2Zak's page

1) Several early firearms can make melee attacks.

2) The limitation to a single barrel is similar to the limit for double weapons. Each head of a double-headed weapon is enhanced separately.

From the above, I derive that the enhancement you want to apply should work on the weapon. So you can apply melee weapons enhancements to firearms that can make melee attacks.

A dancing firearm needs to be something like a Hammer musket and will make only melee attacks while dancing.

That sounds like a perfectly logical dissection and explanation of what should be going on. I knew that firearms that can be used as melee weapons exist but I never quite finished connecting the dots, apparently.

That's perfect, thank you very much.

I don't see any reason you couldn't split the potential bonus between multiple abilities.

Me neither, but I've been staring at rules for far too long and I no longer consider myself reliable.

Presumably a dancing musket can be released to float away and shoot.

Yeah, that's what I thought too but something rubbed me the wrong way and, again, I don't really trust my information processing capabilities anymore.

So, thanks.

EDIT: Aha, I just remembered what exactly rubbed me the wrong way: the abilities are supposed to apply to a firearm's barrel, not the whole firearm. Rules-wise there's nothing preventing a single barrel from floating away and start shooting on its own acting as an independent gun or whatever (the stats are all there and it's magic works as an explanation), but it feels kinda weird I guess? On the other hand, with it costing a level 4 spell I don't see much of a problem with applying it to a whole weapon (or so I think, I'll admit I haven't looked deeply into the logistics of having a dancing gun shooting full attacks while you go about your day and cast spells, do dancing weapons even get bonus attacks from things like Haste (or, in this case, Rapid Shot)?), but that's clearly not what the rules say.

Anyways, thanks again.

I've searched the forums and faq and I haven't found an answer to this, so I apologize if this has been answered somewhere already.

First: I'm working under the assumption that by sacrificing a single spell you can grant multiple different bonuses, is that correct? For example: By sacrificing a level 3 spell, you get a +3 bonus which you can spend in several ways: to grant a +3 enhancement bonus; to grant a +2 enhancement bonus and the flaming ability; to grant the flaming, shocking and freezing abilities; etc.

Second: The rules text for Mage Bullets reads:

Many of these abilities are melee weapon-only special abilities (dancing, defending, spell storing, vicious and wounding). While some are easy to apply or work out (wounding and vicious, for example), others don't feel quite right (dancing or defending, especially dancing). So what's the deal here? Is this an error or is a Dancing Musket a thing? How would that work?

I wasn't alienated at all by Dark Souls 2, I don't really know anyone who was.

Sorry to bring off-topic back but I was, to be honest. But it wasn't because it felt like "it strayed too far to appeal to a wider audience" or anything like that, if anything it was trying too hard to be the same as its predecessor without actually knowing how to do it. More like a cheap knockoff than a sellout, to put it bluntly.

Back to the (current) topic: I hope we get to see this portrayal of elvendom explored further in PF2, I've been bored by Tolkien-esque and Tolkien-adjacent elves since... well, since I read Tolkien actually. I think that trope is well past its expiration date. Also, the gates being there, as James put it, "to spread diversity and bring distant regions and worlds together", sounds much more interesting than the "tree-hugger sect" stereotype that non-Tolkien elves tend to fall into.

that kind of spell is decidedly outside the scope of the alchemist spells.

They have Detect Metal, Detect Secret Doors and Detect Undead, of all things, and Identify, and a few other similar Divination spells. Detect Poison is decidedly not outside the scope of the Alchemist spells.

If anything, they just don't need it, or aren't supposed to. They can use Craft (alchemy) to identify poisons too, and they eventually become poison resistant and/or immune, so why bother developing a formula to do something they can do naturally (identifying) or that they end up not caring about (finding hidden poisons).

Jason Bulmahn wrote:

This sort of change might seem like an extra thing to learn, but it can also be seen as about 100 things you don't have to learn.

How does removing part of the spell entry, in favor of yet another keyword, equate to not having to learn 100 things?

You now don't have to read every single spell that does the exact same as every other spell multiple times to make sure it actually does the exact same. That means you don't have to learn whether each spell does something outside the ordinary because if it does it will have entries for that and if it doesn't it won't.

What's clearer for you: "this spell does half a thing on a successful save, no things on a crit save, a whole thing on a failed save and double the things on a crit failed save" or "this spell works like Fireball but it's cold damage"? Or put another way: Would you like to have a table for each spell explicitly stating whatever it doesn't do alongside whatever it does?

I do like the idea, but I don't like the "depending on their basic reflex saves" phrase because it implies it's a property of the save or that there's a different way to do saves for other spells, rather than being a property or effect of the spell.

I'd go for explaining what the four degrees of success mean for most damaging spells, giving that rule a name or an easy way to reference it, and then referencing that rule when necessary. You could even go as far as making it into a trait, but it might be too much.

Maybe something like:

Saving throws against damaging spells:
Some damaging spells require the targets to roll a saving throw against them. In many of those spells the result of this saving throw will only affect the amount of damage the target takes and nothing else, in those cases the description will declare the damage is modified by the target's related saving throws and will behave like this:
[List the four degrees of success and their effects]
In any spell where the effects differ, the effects are listed right in the spell entry. Any spell asking for a saving throw and not giving the results for them will have the effects listed above.

And then in the Fireball Entry:

Fireball
[Traits, Actions, Range, Area]
A burst of fire explodes, dealing 6d6 base fire damage to creatures in the area, modified by the results of their Reflex saving throws.
Heightened (+1) The base damage increases by 2d6.

I added "base" there so there would be less ambiguity as to which damage is modified by what, but I might very well have introduced new ambiguity. In any case, that was only a mockup, to convey more properly what I was thinking of.
The point is that this is more in line with the way you present damage and critical/miss effects for other things; you don't explain critical hits as an attack dealing damage "depending on the target's AC", you first codify what a critical hit means and then say whether an attack does something else in a critical hit. Ideally, the book should explain what a saving throw means for spell damage and then specify which spells require a saving throw for their damage.

Also, would characters in game think in meters?

Do characters in game think in HP, BAB and dice rolls?

I hope you keep the negative stereotypes because just by giving them you're already giving the player (especially a new player) a ground to start subverting them if they want, but to avoid these problems other people are seeing label them clearly as "negative stereotypes about your class" and not just "others will assume this". You could also add a couple ways to subvert these stereotypes too, while you're at that, I guess. Or at least make it clear those (both the negative and positive) are just stereotypes, not what you're supposed to be.

I'm not seeing the problem myself, to be honest, but judging by the amount of people talking about them, their presentation could use a few modifications.

2Zak wrote:

The only relevant point of discussion should be balance.

I disagree. [...]

I see your point and correct my assertion: The only relevant points of discussion should be balance and game mechanics.

Mostly: don't bring things from outside the game into this.

In any case, what you say looks cool but I prefer the boring but practical way for this, to be honest. In my case I don't want to make high DEX a special thing, I just want to be able to shank things without high STR.

After reading through it all, I'm actually very concern about the order system for druids.

It seems very limiting when compared to the other classes's ability to pick up different class features.

It's not. You're not forced to pick only order-appropriate features and all your order does is give you a head start and an exclusive bonus on the particular feature you're most interested in at level 1. Nothing is stopping a Druid of the Wild to pick every other class feat dedicated to plant stuff.

I'm not sure what I think about how DEX to damage should work under PF2 rules. All I know is that DEX to damage should be an option for the sake of builds that want or need it, and that it should be conditional or require investment and not just free for all (since it messes with the balance of character abilities).

Last, but not least, we should avoid basing any argument for/against DEX to damage on being a realistic simulation of anything and focus on the balance aspect of it. Why? Because AC throws any possible realism regarding "hitting thing with other things" out the window. There it goes. Dammit AC, stop it.
Your AC (not Touch AC, total AC) means two things: How good you are at evading and how much you're hurt by stuff colliding with you. That, by default, means two things that are equally ridiculous:
a) A high STR makes you better at using your hands to hit squishy stuff that moves faster than your hand-eye coordination can manage.
b) A high DEX makes you better at making anything you throw penetrate a stationary stone.

So, that said, I'm gonna tackle this one post I'm quoting not because I think I'll add anything useful to the discussion (other than that "don't invoke realism" bit) but because my inner pedantic nerd requires me to, I'm sorry and I bear you all no ill will.

I'm kind of okay with rapiers being *the* dex and str weapon, to be honest... just because these are four-foot long blades with an offense based on lunging and punching through whatever you're pointing at. Noodly armed folks need not apply. Pure dex folks should stick to daggers and kukri and the like.

I have used a rapier and, trust me, you don't need more than the bare minimum strength to use it. And regarding daggers, STR would be more important when using daggers than when using rapiers, precisely because the length of the rapier adds a lot of force to your swings, while a dagger doesn't have that benefit and relies only on how fast your muscles are and how much explosive force they can deliver. In fact, it's easier to use strength with a dagger than it is to use with a rapier, since the rapier's blade will probably bend (they're VERY bendy) if it hits resistance, diverting your force, where the dagger's blade should be sturdier and apply a higher percentage of your strength to the resisting object.

I mean, using a rapier for a while strains your arm, sure, but under PF rules that's CON, not STR anyways. The problem with your arms becoming tired is not that you can't swing them with enough force, it's that you proggressively lose control of the finer adjustments to your motor functions and as such it's harder to hit people with the pointy end. And the same goes for most bladed weapons, actually, since they require more finesse than raw strength; you barely need to put any force into the swing as long as the blade is properly sharpened and you hit the proper spot.
So if we're talking about realism, most bladed weapons should actually use DEX to hit anyways, and most of them should default to it for damage too.
Of course, hitting harder applying STR would make your hits better at breaking stuff (such as armor), so STR should add damage in cases where for example you don't actually hit flesh but you hit hard enough to damage it under the armor, but if we're talking rapiers it's gonna break apart before it breaks proper armor anyways.

And it's over, sorry about the rant.

TL;DR: Arguments regarding realism don't have a place in the discussion because the AC system is already too much of an abstraction to allow any sort of realism and because the weapon system is already wrong about the basic mechanics of hurting stuff with a weapon anyways, so anything trying to apply realism while still based on that is going to fall flat sooner or later. The only relevant point of discussion should be balance.

So, I have a question: Does Goodberry (the spell in spell lists) still exist? Is it going to be exclusive to Leaf druids? Or is it a spell any druid can prepare but Leaf druids can cast it using spell points, or extra times per day, or with better effects?

It would feel weird that a spell that some consider to be a core Druid feature became exclusive to a particular kind of Druids, but on the other hand it would also feel weird that the first level power/feat/whatever of the Leaf order was just "you can make more berries than that one druid who can electrocute their enemies to death".

Overall impressed with the druid. Always liked Druids as a concept but never got to play one neither in 3.5 or PF. Mostly because the thing I liked the most about them was the shapeshifting and it didn't come into play until they leveled up a little (I like combat shapeshifters a lot and I want my characters to have what I consider their core or unique abilities at least in a very basic form at first level, as it helps me coming up with a core for a backstory). Now I can do a level 1 guy who mauls their enemies with shapeshifted claws! That's good. Even if the Storm Order looks pretty awesome too.

an illusion that can only be seen by the caster, just came across as mostly just skeevy

Hey, that's your own fault. I for one would have my life improved vastly if I could project my own Heads-up Display that I could modify with my mind.

EDIT: I mean, you could use it so you wouldn't forget about things but in game terms it would be either irrelevant (since your character is supposed to remember the stuff it should remember) or maybe too useful under certain circumstances since you could just project something important before someone tries to erase your memories of it, for example. It wouldn't be much different from keeping a diary about the stuff you want to remember but it would be a diary nobody else could interact with or take away from you.
You could even project illusory spellbook pages as a contingency plan for when something happens to your physical one.

Does a PF1e fighter feel special when he hits on a 2 or better?

Assuming the rest of the party doesn't and the fight isn't trivial: Yes. Certainly.

2Zak wrote:

Vidmaster7 wrote:

K-kun the Insane wrote:

Don't forget needle in a needle stack!

Their we go that is the new trivial.

Well, it depends. Is any needle good enough? Or do you need a specific needle?

We've been thru this. I'll let you keep reading.

This is what I get for mostly reading blog post's comments through the dev's comments RSS feed.

K-kun the Insane wrote:

Don't forget needle in a needle stack!

Their we go that is the new trivial.

Well, it depends. Is any needle good enough? Or do you need a specific needle?

I haven't commented much about the blog post itself but I don't find there's much to comment about it. I welcome any and all tools that make the GM's job easier (particularly since the playtest is going to be my first experience as a GM and I'm not exactly confident about my GMing abilities)

John Lynch 106 wrote:

PossibleCabbage wrote:

I disagree.

You can disagree all you want. I have played 4th ed with mediocre GMs who used the table to make the game less fun than it otherwise would have been.

So your issue is "it's not bad-GM proof"?

Let me know when someone comes up with a system that is. I'm on the lookout for one that's bad-player proof too.

I've heard of this new thing called computer games...

Heh, it hadn't even occurred to me that pounds would be less than ideal to much of the world anyway.

This is late but I think there's a very important point to be made here: Remember that most of the world doesn't use the Imperial System anyways so an encumbrance system based on pounds is just as abstract for us as a Bulk/Light/whatchamacallit is for you guys.

When my group does care about weight or distance (in non-5-foot-square-tile-metrics) we just sit there looking confused for a while and spouting random numbers until someone whips up a converter app on their phones. I know 6 feet is roughly 2 meters and that you can do the conversion back by using multiples of 3, 2 and 10 in some way (something like 6x meters being in the ballpark of 20x feet? We only need this for large distances most of the time and I'm probably wrong, who cares) but it's not knowledge I use nearly enough to become an automated process. And don't get me started on how much it took me to know how much potions actually weigh. And I just forgot it again in a week so my GM and I pulled an abstraction out of our backsides just so we didn't have to care about it and now I'm running around crafting bottled magic with a conspicuously convenient weight that might or might not be higher than it should.

So what I mean is that, man, if you're going to publish a game that uses encumbrance as a balancing factor, and it's going to be enigmatic as hell for 75% of the world's population, just go all the way and make it enigmatic for everyone.
Or, more seriously: the game already abstracts a lot of things, I prefer encumbrance abstracted as well for a variety of reasons (only one of which is unfamiliarity with the units that would be used otherwise) and, to be fair, I'd probably like it to be abstracted even further. I understand the need of an encumbrance system as a counterbalance for stuff, but I don't really care that it closely resembles real life when stuff like bags of holding are going to be an staple of the genre.

So all this talk about the bard and the occult and their relationship has reminded me of a certain book where a troupe of traveling performers are slain because their leader composes a piece that's a little too truthful about some demons who are supposed to be a mere fairytale, and said demons don't want the truth to be known.

The occult theme may not fit with the kind of bard that's just a street performer or a mere sweet talker with a lute, but that's not all a bard is. The occult does fit, in my mind, with the idea of an adventuring bard. The kind of bard that goes around the country getting little snippets of obscure folklore to add to their performances and stories, the guy who tells scary stories from some other land when everyone's sitting around the campfire and manages to make them just terrifying and, what's worse: very plausible. The guy who knows how the ten people who live in a remote village, just a couple days worth of walking south of here, where you can hear unsettling laughs coming from the nearby willows at nights when there's no moon, deal with their particular brand of supernatural creatures.

And that has made me, for the first time ever, consider playing a bard.

Yeah, this has me kinda worried and I don't have any accessibility issues. It's just, icons have to be learned and are harder to read if found in the middle of sentences. The only advantages they have (especially in this case where they replace single, short words) are for printing and formatting.

On the flip side, what we're getting in the blogs looks like it's being copypasted from the documents, and in the blogs we get [[A]] and [[R]], not symbols, so I'd assume that it's going to stay like this in PDFs (with an icon overlaid on top)? Maybe it's wishful thinking, though.

2Zak wrote:

The biggest factor here is availability. Would literally undetectable magic more easily available to everyone in Golarion than, say, short swords? I seriously doubt so.

My supposition is not dependent on the availability of magic. it hinges on the degree of fear such an option would create in a general population, in the hands of a limited few.

If it's literally undetectable and it's not widely available, how can it be so widely known that not only the average person fears it but also the upper classes are able to spend money developing countermeasures to it?

Also, who's to say, since this kind of mind control is impossible to detect, that what happens every time anyone tries to develop a protective nation-wide anti-mind-control system, whatever god or supernatural being who reigns over mind control magic (or who just wants people to be able to cast Detect Magic in markets withouth the guards being thrown at them) doesn't just mind control that person and makes them forget the idea forever?

Why do you think mobs of villagers are always armed with pitchforks and torches? That in almost every story where a commoner has a sword, they used to be a soldier?

Economics, mostly. Swords are expensive.

Also, it's easier to gut someone without hurting yourself with short spike of sharp metal attached to a 5 foot pole than with a 5 foot piece of sharp metal attached to a short handle. So stuff like pitchforks are useful improvised weapons for people without proper sword training.

Torches are on fire, which is very dangerous, that makes anyone you're confronting instantly afraid of catching fire.

Besides that, any farmer will have a torch or a pitchfork lying around, which makes getting one fairly trivial as opposed to the same farmer finding an actual sword.

And besides all of that, yeah, there's also the fact that at some points in history, when economics were favorable to commoners and they could afford actual weapons, weapon control laws were created.

The biggest factor here is availability. Would literally undetectable magic more easily available to everyone in Golarion than, say, short swords? I seriously doubt so.

I think you're missing my point - if the CRB wasn't a 'book' to be referenced by page number, and was instead a document (or series of documents) referenced by chapter, section, subsection, etc, than the issue of changes taking up more or less space is no longer a concern

You can already do that, but page number is a faster and more efficient way to search, when it exists, because it's content-independent. I mean, it isn't a book because it's "to be referenced by page number"; referencing by page number is possible because it's a book, not the other way around.

Nah, just from evil sources. The wording isn’t great, but there’s an FAQ to clarify that, yes, Protection from Evil only protects you from evil.

Jesus christ, I wish my brain stopped doing this thing where it just doesn't acknowledge the last sentence in a paragraph.

Indeed, I'd expect such a motivation to be common if such abuses are (I wouldn't expect such abuses to be that common, but if they were people arising to combat them seems very likely).

Especially for clerics of good deities who are against people doing evil stuff.

Honestly, what I'd find rather weird would be that, with mind control allegedly being so prevalent, law forces didn't literally require their personnel, or part of it, to be trained as spellcasters (mostly clerics, as you can build a temple to a deity in pretty much anywhere) to counter/investigate it properly.

It's easier to find a house equipped with a security system than someone wanting to rob that particular house.

As mentioned, Protection From Evil does squat if the caster isn't evil

Protection From Evil protects against all forms of mind control regardless of alignment.

So, all of the classes are getting a bonus blog already? Cool! I was wondering whether I'd have to split my donation among every team member but now I'll donate through the Paizo team itself then.

In my group in PF 1st ed we just homebrewed that drawing the potion is part of the "bigger" action of drinking it much like drawing a weapon can be part of a move action if you have at least +1 BAB. So basically not an action I guess? We just assume the characters don't stow the potions in some ignote corner of their backpacks and carry them somewhere easily reachable instead, in the same way they don't have to search for their weapons if they wanna draw them or the Alchemist doesn't have to search for an extract before drinking it.

Potions are also just about all spells in a can, so it makes a certain amount of sense for taking one to be balanced like casting a spell.

Currently they're even worse than spells in that regard. Most spells are standard actions, so you can still move or do a move action. If retrieving a potion is a move action that requires a free hand and drinking it is a standard action, drinking a single potion takes your whole turn and triggers two attacks of opportunity. It's not like there's many upsides to potions that all of this is counter-balancing anyways. Potions are already limited to 3rd level or lower, need time and money to be crafted, have a single use (unless it's an Alchemist with Alchemical Allocation) and even lose targets (if the spell had multiple targets), letting someone drink one and then do a move action in the same turn is not gonna break anything.

So under second edition rules I think retrieving should be one action unless you are carrying them tucked in some big bag (bag of holding, etc) and have to "search" for them and drinking should be another action.

I'm... torn.

On the one hand I like just being free to set up stats and being able to abhorrently cripple myself in order to build a certain character concept, but on the other hand... PF has always looked, to me, the kind of game where the "narrative traits" of your character either grow up as you play or are mostly made up by the player since the beginning, rather than being built into it during character creation. A PF character sheet only gives you a measure of how good is your character at things, where other games have disadvantages that directly affect the rules about how your character does those things or outright create problems for you where any other character wouldn't have them. So I think I'd rather leave the option of excessive self-crippling for other systems or variant rules.

Having so many different things named Feats though...

If Dodge and Power Attack and Heighten Spell could all be Feats in first edition while doing vastly different things why is it a problem that "class unlocks" are called feats now? Especially since now you're also choosing from a list much in the same way as you did with Feats.

I mean yeah they can break. But we don't know how easily.

IIRC what was said in the podcast, it works just like any other object with a Hardness score. In fact, the DR given by a shield is the shield's hardness. A shield will have an HP and once it reaches 0 it breaks.

realistically, you would use a shield and weapon in tandem.

Have you tried actually doing that? Fighting with a shield and a weapon at the same time? It's incredibly hard to keep track of what both of your arms are doing all the time and whether your non-dominant arm is correctly positioned to defend you when you're probably also going to need it to counter-balance your weapon swings. So, yeah, readying a shield to block takes an actual moment of concentration and affects the rest of your actions.

EDIT: My point is that the baseline for "proficient shield user" is not equal to "expert shield user", as it is in first edition more or less. Someone can know how to properly use a shield to block (it's not as easy as it sounds) and still not be able to seamlessly use a shield during a fight. I like the granularity offered by the new shield mechanics.

Oh, okay, I somehow skipped that paragraph of the rules the last two times I checked nonlethal damage. So you're right about that and my point was moot.

I see. It makes sense for balance purposes and to prevent weird interactions in corner case scenarios, but I feel kinda sad about that.

It should clearly be Track-encounterer.

Suppose I beat someone about the head with a sap, intending them to fall unconscious but not die. Alas, beating someone about the head is a dicey business and they do die. I am, in most jurisdictions, guilty of some degree of murder despite not causing a point of damage to anyone under the rules.

At common law (which is the pre-colonial English shared basis of the criminal law of the various US states) you are presumed to intend the reasonably foreseeable consequences of your actions. "I only intended to bludgeon his brain, not kill him" is not going to fly.

This scenario you describe makes no sense in pathfinder. Hitting someone with a sap can't kill them unless you make a conscious effort to do so, that's a fact. A Paladin with a sap won't kill anyone unless the Paladin wants to kill them.

I mean, you just used an example of applying lethal force. That's exactly the opposite of what I asked about.

Also, I was using the proposed dictionary definiton of murder where murder has to be "premeditated" and "unlawful". I'm not using the current legal definition of "murder" (and never was), partly because I'm no lawyer, but mostly because we're not talking about current law and it's pretty obvious that the rules aren't either, in the same way that I'm not using the programming definition of "kill" because we're not talking about programming and the rules aren't either.
Just because a word has an over-specialized definition in a certain specific domain it doesn't mean that word is forever the property of that domain and can't be used outside it without invoking that definition.

But which spells are these and how do I tell them apart?

Ones will be in one (or more?) of the new four "major" spell lists (Divine, Arcane, something or other and whatchamacallit). The others will (likely) be described alongside the respective class or alongside the feature that grants access to them. In any case, that's just an editing/formatting issue, not a rules one. As far as the rules go, they're both Spells.

Would it be safe to assume that the spells for partial casters all got changed to the new spells that take points instead of slots?

I'd bet on yes. If part of the reason of revamping magic and spells was to help increase the mechanical and gameplay distinctions between different casters I'd expect stuff like Bards and Rangers to use Spell Points rather than Spell Slots.

Lay on Hands is now one of these, is Divine Grace tied to the same pool?

Divine Grace is a Reaction. It's not, as far as we know, a spell in any form.

What does smite do?

We don't know.

The second question is how metamagic stacks up for PF2 vs PF1. Since you apply it when a spell is cast now instead of during preparation we can assume it won't raise the spell level, but if that's the case we have reason to believe they may have other limiting factors (less per day, less stacking, etc) which would further complicate the math.

If I remember correctly, metamagic doesn't affect the level but it does affect the number of actions it takes to cast it. So unless designers confirm you can increase a spell's casting time over 3 actions (finishing it next round, or the round after that if it takes more than 6), that'd leave a maximum of 2 metamagic feats on a spell.

I personally would like to be able to say "okay, this is going to be the mother of all fireballs, it's coming down in five rounds, come on guys cover me" and then go to the supermarket for snacks or something while your fellow players actually fight. It somehow fits with my mental image of Wizards.

I am liking pretty much everything except little snippets that I'm not sure how to feel about for which I really just need more context.

A few things I particularly like are:

Making actions simpler to grasp but allowing for a bigger amount of choices in their use.
Reactions adding almost universal reactive defense options.
Pretty much everything we've been told about magic: scaling cantrips, built-in heighten options for spells, ability to spend more actions to increase effects, etc.
That Alchemists now use actual alchemical items instead of having their bombs be equal-but-different just because.
That Weapons (particularly melee) have more features to them than just hit dice, critical range, multiplier, damage type and reach. It makes choosing weapons having some "flavor" instead of being just number crunching and gives a reason to weapon-focused classes such as fighter to carry a couple weapons on them for reasons other than just defeating DR if it comes up.

I can't think of anything else right now, but I'm sure there's more stuff.

EDIT: Oh, I love the simplification of all the different and independent "number progression" systems such as AC, Saves, DC, BAB, CMB and that stuff and unification of their growth under Proficiencies. Will hopefully save a lot of space in sheets or at the very least it will definitely help a lot when editing your sheet after leveling up.

People were talking about using Nonlethal damage... but didn't that change in PF2, so basically someone could get outright murdered (word use intentional) despite any efforts by a paladin to use nonlethal?

How did it change? And how would it be murder if the paladin is actively trying not to kill?

The ionics are already in the Core Rulebook in the splash pages at the beginning of every chapter of the Core Rulebook

Yeah, this is what I was going to say. They already are there, maybe it's not the most noticeable thing, but it's also the lest obtrusive way.

Other than that, I agree with Mathmuse's entire post and particularly the thing about using them for examples of roleplaying or mechanics, it just doesn't mean anything whether they're the iconics or "Jimmy the stable boy who became a rogue" in these cases.

Even without nonlethal damage, people don't instantly die once they're unconscious. You can actually still heal them later if resorting to lethal force is really definitely literally ultimately your only option to avoid falling. It's not murder if they don't die.

If what you're excited about is three attacks per round, then you don't get it and you never will. It's not about numbers. It's never been about numbers.

It's, in fact, pretty telling that "universal system improvements that affect everyone" such as everyone having more actions per turn and being able to actively defend yourself look "exciting" for martials while "specific changes that only affect magic but change it radically" such as rituals, universal built-in heightening, ability to adapt spells on the fly by using more or less actions and automatic scaling for many cantrips are deemed as "boring" and "not enough" for mages.

It speaks volumes about how wild the difference is between what people think of martials and casters and where the baseline is set for each of them.

More a situation of moral innocence rather than legal innocence

BUT is there anyone truly innocent in the world? "Let the one who is without sin throw the first stone". These children might have at some point tugged on a cat's tail, thus causing harm to another living being for their own amusement, isn't that the epitome of all evil? How could a Paladin act, knowing not whether this moral quandary has a proper solution?

(That's sarcasm by the way)

(I want them to make sorceror significantly DIFFERENT from wizard, not just a spontenously casting wizard).

Oh, I thought I was alone in this.

Tough, to be fair, I'd also like for Wizard to be something more than just being "the class which casts the most spells" and have some identity or unique mechanics to it, so when the eventual myriad of other spellcasters appear in supplements there's something that sets Wizard apart from them besides sheer volume of spells.
By what I've seen in previews so far, chances are that this is happening already though. And maybe with that, Sorcerer will have something to actually set it apart from Wizard.

Back on the original question: I'd like Gunslingers to be core if they managed to set them up in a way that weren't at odds with the established sword-and-magic fantasy mythos and imagery and guns were actually well implemented this time around. Maybe something like making them experts at ranged combat with bows or crossbows and call them sharpshooters or whatever to just avoid guns while keeping the playstyle? It wouldn't be the same though.

Still, even if the sharpshooter idea was doable, it seems like something that wouldn't really work as a core class and more like supplemental stuff.

Since, we're talking about PF2, they probably don't. At least not until ultimate equipment.

Blunt arrows were in Advanced Player's Guide (and also there was an arrow trap doing nonlethal damage using blunt arrows in the very first Adventure written for Pathfinder). Maybe they don't exist in PF2 first edition, but then again maybe there are rules for nonlethal ranged combat without specific ammo in PF2 first edition, so that's not a point.

In any case, resorting to outright killing the bandits then and there is still a conscious decision that can be avoided without outright ignoring the whole situation.

You can warn them and give them a chance to surrender and, if they don't, you can try to engage them in melee combat to knock them unconscious or use your divine powers (if you have any) to restrain them. If that doesn't work because you can't reach them, then you just proved that actions couldn't possibly have prevented the harm they did and you're covered by your Code. But even then, if that's not enough for your Paladin, you could later try to find their hideout to recover what they stole and bring them to justice. Or contact the local authorities and offer your help regarding the case.

I don't see why a Paladin would go "welp, they're fleeing and I'm slow, gotta kill them"

F: Paladin Player believes the act is not murder. The GM does.

Once you bring the "GM has absolute authority and is evil" argument into the table then there's nothing anyone can do. The GM has absolute authority after all, so no rule written in the book will stop them from being evil.

And I'm assuming he's evil because if that's not the case there's no way they wouldn't either be open to discussion, give you warning beforehand or give you a second chance to redeem yourself without making you immediately fall for making a bad decision once.