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Aegis of Arnisant seems really, really bad. It costs a 12th level feat slot to emulate a low level spellcaster ability (which spellcasters don't use, because it's cost inefficient and risky), with even more limited targeting, with obvious visual preparation that warns your opponents, and it can destroy your equipment. The most iconic thing an "absorb a spell with your shield" maneuver could do is shelter your friends from a fireball and that's not even a valid target for the ability!
Those are... very blue and beige. They're a bit of an eyesore.
What happened to the Birdcruncher tribe? I was looking forward to continuing their adventures on the astral plane.
Only including one copy of cure is worrying. My favorite role to play is support, and I like focusing on effectively re-shuffling and recharging cards to get my healing spells into play as frequently as possible, and Grazzle is my favorite character by a huge margin. This seems like a move to reduce that style of play, which would hedge me out of playing.
4. A rage that's more meaningful and functions as a toggle without a restricted duration. The worst part about 1e Rage wasn't that it was too interesting or powerful, or that it lasted too long. It was that tracking individual rounds was fiddly and annoying, and you might as well have just removed that aspect and been left with a functionally identical class feature.
What's the in-setting justification for animal companions having altered action economy? I don't think it makes a ton of sense for my animal companion, Clawthrax the Destroyer, dire bear manifested to protect nature, to sit around being a passive observer while his home is assaulted unless I'm prodding him to keep participating.
The playtest rules thoroughly define each category. Trivial basically means if this is the DC and the whole party can try it and only one person needs to succeed, it would be incredibly unlikely that no one succeeds. For instance, even an untrained 1st-level character with 10 in the stat, likely the worst you have, is 50/50 at the level 1 trivial (a trivial task of a level is actually roughly defined as "Something a totally uninvested character of that level would be at about a coin flip to do"). Even if an entire party of four was built that way with no one invested at all, it's still only a 1 in 16 chance they don't have someone make it. Trivial DCs are relevant enough to be on the chart because someone probably will fail it if everybody has to roll it and all who fail experience some interesting result of failure. That doesn't address the issue or my specific complaints even a little bit. All it does is add more questions. Why is the easiest possible level appropriate task a coin flip for average untrained creatures? This still results in a world where the most basic tasks in a category (climbing a braced rope, asking for directions, preparing a simple meal, noticing tracks in deep mud) are comically difficult for normal people. This still doesn't help anyone actually figure out what a level 3 rope or level 6 tracks or a level 8 meal are.
Liking the Lvl based DC chart. I'm in the exact opposite camp. A chart of DCs with specific examples for each skill is a far better. I don't want to have to try and assign arbitrary levels to things like climbing as a GM, and I don't want to have to try and read my GM's mind to figure out how hard they think a free-hanging rope climb is based on their gym class experience or whatever. The problems with static level based DC charts have been enumerated many times since they were presented in 4e. I'm not looking forward to having those arguments again for more months or years. For example: I can't tell what Paizo thinks a task being "trivial" means, and it doesn't jive at all with my own personal definition. A 1st level trivial task in this setup is failed by a trained specialist of the same level (+4) 25% of the time, and an average attempt from an untrained character (-2) fails 55% of the time. This is almost certainly going to translate to comedy of errors gameplay at the table, with party members regularly failing the easiest possible tasks the system defines.
That's not a "strawman". That's a valid criticism of how d20 and Pathfinder define exploration. There aren't any rules covering "just rolling and using it when it matters or the like", especially since you're required to spend actions intentionally making checks to even be allowed to find things like traps. It describes a flaw with the game that people almost always pave over (for example, by "just rolling and using it when it matters or the like"), because it's unplayable (and wouldn't be much fun even if it were). It's disingenuous to dismiss that kind of criticism because you've consciously or unconsciously solved that problem for your personal games.
Now it just feels like I'm picking a flavor. The fact that they have tailored spell lists strips them of their versatility and customizability. I love the sorcerer because they're a Swiss Army Knife whereas the wizard is a specialized tool (though one that can change every day). Picking a demonic sorcerer sounds like it will probably be just limiting yourself to damaging fire spells and scary stuff. Whatever fits the theme of spooky demon guy. A demonic sorcerer is working from the entire divine list, just like a draconic sorcerer is working from the entire arcane list (or a PF1 sorcerer is working from the sorcerer/wizard list). You just get bonus spells from your bloodline, as in PF1.
I also wonder why the pit has a Fort and Ref save. It's an object, so that's its resistance to spells that affect objects and allow a save, like shatter or fireball in PF1.
The blog seems to imply you still have no chance to detect traps unless you're actively spending actions searching for them, just like in PF1. Is this true?
Spells are a critical part of a 3e or PF Ranger or Paladin's kit. They're what give those classes their adaptability. They're also major reasons why they were my favorite classes, and ditching them in exchange for trapping and a series of feats that consume one resource to activate is extremely disappointing.
Rage taking an action is baffling to me. Especially since it seems no more useful than the older versions (and has lost some of its utility in making Strength checks) of the ability and its downside is so much more severe this time around. Also it's a little insulting that "drastically increases her damage" turned out to be a piddly +2. Come on.
It has nothing to do with spiteful DMs. It's an in-world restriction your character is probably aware of, and it shouldn't be difficult for other people to figure it out as well. Exploiting that weakness isn't beyond the pale for a clever opponent, and doesn't compare even a little bit with "forced alignment change" or anything like that, it's a sensible in-world action based on in-world information.
Not a fan of barbarians getting anathema built in by default, I'll say that much. That really feels to me like the kind of thing that should be a strictly RP decision of the player, and not be tied to mechanics. Barbarians aren't paladins, and codes of conduct (even very simple ones) just don't fit with them in my view. I'd be okay with the idea if the anathema presented as "relatively low impact and designed to create roleplaying hooks" wasn't so crippling- it gives people the ability to force you to agree to a duel (possibly in a remote area or with some other unsafe condition) or lose a chunk of your class features as a free action. If they were optional little prompts like "you like drink a little too much" or they actually hooked into mechanics like Superstition that would be okay, but they can't both be "low impact and designed to create roleplaying hooks" and hand out trivial ways to screw your character or remove a chunk of their abilities. Something has to give in that regard.
Is Assurance replacing Take 10 or something?I'd say it's a worse take 10, because it's not "as if you had 10 on you dice", but "as if your TOTAL was 10". But at the same time, at low level, if you had a negative modifier even you were trained because of armor, it would end up better than you average roll, but probably only low level. I know it's worse. My question is if it's taking the same place, mechanically.
Is Assurance replacing Take 10 or something?
Limiting item crafting by level is frustrating. It's going to warp the setting monstrously if you can't have a lot of items on the market without a large number of high level characters supplying them. The PF1 crafting system has a lot of flaws, but the potential for level 1-5 adepts working in teams and using effective tools to craft just about any item in the game was beneficial for the game and the setting.
Mhm saving gold isn't the issue. We'll see how it plays out, but I if there is no investment required into doing baseline damage through cantrips what could be done (gosh I wanna see how Dragon Disciple turns out x_x).I'll be surprised if Prestige Classes make it into the playtest at all, let alone PF2. The basic concept of prestige classes- that your character concept evolves into something more appropriate for a higher power level- was a solid one, even if d20's implementation of it was weak. Something to let basic fighters pivot into death knights and rogues end up as star thieves would be good to bake into the core of the game. You're probably right that Paizo isn't pursuing that, though. It would be significant enough to at least earn a bullet point on promotional material, and there hasn't been any talk about it at all.
I rescind my hopefulness then, I guess. That's really horrible.
What's your source on that? I wasn't aware sorcerers or spontaneous casting were discussed yet at all.
Concept: What if being more effective with lower level spells used in higher level spell slots is a sorcerer thing? I'd assume that's a natural consequence of having spells known instead of preparing into slots. If you're spending your spell slots ad-hoc instead of preparing them, you don't need to declare ahead of time that you're preparing a 3rd level magic missile like the wizard described here. You just spend the 3rd level slot and go, similar to how undercasting worked in Occult Adventures. We won't know until a Sorcerer or other spontaneous caster preview happens, but it seems likely to me.
The PF1 monster building may not have been perfect, but at least it was parallel to how to build a PC was built, so you had a decent estimate to how they'd match up. In the above example of the so-called "problem" in PF1 with the high-HD fey, maybe you should have developed fey-specific abilities so that you could have a low-HD fey with abilities that scaled high to be the strong iconic abilities for the monster without the other stats based on HD being over the intended goal. In other words, HD was the spine of the monster, and the abilities are the flexible parts that you can scale however you need. Alternatively, HD could have just been based on the monster's role in combat. There's zero reason for all "Fey" to be built with wizard hit dice other than "3.5 did it, and it didn't work very well there either".
Am I the only one who still isn't sure what Righteous Ally actually is? It's Divine Bond with a different name.
Count me in with being disappointed that paladins, like clerics, must be tied to a deity now. It seems like a bizarre restriction to drop in suddenly.
Please don't do this again.
Tempt Fate is just... amazingly horrible. The example critical failures we've seen are crippling and often equivalent to failing versus save or lose/die effects in d20. Critical success is useful but not nearly as critical, like effectively having evasion versus a fireball. The ability would only be good if you could use it offensively, no ally in their right mind is going to be a willing target for that thing.
The fact that a +2 AC bonus has both a 10% chance to block a hit and a 10% chance to negate a critical in an ideal scenario (i.e. your attacker can roll 10 above your AC) is small comfort, and completely misses the point. "Reaction for +2 AC against one attack" is one of many abilities that have been previewed that sound, if not pathetic for the level they come in, boring and unimaginative- which is a bad sign when you'd be expecting Paizo to bring their A game to hype things up. Seriously, one of the most exciting things the new fighter feat list has is apparently "when one of your attacks at -5 or -10 misses and you're being flanked you can make that attack against someone else that's flanking you", and one of the most exciting new rogue talents is ranged feint but it just works instead of rolling a trivial check and it's only a -2 to AC instead of -Dex. The preview of the skill system showed a decent framework that could be revised and built into something pretty cool, these class previews are embarrassing and mostly serve to reveal an alarmingly stripped down combat system that's been cannibalized for abilities to give specific classes.
At 14th level, a fighter can use their shield to protect themself from dragon's breath and fireballs, gaining their shield's bonus to Reflex saves.Is it me or this sounds like a bit weak sauce for a 14th lvl feature? At 14th level I'd expect a martial-type character to reflect the fireball back at its caster, plant their shield and create an area the dragon breath just doesn't get to hit at all, blow out the fire like Superman, or absorb the effect with their anti-magic muscles. Something, anything cool enough to fit with what that level is supposed to mean- that they've surpassed mere mortals and are now competing with planar super-beings for stakes like the world. "One of your defenses is slightly better sometimes against certain threats" is woefully inadequate.
I'm confused about what possible fighter-specific hype you could derive from the preview. It sounds identical to the PF 1 fighter (weapon mastery, feat every even level), the only things that seem to have changed are the that weapon and armor mastery are generic features everyone can get (but you get weapon master two levels early), and a bunch of basic mechanics were ripped out of the engine and turned into fighter feats. The feats that don't do that would be totally ordinary and expected in PF1 (where some of them even already exist). None of this is really any different, and none of it addresses real problems with the fighter, least of all the expiration date on "mundane fight man" as a character concept.
I have but one fear from this... Skill Proficiencies, they're the thing I hate the most about 4e and 5e. Please keep to a skill points system. :( A lot of the post makes me hopeful, but proficiencies as described are just 5e proficiencies, which are horrible and could drag the whole thing down.
I'm not one for breaking down the crunch, but page 326 points out that an Average challenge for starship combat would be 2 less than the tier of the PC's ship. Example: if the PC's ship is tier 4, an average challenge starship battle would be an enemy in a tier 2 ship. This may or may not have something to do with the numbers. That's because a ship of the same tier as the PCs' is just as strong as theirs- i.e. expected to have a roughly 50% chance of winning the battle. Which isn't really an average challenge, but more like a really rough bossfight, since losing either ends the campaign or puts the PCs in an awful situation.
There doesn't appear to be any way to upgrade items to higher level versions of themselves. That wouldn't be particularly helpful in a lot of cases (besides armor) anyway- a lot of weapon types have huge gaps where there aren't any upgrades available.
Boarding seems to have been intentionally shut down as an option in starship combat- there's no option to board manually, and teleportation is specifically noted as automatically failing during starship combat. It's probably because Paizo doesn't want to deal with what happens when the PCs start collecting a fleet- their vision is that the PCs have one plucky small to large ship that can defeat groups of fighters or battleships single-handedly.
Grenades detonate on impact. Going prone doesn't make you any more vulnerable to them- a prone target and a standing target have to make identical reflex saves.
An appropriate item level is probably your level +1, or +2 if you're in a major settlement. That's what it says the game assumes you can buy. At no point does it then go off and define "appropriate item level" as something different. Stop bringing this up in every thread.
Complaining about stamina points being "unrealistic" really makes sense, considering how realistic hit points are in the first place. I don't think the complaint is just that stamina is simply "unrealistic". People seem more perturbed that one of its design goals seems to be a sort of "action hero realism" where attacks can be shrugged off but you still break your legs if you fall off a roof, but it doesn't do that since the fall still hits your "luck points", not your "meat points". Also people can still absorb tons of shots directly to their meat points before it drops them. That's not a problem by itself, but it kinda sucks that the setting still doesn't explain why that happens.
So does hit point damage heal like pf hit points? X per day? Yeah. Healing serums quickly become dirt cheap, too. Healing wands are essentially replaced by sacks full of pharmaceuticals.
We're talking full-on exposure in which you need to hold your breath and start experiencing explosive decompression (bludgeoning damage). Starfinder doesn't seem to have rules in regards to this scene. Yeah. Fortitude saves versus unconsciousness, then a track towards suffocation probably would have been a better model.
For the record, I don't think the Solarian is irredeemable. It has some problems:
I'm not in the mood for beating around the bush: those are some really bad problems to have. They don't render the class unplayable, though. Low levels feel terrible, but if you're willing to ditch the futile struggle to keep your save DCs relevant, you can grow up into a reasonable melee character, especially with a few of the decent revelations (like Corona and Stellar Rush). Pick up Enhanced Resistance (Kinetic) and just add fire. It could have been a lot better, and that's probably what irks me the most about it. Forcing so much of the fluff into the light/gravity dichotomy really narrows what you can do with the class, but "space warrior with mystic powers" would have been a totally defensible chassis to build from- you could use something like that to build anything from overt jedi expies to John Carter-types you stick with passive, quiet powers functioning as unconscious psionics or unnatural luck or something. The biggest problem is the really boring revelations. A lot of the class' content is +1s and conditional +1s for combat. There's very little to inspire characters, and the only one with any real narrative weight is Astrologic Sense. Maybe that will improve with future splat books, but it won't make the other problems go away unless Paizo's more willing to make sweeping changes to classes this time around. Also, people really should be able to pick a character option at level 1, or at least not get saddled with two pre-chosen revelations that just suck.
This is very dependent on the GM. It seems that a lot of people posting on there forums are expecting their GMs to throw unlimited credits at them. I would at least expect GMs to stick closer to WBL, since Starfinder characters are considerably more gear reliant than their fantasy cousins.
It doesn't limit you to learning about events and major figures from your region. That's the first sentence, and it's disconnected from the second- which just alters your ability to make Gather Information checks and has nothing at all to do with your region, nor does it restrict what you can use the Gather Information check to learn.
Until you factor in every 5 levels and the boosts they give. Specialization is not encouraged in a Starfinder unless you're only going to play at level 1 forever. That is factoring in ability score boosts every 5 levels. The benefits for spreading your points around are vanishingly small.
You get a marginal benefit of a net +1 to a secondary or tertiary ability score over the course of your entire career if you don't buy an 18 at level 1. That's it. You don't even get any benefit at all until level 5. A point buy system that made higher ability scores more expensive per-point than lower ability scores would encourage spreading your points around. Point-for-point costs encourages specialization, since it costs just as much to get another +1 on your most important score as it does to add +1 to something less important.
You're thinking of key ability score. And you're also thinking of a version of point buy that didn't make it into Starfinder- reducing Strength by 2 or 4 just means 2 or 4 more points in other ability scores, while putting you further away from being able to do your main job effectively. Starfinder punishes you for spreading your points around, forcing you to make pretty harsh decisions if you have the misfortune of being a MAD class like Solarian.
I knew what I was signing up for as a 1st-level solarian, however. Strength is a melee solarian's core stat. It determines the magnitude of their primary contribution to the party. Charisma is used to increase the DC of some of their weaker and more replaceable options, and gives them extra Resolve if they don't multiclass. I'm pretty sure doing less damage and having more resolve wouldn't have made them drop enemies before teammates started going down. The extra resolve points wouldn't have even done anything.
Black Hole and Supernova can only be used every 3 rounds in a fight, and you have to pick which one you want to use 3 rounds before it becomes available. Black Hole lets you force enemies within 20 feet to save versus being pulled 10 feet closer as a standard action- it's basically a waste of your turn almost always. Supernova lets you deal 1d6 + 1d6/level Fire damage to all creatures (including allies) within 10 feet of you as a standard action, Reflex for half- it's a mediocre AoE that's difficult to hit multiple targets with, and the save is pretty easy to make. It's also very rarely worth activating.
Serums do not specify that they affect crew actions, so they don't. Even if they did, their benefit is an Insight bonus that doesn't stack with Skill Focus. Expertise and Operative's Edge don't apply either. Having them apply would probably be a bad solution. You'd be setting up difficulties so that only Envoys and Operatives have any hope of being relevant in mid to high level starship combat, when the whole point of having different crew roles was to get everyone involved.
That's helpful in making the checks at least possible at high tiers. Unfortunately doesn't help with the problem of putting players on a number treadmill where they never get better at tasks or learn to perform new, harder ones.
Last I checked, your team needs to have like 5 or 6 attackers each turn before it's more efficient to have an Envoy than another gun, and they're almost never going to be relevant if one of those guns was already an Operative. Maybe there were some details I missed, but it seems unlikely.
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