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If the mount's strong enough (and large enough) to carry both of them, then I'd let them both ride. I'd say one has to be the designated driver, and the other(s) would be passengers. Only the driver can control the mount, and only the driver and mount share MAP. If the riders want to swap places, it would require an action from each of them.
I would love to see Kingmaker, I really want to run it for my group but I need a hard copy to make it happen.
I don't think it's an issue with difficulty. Plenty of other games (pf1 included if you know what you're doing) can have very tough encounters that aren't also frustrating. PF2 is rough because it's designed to make you fail individual rolls extremely often. This creates the perception that your characters are incompetent and sucks the fun out of the game. A better way to add difficulty is by adding resistances and health, rather than AC and saves. That way you get the sense of hitting your enemy, of making them fail their saves, but in the background the effects are reduced. You can keep encounters the exact same length and difficulty but make them far more fun just by increasing the rate while reducing the impact of success. I had this happen in the Starfinder game I ran. About halfway through, the players were getting really discouraged by how often they just missed (even with SFs reduced AC, the lack of ways to boost attack means you fail pretty often, and enemy saves way outstrip spell DCs). I started paring back saves and ac a couple points, boosted hp and tossed in a couple resistances. Result was that enemies died in the same time, provided the same challenge, and everyone was a lot happier. Basically, having the "difficulty" be implemented primarily by using RNG (since it depends solely on whether you have good rolls) makes for a frustrating game. Other methods are less painful to play.
The custom staff rules feel so needlessly restrictive. Pathfinder was always about putting power in the hands of the players. We shouldn't be shunting it back to the GM. There are plenty of other systems out there if you want that.
And here's me thinking that narrative and character were the basis of any good story.I mean it's a detour from this topic but magic is certainly less reality defining than in 1st edition. Thematically from an action movie standpoint magus had moved from having a lot of fire and particle effect glittering over their swords to being more like a regular fighter with an outlaw star Castergun that they pull out for the occasional dramatic moment considerably less magical. I'd rate them second. For example, if healing potions are a thing and a character dies to suit the narrative while their best friend is sitting right next to them with a potion that could heal them, that's a problem, and it ruins the entire story even if it's otherwise very well told. Getting back to the original topic though, wave casting feels far, far too limiting. Summoners are martial with less tricks, and magi are either archery turrets or get ruined by action economy.
I mean it's a detour from this topic but magic is certainly less reality defining than in 1st edition. Thematically from an action movie standpoint magus had moved from having a lot of fire and particle effect glittering over their swords to being more like a regular fighter with an outlaw star Castergun that they pull out for the occasional dramatic moment considerably less magical. Exactly this. And mechanics are the basis of any good story. The number and effects of abilities a character can throw around is integral to their story.
Ehhhh, you can Spellstrike with cantrips all day long and literally never run out. I'm talking about leveled spells, not cantrips. If a caster is down to cantrips only they're stopping for the day. A magus who had half a dozen intensified empowered maximized dazing shocking grasps a day, in addition to a bunch of weaker versions and utility spells is not recognizable in the new paradigm. This is an example of how the same stories cannot be told and the same characters cannot exist.
It brings back the 5 minute adventuring day in the biggest way possible. 2 fights, even at high levels, and your spells are done, time to go to sleep. Also wildly incompatible with the lore. All of a sudden, these magi/summoners who could cast a three dozen spells a day can cast exactly four. It's even more egregious than the break for full casters and martial was. PF2 Golarion is at this point an entirely different universe from PF1, and the same stories fundamentally cannot happen in the two due to the mechanical differences. This was promised by the devs and broken in many ways, but most egregiously here.
My biggest gripe with the economy is that you can't perform an activity that takes more than 3 actions in combat. I wish they would have put in abilities that are really strong but take several rounds worth of actions to charge up, e.g. you have to spend 6 actions over any number of rounds to activate it. So you could spend 1 action a round for 6 rounds, 3 per round for 2 rounds, or whatever other combination. Would have given a lot of flexibility, especially if you did that with spells.
I haven't had issues with short adventuring days because I don't keep the 'dungeon' static. What that means is, if my players pull out and rest, the dungeon will be reinforced, a bad guy in it will add traps/perform rituals, ancient machines will crank out an extra golem, or some other increase in the danger levels in response to the invasion. My table knows this and they always weigh the value of the rest against the expectation of an increase in danger. It usually incentivises them to push until they are almost completely out of resources to minimize the number of rests. And when they do rest, the increase in difficulty means it doesn't make life easy.
In some older versions of D&D, poison use was mostly restricted to evil characters, and was on the list of things that a paladin would leave a party over. I could see some players still having that sort of holdover if they started in those games, even though they no longer apply.
Additionally, nothing in the stealth skill suggests that it works differently with different imprecise senses. In fact, going by RAW, I would have to rule that a stealth check to Hide makes you nondetected by imprecise scent: "it might be undetected by you if it's using Stealth". There's nothing in the feat, the description of imprecise sense, or the description of the Stealth skill or it's actions that would let you autodetect a hiding/stealthing creature with imprecise scent. A GM could be very nice and say that stealth doesn't apply to scent, but that would be up to table variation. Which means, imprecise scent (at least from this feat) is specifically only useful in an area of Silence, loud noise (but not strong smells), or if the character has been deafened.
I think the point is that most creatures that the scent would help you against will fall into one of two buckets. A) things you can just hear and don't need to smell, or B) things that are good enough at going undetected that you wouldn't smell them (or that their smell would be too hard to distinguish from the environment/is nonexistent). Given that the scent ability only works while raging, the fact that most creatures will be in one of these two buckets means that there's little value to the feat. Certainly you can come up with some specific scenarios it would be good, but such cases are rare (once every 10 to 12 sessions or less) in every game I've run, played in, or heard about. If it worked outside of combat it could be quite useful for sniffing out ambushes and the like. As it is, it can't come close to competing with options that are useful in the vast majority of fights.
I can forge a good sword for a lot less than it costs to buy one. Tools, materials, and a forge are not expensive. And that's a far more comparable metric for medieval fantasy than mass-produced jeans.
Yes, in basically every way possible. -less spells per day
How you feel about these changes is another thing. Some like them. Some hate them (speaking as someone who mainly plays martials or partial casters in PF1, I think they went way overboard on the nerfs). But you can't deny they took a massive hit across the board.
I think random tables ate best served as a community project. As an official one will have to be either broadly generic,constantly updated or miss new items out. Sounds like exactly the kind of thing that AoN could support.
Yeaaaaah, I definitely couldn't stand idea of tracking both cubic volume and weight of objects :P It would be vastly preferable to this odd system of arbitrary values where nothing means anything and random stuff is way bulkier or less bulky than it should be. Bulk alone is enough for a hard pass on this game as far as I'm concerned.
you never actually need to calculate the bulk of that sofa the PCs are hauling up the stairs- it's enough to say that carrying the sofa makes you encumbered until you put down the sofa. No joke, that sounds like a really fun sidequest to run/play.
I think a better option than Bulk would have been to list out weights and volumes for each item, and impose limits on both instead of only weight. They sort of did this previously with e.g. bags of holding. That way, everything would still be in logical, easy to use units, and the need to have something other than weight represented could have been met. Bulk as a system is unusable for me and the games I run since it's excessively abstract for very large objects and the values for big creatures are nonsensical.
If you're open to a little houseruling, the Dark Heresy system has an interesting take on AoEs. Basically, you make an Agility test (reflex equivalent). If you succeed, you move to the edge of the effect as a free action, up to your single action movement range. If you don't have enough movement to make it to the nearest edge of the effect, then you take full damage regardless of your roll. Of course, the baseline move speed in Dark Heresy is 3 squares as an action, while it's 5 for PF2. Maybe go with half speed as the distance for PF2. This might get you where you want to be. Just make sure your players are clear on it.
It says they are related, but there is no actual connection. As it currently works, unless you force yourself to pick related lessons, you can have a cold themed patron and pick only fire themed lessons with a flaming familiar (if those are a thing). How do you think your icy patron stays chilly? Has to bleed that body heat off sonehow, might as well be through you.
Players who are willing to dig into the rules and interactions and put a lot of time and effort into mastering them are more invested, as they have put a lot more time into the game.
It's toxic to want a game that's tailored to my specific tastes? Isn't that what everyone wants?
Excuse me for liking games that I enjoy and being disappointed that paizo decided to make something that's basically unplayable as far as I'm concerned as a followup for my favorite ttrpg. Consider Mass Effect Andromeda or Fallout 76, PF2 is in the same league as far as I'm concerned.The point is not that you love PF1, but that you love the aspects of it that have traditonally and widely been considered its biggest flaws, and you double down on them. It's not a perfect parallel, just an example of how designing for a specific, smaller, more committed audience is not a bad thing to do. They should have continued to appeal to the most invested players in the system instead of everyone else.
If a boss is as easy to defeat as its minions then what makes it a boss fight?Which is exactly why bosses shouldn't be immune to the effects. They're best used against them.It's bad against multiple/weaker foes. It's good against a boss, because their actions are generally worth more than a party member's actions.If two players spend two actions each to remove one boss action, and the other two focus on just damage, that fight probably becomes trivial.So players are trading 2 of their actions for one of a foes and that's a bad thing when it costs resources? I thought that's spells/feats were meant to have meaningful effects is the foe fail their normal saves... I don't see it. The fact that it's a/the leader of the opposing faction, aka their boss. If a party went to fight Apple I doubt that Tim Cook would be the toughest one there. But the fight with him would still be the final boss battle. If you're unseating a corrupt king, his best guards are probably stronger than him, but he's the boss. Even if you're going for a boss who's stronger, his stats are already better than those of his minions. A balor is more likely to make his save than a marilith is, because he has higher stats. He doesn't also need a side rule to protect him.
Excuse me for liking games that I enjoy and being disappointed that paizo decided to make something that's basically unplayable as far as I'm concerned as a followup for my favorite ttrpg. Consider Mass Effect Andromeda or Fallout 76, PF2 is in the same league as far as I'm concerned.The point is not that you love PF1, but that you love the aspects of it that have traditonally and widely been considered its biggest flaws, and you double down on them. Yes, because those things are 80% of what makes the game fun to play for me. I wish more people shared that interest. It's a little bit like a Souls game. Hard to understand and learn all the moving parts when you first pick one up, but rewarding and cool if you stick with it. Paizo could have really leaned into that niche, and made something that was even better than PF1.
It's bad against multiple/weaker foes. It's good against a boss, because their actions are generally worth more than a party member's actions.If two players spend two actions each to remove one boss action, and the other two focus on just damage, that fight probably becomes trivial.So players are trading 2 of their actions for one of a foes and that's a bad thing when it costs resources? I thought that's spells/feats were meant to have meaningful effects is the foe fail their normal saves... I don't see it. Which is exactly why bosses shouldn't be immune to the effects. They're best used against them.
I'm actually on board with reducing caster/martial disparity, but it should have been done by elevating martials Tome of Battle style, instead of nerfing magic into the ground.
Or are you expecting they should have the most versatility and equal effectiveness to a specialist - the Jack of All Trades and Master of All Trades rolled into one character? I will note that I always put a great deal of effort into writing up a backstory and then having my character act accordingly. I just do it after I've designed them. The RP aspect is enjoyable, even if it is secondary to the build and strategizing. That said, I usually get tired of the character eventually and then let them die off so I can try out a new one. And I'm never upset when they die naturally in the course of things.
Consider Mass Effect Andromeda or Fallout 76, PF2 is in the same league as far as I'm concerned. Given that the fun went out of character creation, games weren't enjoyable at all.
I swear gray you look for the worst possible side to of something to be on then fully commit. No, I spend about twice as much time in the GM seat as I do playing. Critical failures are unreliable at best; that's why I would avoid both incap effects and any of the cantrips with crit fail effects.
Did everyone, including sherlock, forget that this was a thing in pf1? There wasn't a trait for it but numerous spells and abilities only worked against certain HD numbers, which is basically the stand in for level. Same reason I never took those spells unless there was an ok effect above the HD number. Seems like an odd decision to go whole hog on the least interesting spell mechanic and sacrifice the actually cool ones, like usable durations.
They are useless if you have to burn the higher slot. You literally cannot cast them at the level they're made for and get any value out of them. You have to usurp a higher level spell slot. I thought we wanted to make low level slots more useful, not less so. And even then, the cap being double the slot level means that against anything with any real power the spell is wasted. As in, against the things you would most want to affect with said spell, there is no point to casting it.
Movement and utility spells were deliberately restricted for the sake of story telling purposes, not some mechanical balance issue. That was a change for the sake of adventure designers and being able to have skills be a more meaningful choice for players for a longer period of time. Having spells just cover everything that skills can do, only better was a design flaw of D&D. No, it's good design. There should always be multiple solutions, and there's no reason you shouldn't be able to use magic to accomplish mundane tasks. What do you think real wizards would use magic for? Making their lives easier. Doing things magically so they don't need the physical skill or ability. Getting around with a minimum of effort and time. That's what needs to be supported by magic, before we even think about chucking fireballs and summoning walls of ice. Unless your universe is like warhammer and magic is likely to just screw you over completely, your storytelling has to take that into account. PF1 spells were well designed, PF2 spells are lackluster at best.
And their solution was to make the abilities useless by level capping them. The two steps back in design this edition wasn't my fault. It happened despite my objections. I reserve the right to critique commercial products.
That's not really how stars work.
As somebody who has played on both sides of encounters like this, they are a good thing, lots of fun, and removing them was a bad idea. Not sarcastic, I genuinely like them.
And their solution was to make the abilities useless by level capping them. Classy. Incapacitate was a bad idea and never should have been added. "But they might stun the boss". They sure might, and that's never a bad thing. One shotting is ok.
Under Magic Weapon on page 599-600 of the CRB. It uses the language "x extra damage dice". On AON:link
Incap spells are partly useless because they do nothing to bosses. Crippling bosses is far, far more useful than crippling their minions The other part of their uselessness is that there are usually better options at the level you have to heighten them to for them to be at all effective. Essentially, they're generally only worthwhile at their base spell level. They're just too unreliable to bother with.
I think a lot depends on how you run games and perceive the world as players. For example, in games that I run, class abilities and spell names are known things in character. People know that a spell is 'cure light wounds' or 'bladed dash'. People know a gunslinger has grit. Spells are codified in books by their level of power. In my current setting, spell incantations are subroutine calls to a set of goddesses that interface with the world through complex thaumaturgic computers. I've written up a little bit of language for the computers and incantations. Class abilities changing or disappearing if you run a world like this is of significant note if you have an ongoing campaign. People would understand that teleportation, once freely available to all mages who trained enough, was suddenly restricted. Weapons that used to work one way suddenly function completely differently. Magic items and spells that used to work together in harmony suddenly no longer function the same way, and now the strongest one overrides the others. I like characters in game having that level of "meta" knowledge. It makes sense to me that they would understand how their world works. It also means that an edition change is virtually impossible unless I write a whole new setting, or majorly time shift the one I have.
That, or that PF3 will be more like PF1, which means we're in for a decade of constructive criticism. It's this one. I'd also be fine with a much more nitty-gritty system than PF1 for PF3 (e.g. making height and weight have mechanical effects, more realistic depictions of gear, more skills, more bonus types, etc.)
Bah, why use a fruit cart when there's always a cabbage cart around?
I do miss the coupe de gras rules, and I would like to see them return. I think this is a case where you could use the 4 degrees system well. For example:
In the given scenario, the innkeeper's son probably deals 3 or 4 damage, so the player only fails on a nat 1 and likely can't critically fail.
Well apart from the bad choices part the ability to design characters to auto succeed at tasks is possible, if you make the game easier by uniformly adjusting dcs down by about 4.I'm not sure how "want to autosucceed" isn't wanting an easier game. Problem is that maxing out your roll in PF2 is too easy, there's no challenge to be had then. One of my favorite characters was a fighter built around armor spikes with bull rush and overrun - it took something like six or eight hours of digging through feat interactions and whatnot to come up with something really effective and powerful, that could succeed most of the time and deal heavy damage. The fun was in spending all that time rooting around the rules to cone up with a character who was as good at something as they could be. I don't really see things like this ever being possible with the way PF2 is designed. It's too easy to max your roll and pick your options. There's little joy to be found in a game that gives you the best possible character without any major effort.
I don't want an easy game, I want the challenge in a different place.
I dunno John, this is a person whose stated goal on the forums us to spend his time trying to make pf2 seem as bad as possible so it fails and they make a pf3 he personally is happy with. I think most people would agree that such an approach can only be detrimental to the community (and company) as a whole. Thats...not at all what I said. I don't "hope PF2 fails". I want a PF3 that's better. Paizo has to stick around for that to happen. What I did say is that I'm being vocal about my complaints in the hopes that future versions (or this version, though I realize that's unlikely) will improve. I honestly don't know how you could have gotten that I hope PF2 fails, or that I'm somehow 'out to destroy the community' from what I have said. Yes, it's not the game I hoped for and it is disappointing, but my aim is to make the next one better, not make this one fail.
... there’s a vey big gulf inbetween “always succeed” and “constant failure” in play.Only boring if you enjoy constant failure. I don't. It's the pinnacle of design, because you can fail constantly if you build one way, and succeed constantly if you build another, thereby enabling any level of play to suit taste.It is. It’s bad design, and boring at that.You're saying all this like it's a bad thing. If you're likely to fail the roll more than once or twice in a session it's constant. Attack rolls after the first get a partial pass if the first one is a near guaranteed success.
It is. It’s bad design, and boring at that.You're saying all this like it's a bad thing. Only boring if you enjoy constant failure. I don't. It's the pinnacle of design, because you can fail constantly if you build one way, and succeed constantly if you build another, thereby enabling any level of play to suit taste.
So instead it's a waste of time and effort.We tried disarm on success at first (before the playtest). It makes gameplay pretty miserable for anyone who depends on a weapon, particularly if the other team has low-value characters at hand who can pick it up and just start leaving with the weapon, both of which are more likely to affect the PCs (monsters don't as often have weapons, and the bad guys more often have minions who can spend actions to dash away, or 5th level dimension door miles away, with the weapon without weakening their side much). Assuming you don't wind up with a gentleperson's agreement at the table to just never use it, like some groups had for breaking gear in PF1. PF1 had a weird side way around PC frustration for disarm by virtue of having two or three negligible-cost ways to be essentially immune to disarming that PCs used and published NPCs and monsters weren't written to include, but that sort of winds up with no one being able to use it if the GM, quite reasonably, has NPCs adopt the same simple methods as the PCs. Even with a weapon cord, you still cost them a move action to retrieve it, which means no full attacks. That's well worth the effort. Disarm is defeated by locked gauntlets, but those do come with other drawbacks. You can also make a weapon cord in pf2. It may not be an official item, but you can still tie a bit of rope (or a strip of leather sliced off a belt pouch, etc) to your arm and the weapon. It just matters less because nobody is foolish enough to actually try to disarm you in PF2. Much like KAC+8 in starfinder, crit success is a ridiculously hard target for a maneuver. I suppose if it inflicted a penalty of some type to the enemy, it might be ok, but as it is it basically does nothing on a normal success so it's unreliable and therefore useless. |
