Positives and Negatives

Friday, September 6, 2018

Over the past few weeks, I've been spending some time talking to folks on the unofficial 2nd Ed Pathfinder Playtest group on Facebook. Mostly I've been listening to people's thoughts and anecdotes about the playtest, but I've also been answering a few rules questions and conversing about various subjects. Something that's come up a couple of times in that group and in other forums is how we, the folks at Paizo and especially the design team, respond to criticism.

We are no stranger to playtests. Each time we launch a playtest, we get a pile of feedback, both positive and negative. Both are important. Of course, we all love hearing what you like, and in a perfect world we would bask in the glory of your adoration... but we only create worlds of fantasy, we don't live in one. We playtest to hear what you think about the rules and to get your take on what is sound, exciting, and fun. Sometimes you might not care for our initial design. Sometimes you'll spot problems with the initial design. We want you to tell us. No, we need you to tell us. We're making this game not for ourselves, but for all of us to play!

Case in point—let's talk about Resonance Points.

Yeah, that's right. I'm going there.

Let's talk about exactly what design challenges Resonance Points were designed to solve, as that seems to be a point of some confusion.

First, they're meant to address the economy of lower-level consumable magic items as you level up. This is colloquially referred to as the wand of cure light wounds issue in Pathfinder First Edition, but it's more systemic than that. In short, as you go up in level and your ability to purchase and craft (or find) lower-level consumable magic items increases, they actually become the most economical use of resources. When you are limited only by what you have on hand, the amount of bang per buck makes higher-level magic items nearly pointless.

This problem and the Pathfinder First Edition method of item pricing also played havoc with lower-level items with limited uses per day. Designers, by nature, want you to use the items they created in actual play. But adventure designers are often under budgetary constraints to make not the best item for the story, but the one that does the trick while still conforming to the amount of treasure output in the design guides. These factors often created a race to the bottom, design-wise, spawning tons of these little X-per-day buggers that characters could afford, featuring relatively powerful (and always useful) effects that often became more useful as you gained levels. All of this creates a sort of mini-nova during climactic encounters, as characters spend a handful of swift and immediate actions ramping up to their optimal tactics. This is especially true for classes in the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook, since they typically have fewer class-based options competing for the use of swift and immediate actions.

Another problem Resonance Points are trying to address is what is often called the "Christmas Tree" effect of games that impose limits based solely on magic item slots. This goes hand in hand with the cheap consumable (or X-uses-per-day items), as many players rush to fill their slots with items featuring charges or uses per day. While slots still exist in the Pathfinder Playtest, they are the exception rather than the rule, and their primary goal is simply reducing redundancies (like wearing two pairs of boots at the same time and similar nonsense).

Lastly, the Resonance Point system is intended to eliminate or at least severely limit the bookkeeping involved in those X-uses-per-day and X-rounds-per-day items. Instead of tracking a bunch of little point pools, Resonance Points can do the job in most, if not all, cases, with the rest limited to once per day. Admittedly, this aspect was not as thoroughly implemented as it could have been in the playtest rules.

Those are the main issues that the Resonance Point system is trying to confront. Are there problems with the current implementation? You bet. The most glaring one is that it's currently not doing a good job of reducing the number of magic item use-per-day pools at higher levels. We're going to need to pound the system into shape a little more to achieve that goal.

A big issue is that a lot of folks just plain don't like Resonance Points. There are many reasons for that. It's new and different from what people are used to. Other folks don't see the challenges this system is trying to tackle, or they don't see them as problematic. More telling is that even many who do understand the issues have some misgivings, feel that this solution is too artificial, or see it as just plain punitive. We anticipated that. But even with all of the issues, we knew that the current design of Resonance Points would give us valuable information about play patterns and consumable use throughout the playtest, and it has done that in spades already and continues to do so.

Better still, it has given us valuable information on how to solve the issues that the Resonance Point system confronts in a better and more pleasing way for the final game. In short, your use of the current incarnation of Resonance Points throughout the playtest helps us come up with better mechanics to use in Pathfinder Second Edition. You've done a great job in providing us that information already, and as we move into higher-level play, that useful data will become more abundant.

So, in the case of Resonance Points, positivity of play and critical comments have guided us in the right direction. We already have a few options on how to either fix or replace the mechanic, and we are going to keep on kicking ideas around as the playtest data keeps flowing in. So keep on filling out those surveys and sharing your opinions. Getting your thoughts on the game and how it plays, no matter how you express them, is what the Pathfinder Playtest is all about.

Stephen Radney-MacFarland
Senior Designer

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Tags: Pathfinder Playtest
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5 people marked this as a favorite.

Also, no one going to address how making consumables horrifically unreliable is going to affect the game world as a whole? At best, it's a market killer.

Grand Lodge

15 people marked this as a favorite.

It seems to me this is a problem for organized play but in any home game or in the system in general, you can just make the consumable items much harder to find. Though economical from a GP perspective healing a level 10 barbarian twice take a whole wand and game time.

This article seems to be missing key aspects of game design. Does this make the game more fun, more immersive, or more easily adopted. I would say from the tone of the article the answer is no. The most frequent 1st ed complaint about items was that some were mandatory and filled slots that can be used for more fun and interesting items. It is the reason the company wrote the automatic bonus progression, which became a highly utilized rule system.

This is an answer to a problem very few people had. Look at the success of Borderlands and Diablo people love loot and magic items make them fun and helpful but not mandatory that is how you fix the problem.

Hit points are also only one resource that runs out during the day. There are spells, spell point, limited use magic items, and so forth which will fill the role of making the day more dangerous.


4 people marked this as a favorite.

How I would suggest fixing the healing and Resonance system would be to allow healing similar to Starfinder's system along with recovering spent Resonance Points (not invested Resonance Points) on short rests. That would reduce/eliminate the reliance on CLW wands and help get rid of the 15 minute adventure day.


8 people marked this as a favorite.
Grandlounge wrote:

It seems to me this is a problem for organized play but in any home game or in the system in general, you can just make the consumable items much harder to find. Though economical from a GP perspective healing a level 10 barbarian twice take a whole wand and game time.

This article seems to be missing key aspects of game design. Does this make the game more fun, more immersive, or more easily adopted. I would say from the tone of the article the answer is no. The most frequent 1st ed complaint about items was that some were mandatory and filled slots that can be used for more fun and interesting items. It is the reason the company wrote the automatic bonus progression, which became a highly utilized rule system.

This is an answer to a problem very few people had. Look at the success of Borderlands and Diablo people love loot and magic items make them fun and helpful but not mandatory that is how you fix the problem.

Ding ding ding. Resonance sounds completely devised for PFS play.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

One of the things that bothers me about resonance that I've seen few other people talking about is how it pushes sorcerers further into the role of relying on magic item use.

On one hand, sorcerers can use items to improve their versatility, but it is at odds to the trope of a sorcerer as a rugged individualist relying on their own (bloodline) power. Sorcerers are generally not good at item creation (item creation is intelligence-based). Sorcerers then become beholden to wizards to create items for them.

This a reversal of the way I'd like to see the sorcerer/wizard narrative flow. I'd rather see wizards jealous of and trying to discover ways to harness sorcerer's innate magic and sorcerer's disdainfully mocking wizard's need to rely on items (spellbooks, wands, staves, etc) for their power.


9 people marked this as a favorite.

If resonance affected only wands, and wands used only resonance and not charges, it would have the same effect on wands of Cure Light Wounds and players would love it. They would buy a healing wand as powerful as they could afford and pass the wand around to everyone who could use it to heal up the party.

And when they can afford a better wand, they buy the better wand and keep the lower-level wand as a spare.

I dislike that wands in Pathfinder are disposable. That does not match the mythology of wands.

This might not work for Pathfinder Society, since lots of players would bring redundant wands. Perhaps PFS would alter wands so that non-casters could use them, but the wand becomes attuned to the owner and no-one else could use it.

Silver Crusade

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emky wrote:


For the "Christmas tree problem" (which many don't see as a problem), don't make magic items that are just bonuses. Make all magic items DO something. There's no such thing as a +1, or a stat bump. Anything that is, for instance, in the "automatic bonus progression" from Unchained simply doesn't exist. Even more extreme would be "nothing passive at all", but that's probably not necessary.

I've played several games with the Automatic Bonus Progression from Pathfinder Unchained and I also think that this (slightly tweaked for the new math) should become the default system.

If the math of the game EXPECTS you to buy magic weapons, to have stat boost items, etc at particular levels then just skip the steps where the players and GMs have to figure that all out and just GIVE those bonuses at the appropriate levels.

That ENSURES that the math works and lets GMs, developers and players concentrate on magic items that are interesting and flavourful.

Another possibility would have been to change the math to not make these items necessary (lower HPs, for example, would mean less need for magic weapons). But its probably too late for that (Even if it was desirable). Changing the math to that extent would pretty much require another round of Playtesting and there just isn't time.

But baking in the expected numbers and removing all the boring items doesn't require much additional playtest. The math stays the same, the only thing changing is the WAY that people get their numbers.

Grand Lodge

Dark Midian wrote:
Grandlounge wrote:
It seems to me this is a problem for organized play ...
Ding ding ding. Resonance sounds completely devised for PFS play.

And, I would like to make it clear I am an avid PFS player and GM. Also I think a lot of healing is fine when you never know what your group is going to be, you have 4 new players and only one veteran at the table, or when gming for strangers that don't always deal with character death well.

Grand Lodge

1 person marked this as a favorite.

I agree with pauljathome!

RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 4, RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32

5 people marked this as a favorite.

Thanks very much for going into a detailed explanation behind the design goals of Resonance Points.


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Firstly, I support the Resonance mechanic's goals, but feel the implementation is a bit ham-handed.

Resonance Pool: Make it Cha Mod or 3 + Level. This will even out some imbalances and shortages among low Cha characters.

Consumables like Trinkets and Potions: Make them bolstered at a cost of 0 resonance. To use additional require resonance. So, if you have a Minor Potion of Healing, two Lessors, and a Greater you could use one of each in a day without spending any resonance. But, if you wanted to use that second lessor, you'd need to spend a resonance point.

Make reusable versions of some consumables. Make them bolstered with further uses require resonance.

An alternative method.

Resonance pool equal to 1/2 level rounded up for investing worn items for a maximum of 10 items at level 19/20. For consumables, especially healing, make them have two modes of effect. The primary effect which makes you bolstered to iterations of that item, further effects with much lower efficacy. That CLW Wounds wand heals its full effect the first use, but every use after that maybe it only heals Wis Mod. Some harmelss consumables could be used over and over again at full effect. Just offer two modes for the problematic ones.

Also, love the feedback. The insights into the design process, goals, and knowing you are listening to feedback is great.


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As someone who loves playing healers... I don't see the problem with CLW wand spam. That was a terrible thing to do in combat. It was done primarily for between encounter recovery so you could do more encounters a day.

The actual problem was a lack of other ways to recover HP between encounters if you didn't have a healer or your healer was running low on spells. CLW wand spam wasn't a problem. It was a solution to a problem. Maybe not a great solution, but a solution nontheless.

Resonance attacks the solution but leaves the problem: how do you recover HP between encounters? Now? We just rest a lot. The 15 minute adventuring day is a thing because if you can't recover HP between encounters in any kind of reasonable way, you can't do multiple encounters a day. Simple as that.

Fix the actual problem and there's suddenly less need to burn through a wand every couple of days. (And as others have said, CLW was the most popular wand because the pricing on the others didn't make sense for their effect when the purpose of the item is strictly downtime usage.)

As for the "christmas tree"? I never really felt that was a big problem, but resonance does its job better there. If the goal is to simply not have 15 X/day items on top of your permanent stuff, it's accomplishing that goal (albeit with some number tweaking).


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(Item Nova) I don't think Resonance is the best way to tackle this. The new action economy goes a lot further and is a lot of fun.

(Christmas Tree) I'm not sold on it for replacing item slots but I would like to see something address this problem.

(Simplification) I'd like it if Resonance fully replaced item charges and uses per day but did not apply to consumables.


Building on what Tridus said, my group in Doomsday Dawn 2 was very low on healing. We needed as much as we could get. And with the limited resources we had, we only barely had enough to get by. And that was WITH hero points to save us once each.

Thank you, Tridus, for pointing out the REAL problem.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Grandlounge wrote:


This is an answer to a problem very few people had. Look at the success of Borderlands and Diablo people love loot and magic items make them fun and helpful but not mandatory that is how you fix the problem.

Hit points are also only one resource that runs out during the day. There are spells, spell point, limited use magic items, and so forth which will fill the role of making the day more dangerous.

There are a lot of people who don't like resonance because it limits healing and helps create "the 5 minute adventuring day"

But I hope that we don't end up with a video game healing for our model. I see people complaining about the "necessary cleric", but so far none of my games have had a cleric and we've done just fine.

We're making clerics now for part 3 of the play test and clerics have so much healing that I'm having a hard time imagining that this adventure will be anything but easy mode.

There must be other people who are sharing my experience that healing could use a small re-balance (fix battle medic to be more useful, tone down cleric a bit) but otherwise isn't that far off.


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I think Resonance is symptomatic of a larger problem. As someone who lives in a large metro area and has rotated around almost a dozen game stores on and off, I've played with hundreds of players over the years, and I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of what they like and dislike about Pathfinder. I've also spent a fair amount of time on these forums. And the likes and dislikes of the people on these message boards is wildly unrepresentative of the larger player base who don't bother to regularly comment on Paizo.

Only on the messageboards do more than a tiny handful of people seem really focused on stopping other people from having cheap healing, from making sure every character is perfectly balanced, to just making sure other players aren't having too much fun.

Unfortunately, it appears to me that the Pathfinder 2E Design Team has spent two years listening to this tiny, non-representative minority on the message-boards and created design goals almost entirely to satisfy them.

It sounds like you are saying that you recognize that Resonance has failed as a feature towards the design goal of preventing people from easily healing and having lots of magic items, and in response to this you will now diligently work on a brand new mechanism for preventing easy out-combat-healing and players having lots of magic items.

When are you going to submit the actual playtest GOALS for review? Not the mechanical features, but the actual goals? Because right now it seems like the designers have the primary goals of:

A) Make Every d20 Roll so absurdly well balanced that a 10 on the dice fails and an 11 succeeds.

B)Make sure the designers know they are more important than those impudent players.

C)Make magic, especially magical items, much rarer (calling them "unique" and "wondrous" fools no one).

I can tell you to dump Resonance and the Common/Uncommon/Rare System, etc until I'm blue in the face, but if you're just going to try to come up with new methods of achieving goals that I think make the game worse, what's the point?


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Because I'm genetically wired to try and solve problems concisely and with bullet points, my twenty minute think (while walking after dinner) to fix the resonance "issue".

1. Get rid of wands. completely. Gone. Move all the metamagic rods to wands. Now, wands are more like Harry Potter in that they give you a bonus to your overall spellcasting. Heck, if you really want to crib HP, make 1 wand attuned per character. Wands, btw, are a nasty holdover from 1e AD&D. I've never come across a great mage in fiction or lierature carrying a bunch of kindling in their backpack. Yet here we are.

2. Jack up the price of potions tenfold or more. This will get rid of all the low level potions.

3. double the number of 2e spell slots available. So, instead of 3/level, it's 6/level. And keep the rituals separate from your spell levels. Now your caster isn't constantly looking over his / her shoulder to see if they'll be useful 5 minutes from now.

4. Make the Heal / medicine skill worthwhile. Give it some teeth. Maybe that's temp HP for the rest of the day, I dunno.

but all this still doesn't solve the elephant-in-the-room problem which is the 15 minute adventuring day. Somehow, Paizo needs to come up with a mechanic besides HP as a measure of PC resilience. Maybe at higher levels, martials are great at parrying and can outright deflect hits? Maybe they get an adrenaline rush that gives them some temp HP. Maybe PC HP are divided evenly into 2 pools, one of which heals quickly by itself on the minute scale. But whatever the mechanic, it has to stop the yoyoing between max HP and no HP.

As i said on page one, fix THAT and the resonance problem goes away.

Dark Archive

6 people marked this as a favorite.

I suggest the following fixes to resonance:

1.) Remove multiple opportunity costs - consumables should not cost resonance (that is punitive) and limited use per day items should not cost resonance to use (that is punitive). Doing this will resolve many of the book keeping complaints that resonance introduces and ensure that resonance pools can be perceived as allowing things to happen instead of only limiting other mechanisms.

2.) Provide reliable non-magic and non-cleric ways of healing. Right now I have to horde my resonance to use on expendable healing resources because there is no reliable way to heal in 2e. I really like the stamina system from Starfinder. Taking a 'short rest' even matches/aligns with all of the arbitrarily nerfed elongated times in 2e (i.e., identifying items, detecting magic, fixing your shield, etc.). Why can't a player take 10 mins to rest to get back ~30-40% of their hp. It allows parties to survive without clerics and avoids resonance being wasted on crappy healing expendables (effectively increasing the resonance pool for all).

3.) Double the pool so we aren't so restricted.

4.) Separate alchemist resonance and class feature pools or at least provide them with INT + CHA + level.

5.) Make magic items more powerful. Right now there are barely any items even worth using resonance on. Armor/Weapon/Staff are the only worthwhile items. Everything else is so uninspired (especially at low levels). Thus game play is basically me putting 1-3 in those items and saving everything else for healing consumables. Whether I run out of resonance is proportional to whether I either end up using it all on healing consumables or have a cleric in the party and thus only have 1-2 points left at the end of the day.

------

That being said, CLW spam was a solution to problems from earlier D&D editions. You haven't made a convincing argument that there is something to be fixed. It already WAS and now you've gone and broken that fix. I would suggest you increase the ability of high level healing vs. damage output from enemies instead of throwing resonance at us if low level item spam is an issue (it isn't IMO). Otherwise, why would anyone invest in those things? Resonance is a punitive mechanic to force people to use higher level items because they simply can't use enough low level items to make up for the difference. It hasn't fixed whether high level items are WORTH the expenditure or not.

Resonance also hasn't fixed the 'Christmas tree problem'. Bundling magic items together (like armor/cloak of resistance) does this. What has really killed this problem is the fact that your magic items are super under-powered an not enticing in 2e. A great example are stat boosting items. Why is the first stat boosting item only available as a L14 item? That is ridiculous and boring. Especially since many of the DCs for abilities are simply too high to hit reliably (made worse by the flat bonus structure from proficiency). Its a similair story for spell DC vs. CR equivalent monster saves where there is barely a 30-40% chance of a spell even sticking (let alone getting a crit failure only on a 1). Even starfinder has better mechanics and limits access to these items in an appropriate manner (one +2, one +4, one +6, but obtainable at reasonable levels). Without better access to these things there is very little making characters unique. I can't be the master of 'x' because the difference between me and someone else is a +3 (+15% increase in success). It just makes every PC a 18/18/18/18/18/18 stated PC with one attribute maybe being a 20-22 (maybe 24 at L20). That is just cookie cutter to me.

As for fixing tracking of items, it just doesn't work. Adding a resource pool that controls resource pools can't work and will never work (see suggested #1 above).


3 people marked this as a favorite.
Masked Mudpuppy wrote:
How I would suggest fixing the healing and Resonance system would be to allow healing similar to Starfinder's system along with recovering spent Resonance Points (not invested Resonance Points) on short rests. That would reduce/eliminate the reliance on CLW wands and help get rid of the 15 minute adventure day.

I actually like the idea of getting back resonance points spent on consumables.


7 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

I love the playtest, and I was hopeful for resonance, but it does nothing... it doesn't solve anything I've experienced playing Pathfinder. We like the healing sticks because it allows for more adventuring per day. The double dipping on cost is also weird, uses/day + resonance points... Keep the good work Team, but resonance, I'm waiting for that wonderful post that says its gone


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Maybe it'd be best to clear up some assumptions:

As a player, I expect my character to be typically transitioning from Exploration Mode to Encounter Mode at full HP. Is this a correct assumption?

As a player, I'm willing to expend some long-term resources (gold) to achieve this. But I don't expect to expend large amounts of these resources. How much is a party expected to spend?


Wands working more like things such as spell lattices would go a long way too. The wand doesn't do the thing, the wand lets you act like you have the spell on your list and you can use your own spell points/slots to cast whats in the wand.

wands = 1 spell of lowish level
Staves = multiple spells of = caster level.


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In the current state of the game, my biggest thoughts (not backed up sufficiently by playtesting):
- Remove resonance costs on potions. No longer being spells-in-a-can, they're less likely to contain the solutions to everything.
- Lean harder on removing X/day things. In return, have varying resonance costs on the items intended to be rarer. Ideally, varying costs should still be avoided as much as possible.

MerlinCross wrote:

"Low level magic items are a problem"

Really? Really?

Magic Wands were the problem! No seriously Paizo, where'd you get the info that people were mass spamming Potions? The only other thing that saw as much spam was Scrolls for wizards.

Nerfing the wands alone would and should have been enough to solve the "CLW Wand Issue" which was named due to WANDS.

Anecdotally, my Alchemist set up a potion system during downtime to solve a bunch of problems the party could run into, and then just produced more to fill the gap every time they were used.

There were an insane number of challenges we solved by throwing low-level potions at the problem. We didn't use wands because they didn't come up enough in one aspect to be as necessary, plus half-cost potions solved the biggest problem of potions compared to wands.

Also, technically alchemical allocation + potion of shield of faith (level 18) and potion of barkskin (level 12), along with a bunch of other ones.

Tridus wrote:

As someone who loves playing healers... I don't see the problem with CLW wand spam. That was a terrible thing to do in combat. It was done primarily for between encounter recovery so you could do more encounters a day.

The actual problem was a lack of other ways to recover HP between encounters if you didn't have a healer or your healer was running low on spells. CLW wand spam wasn't a problem. It was a solution to a problem. Maybe not a great solution, but a solution nontheless.

Part of the problem caused by the wand is that it makes any HP damage that doesn't kill completely irrelevant because of how cheap it is. That's not really an easy problem to solve. You can't have a pitfall trap, for example, unless you also have an ambush at the same time, because they'll just shrug and forget about it.

I'm not sure Resonance is a good solution, but it definitely stops that problem.


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Wand of CLW wasn't a problem. Indeed, it prevented a problem by making it so dedicated healers, a profoundly boring role, were not needed. This is especially so in PFS where nobody knows what classes the other players will use.

Saga Edition solved this by making the medical skill with medical supplies the only reliable source of net gain healing. This wouldn't work in a fantasy game where the ability to heal people with a touch is an actual staple.

@Mekkis
In most systems/modules (with the exception being games that are very dark or make it so getting into repeated combat in the first place is a failure) I've always seen this as the expectation and only encounters one after the other (often explicitly called out in modules) or limited supplies would prevent that. Indeed, I recall Red Hand of Doom explicitly stated that during the battle of Brindol encounters are spaced apart far enough for player characters to heal. Balancing a game is hard enough without having all characters be at the same HP during each encounter.

As for tension being lost by having everyone at full HP... outside of climatic last stands (where this isn't a problem anyways), how many named characters in fiction actually die of attrition? If a character's injury impedes them across fights, it's because there isn't time or resources to recover.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
PossibleCabbage wrote:
dying so you have to get a new character is especially not fun.

As though I don't have 3 fully fleshed out backup characters I'm dying to try in play at any given moment. Usually quite happy to meet a glorious demise. Building and experimenting with characters is the best aspect of Pathfinder.


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I'm really curious how Resonance can be changed to be a more intuitive and fun mechanic, because as it stands, I'm not seeing how that's possible, considering how much of a flop Resonance was originally.

1. Resonance being a solution to low level adventuring items compared to high level adventuring items doesn't do much when A. you already have a solution with the current "WBL" rules, and B. players should have more freedom in the things they want or need to buy. Buying the lower level items should be punishing enough by simply being weaker compared to buying a higher level item that can, and should, accomplish more. Balancing the existing options will solve this problem in-time, something that Resonance doesn't even need to have a hand in, really.

2. Resonance being a solution to the Christmas Tree effect doesn't really apply here when you still use rules that still have limitations like "item slots." The only difference between how PF2 handles it in relation to PF1 is that now I can have numerous Rings and Amulets, whereas I still can't have multiple boots or hats or what have you because of some arbitrary limitation (AKA GM FIAT). A slightly different codification of PF1 rules (which is actually broken, since this means I have no reason to adhere to items that aren't Rings or Amulets simply due to these not having any notable limitation) is not a fair or proper solution for Resonance to apply, and I don't think we ever will be truly rid of things like item slots, since we need something codified here to help balance people from getting all kinds of crazy.

3. Resonance doesn't "eliminate or severely limit bookkeeping" when I still have to mark charges off of wands, mark off potions being used, mark off certain items still being usable for certain amounts of time/uses per day, etc. This is because Resonance is a linear solution to a quadratic problem, and also because items like Potions and Trinkets are designed for the sole purpose of being looted and used (which marks them on and off a given sheet); balancing the almost limitless potential and disposable design of magic items with the linear scaling expectation of Resonance is like solving Calculus with only the four major operations of beginner math. It's just not gonna happen unless you want your equations' solutions to be completely wrong or outright make no sense.

I'm not really sure Resonance as a mechanic should continue to exist, even if it's tweaked to absolute perfection, simply because there's no way for it, as a mechanic, to compete with all of the radical designs of the other aspects it relates to.

Shadow Lodge

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I haven't seen a good explanation of this issue, so can someone please explain to me what the issue is with a Wand of Cure Light Wounds? And why this issue is drastic enough to warrant taking a sledgehammer to entire classes to "fix"?

From my perspective, having on-demand healing is beneficial for both the party and for the GM, in two major ways.

It benefits the players by not saddling a player with the role of healer. It has been observed time and time again in video games, that players do not like playing healers. It has gotten to the point the League of Legends had to implement a queue that gave special rewards for playing a healer, World of Warcraft found the need to do the same thing. While it's not a direct comparison, it's reasonable to believe such a trend exists in TTRPGs. So why force players into the role? A simple healstick both means a party doesn't *need* a Cleric, Oracle, Bard, Witch, etc. which allows for more interesting and creative party combinations. It also allows the people playing those classes to prepare a wide variety of spells, to do things beyond simply sitting in the back, and preparing to slap a band-aid on the Fighter after a battle. The wand of Cure Light also allows those who enjoy playing healers, to focus on damage mitigation, condition removal, wider varieties of in-combat healing, and other activities that are both more skill expressive and varied in their options.

It benefits GMs by allowing them to design encounters that test a wider range of skills. Rather than players constantly needing to budget their 1-2 healing spells a day, and wincing every time a CLW rolls a 1 or an enemy crits for damage they haven't the resources to heal, the party is more or less at fill HP going into every fight. Which means the GM can throw harder encounters at players, encounters with multiple parts, encounters with fun terrain gimmicks, etc. All without needing to constantly math out if the party has the raw numbers to not be crippled by fighting one extra skeleton.


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InfernosReaper wrote:
They already cut wand charges down considerably. Seems like enough nerfing to me.

How about we test with the nerf and the changes to the price and economy first before we slap on some magic resource system that effects everything.

That doesn't sound like too hard a task to me.

Cyouni wrote:

Anecdotally, my Alchemist set up a potion system during downtime to solve a bunch of problems the party could run into, and then just produced more to fill the gap every time they were used.

There were an insane number of challenges we solved by throwing low-level potions at the problem. We didn't use wands because they didn't come up enough in one aspect to be as necessary, plus half-cost potions solved the biggest problem of potions compared to wands.

Also, technically alchemical allocation + potion of shield of faith (level 18) and potion of barkskin (level 12), along with a bunch of other ones.

I usually play brewers myself when it comes to Alchemist. I rarely however really dig into it to the point of having barrels of extra potions.

And yes, Alchemical Allocation is probably my favorite spell in the Alchemist toolkit. But by Sarenrae does it need to be relooked at a bit.

However, It's Wand this. Wand that. CLW CLW CLW rah rah rah. Oh and Monkey Fish maybe. Every time I've seen the topic brought up, I usually see potions as kicked to the side as "OOOOOH they aren't worth the price because WANDS"

How about we put it to the test? Nerf Wands to a degree and see if people rig up Potion making to replace it. I wonder how many will do that considering that the new crafting rules are meh and PFS doesn't let you craft at all(Cough, Oh but buy as many CLW and you can). And with Alchemists not being spell casters anymore, it's not as easy to brew up a collection of potions. Actually can we even MAKE Potions anymore? Magical Crafting feat maybe but hmm that seems like it would better on a Wizard or Sorcerer that have the spells to back it up.


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Disk Elemental wrote:


It benefits GMs by allowing them to design encounters that test a wider range of skills. Rather than players constantly needing to budget their 1-2 healing spells a day, and wincing every time a CLW rolls a 1 or an enemy crits for damage they haven't the resources to heal, the party is more or less at fill HP going into every fight. Which means the GM can throw harder encounters at players, encounters with multiple parts, encounters with fun terrain gimmicks, etc. All without needing to constantly math out if the party has the raw numbers to not be crippled by fighting one extra skeleton.

Conversely, let's say there's a swinging blade trap. You have no way to disarm it. With effective infinite free healing outside of combat, what is the downside to simply walking through it, taking the damage, and proceeding on as though it didn't exist?


So... i'll freely admit that i wasn't a fan of resonance points the moment i read it. After playing with it however... i still think it needs a bit of tweaking but i'm not entirely opposed to the system if the game would be balanced around it properly(which granted, is what the playtest would be for!)

Invested items requiring more resonance points to activate feels clunky and weird, you've already invested in having it equiped and then you need to spend more resonance points? Its a bit clunky to invest in a staff and then having to spend multiple RP to actually use the charges on the item for example. In addition to buying it, in addition to drawing it.... thats a whole lot of costs to get a minor benefit in most cases.

I won't even start about the state of the alchemist as i believe that class is just straight up not viable because of the RP system itself. Maybe allow their class features(elixers/bombs/mutagens and so on) and other class features like them from other classes such as makeshift wand from wizard to utilise something else then RP.

A lot of the consumables just are straight up not worth it, i played a ranged character with a bunch of the specialised ammunition for example but besides the viper arrow that felt pretty good at lvl 1-4, felt entirely irrelevant after those levels. The other ammunitions were just straight up not worth the cost of a RP for their effects as there is no scaling DC in any of them which i feel would solve a lot of their issues and add some interesting dynamic to ranged combat which is typically one of the least interesting ones to portray thematically comparatively. I believe the exception was the "spellstrike" ammunition) which i do believe are quite interesting and would like to see more off as it at least scales!

Its also particularely bad for early level dwarves who have the base -2 charisma thus having 0 points at lvl 1, but can even go into minus if they pick up a heritage feat that provides them with an additional -2 resonance which is very harsh. I really believe the minimum should be higher then it currently would be.

Maybe splitting it up in "invested RP" and "Spendable RP" would actually make it smoother in a sense.

I still think that with the current math in the game, the damage the average group will be taking is practically forcing them to have a cleric in the group because of the sheer healing output that class has with channel energy. It does create a sense of danger playing without one but without the "short rest system from 5e dnd" and the current resonance system; it is going to result in most groups calling it a night after every single fight in order to overcome the issue, and not allowing the rest will insure casualties instead of increasing the odds and thus having danger be ever present. Which i believe should be present and is certainly an upgrade from PF1.

With regards to the swift/immediate actions from pathfinder 1; i believe you've just recreated the same issue with how valuable reactions and triggered effects are. Its just named differently but in essence is still the exact same issue. The 3 action system is in my eyes still a step in the right direction and has been something i really like after having played with it for a while but; its pretty clear to me at this point that the lack of attacks of opportunity or other noteworthy reactions for some classes have just made the system a lot less interactive compared to pathfinder 1 especially so when it isn't your turn which some of my playergroup have already complained about with regards to the system.


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Disk Elemental wrote:
I haven't seen a good explanation of this issue, so can someone please explain to me what the issue is with a Wand of Cure Light Wounds? And why this issue is drastic enough to warrant taking a sledgehammer to entire classes to "fix"?

There are people that believe that in order to "truly" challenge PCs, you must specifically wear them down through attrition and that that attrition must specifically be of HP. Limited spell slots? Pah. Timed missions? Boo. Enemies having more time to prepare for PCs? Yawn. Players actually not liking the 15 minute adventuring day? Whatever.

I apologise if that sounds bitter, but I have debated this subject long and hard on Reddit against people who refused to concede that any of the mentioned factors could be used by a GM and stuck super hard to "only HP attrition really matters" in the face of overwhelming arguments to the contrary.


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Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Cyouni wrote:
Conversely, let's say there's a swinging blade trap. You have no way to disarm it. With effective infinite free healing outside of combat, what is the downside to simply walking through it, taking the damage, and proceeding on as though it didn't exist?

The massive increase in price and the massive drop in the number of charges a wand has, for a start.

Shadow Lodge

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Cyouni wrote:
Conversely, let's say there's a swinging blade trap. You have no way to disarm it. With effective infinite free healing outside of combat, what is the downside to simply walking through it, taking the damage, and proceeding on as though it didn't exist?

Lets dissect this situation for a moment, looking at the two major modes of play.

First, lets consider the case where this is a pre-written module, that I am running exclusively as written. In that case, if the party has no Rogue (say this was a PFS table, made from a group of random people), then I applaud their use of the wand of CLW as an alternative method to deal with a challenge they had no other way of mitigating. I don't advocate banning Dimension Door, because a Wizard can use it to teleport the party across a river they had no other way of dealing with; why is this any different?

Second, lets consider the case where I wrote this encounter, and knew my party going in. In which case, if they had no way to disarm the trap, and I knew they had a wand of CLW, why would I put a simple trap there? I wouldn't force a party of 20th level demigods to fight a CR 1/4 Skeleton, so why would I put the party up against something they're more than capable of dealing with? Instead, I might poison the blade of the trap, causing an injury that a cheap consumable can't fix; or I might have the clatter attract marauding creatures, who ambush the party and prevent them from immediately healing. In both cases, I've turned a simple axe trap into something that requires more thought to deal with.


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Alchemaic wrote:
Cyouni wrote:
Conversely, let's say there's a swinging blade trap. You have no way to disarm it. With effective infinite free healing outside of combat, what is the downside to simply walking through it, taking the damage, and proceeding on as though it didn't exist?
The massive increase in price and the massive drop in the number of charges a wand has, for a start.

I acknowledge that this is the case in the Playtest, but I was more referring to the way PF1 handles it.

Disk Elemental wrote:
Cyouni wrote:
Conversely, let's say there's a swinging blade trap. You have no way to disarm it. With effective infinite free healing outside of combat, what is the downside to simply walking through it, taking the damage, and proceeding on as though it didn't exist?

Lets dissect this situation for a moment, looking at the two major modes of play.

First, lets consider the case where this is a pre-written module, that I am running exclusively as written. In that case, if the party has no Rogue (say this was a PFS table, made from a group of random people), then I applaud their use of the wand of CLW as an alternative method to deal with a challenge they had no other way of mitigating. I don't advocate banning Dimension Door, because a Wizard can use it to teleport the party across a river they had no other way of dealing with; why is this any different?

Second, lets consider the case where I wrote this encounter, and knew my party going in. In which case, if they had no way to disarm the trap, and I knew they had a wand of CLW, why would I put a simple trap there? I wouldn't force a party of 20th level demigods to fight a CR 1/4 Skeleton, so why would I put the party up against something they're more than capable of dealing with? Instead, I might poison the blade of the trap, causing an injury that a cheap consumable can't fix; or I might have the clatter attract marauding creatures, who ambush the party and prevent them from immediately healing. In both cases, I've turned a simple axe trap into something that requires more thought to deal with.

That's mainly the point - once you add a wand of CLW into the scenario, any HP damage that doesn't kill someone becomes completely irrelevant. The actual threats in the two scenarios you've presented are likely to be stat damage (which takes more resources to fix) or a set of enemies. That's a pretty important problem.

If every encounter has to have more permanent damage (stat damage, conditions) or be a constant string of encounters to prevent healing off the problem immediately, that in itself is a major limiting factor that is imposed. You're stuck using one of those two techniques over and over, or any damage that doesn't kill someone isn't considered a challenge.


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Cyouni wrote:
Disk Elemental wrote:


It benefits GMs by allowing them to design encounters that test a wider range of skills. Rather than players constantly needing to budget their 1-2 healing spells a day, and wincing every time a CLW rolls a 1 or an enemy crits for damage they haven't the resources to heal, the party is more or less at fill HP going into every fight. Which means the GM can throw harder encounters at players, encounters with multiple parts, encounters with fun terrain gimmicks, etc. All without needing to constantly math out if the party has the raw numbers to not be crippled by fighting one extra skeleton.
Conversely, let's say there's a swinging blade trap. You have no way to disarm it. With effective infinite free healing outside of combat, what is the downside to simply walking through it, taking the damage, and proceeding on as though it didn't exist?

Let me ask this. Instead of a wand of healing, lets say we use a wand with an attack spell that is used to set off the trap from a range. Is that wand now 'bad' because it prevented hp or is only healing bad? What is I use a wand to summon a creature to set off the trap? Is THAT bad...

The problem is that the trap isn't exciting and is easily bypassed not with wands.


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Cyouni wrote:
That's mainly the point - once you add a wand of CLW into the scenario, any HP damage that doesn't kill someone becomes completely irrelevant. The actual threats in the two scenarios you've presented are likely to be stat damage (which takes more resources to fix) or a set of enemies. That's a pretty important problem.

Hard disagree on that. You're still using resources from the wand that can't be used later. The attrition that was applied to the HP is instead transferred to charges on the wand.

And if your players have so many wands that that isn't an issue, why did you give them so many wands?
Outside of PFS, where you can't say no if it's a legal purchase, you can just say "the shop only has 2, but if you wait a couple of weeks we'll get 2 more in" or, if the party is crafting them just don't give them enough downtime to do so.
If you still want to give them downtime but don't want them crafting so many wands, just tell them "hey guys, I appreciate that you like being able to adventure for a whole day at full health without a healbot, but as a GM that limits the sort of challenges I personally like to throw at you, so can you cool it on the wands please?"
If even that fails, then ultimately you have to put up with this quirk of your players because you like them enough to, or draw the game to a close because you don't like them enough to continue.

And if you're another player in the game rather than a GM, then it's put up with a game style you don't like or leave.

Shadow Lodge

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Cyouni wrote:
That's mainly the point - once you add a wand of CLW into the scenario, any HP damage that doesn't kill someone becomes completely irrelevant. The actual threats in the two scenarios you've presented are likely to be stat damage (which takes more resources to fix) or a set of enemies. That's a pretty important problem.

It's not a problem at all, because getting nickled and dimed to death via HP damage isn't interesting (since in the scenario you presented there's no way around it) or fun for the party. In the situation, the party needs the foresight and resources to obtain the wand, and the skills to use it, which makes it roughly equivalent to a Wizard preparing the right spell at the right moment. In addition, the problems a wand of CLW does solve, are fairly static and uninteresting in nature. As a GM, I'd much rather challenge players with more creative problems, that can be defeated with preparation and planning, as opposed to pointing to someone and saying "you take X damage" rinse and repeat until the party is dead.


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I would combine resonance and spell points (which sound too much like spell slots as it is). Both do very similar things and few spell point powers do enough to break balance if players can do them more often as long as they still cost a resource.

Call the new resource focus (or energy or willpower or mox or anything that suggests an intangible ability to put a piece of yourself into your efforts).

I would better establish it as an integral character resource by listing the amount classes get as prominently as hit points are listed now.

I would better establish it as a core component of item activation by listing costs as prominently as somatic and verbal actions are on spells.

Modify costs... Almost everything costs 1 point. Activating a 6th level fireball out of the Skyhammer costs the the same as getting a 1st level heal out of a wand. Make some things cost more than others. Otherwise, the tendency is to impose daily use limits in addition to costing points and then you've got redundant systems.

Give some of the classes unique ways of playing with this point pool. Maybe alchemists regain a point when they crit with a bomb. Maybe druids can give their points to other players by feeding them goodberries. Maybe the ranger can deplete their hunting target of its points. Maybe the sorcerer can recover points by sacrificing spell slots... and so on.

I feel like there is a lot more design space here without players getting lost in the complexity.

Grand Lodge

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Things I have been pondering for a while:

I, for one like the idea of resonance, and in the two games I've played so far, it hasn't really been a factor(I suspect the next chapter will test it more thoroughly), but anecdotal evidence tells me it may be a problem when it comes to healing.

Non-magical healing is a step in the right direction, but it needs improvement.
I had a character in "In Pale Mountains Shadow" who had the "Battle Medic" feat, and put it to good use, but I think it could be better.
My main problem is the once per person per day limitation. It would make more sense for it to be once per encounter. Why shouldn't someone with a fresh wound be treatable by the same character, just because they treated a previous injury an hour ago? And add an expert bonus of wisdom modifier(min.+1) to amount healed.

And while we're at it, healing spells should affect different classes differently. D8's are fine for 6hp & 8hp/level characters, but quickly fall behind for fighters and Barbarians and the like. Why not have healing based on class instead. A first level heal spell could heal 1d6 for wizards and scorcerers, 1d10 for fighters, rangers and Pallys, 1d12 for barbs, and 1d8 for the rest. Then let the con bonus of the character being healed be added.


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sherlock1701 wrote:
PossibleCabbage wrote:
dying so you have to get a new character is especially not fun.
As though I don't have 3 fully fleshed out backup characters I'm dying to try in play at any given moment. Usually quite happy to meet a glorious demise. Building and experimenting with characters is the best aspect of Pathfinder.

Totally depends on the person. For some losing their character with its history in the game kills their interest and they want to start another game. For some like you it's a glorious opportunity, especially if the death was glorious too. IME the former's more common, but I have no figures on how common either is in the world as a whole.


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What about we just include 5e-style Short Resting and spending hit dice to heal outside of combat, but not tie that into other mechanics like they do?

This way we can happily nerf Wands of CLW into the dirt without worrying too much about sustaining an adventuring party's HP bars.

Alchemists and Potions need to be taken out of the Resonance system, though, it makes no sense to include those, and leaves alchemists really underpowered.


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I think players like bonuses, rather than limitations and constraints, which I think might be a reason folks have a distaste for Resonance because it feels confining.

Try this on for size:

Wands and certain other magic items could have a certain trait (maybe call it the "resonance" trait) meaning they have X charges per day, and you generally keep X a very small number.

Characters get to add their Charisma bonus to X. With a switch up like that, Resonance would feel more like a bonus, not a constraint, and it would still discourage people dumping Charisma.

Liberty's Edge

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Starfinder Superscriber

The problem is that Resonance is a patch on top of a broken underlying system that fixes one undesirable consequence of the broken underlying system while introducing others.

Just consider a potion of Cure Light Wounds and a Potion of Cure Moderate wounds. In PF1e, the former is 50gp and heals 1d8+1. The latter is 150gp heals 2d8+3. It's far more cost effective for healing to buy three lower level potions than one higher level potion; with the former, you get 3d8+3, the latter, 2d8+3, both for the same price.

It only gets worse for higher level potions, wands, and scrolls, as the price goes up approximately as the square of the level whereas the amount healed goes up proportionately to level. This goes for other sorts of things beyond heading, too, but is most obvious with healing as that's the one thing nearly every party needs all the time.

Fix *that* rather than patching on a system like Resonance that tries to patch the problem of higher level items not being worth it. As long as Pathfinder is going to be a game where magic shops are expected and PCs can get whatever they want, the economics of what you for what you get has to make sense. Perhaps make consumables scale linearly with level in price, and reduce expected WBL (and other prices) to compensate. The patch on top just makes it all more complicated, crufty, and, in the long run, more likely to be susceptible to unintended behaviors as optimisations are discovered.


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What is fun: playing the game.
What is not fun: not playing the game.

Good Change in PF2...
When the party's spell-casters are spent, sure, it's time to rest because you've got players who effectively can't play. The solution: cantrips that don't suck.

Not Good Change in PF2...
When the party's wounded and character-loss is on the table, it's time to rest even if all the other non-healing abilities are still available, because continuing to play is stupid. The solution: add a system designed to limit the ability of players to resume play.

Look, we get it. This is about narrative style. PF2 is aiming for low-magic potency. Got it. Personally don't like it, but I still get it's a style choice, like... artwork. But reducing "ability to continue playing" is a poor choice.

It is my humble opinion that non-combat healing should be unlimited but moderately time-consuming, and available to all classes. Then let us play until we're out of Spell Points, Spells, ammunition, and consumables. Don't limit the adventuring day by yet another choke-point statistic.

My recommendation...
1} Battle Medic shouldn't bolster, and should take 10 minutes.
2} Remove Resonance.
3} ???
4} Profit.

If you really, really, really, really want to reduce accounting for magic item uses-per-day, roll the Spell Points system in; activating a magic item uses one Spell Point. Carrying a magic item for 24 hours increases the character's Spell Point pool by one fifth the item's level and a character can gain this benefit from one magic item per two character levels. Adjust numbers per appropriate balance. But only do that after my other recommendations.


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Here is an issue that the Dev didn't mention:

The other problem Resonance ALSO addressed was the weak stat issue.

There are two weak stats in Pathfinder 1:

1. Charisma - Unless you need charisma (Bard, Sorcerer, Oracle, Paladin, Swashbuckler, etc) for a class feature, you don't need charisma unless you are going to be a face character. Meaning it is weak. It is a weak stat. It has always been a weak stat. It doesn't help with Saves, it doesn't help with Combat (for the most part) and it just is easy to dump.

2. Strength - The second weakest stat. Yes people are going to scream to the heavens that Strength in PF1 was fine, but frankly it wasn't. We all know it. The second people got Dex to Damage through one method or another Strength got dumped. Then Piranha Strike was introduced and Strength was even less needed. "But two handers!"

Okay let us address that elephant in the room, in PF1 Two Handers were good. Yes. Even using a Longsword in two hands (my Paladin's preferred method) let his 22 Strength add +9 Damage per hit, and (at level 12) +12 damage off of the Power Attack.

A person with 22 Dex and Dex-to-Damage with Piranha Strike hits for +6 Damage and +8 on Piranha Strike. 21 vs 14 damage. A difference of 7 damage in total. Which is... Let us face it... Not that significant. You could dump Strength just as easily as Charisma with most martial classes easily enough and since Dexterity was just so much better than Strength (helps out skills, helps out reflex save, helped out initiative, etc) it was a no brainer. Look into the PFS lifestyle and you'll see far more high Dex than high Strength. That is just the way it is.

PF2 addresses this in two systems - As not mentioned here it makes Charisma painful to dump. A low Charisma means less healing from items and potions. It is painful to do.

Same with Bulk, though people are screaming about it, Bulk makes Strength not something you can just dump. Even an Alchemist wants to get a +1 or +2 to Strength to help haul around their gear.

So I'm urging the dev team, keep something of the Resonance system around and keep it keyed off of Charisma. Don't let charisma become a dump stat again.


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Howard197 wrote:
When are you going to submit the actual playtest GOALS for review? Not the mechanical features, but the actual goals?

This! I'd love to see a concise list of the overarching design goals for 2E (or, if this already exists, I'd appreciate it if someone could point me in the right direction). While there have been a lot of insightful blogs and posts about the specific changes made in 2E, often discussing design goals, I've found it somewhat difficult to pull from all of these sources to assemble a coherent high level picture of what exactly the designers wanted out of 2E.

I feel like there's a missing conversation about where the goalposts are or should be for this new edition, and without that conversation it's difficult to fairly or productively critique specific mechanics.


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Since I've just recently started playing with staves and wands, I can see that Resonance are a parallel line of limitation to the power of those items. Wands run out of charges, and staves can only be used a certain number of times a day. Resonance only really caps the number of different magic items a PC can use. A better designed system would have the limitation of a specific staff or wand tie in directly with a PC's other magic items.

Disk Elemental wrote:
First, lets consider the case where this is a pre-written module, that I am running exclusively as written. In that case, if the party has no Rogue (say this was a PFS table, made from a group of random people), then I applaud their use of the wand of CLW as an alternative method to deal with a challenge they had no other way of mitigating. I don't advocate banning Dimension Door, because a Wizard can use it to teleport the party across a river they had no other way of dealing with; why is this any different?

In both cases, a high Thievery bonus and the Dimension Door spell aren't as universally useful as healing all the damage of a trap. It can be used for traps, monsters, dangerous environments, etc.

But on a larger scale, I don't agree with the idea that an entire class should be replaced with a magic item. A Wand of Summon Monster, a Wand of Knock, a Wand of Wonder, and a Wand of CLW shouldn't be able to replace, respectively, the Fighter, the Rogue, the Wizard, and the Cleric. Personally, I like playing Clerics, and feel they have lots of build options to make the kind of character I want to play. But if Clerics just aren't your thing, I'd prefer a system that creates Healer classes with different schticks than making a Cleric replaceable with a wand.


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Resonance points can work if there were a couple tweaks to it.

For the potion consumables why couldnt we make them cost no resonance points but makes you bolstered against that spell and level. So for example if you consume a spell level 1 heal potion you couldnt consume another level 1 heal potion until you have completed a rest. On the other hand you could still consume any other level heal potion.

For scrolls could we maybe let casters of the same spell list you the skill associates to the spell list make a skill check to before the usage of scroll to negate resonance cost of said scroll. If the scroll caster decide to not to spend the resonance after failing the check the action usage would still be consumed. The item also couldnt be activated unless you spend resonance point or completed a rest.

For the X/day items could we maybe make them cost more to invest into but then they wouldn't cost resonance point to use the abilities of the item. Sorta of a give and take on investing into those items.

It would be nice if you could remove the Chramisa 14 requirement on bonus resonance feat it really makes it hard dwarves to get that feat.


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neaven wrote:
Timed missions? Boo.

Never mind timed missions, I have seriously run into people who are adamantly against even having "the bad guys" react to your attack yesterday by being on alert for another one today.

IMHO, 'time pressure'¹ is the #1 thing to use against the 15 minute adventuring day. It doesn't even always need to be in play, just something the players automatically consider.

1: Broadly defined. Not just deadlines, but also things like increased levels of alertness, reinforcements, securing now revealed back doors or even packing up and fleeing in the night.


Anguish wrote:


It is my humble opinion that non-combat healing should be unlimited but moderately time-consuming, and available to all classes. Then let us play until we're out of Spell Points, Spells, ammunition, and consumables. Don't limit the adventuring day by yet another choke-point statistic.

I don't disagree with you, however I suspect they then picture a party of a Fighter, Barbarian, Rogue, and (non ki pool) Monk. If there was a healing option available to all that could go all day, so could that party. Not a huge problem to me, but then again I don't design APs.

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