dysartes's page

This should mean rogues can give out DEX to Damage like candy for one or two feats on anyone, we'll see if that's good enough this edition.

I'm not a religious man, but if I were I'd be praying you're wrong.

If it is going to exist in PF2E at all, Dex2Dam needs to stay as part of the Rogue class, and not be handed out as a party favour to anyone who is willing to MC Rogue.

HWalsh wrote:

Personally, I hope the addition of Cleric Devotion allows people to make Pseudo Paladins to fill the slot for those who wanted Holy Warriors, but couldn't do LG.

Nah, I'll just play a CG Paladin. The alignment system is meaningless as a mechanic anyways, no one will know the "LG" at the top of my sheet is a lie if I don't tell them.

It's funny, I hadn't yet decided what my fifth character class would be for doomsday dawn, but this post settled it.

So you won't actually be playtesting PF2E then? Good to know.

House rules are fine once the game is out at retail, but should be kicked to the curb for the playtest period.

I really wanted to see simpler Firearm rules in the playtest/core rulebook. I get they aren't universally popular, and I don't care. Guns are a cannon element of Golarion, and Pathfinder 2 is set in Golarion by default:

I see what you did there...

Voss wrote:

By what's presented there isn't much that separates a 'dwarf' from a 'tough elf'

Petition to start calling dwarves "tough elves"?

Feck that - Elves can be called "weak Dwarves" instead.

I flat out fielded a question about it in my Major Spoilers interview. Granted, it wasn't for the full details but the design goals.

Mark, I assume there is a schedule for all these blog posts, so the topics of future posts are already known - can you confirm if there will be a blog post looking at multi-classing before the playtest hits?

We also know Rogue gets Dexterity to Damage, so there *may* be a way to get that as a Sorcerer as well (I'm guessing there is, as that's *probably* something that will be made generally available).

I really, really, really hope you're wrong about this.

Dex2Dam is a plague upon the d20 system - the game needs a vaccine against it, with the possible exception of class-specific features.

The last thing we need is a Dex2Dam epidemic...

For example, I do not think you can easily do an Arcanist or Summoner through just an archetype. I think a new type of casting probably requires a new class. But something like a ninja or slayer probably could just be archetypes.

Minor point - given the Ninja (along with the Antipaladin and Samurai) is an Alternate Class, it already is an archetype (of Rogue) in PF1E.

Crayon wrote:

Because it's the act of zealously embracing and loving the deity's teachings that empowers the Paladin. Simply paying lip-service doesn't cut it.

You mean a certain very limited selection of deities teachings. Zealously embracing Torag's teachings can't empower you to be a divinely inspired champion, despite arms and armour, battle and glory kind of being Torag's thing.

Have the alignment options for Torag's clerics in PF2E been revealed anywhere yet? I mean, the dude was stated as LG in PF1E...

Is it just flavour text? Because how they are building the mechanics now is that the Anathema is EQUAL to the Code of Conduct. As in the Paladin must be Good (the first tenet) AND follow the Anathema. (which comes above the 3 other tenets, including the not harming innocents tenet...) So I see it being a lot more important than hair colour and height. (Unless of course you believe that the Code is just flavour text...)

Did where Anathema fell in the fall priority get confirmed somewhere? Last I heard we still weren't sure where it ranked.

We have only seen Dex to damage on the rogue though, so it might be class locked.

We can only hope - though it does make me nervous regarding multi-classing, in case it lets that blight escape its cage.

While it would be nice for Mark or Logan to confirm, I suspect this is how the save table for Stunning Fist will look:

Note - save rating is after any modifier for critical hit applies.

Note 2 - The attack needs to have done damage before this Fortitude save crops up - I guess in case of really high Resistance?

Success: No effect
Failure: The target is Flat-footed for 1 round
Critical Failure: The target is Flat-footed for 1 round, and is Stupefied 2. If the attack was a critical hit, the target is Stunned for 1 round.

AM BARBARIAN wrote:

PossibleCabbage wrote:

Does anybody else think the anathema furor is a little strange given that we haven't seen the exact text of a single anathema, nor the full rules for them?

Like people are getting annoyed that Barbarians have "things you shouldn't do" baked in? I don't get it.

BARBARIAN AM THINKING AM MIGHTYWEIRD.

FOR EXAMPLING, BARBARIAN ANATHEMA AM EXISTING FOR FOREVER: BARBARIAN NOT WEAR SHIRT, EVER. AM NEVER NEED FOR SHIRT. THIS AM NOT NEW FEATURE.

But were still good with pants right?

We can only hope - otherwise AM BARBARIAN is going to be getting thrown out of more places, even before the obligatory bar fight sequence...

Can we please not call them "anathema". How about "taboo" or some other similar word.

I agree that Anathema might not be the best choice for a Barbarian - but if they're mechanically the same as the ones in other classes, it makes sense to use common terminology, rather than re-inventing the wheel.

Of course, you might be advocating changing it everywhere, in which case I have no real preference either way on the term ;)

Also the fact that not a single Iconic is worth the ink that they were printed on.

Based on what metric?

Totems were the most popular thing!!!! No they weren't nobody that I have played with gave arse about the totems. They were popular because they had nice rage powers and were in a tree format which wasn't the case for lot of the other rage powers. Beast totem being a prime example, pretty much everyone for example considered the claws pure tax and nothing else. The other popular ones were the ones that gave fly.

So you're saying they were used a lot, which ties in to what was said. Just because players in your area didn't play up the RP side of things, doesn't mean others might not have done. One group's experience isn't reflective of all groups, after all.

Anethma....oh boy here we go again. Go write 100 times on the blackboard "Locking mechanics behind RP without a very good reason is bad game desing." Superstisous is an example of a good one, it is a mechanical benefit and mechanical restriction also it makes sense IC. The others mentioned are garbage writing and should be discarded as such. At least the paladin has the excuse of sacred cow in need of slaughter. This is adding in more of that assenine thinking into the game.

Firstly, dial back the tone, dude - calling something "garbage writing" because you disagree with it is beyond OTT.

Secondly, while some people might agree with you that it isn't a good move, there seem to be at least as many people who like the idea, going by this thread. Given we're looking at a playtest here, how about we test how it works in the game before discarding the idea?

I like the totem mechanic, it reminds me of sorcerer bloodlines, but was never a fan of rage and was hoping for some other options.

What were you expecting to see on the class which has been defined since at least D&D 3.0 by getting slightly irate in combat, if not Rage?

Superstition totem sounds like the worst party destroying character types of editions past- vow of poverty and the Forsaken remixed into a core book option.

Hoo. Ray.

Any chance of why you think the Superstition Totem will be a problem for parties? It only seems to directly affect the Barbarian, especially if someone in the party has taken non-magical healing options.

NOTE: While it would be amusing, pretty sure I've never seen a wizard cast fireball by flippin' the bird.

I'm not 100% certain, but I think Harry Dresden may have done something along those lines - though I'm not rereading the entire line of books right now to check ;)

Captain Morgan wrote:

I wonder if the rage bonus will also be MOAR damage die. My gut likes Barbarians throwing the biggest fistfuls of dice in a game full of big fistfuls of dice, but I'm not sure how if that works well in practice.

Plenty of people like throwing ye olde dice bukkit. It's at least 33% of the appeal of playing Shadowrun after all.

Or the West End Games classic Star Wars engine.

I think playing a high-XP Jedi in that system, whilst spending a Force Point, is one of the few times I have had to use more than one brick of Chessex d6 (i.e., over 36 dice) in a single attack roll...

KingOfAnything wrote:

Taboos, from the Medium class were interesting restrictions that gave a bonus. However, they were fairly easy to game by taking one with the least impact to your character, and thus practically ignorable. That made the idea much less interesting. So, I'm skeptical of too many options.

It's almost like forcing role-playing restrictions that the player doesn't want doesn't work out well. If Bookrat's interpretation is correct, the developers' intent is to instead encourage a dialogue where the GM and player together decide on restrictions the player finds fun. If that's correct, it's an ingenious way to sidestep this problem.

Nah, it's more like a chunk of the Pathfinder playerbase are determined to get as much ice cream as possible, while eating as few vegetables as possible.

This is needless cosmology. What source? There is no defined, single individual responsible for the anathema like there is for clerics. Why does an intuitive warrior who loses track of everything but the battle and uses massive weapons to intimidate his enemies have to also have a competition complex? More generally, why does a feature as generic as "barbarian who uses big weapons" need to be tied to a specific role-playing restriction?

I'm assuming this is something that will be explained a bit in the write-up of the Totem feature in the Playtest Rulebook. Instead of flying off the handle about it now, how about cooling your jets a bit until you can see the full picture on them?

But even if you weren't, the role-playing restriction having a cosmological source doesn't make it any more fun for me. We're essentially back to the same debate as with paladins. You can have your character with the default flavor, and I should be able to have mine that's another flavor that makes just as much sense. A rulebook with unnecessarily narrow flavor restrictions tells some people "your idea is correct" and others "yours is wrong." In what way does that improve the game?

Well, one would like to think that when it comes to games set in Golarion, the dev team's ideas are what's correct for the default setting. And let's not bring the Paladin argument into here - so much of that in PF1E boiled down to "I want Divine Grace, but can't deal with playing LG!", with a variety of bull-pucky claims as to how this wasn't actually the case, that it wasn't funny.

I hope I can make a fist fighting Barbarian. I hope unarmed combat isn't restricted to the Monk.

From what we've seen, I believe Unarmed is likely to be a weapon proficiency. So, in theory, an unarmed Barbarian would be doable, though I doubt they'd reach the same proficiency level (or have the same Class Feat support) as the Monk.

Please, first example of Barbarian doesn't fall because we don't even know if that is a thing that can happen yet. I'm taking "relatively low impact and designed to create roleplaying hooks" at face value instead of assuming that it makes them lose all their powers and makes them need a cleric.

I'm pretty sure the blog (or a post from Mark) mentions what happens if the anathema is breached - lose totem abilities (but not RAEG!) until you can spend a day to straighten yourself out.

Is it really necessary to literally write THIS TOO CAN BE DISCUSSED WITH GM on every single page people might have a problem with (every page)?

Just pop it in the template for the page header or footer...

Vidmaster7 wrote:

Is it just the totems that are giving the anathema? If so maybe the totem options are slightly better then non-totem options?

their are no 'non totem options' as far as I can tell, from reading this they are a core class mechanic.

Fury Totem (not Furry Totem) exists for the Barbarian who wants an anathema-free life. From what little was mentioned in the blog post, it sounds like generic PF1E Rage Syndrome (as opposed to PF1E Forum Rage Syndrome).

no it does not, its a 'nerf the barbarian button' for intelligent enemies to press, when no such button makes any sense

That assumes that a, it is simple for an enemy to identify a given totem; b, it is commonly known what the anathema for a given totem is; and c, that it is simple to generate conditions to trigger an anathema in a given scenario.

+ + +

Question for Mark Seifter, if he's still reading the thread - are Totems (other than Superstition) being presented with a single Anathema each for the playtest, or are more than one per Totem available?

I wish each time you gained a new Skill Rank you gained a Base Skill Use, which would be the same for everyone who attained that rank in the same skill, much like an Occultist gains a Base Focus Power everytime he gets a new implement school.

Well, we don't know for sure that there aren't some skill usages which are gated by proficiency, outside of an Untrained/Trained split. Would something like that cover what you're after?

If instead I can just invest in an "Academics" skill which covers everything from Mathematics to Chemistry to Marine Biology to English Literature to Analytic Philosophy to Gender and Women's Studies to Art History, I can at least define boundaries like "actually, I never studied glaciology", but I can still play a character who got a triple major in Math, Physics, and Women's Studies who went on to do graduate research on information theory and pedagogy.

Academics, Craft or Swim to represent a Degree in Underwater Basket-Weaving?

Milo v3 wrote:

Iron_Matt17 wrote:

And judging from the skills used at Paizocon Playtest delves, they start at trained not expert.

Though it looks like you don't automatically get Trained in them based on Mark's previous comments in this thread:

Mark Seifter wrote:

This is not quite how it works. You pick what skills you're trained in. Classes do have signature skills, but you are not forced to be trained in those if you don't want.

I took that to mean "you can choose those 4 signature skills at level 1, but you don't HAVE to. If you want to choose another 4, by all means... It's up to you."

Kinda like the signature skills are what you typically would think of when you think of a class. Rogues have Stealth, Paladins have Diplomacy, Druids have Nature, etc... But you can create a non-stealthy rogue, or an unpersuasive Paladin if you want. (Don't know about that ignorant of nature Druid though...)

Getting a straight answer out of Mark as to what Signature Skills are is proving... frustrating.

That said, it seems like Skills are another aspect of the game being made more complicated for complexity's sake...

How so? No more need to determine which are class skills and which aren't (as far as we know); a shorter list of skills; five different levels of proficiency (the same as everything else in the system); and certain bonus abilities gated behind feats. Not seeing how this is "more complicated for complexity's sake" than PF1E, especially if you factor in things like the Skill Unlocks from Unchained.

I think a level 13 character being able to stop their adventuring companion of so many levels from bleeding out without having to sweat about it isn't mind-blowing.

After 13 levels, I'd hope they'd seen enough to figure out "staunch the bleeding" :)

Can't say I'm a fan* and I know the reaction my table will have to this (based on how they reacted to other games that implemented this) and it won't be pretty.

Any chance you might, y'know, actually get one of them to post here, rather than continually speaking on their behalf? It gets old seeing the same thing in every thread, man.

Deranged Stabby-Man wrote:

Lol, that legendary stealth ability. You literally need to wear a bell on you at all times to keep from giving your party mates heart attacks.

Or you can double down and also take Scare to Death from legendary Intimidate, and literally give them heart attacks.

Well played, sir, well played.

We have a known discussion point where the fighter should very likely get Intimidate as a signature skill and also another starting trained skill, but alas, that omission was pointed out after the book hit the printer (after which we noticed it in several times from several places). I am guessing there won't really be two sides among you guys in the playtest as to whether we should carry through on that.

That's a couple of times we've seen you mention signature skill now, Mark - is it just a case of "these are skills we think are typical for the class", or is there some mechanical benefit for a character taking training in their signature skill?

Spell rarity, huh? Good bye, easy Blood Money... (grins)

I'm just hoping for "Goodbye, Blood Money" - full stop ;)

Did anyone who attended PaizoCon happen to see these icons?

It'd be interesting to see what they thought, if so.

Paladin: Their offensive abilities sound pretty cool, and they can buff their allies a little now, which is great. Just hope we actually get different alignments in core that stand up to their LG counterpart(come on, Paizo, I know you can do it!)

*sigh* Can we keep the Paladin alignment debate (PAD as an acronym, maybe) out of this thread, please?

The Gauntlet: Looks good to me, though I still dislike Bulk. What was wrong with carrying capacity in pounds? :(

For one, most of the world uses the kilogram instead...

Deadmanwalking wrote:

I've got to say that I've basically never seen someone walking around in a martial arts or combat stance (including several people I know who very much know and practice such things). People don't actually do that.

I'm black belt, and I walk around like this . It's a bit difficult to go upstairs, and sometimes you hit people with the elbows while using the subway, but other than that it's fine. :P

Clarification required, gustavo - the stance on the left of screen, or the stance on the right?

Deadmanwalking wrote:

Trimalchio wrote:

'high for their level' is not that same thing as unique, not even close.

Nobody said unique. People said unusual. Which is exactly what 'high for their level' means, in this context.

Just do a control F for the word unique.

Why do you straight up just say something utterly dishonest? You could literally just look at the 10 posts above your post.

It's really incredibly rude.

When you introduce a word into a conversation - as you did with "unique" - expect people to respond using the same verbiage.

As noted by the fact I didn't provide a link - or the name of the dev - I didn't have the relevant quote memorised, or I'd've used that.

Please dismount from the high horse, avoid tilting at windmills, and actually join the factual discussion.

Have a nice day...

I must've missed that - given I'm in the UK, the particulars of PaizoCon tend to pass me by.

Interesting - the bonus blog is in the normal Friday blog spot?

You can keep saying the ogre is somehow unique...

We're not saying the Ogre is unique...

The designers have said the Ogre is unique. I believe it was Mark, though it may have been Jason.

dysartes wrote:

So... Alchemist info at $5k? ;)

I haven't cleared any further goals with anyone else, and right now we're still behind HBO by less than the amount to hit 5k, and I'm about to head out to the tournament. If we get a last-minute surge in time for the tournament to place us ahead of HBO (right now that would be $211), we will definitely be grateful, but I can't promise additional bits to this (already monster-sized thanks to all of your generosity) blog.

Well, it was worth a shot ;)

Good luck with the event.

Erik posted this in the main stat block thread - I've only trimmed the bit about the survey thread.

We're doing some experiments with symbols and color in the playtest book, which has already gone to the printer, so that ship has sailed in the short term.

Of course, the whole thing is a playtest, and we'll be monitoring responses as we go. I think even in-house we are skeptical that color is a useful way to delineate information, so that one is really on the fence, and I suspect we'll be finding another way to handle the way it is used in the final book (overall it's fairly minor).

The symbols are a different story. We think they'll really help, but it remains to be seen if we're correct about that. Accessibility is a VERY important issue to us, so I'd say that's the primary metric we'll be using. The action symbols we're using are fairly large and not very plentiful in terms of variety, so we want to see how people feel about them as we begin working on the final presentation of the game.

It's my suspicion that the PRD and all "text-based" versions of the rules will have the [A] and [R] designations in plain text, which should help with ereaders and the like. We're going to be experimenting to see if there's a way we can code the symbols so that our visually impaired readers have to jump through as few hoops as possible with this stuff when using the standard Paizo PDFs, but this is a bit new to us and it'll take us a while to fully work out the best way to handle this.

The rules, the art, the presentation. To some degree all of this is part of the playtest, so it's very helpful to have people raising concerns about things that, well, concern them at this stage. Thanks for your continued feedback, everyone!

^Picture on one side, and stat block on the other (which conveniently is turned away from the players when you're showing them the picture, unless they're flanking you . . .).

And if they are flanking you - and the monster is an unpopular one - watch out for the Rogue...

So... Alchemist info at $5k? ;)

I get the impression a $1,600 stretch for the last blog may have been a bridge too far, Mark - maybe two smaller goals (say 3,800 and then 4,600) to cover the Alchemist and then familiars might have drawn sufficient donations for your goal?

AnimatedPaper wrote:

Whatever you want I suppose. You're firmly into houserule territory at that point.

Edit: Actually, you might be right. Giving rolled characters ancestry boosts is not much different than racial adjustments now.

I agree. You can even get a character with a 20 ability score now if you roll an 18 and slap a +2 racial bonus on it. Also, so what if we end up with a character in the group with a 20 in one ability score? Big deal. I've played in plenty of games with a character like that and it wasn't game breaking or overpowered. Strength that high might be ridiculously strong for a human or half-orc, but it's nothing when compared to something like a Rune Giant.

Not much different in PF1E terms, no - but potentially making quite a difference within the PF2E mathematical framework.

Pretty please can we get an updated set of condition cards to coincide with the launch of the new rules?

The condition cards (including the funny illustrations!) are some of the most useful reference tools I ever bought.

With the changes to conditions, everyone is going to ask: “What is a Frightened 4 again?” Best answer: Here’s a reference card. And ooh, look at the funny Goblin/Kobold/Whatever cowering in fear.

Back up a second - there are PF1E condition reference cards? Why have I never heard of these?

Nice reformatting job on "Irreligious" too, btw (though I agree with those who thinks the name isn't the best choice).

Having just read the Attack the Stat Block blog post and thread, there seems to be a great deal of concern regarding the use of icons within PF2E.

As it stands, we've seen [[A]] and [[R]] as stand-ins for icons for Action and Reaction respectively, though we have yet to see the assets which are going to be used for those icons.

Comments regarding the use of screen-readers, whether the icon imagery will be suitable for colour-blindness and if a block is reformatted into large print have cropped up - as well as comments regarding how these images may cause problems when copying text out of a PDF (such as the Playtest Bestiary).

I've spoilered some excerpts below - however, I counted 21 different users commenting on the issue in a thread which, at time of writing, was merely 6 pages long.

This seems like a topic which could merit from some comment from Paizo, as it is one which could very well have an big impact on a section of the player base.

He was implying that their would be no spell-like Abilities I do believe.

Indeed - it appears that Innate spells are the same as Spell Point spells are the same as Prepared spells. If you can counter one, you can counter all - assuming Counter-Spell is a thing in PF2E, of course.

I think I'm always going to hate it if monster creation and advancement is significantly different from PC creation and advancement.

Can you expand upon why, Ectar - especially when Paizo have said you can build NPCs the same way you build PCs?

This has probably been asked but can we Counter Spell these non Spell Like Abilities?

What SLAs?

Well, Hmm, you know what you need to do ;)

It's such a tease seeing the "Attack the Stat Block" blog sitting there in the forum but unable to be viewed.... lol

Well, I'm glad it isn't just me.

Good work, Team Paizo!

The caveat is that the physiological (Dwarven hardy) traits are often bundled with cultural traits (Dwarven defensive training) as a "race."

With luck, both ancestries and monsters will distinguish between the two in 2.0. It sounds like ancestries may at least.

IIRC, there is going to be a delineation between the physical and cultural aspects of a PF1E when created as a PF2E Ancestry - I think I heard the terms Ancestry vs. Heritage, but I could be wrong there.

I do think we won't see that with Bestiary creatures until they get a PC Ancestry write-up, though.

Paladin might not make it, i suspect because everyones tired of hearing about paladins XD

While people may be fed up of Paladin alignment discussions, I got the definite impression people would be open to getting some information on mechanics of their abilities, as this was something the blog was light on.

I'm going to go simple, and recall a PF1E ability that wasn't referenced in the blog, and that's the Paladin-variant of Detect Evil.

If you're going to Smite it, you need to know it is afoot.

In line with what Paradozen said, I wouldn't be adverse to having the ability to Detect and Smite Chaos as feat-locked upgrades/abilities either.

*casts Heal on the Cleric*

Doesn't explain how well the Rogue is doing, though - or how poorly the Cleric is.

Mark Seifter wrote:

NielsenE wrote:

One of the main things I'm still interested in, is that the devs seem to be expecting people to only progress proficiencies as the class gives them to you, rather than spending feats on them.

The dev comments on classes that give the heavier armors giving shields at the same rate, other comments about when clerics get various casting proficiency, etc. However they do still list that a wizard can buy into heavy armor. This feels like a place where there might be a developer mindset/blank spot in how people will use things. Definitely something for us to see how it plays out in playtests.

Curious if the class proficiencies are worded like "become Expert in X" or "Increase your proficiency in X by one step" Ie, if you spend a feat to accelerate, does it stay accelerated, or is it a wasted feat at some point.

Generally, the higher the proficiency rank, the less generic the way you get it. So for instance, there's an easy way to grab trained for the wizard, but getting further gets trickier.

Thanks for the answer. (Not sure I can interpret it until more details are revealed, but that's part of the process :) )

My guess would be there are general feats to grab Trained proficiency in things, but to go beyond that probably involves class features (or class feats, maybe).

To be totally fair, right before the sentence about one-handed to two-handed it did specifically mention codifying grip-changing in general, it's not *that* big a leap to assume the reverse uses the same rules. As for the doors thing, do note this also applies to more than just doors. Any class that has any abilities that involve using a hand will pretty much be forced to avoid two-handed weapons. Gonna suck for Clerics who's deities favor a two-hander, having to burn an extra action (or maybe even two) every time they want to cast a spell. Or Paladins, who now have to burn an extra action (or two) to use their lay on hands. A melee Alchemist trying to chug a mutagen to get into combat? You're losing an entire round even if they're already in reach as you pull it out, chug it, and then put your hand back on. This really hurts the viability of the two-handed weapon, having to burn an extra action (or two) to do what a one-handed weapon can do without. Or else just leads to the Two-Hand quality becoming king because you can still get that really good damage when you need it, but *aren't* left defenseless if you can't spend the spare action to re-ready your weapon.

You mean there might be a downside to using the weapons that have tended to have the largest damage in the game? Oh, the humanity...

Outside of Mythos stuff, what are your preferred genres to read? Any recommendations you can make for them which are a little off the beaten path?

Which would you say are the weaker stories of the Lovecraft Mythos, and would they have been improved by the addition of dinosaurs?

Who came up with the concept for the Zygomind, and how concerned are you that you might be being digested by one as we speak?

Dracoknight wrote:

I know PF2E is trying to be made in such a way that older materials is still compatible with the new ruleset, but can we expect some progression in the worlds of Golarion as it shift into 2nd edition, or is pieces of history rewritten to work out some of the aspects that 2nd edition allows/disallows?

We'll have more to say on this topic at PaizoCon. If you're not gonna be at PaizoCon, then please re-ask this question after Memorial Day weekend and I'll be able to say more.

For those of us outside of the US, James, which weekend are you referring to?