Bastarache, Welcome to the Nightmare

Game Master Rysky

A fighter with an animal companion and the right feats/proficiency could be terrifying

Very

Gorilla companion

Nice.

... this will also make the rogue happy.

Second Edition News, Critical Success/Failure blog is up.

Critical Hits clarified, Nat 20 is still an auto hit, you just need to beat AC by 10+ in order to crit. So it’s possible to auto-hit but not crit. No other confirmation roll needed. Crits multiply ALL the dice and bonuses in the Damage roll (and the Rogues rejoiced)!

Fighter has a special Strike he can use where if he misses with that Strike he treats the attack as if he hit but rolled minimum Damage on the dice.

You get Profiencies in Saves as well, and if your class grants Evasion you auto get Master Profiency and can treat all successful saves as critical successes (aka no damage). That’s worded really wonky I know, but it’s interesting since now any class can get good saves and stuff like Evasion/Stalwart if they invest :3

An example given was Fireball.

Critical Success = No Damage
Success = Half Damage
Failure = Normal Damage
Critical Failure = Double Damage

That kind of makes sense and can be used as an RP vehicle.

Enemy mage throws a fireball.

Nat 20 = spin behind a column that takes the full blast shielding you completely

Makes save = Dive clear of the worst of the blast.

Failure = not fast enough

Critical Fail= trip and end up moving into the direct past of the glowing bead. Or you're standing next to a pitcher of lamp oil when it goes off.

Best one, one person gets a crit success, another gets a critical failure = Human shield / Sacrifice.

Got the commission for Azura, the aasimar Arshean bard! (This is what Ryn sees in the Shattered Star game.)

And Ryn is lucky she could still remember her own name. lol

Nice.

That kind of makes sense and can be used as an RP vehicle.

Enemy mage throws a fireball.

Nat 20 = spin behind a column that takes the full blast shielding you completely

Makes save = Dive clear of the worst of the blast.

Failure = not fast enough

Critical Fail= trip and end up moving into the direct past of the glowing bead. Or you're standing next to a pitcher of lamp oil when it goes off.

Best one, one person gets a crit success, another gets a critical failure = Human shield / Sacrifice.

*nods*

I’m very excited about this take :3

Second Edition Stuff

Ancestry stats look interesting (Goblin example gets +DEX & +CHA and -WIS) and a floating + to any stat. All Ancestries are going to be like that but exactly what form the floating bonuses (and standard stats for that matter) are still being decided on with least likely being how for example Aasimar and Tiefling subraces are presented in First Edition to more likely (atm) being "If you're Angelkin Aasimar they tend to prefer [stats]."

There was examples given for the floating bonus so don't know if it will be locked to specific stats for each Ancestry, flavor text examples but nothing hardwired, or simply blank like 1e Humans.

Also that "NO GERBLINS" is the hill people are willing to die on "amuses" me to no end. I'm legitimately delighted that someone brought up Incase and Shortstacks though heheh

Second Edition Stuff

They go over Ancestries and Heritage (can only be taken at first level) and Ancestry Feats (gained every 5 levels), the examples being Elves and Dwarves.

Stuff like weapon training and hatred (with expanded options like Derro or Duergar) are options you choose rather than being defaults, though things like Darkvision and not being slowed by armor are still innate for Dwarves.

Their speed is 20 while Elves are the fastest so far with 30 (and can take a Feat to move faster and ignore difficult terrain). Ancestral Longevity is a nice one too, basically they’ve learned and forgotten so much over so long they can become trained in a different skill each day.

The first boss fight of the game.

Gravity.

Second Edition Stuff

Alchemists can now hand out Bombs and Mutagens to allies without having to invest in order to do so.

Their Resonance pool is based off of INT rather than CHA.

Potions are apparently functioning under their own rules rather than simply being a spell-in-a-jar.

Major (to me) Second Edition Stuff

Interviewer: Would I be able to play a Chaotic-Good Paladin of Milani?

Jason Bulmahn: [Laughs] Boy that Paladin argument. Every single time. People love to get into very vicious debates about Paladin alignment. I’m going to say this. Alignment is still a thing in the game. Paladins still have to pay attention to alignment. That’s still something that’s important to them.

I think the thing that I’m most excited to talk to people about is how we have modified the Paladin’s Code to actually speak to reality and not be so inflexible that the characters are a pain at the table. I can’t tell you how excited I am about how that Code is written to the point.

And this is what I’ll leave you with. A Paladin can lie if he has to. If it will save people’s lives, if it is for the greater good, he can look you straight in the eye and lie. And it’s awesome.

It all comes down to the Code. And you have to follow the Code. The Code is the way that you live. But that Code now actually has guidance and it isn’t just a bunch of strictures that just say, ‘Nope you have to do this! You can never lie, you can never talk to an evil person, you can never’, you know ... There were a whole ton of things that you couldn’t do. Like, ‘Oh, I can’t associate with an evil person’.

Well, that made a lot of stories not work. It’s like, ‘Well, I have to go into Cheliax and I have to negotiate with these people. Drawing out my sword and murdering everyone is not really an option. I have to negotiate with these guys so I guess I’m going to need an atonement after this’ — was never really an acceptable way to run a Paladin.

So I’m really excited about that and I don’t want to spoil any more than that. There’s lots of great stuff about the Paladin but that’s one of the things that I’m most excited about, by leaps and bounds. It is great. I love Paladins and I always have. And this makes them really fun and dynamic to play.

Interesting. Now the hot debates will be the definition of Greater Good. :P

But seriously, I like the change, and you know I'm a fan of paladins.

*nods*

I love them too, even if I could never play them. I'd be more than happy with them being opened up to all Good.

Second Edition Stuff

Gnomes and Halflings *throws confetti*

Something that caught my eye is that they are removing the damage differences between Small/Medium weapons. It’s a little unclear if they’ve combined them into one category (and thus Smal races might not be able to use certain two handers) and whether this damage same-ing applies to all size categories of weapons (hopefully not).

Second Edition Stuff

SPELLS!

The four spell lists are not Arcane, Divine, Psychic, and [???] like originally mass guessed, but instead are Material, Mental, Spiritual, and Vital. It was mentioned that Arcane Casters use the Material and Mental lists and Divine Casters use Spiritual and Vital.

Cantrips are no longer 0 level spells but still have unlimited castings and auto heighten to your highest spell level.

Overcasting/heighten is built into every spell, and certain spells, for example the Heal spell (wrapping all the Cure Wounds together), work differently depending on how many Actions you use to cast it. 1 Action to touch to heal the living/harm the Undead (they don’t get a save), 2 Actions to make it ranged, and 3 for an AoE. The Actions are the Somatic, Verbal, and Material Components so some spells will automatically take more than one Action to cast.

Detect Magic and the like no longer automatically detects Illusion effects unless the Detection is a higher level effect than the Illusion, and light/darkness spells can dispel each other if they’re in a higher slot rather than simply being a higher level spell.

Also Bards can use their performing instrument (if they have one) instead of a literal Verbal component. The blog says that Sorcerer can use their magical blood to satisfy the Material Component Action, so they might be able to use less Actions when casting.

Rituals are now a thing from the beginning, opening up a lot of utility to Non-Casters (including things like Resurrection effects) but having the potential for failure and backlash.

Second Edition Stuff

SPELLS!

The four spell lists are not Arcane, Divine, Psychic, and [???] like originally mass guessed, but instead are Material, Mental, Spiritual, and Vital. It was mentioned that Arcane Casters use the Material and Mental lists and Divine Casters use Spiritual and Vital.

Cantrips are no longer 0 level spells but still have unlimited castings and auto heighten to your highest spell level.

Overcasting/heighten is built into every spell, and certain spells, for example the Heal spell (wrapping all the Cure Wounds together), work differently depending on how many Actions you use to cast it. 1 Action to touch to heal the living/harm the Undead (they don’t get a save), 2 Actions to make it ranged, and 3 for an AoE. The Actions are the Somatic, Verbal, and Material Components so some spells will automatically take more than one Action to cast.

Detect Magic and the like no longer automatically detects Illusion effects unless the Detection is a higher level effect than the Illusion, and light/darkness spells can dispel each other if they’re in a higher slot rather than simply being a higher level spell.

Also Bards can use their performing instrument (if they have one) instead of a literal Verbal component. The blog says that Sorcerer can use their magical blood to satisfy the Material Component Action, so they might be able to use less Actions when casting.

Rituals are now a thing from the beginning, opening up a lot of utility to Non-Casters (including things like Resurrection effects) but having the potential for failure and backlash.

We are changing that because it's potentially really creepy, particularly worded that way.

Yeah the non-creepy version would be unable to resist. Or rather creepy in a more obvious way.

The weapon damage thing is quite welcome, presumably they will just do like 5e and make some weapons Heavy that you can't use if you're small.

That would make sense. and it makes mind affecting spells less insidious.

*nods*

So who wants to explore and who wants to climb the Lamae like a Firefighter's Pole?

A does not exclude B

*nods*

Point.

Well... I want to explore, but I feel very dicey about our lack of healing. I don't want people to get killed. But we have no way to prevent it. :/

Interview with Jason Bulmahn

Neat.

If you critically succeed and make the target number by 10 or more, maybe nothing happens to you because you’re totally resilient to it. If you succeed, maybe something small happens or nothing at all. If you fail, something bad happens. If you critically fail, something terrible happens to you. Take the simple example of a fireball, which does 6d6 fire damage. It doesn’t scale. It’s a third-level spell that does 6d6. If you make that saving throw, you take half damage. If you critically make it, you take no damage. If you fail it you take full damage, but if you critically fail it you take double damage, which can be crippling in the middle of a fight. You can take 12d6 from a third-level spell, which is really bad! You don’t want to do that. But your odds of critically failing are small. But it can still happen with a more powerful spellcaster throwing it at low-level foes; the odds of critically failing go up, which means they’re probably going to get knocked out of the fight faster, but that’s appropriate because they’re low levels.

Some of this allows us to tell stories a little better, which goes back to our goals with the game. But what’s also interesting is that if you have spells that you love like fireball. You can prepare those in a higher-level slot, so let’s say you want to do more damage; you don’t want it to do just 6d6. You want it to be valuable to you when you’re fifteenth level, so you’re going to prepare it in a fifth-level spell slot instead of a third. Every spell slot you put it in that’s higher than third, you get an additional 2d6 damage. That’s what happens to fireball when you put it in a higher-level slot. There’s lots of spells in the game that do that. I think lightning bolt does more damage.

Other spells have multiple targets when you prepare them in higher-level slots. One spell can only affect one target when you prepare it as a third-level spell like Paralyze. But if you prepare it as a higher-level spell, you can affect multiple targets in an area and paralyze a bunch of people.

I’m also excited for the introduction of tenth-level spells. I know there are a lot of people that are like, “What’s the deal with that?” There’s a couple spells we’ve looked at from the game and went, “Wow, these are so powerful. I’m not even sure we want to allow those as ninth level.” We want to walk those away so you have to do something more to get them. You don’t get tenth-level spells automatically. You have to take a feat just to get them. That’s where spells like Wish live now. Let’s be honest, it’s one of those spells that can do anything. We have some guidelines built into the spell, but it really is there to be the make-or-unmake-reality spell. You shouldn’t use it to wreck your campaign, since it always comes with the chance that the DM will mess with you and corrupt your wish, so you have to be careful.

But this also gave us the opportunity to write other cool tenth-level spells. There’s one for druids that can wreck an entire environment by invoking a devastation on an area. Don’t make a high-level Druid angry because they will ruin your town! I think we’ve got another spell floating around there that allows you to turn into Godzilla or something akin to it. There are some crazy things floating around with the high-level spells of the game, but that’s appropriate for that level. At that point in time, characters are able to do amazing, almost god-like things when you’re up at the nineteenth-level or something. You know, the magic system is really exciting.

Archetypes in Pathfinder’s first edition were a way to expand on the ordinary class type, so instead of being a regular rogue, you could be a pirate rogue. Instead of rogue abilities, you could pick up some pirate abilities that speak to the way the rogue works and make sense for the rogue. The way they worked in first edition is that instead of getting uncanny dodge, you’d get an ability to swing from ropes and attack people on boats. You get some sort of bonuses when you’re climbing around in riggings and stuff like that. You could very easily build what were basically subclasses. It’s a rogue, but a slightly different version of that. We call those archetypes because we’re basically saying it’s something you choose and it becomes part of who you are. There are great ways to customize what you wanted to be.

The new version is built upon the idea of classes that have all these feats that they give you. When it comes to archetypes, it makes sense that they have additional feats you can choose. In the new game, they work similarly to how they did before, but instead of telling you what you’ll lose, you’ll get a package of feats you can choose instead of the feats from your class. They work just like an add-on package for you to choose from. It allows them to be more open and it’s not tied to specific features of classes. This kind of speaks to whatever character wants that to be a bigger part of their character concept. The rogue might want to be a pirate, but so might a wizard. It might have a feat or two that’s better at casting spells that burn sails or knocking holes in boats with lightning bolts. There could be a wide variety of abilities that speak to how the class works and you choose the ones that are appropriate to you. In this case, the archetypes allow us to expand the character types that we have. We’re not just at 12 classes, but we have dozens of different character concepts to explore from that decision alone, not to mention all the choices you have within skills and feats. It’s about giving you as many tools as possible to make the character you want to play as. Archetypes are a big tool that allow us to do that. They’re a box of toys that we can let people play with to customize their character. The playtest will have a number of archetypes in it, but we’re not putting them into the final version until we have time to test it out.

We just had a discussion about how we were changing Vrocks, the vulture-headed demon in the game. I got tired of the fact that the coolest thing about Vrocks is that a group of them together will start dancing. They’re vulture-headed demons that will float up in the sky and do the Dance of Ruin, and you never want them to get that off because it might kill everyone nearby. It’s really cool, but it never happens, because they have to dance for four rounds without anyone hurting them, which never happened. Now, the moment they start dancing, they let off electricity. Every round that you let them dance, it just gets worse. Cool things like that, little touches, I think will make the game more dynamic and make combat more engaging. Monsters are more mobile and have more abilities. There’s just so much more fun to be had. Maybe that’s just me as an evil DM, but I like my monsters to have cool, horrible things they can do to the characters. That’s part of the fun. The story is two-sided. The characters’ stories aren’t heroic if they don’t have heroic deeds and tales about the terrible monsters they defeated. That’s what I’m most excited about: terrifying a new generation of players.

Well... I want to explore, but I feel very dicey about our lack of healing. I don't want people to get killed. But we have no way to prevent it. :/

Survival Horror mood starting to kick in :3

Y'know what, what the hell, let's risk it. (says the person who almost dies off a single failed skill check)

Lol, I guess there’s something to be said about the atmosphere if the environment is the most dangerous thing in the game hehehe

Just woke up and heading to the gym, we’ll be thinking/working on this hidden chasm you’ve found yourself in.

Second Edition News

THE CLERIC!

It was revealed that you get a +2 to Wisdom, so apparently what class you pick shapes your stats.

No signs of “Clerics of Ideas”, I never liked those anyway. Clerics are shaped a lot more by their Diety this time, determining how they use their Channel ability, rather than being based on Alignment. Pharasma (N) gives you heal, Rovagug (CE) gives you harm, Abadar (LN) and Lamashtu (CE) lets you pick.

Also Anathema, which is your deity’s code, which makes Clerics of them more structured but more flexible as well (no word on whether you can still be one Alignment step away). Example given was that Clerics of Sarenrae, a Goddess of honesty, can’t cast spells that makes them better at lying *side eyes a certain Paladin*

You also start with 1 Domain but can spend class feats to gain more. Your domain abilities are that have usages are powered by a pool currently named “spell points”, hopefully we can get a better name.

Bonus spells are no longer a thing, Clerics at 1st get a flat 2 1st Level spells that steadily increase. Your DC for your spells is determined by your Profiency in Divine casting which Clerics gradually increase in.

Metamagic still exists, and increases the Actions required to cast a spell rather than using a higher level spell slot.

*pokes the snek*

Yay! They unblocked Pinterest at work!

Yay! They unblocked Pinterest at work!

... help...

lol, trapped in the Pinterest zone?

lol, trapped in the Pinterest zone?

... yes.

Huh, Christopher Judge voices Kratos in the new God of War.

Second Edition Monster/NPC makin stuff

TarkXT wrote:

And of course the fun part comes when you have to play with benchmarks and abilities so a momster is actually rewarding to defeat rather than a slog or outright deadly.. I remember a criticism of a 3pp monster i qrote that said the monatera hp was a bit low from its cr. It kind of failed to mention that the monster itself killed people in their sleep invisibly from a separate plane of existence. So the CR wasnt a measure of its ability but a stop gap to ensure gms didnt try to put it in front of players incapable of handling its weirdness before they were ready.

And no one can be perfect about this. Bestiary 1 orcs bein an early example.

Yes, this very much so!

Now all that being said, this is for adversaries, monsters most often (NPCs in PF1 you don't have the toggles you do with monsters, so you usually just put up with the numbers being really problematic or use tricks like prebuff spells or one-use items if you are allowed a tactics entry). For PF2, we wanted the best of both worlds: the ability to fully use the PC system for NPCs and get a great NPC if you want to spend the time and have the cognitive load of remembering all those feats (possibly for multiple NPCs at once), and the ability to stat NPCs quickly that are less complicated to run but still are fun adversaries or allies.

This is a slight relief, Starfinder's Monster/NPC creation rules was one of the biggest killjoys to me.

Huh, thought Pinterest was blocked again so i went and clicked on the link I used yesterday and it let me back in, checking it's Pinterest.co.uk ... or however the url works.

*shrugs*

Hmmm, *scratches head*

Thinking about naming the Darklands/Underdark area of the setting The Hollow (then we call the great hallways linking the various continents The Hollowed Roads :3)

What do y'all think?

Second Edition News

CLERICS AND WORSHIPPING DEITIES!!!!

Major thing right off the bat: “We've included a chart that indicates each deity's areas of concern, alignment (and the alignments allowed for their clerics)”

Shelyn (NG) for example allows CG, NG, LG

So f~&% you CN worshippers of Demon Lord of Rape >_>

Edicts be peaceful, choose and perfect an art, lead by example, see the beauty in all things

Anathema destroy works of art or allow one to be destroyed except to save a life or in pursuit of greater art, refuse to accept surrender, strike first
Favored Weapon glaive

The deity's signature skill is in addition to those all clerics gain, so Shelynite clerics always have the ability to reach great heights in Crafting. Norgorberite clerics, in contrast, gain Stealth in order to blend into the shadows, allowing them to fit in well with clandestine groups.

What about those spells at the end? Those are three extra spells that all clerics of Shelyn can prepare and cast! These aren't in any sort of special "domain slots" like before; you can cast them as few or as many times as you want. Oh, and Sarenrae has fireball!

So instead of Domain spells you have Deity spells added to your list.

The Deity table in the book will list all this in their column, as well as what Energy their clerics are allowed to channel.

Example Domain power from Shelyn

UNITY (ABJURATION, FORTUNE) POWER 2
Casting [[R]] Verbal reaction; Trigger You and one or more allies within range are targeted by a spell or ability that allows a saving throw.
Range 30 feet

You allow your allies within range to use your saving throw modifier instead of their own. Each ally decides individually which modifier to use.

Ectar wrote:

Mark, your reveals are still always my favorites. And how responsive you are in the comments doesn't hurt either.

The change to specifying what alignments a deity will allow instead of always within one step of the deity's alignment is maybe my favorite change in here.
Also, divorcing channeling a type of energy with alignment. Evil parties need healing too!

They do need healing too. Plus, while the creation of undead perverting negative energy into creating a twisted mockery of life with fell instincts is evil, that doesn't mean negative energy is evil, nor that positive energy is good.

V A L I DA T I O N

YUUUUUUUUUUUS!!!!

Simple, Martial, or Exotic?

All weapons in Pathfinder are simple, martial, or exotic, based on their rough level of power. Unlike in Pathfinder First Edition, exotic weapons are not just a mixture of powerful European weapons and weapons from other cultures that only occasionally had a leg up over their martial kin. In Pathfinder Second Edition, we have a different way of talking about whether a weapon is likely to be found in a particular region, and so a weapon's type instead describes a weapon's mix of power and flexibility. Simple weapons usually have a smaller damage die than similar martial weapons (d6 rather than d8, for instance), and exotic weapons usually use the same damage die as a martial weapon but include additional abilities that make the weapon more complex.

Characters start with proficiency in either groups of weapons or lists of individual weapons, and they can take ancestry or general feats (and, rarely, class feats) to gain more!

Weapon Traits
Whatever your weapon proficiencies, you'll want to choose a weapon with useful traits that match your taste and play style. Even among martial weapons that use two hands, a bo staff, a greatsword, and a glaive all feel very different.

A greatsword deals a lot of damage, perfect for a bruiser character like a worshiper of Gorum: its damage die is d12 and you can seamlessly switch between piercing and slashing damage to avoid enemy resistances and exploit their weaknesses.

A bo staff is all about controlling the fight. Its damage die is only d8, but it has reach (allowing you to Strike enemies up to 10 feet away), parry (allowing you to spend an action to increase your AC much like a light shield), and trip (giving you several benefits to your attempts to trip enemies). Plus, it has the monk trait, which weapon-wielding monks particularly enjoy.

The glaive has a d8 damage die like the bo staff and shares its reach, but that's where the similarities end. The glaive has deadly d8 (dealing additional d8s of damage on a critical hit), and it is forceful (which means once you get it going and build up momentum, your attacks become more and more powerful: 1 extra damage per die on the second attack of your turn, 2 extra damage for any attacks after that). The glaive-user isn't interested in giving up an action for defense like a character with a bo staff; instead, she does best if she artfully sweeps the blade like a brush, focusing on accuracy and multiple attacks to really dish out the damage—particularly fitting for a follower of Shelyn.

We want to give every weapon a different personality like this so that we can better serve the infinite personalities that players bring with their characters!

Some other fun weapon traits I haven't covered yet: Twin weapons like the saw-toothed saber deal more damage if you fight with two of them. Backswing weapons like the greatclub gain a little accuracy after a miss. Backstabber weapons like the dogslicer deal more damage to flat-footed targets. Agile weapons like the shortsword decrease the penalty for making multiple attacks in a single turn. Finesse weapons like the rapier use your Dexterity modifier for attack rolls if you prefer. Two-hand weapons like the bastard sword deal much higher damage if you wield them in two hands instead of one!

Critical Specialization and Weapon Groups
Traits give us some really cool ways to distinguish weapons, but we decided to throw one more customization factor into the mix, this time for similar groups of weapons: critical specialization effects.

Characters who unlock their weapon's critical specialization effect gain a special bonus effect on a critical hit that's different for each weapon group. For example, let's compare swords, spears, and axes.

Swords make the target flat-footed on a critical hit, making it easier for you and your allies to hit the target again (and making the group's rogue very happy). This cements swords like the greatsword or a longsword as great choices for dealing damage to challenging foes like bosses, as they have high damage and decrease the boss's AC so your team can hit more often.

Spears pierce the target and weaken its attacks. This makes a spear a good option for someone using a more defensive strategy built around negating enemy attacks.

Axes swing to an adjacent target (if any), damaging that target, too! Combined with the fact that axes usually have the sweep trait, giving you a bonus on attacks when you move on to a new target in the same turn, this makes axes extremely well suited for sweeping up groups of enemies.

These are just a few of the possibilities. For instance, daggers can cause persistent bleed damage, and clubs can knock the target up to 10 feet away (particularly amusing on a well-placed Attack of Opportunity).

Weapon Quality
Weapons, as well as other non-weapon items (but come on, those aren't as cool as weapons, right?), can be poor quality, standard quality, expert quality, master quality, or legendary quality.

Quality grants an item bonus or penalty of the same value as the matching proficiency (so an expert bow grants a +1 item bonus to hit and a legendary axe grants a +3 item bonus to hit). You have to have the matching proficiency to Craft a weapon of that quality though, so you can't make a master sword, for instance, unless you are a master at Crafting.

*squees excitedly*

42nfl19 wrote:

Mark Seifter wrote:

42nfl19 wrote:

Question about agile, does that mean that agile has really great synergy with TFW to the point that it would be almost sub-optimal to not use it? And I might have missed it but is agile an enchantment you can get on weapons or is it that agile is a special property that exist in a certain class of weapons?

Agile is a trait. It's a trait that mainly light weapons from PF1 have. TWFing with at least one of two weapons as agile is a very smart idea, similar to TWFing with at least one of two weapons as light in PF1, though not as punishing if you don't as in PF1.

Does that mean TWF will be more flexible in PF2 than in PF1? I always felt that if you ever do TFW you always had to use a single weapon type because sometimes feats, classes/features, or etc asked you to choose a certain weapon. I might be wrong though. The idea of a samurai using a katana and wakizashi or a duelist using a rapier and a parrying dagger are very thematic.

Yeah, we're not really interested in forcing you into specializing in one very specific weapon. Probably the most we'd ask a character to do would be to decide they were into swords, and many characters don't even have to specialize that deeply. As to rapier/main gauche, personally, I feel like a good main gauche specifically for parrying was one of the few oversights in the incredibly wide diversity of PF1 weapons (there were options like a swordbreaker focused specifically on anti-weapon hijinks, but not really a main gauche).

Woohoo!

Also, just in case anyone had any worries, no, I will not be converting Bastarache over to playtest or finalized 2nd Edition rules, due to stuff not being in it from the get go, such as Black Blades, Sha'ir, Witches, etc. for example. Unless y'all want me to lol

(opening a second game set somewhere else to try the rules out is a completely different story :3)

That sounds reasonable.

Oh! Tangent but I had completely forgotten, for your research efforts in the library Yelenn and Yasmin you each gain a +1 on Knowledge checks to identify Outsiders.

About various types of DR and the issue of "golfbag of weapons".

(Incidentally, despite the tangent, I agree with your later post that always resisting physical damage punishes martial characters over spellcasters [because the martial is being reduced every time if they don't switch and the spellcaster is doing full damage]; that's why actually the answer to your question about skeletons and zombies is "No, only skeletons do that." Zombies have way more HP than you would expect but take *extra* damage from slashing. That way, no matter what weapon you bring, you will beat the zombie, maybe in an extra couple of hits, but if you bring slashing, you are extra awesome. Not going to go too deep into monsters here, but skeletons and zombies were on the podcast already, so I feel fine mentioning them again.

Ooooo...

About various types of DR and the issue of "golfbag of weapons".

Mark Seifter wrote:

(Incidentally, despite the tangent, I agree with your later post that always resisting physical damage punishes martial characters over spellcasters [because the martial is being reduced every time if they don't switch and the spellcaster is doing full damage]; that's why actually the answer to your question about skeletons and zombies is "No, only skeletons do that." Zombies have way more HP than you would expect but take *extra* damage from slashing. That way, no matter what weapon you bring, you will beat the zombie, maybe in an extra couple of hits, but if you bring slashing, you are extra awesome. Not going to go too deep into monsters here, but skeletons and zombies were on the podcast already, so I feel fine mentioning them again.

Ooooo...

Building off of this, Vulnerability is looking to be reciprocal to Damage Reduction/Energy Resistance.

So Skelly has DR/Bashing 5 but a Zombie will have Vulnerability: Slashing 5

(I have no clue how they're gonna format that).