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Will this follow the same principle as the Pathfinder 2 playtest (and the OG Pathfinder playtest before it): PDF available for free, but professionally printed book available for those who want it?


Has the downtime system been expanded on any in the Remaster? Because in 2.0, it felt pretty anemic, with only about a page dedicated to downtime itself plus various skill actions and skill feats here and there in the book.

Personally, I miss the downtime system from Ultimate Campaigns (or at least the idea of it – as I recall, it did wreak a bit of havoc on game balance), and it would be fun to see something similar done in PF2.


pH unbalanced wrote:
I agree with Easy for the core 20. They were saying they should be automatic (no roll necessary).

Indeed I did. Just like I wouldn't require someone to roll Society to recognize an orc.


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Part of the problem is that alchemist support abilities are pretty effin' weak. For example, look at the salamander elixir. It's a level 4 item that protects you from severe heat for 24 hours. This can be compared to a rank 2 spell like endure elements that protects you from either severe heat or cold for 24 hours. As a 12th level item it can protect from extreme heat, something endure elements does as a 5th rank spell.

I do think the alchemist was hampered by the decision to make alchemy stuff something that can be relatively easily bought, and then just give them some free stuff and some boosts in how to use them. It means their abilities will never be on par with those of spellcasters. And since they can use their reagents to make any level of item, they [b]can't[b] be, because if a 10th level alchemist's items were on par with 5th rank spells, they'd effectively have 15 5th-rank spells per day and that would be fairly wack.


Tectorman wrote:

As this seems like the most pertinent thread (and it's still less than a month old), I'll just necro it a tad instead of starting a new one.

1) My general understanding of pre-remaster shields was that Sturdy Shields are good for blocking and basically every other kind of shield should just never be used to block, or at best, they have a finite window of levels where they can effectively block before the number treadmill leaves them behind.

That seems to have been the original idea, but it proved to be rather unpopular. I believe there was an errata pass where at least some non-sturdy shields got upgrades to be somewhat reasonable blockers – the Forge Warden, for example got upgraded from Hardness 6 and 24 HP to Hardness 10 and 40 HP. That's significantly less than the 13/104 of a same-level Moderate Sturdy Shield, but at least it won't break if you look at it funny.

As I don't have the Remaster yet, I do wonder if these shields kept their upgrade or reverted to their original stats, with the expectation that you could slap a Reinforcing rune on it if you wanted to use it for blocking.


Castilliano wrote:
That's generous, as IRL people who don't study religion have hardly any inkling of other religions, confuse practitioners for each other, and fail quizzes regarding even their own denomination & lore.

Perhaps, but Golarion is a place where henotheism is commonplace, and people are expected to choose to follow a god that appeals to them and their personality, as opposed to the real world where most cultures kind of coalesce around one religion and others are "foreign". I mean, the months of the year are even named for the gods.

Look at Sandpoint as an example. You have shrines/temples to Desna, Shelyn, Sarenrae, Abadar, Gozreh, and Erastil as part of the Sandpoint cathedral, with a local library also serving as a gathering point for Irori worshipers. Or take Breachill, with at least four places of worship (for Cayden Cailean, Pharasma, Desna, and Shelyn), many of which also serve as places of business. It is common for people in Golarion to be exposed to people who worship many different gods, and they likely know the basics of those commonly worshiped in their home region. Basically, the stuff on page 437-440 of the CRB would IMO be common knowledge. If you remove the mechanical stuff, that's like two pages of information, which is hardly an onerous amount.

So, someone from Avistan would almost certainly recognize a fly with a skull on its back as a symbol of Urgathoa, and know that Urgothoa is a godess of disease, gluttony, and undeath. That doesn't mean they know about things like the Daughters of Urgathoa, or how Urgathoan worship is conducted, but they would recognize it as Bad News.


AnimatedPaper wrote:
I think the Unstable trait on the inventor was an attempt at this. Unstable abilities certainly seem to be on par with focus spells.

Perhaps, but Unstable is kind of unreliable. I was thinking more along the lines of Tome of Battle-style maneuvers or 4e-style encounter powers, where the martial has some abilities that just work, but are balanced by frequency of use.

For example, Disarm is a really weak action, because if you could keep disarming your foe with just a skill action, that would lead to degenerate situations where you just keep disarming and they have to keep picking up their weapons, and that's kind of silly. But if you had a 1/encounter ability that was something like "Disarming strike" that let you make either an attack roll or an Athletics check against your opponent's Reflex DC and on a success they drop their weapon, that'd be a Cool Thing without being degenerate.


exequiel759 wrote:
Focus spells don't fit the swashbuckler IMO. They make sense in monks because they are mystical warriors, or in the case of champions or rangers because they used to have spells since pretty much forever.

I agree that focus spells wouldn't feel right for a Swashbuckler, but I think it would be cool to have a martial class with some kind of resource management that's kind of like focus points but non-magical, and the Swashbuckler would be as good a place as any for that sort of thing. As I recall, both the swashbuckler and gunslinger in PF1 had a resource they could use to trigger various special abilities (panache and grit, respectively).


Finoan wrote:

“This is the symbol of

Urgathoa, a goddess of disease, gluttony, and undeath.”

As a side note, I would not require a roll or even Religion proficiency to recognize the primary holy symbols of gods common in a character's home culture (which for most Pathfinder characters would be the "core 20"). That's the kind of thing that would be common knowledge. I would require it for more obscure symbols. Using Christianity as an example, I would not require a roll to identify a cross as the symbol. Something that's a cross variant (e.g. a Hospitaller cross, or a Saint Andrew's Cross) wouldn't require a check to recognize it as a Christian symbol, but could require one to know the specifics. And identifying a fish as a Christian symbol would definitely need a check.


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Come to think of it, I think part of the issue is that spells in general, and cantrips in particular, are no longer part of a particular class's abilities. That means you can no longer balance a crappy class chassis (hp, armor, etc) with a good spell list, because that spell list can be used by other classes as well, and there are many ways to poach cantrips in particular.

So I think the solution to "cantrips are bad" should be some kind of buff to those classes that have a bad core, primarily sorcerers and wizards (and maybe witches), not to cantrips themselves. That, or make sure those classes have awesome focus spells.


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Teridax wrote:
SuperBidi wrote:
Well, maybe you should watch it again as Mark never said Electric Arc was overpowered, he just said that Electric Arc was stronger than the other cantrips and why.

Let's lay out the facts, shall we?

  • Mark explicitly states that Electric Arc was stronger than the other damage cantrips, in a game that emphasizes balance.
  • On the other hand, Mark Seifter also said that the pre-errata remaster Wounded rules were the correct ones and had been all along. So I'm not sure his opinions on game balance and gameplay are necessarily something to be treated as sacred.

    Electric Arc being stronger than other cantrips does not mean it is too strong. It could be (and is) that the other cantrips are too weak. In particular, I think the designers overvalue effects that happen on critical hits/critical save failures, such as Ray of Frost's speed penalty.


    3-Body Problem wrote:
    MEATSHED wrote:
    3-Body Problem wrote:
    Calliope5431 wrote:
    You're advocating for specific penalties to disarm and trip for not being proficient with one specific weapon? Absolutely NOT, yuck.
    Other systems do it just fine. Why can't Pathfinder handle it?
    I can't think of a single system that has weapon proficiency work like this

    It wouldn't be hard to implement.

    Everybody can use any weapon to attack with a baseline bonus to hit that advances with level. Then you add tiers of weapon maneuvers that unlock with skill with that weapon/weapon group. Trip might be fairly easy to unlock while Disarm takes a very skilled wielder and you can make the skill order vary by weapon/weapon group.

    Symbaroum has a system sort of like that. Every character has eight attributes: Accurate, Cunning, Discreet, Persuasive, Quick, Resolute, Strong, and Vigilant. Characters have them at different levels (between 5 and 15), and in order to succeed at things you roll d20 below or equal to your attribute.

    You also have a number of Abilities (not all of which are combat-related), ranked at Novice, Adept, or Master. So a swashbuckler-type would probably focus on Acrobatics and Feint, while a more beefcake-y type would go for Iron Fist and either Shield Fighter or Two-handed Force.
    That's more about fighting styles though than weapon groups, but in most cases a particular fighting style requires a particular type of weapon.


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    YuriP wrote:
    The dead curriculum slots from some curriculums needs to be heightened to keep working efficiently (or they will become weaker than even cantrips):

    The lesson there is not that the concept of focused schools is bad, but that they should be designed so that at least the lower-level slots have some spells that maintain their utility at higher levels.


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    pH unbalanced wrote:
    For me, this is root of what I don't like about the new system. No matter how you want to define them, every spell that exists should be assigned to at least one school.

    I strongly disagree. Not everything needs to fit in neat little box.

    Remaster schools are not fundamental parts of the nature of magic. They are inherently social constructions, fields of study. There's nothing that inherently ties, say, the School of Civic Wizardry together other than a theme that means it makes sense to teach them together. There is no Civic Wizardry "essence" to them, they're just spells that make sense for someone interested in using magic for construction.


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    graystone wrote:
    Or how a halfling barbarian can carry around 3 other halflings around all day and not be hindered or slowed down in the least.

    How else would they fit in a trenchcoat?


    YuriP wrote:
    But my main complain still in the mechanics. Its just worse. The spell old style every spell was obligatorily classified into one of the schools auto-incrementing the number of spells available to them whatever the was added.

    That's part of what I don't like about them. The world is too weird to have everything fall neatly into boxes like that – particularly poorly designed boxes like the OG magic schools.

    It's the same reason I have issues with neat cosmologies like the Great Wheel (and that includes the Slightly Smaller Wheel of Pathfinder). The Multiverse should be weird and wonderful, like those old Hulk comics where he gets punted to some kind of pathway in between dimensions and wanders them aimlessly and pops into all sorts of places.


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    25speedforseaweedleshy wrote:

    based on how much class in core 1 changed

    one should not expect much fixing with monk

    maybe orichalcum strike at level 17

    My understanding is that one of the reasons Paizo split the classes the way they did between Player Core 1 and 2 is that the PC2 classes needed some more revisions, and thus got put in the later book.


    Baarogue wrote:
    Even the min str druid can frequently meet and exceed the form controlled wild shape's attack bonus, YET not even the max str druid can consistently exceed non-form controlled wild morph's attack bonus.

    Remember that the Wild Shape feat gives a +2 status bonus when using your own attack bonus. So, as an example, an 11th level druid who started with Str 16/+3 would have an attack bonus of +23 (proficiency 15 + Str 4 + item 2 + status 2), while the actual options for a 6th level wild shape (depending on what feats you've taken) give attack values between +21 and +23.


    Revresbo wrote:
    I was thrilled when I was looking over Player Core to find that the 4th-level Druid feat Form Control no longer had a Strength prerequisite. I never understood how a high Strength translated into "muscle memory" or why it would be necessary for either flavour or balancing when it came to the benefits of Form Control.

    I believe the intent was to force wild druids to spend some resources on Strength. It's a weird place to push that requirement though.

    A problem with wild shape and similar effects in 3e and 5e has been that it means druids who do that kind of thing effectively can ignore physical stats and focus on mental ones, and still easily flip between powerful casting and powerful fighting abilities. Pathfinder 1 tried to fix that by having polymorph-style spells provide bonuses to ability scores instead, but that meant that using them would be super complex as you basically had to recalculate your whole character.

    In PF2 we instead have the Battle Form mechanic, where you basically replace your own relevant stats with those of the form. That's really powerful, but in most cases you need to use a top-level spell slot in order to get stats relevant against the foes you're fighting. But wild druids get to do that as a focus spell. That might just be the strongest focus spell in the game. So as a cost, they need to spread their stats out a little more.

    Also, wild druids already have some incentive to boost Strength because if their melee attack is strong enough, their attack bonus in wild form will be higher.

    (Note: this is about why Form Control had Strength requirements in the first place. No idea why they dropped it from Form Control but kept it for the higher-level version.)


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    Guntermench wrote:
    When they printed the CRB there was a "consensus", but evidently not. When they printed this everyone thought they were ok the same page, but evidently not.

    I could see the conversation going like this:

    "Hey, wasn't there some discrepancy with how Wounded works in different places?"
    "Right, the GM Screen had a different version than the core rules."
    "Well that's not ideal. Let's make sure that gets fixed in the remaster."

    ... and then it got "fixed" in the wrong direction.


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    exequiel759 wrote:
    * Devise a Stratagem is a free action, period.

    On a lore level, I like Devise a Stratagem to be an action. It seems like it should take some time to ponder things. But if it costs an action, it needs to have a much bigger payoff than getting to use Int to hit and getting a version of sneak attack off – maybe something like the rogue's debilitations, although that's more of a high-level thing. At lower levels, maybe something as simple as allowing a reroll of the d20 rolled as part of devising a stratagem if you follow through after a bad roll ("Plan 2"*). Alternately, make something like Known Weaknesses baseline, or take a page out of the Gunslinger's book and allow combining Devise with a number of different preparatory actions, such as reloading, or Step/Stride, or things like that.

    * "Not plan B. Plan 2. Plan B implies we only have 26." –Scott Summers


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    Calliope5431 wrote:
    I admit - the whole "continuity reset whenever you do a new edition/write another adventure that changes the setting" thing may be one of the more painful things to witness in RPGs.

    I think my favorite edition-change explanation, and the one to which I tend to default, is the one Wizards used for Forgotten Realms and the 2e to 3e changes: both are imperfect approximations of the "real" Forgotten Realms. The Symbul didn't change from being a 2e wizard to being a 3e sorcerer, it's just that sorcerer is a better model for her natural command of magical forces.

    Similarly, I don't think it's worthwhile to get bogged down in details of how magic works between editions. Specialists needing to use two slots in order to cast opposition school spells is the kind of nitpicking that isn't really helpful.


    25speedforseaweedleshy wrote:
    always feel gnome and goblin have the best feat pool among core ancestry

    I gotta say I've gotten a surprising amount of mileage out of the combo Sensate Gnome (giving Scent) and the faerie fire spell.


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    Sy Kerraduess wrote:
    The concept of Sin and Virtue magic can be true without being tied in any way to a fundamental categorization of magic itself.

    Sin magic would be a much cooler concept without being tied to the old schools of magic – particularly since many of the pairings were pretty bad to begin with. I mean, what is the association between the sin of Greed and things like erase, feather fall, or jump?


    3-Body Problem wrote:
    If you disliked the old schools you must loathe the spellcasting traditions for being just as arbitrary and poorly defined. What exactly is the logic behind where the cut between Arcane and Occult ended up again? Why is Arcane still mostly just the old Wizard spell list if there are supposed to be rules to these things?

    I'm not a big fan of traditions, no. I much prefer bespoke spell lists. I understand why they made the choice they did (primarily expandability), but it's not one I agree with.

    Quote:
    The old schools were 128 crayon boxes and the new ones are 16 crayon boxes, and you're praising them for making you buy more to get less.

    Yes. I want there to be dozens of different types of wizards with different schools. That wasn't possible with eight schools covering the totality of wizardry.


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    Cyder wrote:
    I am kind of sad so many ancestries still have 'low light or darkvision' as their thing. I would rather Paizo have moved away from almost every ancestry has better sight than humans trope. Its lazy and boring.

    Reminds me of a Farscape episode that lampshaded this trope. There was some kind of threat that mainly consisted of an optical phenomenon, and the one human on the crew was the one who had to deal with it because all the other crew had far better eyesight and therefore were more vulnerable.


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    3-Body Problem wrote:
    What part of these new schools feels like a good idea? I get that some people like the new flavor but I really question what there is to like about these new schools beyond that.

    1. They are not the old schools, which were never a good fit. They originated as minor comments on AD&D 1e spells and were later used as building blocks way beyond what they were supposed to carry. Just look at how many times the schools have been rearranged since they actually got mechanical weight with Dragonlance Adventures and AD&D 2e.

    2. They are expandable. I don't have the Player Core yet, but it has what, four schools in it? That's nothing. You could easily add dozens of schools for various purposes. The old schools were collectively all-encompassing, so there was no way to expand upon them.

    3. They are not tied to OGL material.


    Gortle wrote:
    Calliope5431 wrote:
    But that is the do nothing approach you can shift your odds a lot. Extra defence helps your offence:

    All that does is turn you into the aforementioned adamantine brick.

    Trying to be a defender/tank requires two things:

    1. Good defense.
    2. Some way of making opponents want to attack you.

    That's why Champions make good tanks, because they have both. Heavy armor and good shield feats buff their defenses, and their Champion's Reaction lets them both defend their allies and punish their foes for attacking said allies.

    If you're spending actions to make attacking yourself difficult, and possibly punitive for the opponent, that just means they'll go after someone else.


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    Mathmuse wrote:
    I read about D&D 5th Edition providing too much mid-combat healing, but I had not imagined that it meant letting teammates drop before healing them. My PF1 and PF2 players are careful to heal their teammates before they dropped, except in the three situations that I mentioned in my previous comment.

    One difference is that after level 1 PF2 healing is significantly chonkier than D&D5 healing. In PF2, a 2-action Heal heals somewhere around half of a fighter's hp (a bit more at level 1, a bit less at level 2, and then it stabilizes around there), and does so at range. In D&D5, there are two main healing options: Healing Word as a bonus action at range, which (after level 1) heals between 1/3 and 1/5 of a fighter's hp, and Cure Wounds as an action with touch range healing between 1/2 and 1/3 (again after level 1). I'm treating level 1 in D&D5 as an outlier because (a) going by the XP charts, it's intended to be over really really quick, and (b) healing spells in D&D5 add the caster's casting stat bonus to the healing done, and adding 4 to 1d4 throws things off by a lot more than adding it to 3d8.

    D&D5 is also nicer to characters recovering from being dying because of its looser action economy. The character could recover their weapons as an interaction (nearly free action) and stand up at the cost of half their move. In PF2, grabbing a weapon would be an action, as would standing up be.

    These factors, in addition to PF2's dying/wounded rules, help make yo-yo healing a more reasonable plan in D&D5.


    The Raven Black wrote:
    Also history on these boards has extremely clearly demonstrated that it is far better for a topic to settle down rather than become even more toxic that Paizo people say nothing.

    I have no expectation that Paizo folks will show up in-thread and set things straight one way or the other. That seems like a recipe for being mobbed. But something like a blog post would be nice.


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    Silver2195 wrote:
    Mostly agreed. It's interesting to note that PF2 and D&D5 both have full-caster Bards and at-will cantrips. But this is coincidental; PF1 and D&D4 also had at-will cantrips, and PF2 made Bards full casters to give all four traditions a full caster class in the core rulebook. (I have no idea what D&D5's reasoning for making Bards full casters was. Bards were the only "Tier 3" core class in D&D3.5; they didn't need "fixing"!)

    Probably two-fold:

    1. Bards were seen as weak in 3e, and they thought they could use the buff.

    2. 5e doesn't have 2/3-casting like in 3e. There's full casting, there's half casting (what paladins, rangers, and artificers have), and there's third casting (what eldritch knights and arcane tricksters have).


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    I really don't get where people are getting these two Dying values from. A Dying character has one Dying value. When you drop to 0 hp, your Dying value is set to 1 + your Wounded value, or 2 + your Wounded value if you were brought low by a critical hit. If you fail a Recovery check, your Dying increases by 1 (or 2 on a critical failure) plus your Wound value.

    There is not a "base Dying" that's set to 1 (or 2) and then a "total Dying" that's Dying + Wounded. There's nothing in the rules that indicate that.

    I mean, I'm going to run with the commonly accepted old rules, but unless there's official word to the effect of "That was a mistake that slipped through", I have no illusions that doing so is anything but a house rule. It wouldn't be the first one.


    Cyder wrote:
    And I am going to disagree with you there. Having your background feat continue to improve and remain one of your best skills because thematically even though you may have 'left that life' the skills, knowledge and interests never leave you. Its like I no longer work in several kinds of industries but whenever I hear news or come across articles about subjects in those industries I feel compelled to read and know.

    See, if skill DCs were reasonable at higher levels (i.e. not assuming you keep increasing the skill, stat, and having item boosts) keeping a background skill at trained would still make it relevant at higher levels, and higher proficiency levels would reflect someone actively seeking to become great at that thing and actually being able to do really hard things with it.


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    Ryangwy wrote:

    Do With Panche!

    When you move or Interact, you can attempt to do it stylishly. Make an Acrobatics check or a skill check based on your swashbuckler style at a Very Hard DC for your level.

    No class ability or feat should ever default to using a "very hard DC for your level". That is a bad mechanic, and any ability that uses it should be rewritten. If you want to tie the use of an ability to a particular skill, just have it work but tie the actual effect to the skill proficiency rank.


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    YuriP wrote:
    To be honest, now that the alignment is gone, similar to what happened with the wizards, it is now much easier for Paizo to create an even greater variety of champion subclasses over the course of new books.

    Yeah, one thing I like from the other game is that paladins are defined by a cause (or Oath), not an alignment. Some of the oaths kind of shoehorn you into (or at least out of) certain alignments, but alignments are not what define them.


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    Omega Metroid wrote:
    Eh, not really. A party without frontliners has a grand total of zero people on the front line, by definition.

    I would object to that. I would say that a party without a proper frontliner has four people on the front line, and that's generally four people who don't want to be on the front line.


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    Teridax wrote:
  • The class starts out proficient in more skills than average, but isn't really a skill monkey. On the contrary, as mentioned in the OP, they're practically forced to dedicate some of their standard skill increases towards their panache skills, making them more specialized than most.
  • That's a problem in general in PF2, that there are basically only two speeds when it comes to skill acquisition: there's the OK one rogues and investigators get, and there's the crappy one everyone else gets. Having additional starting skills just means there's more stuff you might think you should be good at at higher levels but aren't.

    Any class for whom several skills are part of their core identity should get some form of skill buff above the default. I'm mainly thinking of Bard and Ranger, but I'm sure there are other examples.


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    Deriven Firelion wrote:
    Now I'm starting to lean back to adding Wounded 1 only once because it is a condition. Adding wounded a second time when increasing dying is like adding Frightened up and stacking it or any other condition, which is not how it works. A condition is added only once using the highest condition modifier.

    Remastered Wounded seems to be acting more like a "weakness to Dying" than a condition. If you have weakness 5 to fire and take 5 fire damage, you're actually taking 10 fire damage. If you get another hit for 3 fire damage, you're taking 8 points, and now you've taken 18 points of fire damage. You've taken your weakness damage twice, because you've taken two instances of fire damage.

    Similarly, Wounded "triggers" each time Dying would increase. If you're Wounded 1 and hit 0 hp, you would normally gain Dying 1 but instead you're Dying 2. You fail a recovery check and would normally increase Dying by 1 but instead you increase it by 2 and hit Dying 4 which means you're dead.


    Guntermench wrote:

    I don't think that necessarily means what you think it means for Monk about multiple paths.

    It already has multiple paths.

    You can go full in on Ki, you can go full in on multiple stances, you can pick one stance and some ki, you can go reasonably heavily into maneuvers, etc. That already exists. They can change literally nothing and it would still meet the "has multiple paths" statement.

    One issue I have with the monk is that all the higher-level ki feats require that you already have ki spells. That means you need to take Ki Strike or Ki Rush at level 1, but level 1 is also where most of the stances are. So if you want both ki and a stance for a damage boost, you either need to downgrade a feat at level 2 to 1, or play a human for the extra level 1 class feat. That seems like an issue to me.


    I think the swashbuckler would have been a great place to have a martial character with actual Cool Moves (like the 3.5e Tome of Battle classes), but I guess that's too big a change for a mere remaster.


    Captain Morgan wrote:
    Who are all the other weapons for?

    1. People who want their equipment to reflect their place of origin and/or backstory in a way that mechanically matters. E.g. "I'm from Osirion, so I should use a khopesh instead of a longsword."

    2. People who want just the right combination of traits for their build. E.g. "I want to trip my opponents and still deal decent amounts of damage, so I'll go with a khopesh."


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    Cyder wrote:

    I get why advanced weapon proficiency exists, I get why advanced weapons exist but the restrictions and accessing and using them seem over done. Why create a whole category of weapons that punish all but a few classes for using them. Give access with the right feat at full proficiency and move on. I still don't even see many druids or bards using advanced weapons but at least a feat would support those that choose to and I don't think it would break or unbalance the game.

    The only reason I can think for not doing it is somehow advanced weapons are seen as part of the fighters class identity and giving access to other classes to make good use of it somehow infringes on that. That however would be contrary to the rest of the design and also a hell of a waste of printing space for all those weapons to only be good for 1 class.

    I think it's one of those "abundance of caution" things. It's real easy to design an advanced weapon to just be a higher-damage version of some martial weapon, and if you could get full access to that via a general feat that would be a no-brainer for many builds (particularly since, at least in 2.0, there aren't all that many good general feats).

    If I had my druthers, advanced weapons should be the ones who are actually complex in their usage. Hook swords, fire poi, and flickmaces, yes. Falcata, no-dachi, and broadspear, no. Those can just be local variations of regular martial weapons. And ideally, advanced weapons should have a fair amount of traits but generally non-exceptional damage. That way, they become specialized tools for those who can exploit those traits, rather than just "better" weapons.


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    SuperBidi wrote:
    Also, the new Dying rules don't change that this party has one big weakness: a lack of frontline tankyness outside the Fighter. It was the case preremaster as much as it's the case post remaster.

    How many tank-type characters do you think are appropriate to have in a four-person party? How many characters with strong AOE abilities? How many characters being able to deal good sustained damage? How many characters who can deal with hazards, particularly traps and haunts? How many healers, both of regular ol' hp and of conditions? How many characters with battlefield control?


    Captain Morgan wrote:
    GMG suggests using four times the weakness value IIRC.

    It's between 1 (or possibly 1.5) and 4 times the weakness value, depending on how common the weakness is. For something like zombies, who are weak to slashing which is super common, they probably get 4x. Something that's weak to sonic damage, which is both fairly uncommon and often underpowered, doesn't get the same boost. That's why I compared the creature's hp to the "standard" for its level, to get a feel for how they valued chaos damage.


    TriOmegaZero wrote:
    I don’t see a benefit to the dev team commenting. All it will do is fuel further arguments, not solve anything.

    It will at least settle the issue that this might be an error due to copying text from the wrong place, and perhaps provide some context for changing the game to become even more lethal. Or, ideally, indicate that the rule book is in error and the old rule is the correct one.


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    SuperBidi wrote:
    Staffan Johansson wrote:
    OK, you're fighting a monster whose level is one or two higher than yours. They just dropped the party fighter in the first round. What tactics do you suggest? Other than "run away and let Bob roll up a new character"?
    Fight and kill the monster. What tactics were you suggesting before the Fighter dropped?

    That's a goal, not a plan.

    Quote:
    Now, if your whole party is relying on a single character for damage, the fault is on you. All classes are able to deal significant damage, overspecialization is not a good thing and can lead to this ridiculous situation.

    Where did you get that the party relied on a single character for damage? But in your archetypal fighter/rogue/cleric/wizard party, the fighter is likely the one who's more likely to be able to survive and take damage. They probably have the best AC (on account of heavy armor) and the most hp. And now they're out. That also means that the rogue has likely lost their flanking partner and won't be able to sneak attack, unless the cleric volunteers to stand around and get smashed.

    And note that I was talking about a level 4 creature against a level 3 party. That creature is probably not alone – you'd need to add in a level 1 creature to the encounter in order to reach what's supposed to be a moderate encounter.


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    I wish the devs would weigh in on the whole dying/wounded thing. I get that the PDFs started getting sent out on Wednesday, and of course it took some time for people to absorb them which meant that the whole thing exploded mostly on the weekend, so they probably haven't had much time to react yet. But it would be nice if someone official could pop in – ideally saying "Oops, we made a mistake here" but even a "We hear you and we're having internal talks and will get back to you" or a Seifter-esque "That's what they were supposed to be all along" would at least be something instead of all this flailing about and guessing at intentions.


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    Malikor wrote:
    Also, are such beings that are neither good or evil pre-remaster (such as aeons) which had weakness to chaos for example, going to have a different weakness to replace them, are they going to be susceptible to both? Or a stronger weakness toward what sort of material does more damage to them?

    I'd go with no weakness, and compensate by dropping their hit points by double the value of the weakness.

    Why double? I used the Theletos as a base, a level 7 creature with 125 hp and weakness to chaos 5. The normal medium hp range for level 7 is 111 to 119, or 115 on average, so it appears having a weakness to chaotic damage is worth a hp increase of double the weakness. I have not looked at other monitors to see if they have a similar ratio of weakness to hp boost.


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    Darksol the Painbringer wrote:
    Although, I will say that honestly, a PC going down within the first round of combat is indicative of not being fully healed between combats, or facing an extremely powerful opponent, neither of which is really commonplace.

    At low levels, even a level +1 creature has like a 10-15% (I think it comes down to about 11%, which is 1 in 9, or the same chance as rolling a 5 on 2d6) chance of KOing a fighter in two attacks. While that's certainly not the expected result, it's definitely not one you should be surprised by.


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    gesalt wrote:
    Inspire heroics, now called fortissimo composition, got the weirdest buff. Rather than being a very hard dc based on the highest level creature affected, it is now based on the highest will DC of targets affected. In the worst case this is usually easier by 2-3 but if you don't have a character with capped wis and will progression (most parties without a cleric or druid) it'll be even easier.

    Sweet Shelyn, I hate that mechanic. I get that they want to reward bards for maxing Performance, but a better way would be something like: "The bonus from your inspire courage or inspire defense increases to +2 (+3 if you are a Master of Performance)."

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