Trinkets and Treasures

Resonance seems a bit like Healing Surges, but for magic item use, instead of hit point recovery.

Dragonborn3 wrote:

When you MUST save your spare Resonance for HEALING quickly because if you don't you could DIE then there is something wrong.

I coudn't disagree more, a PC who isn't willing to reserve some of their personal equipment and "potential" for healing themselves should they get hurt (At least in a party without a dedicated Healer) SHOULD be punished.

If a PC can go in loaded to the gills having spent EVERY Copper piece they own on magic equipment to buff themselves, they would be remiss not to reserve some of that potential for healing. This is EXACTLY the kind of character who thrives in a 15 minute Day, they blow all their APL on powerful x/day effects and just wait until they can exploit them again.

I just don't understand why people think magical healing should be cheap, free, or easy.

Because I don't want to go through two rooms of a dungeon and then have to return to town to heal naturally for 4 days.

Because I don't want to be in a situation where one player is expected to be 'the healer' when no-one at the table wants to.

Because you say broken, I say working just fine thank you - as both GM and player.

Excaliburproxy wrote:

I want to accentuate a point here:

Resonance is not just here to solve the "wand of cure light wounds problem".

It is trying to solve broader family of issues that come with balancing low level items (non-consumable AND consumable) in the face of having an exponential-scaling gold system.

Consider the "Batman Wizard"; that is to say a wizard that always has a solution in their "utility belt" of consumable items. At level 7 or 8, the wizard does not need to buy a magical weapon and thus can use that wealth to purchase or craft a plethora of low level spell scrolls. Suddenly, you have a character that for all intents and purposes has every single level 1 and 2 utility spell readied at all times. Soon thereafter that same wizard can buy or craft a wand of haste that lets them cast haste on their party every fight which is almost always the wizard's best option in the first round of a fight. This indirectly grants that wizard one extra spell per fight. Resonance slows this whole pain train down.

There are definitely other solutions to this family of problems; not the least of which is having wealth scale linearly and limiting characters to being able to use items of their level. Frankly, that is much simpler! To me at least, the resonance system is more fun and more flavorful though.

Everyone is still calling this a problem - it is not universally accepted as such by any stretch of the imagination.

I understand that point of view as well. Me seeing this as a problem is in part due to my belief that players should have resources that matter and compete meaningfully with other resources.

I can certainly see a case being made for all characters getting access to free or close to free out of combat healing and/or access to a wide variety of essentially at will out of combat tricks and resources. Honestly, having a game like that might be pretty fun too and I think that line of thought was a major thrust in the design of 4e, actually. Still, I would prefer the longer term benefit/cost management paradigm to the "only fights matter" paradigm or the "each encounter is its own thing with a separate set of resources" paradigm.

I can certainly see a case being made for all characters getting access to free or close to free out of combat healing and/or access to a wide variety of essentially at will out of combat tricks and resources. Honestly, having a game like that might be pretty fun too and I think that line of thought was a major thrust in the design of 4e, actually. Still, I would prefer the longer term benefit/cost management paradigm to the "only fights matter" paradigm or the "each encounter is its own thing with a separate set of resources" paradigm.

I am constantly bringing this up, but I would like to stress that in PF1e and PF2e all loot is firmly within the purview of the GM. That's how it always has been. That's not a house rule, either, that's just how the game works.

That's why making a system that's permissive with what loot can do is good because GMs are the natural throttle for what loot the players have access to.

If you want to play in a game without cheap out of combat healing and no bag of tricks, the GM can distribute or not distribute wands and scrolls as they see fit.

For those who are okay with cheap wand healing and such, Resonance rules are much harder to get around and likely requires house rules.

willuwontu wrote:

That first part is where resonance steps in, sure he can order a million burgers (clw), but he can only eat so much before he becomes full (runs out of resonance), and he might not be satisfied (not full hp), whereas a couple lobsters, (heal spell, csw, etc) he might have room for and be satisfied with (full hp).

I know that's where resonance steps in, my question is: why is it necessary? Why is it wrong for the millionaire to eat three hundred big macs instead of a couple of big ol' fancy burgers?

Because the most obvious answer is that he's using way less resources to eat the three hundred big macs. But he's only doing that because, comparatively, the big ol' fancy burgers aren't worth the price.

The best solution here, going back from the analogy, is to rework the mechanics and prices behind the higher level consumables so that they are worth the price. Not simply gating you from abusing low level consumables with a mechanic that also prevents you from using too many magic items at once.

That and also, this system penalizes low level characters much more than it does high level ones (which Mark is on record saying very rarely, if ever, run out of resonance.) Honestly in what game is it alright for your first level Dwarf PC with 8 charisma to have a 50% chance to drink a potion and have it affect them? It's just bad design.

Cause he'll get fat :P

Note: this has been in the works for the past couple hours while I took care of other things, so bear with me if I repeat things people already said.

To answer you I have to go on a tangent, so bear with me.

To me, the big issue with resonance is that it tries to be 2 systems at once instead of being split. There should be an item investiture system for permanent magic items, and there should be a separate consumable system (resonance).

The investiture system limits personal magic items while allowing more freedom with item slots than in the previous system (something I appreciate and that would be fine on its own). This allows the dev to constrain the numbers more tightly for (lower level) encounters since they know that players can have between x and y magic items with wbl of z, narrowing the range of numbers players can have.

The resonance systems limits how much the players can depend on magic items instead of their classes for fights, it also causes them to have to make meaningful choices when deciding to use items that consume their resonance. Do I want to drink this potion of mage armor before we go into the dungeon, or at the first sign of trouble. It again also allows the numbers to be more constrained since players can't swagger in with potions galore and just guzzle em down as they go through in order to keep their stats at the maximum as they go through. And this is a healthy system to have in place.

This is where the issue lies though, those one-off higher end consumables aren't worth the same hold per pound as their cheaper cousins. Now that's not unable to be fixed, we can adjust the cheaper ones price up, decrease the price of the more expensive ones or we could increase the effects of the more expensive ones.

However, if we increase the price of the lower ones we hurt the survivability of lower leveled parties. If we decrease the price for higher leveled things, we increase the accessibility of higher leveled items, and new spells at higher levels tend to increase in power exponentially, unlike heal spells which increase linearly. Thus lowering the prices would hurt the system extensively. And while they could make an exception for just healing spells it'd be clunky.

Now this is where you might say that maybe they should just increase the power of heal spells exponentially as well, and while you wouldn't be wrong out of combat, in combat this would make dying near impossible due to the power of the new spells, which is an undesirable result.

Another option is to tweak the spells so they have greater effect out of combat, this could be achieved by giving an optional cast time of 1 min in addition to the normal casting actions that are possible. However this leads to players wanting to hoard their heals for when combat ends, causing it to be more likely to end in player deaths or in players feeling resentful over being forced to use their heal spell in combat (why didn't you dodgeeee).

Another option is like you said, to attach other effects to the healing. This seems like a nice idea at first, but for people who purely want healing, this is subpar.

The only way a heal spell (that only healed) would stay viable in pricing at all spell levels would be if players never gained anymore hp, and instead gained DR, resistances, and AC instead or some combination of hp and defenses were gained at each level (more than currently). Which while not unreasonable, isn't pathfinderish and is thus unsuitable as a mechanic. Or they were to nerf magic across the board more than they already did. Not only would this cause mass outrage, it also hurts the image of a fantasy setting in general.

Personally if I were to change resonance, I'd split the 2 systems apart into investiture and resonance. The investiture portion seems fine from what I've seen of it (could use some tweaks but fine overall). For resonance though, I'd tweak the numbers involved, and see how the data involved works out in playtests before tweaking some more.

I hope that answers your questions.

Excaliburproxy wrote:

I can certainly see a case being made for all characters getting access to free or close to free out of combat healing and/or access to a wide variety of essentially at will out of combat tricks and resources. Honestly, having a game like that might be pretty fun too and I think that line of thought was a major thrust in the design of 4e, actually. Still, I would prefer the longer term benefit/cost management paradigm to the "only fights matter" paradigm or the "each encounter is its own thing with a separate set of resources" paradigm.

I am constantly bringing this up, but I would like to stress that in PF1e and PF2e all loot is firmly within the purview of the GM. That's how it always has been. That's not a house rule, either, that's just how the game works.

That's why making a system that's permissive with what loot can do is good because GMs are the natural throttle for what loot the players have access to.

If you want to play in a game without cheap out of combat healing and no bag of tricks, the GM can distribute or not distribute wands and scrolls as they see fit.

For those who are okay with cheap wand healing and such, Resonance rules are much harder to get around and likely requires house rules.

I agree with you, but GM throttling items is not an option for PFS, and looks like PF2 is being engineered to support PFS better.

WatersLethe wrote:

Excaliburproxy wrote:

I can certainly see a case being made for all characters getting access to free or close to free out of combat healing and/or access to a wide variety of essentially at will out of combat tricks and resources. Honestly, having a game like that might be pretty fun too and I think that line of thought was a major thrust in the design of 4e, actually. Still, I would prefer the longer term benefit/cost management paradigm to the "only fights matter" paradigm or the "each encounter is its own thing with a separate set of resources" paradigm.

I am constantly bringing this up, but I would like to stress that in PF1e and PF2e all loot is firmly within the purview of the GM. That's how it always has been. That's not a house rule, either, that's just how the game works.

That's why making a system that's permissive with what loot can do is good because GMs are the natural throttle for what loot the players have access to.

If you want to play in a game without cheap out of combat healing and no bag of tricks, the GM can distribute or not distribute wands and scrolls as they see fit.

For those who are okay with cheap wand healing and such, Resonance rules are much harder to get around and likely requires house rules.

I agree with you, but GM throttling items is not an option for PFS, and looks like PF2 is being engineered to support PFS better.

Really? in what way? - I'm not seeing that, especially with resonance. Resonance appears quite an issue for PFS so far.

edduardco wrote:

WatersLethe wrote:

Excaliburproxy wrote:

I can certainly see a case being made for all characters getting access to free or close to free out of combat healing and/or access to a wide variety of essentially at will out of combat tricks and resources. Honestly, having a game like that might be pretty fun too and I think that line of thought was a major thrust in the design of 4e, actually. Still, I would prefer the longer term benefit/cost management paradigm to the "only fights matter" paradigm or the "each encounter is its own thing with a separate set of resources" paradigm.

I am constantly bringing this up, but I would like to stress that in PF1e and PF2e all loot is firmly within the purview of the GM. That's how it always has been. That's not a house rule, either, that's just how the game works.

That's why making a system that's permissive with what loot can do is good because GMs are the natural throttle for what loot the players have access to.

If you want to play in a game without cheap out of combat healing and no bag of tricks, the GM can distribute or not distribute wands and scrolls as they see fit.

For those who are okay with cheap wand healing and such, Resonance rules are much harder to get around and likely requires house rules.

I agree with you, but GM throttling items is not an option for PFS, and looks like PF2 is being engineered to support PFS better.

Really? in what way? - I'm not seeing that, especially with resonance. Resonance appears quite an issue for PFS so far.

Just I supposition from my part really. That Paizo doesn't like how people use low level items, so Resonance will encourage them to use high level items.

Because otherwise you aren't playing the game right.

-- Healing Stacking Limits -- Potential option to make spamming cheap healing less appealing/effective.
What if healing had stacking rules of sorts?
You have Max HP
You have healed HP
You have current HP

Item healing (or could apply to any die based healing with effective spell level) will only heal you damage since your last such magical healing, unless it is sufficient to get you to your MaxHP, or its spell level is at least half the individual's level.

This would give an incentive for higher level characters to purchase higher level healing potions/magic, and utilize things to improve the benefit of individual spells. But would also allow the same high level characters to still use the weaker magic in some circumstances where they had not taken that much damage and just need a small boost to go forward (where using a more powerful magic would almost assuredly end up wasting magic).

So when you take fresh damage, it always reduces your current HP. Anytime you use a weaker healing magic, you add the result to current HP but it remains capped at the prior healed HP, unless it gets them all the way to their MaxHP, at which case current, healed are both set to MaxHP.

Alternately this could only apply to healing by die... and all individual HP healing or bonuses added to die rolls might be come a minimum value which the healed HP value is boosted by after the roll. (meaning multiple uses of minor healing on a badly injured high level individual would economically become less viable applications)

If someone makes a horrible roll for healing, and they know they have additional healing available. They can choose not to apply the healing effect of the dice thrown, and attempt a second healing application, and apply the new die result instead if it is better. The loose the other die roll however.

Revisiting my other general thoughts on consumables and resonance, I think I understand something I hadn't seen that is probably part of the motivation.

-- Limiting a cart load of wands and scrolls --
The idea that brought me to the understanding was imagining a first level wizard, with a cart full of scrolls, I can see the argument that perhaps they should not be able to cast a hundred first level (or higher spells) over the next hour, pulling scrolls from the cart and casting. It is a perhaps extreme example, but I acknowledge that a system that stops that seems reasonable.

I'm less certain that the same wizard shouldn't be able to potentially utilize a pair or a few more magical wands to actually cast that same number of spells in that hour span, however. I would require however, that such wands were consumables would would not recharge. I'm willing to admit maybe 100 would still be excessive, bit it gives me a point of comparison. As such, in any case, I'm willing to say that such use should/could probably be at least as taxing as using a pair of scrolls, and potentially more taxing, but I'm not completely certain exactly how much.

-- Examining if potions should/could be similarly limited --
Potions are harder for me to see consuming requiring a resonance to work on someone. Here is a thought however, taken in part from some of the old Grit mechanics. A potion might expect you having resonance left, or its impact is, immediately minimized. If you have at least one Resonance left, it doesn't consume the Resonance, but the effect occurs. If you don't have any resonance left you end up either putting up with a minimized effect (or if they have the emergency roll for Resonance you would make that roll to hope to be able to 'charge' it, a success allowing it to kick off as normal, the temp resonance getting consumed. A failure causing you to get a minimum effect. Potentially you might be allowed to delay the 'impact' of the potion and attempt resonance re-rolls until a success or critical failure which would cause the effect to trigger as normal finally, or manifest in its minimum form.) Perhaps if the above healing stacking rule was implemented, perhaps burning a resonance would allow one to ignore the stacking rule and simply allow the healing to apply to current HP and if current exceeds the healed it would reset it to the new current.

Something to limit people from abusing the lack of resonance consumption from most portions might include the fact that while one potion is creating an effect, you can't consume another potion for an additional effect. And mixing might cause other problems if they try. Potions with immediate effects you could consider potentially make a general rule they still are said to be in effect for a minute keeping someone from drinking another potion for 10 rounds. However, that might affect some literature in the past if someone was seen drinking more than one potion in a quick combat. Although someone like an alchemist might have an ability to avoid such a limitation.

-- Resonance and Daily use Wondrous Items --
I'd encourage the investment of a RP to most wondrous items with daily applications, I think most such investments should give you the multiple uses of that item, rather than paying an RP for each use. I could see needing to pay for some of the more powerful uses, especially if used by a user of say a lower level threshold, or not meeting another sort of prerequisite. Maybe I'm guilty of being one of those people who likes having a variety of weak daily magical items, but resonance might actually give a person an extra economic incentive to buy a 3x a day item, rather than a couple or more 1x a day items. Otherwise, since different items/effect will likely be very unequal, I find it harder to imagine being unable to use an item because I'm too... spread thin with items... than for me to have used one use of a three use a day item and two uses of a two use a day item, and another use of a two use a day item, and find that I can't activate either of the daily use items I've been able to activate already today because of that. Otherwise, it does give the bigger impression I'm 'powering' the item and running out of power, not that I'm triggering the item.

Again, trying to think things through, I can't help but feel it would be reasonable for a first level cleric or mage should be able to cast from at least a couple scrolls in an evening without consuming his last resonance, allowing him to drink a potion in an emergency. That would be at least three, but inclined towards a little more to allow them to have a trinket perhaps.

-- Revisiting Wands and Resonance--
Thoughts going back to wands, if they keep charges, and we like the idea of making more powerful heals seem more affordable/efficient to higher level characters, what if after a wand uses up 3 charges in specified time period, such as a day, each subsequent use burns an additional charge. So your first three castings in a day cost you normal, the next three basically end up being twice as expensive, and then potentially the next three become three times as expensive, and so on. That would mean that 16 castings in a single day could consume 50 charges meaning over three times cost might be quickly justifiable if you know you'll need large batches of the spells. (of course that could also be worked around by buying multiple healing wands, but that could consume extra resonance) If you like the idea but want cost to scale up quicker, you can make charge cost = time that day -2 (min 1) and you'd fully deplete a 50 charge wand in 12 uses in one day. (actually 57 charges). If wands gave you the ability to spontaneously cast those spells using your slots, it would make the charges tend to be for emergency use.

Ohh... one other thing...
-- More than one tier of magical writing/scrolls --
Why not have two qualities of scrolls? Use scrolls, which some of the spell has in effect already been cast, and the last part of the spell remains. It might use resonance to cast, and it might not be enough to learn a spell... as only the last... or relevant triggering portion of the magic is still in written form. This is effectively the cheapest written form of the spell... it might only require one page as some is already woven magically into the medium... but it relies on the caster to complete it with their own skill and resonance. Next most expensive, is a spell written into a spell book. It takes up more pages, and the writing is of course somewhat magical, but the spell book itself doesn't normally allow you to cast the spell directly from it in an emergency with magical already stored up. Third is an Archival scroll. More expensive than either a scroll, or a permanent spellbook, an archival scroll is similar to the best of both the scroll, and the spell book. An archive scroll can be cast like a scroll, but may not require resonance to cast, as it has the energy for the casting woven into its writing. However, an archival scroll is also a complete record of the spell. As such, the writer of the scroll can use the scroll itself to re-memorize a spell just like a spellbook. (this might also apply for an apprentice to the writer of the scroll for a spell who already learned this spell from that master) Re-memorizing a known spell like this does not consume the scroll. However, if someone uses the scroll to attempt to learn (and copy) the spell, it will consume the scroll in the process. If a wizard already knows the spell, but may have learned it from a different master, they don't need to roll to learn a spell, but that spell would still vanish from the archival scroll, as they copy it to their book.

Anyway, this would help make scrolls cheaper, without making 'learning' a spell nearly as easy a simply paying for a cheap consumable scroll, and then copying it to their spellbook. Your base-line consumable scroll wouldn't be enough to give a wizard enough to suddenly know how to cast the spell. However, archival scrolls could be excellent emergency spell books, which would also serve as emergency resource for a wizard whom might have depleted their resonance. This means that adventurers can fine such archival scrolls in treasure on such mages, or in vaults where one was hidden away. Perhaps getting a regular scroll might be an excellent first step towards researching an otherwise hidden/unknown spell, but it isn't handing over the secret. This means that some spells can actually really effectively be guild secrets in certain areas, even if a few random mages might have some scrolls, they either purchased or stole from the guild, or maybe even researched it in secret, making people think they are using purchased scrolls, but now are their own source. [if they were found out, the guild might of course come after them, or force them to join and share] There might even be an option for an even stronger type of archival spell, where it is actually bound into a strong book, allowing you to cast from the book, but such a casting (or copying from) would not remove the writing from the book, leaving the spell still written to it. Potentially allowing the powerful mage to be able to preform an additional ritual in the future to re-bond magic to the inscriptions to allow the spell to be cast in an emergency from their book.

-- An often forgotten magical item/source that may/should require resonance --
A magical item that many magic users are already used to having, but you may not be thinking about.

A spell book may consume a resonance as part of the wizards study and meditation in the morning. The meditation of a priest to gather their spells may also consume a resonance. This may cause someone who gets powers from multiple magical sources will be spread a little thinner, but would have greater variety due to it, which would likely make sense. [but this means you need to leave enough resonance from the start so a mage/priest could attune themselves to their spellbook or patron. Attempting to learn a spell from an archival scroll or other caster's spellbook would consume a resonance as they try to attune themselves to it, making it more likely to be done in downtime, but could be done in a dungeon if they had left resources for it.

Excaliburproxy wrote:

I can certainly see a case being made for all characters getting access to free or close to free out of combat healing and/or access to a wide variety of essentially at will out of combat tricks and resources. Honestly, having a game like that might be pretty fun too and I think that line of thought was a major thrust in the design of 4e, actually. Still, I would prefer the longer term benefit/cost management paradigm to the "only fights matter" paradigm or the "each encounter is its own thing with a separate set of resources" paradigm.

I am constantly bringing this up, but I would like to stress that in PF1e and PF2e all loot is firmly within the purview of the GM. That's how it always has been. That's not a house rule, either, that's just how the game works.

That's why making a system that's permissive with what loot can do is good because GMs are the natural throttle for what loot the players have access to.

If you want to play in a game without cheap out of combat healing and no bag of tricks, the GM can distribute or not distribute wands and scrolls as they see fit.

For those who are okay with cheap wand healing and such, Resonance rules are much harder to get around and likely requires house rules.

I understand that point of view. Wouldn't a more expedient solution be to have a game that has modular components that add things like "free out of combat healing" (such a free healing from healing surges) rather than trying to have the GM adjudicate those extra rules through gear? I will also note that crafting rules in both editions move part of that power towards the players under rules as written.

I will note that an easy house rules for easy out of combat healing is just to let anyone spend their resonance to heal 1d8+1d8/2 levels.

dragonhunterq wrote:

edduardco wrote:

WatersLethe wrote:

Excaliburproxy wrote:

I can certainly see a case being made for all characters getting access to free or close to free out of combat healing and/or access to a wide variety of essentially at will out of combat tricks and resources. Honestly, having a game like that might be pretty fun too and I think that line of thought was a major thrust in the design of 4e, actually. Still, I would prefer the longer term benefit/cost management paradigm to the "only fights matter" paradigm or the "each encounter is its own thing with a separate set of resources" paradigm.

I am constantly bringing this up, but I would like to stress that in PF1e and PF2e all loot is firmly within the purview of the GM. That's how it always has been. That's not a house rule, either, that's just how the game works.

That's why making a system that's permissive with what loot can do is good because GMs are the natural throttle for what loot the players have access to.

If you want to play in a game without cheap out of combat healing and no bag of tricks, the GM can distribute or not distribute wands and scrolls as they see fit.

For those who are okay with cheap wand healing and such, Resonance rules are much harder to get around and likely requires house rules.

I agree with you, but GM throttling items is not an option for PFS, and looks like PF2 is being engineered to support PFS better.

Really? in what way? - I'm not seeing that, especially with resonance. Resonance appears quite an issue for PFS so far.

Just I supposition from my part really. That Paizo doesn't like how people use low level items, so Resonance will encourage them to use high level items.

Rather: the current system encourages people to use low level items rather than higher level items. It's not just not how people "like" to use them. It is a behavior that arose from how the game's economy was constructed and is just players finding paths of least resistance.

Rather: the current system encourages people to use low level items rather than higher level items. It's not just not how people "like" to use them. It is a behavior that arose from how the game's economy was constructed and is just players finding paths of least resistance.

If that was the only issue it would not had served the same purpose design high level items more appealing with appropriate cost?

I just don't understand why people think magical healing should be cheap, free, or easy.

Because if it isn't you can't create scenarios where people are on a clear timer, without running into the danger that you will lose player characters or that they will just have to turn back and the timer will run out (hostage gets killed, the magic bomb goes off, the portal to the abyss gets opened, etc).

I prefer it very much to throw challenging encounters at my party so that the danger for them is in every encounter they have. I don't get the complaint some people make that cheap healing makes every encounter have to be challenging enough so that the party is seriously threatened. Why is that a problem?

Lots of filler encounters just eat time, which is a real life currency, especially when you get older and everybody has full time jobs and families. We are down to about three hour sessions every week now, because we can only start after office hours and people want to get home soon enough to get a decent night of sleep before their next day at work.

Excaliburproxy wrote:

Rather: the current system encourages people to use low level items rather than higher level items. It's not just not how people "like" to use them. It is a behavior that arose from how the game's economy was constructed and is just players finding paths of least resistance.

If that was the only issue it would not had served the same purpose design high level items more appealing with appropriate cost?

Like: the +4 sword gives a +16 to attack (having the bonus from items scale quadraticly along with cost)? Then you might end up in the corner case where parties could optimize by forgoing all consumables and putting all their resources into one character. Having said that, how worthless would low level consumables need to be that 1 high level items is worth literally hundreds of low level consumables?

I am telling you: You either have to restrict item usage by an amount or by level. Otherwise, some kind of shenanigans start happening from a balance perspective.

Themetricsystem wrote:

I just don't understand why people think magical healing should be cheap, free, or easy.

Because if it isn't you can't create scenarios where people are on a clear timer, without running into the danger that you will lose player characters or that they will just have to turn back and the timer will run out (hostage gets killed, the magic bomb goes off, the portal to the abyss gets opened, etc).

I prefer it very much to throw challenging encounters at my party so that the danger for them is in every encounter they have. I don't get the complaint some people make that cheap healing makes every encounter have to be challenging enough so that the party is seriously threatened. Why is that a problem?

Lots of filler encounters just eat time, which is a real life currency, especially when you get older and everybody has full time jobs and families. We are down to about three hour sessions every week now, because we can only start after office hours and people want to get home soon enough to get a decent night of sleep before their next day at work.

If that is the game you want then the whole game should be balanced around resources that are predominantly per-encounter rather than resources that are predominantly per-day.

It is totally fine for that to be a game, but it is a very different game than I have been playing for years.

I’m pretty sure armor is invested, DMW.

Based on? I don't think we have any definitive evidence one way or the other, but I have vague memory of at least one designer comment that seemed to imply it wasn't. I remember it because I was surprised at the idea at the time.

I'm not positive of this by any means, but I certainly wouldn't assume that armor was invested.

Because I don't want to go through two rooms of a dungeon and then have to return to town to heal naturally for 4 days.

Because I don't want to be in a situation where one player is expected to be 'the healer' when no-one at the table wants to.

What in the world makes you think Resonance results in either of these? Wands still exist, and can be readily used to keep HP up (actually, they can do so more efficiently than PF1 Wands since on charge can restore HP to the whole party). You just need to buy ones that are remotely on-level rather than sticking to CLW ones.

This tactic has been made more monetarily expensive, not removed or made invalid.

MerlinCross wrote:

Themetricsystem wrote:

I really get the feeling like most of these people complaining about having to pay resonance for Potions and Consumables simply DONT understand that it is problematic for game balance and likely assume that they should have the opportunity to fully buff up before every battle, activate every Magic Item, and use every x/Day Use Abilities before even rolling initiative. The same people who throw a fit if they cant heal up 100% after every fight, they assume if they cant steam through the encounters effortlessly then something is wrong with the math. If your PCs can just consume endless magic buffs and healing then there is no challenge.

Assuming that Potions and Consumables shouldn't count towards your Characters APL calculation (Part and parcel of the PC Statistics just like any Class Ability or Racial Bonus) is so backwards it doesn't make sense. If they remove the Resonance System from these type of items for the Core Rules, I would be shocked if they didn't triple the cost and and Crafting Time required.

These kind of items bloat the APL of the Party WAYYY in excess of the game intent, Resonance is a GREAT way to ensure PCs aren't abusing every-single-stackable-effect possible. In many ways these kinds of effects have MUCH greater impact on the Combat that ANY other single RP Invested Item such as a +3 Warhammer or even that Cloak of Elvenkind EVER would.

Those kinds of items are also limited in use. So if you mistime the potion use, you have wasted your potion.

And if you're PCs CAN consume endless magic buffs and healing there IS something wrong. Where the heck are they getting the GOLD for that? Especially if they go the Potion route as that's a money sink it seems to be.

You don't want them getting all those consumables? Close up the shops, reward less gold, hike the price, make them less effective, you have so many different ways of fixing it.

But no, if you want to put words in peoples mouths fine.

I get the

Just because you can houserule a problem doesn't mean it shouldn't be fixed.

That's like saying "because there are feat tax houserules we should leave every problematic feat tax around".

Paizo had a lot of time to double back and fix things. A lot of things. Some they did, others made worse probably depending on who you ask, and others they never got around to.

You are, however, not required to leave it in said broken condition. You can fix it through house rules and bans.

Guess what, stuff will still cause issues in PF2. Just what, who knows the rules and numbers aren't set yet. Will Paizo fix them? Again, who knows. But if there are issues in the rules, when fully printed up, I'm not legally bound to play with those issues, as is, at my table.

That's like saying "Leadership is in the game, you have to allow me to use it." No. No I don't. It's my table. And Leadership leads to these issues so that's why I'm banning it. Summoning leads to issues, here's my personal take on how to do it. X causes Y issues, this is why I changed it or banned it.

CLW wands cause all these issues, okay fine. Paizo didn't fix it in PF1. You however, are not FORCED to sit there, shrug and say "Nothing we can do about it." Likewise if Resonance is a problem in your game, if the new Archetypes are a problem, if ANYTHING in PF2 rules are a problem, you don't have to just shrug and play by those rules at EVERY table. Including your own, that you are running, in a made up world from Paizo, with new races you wrote up and etc etc etc.

The ONLY explanation I can walk away with, for people that complain about the CLW wands but never fixed them, is that they are the same people using them enmass in the first place. You are complaining that you are using something you don't like for no reason besides you just can't help it.

What makes CLW wands such a sacred cow, More so than even PALADINS it seems, that made no one wanted to try fixing them for PF1? I cannot be the only person that tried fixing the problem at their table in ways that wasn't just chucking higher level CR monsters at the party. I know I said I'm done before but this just circular logic I'm coming to just keeps making me have to comment on it!

"I hate having to do X, but it seems there's no way to fix X so I'll keep using and complaining about it."

The ONLY issue I can see is in PFS play. But I would think honestly think, that after seeing how many people tend to pick it up and abuse it, the people in charge of the rules would look into trying to tone it down. Or Paizo would eventually double back to Wands.

I don't get the complaint some people make that cheap healing makes every encounter have to be challenging enough so that the party is seriously threatened. Why is that a problem?

From my perspective as a GM and a player, it makes tension very difficult to create and maintain. No middle ground exists between the party being fully stocked, and dead. Rocket tag encounters aren't fun from either side.

Tension can gradually build when you remove options to empty wands of clw on everyone to heal them back to full. The threat level of simple monsters, traps, and other encounters is dynamic and ever increasing when you don't have the always-available option to restore everyone back to full health. Resting to recover becomes a difficult option to consider, especially when the party is on the clock. Sure, there are spells, but not once have I ever seen or been in a party that has run out of spell slots in the typical adventuring day.

As a player I want to experience tension, and as a GM I want to create it organically through the expression of the narratives and systems that support it -- otherwise, what is the point of playing? I personally think that things like wands of clw are boring choices because there is no choice. You get one because it's an unspoken rule that you need one because that's what the system has expressed, just like "the big six."

I'm excited about any features that more limit the powers of the players -- and that's from my perspective of playing 99% of the time. (I've only GMed a handful of sessions, compared to playing in way way more.) I welcome any system changes that make tension in this game move away from "perfect health or dead" to a more nuanced feeling where difficult choices have to be made instead of choosing how many wands of cure light wounds we're bringing into this adventure.

If that is the game you want then the whole game should be balanced around resources that are predominantly per-encounter rather than resources that are predominantly per-day.

It is totally fine for that to be a game, but it is a very different game than I have been playing for years.

No, because you are still limited by spells per day and powers per day and all that good stuff. But healing should not be the deciding factor on that, because of the problem that every new encounter could have that heavy hitting guy who crits you from 100% to 20% of your HP... or from 50% to -30% if you go into it wounded, because reasons, Die Hard is how I want to play, blablabla.

And since I've been playing officals adventure paths for the last ten years, I have to assume that the game you've been playing is very different from the official baseline.

edduardco wrote:

Excaliburproxy wrote:

Rather: the current system encourages people to use low level items rather than higher level items. It's not just not how people "like" to use them. It is a behavior that arose from how the game's economy was constructed and is just players finding paths of least resistance.

If that was the only issue it would not had served the same purpose design high level items more appealing with appropriate cost?

Like: the +4 sword gives a +16 to attack (having the bonus from items scale quadraticly along with cost)? Then you might end up in the corner case where parties could optimize by forgoing all consumables and putting all their resources into one character. Having said that, how worthless would low level consumables need to be that 1 high level items is worth literally hundreds of low level consumables?

I am telling you: You either have to restrict item usage by an amount or by level. Otherwise, some kind of shenanigans start happening from a balance perspective.

I raised the same concern that with Resonance pooling resources looked like a good tactic, but according with other posters the quadratic costs of magic items prevented that from being viable.

Items usage is restricted by gold.

Themetricsystem wrote:

I just don't understand why people think magical healing should be cheap, free, or easy.

Because if it isn't you can't create scenarios where people are on a clear timer, without running into the danger that you will lose player characters or that they will just have to turn back and the timer will run out (hostage gets killed, the magic bomb goes off, the portal to the abyss gets opened, etc).

I prefer it very much to throw challenging encounters at my party so that the danger for them is in every encounter they have. I don't get the complaint some people make that cheap healing makes every encounter have to be challenging enough so that the party is seriously threatened. Why is that a problem?

Lots of filler encounters just eat time, which is a real life currency, especially when you get older and everybody has full time jobs and families. We are down to about three hour sessions every week now, because we can only start after office hours and people want to get home soon enough to get a decent night of sleep before their next day at work.

That's how we've been playing it as well, though with a bit more play time. Encounters that offer little more than attrition and an attempt to juke the players out of resources tend to be narrated through to save time. If the result is a foregone conclusion, we don't need dice for it. The always important type of encounter design strongly encourages diplomacy as well since the players aren't expecting to survive every fight they can pick.

Designing these attrition encounter chains also leaves the possibility that the players come at the encounters from an unintended direction and nullify the expected attrition. It's fine for a video game where you need to fight through the wizard tower but it's pretty useless in an open game with creative players who may very well just climb up the side of it or knock it down.

My reservations about this system probably come mostly from the fact that the problems they're trying to solve just don't happen at my table with any of our DMs. I assume this is another Pathfinder Society fix unless they're really just trying to make a system for a video game.

Is there some reason to believe that Resonance/item costs are built on the assumption that "starting every encounter at full health is bad" vs "using a bunch of actions and crappy wands that we go through like candy canes to start every encounter at full health is obnoxious and immersion-breaking"?

magnuskn wrote:

I don't get the complaint some people make that cheap healing makes every encounter have to be challenging enough so that the party is seriously threatened. Why is that a problem?

From my perspective as a GM and a player, it makes tension very difficult to create and maintain. No middle ground exists between the party being fully stocked, and dead. Rocket tag encounters aren't fun from either side.

But, dude, rocket tag exists at higher levels anyway. You can only make it worse by going into the next combat with half your HP.

There are just too many monsters (or NPC opponents) who can take a PC out with a good crit or spell and making it easier for them results in dead player characters. Which is almost never a good time for the affected player and can bring a session to a screeching halt. I'm not saying to GM's "never kill a PC", but it should be more of an accident than a regularity.

Is there some reason to believe that Resonance/item costs are built on the assumption that "starting every encounter at full health is bad" vs "using a bunch of actions and crappy wands that we go through like candy canes to start every encounter at full health is obnoxious and immersion-breaking"?

Efficiency in life or death situations breaks immersion?

Shisumo wrote:

Is there some reason to believe that Resonance/item costs are built on the assumption that "starting every encounter at full health is bad" vs "using a bunch of actions and crappy wands that we go through like candy canes to start every encounter at full health is obnoxious and immersion-breaking"?

Efficiency in life or death situations breaks immersion?

If I understood and interpreted Erik's rather epic rant on the topic correctly, the fact that this particular healing method is the most efficient is, yes. Because it's not "we heal to full," it's "we determine how many times we want to roll 1d8+1 until we've reached full health," and it breaks the players' immersion in the tension of the scene.

Excaliburproxy wrote:

Rather: the current system encourages people to use low level items rather than higher level items. It's not just not how people "like" to use them. It is a behavior that arose from how the game's economy was constructed and is just players finding paths of least resistance.

If that was the only issue it would not had served the same purpose design high level items more appealing with appropriate cost?

And we have those in pf1, you see wizards use metamagic rods, fighters with swords that have +5 bonuses and so on.

The issue is the way consumable items were priced. Consumables tended to have such a high price that you were practically forced to use permanent items due to costs (metamagic gem vs rod). And since the higher level effects were often attached to permanent items (ring of FoM), but typically lower level spells were neglected when it came to permanent items. And higher leveled versions of weaker spells tended to not be worth the money they cost (csw over clw) as a consumable.

There was also the issue with consumables having great disparity in prices amongst themselves (750 for a 50 charge clw wand vs 2500 for 50 clw potions). This is despite the great restriction on potable spells, and while yes you didn't need to umd a potion unlike a wand, you would need to fail 2/3rds of your UMD checks with each wand, for a potion to be even remotely close to competition in price. (Even scrolls were cheaper than potions)

And so people used the cheap consumables because level appropriate ones were a significant portion of wbl (a CL 20 spell level 1 potion was .1% wbl for a level 1 effect.). Also increasing the caster level of items tended not to be worth it as it was cheaper to use 2 minimum caster level items over 1 with an increased caster level (2.7gp per HP at cl 1 vs 4.6 at cl 2 for a clw wand).

There are a few ways to combat it, but one is simply don't make wands prevalent. Or, better yet, ask your players not to do this. Taadaa~

kpulv wrote:

magnuskn wrote:

I don't get the complaint some people make that cheap healing makes every encounter have to be challenging enough so that the party is seriously threatened. Why is that a problem?

From my perspective as a GM and a player, it makes tension very difficult to create and maintain. No middle ground exists between the party being fully stocked, and dead. Rocket tag encounters aren't fun from either side.

But, dude, rocket tag exists at higher levels anyway. You can only make it worse by going into the next combat with half your HP.

There are just too many monsters (or NPC opponents) who can take a PC out with a good crit or spell and making it easier for them results in dead player characters. Which is almost never a good time for the affected player and can bring a session to a screeching halt. I'm not saying to GM's "never kill a PC", but it should be more of an accident than a regularity.

My point is that the rest of the system is effected heavily by the expectation that players go into every encounter at maximum health, thereby making higher level encounters rocket tag. I think the way that magical healing works right now is *why* higher level encounters are like this. They wouldn't have to be designed in such a way if the baseline system didn't allow for near infinite amounts of healing.

The effects of this core idea are felt throughout the entire system. Monsters and NPC opponents wouldn't need abilities that take out a PC in a single blow if the expectation wasn't that the party was walking into an encounter fully stocked because obviously they brought a cleric or a handful of clw wands.

I think we agree here that this isn't fun, but we have sort of a chicken and egg dilemma. The game began in a state where magical healing is always available, so for encounters to be challenging they have to include things that essentially one shot players. What I'm trying to say is that if healing was harder to come by, monsters and encounters wouldn't need abilities that one shot everyone in order to create tension. If the Playtest/2e can create a system that removes easy healing options, then I think it could dial back rocket tag problems significantly.

edduardco wrote:

Excaliburproxy wrote:

Rather: the current system encourages people to use low level items rather than higher level items. It's not just not how people "like" to use them. It is a behavior that arose from how the game's economy was constructed and is just players finding paths of least resistance.

If that was the only issue it would not had served the same purpose design high level items more appealing with appropriate cost?

And we have those in pf1, you see wizards use metamagic rods, fighters with swords that have +5 bonuses and so on.

The issue is the way consumable items were priced. Consumables tended to have such a high price that you were practically forced to use permanent items due to costs (metamagic gem vs rod). And since the higher level effects were often attached to permanent items (ring of FoM), but typically lower level spells were neglected when it came to permanent items. And higher leveled versions of weaker spells tended to not be worth the money they cost (csw over clw) as a consumable.

There was also the issue with consumables having great disparity in prices amongst themselves (750 for a 50 charge clw wand vs 2500 for 50 clw potions). This is despite the great restriction on potable spells, and while yes you didn't need to umd a potion unlike a wand, you would need to fail 2/3rds of your UMD checks with each wand, for a potion to be even remotely close to competition in price. (Even scrolls were cheaper than potions)

And so people used the cheap consumables because level appropriate ones were a significant portion of wbl (a CL 20 spell level 1 potion was .1% wbl for a level 1 effect.). Also increasing the caster level of items tended not to be worth it as it was cheaper to use 2 minimum caster level items over 1 with an increased caster level (2.7gp per HP at cl 1 vs 4.6 at cl 2 for a clw wand).

So instead of fixing pricing for consumables, we got Resonance in order to disencourage the use of cheap items, is that right?

KingOfAnything wrote:

I’m pretty sure armor is invested, DMW.

Based on? I don't think we have any definitive evidence one way or the other, but I have vague memory of at least one designer comment that seemed to imply it wasn't. I remember it because I was surprised at the idea at the time.

I'm not positive of this by any means, but I certainly wouldn't assume that armor was invested.

My own vague memories of Mark's voice. I just looked through a bunch of posts and couldn't find anything one way or the other. Do you remember the context of the comment at all?

If not, I'm pretty sure it will be mentioned in tomorrows blog one way or the other.

Excaliburproxy wrote:

If that is the game you want then the whole game should be balanced around resources that are predominantly per-encounter rather than resources that are predominantly per-day.

It is totally fine for that to be a game, but it is a very different game than I have been playing for years.

No, because you are still limited by spells per day and powers per day and all that good stuff. But healing should not be the deciding factor on that, because of the problem that every new encounter could have that heavy hitting guy who crits you from 100% to 20% of your HP... or from 50% to -30% if you go into it wounded, because reasons, Die Hard is how I want to play, blablabla.

And since I've been playing officals adventure paths for the last ten years, I have to assume that the game you've been playing is very different from the official baseline.

I do not understand how what you are saying is a counter point to my proposition.

If you want every encounter to be potentially deadly and challenging rather than occasionally being a resource puzzle then that game should be designed around short rests and resource management within the encounter (ala the warlock in 5e DnD) to make that happen. Most things should be encounter driven with a small handful of dailies to get you out of trouble when things go pair shaped. If things go pair shaped too many times in one day then it is probs a party wipe.

Also, if you want to look at the sort of games that I am describing then you should listen to the glass cannon podcast playtest. That podcast was almost all low threat encounters that ate through healing and other daily resources and then a high threat encounter at the end.

My point is that the rest of the system is effected heavily by the expectation that players go into every encounter at maximum health, thereby making higher level encounters rocket tag. I think the way that magical healing works right now is *why* higher level encounters are like this. They wouldn't have to be designed in such a way if the baseline system didn't allow for near infinite amounts of healing.

The effects of this core idea are felt throughout the entire system. Monsters and NPC opponents wouldn't need abilities that take out a PC in a single blow if the expectation wasn't that the party was walking into an encounter fully stocked because obviously they brought a cleric or a handful of clw wands.

I think we agree here that this isn't fun, but we have sort of a chicken and egg dilemma. The game began in a state where magical healing is always available, so for encounters to be challenging they have to include things that essentially one shot players. What I'm trying to say is that if healing was harder to...

It's an interesting idea and that falls back on the paradigm of "Let's wait until the playtest comes out and then we'll see". :)

Man, the first day we get the PDF documents (since I'm in Germany I'll probably get my books two weeks later at the very least...) there will be a lot of reading and math'ing and "what does it mean?"'ing. ^^

There are a few ways to combat it, but one is simply don't make wands prevalent. Or, better yet, ask your players not to do this. Taadaa~

Asking your players to be actively inefficient isn't a particularly successful strategy in my experience, and using GM fiat to force inefficiency on them causes active resentment. Redesigning the economy from the ground up so the efficiency curve actually encourages the kind of play you want to see is very much the better choice.

I do not understand how what you are saying is a counter point to my proposition.

If you want every encounter to be potentially deadly and challenging rather than occasionally being a resource puzzle then that game should be designed around short rests and resource management within the encounter (ala the warlock in 5e DnD) to make that happen. Most things should be encounter driven with a small handful of dailies to get you out of trouble when things go pair shaped. If things go pair shaped too many times in one day then it is probs a party wipe.

That is your interpretation, which I say is wrong. There are still daily resources to consider and how many of them you want to spend per encounter. At some point those resources are going to run out, but HP should be the last consideration among those, because of how opponents at high levels work. The deadliness of encounters increases exponentially the higher your level gets. And I am talking from the baseline of the game is it works right now and how official Paizo adventure paths have been constructed throughout the last decade.

Also, if you want to look at the sort of games that I am describing then you should listen to the glass cannon podcast playtest. That podcast was almost all low threat encounters that ate through healing and other daily resources and then a high threat encounter at the end.

I assume those were all at the lower levels. Of course those encounters are less deadly, since HP pools are also still low and dead characters are way harder to get back to life than at the later levels.

So you would say that the "exploits" that myself and others have discussed above (CLW spam/"Batman wizarding") are features of the old wealth system sans RP rather than a glitch in those systems?

I do not think the christmas tree is the only problem being solved by RP. I don't even know if it is the main one.

Unintended features (hence why they're trying to redo those rules), but yes.

However, I don't mind that players want to have a multitude of magic items, or that they want CLW wand spam. What I do mind are systems that fundamentally change what my players want to a detriment, which is what the current form of Resonance does.

CLW wand spam was one of the big reasons why Resonance became a thing, because CLW wand spam wasn't really favored by the developers (there have been podcasts where they outright stated they disliked it), so they wanted to change it. The Batman Wizard is another example of something they wanted to change, among other things, and they decided to try and lump it all together into a "one-size-fits-all" solution: Resonance.

And that's a bad thing to have. Resonance might be fitting for one or two problems, but the foundation for each of those problems are vastly different from each other. CLW wands were only a thing because they're the cheapest form of reliable out-of-combat healing, due to exorbitant price scaling on magic items of higher levels being generalized and imbalanced. Batman Wizards are a thing because they are one of the most SAD classes in the game (in all senses of the word) and don't need to invest their money across as much items (which means they could likewise invest in more CLW wands than Fighters could or would, ironically enough). The Christmas Tree effect, while similar to the Batman Wizard, is more generalized and likewise falls more under a playstyle than a mechanic; some players like having numerous flashy items, others not so much, but it's by no means a mechanical issue (which requires a mechanical solution). Each of these issues are vastly different, and as such, should be handled separately.

But as I said before, I don't think Resonance is the answer to all (or even some) of these "problems." Paizo has more avenues to explore, and I would rather they do that (such as by completely revising wand rules so that CLW wands aren't necessarily that great in comparison, but spells of other kinds are more useful) than try and tack on a "cureall" that doesn't do too great at its purpose. (It's actually largely the reason why spells and such in PF1 were so imbalanced from each other.)

magnuskn wrote:

Excaliburproxy wrote:

If that is the game you want then the whole game should be balanced around resources that are predominantly per-encounter rather than resources that are predominantly per-day.

It is totally fine for that to be a game, but it is a very different game than I have been playing for years.

No, because you are still limited by spells per day and powers per day and all that good stuff. But healing should not be the deciding factor on that, because of the problem that every new encounter could have that heavy hitting guy who crits you from 100% to 20% of your HP... or from 50% to -30% if you go into it wounded, because reasons, Die Hard is how I want to play, blablabla.

And since I've been playing officals adventure paths for the last ten years, I have to assume that the game you've been playing is very different from the official baseline.

I do not understand how what you are saying is a counter point to my proposition.

If you want every encounter to be potentially deadly and challenging rather than occasionally being a resource puzzle then that game should be designed around short rests and resource management within the encounter (ala the warlock in 5e DnD) to make that happen. Most things should be encounter driven with a small handful of dailies to get you out of trouble when things go pair shaped. If things go pair shaped too many times in one day then it is probs a party wipe.

Also, if you want to look at the sort of games that I am describing then you should listen to the glass cannon podcast playtest. That podcast was almost all low threat encounters that ate through healing and other daily resources and then a high threat encounter at the end.

I am really lucky to get 10 hours a month to play, and I don't get to house rule, please don't build the game around attrition, it eats that little time on uninteresting grind encounters...

Deadmanwalking wrote:

KingOfAnything wrote:

I’m pretty sure armor is invested, DMW.

Based on? I don't think we have any definitive evidence one way or the other, but I have vague memory of at least one designer comment that seemed to imply it wasn't. I remember it because I was surprised at the idea at the time.

I'm not positive of this by any means, but I certainly wouldn't assume that armor was invested.

My own vague memories of Mark's voice. I just looked through a bunch of posts and couldn't find anything one way or the other. Do you remember the context of the comment at all?

If not, I'm pretty sure it will be mentioned in tomorrows blog one way or the other.

Was it in the early 2e playtest Glass Cannon episodes? Because that's where I first remember getting a real glimpse at resonance, in any capacity.

Excaliburproxy wrote:

magnuskn wrote:

Excaliburproxy wrote:

If that is the game you want then the whole game should be balanced around resources that are predominantly per-encounter rather than resources that are predominantly per-day.

It is totally fine for that to be a game, but it is a very different game than I have been playing for years.

No, because you are still limited by spells per day and powers per day and all that good stuff. But healing should not be the deciding factor on that, because of the problem that every new encounter could have that heavy hitting guy who crits you from 100% to 20% of your HP... or from 50% to -30% if you go into it wounded, because reasons, Die Hard is how I want to play, blablabla.

And since I've been playing officals adventure paths for the last ten years, I have to assume that the game you've been playing is very different from the official baseline.

I do not understand how what you are saying is a counter point to my proposition.

If you want every encounter to be potentially deadly and challenging rather than occasionally being a resource puzzle then that game should be designed around short rests and resource management within the encounter (ala the warlock in 5e DnD) to make that happen. Most things should be encounter driven with a small handful of dailies to get you out of trouble when things go pair shaped. If things go pair shaped too many times in one day then it is probs a party wipe.

Also, if you want to look at the sort of games that I am describing then you should listen to the glass cannon podcast playtest. That podcast was almost all low threat encounters that ate through healing and other daily resources and then a high threat encounter at the end.

I am really lucky to get 10 hours a month to play, and I don't get to house rule, please don't build the game around attrition, it eats that little time on uninteresting grind encounters...

I don't think lower challenge/danger encounters are uninteresting. They give classes with fewer daily resources a chance to shine, they challenge a player to use their resources wisely rather than flail for survival, and they make the truly deadly encounters stand out even more; the game can't always be at 11.

willuwontu wrote:

edduardco wrote:

Excaliburproxy wrote:

Rather: the current system encourages people to use low level items rather than higher level items. It's not just not how people "like" to use them. It is a behavior that arose from how the game's economy was constructed and is just players finding paths of least resistance.

If that was the only issue it would not had served the same purpose design high level items more appealing with appropriate cost?

And we have those in pf1, you see wizards use metamagic rods, fighters with swords that have +5 bonuses and so on.

The issue is the way consumable items were priced. Consumables tended to have such a high price that you were practically forced to use permanent items due to costs (metamagic gem vs rod). And since the higher level effects were often attached to permanent items (ring of FoM), but typically lower level spells were neglected when it came to permanent items. And higher leveled versions of weaker spells tended to not be worth the money they cost (csw over clw) as a consumable.

There was also the issue with consumables having great disparity in prices amongst themselves (750 for a 50 charge clw wand vs 2500 for 50 clw potions). This is despite the great restriction on potable spells, and while yes you didn't need to umd a potion unlike a wand, you would need to fail 2/3rds of your UMD checks with each wand, for a potion to be even remotely close to competition in price. (Even scrolls were cheaper than potions)

And so people used the cheap consumables because level appropriate ones were a significant portion of wbl (a CL 20 spell level 1 potion was .1% wbl for a level 1 effect.). Also increasing the caster level of items tended not to be worth it as it was cheaper to use 2 minimum caster level items over 1 with an increased caster level (2.7gp per HP at cl 1 vs 4.6 at cl 2 for a clw wand).

So instead of fixing pricing for consumables, we got Resonance in order to disencourage the use of cheap...

I believe it was intended to be a mix if both. However from the pricing of those potions they seem to have made it worse. If they used pf1 math for them, simply dropping the CL in the equation, the potions would have been the same price per hp due to the change of how heal is affected by CL.

Edit: wait my math was off, I forgot to factor in that you get spellcasting modifier, so higher level ones would still have been more expensive. Though thus could be fixed by removing it, or adding it more times when heightening.

Redesigning the economy from the ground up so the efficiency curve actually encourages the kind of play you want to see is very much the better choice.

I think that designing the game system so that it doesn't enforce only One True Way of playing is very much the better choice.

In all honesty, Resonance is looking to me more and more like a solution in search of a problem - only nobody can agree on what the problem actually is.

Dragonborn3 wrote:

There are a few ways to combat it, but one is simply don't make wands prevalent. Or, better yet, ask your players not to do this. Taadaa~

Asking your players to be actively inefficient isn't a particularly successful strategy in my experience, and using GM fiat to force inefficiency on them causes active resentment. Redesigning the economy from the ground up so the efficiency curve actually encourages the kind of play you want to see is very much the better choice.

Except that's not what we're getting, is it? We're getting Resonance. And as far as potions(still ludicrously priced) are concerned we've already seen examples of the strongest healing potion being the worst option.

Paizo seems to want to just remove consumables from the game but can't just outright remove them without huge backlash and changing the seeting even more than they already are.

Rob Godfrey wrote:

Excaliburproxy wrote:

magnuskn wrote:

Excaliburproxy wrote:

If that is the game you want then the whole game should be balanced around resources that are predominantly per-encounter rather than resources that are predominantly per-day.

It is totally fine for that to be a game, but it is a very different game than I have been playing for years.

No, because you are still limited by spells per day and powers per day and all that good stuff. But healing should not be the deciding factor on that, because of the problem that every new encounter could have that heavy hitting guy who crits you from 100% to 20% of your HP... or from 50% to -30% if you go into it wounded, because reasons, Die Hard is how I want to play, blablabla.

And since I've been playing officals adventure paths for the last ten years, I have to assume that the game you've been playing is very different from the official baseline.

I do not understand how what you are saying is a counter point to my proposition.

If you want every encounter to be potentially deadly and challenging rather than occasionally being a resource puzzle then that game should be designed around short rests and resource management within the encounter (ala the warlock in 5e DnD) to make that happen. Most things should be encounter driven with a small handful of dailies to get you out of trouble when things go pair shaped. If things go pair shaped too many times in one day then it is probs a party wipe.

Also, if you want to look at the sort of games that I am describing then you should listen to the glass cannon podcast playtest. That podcast was almost all low threat encounters that ate through healing and other daily resources and then a high threat encounter at the end.

I am really lucky to get 10 hours a month to play, and I don't get to house rule, please don't build the game around attrition, it eats that little time on uninteresting grind encounters...

I don't think lower challenge/danger encounters are uninteresting. They give classes with fewer daily resources a chance to shine, they challenge a player to use their resources wisely rather than flail for survival, and they make the truly deadly encounters stand out even more; the game can't always be at 11

Pretty sure it can... :)

I don't think lower challenge/danger encounters are uninteresting. They give classes with fewer daily resources a chance to shine, they challenge a player to use their resources wisely rather than flail for survival, and they make the truly deadly encounters stand out even more; the game can't always be at 11.

I find them an incredible waste of everybody's time and as I have gotten older I have found that I have much less tolerance for them than I had when we all were younger and had less real life commitments.

Excaliburproxy wrote:

I don't think lower challenge/danger encounters are uninteresting. They give classes with fewer daily resources a chance to shine, they challenge a player to use their resources wisely rather than flail for survival, and they make the truly deadly encounters stand out even more; the game can't always be at 11.

I find them an incredible waste of everybody's time and as I have gotten older I have found that I have much less tolerance for them than I had when we all were younger and had less real life commitments.

Why do you find them a waste of time? Is it because you can be back at full health without really spending resources right after?

To me the big thing this is going to do is make HEALERS a prime class again, not being able to use a resource like a wand all the time makes having a healer a big consideration on party composition and weather you can get through dungeon or not. Otherwise it will depend upon how many stat points you get with leveling. If it is like starfinder and getting 4 stats with a +2 then getting your CHA up is no big deal that would give you at level 15 between 3-5 items active (on average). At low levels this is going to suck, but thats the breaks.

IF that is a consequence, then that is a boon. Every party should consider hiring a cleric if they want to do any serious adventuring!

magnuskn wrote:

Excaliburproxy wrote:

I don't think lower challenge/danger encounters are uninteresting. They give classes with fewer daily resources a chance to shine, they challenge a player to use their resources wisely rather than flail for survival, and they make the truly deadly encounters stand out even more; the game can't always be at 11.

I find them an incredible waste of everybody's time and as I have gotten older I have found that I have much less tolerance for them than I had when we all were younger and had less real life commitments.

Why do you find them a waste of time? Is it because you can be back at full health without really spending resources right after?

No, because they leech valuable playing time, i.e. real life time, away from the few hours we have per week. An higher level encounter in Pathfinder which is not challenging at all will still take more or less half an hour to play through, because of set-up, player dithering and rules checks. That's one sixth of a regular weekly session for something which in the end didn't do much at all to change the status of the party and got nobody excited.

Excaliburproxy wrote:

So you would say that the "exploits" that myself and others have discussed above (CLW spam/"Batman wizarding") are features of the old wealth system sans RP rather than a glitch in those systems?

I do not think the christmas tree is the only problem being solved by RP. I don't even know if it is the main one.

Unintended features (hence why they're trying to redo those rules), but yes.

However, I don't mind that players want to have a multitude of magic items, or that they want CLW wand spam. What I do mind are systems that fundamentally change what my players want to a detriment, which is what the current form of Resonance does.

CLW wand spam was one of the big reasons why Resonance became a thing, because CLW wand spam wasn't really favored by the developers (there have been podcasts where they outright stated they disliked it), so they wanted to change it. The Batman Wizard is another example of something they wanted to change, among other things, and they decided to try and lump it all together into a "one-size-fits-all" solution: Resonance.

And that's a bad thing to have. Resonance might be fitting for one or two problems, but the foundation for each of those problems are vastly different from each other. CLW wands were only a thing because they're the cheapest form of reliable out-of-combat healing, due to exorbitant price scaling on magic items of higher levels being generalized and imbalanced. Batman Wizards are a thing because they are one of the most SAD classes in the game (in all senses of the word) and don't need to invest their money across as much items (which means they could likewise invest in more CLW wands than Fighters could or would, ironically enough). The Christmas Tree effect, while similar to the Batman Wizard, is more generalized and likewise falls more under a playstyle than a mechanic; some players like having numerous flashy items, others not so much, but it's by no means a mechanical issue (which requires a mechanical solution). Each...

I don't think you are necessarily wrong want to have super easy out of combat healing, but if that is the core assumption of the game then I think things need to be redesigned around that rather than leaving an "exploit" in the game's wealth system. For clarity, I don't like auto-healing after combat, but I recognize that is a personal preference.

I think the batman wizard and the clw healing issue are essentially the exact same problem and it flows from the gold scaling in the game's economy. Things that are good at barely affordable at level 1 quickly become vanishingly cheap and thus you have a situation where higher level characters have a nearly unlimited supply of low level effects.

You are right that the "christmas tree" is a somewhat separate problem but I think that it is is mostly solved by collapsing cloak of resistance bonuses into armor and all the other AC bonuses into automatic scaling with your level.

Do you not like that resonance makes your constantly effective gear compete with consumables and daily uses in general? I kind of like that. I think deciding between the two is interesting.

I can understand why some people might find managing that pool to be either stressful or tedious, though: hard decisions are stressful and keeping track of a number can be tedious. I still like it, though. I like thinking through that problem and planning ahead.

There are a few ways to combat it, but one is simply don't make wands prevalent. Or, better yet, ask your players not to do this. Taadaa~

I concur and nothing in the system as presented thus far would stop a GM from doing this.

KingOfAnything wrote:

magnuskn wrote:

Excaliburproxy wrote:

I don't think lower challenge/danger encounters are uninteresting. They give classes with fewer daily resources a chance to shine, they challenge a player to use their resources wisely rather than flail for survival, and they make the truly deadly encounters stand out even more; the game can't always be at 11.

I find them an incredible waste of everybody's time and as I have gotten older I have found that I have much less tolerance for them than I had when we all were younger and had less real life commitments.

Why do you find them a waste of time? Is it because you can be back at full health without really spending resources right after?

No, because they leech valuable playing time, i.e. real life time, away from the few hours we have per week. An higher level encounter in Pathfinder which is not challenging at all will still take more or less half an hour to play through, because of set-up, player dithering and rules checks. That's one sixth of a regular weekly session for something which in the end didn't do much at all to change the status of the party and got nobody excited.

You said 'no', but your description reads as 'yes'. It didn't change the status of the party, and nobody got excited. Even an encounter that doesn't pose much challenge should still do some damage. Why does that not count as changing the status of the party?

Deadmanwalking wrote:

KingOfAnything wrote:

I’m pretty sure armor is invested, DMW.

Based on? I don't think we have any definitive evidence one way or the other, but I have vague memory of at least one designer comment that seemed to imply it wasn't. I remember it because I was surprised at the idea at the time.

I'm not positive of this by any means, but I certainly wouldn't assume that armor was invested.

My own vague memories of Mark's voice. I just looked through a bunch of posts and couldn't find anything one way or the other. Do you remember the context of the comment at all?

If not, I'm pretty sure it will be mentioned in tomorrows blog one way or the other.

Maybe something in the Armor/Weapon Blog thread? And yeah, we'll probably find out tomorrow.