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The Sideromancer wrote:
Well, the crushing ceiling isn't an HP debate. It's a STR debate. Just hold the ceiling up until you're out of the room.

It's also a bad example. If a crushing ceiling does, say, 10d6 per round, it will kill whoever is below, it's just a matter of time. Actually, same goes with lava, unless the inmesrsion is really short (1-2 rounds), like jumping into it to pick the lost artifact and get out as fast as possible. Even a lvl 20 fighter will die soon at 20d6 per round.

A better example would be using a scythe trap, like those seen in Indiana Jones the Last Crusade, and then claiming that, regardless of the trap doing 5d6, if you are hit, you die, instantly, because there is no way a human being can be hit by such a big scythe with so many momentum and not being cut by half.

You could use the same "real world logic" for tyrannosaurus jaws, being trampled by elephants, being struck by a lightning bolt, a cave-in, or coup the grace with a crossbow bolt in your head. All of those would be insta-killing for a real human being, and are shrugged easily by a PF hero. Because PF heroes are not normal human beings. Normal human beings can't grapple rhinoceros with a hand tied to their backs, and high level fighters can.


The way I always reconcile these problems with my group is to say that you have normal people that die to infections and falling off the roof of houses and then you have adventurers who get swallowed by giant monsters and carve there way out. Adventurers are not standard people they do incredible things that we can only imagine people doing in myths.


If I was to play in a campaign where my character can routinely jump off of 1,000 foot cliffs (picture Wily Coyote - "boof"), bathe in pools of acid and what-not, and be fine, due to HP, I would go to town in that campaign, would be hilarious.

What I am talking about is not DM fiat or gotchas, the players and their character should/would generally be aware of the stakes in an encounter, certainly aware of what things may cause instant death (like fall of this earthberg in Asgard and you perish).


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I understand your point, Weather Report. My point, is that you (and many others), seem to have a selective suspension of disbelief about what things they find inmersion breaking.
Yes, falling 2000 feet and surviving is something that only happens in marvel movies. So does being chewed several rounds by a tyrannosaurus

Look again at this picture. A piece of metal of that size should weight a few tons. A sharpened piece of metal of that size, moved by the appropiate strength, would cut through walls.

The small guy in the stairs will be hit several times, and survive. And yes, he will be hit. No, it's not "fatigue for dodging". It's being hit. Because if the rune giant puts injury poison in the blade, when he hits, the fighter rolls Fortitude, because the poison in the blade is now in his blood torrent, because he has been hit by the blade. Because the Rune giant has "Awesome blow" as a feat, which means when he hits someone, he flies several feets, and he doesn't fly several feats by being "fatigued by dodging an almost hit". Because other equally sized creatures have other "riders" in their attacks, such grab. When a kraken hits you with a tentacle, then grabs you, and constrict with enough strength to break a stone column, he's not "almost hitting you" and then you lose "fatigue points" because you are "almost being constricted" after "almost being grabbed". It's that the kraken got you, and crushed you with 10.000 pounds of strength, and you survived. Same goes when a dragon uses "Crush" ability on you, or you are swallowed whole, or you miss a save throw against a bomb.

Yes, an inmersion in lava is deadly. 20d6 IS deadly. Nobody on earth will survive that. Everyone in levels 1-5 will be instantly reduced to ashes.

However, the fire breath of an adult red dragon does 12d10, which is the same level of heat. It does 70hp on average, give or take, just like inmersion in lava does. It's enough heat to melt iron doors. It's hot, like entering in a foundry furnace. There is no one on earth that could survive that red dragon fieray breath either. Yet your fighter SURVIVES that. Just the same that he survives the inmersion in lava. Yet you deny the inmersion in lava, and not the hot-as-lava dragon breath, because your brain can produce a realistic mental image of what means being inmersed in lava, because lava exists, but cannot make a mental image of what means being inmersed in dragon's breath, because dragons are imaginary.

But it's the same. Your high level fighter is, already, surviving things that nobody on earth could survive, ever, under any circumstances. He does so on a regular basis, every time he faces a proper Challenge Rating.


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gustavo iglesias wrote:
Yes, falling 2000 feet and surviving is something that only happens in marvel movies.

This isn't strictly true. People have survived falling out of airplanes without a parachute before. They were severely injured and it's not common, but it's happened.


Mr. Pedantic wrote:
gustavo iglesias wrote:
Yes, falling 2000 feet and surviving is something that only happens in marvel movies.
This isn't strictly true. People have survived falling out of airplanes without a parachute before. They were severely injured and it's not common, but it's happened.

This is true, but spending the day hurling yourself off cliffs because you can, is different.

Liberty's Edge

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Weather Report wrote:
This is true, but spending the day hurling yourself off cliffs because you can, is different.

Barring healing magic, which is, y'know, magic, nobody can do this in Pathfinder either. Even the toughest 20th level people in PF1 can survive maybe 5 falls of this magnitude at most (well, assuming average rolls).

5 is a lot, mind you, but then, by 8th level in PF1 (more like 6th if you focus on it) a Str-based character can wrestle a rhinoceros into submission and be fairly assured of success. High level characters just violate all sorts of laws of reality.

Meanwhile, in PF2 we have no idea what the cap on falling damage is, but I doubt you can survive more than 2 or 3 of them sans magic.


Deadmanwalking wrote:

High level characters just violate all sorts of laws of reality.

Even low level characters can, the table can limit the violation in some areas, for integrity's sake, pedantic rulings aside.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Deadmanwalking wrote:
Weather Report wrote:
This is true, but spending the day hurling yourself off cliffs because you can, is different.

Barring healing magic, which is, y'know, magic, nobody can do this in Pathfinder either. Even the toughest 20th level people in PF1 can survive maybe 5 falls of this magnitude at most (well, assuming average rolls).

5 is a lot, mind you, but then, by 8th level in PF1 (more like 6th if you focus on it) a Str-based character can wrestle a rhinoceros into submission and be fairly assured of success. High level characters just violate all sorts of laws of reality.

Meanwhile, in PF2 we have no idea what the cap on falling damage is, but I doubt you can survive more than 2 or 3 of them sans magic.

I THINK Jason said there was no falling cap in the GCP playtest. I'm at least sure Erik raised the question, I'm not 100% sure Jason answered it seriously. There was a little bit of a joke vibe.

Liberty's Edge

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Weather Report wrote:
Even low level characters can, the table can limit the violation in some areas, for integrity's sake, pedantic rulings aside.

Being able to wrestle rhinos isn't a pedantic ruling, though, it's a fundamental mechanical assumption.

Captain Morgan wrote:
I THINK Jason said there was no falling cap in the GCP playtest. I'm at least sure Erik raised the question, I'm not 100% sure Jason answered it seriously. There was a little bit of a joke vibe.

I think it was a joke, and even if not at least a few rules have changed since then (Acid Splash apparently got changed, for example).

I certainly hope there's a damage cap. Terminal velocity is a thing.


Deadmanwalking wrote:
Weather Report wrote:
Even low level characters can, the table can limit the violation in some areas, for integrity's sake, pedantic rulings aside.

Being able to wrestle rhinos isn't a pedantic ruling, though, it's a fundamental mechanical assumption.

Though, this is pedantic silliness, not cool; I have not mentioned any rhino-wrestling, I am clearly talking about something different...I mean, come on...

Designer

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Deadmanwalking wrote:


I certainly hope there's a damage cap. Terminal velocity is a thing.

The cap is based on terminal velocity, so you don't reach it until you fall about 1500 feet. It is possible to survive that fall, but without something helping to mitigate it, almost anyone or anything would be at least knocked out.


Mark Seifter wrote:
Deadmanwalking wrote:


I certainly hope there's a damage cap. Terminal velocity is a thing.
The cap is based on terminal velocity, so you don't reach it until you fall about 1500 feet. It is possible to survive that fall, but without something helping to mitigate it, almost anyone or anything would be at least knocked out.

What are death saving throws like if I jump off a fantasy plane and my fantasy parachute won’t open?


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Weather Report wrote:
Deadmanwalking wrote:
Weather Report wrote:
Even low level characters can, the table can limit the violation in some areas, for integrity's sake, pedantic rulings aside.

Being able to wrestle rhinos isn't a pedantic ruling, though, it's a fundamental mechanical assumption.

Though, this is pedantic silliness, not cool; I have not mentioned any rhino-wrestling, I am clearly talking about something different...I mean, come on...

You're talking something that is no more 'silly' frankly than wrestling rhinos. A couple something even. The thing is, what you consider 'silly' and 'immersion breaking' others clearly view as a feature, and even downright central to the genre. Heck, I consider it quite flavorful to have a high-level character that could bathe in the purifying flame of a lava flow, and can even see potential uses for that (particularly centered around the "bathe in the purifying flame" aspect) in a storyline outside of the "have to grab the mcguffin from the bottom of the volcano basin."

Liberty's Edge

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Weather Report wrote:
Though, this is pedantic silliness, not cool; I have not mentioned any rhino-wrestling, I am clearly talking about something different...I mean, come on...

My point was that I don't consider surviving lava to be much more unrealistic than rhino wrestling and rhino wrestling is a core game assumption.

They aren't different conceptually, IMO. They're both PCs doing something physically impossible in the real world, but available to powerful enough people in that of Pathfinder.


Deadmanwalking wrote:


Quote:
and we made all ability boosts work the same way instead of being different at 1st level. Learn it once, use it in perpetuity.
So...that's specifically several, and specifically very similar to Starfinder. I'd say that guessing it works the same is a fair guess.

First lvl you bump everything by 2 at time right? So I read it as each time you get stats you get a + 2 bump. Or are they not referring to character creation when they say lvl 1?

Liberty's Edge

Senkon wrote:
First lvl you bump everything by 2 at time right? So I read it as each time you get stats you get a + 2 bump. Or are they not referring to character creation when they say lvl 1?

No, at level 1 everything seems to bump by +2.

However, if we're right about it working like Starfinder, that's because you can't get Abilities above 18 at level 1, and when you add a bonus to a stat that's already an 18, it's only a +1 rather than a +2.

That just can't happen until level 5 due to the way character creation is structured.


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Deadmanwalking wrote:


No, at level 1 everything seems to bump by +2.

However, if we're right about it working like Starfinder, that's because you can't get Abilities above 18 at level 1, and when you add a bonus to a stat that's already an 18, it's only a +1 rather than a +2.

That just can't happen until level 5 due to the way character creation is structured.

"Learn it once, use it in perpetuity"

If the first lvl bumps by 2 then the game should continue bumping it by 2.


well I like the idea that after 18 those stats progress slower in encourages people to work on other stats a bit and actually get something out of it. I suppose the ultimate way to handle that would make all stats an equal investment for all classes while still keeping there feel but good luck with that.


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Senkon wrote:
Deadmanwalking wrote:


No, at level 1 everything seems to bump by +2.

However, if we're right about it working like Starfinder, that's because you can't get Abilities above 18 at level 1, and when you add a bonus to a stat that's already an 18, it's only a +1 rather than a +2.

That just can't happen until level 5 due to the way character creation is structured.

"Learn it once, use it in perpetuity"

If the first lvl bumps by 2 then the game should continue bumping it by 2.

This.

I'd really rather not bog down leveling with more inane rules, and have players bother me with complaints about it, with my only valid response being "The devs hate you, that's why."

Selecting both feats and spells and other numbers slows the process down as it is. With it ramping up, adding a >18< rule for stats makes it too rough.

Sovereign Court

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Pathfinder Starfinder Society Subscriber
Senkon wrote:
Deadmanwalking wrote:


No, at level 1 everything seems to bump by +2.

However, if we're right about it working like Starfinder, that's because you can't get Abilities above 18 at level 1, and when you add a bonus to a stat that's already an 18, it's only a +1 rather than a +2.

That just can't happen until level 5 due to the way character creation is structured.

"Learn it once, use it in perpetuity"

If the first lvl bumps by 2 then the game should continue bumping it by 2.

It doesn't come up with the core ancestries, but a monstrous ancestry with a +4 bonus to a stat might have to contend with the inflection point at level one.

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