A man who led crusades, earned countless honours and protected the smallfolk, but is still level 1...
... because he's actually Gunter, a regular farmer whose field Weyford died in. He put on the poor man's armour to go sell it, but when people addressed him as Lord Weyford, decided to pretend to be the man and try to find a better future.
And for completeness,
65 The real Simon Weyford
ABC: Human Noble Champion
A man who will lead crusades, earn countless honours and protect the smallfolk, before dying alone in a field after driving away a roving band of kobolds
(that somehow don't shatter when they are dropped)
Ignoring the rest of the issue (since I don't want to get into it), but vials for Alchemists have always been available in metal. Indeed, given the state of Golarion's technology, it's much cheaper than glass as well as more durable.
Really, assuming they're all glass has always been a deeply odd assumption.
While what you say it true, you just multiply the bulk issue: An Iron vial weighs 1 lb. by itself vs the - weight of a glass one. That's adding L weight to each and every item made, and that's to a class that looks to already have issues with bulk.
The negligible-weight vials from UE are explicitly "made out of glass or steel". The heavier ones are ones designed to be tougher and hard to break.
EDIT: Rereading the description of an iron vial ("This metal potion bottle [...]") and weighing my coffee travel mug (about 1lb) makes it even more obvious that the iron vial is poorly named; it's essentially a thermos for a potion, not the small vial an alchemist would use for their concoctions
If Assurance is the new Taking 10, I see the Failing Forward philosophy as being PF2's take on Taking 20. The typical use case for the more contentious Fail Forwards is the same as for taking 20: The players can try again and again until they succeed: picking a lock, tracking a hydra, etc.
Unlike taking 20, though, this rewards investing in your skills (since a success is still better than failing forward), it's more flexible (the consequences can be anything, not just taking 20 times as long to complete) and it opens the door to failing forward in other situations (e.g. the aforementioned climb down a cliff; you'll get to the bottom either way, failing just gets you there faster and more painfully)
And yeah, not every check needs to fail forward. Sometimes, it's fine to let a failure be a failure and force the players to try a different tack. But sometimes, they're going to want to try an approach until it works and fail forward, just like taking 20, allows for that
Loot will probably be the hardest thing to convert, but it still isn't that difficult.
A number of people (Like, I believe, Mark Seifter) who have done AP conversion have said it's usually simpler to just rebuild the loot using PF2 rules than to update it from PF1
We already know, from the most recent Know Direction podcast. Most spells take two actions to cast, so the only way to cast more than one spell in a round is to cast one of the rare single action spells.
And what's the penalty to the spell roll for casting that second spell?
If both are Attack spells, the same -5 as if you'd made an attack with your third action. If either of them isn't, no penalty (Again, same as if you'd made an attack before instead of the other spell)
I'm personally still in favor of having the Cha Mod set the starting attitude of NPCs who are unfamiliar with the PC until they actively make a social skill check against them to raise the attitude level.
I have no idea if the starting attitudes are codified for PF2 or not but I personally plan on running with the following.
Most NPCs start as indifferent to Characters they do not know of or have a prior relationship with. Unless otherwise stated NPCs begin as indifferent. Depending on the Characters Charisma score NPCs have their starting attitude adjusted as follows:
Unfriendly -2 or less
Indifferent -1, 0, or +1
Friendly +2 or Greater
Having an NPC treat Characters differently based on how powerful or influential their personality seems natural to me and I hardly think having most strangers treat the ugly, uncouth Barbarian with -2 Cha badly to start is unreasonable (Given how hard it is to even achieve such a score), and on the inverse, if an attractive well-spoken Bard walks up they should gain some benefit from this.
There's already a skill feat to try to improve someone's attitude when first meeting them. This would just let charismatic chars double up
For me, Druids never felt like divine casters to begin with, so the switch to primal is mostly just admitting the reality which has always been there.
They do for me, most likely because we have [or had] druids that worship actual gods for their abilities like Erastil, Gozreh, and the Eldest. Now we'll have divine mage NOT mean magic given to worshipers of a god [or philosophy, ideal, etc like nature]. It makes one wonder if you can worship gods and cast occult and arcane too.
You can, however the gods you worship aren't the source of your arcane/occult/primal magic like they would be for a cleric's divine magic
Besides, this is 'every +1 matters' edition so, clearly, every -1 does too. Saddling the rest of the party with someone who's going to penalizing them with 2 (or even 3!) sets of rolls at -1 is pretty poor form. Why are they bringing this one along into life or death struggles?
I encourage everyone to read this paragraph of Voss' post once again.
When I was arguing for some mechanical benefit to offset the cost of opting to reduce an ability score, I was told ad nauseum that if it's for roleplay purposes I should just be satisfied with the built in rules to voluntarily take a penalty with no recompense. I was told that no one would reasonably complain about inflicting a no-benefit, RP only, handicap on the party.
hmmmm.
The "Every +1 Matters" mentality has an implicit "in things you expect to be doing and be good at" rider attached. The stats you dump are by definition not things you're expecting to succeed at. Yes, that -1 to CHA will hamper you in the case that you're forced to attempt diplomacy, but your chances of success were already low to begin with
Sure, you can elect to twist things around to make certain characters stronger or weaker based on their Ancestry. If Tiefling ends up a Heritage that can be taken by any ancestry, then I could easily say "hey, take a human/elf/dwarf feat AND a Tiefling feat whenever you get an Ancestry feat option.
But I tend to find that this actually goes by players a lot worse than if the Tiefling itself is just sort of better. If I'm giving my Planetouched players more stuff then players who don't want to play those types feel like I'm being a jerk. But if the game just has them be better most say "yeah, that makes sense. A human with demon blood is going to be stronger than a regular human". Besides, I don't want them to have more feats. I want the feats they have access too to be just a little bit better.
I see the situation completely the opposite. If it's the GM making these ancestries stronger, they can make a case to their players that planetouched are stronger because it makes thematic sense for the game they'll be running. An individual GM can account for the boost in power and make sure the players who aren't taking a stronger ancestry don't feel like they're making a mistake.
On the other hand, if it's baked into the game, that's where I imagine that players could feel forced to pick one of the strong ancestry or penalised if they take one of the weak ones. Most GMs wouldn't think to make sure the stronger ancestries improve the feel of the game
Considering how easy it is to start with an 18 now I would be surprised if she didn't have one for Charisma. Given that, 2d6+4 could easily be up to 16 healing, so 14 is, like Mark said, achievable... of course, that's assuming the healing was literally doubled from the playtest version, but given that it's (probably) a 2 action cast vs the versatile casting of the heal spell that seems fair
It's also not impossible that it gained the same kind of buff that 2-action Heal got. 14 healing is plausible for 1d6 + 6 + CHA
How does Rahadoum feel about divine sorcerers? I imagine it's fine since they don't necessarily worship a deity, but having nearly the exact same spell list as clerics might be seen as suspicious.
But do they follow a deity, not always. For Rahadoum, its deities out, and everything else in. Being a caster with the Divine Spell List doesn't make them religious, just means that they have different magic. Druids get some of that list as well, but they don't worship deities.
It's not like the Rahadoum deny the existence of gods they just don't want anything to do with them. Some poor soul cannot help if some distant ancestor was taken advantage of by some divine force. In fact I could easily see a divine blooded sorcerer being pissed off and angry at the gods and turning to rahadoum.
That didn't help Alahazra. Her divine magic doesn't come from devotion, yet she was still cast out under suspicion of clericness
What worries me with Hunt Prey is the Concentrate trait... That seems to mean it eats up an action each round to use and that's worrisome: assuming animal companions work the same, or similar, you're eating up 2 actions commanding it and using hunt prey.
The Concentrate trait doesn't mean you need to spend an action to keep it up, only that you need some focus to use it (i.e. not Raging or Fascinated) and that it's affected by Disruptive Attack of Opportunities (and Devastators' Opportune Armament)
"Our Card Game is Good" - Yes, we know, we agree, it has an evolutionary and compatible design, What about those 2nd edition rules?
"Our organised play is Good" - Yes, we've heard, looks good, sort of irrelevant outside of conventions. Did I mention the rules?
Those two have nothing to do with 2E. There have been blog posts about what's coming to Organised Play and the Card Game since long before the playtest was announced
If you want to be the kind of hero who's gonna stop a draconic apocalypse and fight evil slavers and put an end to a lot of villainy all over the world, this is sort of a good place for you to do it. This is a classic adventure where you get to be the Big Damn Heroes who right the wrongs and conclusively defeat the bad guys.
But that isn't exactly an elevator pitch. You could say "If you want to be the kind of hero who's gonna stop an evil wizard and fight tyranny and put an end to a lot of villainy, this is sort of a good place for you to do it" and still won't know if you are going to be playing Star Wars or Harry Potter.
For what it's worth, this quote was the answer to the question "In one or two sentences, how would you sell Age of Ashes to players?" So not really an elevator pitch of the plot, but more of the feel of the campaign. It also happens to be the answer to that question in the context of a group of new players jumping in at PF2. There was also an answer tuned to groups who played lots of PF1 adventures, but I didn't write that one down
Per Rob Lundeen, this is what Age of Ashes is about:
Arcane Mark wrote:
If you want to be the kind of hero who's gonna stop a draconic apocalypse and fight evil slavers and put an end to a lot of villainy all over the world, this is sort of a good place for you to do it. This is a classic adventure where you get to be the Big Damn Heroes who right the wrongs and conclusively defeat the bad guys.
I always just figure out mental/emotional ages in terms of humans then adjust for whatever range that would probably be for a non-human thing, or just not bother and just write their age in human terms.
Like my dwarf who ran away to join the circus needed to be an age where that was feasible, whereas the changeling who was supposed to be SO TIRED was much much older. It's just easier to write down [16] and [37] to represent those ages in human terms.
Yeah. I usually think of my characters in Human-Equivalent Age and map that to their lifespan if ever needed.
Has it been mentioned (perhaps even earlier in this discussion) what the maximum PC level for the AP will be, and what sort of level range each chapter will tend to cover? A long time in the past, James mentioned a goal of having APs go 1 to 20 as a norm. Is that going to be realized?
Last we heard, they were still on track, but that was when they were just putting the finishing touches on Hellknight Hill. No news since
I'm not sure how we can have interesting conditions that do multiple things without "nesting." The only way to avoid that would be to write out the "nested" conditions each time. Which would make that Centipede Venom way harder to read.
Centipede Venom (poison) Saving Throw Fortitude DC 13; Maximum Duration 6 rounds; Stage 1 1d6 poison and a –2 circumstance penalty to AC. (1 round); Stage 2 1d6 poison, –2 circumstance penalty to AC, and -2 conditional penalty to AC, attack rolls, Dexterity-based checks, and Reflex saves that is overrided by other circumstance penalties to AC, attack rolls, Dexterity based checks and Reflex saves if it has a higher negative. (1 round)
You forgot to list all those Rogue features that Centipede Venom enables in there (like Sneak Attack, Debilitating Strike, Master Strike, etc.) and also all future abilities that combo off flat-footed that haven't yet been designed
Divine Lance the cantrip we know from the 100 spoilers increase one dice per spell level. So something like Chill Touch would do 2d8 at lvl 3 and 9d8 at lvl 17, mo martial can increase the damage that much with 2 actions.
Maybe making something similar to bard that basically have an action tax every turn to keep compositions, like a stance.
Spellstrike Stance Feat x
You enter the Spellstrike Stance. When you cast a spell with the touch range make a strike, if it hits apply the spell effect and then the stance ends.
This makes it use 3 actions but it's way more flexible and would be fine to use cantrips with it.
I like the stance idea, and actually would be interested in seeing Magus focused stances to flesh out that martial side of them. I don’t like the ‘then this stance ends’ part though. I feel that’s what the traits Open and Press are for.
The problem is that the Open trait is not even a drawback because everyone would be Spellstriking with the first attack anyway while Press could work people would complain about it being inaccurate because of MAP.
I thought that something like Bard compositions would work, every turn Bards use an action to keep it and if they use an spell they can't even move and when use one that have material casting the compositions is even dropped all together because of the action economy.
The stance that ends every time is used is something similar but more flexible.
Flurry of Blows has the Flourish trait to make usable once per turn
But I thought that the Whispering Tyrant will be killed by the PCs once and for all in the final book of Tyrant's Grasp. How can he still be alive in Second Edition?
Killing him is not the same as destroying his Phylacerty, which is I am pretty sure something that does not happen in Grasp. My money is on they destroy his current body and a large chuck of his army, setting him back to having to reform and rebuild his forces. Hell the shard of certain exploding shield implanted in his current body is just asking to explode in his face...
So we can read most of the Core Rulebook page devoted to the Eye of Dread in the video from the UK Games Expo interview. You can see those images here.
I've done my best to transcribe, though a line of glare down the middle of the second column has left me scattering some (???) through the second half where I could make out the text.
Spoilered for anyone who wants to wait for next week's blog.
The banquet slides are marginally more readable. I've filled in the missing words
Eye of Dread:
Core Rulebook wrote:
The heart of the continent of Avistan has rotted.
This region is dominated by Lake Encarthan, a large inland sea that was—until recently—a well-traveled hub for trade. To the southwest stands the militaristic nation of Molthune, which had long engaged in an intermittent war against its northern neighbor, Nirmathas, a wooded nation populated by folk who take their freedom seriously. An uprising of hobgoblins took advantage of this conflict, and while hostilities have since abated, the two nations now share their borders with a third: the newborn hobgoblin nation Oprak.
North of these war-torn nations lie two other lands equally forged in the crucible of conflict. Until recently, the paladins and protectors of the small but strong nation of Lastwall stood fast against invasions from orcs, undead, and the like. The wild and rugged Hold of Blekzen, meanwhile, has long been held by those orcs, ever since they were driven up from the Darklands below by the dwarves during their Quest for Sky thousands of years ago.
Still farther to the north is the nation of Ustalav, a collection of countries each beset with its own manifestation of horror and fear, ranging from the nightmarishly cosmic to the dreadfully infernal.
It was from Ustalav that one of the greatest threats to the Inner Sea region emerged. The arch-lich Tar-Baphon—known as the Whispering Tyrant—has been defeated twice in the distant past—once by Aroden and once by the heroes of the Shining Crusade, but he has never been truly destroyed. When the magical seals that kept him imprisoned below the ominous tower of Gallowspire were finally sundered in 4719 AR, Tar-Baphon emerged, bringing with him devastation on such a scale that the one-time nation of Lastwall, which bore the brunt of his return to the world, has been utterly scoured. It exists now only as the Gravelands—a nation that once stood watch over the undead uprising now consigned to an undeath of its own. While heroes temporarily thwarted the Whispering Tyrant's immediate plans shortly after he emerged, the lich remains an active menace.
The Whispering Tyrant now rules a kingdom of the undead on the aptly named Isle of Terror in the center of Lake Encarthan. The nations lining lake Encarthan's shores have all suffered to varying degrees under the Whispering Tyrant's renewed influence, and some are pursuing unlikely alliances to resist him. The lich is gathering his resources on the Isle of Terror, and none can say where or when he will strike next.
The appointment should last for the rest of this Adventure Path, after which the PC's term of service as herald ends and the job goes back to a unique CR 15 outsider of Iomedae's choice.
Per the adventure, Iomedae picks a new herald. GMs could choose to let the PC stay Herald, but that's as canon as "In our RotR, the PCs joined up with goblins and burned Sandpoint to the ground"
Yes, the prestige term is gone, not the idea of having higher-level "prestige-ish" archetypes. The Pathfinder Society's first "test" pre-initiation is "Can you get to Absalom on your own to try to join?" so it's not a particularly hard uncommon archetype to gain access, but those who don't start having trained up...
Does this mean that the Pathfinder Agent Archetype is accessible to anyone who is able to make it to Absalom and join the Pathfinder Society?
You need to be from Absalom to have Common access to the archetype. People from elsewhere on Golarion need to prove themselves to the Society (i.e. unlock the Uncommon archetype)
The world isn't changing drastically. Numeria still exists and the devs have expressed some interest in making a Gunslinger class (or something similar) in PF2 during Paizocon.
If your players don't like having firearms in their games, you can set them away from Numeria as easily as you could in 1E
Qualifying subscribers automatically receive their Paizo Advantage discount once their first subscription item ships, and only as long as their subscriptions remain active.
I'd like to know if the Paizo Advantage discount applies to articles that ship alongside the first subscription item.
Considering how much stuff I'm interested in comes out with the launch of 2E, if it doesn't, I'll just start with the last few volumes of Tyrant's Grasp
I watched the stream of the Secrets of Golarion panel where tradition dictates you don't answer "What happened to Aroden", but I'm personally more interested in the meta question: Do you, James Jacobs, know what happened to Aroden?
That is, when the time comes to reveal what happened to Aroden, will it be more "Time to reveal what we prepared in 20XX", or "Okay, that's a cool thing that could have happened. Let's run with that"
Quickened Casting {A} (Feat 10). If your next action is to cast a sorcerer cantrip or a sorcerer spell that is at least 2 levels lower than the highest level sorcerer spell you can cast, reduce the number of actions to cast by 1 (minimum 1 action).
It's blurry, but Quickened Casting appears to be a Free Action
Pricing in particular seems to be something I'm worried about. They say scrolls are way cheaper, but how expensive will a wand actually be? After all, a wand can't be too expensive or players will, A) complain about their expensive toy got permanently destroyed & B) create wealth issues within the party if one player's wand is destroyed and their equipment value is now significantly lower than the rest of the party. On the other hand, if wands aren't expensive enough, then they're just a pure upgrade to scrolls.
Unless I'm misunderstanding what was said above in the first post, isn't the wand 'broken' if you fail the flat check not 'destroyed'? In Pathfinder lingo broken is more of a temporary state until repaired?
i.e. Fighter's shield takes more damage than it had it in HP, it becomes 'broken'. During the next rest(In the playtest it took 10 mins) the fighter made a skill check and repaired it.
It seems like wand might be very similar to this, right? Then it dosn't upset the whole WBL problem you are describing.
Pathfinder Spoiler #98 describes the wand rules. If you overcast, there's a 55% chance it's merely broken (unusable until repaired) and a 45% chance it's completely destroyed
Archaeologist
The most popular Archetype in PF history that was so different to the base class that it was essentially a new class. An adventurer skilled in lore, tomb robbing and luck- and with the volume of tombs around Golarion, this diehard adventurer would be an excellent fit to many parties, especially ones which delve deep into dungeons!
Archivist
They say knowledge is power- so prove it! Unlike the Wizard, I'm thinking a true master of knowledge- someone who can identify foes, traps and treasures and use their powers against them. This one isn't as fleshed out as the others, but that's okay- the concept is all that's needed to start us off, and an explorer with a big book of knowledge that he can use to solve fights without magic or weapons is certainly a fun concept!
Please no. The latter is my _actual professional job_, and I've worked with a lot of the former. I'm not sure what you think we actually do, but it is none of the things you've listed. It's honestly a touch offensive.
It's like the drunken 'I am a Librarian' speech from 'The Mummy:' pure cringe and unhealthy stereotypes.
I don't know where that Archivist is coming from, but for the archaeologist, it's clearly Indiana Jones. Now, we're all agreed that Indy isn't representative of actual archaeology, but the adventure-archaeologist is very much a trope in the world of fantasy. See also, Lara Croft, Nathan Drake and the entirety of this TV Tropes page
Also, there was reveal that "Cheek Pouches" feature in Bestiary entry for Ratfolk.
Which is basically Paizo rubbing into my face that Goblins are Core and Ratfolk are not. ;-P
We were this close to "Cheek Pouches" as Core PC ability, folks. Instead we get pyromaniac green Kender. /facepalm /s
I know how you feel. Jason also mentioned in the Moving On from the Playtest panel (I think) that they discussed having Orcs be a core ancestry. Instead, goblins
Thanks for reading and commenting on the series, everybody! I had a ton of fun writing these, and I'm really glad the Paizo crew let me come back and put words in the iconics' mouths again. :) I can't wait to see what they do next!
Just words? I'm sure Fumbus would have preferred a pickle. Or a rat if it comes to that
That said, in the playtest the Cavalier and Pirate prestige classes could be taken at level 2 - and players are likely to be a little way into level 4 by the end of book 1 (assuming the xp for all 20 levels are evenly distributed accross six books).
Even with 2E's linear XP curve, I suspect the earlier adventures will still give more levels than the later ones.
Also, while somehow not liking the idea of finger snaps substituing for verbals, I find whistling quite appropriate (Did Guardians of the Galaxy have such an influence over me?) and I would support it.
Whistling does seem like an appropriate Verbal Casting action for a mute and/or deaf caster. It has the same limitations and freedoms as chanting a prayer or reciting magical incantation: It can still be heard and is affected by silence, while not requiring a free hand or being disruptable like the hypothetical "Sign Language as a Somatic action" suggestions upthread. Since it's just fluff reskinning with no mechanical advantage, I'm quite comfortable just allowing it for all spellcasters who want to, deaf, mute or not.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go build Yondu. I'm Mary Poppins y'all!
Just for fun, I increased the saturation on the new Amiri and instantly, she looks less sickly and more menacing*. Hopefully, her skin will look less pallid in future pictures of her
* The armour looks weirdly colourful, but that's because I didn't exclude it from the saturation change
I find the bug-eyed alien elves disconcerting. So I approve.
Indeed, the over-sized black eyes and tapered (cone?) skull shape really bring that out.
I did have a question: AFAIK Merisiel's forehead has always been some jeweled decoration of some sort,
but I realized I couldn't tell from the new art whether it is actually a third eye set in forehead.
IMHO Elves having 3 eyes would radically drive home their insectoid-alien nature, almost more than other changes.
Obviously that would be a ret-con, but I don't believe Paizo is allergic to those, and after all,
there is a history of Wayne's art informing game-world lore (casting phenomena of "floating runes"). :-)
Maybe all those forehead decorations WERE really third eyes all along? I do think that would be good direction to go.
Merisiel's forehead jewel is just a jewel that Merisiel wears on her forehead. It's just a piece of removeable jewelry, not something that all elves have (just like Kyra's face tattoos are just so she's easily identified in art, not a thing all Qadirans have)
Alignment pidgeon holes champions as it stands, since there can be only 9 subclasses.
I disagree. I see no reason why Paizo couldn't double up on alignments if they found new Champion concepts, or making Champions that match multiple alignments (e.g. Hellknights in any Lawful)
I didn't catch this episode, but I might just stop trying since I am mostly looking forward to mechanical spoilers to try to excite people locally for PF2.
Great work on this thread everyone ^^ it is very much appreciated.
I joined in for the same reason, but to be honest, after the end of today's episode I'm hooked to the story as well. I would strongly recommend watching if you have the time.
If the Saturday 3pm replay becomes a thing it might be worth checking out too - last week there were cast members in the chat which made it kind of cool. :)
Jason has confirmed on Twitter that the 3pm Saturday replays are a scheduled thing, but he can't make any promises as to whether the cast shows up
