I think the last year of running PF2 has been the most fun I've had with a TTRPG. Combat is very tactical and I find it fun, the players have plenty of options, and it's very welcoming for homebrew that doesn't break the system due to how modular everything is.
I do find it interesting that they get enhanced focus recovery as part of their automatic progression. I quite like that.
So excited for this book! I happen to have a session coming up where the PCs will be engaging in naval combat - does there happen to be any section that addresses rules on how to best handle that? For the last option, the victory points system might be able to cover some?
Spells are a good baseline, especially for constant or at will spells that might just be thematic. Like say, tidal surge for a creature that tries to drown people, silence for a creepy monster that never makes a sound, or say an action or reaction approximating the effects of secret page for a haunted book that pretends to be a regular book until combat starts. For what it's worth, I think you can also pull some fun tricks with the mechanical tables given etc. E.g. I did something like the following for an engineering-themed dragon in my setting: Craft missile (One action) The dragon assembles one missile. If she wishes, she may then add it to her armour as a free action. She may store up to three missiles.
This used the table of what should be able to be done every round as AOE and what should be possible every few rounds and I'm fairly happy with how it turned out thematically. There's similar advice on how to handle things like attacks that heal the creature, which is also an easy thing to roll into thematics.
So, let's go with a gnoll caster. Maybe, challenging but not a boss fight on their own, gotta give the baddie some buddies. So maybe level +2 or +3, which would be level 12 here. First, we wanna look at what traits every other gnoll has. So these would be the key things we want.:
Traits Medium, gnoll, humanoid, CE Languages Gnoll Senses Darkvision. (Note: so darkness is a nice spell option for a caster then) Speed 25 feet Attacks Jaws attack, d6 or d8. Agile. Pack attack A gnoll does d4 extra damage to any creature that's within reach of at least two of the gnoll's allies. (Note: maybe the wizard has some summoning tricks up their sleeves to help allies and themselves, or maybe they're an abberant sorc and you wanna build a gish instead who helps other gnolls in combat. That's a fun variant.) Rugged travel A gnoll ignores the first square of difficult terrain it moves into each time it steps or strides. (Note: maybe the wizard abuses this with spells that create difficult terrain, like the illusion focus power) We could also look at if there are any trends in gnoll stats (e.g. HP V AC) but that's not necessary here anywho to get the basis done.
Then, we just need to look at how the monster guide advises building a caster. So, let's look at the caster stats.:
So, according to page 6 of the preview monster creation rules, we wanna do the following: HP, AC, & saves Low fort, high will, implied medium reflex and AC, low HP, tweak to taste.
Page 20 gives more class specific advice and recommends that perception should be low, arcana should be high, AC should be low, access to drain bonded item (and either bonus spell slots as per specialist or additional uses of drain bonded item as per universalist). It also suggests adding feats. This is close enough to the standard caster overall but I'll leave these details off for now, so we can suggest variants of this gnoll caster. So, let's put this together. Cookie cutter level 12 gnoll caster: Traits CE, Medium, Gnoll, Humanoid
It seems like a good choice if you know you're dealing with large numbers of folks less competent than you. If you roll enough times, you will eventually fail, so it's useful in those situations where you absolutely do not want to alert anybody. Also possibly a fairly funny choice for somebody in perpetual full armour.
Um, wall of text incoming. I'm really, really enjoying it. I think it plays easy, is easy enough to customise, and I actually enjoy playing pretty much all of the monsters I throw at my players. For what it's worth, I've only been a GM so far, with my only previous GMing experience being an accelerated level 1-20 D&D 5e campaign (although my only long term experience as a player was with shadowrun 5e). I'd like to be a player at some point, but I think this system is so fun to GM that I don't really feel the need to any time soon. Overall with my group the choice of PF2 was a little controversial at first, as while two of the players have been huge fans of the new system, two of them were fairly sad to be leaving D&D 5e. Both of those have since changed their opinion a bit, and while they still like 5e they quite like PF2 as well. The fifth player plays a little less regularly and it's a little harder to gauge his opinions clearly, but it's my understanding that he is completely fine with the system. Personally I haven't had many issues with the system, with those I have had being small enough to forget, with the exception of hero points. I'm fine with their mechanics, I just don't like them being tied into a meta reward thing. As for house rules, most of mine were to tailor it to my own setting. So I changed the ancestries and heritages a bit, replaced the pantheon with my own, and added some new advanced weapons (hello flamethrower!). I also let you get language and ancestry feat options from the plane you're from (multiplanar-focused setting) and some ancestry feat options from heritage. I also changed hero points to be a 3/day thing rather than 3/session, with it being a sort of in-setting force of fate thing some NPCs also have. I did make a couple of other changes though. 1) I made it so that background lore skills scale automatically, like with additional lore. For what it's worth I'm also letting players build their own backgrounds for now. 2) I gave every ancestry a fixed bonus feature, which is roughly on par with an ancestry feat or heritage. 3) I ditched half-elf and half-orc as fixed heritages, and mixed them up with adopted ancestry mechanics to let people play mix-and match with different ancestries, where they have an excuse. 4) This is probably the most disruptive change I've made, but I made ancestry feats a subset of general feat and replaced ancestry feat levels with general feat levels. Ancestry feats are usually better, but I'm happy with how it's playing and general feats always exist as a niche pick to round out a build. Personally at least I think the system handles homebrewing fairly well, so I confess I'm still pumped for the GM's guide.
Skirmishing enemies or unusual terrain can help. While I like combat anyways in this edition, the most memorable fights have definitely been the ones where the players have planned around stuff. E.g. some of my earlier encounters in my campaign involved an urban area, with trees next to buildings, 10 to 20-foot wide roads and alleyways, and groups of enemies on the ground with support on the rooftops. The martials climbed the buildings to beat up some of the archers and bosses, using the trees to make it easier, while the spellcasters did stuff like wall of wind and blasting spells to keep themselves safe on the ground.
You can use three spells in one turn if you have one action spells, as mentioned above. Generally if something is only once per turn, the rules call it out either explicitly or via a trait. A good example of a three spell turn would be a high level bard with the following: Inspire Courage, True Target, Shield
What deadman said. I am super hyped for how demons work now. As for the main topic. I remember I liked the idea of shocking grasp on a tentacular limbs gish.
Personally I'm pretty happy with medicine being as strong as it is.
I've been running a game for a while now in a Very homebrew setting, previously in a somewhat homebrewed version of the playtest (just adapting my ancestry options etc. to the final version so I can actually run a game this weekend). The setting itself consists largely of a thriving multiplanar metropolis, with more exotic planes being the result of a war between the gods (also homebrew) and the all-consuming world serpent. Probably the most notable bit about the planes is that all of them were originally parallel worlds thanks to the actions of the players in my previous campaign. For the most part the actual setting style is modern or even a more upbeat variant of cyberpunk, but with all the technology replaced with arcane magic. The actual content of the game so far has varied from a ritual in the form of a concert (ran by a well known group of travelling occultists), to a diabolic infestation in a small neighbourhood, to gang warfare, to bioterrorists, and being interrogated by a megacorp. The current top runner for antagonist is a cleric of the world serpent who has been organising bioterror attacks and peddling weirdly high tech wares from my equivalent of the afterlife (read: sort of like dark sun but the sand is acidic and there happens to be skeletal sea-life swimming through the sands of the dried-up oceans).
Sorry, there was supposed to be a “have” after Composites. I had more written up but deleted because i saw you were just comparing composite vs non so it doesn't make as much sense, what I get for writing just after waking up. Ah, no worries.
Game mechanics aside, why is there even a Bastard Sword in the game? It's literally a Longsword IRL. They're the same weapon... Piercing has a major, albeit niche, advantage of working far far better around water.
I was mildly bugged by the fact that every element dealt bludgeoning damageI was like transiently bugged but then I remembered that the traits can potentially make a massive difference with interactions. Waterball affects certain monsters in a very different way to Earthball. "I have a +3 to unarmed." "I don't care."
I was mildly bugged by the fact that every element dealt bludgeoning damage I was like transiently bugged but then I remembered that the traits can potentially make a massive difference with interactions. Waterball affects certain monsters in a very different way to Earthball.
I got ninja'd about Athletics to kick down a door or break in through the window and saying "OH YEAH!" Oh my god my fighter is obsessed with trying to make his character play like the kool-aid man and I have to watch, horrified.
Thank you for reminding me of this ever blessed combo.
Bar the table flipping, I have been the fighter in this scenario.
While some advantages of the undead have been mentioned, I do actually kind of like the idea of a makeshift army of pots and pans, brooms and chairs, knives, swords, shields and buckets. So I think I might nab it, thanks.
It's possible I'm misinterpreting you, but fast, medium, and slow progression are things outlined in the rules, where you change the XP per level value to e.g. 800 or 1200. Personally I like experience always being proportionate to the relative challenge, but it's fair enough to prefer raw numbers.
The monk in the game I'm running has decided to build his entire character around jumping and running up things. The other players, of course, have decided to egg him on.
I'm quite fond of the gang-up feat when you're riding a horse. |
