Please This, Not That


Prerelease Discussion

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Please make all characters scale into the same degree of badass gods that full casters do [in their own unique way. Martial characters will wind up reality warpers but their reality warping should be very focused in scope according to their theme.]

Please do not continue to stick it to the martials with feat chains, non-scaling abilities, dead or comatose levels [+1 to Weapon Training and one PF1-grade Combat Feat may not technically be dead but it's certainly not an active level] and over-dependence on magic [either from an ally or an item.]


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BPorter wrote:
PLEASE DON'T5. 10th-level spells. You REALLY think magic needs another boost in this game?!?

How is spreading spells over more levels (so caster presumably get the highest levels spells later) a "boost"?

Anyway, on to my dos and don'ts:

Please Do:

1. Think carefully about the mathematics of the game, and how that impacts gameplay and feel, rather than leaving it as an afterthought.

2. Spend your complexity wisely.

3. Improve the balance in general. Caster vs Martials is the headline grabber, but other areas are important to. Feats, spells, whatever. Basically, it should not just look like there are a lot of options; all the presented options should be genuine viable choices.

4. Make hit point restoration approximately proportional to the target's maximum hit points (I say approximately, because I do not wish to rule out bonuses from the healer or healing effect).

5. Stop referring to restoring hitpoints as "healing".

Please Don't:

a. Ever forget that hit points are not and have never been meat points.

b. Ever print another feat that does literally nothing (like Prone Shooter). Except possibly as a joke (like 3.5's Bad Decision).

c. Get rid of Vancian magic. I was astonished when 5e did that! Making it one options amongst several is fine, but do not ditch it entirely.

d. Be afraid to take good ideas from 4e and/or 5e. The game as a whole will obviously not be too much like either, and not everything that works in 4e or 5e fit in Pathfinder, but some things might and a good idea is a good idea regardless of where it comes from.

That's all I can think of for now.

_
glass.


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glass wrote:
Anyway, on to my dos and don'ts:

I thought of another important one, and the edit window is really short...

Please Don't:

e. Make human ethnicities into ancestries, or give them any mechanical heft whatsoever. Doing so would would take the good work they are doing in getting rid of the term race, and shoot it in the head.

_
glass.


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glass wrote:

Please Don't:

e. Make human ethnicities into ancestries, or give them any mechanical heft whatsoever. Doing so would would take the good work they are doing in getting rid of the term race, and shoot it in the head.

Glad you made this into a separate post, as that allowed me to press like for the post above.

I think the reason for race -> ancestry is exactly this, and I support it wholeheartedly. When I play an Osirian, I want the choice to matter and be different from a Varisian. This can be done well if done with respect. We already have ancestry-specific traits, and I've not seen any hate for those. And this is not only for humans; duergar can now be a sub-ancestry of dwarf.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

Please do this:

Stop grouping true dragons into clans of 5. I love true dragons but trying to force all true dragons into groups of 5 doesn't make sense.


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Please Do

-Continue to put true dragons into groups of five(though 7 could work for some groups).

-Make elementals it's own creature type like they used to be.

-Make vermin a subtype of animal or just animals in general.

Please Don't

-Give us nothing but demons, devils, and to a lesser extent daemons in every bestiary, let the other outsider groups get equal love. In fact limit each type to 2-4 per bestiary.

-Change creature's designs, biology, and/or cultures to be more "PC".

-Introduce new player races, animal companions, and familiars in bestiaries. They should be in player option hardcover books or get their own softcover books.


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To clarify requests made elsewhere on the boards:

Please do:
Bring down the caster power curve. I'm cool with levels 16-20 being demigod terrain, but "lifting" martials to reality-breaking stuff sooner is a move in the polar opposite direction of where the game should go. When Epic-level play was being debated we heard lots of clamor for wuxia- and feats-of-Hercules stunts. Mythic gave that and one of the least-popular aspects of PF 1e. Please don't increase the game's power level again!

Please don't:
Make every class a caster.

Liberty's Edge RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16

Please do keep skills that work for a variety of non-adventuring skills and backgrounds like craft and profession being specific to a single thing.

Please don't have all characters get better at all skills as they level up. I'm okay with that for something like perception since all adventurers get better at spotting danger, but I don't want my fighter who's not an academic to suddenly have decent knowledge skills just cause he's 10th level. Nor do I want character to improve in things like the above mentioned craft and perception skills just cause they leveled. No "I grew up in a desert and never have been to the ocean, but I'm a pretty decent sailor still now that I'm 10th level!"


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Athaleon wrote:

Speaking of C/MD, I think a good way to both rein casters in and make them more thematic would be to more strongly enforce their themes. Currently the best casters are those who take care to minimize redundancies. This results in Wizards and Sorcerers who, in spite of their School/Bloodline, are just piles of powerful but mutually unrelated spells. For example, there is currently no need for a Wizard to learn lesser teleportation spells (such as teleporting small objects, or short distances) before learning more powerful ones. Even Spheres of Power doesn't really do this, because that system still encourages and enables casters to poach a few of the best options from as many Spheres as possible.

Just as a rough example, a Wizard would have to specialize in one school, and his ability to learn and cast spells from any other school would be limited. Among other things, this would require a careful rebalancing of the schools and their capabilities. Likewise, Sorcerers might get the lion's share of spells from their Bloodline, and very few from 'outside' of it. This would require a careful rebalancing of Bloodlines and their associated spells and powers. Cleric spells would be much more Domain-dependent, and so forth.

Please never do this ^


Chromatic Dragon(keep as 5)

Metallic Dragon(keep as 5)

Primal Dragon(I could see 6 if they added a positive energy plane one)

Imperial Dragon(keep as 5)

Outer Dragons(keep as 5)

Occult Dragon(I could see them adding 1-3)

Planar Dragon(9, one for each outer plane)


please find a way to fix or get rid of vancian spellcasting..


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Dragon78 wrote:

Chromatic Dragon(keep as 5)

Metallic Dragon(keep as 5)

Primal Dragon(I could see 6 if they added a positive energy plane one)

Imperial Dragon(keep as 5)

Outer Dragons(keep as 5)

Occult Dragon(I could see them adding 1-3)

Planar Dragon(9, one for each outer plane)

I would favour keeping true dragons in groups of 5 if only because calling groups of 5 "septs" never ceases to amuse me.

Liberty's Edge RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16

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Please do: Remove adamantine's ability to ignore hardness under 20, and therefore turn into a hot knife slicing through any dungeon obstacles. Keeping it's high hardness is fine, but the ignore hardness aspect should be toned down significantly, to not make carving through stone walls, metal portcullises, etc. too easy. Alternatively, you could price it to be comparable to a passwall spell multiple times per day.


Please do: further de-emphasize the dungeon format for adventures. We're now two editions removed from Dungeons and Dragons.


BPorter wrote:


Please don't:
Make every class a caster.

THIS

I hated Tome Of Battle for trying to "fix" martials by making them into casters-in-everything-but-name.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
JoelF847 wrote:
Please do: Remove adamantine's ability to ignore hardness under 20, and therefore turn into a hot knife slicing through any dungeon obstacles. Keeping it's high hardness is fine, but the ignore hardness aspect should be toned down significantly, to not make carving through stone walls, metal portcullises, etc. too easy. Alternatively, you could price it to be comparable to a passwall spell multiple times per day.

Completely agree. This has been a house rule of mine since 2002.


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Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
kyrt-ryder wrote:
Please do: further de-emphasize the dungeon format for adventures. We're now two editions removed from Dungeons and Dragons.

Hard disagree. Please continue to offer a variety of adventure types. Turns out that not everyone likes the same things!


Please do: have simple classes that just work.

Please don't: have only classes that spends most combat rounds doing the same action without thought.


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Please do this:

-Keep feat trees but make them significant and add more scaling feats. For example Vital Strike does not need to be 3 different feats, it should be 1 feat scaling from 5th to 10th to 15th and then (possibly) to 20th level.

-Make classes have an UNIQUE role. The problem with spellcasters is not that they do their stuff well. It's they do EVERYTHING well thanks to how spells work and there are ways for some of them to be prepared for everything. Stop that. A wizard should have his niche and shine when doing his thing, same with clerics and druids but they should not also do the fighter or rogue work.

-Make skills significant and again stop spells from making them redundant.

-Make humans a less obvious choice as the "best race" for any class.

Please don't do that:

-Don't make a spell system that trivialize mundane classes.

-Don't allow the game to keep the "I go first and win" mechanics that currently plague it at higher levels.


Please do: Allow martials to be good at more than one fighting style. While in fiction a lot of fighters have a specialty, many are quite capable of switching around gimmicks or even having using lots of weapons and styles as a gimmick. I don't want a 'specializes in just this weapon,' I want 'may start out specialized in this one, but by the time they're higher level they can be advanced in many weapon types and styles or even have 'good at any weapon they pick up' as a not-that-hard-to-get ability.'

This applies to rogues too, 'sneak up/flank and stab from behind,' should be just one option of several they have.


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Please do:

- Make good pet classes, like the original summoner and the hunter.

- Keep the paladin what it is, not some random sacred warrior like the warpriest.

Please dont:

- Do not at any cost break the power level of casters. Sure you can bring martials up, but do not break the resses, the time stopping, the teleporting and so on. High magic is a very big part of the game and so are those who wield it, do not lower the bar on the magic overall power.


please do make wizard sorcerer archetype,
please dont make sorcerer powerless then wizard


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Please:

Make a game where the math is elegant, informs all things, and avoids things like characters easily making all situations deterministic, "Rocket-Tag", or LFQW. Basically the entire game should be built around the math and making it work first as a game.

Eliminate the need for the "Big Six". More power in the character less in the magical "Bling" that anyone could wear.

Let your game design mojo run free and truly change things for the better.

Include familiars as a valid, and useful thing. Rather than a wand buddy/item retrieval buddy, or a gimmick due to DR/Fast healing/Damage sharing.

Clarify mounted combat.

Clarify Hand Vs Hand and wield/hold.

Use tags/call outs to define things. Such as a spell could be [1rst Level], [Fire] and [Evocation]

Make Clerics different based on God/Religion. A base limited spell list and then gaining access to spells with certain keywords based on your deities domains would be great.

Fix mundane crafting so that it is useful for PC's.

Fix Magic item crafting/Purchasing/Spell casting services such that the right answer to all things is not to have an encyclopedic knowledge of items/spells so you can make/buy perfect magic bullets for any situation.

Make casters more narrow such that you are no longer a wizard, you are a master conjurer or a sage of abjuration. Basically beguiler.

Make spell schools equally desirable. No more Conjuration > everything.

Make Evocation viable and good as it is sometimes fun to just blow stuff up without having to jump through a bunch of weird hoops.

Give pure martials ways to have narrative power. Skills would be a good place to do this.

Eliminate long feat chains, and buff feats. No more +2 to two skills or +1 hit or AC feats.

Give a good solid explanation for all skills especially things like stealth, in the skills chapter. Do not make players hunt through the environment and other rules chapters.

Buff skills to grant more narrative power.

Give solid lists of Skill DC's that show appropriate tasks 1-20.

Make the system setting agnostic. Gods for clerics as examples are as setting informed as I at least desire, and I would prefer just having domain lists and example builds. Making setting specific feats/classes/spells or anything else is fine in a setting book, great even, just not in the core book.

Make alignment only required for those that draw their powers from being said alignment, and eliminate much of the alignment restrictions. Allow non-lawful monks, lawful barbarians, or Champion of "X" alignment in place of paladin for example.

Please Don't:

Make any concessions in the quality of the game for backwards compatibility.

Include anything for "realism", "feel's right", or "World building".

Use different systems to build PCs and NPCs/Monsters. All characters should use one coherent build system.

Padded Sumo. In other words inflate hit points and reduce damage, such that a fight lasts much longer than it should, and also long after it is clear who will win. Some hit point increase at lower levels to combat swinginess would be fine and some damage moderation to combat rocket tag is desired even. Just please do not go overboard.

Make healing ineffective/onerous, or have any class where what they are "good" or "The best" at healing.

Sliding Skill DC's, the same 10 foot wall should not have a higher DC just because a character leveled up.

Balance mechanical power with role playing restrictions.

Would be Nice, personally:

An eventual mythic book. I admit I love mythic, and this would be a perfect opportunity to include it in a form where the math for mythic is just an extension of the math for the core game.


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Please give every signature character their own signature hats. This is exceedingly minor but I like hats.

Oh, more seriously:
Please give signature characters weather appropriate outfits.

It's fine if they have a main look, but it is *really odd* when the tropical sorceress and the cold-weather warrior both walk around in their native garb with no respects for temperature and, indeed, no temperature would be suitable for the whole party at the same time.

If every signature character had a mere two outfits, that'd be good- and by outfits it can be 'basically the same thing plus or minus some fur or a cape,' though being varied is fine too. The artists are easily good enough to make things not-confusing even with a few different outfits.

Liberty's Edge RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16

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Please don't make magic item crafting so automatic that it's easy to skip multiple requirements and still craft just about anything for half price.


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Please don't base magical item crafting on spellcasting.

Please do base it on craftsmanship and materials (and possibly the environment/seasonality/celestial alignment during crafting in some cases)

Liberty's Edge RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16

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Please do: have the revised rules for ancestry better interact with reincarnation, so that there's a clear distinction between abilities tied to an ancestry's physical form (which would change when reincarnated) and abilities tied to culture (which would stick around when reincarnated).


kyrt-ryder wrote:

Please don't base magical item crafting on spellcasting.

Please do base it on craftsmanship and materials (and possibly the environment/seasonality/celestial alignment during crafting in some cases)

Yes, of some note, in mythology, and even D&D, the traditional best forgers are Dwarves, who are not the best spellcasters.


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Please don't make monsters/enemies (too) mechanically different than PCs. I enjoy that everyone in the pathfinder universe follows the same rules, and that it is the actions of the PCs that make them different from NPCs.

I'm bias because when I GM homebrew most of the enemies I use are humanoids with class levels (all hail the NPC Codex).


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Please do this:

Make Rangers useful in all out door, non city terrains. Make their Tracking good everywhere.

Merge things like gunslinger and swashbuckler into fighter.

Please don't do that:

Force fighters have to focus on one weapon. As spell casts go up in level the scope and range of their abilities widen, where the fighter has to get masterly better an ever narrowing gap.

Magic item excellation

Have Materwork items be a thing. Anything extra special should just be rare like magic items.


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HunterWulf wrote:

Please do this:

(...)
Merge things like gunslinger and swashbuckler into fighter.

Please don't do this. The more distinct base classes, and the less need for bolting bits on to make them distinct, the better.


Except swashbuckler and gunslinger are literally "light armored and armed fighter" and "fighter who is really really good at using guns."

Neither of those is a class in a well engineered game with the flexibility PF2 is promising.


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Please don't make stupid/unskilled and exceptionally vulnerable fighters.


Here's a thought, though it might be a bit controversial:

Please do make a definitive ruling as to how "drow" is pronounced in Pathfinder.

At very least, it would stop players making an Abbott and Costello routine out of confusing them with either derro or draugr when mentioned aloud.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Please:
* Make unarmed combat something everyone can do decently (but the monk does it best) with the right feat investments.
* Make dex-based melee combat something everyone can do decently (but the rogue does it best) with the right feat investments.
* Make firearms and crossbows viable without having to take a gunslinger class or even worse a specific archetype of it.

Please don't:
* Make the monk class exclusive users of unarmed combat.
* Make the rogue class the only one who can use dex well in melee.
* Lock guns and crossbows behind specific classes or archetypes.


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Please do-
Include a variety of races- that is to say, skin colors among elves (and quite possibly dwarves/gnomes/whatever? But especially elves) from the start. I know in the plot their color is supposed to be quite varied with proper-brownskin elves around, but we never see them. We shouldn't have to rely on word alone to know they exist- and bonus points if they do NOT have white hair!

Seeing a black elf fight a drow in an early book would really draw the contrast between 'these ones are racial diversity, these ones made pacts with demons and are now purple and white.'

Please don't-

All-white or mostly-white non-draw elves.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

Please do:

Keep prestige classes as a thing

Please don't:

Have generic prestige classes as a thing. I want my Shadowdancer and Dragon Disciples integrated into Golarion.


Please do:

Trim the fat off the feat system, like in Starfinder.

Please don't:

Leave the feat system with 50% less feats, like in Starfinder.


  • Pathfinder CRB has 178 feats.
  • Starfinder CRB has 83 feats.

------

We want the system improved: and paring off the feat taxes, must haves and generic stacking +1 bonuses is great. Those were a massive problem in PF1e.

However, we also don't want to run into a system where a regular character looks at the list of feats and sees a whole bunch of generic, non-synergistic feats for their character.

Iron will is a good feat, but it's a generic one: if you're looking to focus on one specific category of feats (ie. ranged combat, defense, whatever) and you're already giving up and just taking iron will at 5th level because there aren't any, a ball has been dropped.

If fighters still get more feats, make sure there are a whole bunch of combat feats that each type of fighter will want to fill the ranks with (and will complement their specific combat style, if PF2e uses a system similar to the Starfinder Soldier). If weapon specilization becomes baseline, and all the TWF lines etc get removed (like in starfinder), we need something else that's tasty to put into the build: otherwise you're just nerfing feats overall, and leaving fighters with a really poor class "feature".

If a regular character gets stumped well before 20, a character with twice as many feats is going to be very, very unhappy with planning builds. Make sure "Core" lets you build a full level 20 character, feat-wise, without hitting a wall of "What the hell do I take now?".

Splatbooks should make more options, yes: but the baseline level of flexibility should be higher than Starfinder, feats-wise.

Don't get me wrong, I like Starfinder: but the scarcity of feats in the CRB is a bit of a hurdle for me. I'm aware that most of the glaring removals are aimed at making the system better (removal of crafting lines, TWF and so on) but if you remove systems that classes rely upon in order to have a functioning class feature, you need to replace the content with something else.


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Not sure I should even participate in this one, given that I do not so much play Pathfinder as scavenge it, but I figure I can offer some suggestions that will make me more/less likely to use the new edition as something other than spare parts.

Please Do:

  • Fix the multiclassing system. The AD&D and 4e systems were bad, but the 3.X system was worse. In every way, worse.
  • Integrate Prestige Classes into your new multiclassing system, as options with both benefits and drawbacks.
  • Replace generic Prestige Classes with Archetypes as much as possible.
  • Stop using alignment as a class prerequisite entirely.
  • Give Paladins a choice of Divine Oath; each comes with its own specific, explicit Code of Conduct.
  • Make martial PCs explicitly superhuman/supernatural starting around level 6-7; give them all magical options without making them spellcasters.
  • Increase the rate of ability score increases to replace inherent/enhancement bonuses.
  • Include robust fantasy/mystical martial arts for non-monks.
  • Make Ancestry mechanically comparable to Class in significance.

Can't think of many things I want to ask Paizo not to do. It sounds like lot of what they are planning is pretty good.


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Please do: another solution
Please don’t; resonance as revealed so far.


Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Please Do:

Make new archetypes worth using in one way or another or have them be truly unique, instead of stapling on abilities that could have just been a bunch of talents/class feats or whatever you call them now.

Please Don't:

Print more distinct versions of Bottled Sunlight.

Liberty's Edge RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16

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Please do:
Have rules for Huge monsters avoiding many types of difficult terrain, since they can just step over them.
Grant monsters which are native to specific challenging terrain abilities which allow them to move at normal speeds, like swampstride, etc.


Please do:

Make nonstandard combat actions more usable on the spur of the moment:
It's unrealistic, silly, and awkward to build around just being the guy who trips people really well and does little else, or whatever. But with so much investment needed for combat maneuvers to not be harmful to try using, it's what happens. I'd like for specializing in this stuff to stay an effective option, but also for maneuvers, unarmed strikes, feints, etc to be reasonable choices in the right situations for characters who haven't specialized in them (and by that I mean more situations than just against squishy casters). Let it make sense for the fighter to knock someone off a bridge if there's a narrow bridge, without him having to have trained for years in a fighting style consisting solely of shoving people. Let punching somebody because you got your weapons confiscated be much worse than using a sword, but not "the AoO does over ten times as much damage to you as the punch did to him" amounts of bad. Give martial combat that little bit of versatility.

Provide an option for paladin-alternatives without diluting the identity of paladins:
I'm all in favor of the idea of being able to play champions of alignments other than LG and CE. I really like the Gray Paladin, Tyrant, and Insinuator archetypes, for example, they allow doing some neat stuff. But I want paladins to stay being paladins. I think warpriests/clerics/whatever have the flavor role of "warrior who follows whatever their god's code of conduct is" covered just fine. Paladins are heroes first and religious paragons second, as I see it. And I want that to remain the assumption when someone says "I'm playing a paladin".

Make HP/healing/injuries make sense:
I just can't rationalize HP in so many ways.

First of all... in most situations (ability damage/drain/negative levels/diseases/etc being much less common and even less often significant) PCs routinely go straight from fighting at full capacity to completely unconscious. I had high hopes for Unchained's wound thresholds to solve this before I realized just how much tracking it amounted to and how much it would encourage wand-spamming and 15 minute adventuring days or else make encounters snowball from bad to insurmountable. As is, apparently everything is just a flesh wound, but people don't have 100 HP worth of unnecessary flesh. Or is it stamina you fix by curing wounds but not by sitting down and resting for anything short of eight hours?

Second, the sheer scaling makes it really hard for me to rationalize high levels. I know, I know, it's just a game mechanic, but, for example, by level 10 or so I may as well sit down in the campfire to keep warm. Suspension of disbelief is pretty hard for me trying to figure out how to roleplay a reaction to having been shot fifteen times but only having lost maybe a third of my hit points.

Third, the difficulty of having people be conscious but dying and not saveable by an idle application of CLW. Anyone having last words or anything takes extreme contrivance or blatant "you can't do that, it doesn't work because I say so" GM fiat. This is a standard fantasy trope, it should be possible within the game without awkward scriptedness.

Enable weapon flexibility:
Because it's annoying when the party, put together, uses *maybe* five different weapons. And therefore any weapons you intend to give them HAVE to be a greatsword, an agile elven curve blade, a kukri, or a whip, or else they're going to be sold at the first opportunity without a second thought. And you can't even blame the players when you have things like Weapon Focus being a common prerequisite, or convoluted stacking of "need finessable weapon, need swashbuckler weapon, really encouraged to have 18-20 crit range", or "deity's favored weapon only".

On that note, I love that Warpriest offers a way around that reasonably efficiently without overly comproming flavor - because "I need a CG or NG deity who gives me greatsword proficiency" or so on gets annoying.

Please don't:

- Have 5ft steps take up a full action. That is all. I don't have a huge rant worth of things to say about it.

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