Alric Rahl's page

Hello I live in the Red Deer area of Alberta and am looking for an in person group.

Alright Guys time for session info. Sorry its been a week since the session was run but Paizo has been down so I havent been able to post.

First things first , the Paladin in my group is now a Necromancy Wizard named Thelinth Soul Shepard.

So onto the fun.

Die Dog Die: The new Wizard of the Group decided to use Ghost Sound to make it sound like a pack of Dogs was approaching as his first action. He wanted to draw their attention away, but other then the commando the goblins are more scared of dogs, so I had the Goblins roll Will saves and treated the sound as a fear effect. One of the Goblins critically Failed and ran away, the other stood still for 1 round as if stunned, and the last critically saved and became brave and decided to meet them face on, so he left himself vulnerable to a flank attack. The Rogu moved up and dispatched the Stunned goblin, however this left her open to an attack by the Commando, who struck with his horsechopper and then commanded the Goblin Dog to bite her as well, these two attacks dropped her to Dying 1, the other managed to swoop in and kill the goblin and dog and the druid healed the rogue who had failed her con save and dropped to Dying 2.

Aldern Foxglove of course took to the wounded rogue who was excellent in battle but also a delicate flower for falling, and the Rogue {Who has played all of the 1st book before} metagamed him into helping her, playing the role of the wounded damsel in distress and had him wait on her hand an foot. This switched up the order of events.

When they got back to The Rusty Dragon with foxglove, Ameiko's Father came in and tried to get her to leave. Thanks to the Wizards Ghost sound spell again, who caused the sounds of plates crashing in the kitchen, it snapped ameiko out of her unwillingness to disobey her father and she told him to get out. He then disowned her of course.

The next day Sheriff Hemlock and Father Zantus came by looking for their help with the Crypt. Which they gladly agreed and dispatched the Skeletons very easily. Even though they didnt have any blunt weapons it helped when the Ranger made Two +10 DC crits two rounds in a row. Afterwards the Sheriff Deputized them and gave them writs marking them as such.

Later that day they heard about the murder in the house and investigated. The Wizard again shined here as he managed to roll a Crit Deception check with the spell Disguise Self and convinced the goblin commando that he too was a goblin and began jumping on the bed, the goblin followed where he was swiftly dispatched by the Ranger who was checking under the bed and thus was hidden from the goblins view since the goblin was focused on the wizard on top of the bed.

The boar hunt was uneventful as the Heroes managed to dispatch it pretty easily, however there was some competition between the Ranger and the Rogue for Shalelu's attention.

When they arrived back in town Lady Vinder approached the Dwarven Ranger and asked for his assistance in getting rid of her rat problem. Now the other 3 players knew exactly what was going on because of their metagame knowledge but the ranger did not, I also chose the ranger because he was obviously trying to impress Shalelu and I gave him the chance to impress Lady Vinder as well. This encounter was by far the funniest one I have done in a while, it made me laugh harder then I have in the past few years. The Player decided to play the Ranger as the takes everything literally, has no social skills because he has been in the forest most of the past 5 years, and thus was oblivious to her advances. when he got down to the basement she said "Let me slip into something more comfortable and had barely got the top of her dress off when he Table flips the Bed and smashes the ground hoping to smash the rats. I had him roll an intimidate check to see if his action frightened her. It stunned her so she didnt run, but he was so insistant about the rats that she ran away screaming for him to get out of the house.

Now while that was going on, the rogue had decided to tail him. And it was a good thing they did, as when Ven Vinder came back she managed to Deceive him into thinking the house was Quaranteened for rat infestion and the rat problem was being taken care of. Ven walked away. So the PC's got away without a fight but pretty sure they hurt Lady Vinder's feelings.

And finally they convinced the Waitress to explain why Ameiko wasnt there the next morning. And next week will be assaulting the Glass works.

Hope you enjoyed.

Go to The Skinsaw Murders

Here we go guys. The next installment of the Conversion.

This one took me longer then expected because of the Haunts, Converting them was difficult. The Hazards Chart didnt really help much. It gave me a baseline DC for the hardest save but the rest I just took from the GM DC table in the rulebook. I will say however that even this method still seems to keep the success chance within 40-60%.

Let me explain how I converted them. I took their old CR and made that the Level of the challenge, for example CR 4 = 4th level. I then referenced the DC table in the Rule book and assigned 1 DC from each category {Trivial, Low, High, Etc.} The "to notice" DC I set the highest as most haunts only affect 1 person, i feel that only that 1 person gets the chance to notice it. The Disable DC I set at High, and the Saving throw to avoid the bad stuff I Set at the Extreme DC as again since its only 1 person being affected i want it to be a challenge.

I've also decided that after this book I will no longer be including treasure as I feel anyone who uses this conversion can just assign their own treasures to suit their PC's

On Treasures, I feel Permanent and Consumable need to be reworded or removed. I found that at each level The permanents were almost always just weapons and armor and their varying quality. This left the other "Permanent Items" such as boots, cloaks, etc. hard to give out as treasure. I started just giving that out as consumable treasure. The Categories should honestly just be Weapons/Armor and Other. Otherwise its a little confusing to new GM's and their NPC Villains will either be lacking in the stats department to make them a challenge or they wont have any other cool gear to dish out. Perhaps maybe even add a 3rd Category which is Boss Loot, and just reduce the amount of wealth {"Coins"} given out at each level. Since most adventurers sell the gear they are given and buy what they want anyway.

Hey guys here is the link to the Backgrounds I created for my PF2e conversion of Rise of the Runelords.

RotRL PF2e Backgrounds

Can the party even survive the first encounter if the goblins actually try?

Yes they can, everyone (including the goblins) have a 50/50 chance of hitting, with their bonuses. If the goblins ganged up on someone for sure that someone probably would of been knocked unconscious but goblins aren’t that smart either, so the probably would have took 1 PC each, maybe doing some damage, but ultimately losing. It might have made the second encounter slightly harder because in that one they actually were trying, they just weren’t smart enough to use gang up tactics.

Remember that high difficulty both in encounters, hazards and the DC table I’m the Gamemastering section of the Core Rule Book are supposed to be the standard, a challenge that will test the PCs but will not give them cause for concern.

Hello again community. time to meet the heroes. But first some notes;

1. I originally told my group they would get one freebie feat to be used for the Half-it's Heritage feats, Archetype Dedication feats, or the Multiclass Dedication feats at level 2. Now i told them this before i started re-writing the NPC Villains/Bosses. Once I started re-writing the NPC's I realized that the Multiclass and Heritage feats actually work as currently written. No one in my group took a Heritage or Archetype with this freebie feat, instead my rogue wanted to be able to use starknives, so I added that the freebie could be used for a Bonus Skill or General feat, everyone jumped at that, but not everyone has chosen one yet.

2. The other most experienced player in my group voiced his concern on how lackluster the General and Skill feats feel. And we both agreed that perhaps every class should get 1 Bonus feat at character creation to be used on either a Skill or General feat. Yes this would give Rogues a total of 3 {2 from class, 1 from background}, but it would make Character diversity at creation more apparent. For example, a player could actually take Splint mail at 1st level as well as a Heavy Wooden shield and weapon and still have some coin left over for adventuring gear. But no one is going to because of that -10ft to speed. My Dwarven Paladin said "Hell no" to being reduced to 15ft, but if he was able to take a General or Skill feat at 1st level he would have taken Fleet and been able to stay at 20ft. Any other race could as well and not feel that speed reduction so terribly. He decided not to take Fleet with the freebie i gave them anyway and opted to stick to Medium armor for now.

3. I created Backgrounds from the Anniversary edition Player's Guide based on the Traits and all of the Players chose one of those.

4. I was a little concerned about the General Feat: Weapon Proficiency, it says "if you are trained in ALL simple weapons you become trained in all martial". Well what if for example the Wizard is trained in only a select few weapons, it seems they would be unable to take this feat.

So without further ado, here are the Heroes.

Knutgas {Pronounced newt-guh} Northwind - Dwarf Ranger {Two Weapon}
Brother of Dunebrash Northwind
Background: Monster Hunter {Strength or Dexterity boost + Free boost, Intimidating Glare skill feat, Monster Lore}
Str: 16, Dex: 16, Con: 14, Int: 10, Wis: 14, Cha: 8.
Feats: Hardy{Ancestry}, Double Slice{Class}, Intimidating Glare{Background}, has not chosen a freebie feat yet.
Weapons: Dwarven Waraxe, Warhammer

Knutgas seemed to do very well with his Two Weapon fighting, managed to hit with both of them consistently. He took 1 hit with his 17 AC. He found 20 feet a little slow, but enjoyed that he could move twice in a single round as it managed to keep him close to the combat.

Dunebrash Northwind - Dwarf Paladin of Torag
Brother of Knutgas Northwind
Background: Giant Slayer {Strength or Constitution Boost + Free boost, Defensive Climber Skill feat, Giant Lore}
Str: 14, Dex: 16, Con: 14, Int: 10, Wis: 12, Cha: 12.
Feats: Hatred{Ancestry}, Hospice Knight{Class}, Defensive Climber{Background}, Intimidating Glare{Freebie}
Weapons: Warhammer, Shield Spikes

Dunebrash seemed to have a harder time hitting things, mainly because his dice were not working for him, he used two attacks with his Warhammer as often as he could and managed to hit on the 2nd attack more often then the first, so multiple attacks even with a penalty are great now as it gives more chances to roll high. He was the tank and took most of the hits mostly 6's from the dogslicers, but with his 22 HP he managed to stay alive quite well.

Ylladi {Pronounced Yeh-La-Di} Elf Rogue {Two Weapon}
Background: Family Ties {Wisdom or Charisma boost + Free Boost, Experienced Smuggler skill feat, Underworld Lore}
Str: 10, Dex: 18, Con: 8, Int: 14, Wis: 12, Cha: 16
Feats: Nimble{Ancestry}, Nimble Dodge{Class}, Experienced Smuggler{Background}, Quick Intimidation{Rogue Skill Feat}, Weapon Proficiency: Starknife{Freebie}
Weapons: Dual Starknives

Ylladi had a great time with her starknives, she was able to hit at range and add her dex to damage and hit at melee consistently too. She got to use her surprise attack within the first round and flanked with the tank to get her sneak attack regularily.

Blythe: Half-elf Druid {Wild Order}
Background: Goblin Watcher {Wisdom or Intelligence Boost + Free Boost, Quick Identification skill feat, Artifact Lore}
Str: 14, Dex: 16, Con: 12, Int: 10, Wis: 16, Cha: 10
Feats: Half-elf; +5ft speed, Lowlight vision{Ancestry}, Wild Shape{Class}, Quick Identification{Background}, Battlemedic{Freebie}
Weapons: Dagger, Sling

Blythe had a hard time hitting both in melee and at range, but again mainly because his dice were not with him. When their tank was engaged in melee and down to 5 hp, he used his 2 action Heal to restore the tanks hp from 30ft away, which he did enjoy.

All in all each one enjoyed the way combat and initiative plays out so far.

Now for the Encounters themselves. I will use the names or Room markers from the book in this thread, so if you have the book you can reference them to see the difference.

Initial Assault: 3 Goblin Warriors {90xp, High Difficulty} I played this out how the book suggests, having the goblins run willy-nilly until engaged, the first goblin was defeated in the first round before he even got to move, this was thanks to the rogue. The second goblin was chasing an NPC until he was engaged by the Ranger and killed. The last goblin was flanked and killed on round 2.

Goblin Pyros: 3 Goblin Warriors, 1 Goblin Warchanter {120xp, Severe Difficulty}, This one I played as the town square was deserted so the goblins just attacked the PC's. This is where the tank took most of the hits. 2 Goblins Charged the PC's while 1 Warrior and the Warchanter stayed back and fired their Shortbows, The Warchanter was able to continue Casting Inspire Courage even while shooting, this was great. Once the PC's closed the gap the goblins flanked the tank and the Goblin Warrior even managed to flank 2 PC's in the same round, Attacking 1 then moving and flanking another with the Warchanter. Although I could of knocked the Tank into Unconciousness, i opted to split the attack between him and the flanking ranger. It wouldnt have mattered anyway as later that the remaining goblins were finished. Overall though I i dont feel like this fight was actually a Severe Difficulty. Maybe if all the goblins were attacking the same PC from range or in melee it might have felt like that, but neither me nor the PC's were worried about them being taken down.

So to summarize

I feel PC's should get a Bonus feat at 1st level that allows them to take either a General or Skill feat as my Players were alot more open to that idea then the heritage or archetypes. While I know this is only the Playtest and there arent alot of options for Archetypes or Heritages at the moment, I still feel that because of how bland most of the General and Skill feats are that taking one at 1st level would not be a significant enough power boost to break the game.

My Players and I love the new 3 Action Economy, and rounds did seem to go much faster.

Thanks all for reading. Stay tuned for the next installment. Next session will be on the 26th of August. If you have any questions I will of course be around to respond.

I will link the Campaign Backgrounds I created tomorrow, and sometime this week will should have The Skinsaw Murders converted so I will link that too.

I like the system but not for potions or elixirs, wands and everything else are fine. But they way they made restoring HP via rest (you only heal your level+con) is ridiculous and so we should be allowed to guzzle potions to bring that back up without repercussions.

I think the rest of you posters are nuts..... in every D&D/Pathfinder book I’ve read and used to build characters, I have had to do multiple page flips to find all the info I need to make my character, 5th edition was the worst. While I agree that a new player trying to figure this out without help would go cross eyed from all the page flipping, most new players are going to be with a group of experienced players who can help.

I think adding all the first level formulas in a table with their page number to the Alchemist class section, would make picking them easier as most will just flip to the page of the item they like the sound of just from reading the name, such as bottled lightning, soon as I saw that it was one of the first items I wanted to look up.

The whole point of a new system is to learn the Jargon, I agree that key words should be bolder so as to indicate importance, I also agree that more Pg references are needed when those key words pop up, I realize it would take up more space, but put a footnote section at the bottom of each page, with all the bolded words mentioned in the current page and the pg number their info can be found on.

Lastly the middle ground you all want for feats to be renamed is nonexistent and renaming the different categories each with a different adjective is the same as having rage powers, rogue talents, etc., The way to look at it is, everything is a feat and it’s separated by its noun, CLASS feat, SKILL feat, ANCESTRY feat. I for one have no problem looking at the class table and going ok I get one Ancestry and one Class (for martials) feat. Plus a free Skill feat for my background and a second Skill feat if I’m a rogue. Also the character sheet helps immensely in determining what feat you get at what level. If you are having a hard time figuring out what you get go look at your character sheet and check the feat category for a line that has your current level on it.

From what I gathered, the designers basically picked ability mods and skill bonuses that always gave the PCs at least a 40-60% chance of hitting. Take the goblin warrior for example. It’s AC is 14 (I think I don’t have the book in front of me). A first level PC has between a 4-6 for their hit roll. This makes it a 50% chance of hitting, A Goblin Commando has a 16 I believe, this makes a 1st level PCs chance to hit 40%. As they fight tougher monsters it seems the AC keeps in line this hit chance. Heck even the NPCs I built using the PC rules have a 15-17 AC, and those are the Villain/Bosses so it would make sense the hit chance Drops a little, but even Nualia with her 21 I think is still only about 50% for a 3rd-4th Level PC.

So keeping this in mind NPCs and monsters can be built relatively easily.

I forgot to mention you will also need the Playtestiary and CRB for my conversions.

For Sure. here is the Google Docs link.

Burnt Offerings PF2e Conversion

You will still need the Anniversary Edition of Rise of the Runelords which I do not have the Authority to share.

I have not given Nualia her spells yet i noticed. but I realized that as a Cleric of Lamashtu anyone using this doc can assign her their own choice of spells.

Encounters are listed by either their titles from the book or the Location such as A17. B4. and so on. # and name of monsters plus if they have the Elite or Weak adjustment are listed first, then total XP for the encounter, then for normal monsters treasure is listed. for NPCs/Villains their treasure is in their stat block, and their stat block is usually the next page down.

EDIT: Hmmmm. Im not sure how to share the Google Docs link. when i copy and paste it, it brings up a page not found error. Could anyone inform me on how to do this as i have never tried Google Docs before but I know its what everyone uses.

Double Edit: nevermind. Figured out how to give it a URL and it works now.

Hey guys, this will be my last post until Character Creation.

So I just finished converting the first book, Burnt Offerings, with only 3-4 hours available to work on it per day, I managed to completely convert it in 4 days. This time included Converting encounters, Rewriting Class Level NPC's/Villains, Figuring out, selecting and distributing treasure, quick smoke/bathroom breaks and interacting with my son when he wanted my attention. I also got a bit distracted and created my own Backgrounds based on the Traits from the Anniversary Edition's Player's Guide.

All in all i would say conversion is pretty easy and intuitive. The new Encounter building rules are really great this time around i had no trouble figuring them out. The Elite and Weak adjustment tables were also easy to understand. I remember trying to build some encounters and adjust monsters with 1e rules and i just couldn't get it. The only issue i ran into was remembering that my PC's were a higher level as i progressed through converting, some encounters would come up Severe or Extreme. This is because the monsters XP is always based on the Party's Level, so Creature Level 1 for a level 1 party is 40xp and Creature level 2 for a Level 2 Party is also 40xp, once i remembered this those encounters dropped to Low and High difficulty. its just something people will need to get used to when building encounters.

Unfortunately some encounters required monsters that are not in the Playtestiary, so i used monsters that fit the same general premise. For example the Yeth Hounds are not in the Playtestiary so I used Hell Hounds instead, same level, same type of creature.

I also had to recreate the Portcullis Trap from the very last section. Reading the hazard rules i realized i could just assign DC's, such as stealth and Reflex. I made the Stealth a 4th level Extreme DC since only 1 person is gonna get trapped in it and i feel the rogue is going to be scouting for it. I took the Glaive Stats for Damage and made it an auto hit which i then gave it the Reflex save, I then made a 4 Degrees of Success table for the Reflex save as follows.
Success: Target Takes no Damage but is trapped,
Critical Success: as Success but target may take a Step before the Portcullis's drop.
Failure: Creature Takes 2d8+6 Damage and is trapped
Critical Failure: Creature takes 4d8+12 damage and is trapped
I feel this accurately represents a creature being trapped in a 5ft square with 2 Glaives slashing at the air, one high and one low. Success means a character was able to react quick enough to either drop to the ground or press themselves up against the portcullis or wall so as to avoid being hit. A critical success means they were quick enough to realize as they stepped in the square what was gonna happen and managed to either jump back or spring forward to avoid being caught.Failure of course means they were too clumsy and slow and got caught unaware.

As I finished converting the book I went back and calculated all the xp and Level advancement syncs up quite well with what it says it should in the AP. The PC's will reach 2nd by defeating Tsuto or just before encountering him. They will hit 3rd level just before entering the thistletop stronghold building. And will hit 4th by defeating Nualia or just before Encountering her.

Well thats all I have for today. Please check back in on Monday when I will post about the PC's taking on the job of protecting Golarion from a Runelord.

Or the devs assumed since you take the background first that you would look up the feat and decide to use one of your skill points from your class in that skill. However this doesn’t work with the feats like Robust Recovery which require Expert in the skill.

Also @ Joe Muchiello, why would they give you a feat that requires Expert in a skill since
You wouldn’t be able to use this until 2nd level if you were trained at 1st or 4th level if you only chose to train that skill at 2nd. That seems really dumb. Robust Recovery’s feat requirements are Expert in Medicine, that is a stupid feat to give a 1st level player if by your statement they can’t use it until at minimum 2nd level.

Yes but they haven’t explicitly said that it makes you trained nor that you get even if you don’t meet the requirement.

But the feats it gives you has Feat requirements of “you must be trained in x skill”

Thanks I will give greater detail on the encounters when the PCs get through them.

As for treasure I’ve used the treasure distribution per level rules and have had to pick and choose the treasure to give for every level. So far I have done this by converting the encounters first, figuring out how much to give per level(by using the table in the treasure section), picking the treasure, then dividing the treasure out to each encounter. So far it seems like not every encounter should have treasure, it seems to be easier to give most of the treasure and currency to the bosses/bigger fights, and the remainder in empty rooms. Things like the NPCs Armor and weapons just seem so lacklustre as treasure, though you can use them as a way of calculating the currency total the PCs get as part of the treasure distribution table. I will not be giving my PCs any of the NPCs mundane equipment as treasure (save for ammunition) basically going to consider it all of poor quality, beaten up in the fight, this will make the currency distribution seem more significant when they find a pouch of 20gp in the Boss’ room or on the boss.

I will post the treasure the PCs acquired in the encounters they acquired them in, then give a total list at their level up as a summary of everything they should have picked up for proper treasure distribution.

Another thing to note is that for NPC bosses I used character creation but only gave them 2 Free +2 boosts instead of the Standard 4 free. I chose this because there are no rules for building the NPCs specifically. For Monster bosses I added the elite adjustment, so far I have only Erylium the Quasit as a monster boss so I only added 1 elite adjustment to her, and her initial sinspawn still makes the encounter a severe type encounter based on the encounter budget table. Depending on how well the PCs do during this fight I might have her add another sinspawn.

Hey Community. You don’t know me but I have been a dedicated fan of Pathfinder for the past 8 years. Pathfinder was the first TTRPG that I played fully. I have played a couple levels of 5e and even picked up a 4e book when it was first released but never got to play it.

I have decided for my own purposes to convert RotRL to 2e for my group. 3 main reasons for this was 1. How easy is it to convert old content to new rules because in a year when the full rules come out there will probably only be 1 AP and a couple Scenarios, some groups will probably want to play some older APs with the new rules. 2. Because I do have some, for lack of a better word, “close-minded” individuals in my group who are put off by the term Occult and anything otherworldly. And 3. I wanted to utilize all of 2e’s rules, since treasure and xp rewards and encounter building work differently I wanted to test the ease of use of such rules from a GM standpoint.

As I am converting this using all the rules I chose the Anniversary Edition of RotRL. And since treasure and currency does not convert straight over, nor do the monsters, I had to re write and distribute my own treasure based on the new rules. So far I have converted up to the catacombs of wrath, and every encounter is pretty much on par in terms of # of monsters and difficulty, based on the encounter budget rules in the Playtestiary. Even converting Tsuto the Monk2/Rogue2 (in PF1) does not seem overly powerful, but will definitely present a severe challenge to the PCs. The only road block I think the PCs might hit is the room in the Glassworks with 8 Goblin Warriors, which in 2e is well above and beyond even an extreme encounter. However I will be giving all of the goblins the weakend adjustment without the drop in hp as they only have 6 I can’t make it -4. This adjustment effectively makes them a Creature Level -1 (yes I know lowest is 0), which would put them at experience for budget of Party Level -2. So we will see how well that works out.

We will be having a character building session next Sunday and will post my PCs and their feat choices afterwards. At each level I will give an in depth analysis of how the players felt their mechanics worked and how well they feel their character contributed/felt useless.

After each session I will post about each encounter, how long it took, how well the PCs faired against the monsters, as much information on how much of their resources were used and the overall feel of combat. I will also post how each encounter with 2e conversion lined up with the original encounter.

Resistances comes to mind. Adding the damage of heal/harm to a melee strike makes its one damage calculation instead of two. But beyond that definitely not that great.

I think you all forget that resonance goes up with level the bag of holding thing twice per day can be done at 1st level with a 16 cha. At 4th level it can be done 2 more times per day. Resonance will honestly be a non-issue at 4th and higher. Since it only costs 1 point to invest in worn items (Armor, boots, amulets, rings etc.) that means at 4th level you can activate all those at the beginning of the day and still have 3-4 resonance points for per use activation items (potions, wands, staves, weapon abilities).

Organization:

The Classes are great. I just want to start by gushing that the Class layouts are wonderful and extraordinarily clear. I love them. The Ancestry layouts are also very solid, as is the character creation section prior to all that.

In contrast, the General Feats chapter hurts me. I mean, we're back to long alphabetical lists you have to search through for your options, and to make it worse the Skill Feats are just mixed in with the rest of the General Feats. I get that they're technically a subcategory, but you pick more of them, so having them separated is verging on absolutely necessary.

Magic Items and Spells being alphabetical seems fine given the listings by level to start things off and the fact that organizing them otherwise would be logistically unworkable.

Alchemical Items are similar, but much worse because there isn't even a table (or not one I can find) that lists them by level at all. Which makes the logistics of picking new ones for an Alchemist something of a nightmare. The same is true of Snares, there are just fewer of them, lessening the logistical hurdle.

I would rather have everything listed by level. It’s not logistically unworkable, you literally just add a small bar that says level 1Spells and then they can be listed alphabetically. Change the spells list at the beginning to be just by level with brackets indicating which spell list it is on. This would actually save 1-2 pages since most repeat the same spells anyway.

I have one to add. In the Crafting skill use Craft, it says you can make a standard batch of 4. The Accelerated Alchemy feat from the Alchemist says “when you use downtime to perform the craft activity you can make twice the amount of a standard batch, making 4 items instead of 2”

My thought is they either meant to say daily preparations, since the advanced alchemy feat lets you make only 2, for free in an hour. Or they meant to leave it at double the normal batch during downtime which would make 8 because the feat also talks about needing to supply the materials.

I believe Jason Buhlman said in the Ranger Blog that there was a feat at higher levels that allows deployment in combat.

I feel that since Paizo is pushing the everything has a level concept now that the book contents should be organized by level, then alphabetically. They did it with the classes and their feats.

Please paizo do it with spells and treasures too. The tables are great for quick reference, but it’s a pain to have to keep going back to the table to look up the page for the specific item. Please just order them by level first.

Same with spells. The spell list is great but it doesn’t have page #s so I have to scroll or flip through all the pages to find the spell I want. It would be better to organize it by level as well so I only have to look at a couple pages for the 1st level spells. Then I can flip to the 2nd level spells when I need. Also if you change it to this, please put in a table that shows what page the spell levels start on. This would make it easier for newer players to digest as well instead of having to read through a slough of spells to find the ones of the level they can take.

ummmmm then they must be calculating AC wrong. My Alchemist has an Ac of 15 and a ranged attack of +4 that means I hit myself on an 11 or better, and I have 1 less then max dex. A fighter with max dex and medium Armor at 1st level would have 17 or 18, which means I would hit on a 13 or 14, and that’s how it should be to hit a fighter. Pretty sure the devs wanted this to be a challengeing game, which is why all the monsters have lower to hits than they did in star finder. I found that with the monsters in Starfinder I only missed my PCs on a 1 or a 2 it would have been a little more even if the AC base had remained at 10.

I’m converting Rise of the Runelords to 2nd edition and am using PC rules to build the bosses, except they only get 2 free +2 ability boosts after ancestry, Background and Class. But in keeping the stats block simple it’s more like Str mod goes up by +1 instead of giving them a an actual score.

Seems to be keeping the power level pretty well.

What I want to know is how to add classes to monsters. Such as for Eleryium the Quasit. Since there isn’t a witch class yet I was planning on giving her Sorcerer levels with a divine spell list but don’t know how to make the adjustments.

Hey all I’m looking for suggestions from the community or for Dev input on how I would go about adding class levels to monsters.

I’m converting Rise of the Runelords to 2nd edition, I’ve gotten to the Catacombs of Wrath and Eleryium the Quasit. She is only a level 1 creature, I want to make her at least a level 3 creature with levels of Sorcerer with the divine list.

With her as a level 3 creature, plus the level 2 sinspawn she adds this would make an Extreme encounter for my Level 2 PCs.

Can I please get some feedback on how to approach this.

I’ve been converting Rise of the Runelords and have used PC rules to build the boss NPCs. So far it’s workig out to pretty close to the same bonuses as the original encounters.

For example Tsuto has +9 for his attacks in 1e, so far in conversion he has +8 or +9 with Expert handwraps. I’ll have more info on if this is ideal once my PCs get there.

It says the xp will not always be exact for the level of encounter. So a high 1 encounter would be 80xp, this means that the encounter should have 3 Goblin Warriors which works out to 90 xp.

I’ve actually converted Rise of the Rune Lords using this and it works out pretty well to the number of creatures in the original encounters. Except for the glassworks part so far where there are supposed to be 8 goblins that seems completely unmanageable. Unless I give them all the weak adjustment. Which I haven’t tried yet.

Basically you use the 2nd table to determine your budget average then add monsters to meet or slightly exceed/come under the budget to build your encounters.

Engineer/mechanic - kind of like the Starfinder class but can make constructs instead. Wood to start, then out of like stone and metal as he levels, and able to give them abilities like the summoners Eidolon. But no spell list, just the ability to infuse some of his own soul into the construct.

Puppet master - able to control multiple homonculi, using “Work Together” tactics but the homonculi can use them with other party members. This class would be more support/battlefield control then actual damage dealing with the homonculi. The homonculi would only gain a hit bonus equal to half your level (minimum 1), be small size only, and only deal 1d3 points of damage, with feats to increase it to a max of 1d6 damage.

I think the fact that the character table clearly spells out what you get at certain levels and each category of feats is going to be in a different part of the book then the way it is now is fine. We are just gonna have to get used to it.

Oh look I get a class feat at level 3 let’s go look at my class section. Oh now I get a general feat at level 4 let’s go look at the general feat section. Oh now I’m level 5 I get an ancestry feat I’ll go look at the human section since that’s what I am. This isn’t confusing at all

Kazk wrote:

It could very well turn out too strong, but I have also heard a lot of complaints that many class features are backloaded, level-wise. So not only are characters not able to access feats past level 10, but to continue cross classing at high levels means a high opportunity cost of class feats balanced for double the level of what one could grab from their cross-class.

I've heard complaints that PF1 multiclassing is broken to the point that every character that does it is completely trash.

I've heard complaints that PF1 multiclassing is broken to the pioint that every character that does it is completely busted.

I have no reason to not believe that PF2 won't allow both sides to still complain going forward. But at the same time I feel it punishes players that want to 1-20 in 1 class. Or maybe just rewards people that don't.

Moro wrote:

Only if the class feats you give up for multiclassing are such inferior options to the class features you pick up with multiclass dedication and feats. And we don't know the details yet, so that is a big if at this time. Granted, such a balancing act for every class and class feature would be a momentous feat of balanced game design if they are all even within spitting distance of one another, but there is hope. And a playtest, this is why we are testing, after all.

I don't see how staying hyper specialized is rewarded in this system. But that might jsut the community think that makes it to where basically every time I go online for helps or tips I'm instantly met with "Okay here's how you do everything" or "Here's how you break it". Why shouldn't I expect this to continue?

And really that's the biggest thing I keep walking away from these debates with. All the changes, all the tweaks, all the new and shiny stuff; and everything seems to think everything is suddenly fine now? That everything will be okay? That we're going to be ushered into a golden age that is PF2?

With the same community that has number...

And that is why we PLAYTEST. To find these types of things and report them. What the devs do with the information is ultimately up to them. This concept of people breaking the game is no different from people learning how to cheat at video games, or how to cheat the legal system, or be on welfare when they are perfectly fine to work. Nothing can be 100% perfect, all the devs at paizo have tried to do is to make that game breaking combo less game breaking,

I feel like when people read a blog they tend to focus on 1 or 2 things and forget all the other parts of the game. Yes a 1 Level dip into wizard nets you cantrips that scale, but you can either continue to take dedication feats or fighter feats, nothing is forcing to continue your wizard training. Since you only have access to multiclassing feats, you can’t choose any of the feats that are meant for wizard (save for the dedication feat that lets you take a wizard feat. This means a full wizard is going to have lots more options to make her single class unique, and since we don’t know what those feats are we really can’t speculate on the brokenness of multiclassing at this point. Hell a wizard might be able to take a feat such as signature spell where she can cast that spell using one less action. Being able to reduce a spell down to one action, and being able to do it because she is only a wizard (not a fighter with wizard multiclassing) is a pretty good feat in my opinion. But we don’t even know if that feat is an option, cause we just don’t have enough info yet, and we need to wait for the playtest to come out before we make any real decisions.

I for one am thrilled about all that I have read, I believe this is going to be a great game, knowing full well it isn’t going to be perfect, but that it will be better then anything I have played so far

Let me simplify this for you.

You get a number of Resonance points equal to your level + charisma mod.

Worn magical items (such as Armor, cloaks, boots) require you to spend 1 resonance point per item at the start of the day to gain its benefits for the whole day.

Weapons require no Resonance Points you get their magical properties (+x to attack/dam) always.

Items with a charge (Amulets, Rings, some weapon abilities like Fire/Frost/Lightning damage) require you to spend 1 point of resonance to activate, for either an instantaneous effect or an effect with a duration.

If you run out of resonance points, your Worn items do not deactivate (since you spent the point at the beginning of the day to activate them), your weapons magical properties (+x bonus to attack/dam) do not deactivate as they are always on. You can still activate items with a charge by rolling a flat d20 check (no mods) the first time trying to activate it with 0 resonance is a 10 (this means you successfully activate the item and in all effectiveness spend another resonance point putting your total at -1) for each additional attempt to activate an item with a charge you increase the DC by 1 (and effectively lower your resonance points by 1 as well) So a second attempt would be against a DC 11 (Resonance now at -2) and so on. You can do this indefinitely for as many charges as you have in the item. If you fail you lose a charge (and your resonance does not decrease) but the DC remains the same for the next attempt, that is all.

Easy peasy,

This honestly means you can still buy a wand of CLW, but now there is a cost to trying to go beyond your resonance pool. Also with a Wand of CLW you could actually pass it around to everyone to “cure themselves” using their own resonance.

Why not just say that if someone takes a heritage feat they get an ancestry feat from the half elf choices at 1st level but can then take either elf, half-elf or human ancestry feats at later levels.

Or even add a single general feat that allows you to take a ancestry feat, but only once. That way people could take it at any level if they wanted but the half elf/orcs could take it at 3rd level.

Arikiel wrote:

I like it! I found it silly/annoying how Half-Orcs always got specced out like a "full race" while Orcs were treated like an after thought. Nothing against the Half-fans but as far as representation goes I always felt they should be a sub-entry or even just a footnote in the sections about their parent races.

I also like how it makes it clear that half-elves/orcs/etc. are a lot less common than full-blooded humans, elves, dwarves, etc. It always felt kind of odd how half-blooded people were in core next to other options which were vastly more numerous and widely distributed.

Like Golarion has enough half-orcs that you can plausibly play as one in any adventure path regardless of where it's set, but it's not like they were ever common.

Actually considering that the Giant Slayer campaign talked about nothing else except the amount of half-orcs in the area I feel like they were more predominant then other systems, almost like Paizo made it a common race.

Guys we don’t even know what other things humans get at first level. This half blood thing might seem better once we see what kinds of things the human actually gets before taking the ancestry feat.

Why do you have to be cruel to animals to be an evil animal Druid? Isn’t it more you just decide to enlist the help of the most cruel animals, Wolf, Tiger, Bear.... and corrupt them into being more ferocious and wild.

“
Every single enemy rolling individual perception checks is always a recipe for a very frustrated rogue. Sneaking through a cave of 40 sleeping goblins becomes a statistical impossibility at that point, even with the huge penalties they take for being asleep (unless your stealth exceeds their perception to the point where they can't detect you even on a nat 20, at which point why are you rolling dice?”

This example is when you make it a DC off the chart instead. An extreme DC challenge for them to sneak past a cave of sleeping goblins, if you are rolling 40 checks then you are a bad GM. The other thing you could do is just have the party roll against the goblins Perception DC, which is their perception mod +10 + any negatives for sleeping, that’s the great thing about the new mod/DC system for skills. Since every goblin will have the same Perception DC the party should only need to make 1 check.

Also how hard of a concept is it to understand that you use a check such as stealth, vs the opponents appropriate skills DC, in this case perception, and that DC is 10+the skills mod. That seems pretty easy to me.

Deadmanwalking didn’t say the fighter would auto succeed always too, but would give them a reasonable chance to try. This is better then not bothering at all. If everyone succeeds (even with a bit of difficulty) then great the plan works, if only the rogue succeeds then that’s ok too because he can use the stealth to get into a position for the combat. The fact is stealth missions are now a possibility, not a “either the rogue goes alone, or the rogue has to comply with the rest of the group” Situation.

Soooo the argument is that now that the Cleric and fighter have the option to join the rogue on his stealth mission and more then likely not get caught is a bad thing.... this opens up so many more optional tactics for teams. And the text being clearly indicated will help GMs figure out that chart, if any GM has trouble with this and assigns 1 DC for the whole castle then they are a bad GM. That is all. If you can’t be smart enough to assign multiple DCs to an encounter area then they aren’t good GMs.

Bards should have scaling DCs for their performance, because they are adding an additional benefit to their performance to make it last longer but they are doing so in increasingly difficult battles, just as the fighter and rogue have to deal with increasing AC and the wizard has to deal with increasing saves on their normal abilities where the bards normal ability is free. Otherwise bards really would be OP, and auto succeeding on everything they do. There should be some risk to make that ability even more awesome.

LuniasM wrote:

In PF2, every character has at least some baseline competency in Stealth, so the tactic isn't automatically useless. The Wizard can spend a spell to improve their chances of success, and the Fighter and Cleric pass about as often as they fail (or less, depending on armor). But the specialist Rogue? Their skill feats and expertise reduces the Armor Check Penalty for the rest of their party, they move twice as fast, and if they don't automatically succeed with Assurance and bypass the need to roll entirely they likely still have no chance of critically failing, a high chance of passing, and a solid chance of critically succeeding and getting some additional benefit. Nobody would be able to look at that and claim the other characters are stealing the Rogue's thunder just because they have a chance to pass.

Really it's even more extreme then this, with the Stealth Master Rogue is ALWAYS stealthing, thus he cannot accidentally trigger the trap in the room, even if he's not looking for one. Because of his higher proficiency and class skills, he can lift the keys off the palace guard with ease, but the other 3 can't even TRY because it's gated behind a proficiency level.

Gated behind a proficiency level that the Cleric and fighter can work towards achieving.

LuniasM wrote:

In PF2, every character has at least some baseline competency in Stealth, so the tactic isn't automatically useless. The Wizard can spend a spell to improve their chances of success, and the Fighter and Cleric pass about as often as they fail (or less, depending on armor). But the specialist Rogue? Their skill feats and expertise reduces the Armor Check Penalty for the rest of their party, they move twice as fast, and if they don't automatically succeed with Assurance and bypass the need to roll entirely they likely still have no chance of critically failing, a high chance of passing, and a solid chance of critically succeeding and getting some additional benefit. Nobody would be able to look at that and claim the other characters are stealing the Rogue's thunder just because they have a chance to pass.

Really it's even more extreme then this, with the Stealth Master Rogue is ALWAYS stealthing, thus he cannot accidentally trigger the trap in the room, even if he's not looking for one. Because of his higher proficiency and class skills, he can lift the keys off the palace guard with ease, but the other 3 can't even TRY because it's gated behind a proficiency level.

You guys are forgetting that for the Cleric and fighter to have proficiency in stealth they need to actually invest those skills as they level. I don’t think the Cleric or fighter is trained in stealth unless it’s due to their background or ancestry. This means the rogue is still the stealth specialist. The only class that has pretty much all the skills at 1st level is the rogue. But through their adventures both the Cleric and fighter could become skilled in stealth and possibly be able to follow the rogue. And in all honesty I think that is a great idea. They won’t be as great as the rogue but at least tactics like sneaking in won’t be so impossible anymore.

Unicore wrote:

I have missed a couple of pages of posts here, but I am confused as to why people think that the flexible DC chart was designed around creating DCs around the party’s level and not the level of the situation’s creator/intended difficulty? Is the issue the column names? When I read this post, It read to me: here is a flexible chart so you can figure out what the most difficult DC effect a certain person can make and a couple of less difficult options, and you, as GM, can decide the level they invested into it.

I think genuinely a lot of the concern is that some GMs will misread the chart and think "Okay here are the DCs for 6th level characters" not "here are the DCs which would provide an appropriate challenge in a context befitting 6th level characters." I get that this is a subtle kind of distinction, but we all kind of understand that the king of the storm giants has always had better locks than the local goblin chief already. We do this so a party of 16th level characters will actually have enough challenge to create drama when they invade the storm king palace. I guess the danger is if the victorious heroes decide to stop by the local goblin chief's place and cause trouble on the way home from robbing the storm king, someone misinterpreting the chart will insist that the goblins suddenly have much better locks.

But I'm genuinely unclear on how one prevents misinterpretation of the text, short of making the text clearer.

The text will be clear, it clear in the blog here, and considering paizo has had many problems in the past with unclear text I’m fairly certain it will be clear to GMs who reference the chart.

Considering that the DIfficulty Class part of this blog states “the DC is based on your oppositions level” thus the lvl 16 storm giants and the lvl 3 goblins locks will be different. No where in the chart says that it’s based on the character level but it does say a challenge appropriate for their level. So climbing a rope at any level is a level 1 challenge thus the DC to climb the rope will be 10, however while climbing that rope at orcus’ castle the DC to sneakily climb that rope so as not to be spotted will be a level 20 challenge or whatever. This is not a hard concept to understand.

You know what though, too well balanced plus lack of difference, does make for a boring game. Thankfully we have a more versatile abundance of options so that no 2 PCs are exactly the same.

Tender Tendrils wrote:

I'm not a 4e fan but I think it has some very elegant game systems and broke out of the mold a bit with monster design so I think arguments that say that any resemblance to 4e is bad are a bit silly.

I think 4e is the "The sum of its parts is greater than the whole" system. So, honestly, the fact that PF2e is taking some of the beneficial aspects of 4e, while still hewing to the core of Pathfinder, is actively something I'm looking forward to. Granted, not everything falls into this camp (for instance, I could do without the greater limitations on non-class skills that they picked up from 4e, and I'd like to see ancestries be more important at level 1, since both PF2e and 4e have them largely as "stats and a single ability")

You don’t know that for sure yet, but that’s what ancestry feats are for. And they explicitly stayed away from saying what feats a 1st level character does get.

Right, they took the +level to everything, then added scaling DCs so it doesn’t seem like such a huge jump in beating the DCs at every level. As Mark said by 2nd level of well built PC you could actually have a +9 to a check making even a level 3 extreme DC (which is not listed but I assume a 21) possible to pass. And that’s only after adding in bonuses from an expert level item and other things. It seems to me that at each level if you added only 1 mediocre bonus boost on top of the +level you would actually be keeping ahead of it by 5-10%.

They made it possible for lower level characters to beat higher level challenges how is that a bad thing. Now it won’t feel like you have to be overleveled to attempt hard stuff

Did anyone ever think to realize that the devs took portions of each PF1, 5e, 4e, and 3.5 and kind of just took the best from all of them but tweaked them and made them their own. From where I’m sitting, I see elements of all of these systems and I’m fine with it because as it stands, it sounds like an amazing system so far.

I listens to the glass cannon networks playtest podcast and it seemed like everything was much more of challenge which as a player I love, because those higher levels of PF1 really did feel like a face roll. And as a GM and watching the GM of my very first PF game, it becomes increasingly frustrating when everything you throw at competent players who can build exceptional PCs is destroyed in 1 round. Now I know the podcast was only level 1 & 2 and that PF1 had the disparity of levels 1-5 being pretty hard (on quite a few occasions I had my group ask if we could skip to level 3 to start) but I feel like everything will be much more of a challenge as we level up. Looking at the red cap from the attack the stat block blog it looked very deadly.

Also it sounded like it was more rewarding for the players too as the last man in the party managed to make his resonance roll and defeat that boss and still manage to bring everyone back up from dying.

Alric Rahl wrote:

Im just curious if there will be a quick guide for monsters in the playtest, or some quick rules on converting content. I figure skills and possibly attacks are pretty easy, but what about monsters themselves. Or will there be a Playtestiary (Bestiary) later on before the full release? Im considering actually running a RotRL 2e game for my group.

There will be a playtest bestiary with some 250+ monsters released on the same day as the playtest rulebook. Important to note that most of these entries will be pure stats, designed to give GMs enough raw material to work with in as tight a package as possible.

Perfect. Im prefectly fine with it being only stat blocks as long as i can use those to fill in most of the spaces in a converted Rise of the Runelords campaign. some boss monsters im probably going to have to remake as either NPC's or PC's either at same/lower/higher level.