Got to do the playtest at UK games expo last weekend. I played the cleric. I didn't roll above 7 and achieved nothing, the rogue rolled 4 20s and seemed very efficient
May need to play it again to get a better idea!!
Id much prefer Initiative to be based on what you are about to do, then what you were doing, to be honest.
Dice Rolls are more important now than in PF1, especially for combat with damage rolls, including the dice type being used.
My group's preference is for actual skill (represented by attack bonus or skill rating or whatever) to count for more than the swinginess of the dice. I'm very curious about how nicely PF2 will play with our preferred method of rolling 2d10 instead of 1d20.
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My group's preference is for actual skill (represented by attack bonus or skill rating or whatever) to count for more than the swinginess of the dice. I'm very curious about how nicely PF2 will play with our preferred method of rolling 2d10 instead of 1d20.
Well Bell curve systems in general (or pseudo-bell curve in this case) tend to do pretty well with small bonuses, so I could see it working. Though I'd wager that since critical fails and successes are important in the game, maybe shifting the cutoffs for critical fails and successes would be needed.
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Got to do the playtest at UK games expo last weekend. I played the cleric. I didn't roll above 7 and achieved nothing, the rogue rolled 4 20s and seemed very efficient
May need to play it again to get a better idea!!
Id much prefer Initiative to be based on what you are about to do, then what you were doing, to be honest.
As far as I am concerned, this is a good thing.
I have seen too many games get boring because of the endless multiplication of bonuses and char op.
Got to do the playtest at UK games expo last weekend. I played the cleric. I didn't roll above 7 and achieved nothing, the rogue rolled 4 20s and seemed very efficient
May need to play it again to get a better idea!!
Id much prefer Initiative to be based on what you are about to do, then what you were doing, to be honest.
Can you comment on what type of things you were rolling to do?
Yeah....I expected dice rolls to be vastly more important in PF2 than they were in PF1. In PF1 you could have bonuses so high that you hit a point where "don't roll a 1" was all you needed.
I'm torn on this because part of what I liked most about PF1 is that if I chose to really focus on something, success was mostly assured. It felt rewarding. I'm worried that in PF2 while my character might be better than an unfocused character attempting the same thing, that I wont ever really feel like the character has gotten stronger because as I scale the enemies and target DCs will also scale. At much closer rates than they did in PF1 (which did scale, but almost irrelevantly so).
Honestly, I don't think PF2 is going to be the game for me as I'm pretty happy with the way most things work in PF1. But to those who will enjoy it, cheers!
Yeah....I expected dice rolls to be vastly more important in PF2 than they were in PF1. In PF1 you could have bonuses so high that you hit a point where "don't roll a 1" was all you needed.
I'm torn on this because part of what I liked most about PF1 is that if I chose to really focus on something, success was mostly assured. It felt rewarding. I'm worried that in PF2 while my character might be better than an unfocused character attempting the same thing, that I wont ever really feel like the character has gotten stronger because as I scale the enemies and target DCs will also scale. At much closer rates than they did in PF1 (which did scale, but almost irrelevantly so).
Honestly, I don't think PF2 is going to be the game for me as I'm pretty happy with the way most things work in PF1. But to those who will enjoy it, cheers!
We know that there are skill Assurance feats that make it so you don't need to roll on things you want to specialize in, for whatever that is worth.
For the OP: I assume the game was level 1, right? Dice rolls matter a lot in PF1 early levels as well, and every other system I've played for that matter. I'm not sure how the dice will play out at higher levels- depends on how enemies and DCs are raised for average encounters.
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We also know that the DC for a specific task doesn't change, so as you level certain things will become trivially easy anywayI'm worried that in PF2 while my character might be better than an unfocused character attempting the same thing, that I wont ever really feel like the character has gotten stronger because as I scale the enemies and target DCs will also scale. At much closer rates than they did in PF1 (which did scale, but almost irrelevantly so).We know that there are skill Assurance feats that make it so you don't need to roll on things you want to specialize in, for whatever that is worth.
That's not completely true. You're thinking of skill checks only, which is not what I was referring to. I was basically referring to any d20 roll.
If the roll was for something you decided to have your character focus on, you were basically guaranteed success. Including even attack rolls. A full BAB character was almost guaranteed to hit on 3 out of 4 iterative attacks.
As for skill checks, some task DCs will effectively remain static, but other will grow with us. As a simple example, opening a lock. Typically, as you level up miraculously people start using better quality locks. As the importance of what lays behind them also increase. Same for traps. The trap CR and their DCs increase as well.
So while the DC of some task doesn't increase, checks against NPCs or opposed checks do typically increase. And we already had plenty of skill checks in Pathfinder that became trivial due to static DCs. Ride checks, handle animal, jumping, climbing just to name a few.
The DC to climb a tree remains the same; an Ogre's AC remains the same; the save against a 3rd level Wizard's spells remains the same; the DC to open a masterwork lock remains the same.
Sure, you're going to run into more difficult locks trying to break into the King's treasure vault that a peasant's foot locker; as you said, the thing being protected is more important, so it's harder to get to.
Spell save DCs are going to go up if you're fighting a more powerful wizard. Better trained guards are (or should be) harder to sneak past.
I'm not seeing any of this (except the spell DCs) as being fundamentally different to PF1, so maybe I've missed the point you're making.
Right, but it doesn't matter that those DCs remain the same because you stop encountering them as obstacles to the main goal.
You don't continue to encounter CR 3 enemies at level 10 and so it's not really meaningful that their AC doesn't chance. You're facing CR 10 enemies, who will have more AC.
It's not that all things scale with you, it's that the things you encounter will scale with you so that the chance to fail will always be present. Unlike PF1 wherein you could attain enough bonuses in your focus that you have almost no chance to fail. Regardless of whether or not the target DCs have grown with you or not.
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...It's more confirming for some to get a feeling from the system like that of 4th Ed, that the world seems to conveniently level with you.
In P1E, that happens though. The monsters and minions you fight do generally get stronger as you do.
Admittedly, I mostly do Adventure Paths and PFS. Even in those however, you come across something that is far below your level because it makes sense.
Bleh, I had a long post and the internet ate it. Short version: don't conflate adventure pacing with rule design. The latter informs the former but they are not the same thing. In both versions of Pathfinder DCs and other numeric values can be adjusted on the fly for whatever the GM seems appropriate. The big difference is PF2 makes it harder for you to completely leave your teammates in the dust. I may be significantly better at picking locks, but the party isn't completely without hope to pick a decent lock without me.
Also, I expect the crit system to play into this safety net idea. In PF2, failing a disable device check by 5 or more set off a trap. In PF2, I kind of expect it to only be a on a critical failure of 10 or more. Which means you don't need as high a bonus to avoid really dire consequences.
Bleh, I had a long post and the internet ate it. Short version: don't conflate adventure pacing with rule design. The latter informs the former but they are not the same thing. In both versions of Pathfinder DCs and other numeric values can be adjusted on the fly for whatever the GM seems appropriate. The big difference is PF2 makes it harder for you to completely leave your teammates in the dust. I may be significantly better at picking locks, but the party isn't completely without hope to pick a decent lock without me.
Also, I expect the crit system to play into this safety net idea. In PF2, failing a disable device check by 5 or more set off a trap. In PF2, I kind of expect it to only be a on a critical failure of 10 or more. Which means you don't need as high a bonus to avoid really dire consequences.
Unfortunately, rolling a 1 is a crit fail on skills, or automatic failure if it would have succeeded.
Unfortunately, rolling a 1 is a crit fail on skills, or automatic failure if it would have succeeded.Bleh, I had a long post and the internet ate it. Short version: don't conflate adventure pacing with rule design. The latter informs the former but they are not the same thing. In both versions of Pathfinder DCs and other numeric values can be adjusted on the fly for whatever the GM seems appropriate. The big difference is PF2 makes it harder for you to completely leave your teammates in the dust. I may be significantly better at picking locks, but the party isn't completely without hope to pick a decent lock without me.
Also, I expect the crit system to play into this safety net idea. In PF2, failing a disable device check by 5 or more set off a trap. In PF2, I kind of expect it to only be a on a critical failure of 10 or more. Which means you don't need as high a bonus to avoid really dire consequences.
I hold out hope that this will be changed after the Playtest. If not, it's my first house rule in P2e.
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I hold out hope that this will be changed after the Playtest. If not, it's my first house rule in P2e.Unfortunately, rolling a 1 is a crit fail on skills, or automatic failure if it would have succeeded.Bleh, I had a long post and the internet ate it. Short version: don't conflate adventure pacing with rule design. The latter informs the former but they are not the same thing. In both versions of Pathfinder DCs and other numeric values can be adjusted on the fly for whatever the GM seems appropriate. The big difference is PF2 makes it harder for you to completely leave your teammates in the dust. I may be significantly better at picking locks, but the party isn't completely without hope to pick a decent lock without me.
Also, I expect the crit system to play into this safety net idea. In PF2, failing a disable device check by 5 or more set off a trap. In PF2, I kind of expect it to only be a on a critical failure of 10 or more. Which means you don't need as high a bonus to avoid really dire consequences.
I'm considering that as a house rule myself, though I think if we're strictly delineating "modes" between encounter, exploration and downtime, I could see having some flexibility in saying "ok on a 1, it's not automatically a critical fail unless you're in encounter mode," with logic similar to how you couldn't take 10 in combat or any other tense situation.
I'm considering that as a house rule myself, though I think if we're strictly delineating "modes" between encounter, exploration and downtime, I could see having some flexibility in saying "ok on a 1, it's not automatically a critical fail unless you're in encounter mode," with logic similar to how you couldn't take 10 in combat or any other tense situation.I hold out hope that this will be changed after the Playtest. If not, it's my first house rule in P2e.Unfortunately, rolling a 1 is a crit fail on skills, or automatic failure if it would have succeeded.Bleh, I had a long post and the internet ate it. Short version: don't conflate adventure pacing with rule design. The latter informs the former but they are not the same thing. In both versions of Pathfinder DCs and other numeric values can be adjusted on the fly for whatever the GM seems appropriate. The big difference is PF2 makes it harder for you to completely leave your teammates in the dust. I may be significantly better at picking locks, but the party isn't completely without hope to pick a decent lock without me.
Also, I expect the crit system to play into this safety net idea. In PF2, failing a disable device check by 5 or more set off a trap. In PF2, I kind of expect it to only be a on a critical failure of 10 or more. Which means you don't need as high a bonus to avoid really dire consequences.
Have they indicated whether Take 10 / Take 20 survive in any form in PF2?
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The existence of Assurance as a mechanic seems to indicate that isn't so.
Not necessarily. Assurance seems to work like Skill Mastery in that, after having taken it as a Skill Feat, it's always available even under stress and doesn't take extra time. Taking 10 or Taking 20 are thus not precluded by it, being less generally applicable.
Personally, I think the inclusion of Critical Failures makes the situations where you can 'take 20' a lot rarer (since you've never been able to do it if there are consequences for failure), but wouldn't be shocked if it's still around. 'Taking 10' I'm less sure of.
Another possibility is that you can do the 'Assurance' thing under the same circumstances you could 'take 10' in PF1 without a Skill Feat, or do it whenever you like with one.
Wasn't the concern that dice rolls are too important?
The OP's initial post phrased things as though people were concerned that dice rolls we no longer important.
Now, they probably more important in PF2 than they were in PF1.