WhiteMagus2000's page

The most random thing to zero in on on your post I'll admit, but Unseen Servant being able to cook is a lot more than what it could do previously, which was basically push/pull/open/carry and clean.

As for altering the all-or-nothing instant lose spells to be more commonly debuffs than fight enders, that's healthy for the system and games.

I've never seen a martial break the game either, in the way that spellcasters can anyway.

Anyone who refuses to play along with the rest of the group or go on the adventure that you planned can break the game. I've had more difficulty, over the decades, with a first level rouge or bard trying to pick every pocket in town or seduce the nuns at the local monastery than I've had with a wizard breaking reality.

I just do not understand how that works. Is this just about my wizard creates with Craft Alchemy anything and hands it over to the familiar who can use it at the battlefield? Example: I give my eagle alchemist fire and he drops it on the battlefield.

This thread is ancient, but that is a question I'm not sure has an official answer right now. Currently familiars don't have a stat block and don't have a strength score, so as near as I can tell, it would only be by GM permission that a familiar can carry or lift anything. People are hoping that they'll clarify this soon.

I think "bottlenecking" is a term that frames the discussion rather heftily. How many feats do you need to be a viable archer ranger? 1-2.

The "bottleneck" I think is a push to actually make it harder for all archer rangers to be duplicates.

I thought I had made my question clear in the first two posts, but it appears I failed.

In PF1 I commonly split feats between a couple different areas without spreading myself too thin. Many people online complained about not having enough feats.

In the PF2 playtest my players felt so underpowered that they didn't dare spend feats on anything other than their core specialization. This was something that other people mid to high level play testers also mentioned commonly.

I was asking if that was still a problem since it's been fully released, but it appears to have been fixed. I didn't mean to the topic to only be about rangers, that was just the first example off the top of my head that everyone fixated on.

Thanks. Sounds like you can split feats in two areas and still be viable.

Let me rephrase my question: In PF1 a ranger could use a great sword, a longbow, a companion, and spells at the same time well enough to keep up with everyone else.
If I try to diversify characters in PF2 will I just end up with a character that is awful at two or three things? Can I get away with spending 50% of my feats in one area or does it require 80-100% to be viable.

"Perhaps you're referring to the fighter 7th-level feature that gives them +2 circumstance to Perception for initiative only? Fighters being as fast or faster than rangers to react to combat seems right to me; they still won't notice the details on their opponents' clothing any better."

Being able to be just as good as a ranger, but better is being better.

I played in beta, but haven't gotten a book yet, I've just been reading from the SRD to feel out the fully released system, so there is probably a lot of changes I've missed.
First I looked up a ranger (one of my favorites) and saw that they get 10 class feats (same as everyone else as far as I've seen). I was trying to design a typical 3.5 bow ranger, where I would have spent half my feats on bows, 1 on animal companion, and happily accepted the utility spells I got; still leaving some wiggle room for defensive feats or flavor feat or two.
So now if I want to get all the bow feats it'll use 10/10, if I want a decent companion it'll use 3-5/10, and having about the same spellcasting as PF1 would take 4/10. Obviously I can only take half of these. (Did anyone else notice that fighters get better Perception than rangers until level 15?)
Theoretical builds for druids were the same and alchemists even worse. Wizards and Fighters look like they might have a bit more wiggle room, but wizards sure look bland compared to a fighter that can inflict debuffs every round and never run out of swings per day.
Anyway....seems like multiclassing or even dual specing would really gimp the core class most of the time. Is this right? Did miss something?

I mean, even calling it "Mother May I" to begin with is talking down about the whole concept.

The fact that you're acting like the GM is some strict parent you have to beg and plead to have permission to have fun kind of indicates there's a really toxic and unhealthy mindset about the relationship you have with the GM (or the relationship itself is toxic, hard to tell what's perception and what isn't).

I basically disagree with you there. I GM my games and I have 1.5 players that try to abuse the game and bring in broken/OP feats, spells, and items from 3rd party sources, so we've had a no 3rd player stuff rule for years. Now it's tough to say, yes Bill can have his optional rules that he wants but Josh and Diane can't.

And when I was playing a bit during the beta it was annoying for me, because I couldn't just plan out a character, now I had to personally ask the GM if I could take such OP spells as protection from evil. Or I could just pretend that those spells didn't exist and take ones that I knew for sure were going to work.

Even I find it very annoying that the players will have to personally beg the GM to use spells right out of the players handbook. Seems like they made another problem for me that never existed before. I agree that "uncommon" spells are basically the designer's house rules.

Monsters do still have ability scores, they just print the bonuses, so you just have to convert it if you really want to bring it up. +2 str = 14, +3 con = 16, etc.

To the OP and his buddy.

You seem to have stumbled into a heated debate that's been going on for the last ten years. How to fix fighters. People have suggested that fighters just get a few more skills and bonus skill feats but, were told that that would make them too rogue-like. There were other options that let them make alchemist preformance enhancers, but this made the too alchemist-like. There were options to make them educated combat tacticians, but this made them too bard-like. When asked "what do you want", the answer was usually MOER DAMAGE!

Fast forward to PF2 play test. Fighters have the best consistent damage output and the best feats to control combat, such as Sudden Charge and Swipe. Fighters are currently the best (or one of the best) classes in the game. As a long time fan of rangers and alchemists (which are currently much weaker than fighters), it's really hard to emphasize with your point of view and agree that fighters need to be even stronger.

If you really are looking for versatility, then I have good news for you. Multi classing. You can make your fighter more rogue like, or bard like, or wizard like. I'm not sure if they'll make you more powerful, but they certainly add new abilities.

So basically it's there to punish newbie players and/or veterans who don't metagame and make the game less fun for them?

By level 12 you shouldn't be a noob anymore. Unpleasant conditions happen and by that point you should have something to fix it. Like the old saying goes, if you fail to prepare then you prepare to fail. Even at level 1, you should prepare for as much as possible. What if you run into a sealed vault and have no one to pick the lock? What if you have to get up a smooth stone wall and no one remembered to bring a grappling hook? What if you contract ghoul fever? The GM shouldn't have to remove challenges from the game because you didn't expect to run into challenging problems.

I like the idea of Assurance being a "take 10" type of thing. I would say take 8 at expert, 10 at master, and 12 to legendary. Just because I don't think anyone would take a feat that only let's you take 4. But that seems like a good and simple way to actually be useful.

While on the general topic, under using Perception to find invisible targets I recall the rules saying,"If you beat the invisible creature's stealth roll then you know what square it's in or get a clue." Do we have anything more concrete that that? Seems like pinpointing an invisible creature just by succeeding a single Perception check is too easy and only getting a "clue" is too vague. Is there any clarification of this, or did I read something wrong, or is it really that vague?

I would greatly prefer buffing the weak ones. Once my players thought about how cantrips take two actions, they quickly changed what they use. Now they only use Ray of frost, the electric one, and short bows. They have stopped using cantrips nearly so often (except the electric one) once they noticed that they can just shoot a short bow and cast a spell on the same turn. RIP acid splash, produce flame, and sometimes Ray of frost.

Likes
1) Three action economy.
2) Cantrips scale with level.
3) Multi classing that feels both fair and useful.

Hates
1) Martial damage tied to weapons, not character.
2) Arcane casters have been over nerfed.
3) The rule book reads like a math textbook.

House rules
1) Animal companions get 1 action per turn, if undirected.
2) Very few, if any, hidden rolls.
3) Might use traditional weight system, instead of bulk system.

WhiteMagus2000 wrote:

While not fully worthless, I think Lightning Reflexes, Iron Will, and Great Fortitude fall into this weird catch 22 area that makes them far less useful. Each makes you expect in the relevant save, no more, no less. And each requires a 14+ in the associated attribute. So to get Iron Will you need to have a pretty decent will save, but not a good will save.

I've already had a couple of players with poor saves want to take one, only to find that they don't have good enough attributes. And the ones that already have good saves don't need or can't use it. Even with the tight math in PF2, I seems reasonable to just give a flat +1 to the save.

While they have problems, they aren't traps. +1 to a save is a passable effect. I expect that they will become underpowered once we get more published content, however, as right now they only get picked because there is pretty much no competition. I mean, Fleet and Toughness are the premier choice for general feats. The pickings are pretty slim, and I suspect a lot of the stuff that looks fine now will be hopeless underpowered once there are actual alternatives.

They don't give +1 at this time, they give you expert proficiency. If you already have expert proficiency then it does nothing at all.

While not fully worthless, I think Lightning Reflexes, Iron Will, and Great Fortitude fall into this weird catch 22 area that makes them far less useful. Each makes you expect in the relevant save, no more, no less. And each requires a 14+ in the associated attribute. So to get Iron Will you need to have a pretty decent will save, but not a good will save.

I've already had a couple of players with poor saves want to take one, only to find that they don't have good enough attributes. And the ones that already have good saves don't need or can't use it. Even with the tight math in PF2, I seems reasonable to just give a flat +1 to the save.

Some people hate the idea that magical weapons are actually magical. They want them to slightly help with accuracy and add eh, a slight bit of damage.

I hated this in PF1 and earlier editions.

Even my beloved Paladin has this:

1d8+10(str x 1.5) +12(Power Attack) +3(magic weapon)

The difference between a normal sword and a supremely expensive magical weapon of great power is... 3.

1d8+25 vs 1d8+22

That is silly.

Some people hate, in PF2, that a +3 weapon would be 4d8 rather than 1d8+3

I don't understand that.

"If a commoner picked up a..."

Yes. A commoner would hit hard, but would have no chance vs the high level fighter because the commoner couldn't hit him.

In PF2 its realistic to a point. You can only do so much damage with muscles and skill. Magic is the force multiplier and I, for one, am happy.

I don't want to play a story of the heroic magic sword and the farmhand that carried it. I want to play the story of the heroic warrior with a sword that burns with holy fire.

This is actually a deal breaker for me. It is a very unheroic feeling to know that if you lose or drop your sword then your damage goes down the crapper. It also puts a huge burden on the GM to make sure that everyone has exactly the weapon that they are supposed to have at the exact level they are supposed to have it. I've read APs where a level 2-4 fighter can find a +3 frostbrand. That's strong but not game breaking. Now if a level 1 Barbarian happens to find a +1 ghost touch dagger (and transfers the rune to a greataxe), all of a sudden he's doing triple the damage of anyone else. Now that is game breaking and if it remains in PF2 then I'll remain in PF1.

I rather miss dirty tricks. Had one player that would commonly used to pocket sand to blind enemies and wads of fishing line to entangle. Now he has to play Warframe to blind enemies with pocket sand.

WhiteMagus2000 wrote:

A really amusing scenario would be when a high level player fails to roll a DC 30 to climb a tree, only to watch a child climb it a few minutes later.

Player: "What? How did he roll a climb check of 30?"
GM: "Well, he's only level 1, the DC is 11 for him and he rolled a 13."

Well then, it's a good thing PF2e doesn't work like that. Like, at all.

I wasn't being literal. It's the "non listed DC for anything so just assume that you can do it on about half the time" that is the problem. Identifying a rabbit nest should be a nature or survival DC of about 10. Peasant hunters do that kind of thing every day. Assigning a DC 27 to a task that a 14 year old farmer could do is just artificially inflating the numbers and most players are going to be smart enough to notice that.

It is pretty annoying that unopposed checks don't have some kind of listed DCs. Players shouldn't still have a 50/50% of doing the same stuff they could do at level 1 (like identifying a rabbit nest), they should be doing more epic stuff. People have already complained about the DC of medicine checks increasing with level, but how about all the other skills? Treading water in a pond when you are level 1 might be DC 11, while treading water in the same pond at level 20 might be DC 30 (it might even require expert training). This kind of thing really breaks immersion for the players, and makes the world feel like unreal or stacked against them.

Paizo either needs to list some DC guidelines for each un-opposed skill or they could save themselves some time, really "simplify", and make each skill check a coin flip. Heads; you can do the thing, and tails you can't.

A really amusing scenario would be when a high level player fails to roll a DC 30 to climb a tree, only to watch a child climb it a few minutes later.
Player: "What? How did he roll a climb check of 30?"
GM: "Well, he's only level 1, the DC is 11 for him and he rolled a 13."

Regarding overpowered encounters, if the 1st level party is traveling and crest a hill only to see three trolls down on the road ahead eating the remains of a horse and rider you can still have a good scene. They can fall back, they can sneak around, they can set an ambush and try to pick them off one by one, but whatever they do they know they live in a world with its own rules and logic that doesn't just exist for them. That is vital to the world seeing real.

Indeed. The most memorable encounter in part 3 of Strange Aeons is when they are in a city that is attacked by a CR 26 Old One. They aren't supposed to fight a thing that looks and acts like Godzilla (@ level 7) and deserve to die if they try.

Saying "What class are you?" just sounds wrong. So what would you say?

You might have to ask a subtle series of questions. Ask if they can do X, Y, and Z that only one class can do all of (unless they have some weird archetype). I had a bard once that always claimed to be a warrior/sorcerer, and had the spells and archery feats to prove it.

Agreed. I don't really play high fantasy RPGs for the realism. If you want realism, gurps is good, but a single shotgun blast to the face is likely to take you out for days or weeks.

So far my group has had no issues with Treat wounds. With only a modest investment the party barbarian had a 50% chance to succeed at level 1 and will end up being 55 or 60% at level 20. Seems like a reasonable cost in time and a couple skill increases. Yes, someone is going to have to invest in it, but that doesn't seem much different than how someone has to invest in diplomacy or intimidate and someone is going to need to take arcana. I think barbarian is glad to have an important out of combat job.

And tearing down walls will be downtime material so a character with an adamantine weapon can't play Minecraft anymore.

My first "for the party" purchases in PF1 was always a bag of holding and an adamantine hand axe. You have no idea how many times we just chopped through the hinges of locked doors and chests. We even tunneled around a door with a really nasty magic trap once.

thorin001 wrote:

Evilgm wrote:

A 5th level character using Ray of Frost is 1d8+4, with +8 to hit vs Touch (usually a 2 point difference) for two actions.

A 5th level character using a +1 Crossbow is 2d8, with +9 to hit vs AC for one action, with an additional action to reload.

A 13th level character using Ray of Frost is 3d8+5, with +17 to hit vs Touch for two actions.

A 13th level character using a +3 Crossbow is 4d8, with +20 to hit vs AC for one action, with an additional action to reload.

Those numbers seem fine to me, and put Cantrips in the position of being the main attack option for casters who don't want to invest in better fighting options. They're going to be worse at fighting with them than a Martial character, but fortunately they're generally going to be better at healing, flying, turning invisible, mind controlling and a host of other things they can do when needed.

I would like to see some Feats to boost them just to allow that as an option for players who want to focus on them, but as it stands they're a free alternative to the Crossbow the character would likely otherwise be using.

You do realize that you are comparing the cantrip to a primary weapon. At 5th level you will only have the one +1 weapon and at 13th level you will only have one +3 weapon. It is at 9th or 10th level that you will be able to have a backup +1 weapon, and probably 16th or 17th level that you might have a backup +3 weapon.

What Thorin said, over and over again. Cantrips are *not* comparable to primary weapons and should not be compared to the top-end damage of classes dedicated to landing hits. Your spell slots and the trickeration you can create with them ought to be compared to those primary tactics of martials. Cantrips are what you'd compare to a Fighter gearing down, using his ranged weapon despite being a high-strength melee character.

This issue is that fighters can use there preferred melee attacks the large major of turns of combat. A wizard can only use their preferred actions (spells) the minority of turns of combat. Even when they do use one of their few spells, there's only about a 50-60% that the spell will hit or the target will fail to resist it. So a wizard uses their mediocre option most of the time and fighter's use their mediocre option only rarely.

The result in my group is that everyone agrees that the least valuable party member is the wizard. They feel they absolutely need a tanky martial, a healer, and a skill monkey, but the wizard offers low damage, unreliable battlefield control, and not a lot of utility out of combat. I imagine some of this will get better with higher levels, but it feels like wizards/sorcerers have been over nerfed.

If they A) increased their spells/day, B) Made cantrips at least as good as a shortbow, or C) increased the DC of spells so that they would do the thing that they are supposed to do most of the time, then arcane casters would feel more useful.

Didn't know that you couldn't strike an object. I let my players break down a door and just assumed it had a hardness of 5 and made a lot of noise (alerting monsters in the next room).

This is silliness of about the same magnitude as when your animal companion just sits there while it's master gets beaten to death.

By the rules couldn't you check for mimics by attempting a strike against all suspect objects, and if you can actually roll an attack, then it's really a disguised monster?

Treat Wounds seems like a decent fix to a really bad problem. It's not quite how I would have done it, but it works alright and adds about 3 hours to the 15 adventuring day.

As far as difficulty;
A level 1 a barbarian with 12 wisdom and a healer's kit would have a 50% of hitting a DC 13 medicine check (+1 from level, +1 wisdom).

A level 1 a cleric (or druid) with 18 wisdom and a healer's kit would have a 60% of hitting a DC 13 medicine check (+1 from level, +4 wisdom, +0 item quality).

A level 20 barbarian with 14 wisdom, a master healer's kit, and expert medicine proficency would have a 50% of hitting a DC 36 medicine check (+20 level, +2 wisdom, +2 item quality, +1 expert)

A level 20 cleric is going to be much higher (70%?)

Each attempt takes 10 minutes. Half may fail, increasing the time spent, and when you critically fail (5%), you are locked out for the rest of the day. Additionally it requires a modest investment of player resources, but that certainly seems reasonable to me.

Some people are saying Treat Wounds is too weak, some are saying it's too strong, so I guess Paizo isn't going to be able to make everyone happy.

Maybe this changes at high levels, we've only played in the first two adventures so far. What I've seen is that cantrips hit about as frequently as the barbarian, but take two actions instead of one and do about half the damage (or less). With the barbarian frequently making a second or third attack, she is inflicting at least three times the damage as the wizard. Yes, the wizard has a few real spells, but with the current 50/50 system, they only stick about half the time.

Yes cantrips can sometimes take advantage of weakness, but many more monsters seem to have unexpected resistances that reduce incoming damage much more than boost it.

I could easily see the wizard being dropped from the group without a major problem, while the loss of the cleric or tanky martial would be devastating. Again, maybe this changes with higher levels, but wizards currently feel kind of weak and with cantrips being their default action, lackluster cantrips just showcase the issue.

The problem is that firing a crossbow into the crowd is now better than cantrips.

At level 1 a hand crossbow does 1d6 compared to a produce flame that also does 1d6 (and takes 2 actions)

At level 20 a hand crossbow +5 does 6d6 compared a produce flame that does 4d6 + (Ability modifier) (and takes 2 actions)

The term "caster level" may not exist anymore, but a level 5 wizard still casts spells as if they were a level 5 wizard.

I believe the assumption was that the feat meant you would cast the spell as though your were a wizard or druid of 1/2 your level.

Like feats with the "press" descriptor, if the majority of players are misinterpreting the rules, then the rules need better clarification. In fact counter intuitive writing of the rules and poor book layout is about 1/2 of my group's complaints.

Excaliburrover wrote:

EberronHoward wrote:

Clerics don't get damaging cantrips, but domains offer a lot of good weapons to use. And an Elf or Gnome divine caster can poach a damaging cantrip with their Ancestry feat.

But yeah, having GMed for Sombrefell Hall, an all-Divine party is going to be severely lacking in consistent damage output.

Your post has some imprecision: clerics have Chill Touch as damaging cantrips.Cantrips you take with ancestry feats scale at half level and thus are even worse.

For clerics, resorting to weapons to do damage is ok but i'd like to have more choices.

They are heightned as a full spell

** spoiler omitted **

The cantrip is heightened to a spell level equal to half your level rounded up.

So if you are level 11 : 2 = 5.5 = heightened spell level 6. The only difference it's that use you use your Charisma modifier as your spellcasting ability.

100% of my players misread this to mean 1/2 caster level. (Paizo staff attempts to craft clear rules. They rolled a natural 1, what happens).

Funny, over on the other treat wound thread, the general feeling is that treat wounds is too weak. Guess paizo isn't going to be able to please everyone.

WhiteMagus2000 said wrote:

With Assurance, expert in Medicine, and level 20, you can take an automatic 35. For only 200 SP you could get an expert healers kit and never have to roll again.

Actually seems too easy, now that I think about it.

That's not how assurance work. The result would simply be 15 no modifiers.

Is that seriously how that feat works? You don't get a 10 and add modifiers, it's just plain 10? That is so awful that I never would have assumed that it was supposed to work that way.

With Assurance, expert in Medicine, and level 20, you can take an automatic 35. For only 200 SP you could get an expert healers kit and never have to roll again.

Actually seems too easy, now that I think about it.

I don't really see the big problem with the treat wound system. I does have a cost, it's just character development rather than gold. The target for level 1 is DC 13. The parties cleric with medicine +5 can get that more than half the time. Even a martial with only 12 wisdom and an expert kit could get that half the time. At level 20 the DC is 36. With +20 (level), +2 (wisdom), +2 (skill increases), and +2 (master work healing kit), you'd still have that same 50% chance from first level. This seems like a reasonable cost for the party to pay for not needing a devoted healer.

I personally would make the target DC based on the level of the patient, and make HP healed = (doctor's level) x (patient's Con).

Cheap effective healing between encounters is a bad thing.

Free effective healing between encounters is a good thing.

Color me confused.

Is this exactly how I would have fixed the problem. No. But I'm guessing that each of us here would have a different fix and then we'd be complaining about that one. I'll just say "good enough" and worry about other issues.

The cost is essentially time, rather than gold. Can you sit around in the lobby of a keep, after killing the guards, and heal up for an hour without someone interrupting? That's up to the GM, but I certainly plan on wandering monsters being a consequence for healing this way. I also plan on house ruling that a healing kit has 10 uses, so you'll need to stock up with several before each dungeon.

I'd just say that the target DC is based on the patient, not the doctor. As for a cost to make it slightly less unlimited, just give healers kits a number of charges before they run out of supplies, like in PF1. It would still be cheap and most of the cost would be time spend, but not actually free.

Still, I'm very happy to have the new option. I think fixes far more problems than it causes.

I can sometime be a fairly pessimistic person, but I wanted to thank the Paizo team for all the fixes in 1.3

This update solves at least a third of my groups issues with PF2. There is still a lot I'd like to see changed but this is a great step forward.

My favorite changes include:
1) The -4 to untrained skills, but a generally reduction in target DCs.
2) Treat Wounds w' Medicine. I would even be on board with healer's kits having 10 charges. With repairs time and reduced identification time, a 20 minute power nap should keep players in the game without having to retreat and rest for the day.
3) Basic fixes to Alchemist and Ranger. Now they look playable and I can probably get my players to play them.
4) Multiclass options for all the classes

Things I'm hoping to see in the future:
1) Bonus damage dice be a quality of the character and not tied to weapon +.
2) Some kind of "at will" ability for alchemists
3) A big buff to ranger snares. The idea for a martial class with battlefield control is awesome, but it has to be much faster, much cheaper, and effect a larger area. Also, did you intend rangers to lose 1 skill? Seems weird.
4) Maybe have ancestry start you with 2 or 3 feats, but move the stronger ones (like +5 move speed for elves) to level 5.
5) More general feats.
6) More user friendly book. Adding one line descriptions to feats and spells. Adding an appendix for conditions. Stating how things normally work for feats that alter normal rules (Furious Focus, I'm looking at you).

Thanks again. I look forward to trying out the new rules this week with my group.

While a martial character with battlefield control would be awesome and give rangers a unique purpose, that would be making rangers awesome.

Currently they cost far too much, take far too long to set, and effect far too small of an area. They certainly are traps, but only for the character that wastes feats on them.

Crossbow should never have been a ranger's signature weapon. Let it be the weapon for non martial folks, like wizards and clerics.

Themetricsystem wrote:

Simon Dragonar wrote:

I don't see how you can admit such interpretations or readings are valid and in the same breath advocate for ignoring the accompanying results. It happened at certain tables which have already been admitted to abide by RAW. It didn't happen at others. So what is the issue? What is with the hostility?

They did not "admit" to playing by RAW, the CLAIMED to play by RAW.

Out of the 6 game sessions I've played (Finished Chapters 1-3) we only had 1 PC die in that ENTIRE time, and the GM was very much playing by the RAW, even when it was a detriment to the safety of the party.

I would bet ANY number of dice from my personal collection that the 11/11 TPK claims are at LEAST partially fraudulent, if not wholesale lies to bash the system. Please bear in mind this my opinion only, but I simply don't see this as being anything more than hyperbole, exaggeration, intentional misreading of the RAW and trolling.

You have to wonder. All of the GMs I've seen on this forum that claim full TPKs on every chapter are also ones that if you look at their post history were overly unhappy and negative of the system as soon as it was announced. It really can't be a coincidence.

I think it matters a vast amount just how the GM plays. We have not had any TPKs, but I don't try to kill my players. I don't generally focus fire on one player, don't play the monsters as expert tacticians, and remind them they still have a hero point when they hit dying 3. If I GMed more aggressively, but still within the rules, I certainly could have killed them.

Also, does anyone actually use the secret rolls? The system already seems stacked against them, it feel mean spirited to just pretend to roll some dice and declare they they break their lockpicks and trigger the trap.

Rogues: instead of just nFinesse Striker, you can choose one of three different paths (finesse, brute, feinter)

Ranger: double slice is dropped for 2 feats: one makes you better with two weapon fighting, one makes you better with ranged (fire twice, if both hit add together)

Proficiency: untrained is now (lvl - 4). Also, skill DCs are adjusted, and lowered overall. Net result: as you get better and better you get more and more certain of success. Every skill DC in Doomsday Dawn updated to reflect

Death and dying: getting much more deadly. New condition, “wounded,” you acquire when you are healed back up from 0 hp. Next time you drop to 0, your wounded value is added on to your dying value. And since you die at dying 4 ... this can mean insta-death if you’re doing too much up-and-down.

Mundane Healing: Medicine gets a new function: Treat Wounds. This removes Wounded and also heals damage. Cures (healer’s lvl) * (your con mod) hp. Makes out-of-combat mundane healing very possible, making magical healing more for in-combat, mundane healing for out-of-combat.

Death & medicine: Seems fine to have to bandage someone after a near death experience. Really hoping this makes out of combat healing balanced and viable.

Shields: no multiple dents. One dent and then the rest of the damage goes to you.

Identifying magic items: doesn’t take as long. I wasn’t clear on how long it will take in new rules, but works with someone else using Medicine to heal everyone.

ALL 12 MULTICLASS ARCHETYPES. Goal: you can do this class thing, but you can’t just be a better Barbarian than the Barbarian herself. The 4 we have are rebalanced. Biggest change to Fighter, which a *lot* of folks had been grabbing for armor proficiency. Now it will just step up your armor prof to the next level. (If you want more armor...

Rogue: Since our rogues have always been finesse combatants, I don't care much about brutes, but more options is always nice.

Rangers: Great to hear that rangers are going to be able to use their iconic combat style again. Seems odd that they would remove the one early level ranger feat that is actually good.

Skills: If they are going to make non proficient penalty -4,but reduce DCs by 2, that would make proficient users 10% more likely to succeed. Seems good to me.

Shields: Thanks for the clarification.

Multi classing: Happy to get a version for each core class. Please don't Nerf them too much. Class feats are our most limited resource, trading them away should get us nice things.

I'm happy to see three of my group's concerns being addressed. Returning to a state of cautious optimism. Still want to see alchemists fixed, bonus damage dice not linked to weapon +, better general feats, slight buff to magic (remember that monsters save about 50% of the time), and user friendliness of the core book improved.

Steve Geddes wrote:

The Once and Future Kai wrote:

Ecidon wrote:

Luckily for us, Paizo do keep an archive of these discussions.

I see a lot more negativity here than in those boards...

It's telling that the archive includes threads complaining about negative overly dramatic posts...but few to none of those posts themselves. For instance I distinctly remember Frank Trollman's exit thread but can't find it in the archives. Not accusing Paizo of whitewashing - they only have so much server space - but let's not pretend that the alpha period wasn't contentious.

It’s probably a function of the more egregious posts being deleted and threads being locked (meaning they drift to the bottom).

I found the PF1 playtest ugly but I think this one is worse. I don’t think it’s a function of how well the rules are being received, I think people are less concerned with being polite now than they were then.

We shouldn’t object to people posting negative opinions - that’s useful and almost the whole point of the process. There ware ways to say it though.

I really don't know where are you coming from because since the playtest dropped I've seen maybe two threads locked. There has been a fair amount of flamewaring during the previews, but I think the atmosphere currently is one of debate. An i remember the i avoided the Paizo forums because of serious flamewaring during the playtest even though I was lurking because i was interested in the rules. The amount of negativity is a different thing altogether, and IMO signals that the rules are not in a good place right now.

Agreed. The pre play test comments were quite toxic, but the vast majority of the current threads don't feel mean spirited to me.

I posted my own, careful to be organized and constructive in my criticism, because I want the problems fixed far more than I want to just rage. I think this represents the majority of posts these days.

My group's current frustrations can be best summarized as 1) Poor layout of the book and 2) Breaking stuff that wasn't broken before (such as rangers, alchemists, and reducing the 15 minute adventuring day to only 10 minutes). I want to like the new version, but the current version fixed problems that didn't effect our group and created problems that never afflicted us before.

But more seriously, a rangers biggest strength was it's flexibility. A switch hitter was decent at melee damage, decent at ranged damage, decent with a pet, pretty good at skills, and even passable with spells.
I think they need several versions of hunters mark, each favoring a common play style. The current version would be acceptable if it didn't take an action, but I don't see many players wasting an action to maybe get a +1 to a second and third attack. So far, most would just opt for an extra attack.
And I really wish Paizo would drop their ranger crossbow fetish. I know they are trying to break the mold with a wacky new iconic weapon for rangers, but the classic longbow got there for a reason; it's been great IRL until reapeating rifles were invented.

I know the devs have considered changing Double Slice for Rangers

Did they find out that rangers have one viable build? They are going to Nerf it into the ground, aren't they.

Love the idea in general. I'd like to see a one hour ritual with medicine as it's primary skill, with nature, religion, or alchemy as a secondary. Costs a little bit of rare herbs (maybe gold = to highest effected character level). Success heals 50% HP, failure heals 25%, crit success heals 75%, and crit fail heals 0.

Honestly, there are probably dozens of variations that would work, but this would fix both the cure wand problem and the mandatory heal bot problem. And the time and gold cost would be enough to discourage abuse.

The OP seems to want an entirely new game that isn't Pathfinder. The argument that magic should be free makes little sense to me. Magic, in almost every setting is rare, requires lots of training and usually arbitrary restrictions on top of that (such as natural talent, magical lineage, or favor of the gods. IRL hiring a highly educated specialist is always expensive. Why doesn't a surgeon work for free? It only takes him an hour or two, plus some minor material components. Why doesn't a gemologist identify stuff for free? Well, people don't like going to years of schooling, spend a lot money on equipment, and then get nothing for it.

An average town in PF might have only one or two clerics. Hiking out to a farm to treat a sick kid or cow could take hours (because hiring a specialist to make house calls always takes hours and costs money). I would generally assume that most of time of low level casters is spent studying, running their Church (for clerics), and attending to the needs of the local government or wealthier folks that are willing and able to pay for a quick fix.

If you compare hiring a caster to hiring a surgeon (cleric), chemical engineer (alchemist), or electrical engineer (wizard) then the reason for why it is expensive should quickly vanish. This isn't to say that good clerics might not offer free healing for worshippers, but it's going to be at the cleric's schedule, not the supplicant (similar to churches in my area that offer a free clinic one day a month.) Maybe only available to the first three supplicants, in the hour before the cleric goes to bed.

The current magic weapon system is the feature of PF2 I hate the most. At the end of the first dungeon the players get a +1 ghost touch dagger. They instantly had it transferred to a great axe for the barbarian and now she does more than double the damage of anyone else.

Not only does it feel super non-heroic to realize that 3/4 of the damage that a level 20 fighter does is his awesome sword and not him, the responsibility now falls on the GM to make sure that everyone has exactly the weapon they are supposed to have at the levels they are supposed to have it. Previously the difference between a MW great sword and a +1 great sword was trivial, now it's night and day.

My solution is basically the same as your; +1 dice to all weapon attacks, bombs, and cantrips when they get each new attribute bonus. Magic weapons will still give bonuses to hit and have secondary properties (like ghost touch), so players will still want them. It's not an elegant solution, but it seems both noob and munchkin proof.

I did the adventures kit, basically the same, minus the cook ware. Which seems like a crazy high amount of bulk to me. A tin mess kit normally contains a saucepan, plate, and little pot and weighs like a pound. I added chalk too.

My group's experience has been pretty similar to yours.

Especially the frustration with alchemists and rangers being so underpowered, dislike of magic weapons in there current state, and wands.

One of my players actually laughed at me when I told him they got a wand of produce flame. He said, "So it has charges AND it costs resonance AND it just does a cantrip that I can do all day for free? Wow, what a piece of s!@%! Guess it's PF2 vendor trash."