Catching Our Breath

@Wandering Wastrel - I just want to point out that your house rule is almost equivalent to the one from the book - in both versions you need to meet a higher DC to heal more HP and as a corollary healing the same % of health on a higher level character needs a higher DC.
I guess the feeling you get from the rule may be coming from how you define HP in-game. For example, I always disliked how Cure spells were named in 3.x because it implied that low-level characters dropped dead from light wounds while high-level ones shrug off multiple critical wounds. I did not describe damage that way in-game, instead looking at the ratio between damage and full hp to describe how grievous the wounds are.

My players are gaining individual levels, because I'm running a sandbox instead of DD... character creation took about 8 hours in total, and each level-up has taken up about 4 hours. Which means by 3rd level we'd wasted an entire month's worth of playtime on the "age of accounting".

I would like to say there was some particular element which slowed everyone down, but there wasn't. The book playtest rulebook is simply unusable throughout. All three of my players have complained about how user-friendly the book isn't; and that is with a physical book, up-to-date printed errata, and simultaneous access to multiple mobile devices with copies of the PDFs.

How did it take 8 hours to make a level 1 character? Like how... You don't even have much to choose at that level by the time you pick a class. That's just literal indecision.

We made level 1 characters in around 3 hours. And there were two complete beginners to any TTRPG game in the group so that included explaining each class and brief explanation of how combat worked.

Spell selection is taking a lot of time from the book for a lot of folks because all of the spells are pretty much unique and it takes a while to flip back and forth from the spell list to the names of all the spells you might consider. PF1 is slow for that too if you are only using the rulebooks and don't know 90% of the spells by memory.

Spell selection is taking a lot of time from the book for a lot of folks because all of the spells are pretty much unique and it takes a while to flip back and forth from the spell list to the names of all the spells you might consider. PF1 is slow for that too if you are only using the rulebooks and don't know 90% of the spells by memory.

Sure but you can't really fault the rulebook for that as that works the exact same as in PF1. I guess if you are used to just playing with an SRD at your finger tips it might feel a lot slower but still. Level 1 you don't have 8 hours of choices to make lol.

There are online tools already that make spell selection much easier.

As for why it is harder to treat the wounds of higher level characters, see Luke Cage.

As for why it is harder to treat the wounds of higher level characters, see Luke Cage.

How will he explain it?

Captain Morgan wrote:

As for why it is harder to treat the wounds of higher level characters, see Luke Cage.

How will he explain it?

Dude has velcro skin that gets stronger every time you shoot 'im, man!

Velcro? So he sticks to things?

Velcro? So he sticks to things?

Nah, the man has invulnerable skin that's basically impossible to penetrate. While it essentially makes him pierce/slash/bulletproof, it also make it way harder to treat him when he does get hurt internally (usually by giant blunt force trauma) because doctors can't open him up to operate and such.

No idea what this has to do with the Treat Wounds mechanic though. Unless Captain Morgan wants to say high level characters are like Luke Cage which....doesn't work one bit, no matter how you slice it.

I'm still on the side of feeling that the simplest thing to do with Treat Wounds, instead of making the mechanic more complicated than it is, is to just have it heal half on a failure. I feel that would do a lot to make the increasing difficulty not bother people as much, since it would almost always be "how much do I heal?" not "do I heal or don't I?".

Plus it helps explain the difficulty increase better, since then a high level character will end up healing more on a failed Treat Wounds than a low level character would even on a success.

It’s almost like we had something that dealt with wounds in PF1e that kept adventures from grinding to a halt *cough* wands *cough*.

Honestly if magic healing is unrealistic and cleric channels are just gonna get nerfed because heal is the only good spell in the playtest they may as well just remove all magic healing, heck just get rid of magic clearly that’s intended to only be fun for monsters unless you’re a wizard we’ll buff those since they were too boring not because data said they were significantly weaker.

Honestly though it feels like you’re inherently punished for wanting magic in the playtest, paizo say that they know and will fix it by the release and hey maybe they will but based on what we have at the moment I am extremely skeptical.

I'm still on the side of feeling that the simplest thing to do with Treat Wounds, instead of making the mechanic more complicated than it is, is to just have it heal half on a failure. I feel that would do a lot to make the increasing difficulty not bother people as much, since it would almost always be "how much do I heal?" not "do I heal or don't I?".

Plus it helps explain the difficulty increase better, since then a high level character will end up healing more on a failed Treat Wounds than a low level character would even on a success.

I really like this idea, even if it comes with a bit of a downwards adjustment to the maximum healing possible in 10 minutes (which I think would also be a good thing!). For the "you have 10 minutes between waves of enemies" type scenarios - just on the offchance there were to be any ;-) - this would make Treat Wounds *much* less of a lottery.

Reading the treat wounds discussions really make me wish that they would adopt the stamina/resolve model from Starfinder.

Ed Reppert wrote:

Velcro? So he sticks to things?

Nah, the man has invulnerable skin that's basically impossible to penetrate. While it essentially makes him pierce/slash/bulletproof, it also make it way harder to treat him when he does get hurt internally (usually by giant blunt force trauma) because doctors can't open him up to operate and such.

No idea what this has to do with the Treat Wounds mechanic though. Unless Captain Morgan wants to say high level characters are like Luke Cage which....doesn't work one bit, no matter how you slice it.

Meh, invulnerable skin is as good an explanation as to why high level characters can take so many axes to the face as any. XD

It’s almost like we had something that dealt with wounds in PF1e that kept adventures from grinding to a halt *cough* wands *cough*.

Honestly if magic healing is unrealistic and cleric channels are just gonna get nerfed because heal is the only good spell in the playtest they may as well just remove all magic healing, heck just get rid of magic clearly that’s intended to only be fun for monsters unless you’re a wizard we’ll buff those since they were too boring not because data said they were significantly weaker.

Honestly though it feels like you’re inherently punished for wanting magic in the playtest, paizo say that they know and will fix it by the release and hey maybe they will but based on what we have at the moment I am extremely skrptical.

You know, I see so many people complaining that magic sucks in PF2 but I have seen every caster class played in the games I GM and in EVERY case they have all contributed very well. They haven't been stupid OP and solved all sorts of problems by themselves but they've definitely contributed as well as martials and in multiple cases been MVPs, pulling off awesome moments, providing significant out-of-combat help, even outright saving my Heroes of Undarin group more than once.

Even at their least flashy, the fact that most spells have at least some effect unless the foe crits has allowed them to chip at the HP of really hard to hit foes, dealing more damage than the martials due to dependability, and get minor debuffs on such foes so that they get hit and miss more often, tipping the scales of the fight in a vital manner.

I just have yet to see anything in 6 1/2 chapters of Doomsday Dawn to indicate magic sucks.

Yeah, the games I've run smart casters have had a significant impact on fights. My major concern with magic is that buff spells feel a little too short-term to be reliable, but Paizo seems to be aware of that (and I really love their suggested potential fix of giving buff spells 10 minute durations so that you choose between keeping your buffs or stopping to Treat Wounds).

But compared to PF1e, where a 14th level god wizard could solo an APL14 adventure (seriously, there's a thing someone posted somewhere on the forums where they do exactly that)... I imagine magic feels totally useless if that is the expectation you are coming from.

Yeah, the games I've run smart casters have had a significant impact on fights. My major concern with magic is that buff spells feel a little too short-term to be reliable, but Paizo seems to be aware of that (and I really love their suggested potential fix of giving buff spells 10 minute durations so that you choose between keeping your buffs or stopping to Treat Wounds).

But compared to PF1e, where a 14th level god wizard could solo an APL14 adventure (seriously, there's a thing someone posted somewhere on the forums where they do exactly that)... I imagine magic feels totally useless if that is the expectation you are coming from.

Yeah, I suppose that much is understandable. I never really experienced magic exploited to that degree despite a couple years of GMing PF1, my own experiences were such that PF2 magic feels like it's in a very good place, especially with 1.5.

And I'm interested in that 10 minute buff idea as well. I think buffs have been polished to the point where super-buffing is much less of a problem now already even without the duration issues.

It was interesting in HoU though, where some fights were close enough together to have 2-fight buffs but they might run out late second fight or early third.

Ed Reppert wrote:

Velcro? So he sticks to things?

Nah, the man has invulnerable skin that's basically impossible to penetrate. While it essentially makes him pierce/slash/bulletproof, it also make it way harder to treat him when he does get hurt internally (usually by giant blunt force trauma) because doctors can't open him up to operate and such.

No idea what this has to do with the Treat Wounds mechanic though. Unless Captain Morgan wants to say high level characters are like Luke Cage which....doesn't work one bit, no matter how you slice it.

High level characters can fall from 200 feet and survive, and have their AC reach a point where even sleeping naked a 1st level characters with an axe can only cut them slightly on a 20. To me that screams enhanced durability, and if it is harder to cut their skin or break their bones, it stands to reason it will be more difficult to sew that skin back together or reset those bones.

High level characters can fall from 200 feet and survive, and have their AC reach a point where even sleeping naked a 1st level characters with an axe can only cut them slightly on a 20. To me that screams enhanced durability, and if it is harder to cut their skin or break their bones, it stands to reason it will be more difficult to sew that skin back together or reset those bones.

Show me how that works, please. Particularly the "sleeping naked" part. And are we talking PF1 or PF2?

As a result the usable magic items for certain levels ends up quite generic with everyone choosing the same things over and over again and then using gold to buy Trinkets (if desired - and one player did invest in several Trinkets, seeing he was playing a Fighter).

Very true! i'm looking at 4 characters for Red Flags that all have essentially the same magic items and ancestry feats. Cave elves that are as fast as they can be, wearing celestial armor and with some actobatic boots thingie.

Captain Morgan wrote:

High level characters can fall from 200 feet and survive, and have their AC reach a point where even sleeping naked a 1st level characters with an axe can only cut them slightly on a 20. To me that screams enhanced durability, and if it is harder to cut their skin or break their bones, it stands to reason it will be more difficult to sew that skin back together or reset those bones.

Show me how that works, please. Particularly the "sleeping naked" part. And are we talking PF1 or PF2?

PF2.

Falling from 200 feet will deal 100 damage. An 8 Con Elven Wizard can do this at 20th level and survive. Something more reasonable like a 14 Con d8 class survives this fall at 10th level.

The sleeping naked and barely being hurt on a 20 by a level 1 character with an axe:

Level 1 Fighter has a max of +6 to hit. The "Only cut slightly on a 20" is referring to a situation where this level 1 character is attacking a high level character sleeping naked but can only hurt them at all on a 20, and even then only slightly (A regular hit instead of a crit, and one that does very little damage compared to the target's HP). Since the max to-hit is +6, this character would need to have AC 27 sleeping naked (That's the point where this level 1 character with an axe gets a success rather than crit on a 20 and fails on any other number).

Sleep provides the flat-footed debuff and a -4 conditional penalty for a total of -6 AC. So their waking unarmored AC needs to be 33 to meet these conditions.

On one end of the spectrum this is obtained at 20th level with 16 Dex. 20th level with less than 16 Dex does not meet this criteria (But might against a less optimized level 1 character, I just put the most optimal level 1 character for the sake of argument).

However this point can be reached as early as 18th level if you pump Dex, or even as early as 16th level if you are a Dex Monk.

Against a less optimized foe the level you reach this point is 1 or 2 lower (Or the Dex mod requirement 1 or 2 lower).

And to clarify, at max that level 1 character is going to do 12 damage (5 minimum), while the high level character has something like 154-410 HP (There's a large variance because of level range and unspecified Con and class to meet this criteria at), 5-12 damage can be fairly classified as a small cut to such HP.

That is how a high level character can be barely cut while sleeping naked by a Nat 20 from a level 1 character with an axe.

Tangent101 wrote:

As a result the usable magic items for certain levels ends up quite generic with everyone choosing the same things over and over again and then using gold to buy Trinkets (if desired - and one player did invest in several Trinkets, seeing he was playing a Fighter).

Very true! i'm looking at 4 characters for Red Flags that all have essentially the same magic items and ancestry feats. Cave elves that are as fast as they can be, wearing celestial armor and with some actobatic boots thingie.

That's... peculiar. Your players must have very similar mindsets or playstyles, or my group must be the oddball because I've seen very little such similarity at my table. I think the closest was in Heroes of Undarin where completely separately three players chose Elf, Half Elf, and Half Elf for their ancestries. Not a whole lot of feat crossover even so (Except everyone took Demon Skirmisher for obvious reasons). Magic items haven't been particularly samey though admittedly as GM I have allowed changing of items for items at different level with equivalent value exchange because not every item level has something for every character type yet, Playtest and all. Still though there have been few items if any that are considered super necessary or the only good item within x range to where most of my players had one. They have been quite varied in their picks, and the aforementioned item exchanges have been VERY rare.

The only copies I've seen mostly are the +x weapons and armor and classes with the same key ability score taking the same potent item. But those are no surprise. Other than that there has just been the rare case of two players taking the same skill boost item because they both specialized in that skill.

Starfox wrote:

Tangent101 wrote:

As a result the usable magic items for certain levels ends up quite generic with everyone choosing the same things over and over again and then using gold to buy Trinkets (if desired - and one player did invest in several Trinkets, seeing he was playing a Fighter).

Very true! i'm looking at 4 characters for Red Flags that all have essentially the same magic items and ancestry feats. Cave elves that are as fast as they can be, wearing celestial armor and with some actobatic boots thingie.

That's... peculiar. Your players must have very similar mindsets or playstyles, or my group must be the oddball because I've seen very little such similarity at my table.

Yep, we pretty much like the same playstyle. (I’m one of Starfox’ players) We love skillfull, mobile, sneaky characters. It is also much easier to play a skillfull, mobile, sneaky character if your buddies are like that too. ;)

So, our four characters are Cave Elves because of Darkvision (if all four have it, sneaking is much easier), Nimble and Expert Longevity (one free expert skill, changeable every day!)

All have Celestial Armor (+3 Diplomacy, Fly AND no movement penalty!), Boots of Bounding for movement, and Armbands of Athleticism because they are real cheap for their level, and Trip rocks in combat. We spend very little of the money part of the starting allotment on consumables or trinkets, prefering to buy cheaper permanent stuff instead.

at max that level 1 character is going to do 12 damage (5 minimum), while the high level character has something like 154-410 HP (There's a large variance because of level range and unspecified Con and class to meet this criteria at), 5-12 damage can be fairly classified as a small cut to such HP.

That much I understand, and I agree. The rest seems like a lot of hand-wavium. Or you're making assumptions I don't see.

Really all this says to me is that hit points and armor class are poor ways to approach the problem. Maybe I'm just too familiar with Harnmaster, which doesn't use either stat.

Edge93 wrote:

at max that level 1 character is going to do 12 damage (5 minimum), while the high level character has something like 154-410 HP (There's a large variance because of level range and unspecified Con and class to meet this criteria at), 5-12 damage can be fairly classified as a small cut to such HP.

That much I understand, and I agree. The rest seems like a lot of hand-wavium. Or you're making assumptions I don't see.

Really all this says to me is that hit points and armor class are poor ways to approach the problem. Maybe I'm just too familiar with Harnmaster, which doesn't use either stat.

There weren't really any unstated assumptions or handwaving there. I stated the math on the level 1 character's attack, and I stated the Dex scores/range required to get high enough AC to reduce even a Nat 20 from them to a normal success, with unarmored AC being 10+level+Dex mod (With extra if you're a Monk). I thought the math involved was fairly well explained.

Unless you're referring to the falling, but same there really. Listing the weakest possible HP build and then a more average one, and the levels at which they could take a 100 damage fall (Falling damage in PF2 is 1/2 the feet fallen and the example given was a 200 foot fall).

I'm not sure where the ambiguity is but if you let me know where the specific confusion is I'd be happy to outline the math in more detail.

Hm. I looked for information on how to calculate AC in the PF2 rulebook, but I didn't see where level is a modifier. So I'm thinking of it as 10+dex mod. 16 dex is +3, so AC would be 13, not 33. Where does the book say add level to it?

I guess what bugs me about it is that it's unrealistic. To me, if you're sleeping and unarmored and somebody comes up and shoves a knife in your ribs, level disparity shouldn't matter. If you're fighting an unarmored and unarmed foe, it shouldn't take you forever to kill him with a sword, level disparity be damned. Maybe I'm just nuts.

Hm. I looked for information on how to calculate AC in the PF2 rulebook, but I didn't see where level is a modifier. So I'm thinking of it as 10+dex mod. 16 dex is +3, so AC would be 13, not 33. Where does the book say add level to it?

I guess what bugs me about it is that it's unrealistic. To me, if you're sleeping and unarmored and somebody comes up and shoves a knife in your ribs, level disparity shouldn't matter. If you're fighting an unarmored and unarmed foe, it shouldn't take you forever to kill him with a sword, level disparity be damned. Maybe I'm just nuts.

I, too, had trouble finding +1 per level to everything in the rulebook, despite its mention in the previews before the Playtest Rulebook was released in August. It is on pages 290-291, Proficiency Modifier, that specifies that proficiency modifier equals level plus a small constant based on proficiency rank.

Next, page back to page 176, Armor Class, that says, "Your Armor Class equals 10 plus your Dexterity modifier (up to your armor’s Dexterity modifier cap) plus your proficiency modifier for any armor or shield you are using plus the armor’s item bonus to AC. If you’re using both armor and a shield, apply the lower of the two proficiency modifiers. If you’re not wearing armor, substitute your proficiency in unarmored defense." Because proficiency modifier adds level, AC adds level.

This forum has several threads about the effects of +1 per level to every proficiency. I recommend reading Jason Bulmahn's comment at the end of What about having "remove +1 / level" as an optional rule, at least?.

Hm. I looked for information on how to calculate AC in the PF2 rulebook, but I didn't see where level is a modifier. So I'm thinking of it as 10+dex mod. 16 dex is +3, so AC would be 13, not 33. Where does the book say add level to it?

I guess what bugs me about it is that it's unrealistic. To me, if you're sleeping and unarmored and somebody comes up and shoves a knife in your ribs, level disparity shouldn't matter. If you're fighting an unarmored and unarmed foe, it shouldn't take you forever to kill him with a sword, level disparity be damned. Maybe I'm just nuts.

I mean that's a valid opinion, but really characters beyond level 5 or 6 in PF2 AREN'T realistic (And characters in the "Realistic" level range are very much susceptible to 200 foot falls and level 1 axe to face while sleeping unarmored, so in the realistic people level ranges these unrealistic things just don't happen). That's kind of the point. That wasn't any different in PF1 either, at least not in a general sense. Level 1 character might have been able to hit level 20 character unarmored in PF1 a bit easier, but it would still take dozens of hits to down a foe because naturally HP and damage grow in level. For a game like Pathfinder that's how it SHOULD be. If a level 1 character can easily hit and kill a level 20 character then what exactly is the point of the levels? I mean maybe you're getting other boons if not durability but accuracy and damage growth far outscaling evasion and durability is why PF1 is so rocket tag-y at high levels.

High level characters are superhumans, I would argue that a pleb-level knife to the ribs really shouldn't be a kill, or at least if you put in something like PF1's coup de grace the DC be built in a way that you actually have more than a 5% chance to survive one, at least if your attacker is weaker than you.

In a similar vein, I think a high level unarmed/armored character should absolutely beat a well-equipped low level character, their loads of experience and growth in general power should very much give them an edge over someone so much further down the food chain.

In the end this likely comes down to a difference in what we expect to get out of level increase. And that's fine. But this has always been generally how PF1 is, and where it fails to be so is mostly due to places the system breaks down. PF2 has just refined the effects of level difference and maybe taken the effects of level disparity a bit further.

I like the "higher level characters have higher AC when sleeping" thing since that jives with how in fiction every time we have assassins attempting to assassinate people in their sleep, they might incapacitate some of the hirelings or non-essential associates, our heroes will always wake up or roll over at just the right moment.

Like in the Speed Racer movie, the only person more than inconvenienced by the ninja attack in the hotel was Rain, all of the Racer family came out fine.

I, too, had trouble finding +1 per level to everything in the rulebook, despite its mention in the previews before the Playtest Rulebook was released in August. It is on pages 290-291, Proficiency Modifier, that specifies that proficiency modifier equals level plus a small constant based on proficiency rank.

Next, page back to page 176, Armor Class, that says, "Your Armor Class equals 10 plus your Dexterity modifier (up to your armor’s Dexterity modifier cap) plus your proficiency modifier for any armor or shield you are using plus the armor’s item bonus to AC. If you’re using both armor and a shield, apply the lower of the two proficiency modifiers. If you’re not wearing armor, substitute your proficiency in unarmored defense." Because proficiency modifier adds level, AC adds level.

This forum has several threads about the effects of +1 per level to every proficiency. I recommend reading Jason Bulmahn's comment at the end of What about having "remove +1 / level" as an optional rule, at least?.

Thanks, I'll look at all that tomorrow. Sleepytime now. :-)

PossibleCabbage: Good old 'plot' armor. ;)

PossibleCabbage: Good old 'plot' armor. ;)

But in this case it's not just authorial fiat, the physics of the universe dictate that higher level people actually are harder to hurt in their sleep. No need to justify it any more than we need to justify gravity or how magic works.

Edge93, thanks for outlining the math and general concepts for me. It is appreciated.

And I agree with you as well that high level characters have always felt superhuman and I like PF2 leaning into that more.

Edit: At the very least, I like a character's body getting more durable as an answer for how your AC gets higher rather than constantly cycling through +1 ring, +1 armor, +1 amulet, +2 ring, +2 armor, +2 amulet, etc. Seriously, if you want to talk about samey item choices, look no further than the big 6.

Cantriped wrote:

My players are gaining individual levels, because I'm running a sandbox instead of DD... character creation took about 8 hours in total, and each level-up has taken up about 4 hours. Which means by 3rd level we'd wasted an entire month's worth of playtime on the "age of accounting".

I would like to say there was some particular element which slowed everyone down, but there wasn't. The book playtest rulebook is simply unusable throughout. All three of my players have complained about how user-friendly the book isn't; and that is with a physical book, up-to-date printed errata, and simultaneous access to multiple mobile devices with copies of the PDFs.

Have any of the group considered Hero Lab Online? The Demo is free and it can really be quite helpful to teach a player the steps in creating a PC.

It's only free for the first level characters. After that you have to buy Hero Labs Online. And to be perfectly honest, HLO is a substandard product that is unable to do half of what the non-online version of Hero Labs can do. I can't even put all of the characters into one document together to keep track of things, or load up monster statistics to keep track of that.

In short, I honestly cannot recommend the program to anyone right now. It falls short of what I can do for the original Pathfinder using the original Hero Labs. And that's even with my decision to only use Hero Labs for basic monster information instead of tracking everyone's hit points and the like.

That said, Pathfinder 2 Online did end up helping significantly in building characters. As a GM, I can build a 9th level character in around 30 minutes. My players? Well, with me telling them of various suggestions I'd make and the fact the two players in question were doing a Rogue and a Fighter, initial character creation took 2 hours each, and leveling up to 9th level took another 2 hours.

I suspect the only reason everyone didn't end up with Bags of Holding is because I was the one who leveled up the other two players (everyone is playing remotely for the Playtest) seeing the last two players of the remote group "decided" to wait for the game before leveling up and we play every three weeks. I wasn't going to waste an entire game session for them to level up and they accepted the leveled-up characters (with minor changes) without complaint anyway so...

I will note that a new player, with absolutely no knowledge of 2E (but had previous experience with 1E about 4 years ago), took Pathbuilder for 2E and made their character for part 5 in 30 minutes.