only cost one resonance to cast, probably, but the cost of the item would go up accordingly.

NielsenE wrote:

Since you're here Mark, can you comment on the wand w/ charges compared to resonance thing? A lot of us thought resonance was getting rid of tracking charges on things like wands. Did we misinterpret things, was the on-the-fly playtest conversion a little off? Something else? Or a wait and read?

Resonance is getting rid of pretty much the per-day tracking other than "Once per day" or "At will, as resonance allows." But consumables are still consumable. Just as casting 10 scrolls is going to cost 10 RP and use up the 10 scrolls, same with a wand (but cheaper than buying 10 scrolls).

There should really be an item (probably a costly one) that functions as "input resonance, get spell." It could be a wand, a staff, or a holocron, I don't much care - but the concept that magical items can cast indefinitely is definitely a rope of the genre. Given that it wouldn't take any effort at all to make scrolls hold multiple pages (charges), I think wands are most suited to fill the role that really most closely matches the fiction anyways.

tivadar27 wrote:

As with everything, I'll give it a shot. It could be I'm coming to the table with bias because I *do* feel Starfinder attributes were done poorly overall (though some of that might have had to do with point buy to begin with...), and this is at least a slightly different system, where the initial allotment is different as are the cut-offs for when you get reduced points.

Any unfriendliness to MAD characters in Starfinder vis-PF1 rests squarely on the shoulders of the initial attribute assignment; the level-up process is significantly more MAD friendly than in PF1, and the cornerstones are raising four stats and the diminishing returns. I imagine it might become a common houserule in Starfinder to use something akin to PF2 (add another free boost to each Starfinder race, a free boost to themes and increase the boost to +2, a +2 to key ability score from class, and a starting +2 to 4 stats) instead of SF point buy; I know I'm strongly considering it next time I run. That'll give you something more like Strength 16, Dex 14, Con 12, Int 8, Wis 10, Cha 18 for a starting vesk solarian rather than like Strength 18 Dex 10 Con 12 Int 8, Wis 10, Cha 14.

Good to see I'm thinking what you're thinking. Plenty of people are like "Oh no, monks are MAD!" I'm thinking, "Well, yeah. Isn't the goal here?"

Isn't the goal to make all classes MAD, or at least to make each classes' SAD and MAD builds equally viable? Even if it's not baked into the class, useful skills will necessitate some attention be paid to the ability scores those skills require. Right? Dump stats are much less attractive?

(If that really is the goal, why would a wizard need STR?)

How does a quivering palm end when you cast another one?

If you use it again does the last enemy you killed with it suddenly come back to life?

Also, I thought we were trying to get rid of rocket tag? But here we have an ability that a Monk can easily use in the first round of combat to instant kill an enemy.

Only if he critfails the save. This means that it's likely to be really effective in a normal fight but not so much vs. a boss.

Anathema for monks?

They didn't specify one way or another, but I wouldn't mind seeing monk orders or something that came with some anathema. A pacifist (nonlethal) monk would be thematically appropriate and amusing.

It's official Monks have no Alignment Restriction.

Given the option to play an entirely non-mystical monk, I'm not surprised.

It kind of looks more like fighter will in general be pretty bad at unarmed compared to monk, and you can use a base monk and build an unarmed non-magic fighter rather than using base fighter and trying to make him unarmed and monk like. So basically monk absorbed brawler, fighter didn't.

Well, I'd imagine that "unarmed fighter" is a thing. I'd be disappointed if it wasn't, although you may need to dip into monk a little for it (however that works).

From the Fighter Blog:
"[A]t 3rd level, you gain weapon mastery, which increases your proficiency rank with one group of weapons to master. Your proficiency rank increases to legendary at 13th level, making you truly the best with the weapons of your choice. At 19th level, you become a legend with all simple and martial weapons!"

So long as "unarmed strikes" are a valid group of weapons, the fighter would still rank up in them. They's be at 1d4 instead of 1d6 like the Monk has, but the proficiency bonus would still apply. Assuming that going weaponless is good for defense and grapples, a heavily armored unarmed fighter could be effective without feeling too similar to the monk.

Of course, if a Monk were to sacrifice a few class features in order to wear armor, he'd still have the mobility options of a Monk, making him feel different from an unarmed fighter.

That's what I think will happen.

Do things like grapple or disarm require a free hand?

Barathos wrote:

dragonhunterq wrote:

Wait, Why? one of the defining features of the monk is being the best unarmed combatant - any martial being able to match that is undermining (one of) the central foundation of the monk - IMO.

I cannot agree with you. (unless you missed a 'not' in there)

Not true. A Fighter in PF1 gets better damage unarmed than a Monk. In my view, a fantasy Monk is a ki mystic first and foremost. Making another class better at being a """mundane""" martial artist than the Fighter would "[undermine] (one of) the central foundations of the [fighter]".

Fighter is, and should be, better at using weapons. Unarmed should be the Monks schtick - at least without significant cost to the fighter.

Therein lies Paizos dilemma, they can't please both of us.

I also believe that a weapon using monk should not be as good as an unarmed monk without a significant cost - as that should be the fighters bailiwick.

IIRC, using moves like grapple or disarm requires a free hand. So a fighter would have to drop his weapon or shield to do those things, while a monk would get to do them without dropping anything. So perhaps the fighter is the master of damage while the monk's thing is probably combat maneuvers.

If that were the case, though. I'd thing it would have been mentioned. Maybe they haven't mentioned it because there hasn't been a blog about combat maneuvers.

O.O maybe that will be Friday?

AnimatedPaper wrote:

I bring it up because there's a segment of players and DMs that feels if the player manages to say the right word or line, the character should be able to accomplish their diplomacy task no matter what the roll says. There was the old advice that you could almost always afford to dump charisma because effective roleplay could override a low charisma skill bonus, and that seems wrong to me. If I'm getting the advantage of my character's high skill bonus when as a player I'm just mumbling, I should also have to take the result of a low skill check even if I say the exact right thing.

That's why I think the happy medium is that good role-playing should at best supplement your roll, not replace it. I've made some pretty impassioned and logical pleas to NPCs before, only to roll a nat 1. So my big speech was rather ruined when I literally vomited on the person whose help I was requesting. Such is life!

I think the best approach is that the roll represents only the binary success or failure of the conversation at hand. Your choice of words/roleplay still determines what it is that you are succeeding or failing at.

Things like the NPCs objections should either be clearly labeled or it should be clear that a perception check is needed to discern them, etc.

So, there's still a difference between flirting with the guard, bribing the guard, and trying to reason or plead with the guard, because those things will have different outcomes even under the "success" umbrella. But you don't have to be particularly charismatic IRL to pull it off (A for effort sort of thing). You just need the roll.

Edit: I guess with the new system it's not exactly a binary success or failure, but you understand what I mean. One axis.

I'm kind of wondering if stances work with weapons (assuming you take the feat). After all, the feat says that weapons work with any monk feature that works with unarmed strikes. However, Crane Strike is a new attack with the "unarmed" type. I think that if you could use crane stance with a staff, then that could really act as a good defensive option for the defensive monk, but it doesn't look like they synergize.

It was always more efficient to play a character with a strong contribution in combat and roleplay through non-combat encounters despite the PC having little social skills rather than try the opposite

I hope PF2 will be more balanced here

That's a GM problem, not a system problem. Would you let someone build an entirely social character and then let them roleplay through a combat using their OOC knowledge of martial arts? No? Then make people roll for results.

What you choose to be good at is a strategic choice that should carry consequences, so unless you plan to remove the mechanical benefit of social interaction, you shouldn't let people succeed at it for free.

gustavo iglesias wrote:

John Lynch 106 wrote:

I'd expect there to be a rogue feat where you consider something being flanked as being flat footed. We had it in 4th ed. I'd expect it in this edition

Someone who is flanked is flat footed for those who flank him, rogues or not.

Right. But that's not what the feat does. It allows someone the rogue isn't flanking to be considered flat-footed for the rogue so long as the creature is being flanked by 2 other allies. This allows 3 people to be "flanking" a target without having to do the 5-foot step shuffle (which is no longer a quasi-free action but now an action). It also lets rogue's get sneak attack on ranged attacks so long as a target is being flanked by allies.

Overall I am open to the blog content. It's definitely different. But I'll have to see how it plays out to see if it's better, worse or simply different.

How about a archer rogue with alchemy who uses poisoned arrows and tanglefoot bags?

One thing I'm hoping we'll see in PF 2.0 are options for characters who don't want to do physical combat. In our group, there's a lot of social activity involved in our encounters, before we even get to the weapons, and it would be great to see character options which step away from physical combat and go more into social conflicts. Whether it's trying to negotiate with a hostile force, convert people to the cause, or cloak and dagger in the king's court, having characters able to do more outside of combat would be a godsend.

Think about it - a cleric who's more oriented towards uplifting spirits and inspiring the faithful than about smiting undead and fighting on the front lines. A magician who's about bewitching and entrancing opponents with words and illusions than fireballs and lightning bolts. A rogue who can talk anyone out of their goods, convince everyone he's on their side, while walking away with their belongings.

I would love to see archetypes and feats that put as much emphasis on social activities as they do on combat activities.

As a total aside, there are systems that have "social combat" where you deal "damage" by talking the enemy over to your side (or you get talked over to theirs). Just in case you wanted to try running different systems to match different styles of play.

My GM is doing a bunch of one-shots at different levels so I'll have an opportunity to try out a bunch of different concepts, but right now the concept I'm most excited about is my Superstitious Barbarian who's been experimented on by an evil something-or-other (maybe scientist, maybe witch doctor) to create an antimagic supersoldier.

That sounds fun. Would he also be anti-science as well as anti-magic? I imagine that background wouldn't entice one to see the local alchemist.

In my original post, I said that this would not be a problem when I myself am GMing. Do you think it reasonable that I should have to beg every GM I play with to allow my character's personality to be different from the default? Is it reasonable that in Society play, you're stuck with the default character trope with no recourse? Why is this role-playing mandate necessary, instead of providing a suggestion for people who want inspiration?

I'm serious, I just don't see what positive addition these anathema make. If someone understands, I'd love an explanation.

I'm pretty sure Paizo's stance (or at least Mark's stance, which is just as good) is that most anathema are only for flavor and are not required. They're not a big deal and they're not going to break the game. The only example so far of where removing the restriction would kind of break the game is superstition, and I for one would prefer if that restriction were hard-coded in instead of needing to be role played (i.e. if you take superstition, you automatically attempt to resist friendly spells, even if you're not aware of them).

However, not all GMs will allow you to customize. I've been there, and I'm truly sorry. However, a change of wording over anathemas is not going to fix the core issue of player-GM disagreement. There will always be something to argue about.

Even if the book spells out the fact that anathemas should be customized by the player and GM coordinating on it, there will be GMs who say "just pick one of the premade ones." I guarantee it.

The trick is to either:
1 only play with GMs you like, or
2 suck it up and just play what works.

Most of us make compromises for our GMs or our fellow players. It's part of the hobby.

I plan to GM, but if I were a player, I would do a Varisian Street Performer Monk. Monk class because I want to stress-test the system and effective monks are hard to create. Varisian ancestry because it is a well-developed ethnic group in Golarion and I want to see how well the ancestry fits the ethnic. Street Performer background because it complements both monk and Varisian.

Well, the playtest adventure is split up I to modules. As best as I can tell, it's totally possible to rotate GMs between the segments. If you'd like to GM but you'd also like to be a player, then rotating isn't a bad idea.

bookrat wrote:

Joe M. wrote:

Re Somatic Components: My understanding is that Somatic components provoke AOOs while Verbal components do not. So Barbarians with spells only at first can use while ragong spells that will provoke. But later might be able to use other spells without provoking by taking extra feats and such. A balance idea, maybe.

I imagine this decision relates to that, and what it might say about the design principles of picking components when designing a spell. But yes, I would love more insight into these decisions, just to understand the playtest design better.

Despite my (extremely minor) complaints, I do find this line of reasoning compelling. I'd be willing to overlook the somatic/verbal issue if the use of somatic was due to this.

aren't attacks of opportunity gone? So they would generally be provoking reactions right? I am getting a little curious to see how many different kinds of reaction triggers there are and whether they will functionally be the same as the old Attack of Opportunity system or create something quite different.

Any action could trigger a reaction. The actions that could trigger a specific reaction are listed in the reaction itself. For example:

Moving out of a threatened area, somatic spell actions, and (IIRC) manipulating an item will trigger the AOO reaction. Casting any spell may trigger the Counterspell reaction. Only landing a critical hit triggers the storm retribution reaction.

As for me, I'm going to do my best to make a melee - focused cleric. Maybe a CG cleric of Milani. If the cleric can fill the "Holy Knight"/Warpriest design space well enough, I'll be much less concerned about the alignment restrictions on the Paladin.

As of now, angry, drunk, Superstition Barbarian, that detests magic so much, he not only refuses magical aid, but destroys all magic items, or tries, even those belonging to other characters "Grr, give me that!" *grabs magic item and starts trying to angrily break it*

While "breaks all magic items" is too much to be a mechanical requirement, it makes for a neat roleplay option.

Crayon what is your definition of narrative? Because to me it isn't merely the end result of events but the journey as well. How long and how hard it is to achieve something absolutely is important to narrative. An epidemic that gets cured by the various faiths pooling resources in a few days is a much different story than thousands dying while a small band of adventurers traverse the mountains looking for the rare Meiklar Orchid held in the halls of the mountain giant Bromar. Yeah end result "The disease got cured" but the narrative is vastly different.

I suppose that depends on your perspective. In the "quest - based narrative viewpoint" the narrative is binary: succeed or fail. In the journey - based mindset, every choice adds to the story.

The hardest part about all this is that it's largely up to the GM. If the GM emphasizes things then they matter. If the GM only focuses on whether the BBEG dies, then that's going to be the focus. If the GM shows your characters' long-term impact on the setting based on your choices, then that is what matters. Unfortunately for those of us who want every choice to matter, that means the GM has to make every choice matter, which is harder on the GM.

I find that if the GM wants to put that much effort into the narrative, it can be hard to keep up with the mechanics and also the narrative. Roleplaying systems with less mechanical complexity free up the GM (players too) to concentrate more on the narrative impact of individual choices.