Arcaian's page

Spamotron wrote:

Movie Smaug is explicitly a bad example for your argument. Because it wasn't arbitrary. There's plenty of interviews explaining that his initial design was based on the original four legged artwork but they couldn't get the model skeleton to move naturally and he came across as a blatantly artificical. The "wyvern," redesign was as much a practical decision based on technical limitations as anything else. Given that Smaug is what a lot of people consider to be the best thing about those movies. Often citing how impressively he moves. It was almost certainly the right choice to change him.

Well guess we should make vampires into glittering vegetarian xmen then after all so many teenager girls loved it.

Obviously it would be absurd to allow vampires to glitter - we should keep vampires how they have always been. Any vampire that doesn't follow the trend of Lord Ruthven in The Vampyre is obviously a contemptuous betrayal of tradition - all of this nonsense about garlic and burning in the sun and being highly capable in a fight should never have been in the vampiric tradition, they should be killed by bandits like they have traditionally been.

Sarcasm, obviously - at what point do we decide a fantasy concept should be set in stone? It's nonsensical, these are shared concepts that will naturally evolve over time in ways that people find interesting, and that keeps them relevant. It is good that vampires are weak to sunlight, that is an interesting twist that was thoroughly changed from their original creation as a fantasy creature.

With May the 4th coming up, i'm curious if there are any low to mid level scenarios involving the Technic League and/or are more sci-fi themed to run on that weekend. Thanks.

If the level isn't important, there's Lightning Strikes, Stars Fall, a 5-8 PFS scenario that seems to fit :)

We actually just went through this recently as one of my groups decided to stop playing Kingmaker. The GM is excited about Spore War and we were looking at lead ins for it. Not a lot feels like it fits well, especially considering some of the potential options we had already done.

In the end we couldn't really find a lead-in that works for the group so we just didn't bother: we're starting at 11. Two of us are literally just playing our Kingmaker characters who were level 8, so we just add 3 levels, make up an excuse to be there related to being diplomatic envoys, and we're good to go. The others are just making new characters and coming up with an explanation for why they are there.

Ironically only one of the 5 PCs is actually from Kyonin and the other 4 are there because "the player wants to play this concept/class/ancestry/whatever, so we're making up a reason for them to be here at the start." So maybe we overthought the whole "the lead-in has to be appropriate" thing. :)

That said, saying "we want to run Spore War so to have some thematically appropriate characters, we're going to run Outlaws of Alkenstar first" doesn't make any sense. Sky Kings Tomb might make sense if you know what it's about, but from the outside looking in it doesn't because one is a "Dwarf Adventure" and another is an "Elf Adventure" on the box. We weren't really sure what a good lead in would be which is why we didn't use one. None of the APs fit together to form a 1-20 arc the way the full 1-20 APs did.

This sort of situation is I think a good example of how starting at 11 without it being a follow-on from a previous adventure can be quite liberating. We had a similar experience - I finished running a PF2 conversion of Ironfang Invasion at level 10 (they did ... strange things for it to end there :P ), and so when we discussed what we wanted to do next and they picked Stolen Fate (which starts at level 11), there was a lot of freedom in what characters people could bring. We had one player directly follow on from the Ironfang Invasion story, bringing the same character. We had two players adapt characters they'd not been able to finish up the story on previously to the new campaign - one PF1 character from a Mummy's Mask campaign we stopped at level 9, and another a version of a PFS1 character that has an ongoing story. The other three players made completely custom characters, feeling all their established characters had concluded everything cleanly already, or weren't a fit for Stolen Fate. For those people who wanted a 1-20 character experience, they could get it - but for people who were happy with the previous story, they could do what they wanted. I enjoyed how it worked a lot! :)

I think I will make the Finisher tag work more like a flourish. I am not seeing a reason why a finisher prevents all further attack actions.

The investigator does 5d6 once per round and they made it far easier for remastered investigators to get the Devise a Stratagem as a free action. I see no reason why one additional d6 of damage should lead to such an intense limit on the swashbuckler other than the name "Finisher" which I guess the designer wanted to be a killing blow type of attack.

Since it doesn't actually work this way in the game, I'll consider the "finisher" more of a deadly technique of the swashbuckler they can use once a round without additional limitation. I'll adjust if I see problems with it.

I think with the need to obtain panache every round and a maximum of one finisher a round and MAP, that should all be enough to throttle the finisher to the right level of power, especially compared to the rogue or fighter or barbarian.

I accidentally ran Finishers this was for a couple of levels due to a misread of the rules, and then I intentionally started running Finishers this way and didn't regret it. There are a few finishers that are weaker than they otherwise would be - the one that reduces MAP effects on the finisher, for example - but overall I find it to be a nice QoL change without a huge impact on the game balance.

Errenor wrote:

Because this isn't forbidden in the game mechanically and frankly doesn't break anything.

That's where our opinions differ.

While for a melee character Aiding is extremely costly (melee characters lack actions and reactions), for a ranged character it just costs you a third action and a useless reaction. The cost is negligible. If you can do it using an attack roll you also benefit from a bonus that goes automatically up to +3, and even +4 for Fighters (and Gunslingers but they already have Fake out for them). At high level, with the natural action compression archers can gain with Hunted Shot or Flurry of Blows, it's incredible.

On the other hand, it severely nerfs Fake Out, which is in my opinion one of the selling points of the Gunslinger (which is definitely an issue, Gunslingers need some love), and all the feats to Aid (like One For All). And it pushes archers toward some form of "One True playstyle", again a hit on build variation.

So, in my opinion, it significantly impact high level play to the point of being an issue. So, no, I don't allow Aiding a melee attack with a ranged weapon at my table.

Honestly, it sounds like you've placed a very high value on One For All and Fake Out on ranged builds, and are now trying to justify that value by keeping any alternative weak. One For All has the inherent advantage of always working in basically all combat situations (to compare to our current example, you don't need to have line of sight on your enemy to make the attack roll), always using your Diplomacy (which you can always have at maximum proficiency, will always have maxed-out item bonuses for), has the bravado trait to give you panache, and it is completely applicable outside of combat as well as in - it's a very good feat with those benefits even if you run Aid in a fairly permissive way. I'm currently playing in a campaign where Aid is run permissively and I use One for All frequently still, and don't regret it. Perhaps it'll be less common for someone to take the Swashbuckler archetype when they're uninterested in anything but One For All, but that honestly seems like a good outcome to me. There's also the consistency provided by being an explicit mechanical option like One For All - if you keep Aiding with attack rolls, I'll start boosting the DC; if you keep repeatedly intentionally shooting near but not hitting an enemy, they'll eventually focus on the real attack a little more easily. I'm not going to do that for something like One For All. Fake Out is obviously even better; it doesn't require an action to prepare, and it doesn't require you to specify a benefiting ally ahead of the reaction. I don't think anyone who would qualify for using Fake Out would not pick up the feat because someone else can occasionally aid using their attack roll.

With Paizo phasing out chromatic and metallic dragons, how will their presence be handled along the Golden Road? I'm aware of two major dragons in Osirion, though it doesn't sound too hard to keep the name and plot bunnies they represent and simply change them to primal dragons - Sussurex is already called the "Crystal King" and could be switched from a Blue to a Crystal Dragon, and Asuulek, being interested in a volcano with an extraplanar dimension within, is almost perfect for a Magma Dragon. But blue dragons being more common in the Thuvian desert (especially as guardians/hoarders of the oases) and Katapesh is fairly well established. Do you simply replace them with Cloud Dragons as the closest equivalents? Mirage and Fortune Dragons also sound like ideal inhabitants of vast desert sands that hide ancient treasures. Or is the Golden Road going to find itself populated by a more diverse draconic ecosystem?

They've previously stated that for major named chromatic/metallic dragons that don't have an obvious creature to be based off of in ORC pathfinder, they'll just make them a custom stat block - for example, Choral the Conqueror won't be statted up as another type of dragon if he returns to Brevoy, he'll simply be a dragon that is red and that has a unique stat block :)

Errenor wrote:

What about real shots? With ammo expended if you are counting it, action costs for reload if required and no damage even on good rolls (higher than AC).

Just curious. Maybe we even have discussed that, I don't remember.

What's the in character difference between shooting an enemy to hurt them and shooting an enemy to help your friend hitting? If there's none then there should be no mechanical difference.

I don't see any way to shoot at an enemy to help an ally and as such I don't allow Aid with a ranged weapon. It just looks like a way to gain a benefit without having paid for anything.

You pay the same action + reaction cost as anyone else does, not sure what you mean by 'without having paid for anything'. Personally, I think it makes a good amount of sense that if someone is firing an arrow at you at the same time you're trying to dodge someone else's sword strike, it's harder for you to avoid both; if that's the effect you're looking for, you don't need to hit a weak point in their armour/put your full draw weight into it/take the time to line up the shot perfectly/etc, because it just needs to be an arrow going near the enemy, which is the difference between shooting with the intent to hurt and the intent to aid. Surely it's harder to differentiate swinging a sword at an enemy with the intent to hurt vs aid someone else than it is with a bow, especially when something like Feint already exists?

I legit do not understand that decision about Fleshwarps...

In P1E, it led to different species based on the victim's heritage, but in P2E, they became homogenous???

Then again, now they need to find another creator ancestry to replace dark elves...

I don't think they became homogeneous in PF2, I think the intended narrative is that a fleshwarp has so little in common with whatever their original ancestry's physical form was that you're functionally a completely distinct creature. I think that narrative could be sold more effectively if they had an Adopted-like effect to still get more cultural feats from their previous ancestry, and I think a less-completely-Fleshwarped versatile heritage would absolutely be appropriate as well.

Interesting to see the comment suggesting avoiding picking aquatic ancestries because the presumed focus of water in the campaign is incorrect! That makes me more interested in this one :)

I think many people miss the mark when it comes to Cheliax. First Cheliax may be the largest imperial empire in the world. Sure Quadira may be bigger but that is speculation and on the other side of the world. Cheliax is the world power of the inner sea.

Second, Cheliax is the kingdom of men. Always has been. Cheliax was the chosen of the god of men, Aroden. It was KNOWN that Aroden would return to Golarion to usurer in the golden age of men and he would do it in the capital of Cheliax, Westcrown.

The death of Aroden shook the world but nowhere as much as Cheliax. By the time Aroden died Cheliax had converted ALL government functions over to the church of Aroden. Why do you need mortals in government when a god is going to do it. So when Aroden died the government collapsed and civil war broke out.

The civil war lasted 30 years. During which house Thrune made a pact with Asmodeous. This pushed Thrune to win the war. As a part of the pact Asmodeous became the state religion.

Hell Knights should be given an even more close look as they PREDATE the rule of Thrune and are not beholden to it; unless you count the Order of the Glyph, which most do not. To become a Hellknight one must kill a devil in single combat.

This I believe is the reason Tieflings are considered lesser than man. Add to this and the enslavement of any Halfling they can catch and you get a society that views all races less than man.

In my campaigns I envision Berlin 1936-1939. I believe this is the historical moment that inspired the look and feel of Cheliax. Especially the imagery of the banners of Thrune prominently displayed reminds me of images of Berlin 1936. I use this period as it is the time between the 1936 Berlin Olympic's and the Feb 20,1939 Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden, New York where over 20,000 Americans attended. Of course that all change when Germany invaded Poland Sept 1, 1939.

Cheliax is also the de-facto colonizer. That is until Andoran sank their navy. You can add all the colonial history to...

It's not speculation that the Kelesh empire is larger, it has been concretely canon since the original campaign setting book. Qadira on its own is maybe half the size of Cheliax, and that's just one of many satrapies in the Kelesh empire, which is itself larger than any of its satrapies. It's also not on the other side of the world; the holdings of the Kelesh empire border Taldor and are part of the Inner Sea. Cheliax is also not particularly large for Tian-Xia either; Xa Hoi, Lingshen, Minkai, and Nagajor are all comfortably larger than Cheliax. Cheliax is the largest state in the Inner Sea, and is clearly one of the major centers of power in the region, but is not a world-defining power, and is not without rivals in the Inner Sea - any two of Taldor, Andoran, Osirion, and Rahadoum would at least be able to seriously hinder Cheliax, and any three of them would certainly win. Cheliax is not in a position where it is clearly the sole dominant power in its region.

I also think it's unfair to say that Cheliax is the definitive kingdom of men - yes, Aroden was prophesized to appear in Westcrown and rule from it, but Aroden has always had a very Inner Sea-centric definition of humanity, neglecting the humans Tian-Xia, Casmaron, and Arcadia very thoroughly. I see no reason to expect that to change upon this return of Aroden - he'd had plenty of time walking the surface of Golarion and leading people previously, it's not like this would be his first time doing this.

Taja the Barbarian wrote:

Honestly, I'd be shocked if a lawful evil human society didn't have a bunch of laws/customs set up to preserve the position of humans from 'outsiders' (in any sense of the word) that might have the gall to try to get ahead in 'their' society...

.

This is what I did for Molthune -- in order to separate Molthune from Cheliax or other 'evil' societies. I decided to make Molthune this Nazi or aryan-like bad-guy state that was equally against Orcs from Belkzin and human ethnicities other than their own. They war against Kyonin and 5-Kings-Mts and push a pogrom of ethnic cleansing from all 'non-Molthuni' humans. .... Back in the day when the campaign setting was brand new, it was my way of really telling the difference between Molthune and Cheliax. So for me, in Molthune they'd be very racist against any Tiefling, Orc, Ratfolk, Halfling, Half-Elf, Ifrit, even an Aasimar if the Human-side wasn't Molthuni. .... So far I've only run one game in Molthune, where the PCs are tasked with liberating a 'concentration camp' to rescue Nirmathi, Druman, and Elven people from the Molthuni.

Ultimately, the Molthuni for me are kinda like the Zhentarim in FR (at least how I see the Zhents.)

Interesting, my favourite aspect of Molthune in the canon is that they're almost the opposite of this interpretation! The two-tier system of residency where those who serve in the military can go from labourers/foreigners to the well-supported citizen category, as well as the roman aesthetics in some of the art giving some direction as to where the citizenship inspiration is drawing from, gives rise to a very interesting society to me. There's a core of old-money citizens who are very prejudiced, but also an increasing influx of newer citizens from very diverse backgrounds - they just had to be willing to serve for years in an imperialistic military to join. I think it justifies the old position of Molthune being LN rather than LE, and sets up an interesting situation - regardless of almost any inherent aspect of who you are, it seems like you can become a citizen in Molthune, but the cost is that you'll need to be complicit with their military. I find it a really interesting place in the setting.

This RL horror show, still ongoing in 2025, is outright what Paizo presents as what the "atheists" would do if they had a country of their own, execute people for the crime of non/belief.

I don't think the argument that "Rahadoum is presented as the natural outcome of atheism" stands up to scrutiny. I find it particularly strange to say when you're approaching it from a literary analysis perspective - it seems very clear to me that the critique happening here is of the authoritarian response, not the atheism. There's nothing about the rest of the setting that seems to imply this is the only possibility for atheism - there are other polities that are predominantly atheist (e.g. Druma) which don't have this authoritarian response, and there are certainly individual atheists who stand in stark relief from the authoritarianism of Rahadoum - including figures from Rahadoum. I don't see why "Rahadoum's authoritarian and violent response to the Oath Wars as a state, of which there are differing opinions even within the state, is a tragically brutal response to a real problem that metatextually works to invert the typical assumption in fantasy of violent theocracies (of which the Lost Omens setting has many)" isn't a valid reading of the text.

There's interesting space in Rahadoum to expand on - the Sword of Man of the Pure Legion has very significant authority and seems like they're in a position of comparable authority to the legal head of state in many ways. Tension between the Sword of Man and the Council of Elders, especially with the Keeper of the First Law typically being an insecure position, has the possibility for some interesting tension there. But right now, we don't really know almost anything about the state - in nearly 2 decades of the setting, we've not yet had anything that focuses on it to a meaningful degree. There's a lot of space for them to take Rahadoum in different directions, and I think there's some tension between those directions in published books. There's Rahadoum as an authoritarian but not horrific state, filled with intellectuals and the pursuit of human development, with questions about the cost of the violent anti-theism on this state. There's also a Rahadoum that's almost cartoonishly repressive and is basically acting fully as an inversion of your evil theocracy, but this time an evil anti-theocracy. Both of these are present as far back as the Inner Sea World Guide, where we're first really introduced to the nation, but I think the first seems to be a little more where PF2 is taking it; but again, with the lack of detail we have, both are still present. The fact that both of them are present without clarity as to which is more correct is a little unfortunate, I think - it does lend itself to some stereotypes around atheism. When we get Lost Omens: Golden Road, or whatever book fleshes out the area a little more, I think the lack of clarity will go away.

On top of that, I don't think there's a fundamental moral issue with telling a story about an oppressed group who gain power and react to their past trauma by violently imposing restrictions intended to prevent their past troubles happening again. It's a complicated story, for sure - one has to be careful in how one tells it, but I see no reason why this is fundamentally a bad story to tell. It happens in the real world, all too often - exploring how and why is important, I think. Perhaps a little out-of-tone with Golarion as a broader setting, but it's not necessarily a bad direction to take a story.

Honestly that just sucks.

Because that's very conflicting with the earlier published information I linked.

Actually, looking into this more, the world guide was published before Lost Omens Gods and Magic, which I cited.

Since they are in direct contradiction of one another, I would say that your source has been....redacted isn't the right word...overwritten.

Anyways, based on the most recent published item (just looking at these two) I would go with the description from Gods and Magic. It also makes a lot more sense to me than the first.

I don't think this is a case of a change in the lore - for one, it was only ~6 months between releases, so their development was happening at the same time. That always makes it difficult to figure out which was the intended one. Secondly, I don't think there's necessarily an out-of-universe contradiction here - and it seems too far-reaching (to me) to say that the edicts/anathema of a philosophy being released overrules recently-published specific lore about a part of the setting. There's an interesting almost-contradiction here, but it entirely could be in-universe. Especially when an even more recent source (Divine Mysteries) continues to reinforce the World Guide information.

The general edicts and anathema of the Laws of Mortality can be to challenge religious power and to resist religious aid, and Rahadoum can allow specific non-deific faiths to operate in their borders. Does the Green Faith count as a religion, and so it is against the edicts of the Laws of Mortality to receive aid from it? There's a strong argument to be made - and I imagine it is being made by many members of the Pure Legion. Others will disagree, and yet others will be acknowledging the assistance of druids of the Green Faith in stopping desertification and view that as more important than fights about what does and does not qualify as 'religious aid'. Is astrology a faith? Many will argue it has no deity involved, and is not necessarily based in faith - especially in a setting like the Lost Omens setting, where it is provably real in some ways. Others will disagree, and that conflict makes Rahadoum more interesting, not less. Rahadoum should not be a monolith, and the possibility for multiple perspectives for characters from the region (as well as the potential for stories like a power struggle between the Pure Legion and the main government over this sort of decision) is something I'd like more of in the setting, not less.

James Jacobs wrote:

So here's the thing: Pathfinder, and by extension Golarion, is a made-up world where the gods are real, and magic is a fundamental part of existence. That sort of thing changes how religion and faith works on a deep, fundamental level, and it gets worse if you approach it from an omniscient perspective as a writer of a fantasy world or a reader of a fantasy world.

Keep in mind that no one who lives in Golarion exists in a reality where they can pick up the books we create about Golarion. They don't have those resources, and it's not really appropriate to assume everyone who lives on Golarion has read every book about Golarion that has been published.

As for Pharasma... the key there is to remember she's not human, nor does she have a human mind. She is, as are many deities, unknowable by human minds, including those that invent her. That's part of the mystery and terror and beauty and problem with matters of belief and mythology when they're presented as fantasies by a content creator, and not presented as guesswork from an in-world author.

My own personal take about the OP's question (and this, I MUST STRESS, is my take alone and IS NOT MEANT to be "canon" for Golarion in any way):

** spoiler omitted **

Have you considered creating a faction to represent these people? Because, if you ask me, the problem isn't so much Pharasma herself, but the fact that every alternative to her is evil—like the asura, the undead, or the sahkil. Maybe if there were a neutral or chaotic neutral faction to represent people who feel this way, others would side with them and champion their cause, much like how some people play the Bellflower Network.

There's no longer alignment in the setting, so TN/CN isn't a meaningful distinction any longer, but you might be interested in The Lady of the North Star, a Tian deity who is a huge enemy of Pharasma's - to the extent that Pharasma and her servants go out of their way to remove all evidence of her existence. She allows her servitors to become Holy, but not Unholy - closer to the good end of the spectrum under the old alignment rules, she's pretty upstanding morally IMO - and her entire thing is about gifting immortality to mortals. I think she's an example of the setting moving away from the idea that Pharasma's justice is unquestionable.

Alynia wrote:

vyshan wrote:

So with this war, are we going to see Cheliax take more beatings and stop being a threat, or be utterly defeated and another big bad empire is removed from the board?

I am afraid about the same thing to be honest. "Hellbreakers" sounds a lot like Cheliax will loose this. And removing the last "Big bad evil empire" might feel good while doing so in the story itself, but leaves a big hole afterwards narrative-wise.

To be fair, Cheliax works as a bogeyman but every time they appear in APs they get the stuffing kicked out of them and end up taking the L (which makes sense, since they're villains).

Even if we take into account that they win in Hell's Vengeance, this is counterbalanced by how thoroughly they got trounced in Hell's Rebels.

However, I don't think the AP will see Cheliax gone. I think a much better bet, given the geographical positions involved, is that Andoran takes part or the entirety of Isger, which has already tried rebelling before.

That would deal a blow to Cheliax without removing them from the board, so to speak.

I don't think they really get trounced in Hell's Rebels - spoilering the rest of the discussion, just in case :)

They functionally get a vassal state with a decent degree of autonomy, still getting most of what they want out of the land. They do lose the land, but it had no sites of importance in it, it's barely populated, and they still have primary access to its resources. And that's the best case scenario! Depending on the PC's results, they could be giving 70% of their resources away to Cheliax, or be forced to send their entire army + navy to support cheliax's wars, regardless of who they're fighting. It's definitely a loss, no doubt about that - but I think the Glorious Reclamation's seizing of Westcrown is more of a strike against House Thrune than the outcome of the Silver Raven's rebellion.

Arcaian wrote:

I don't think the core point of the essay is wrong - if you don't balance the game around assuming that a highly versatile character takes advantage (not perfectly, but pretty well) of their versatility, people who do take advantage of the versatility well are going to be unbalanced.

How much of a problem is it that someone playing perfectly is going to have above average results? How much are we throwing out chasing that? Like, other classes also have gradients of power to them but we don't seem nearly as fixated on aiming for the top.

To put "if you don't balance around taking advantage of all your versatility" another way...

If you balance a class around the assumption that it's played near-perfectly, anyone who makes suboptimal choices for any reason is going to have a bad time. Or anyone who plays in a game environment where perfect decision making is not possible will have a degraded experience. And so on.

The real damning thing for me here is that this standard doesn't really seem to be applied in the same way to other classes. There have been significant efforts, both in base PF2 and even moreso with remaster balance changes, to try to promote a variety of options for classes to be able to lean into. PF2 has prided itself on this. The community has prided itself on promoting this, on encouraging people to play what feels good because there are often ways to make it functional.

... Yet inevitably whenever this conversation comes up, even the designers (or well, former designers) default to a discussion of optimization first and everything else second.

You literally quote me saying "not perfectly, but pretty well" before proceeding to argue against the idea that we should balance all casters around perfect play. I didn't say that, and Michael Sayre didn't say that. The difference in the versatility of something like a ranger and a prepared caster aren't comparable, that's why this conversation comes up for prepared casters. It's not like I'm sitting here saying that the wizard is perfect - I do think there are issues with the power level and class options of the wizard specifically, which is why I wrote and published a 3PP book addressing my issues with the class. And yes, balancing around playing perfectly is going to mean anyone who isn't playing perfectly underperforms; it's basically an unavoidable situation when a class has very significant versatility and balance is a key goal of the system. If you're not going to undermine the balance, you either need to reduce their versatility, or you need to do your best to communicate the expected level of competence and give tools and education to help players reach that point. I don't think that has been pulled off fully in this case - but that doesn't mean the fundamental logic here has a flaw.

That essay is really tragic. Basically admits to a bunch of things players find fun then shrugs them off as not worth the effort and kind of handwaves a lot of balance problems based on hypothetical versatility that a character probably doesn't even have in the first place.

I think that's mischaracterizing the essay to some degree - I don't think it's saying that they're not worth the effort, I think it's saying that there is a fundamental trade-off here you can't ignore. I don't think the core point of the essay is wrong - if you don't balance the game around assuming that a highly versatile character takes advantage (not perfectly, but pretty well) of their versatility, people who do take advantage of the versatility well are going to be unbalanced. If consistently casting only fire spells, or focusing your build around casting spell attack rolls, gave you equivalent outcomes to other classes and you maintain the ability to pull out all manner of other useful spells, then the class is too versatile for its power, and that's an important consideration in class design.

The exact degree of taking advantage of that versatility you balance around is definitely worth discussing, and the amount of power you gain from versatility needs to be considered as well. If you can perform at 95% of your theoretical maximum power by just preparing the best all-round spells, then this whole point is moot. It's difficult to determine exactly how much power the versatility of prepared casting gives you in PF2, because it is pretty radically table-dependent, as has been discussed many times already in this thread. Personally, I think the degree of versatility inherent to Vancian casting with big spell lists is a bit too much - I rarely see players engaging heavily in re-preparing their whole spell list every day, and I regularly see players wanting to specialise their magic in a way that Vancian casting doesn't really allow. If we had some sort of trade-off where you have to pick between broadening the spells you have available to you to prepare vs specialising in the few spells you do have available, I think you could make the versatility more impactful should you choose to invest, and you can make the doubling-down on one type of magic possible without necessarily having to worry about the consequences for a highly versatile caster - but that might've been too radical a change for the PF1 -> PF2 era.

After having read a lot of these discussions, I figure I'll jump in here and mention that many of these discussions about different ways to add content/rebalance existing content have been thought about and 3rd party products have been developed in (partial) response to these sorts of frustrations. I'm over on Infinite, so that's where I know the products best, but if anyone wants to look at already-published additions to the Wizard class, here are 3!
- Wizards+; there's a good chance people here already know this one, it's recently released by Team+ and adds a wide variety of new content to the class. As typical for Team+, it's mostly not focused on rebalancing existing content, but instead about adding new ways to play the class. This includes new feats, theses, and schools - but also a class archetype to introduce some almost animist-like casting to Wizards, and Deliberations, which replace your arcane bond. There are also some rebalancing changes at the end of the book. It's a really fun introduction of new content!
- Arcane Accoutrements; the debut book from Three Rooks Books, this one also focuses on adding a variety of new content for the wizard class - I really like the sword binder arcane thesis, personally. It's got more of all the normal wizard options, as well as some magic items, plus an extra Deliberation using the rules from Wizards+!
- Wizards Refocused; this is the one I wrote, which has a slightly different focus than the other two. There's still new content - a bunch of new class feats, especially focused on trying to introduce some of that academic flavour into wizard, a new thesis, and a Deliberation, but then there's also an archetype to let other classes get some of the nerdy stuff if they want to, and then pretty substantial rebalancing of existing content - I introduced a new ability all Wizards get (Expand your Education) to try and add some academic flavour, as well as to make up for the less flexible schools in the Remaster. I also rebalanced all of the existing theses to try and ensure they each have a fun niche and are more comparable in power to the strongest option available at the moment.

If 3PP isn't the stuff for you, feel no pressure to look at them - but if you're invested enough in wizards to be 3 pages deep into a forum discussion, you might also be interested enough to give a read of how some 3rd party publishers have given the wizard class a bit of a revamp.

I do agree with people saying not to try to interrogate this too closely. In this particular case, I'd also point out that you can move 3 times/turn now, not 2 like in PF1 (barring running in a straight line) - so the average move speed of ancestries tends to be reduced 25 to account for the greater number of times you can move that distance.

Kalaam wrote:

One step worse on a critical hit might work but damn that could be very, very strong.

How strong are we talking?

It's like I'm missing something in P2E entirely...

Do critical successes happen like 9 times out of 10 or something now?

Back in P1E, you had to roll from 17 to 20 on the die to get a critical hit, as a reminder.

Right now, it's like almost all of your attacks, as a Magus at least, are critical successes.

Lets go for level 5, you've just got Expert proficiency and have a +1 weapon, giving you a +14 (+5 level + 4 expert + 4 ability mod + 1 item) to-hit. A level 7 with a high AC has 25 at base. You can then flank them for off-guard, make them frightened 1, and you now need to roll a 8 to hit/18 to crit. If you combine that with spellstriking Slow at the same time, you've now got a 15% chance to almost guarantee the boss (again, they're 2 levels above you!) is Slowed 1 for the fight (they'd need to crit succeed to only be Slowed 1 for a round), and a meaningful chance of making them Slowed 2 for the fight. If you have a reroll (Sure Strike, a hero point, etc) that's a 27.75% chance of happening. I think it's pretty clear that a character shouldn't have a more than 1/4 chance of trivialising the boss on round 1 from full health.

If you optimise your to-hit further - lets say a status penalty of -2, and you're picking up Spellstrike from the magus archetype as a fighter to give yourself a +2 to hit - then you're going up to critting on a 14: a 35% chance, or a 57.75% chance with a reroll. The only way these odds can make sense is if the spell can't do anything approaching a save-or--suck, even on a crit fail.

Didn't Rage of Elements get pretty detailed errata earlier this year?

GameDesignerDM wrote:

Hey, can we stop assuming what Paizo is doing, has done, or has 'lost', or whatever? It's all mostly speculation, anyway.

It's unproductive, and its stuff like this that makes ANY dev not want to engage with the community.

Paizo, aside from scheduled announcements at conventions, already doesn't interact with the community anyway so it's not like we're losing anything here.

They literally posted in this thread.

Witch of Miracles wrote:

There are multiple benefits:

-You are doing spell+strike in two actions instead of three, and can hopefully recharge with some kind of action-compressing ability like magus's analysis or a conflux spell. The action economy on this is better than just casting the spell and then striking.

-You get access to interesting targeting options if you are Starlit Span or have a reach weapon

-You are able to deal fairly serious AoE while performing a single-target strike

-Your spellstrike can still do something if you miss

I'll ask again: why use a save spell instead of an attack spell for Spellstrike?

I use Ray of Frost, it automatically hits with my strike.
I use Frostbite, it can do less damage than expected and/or miss, even if I critically hit with my strike.

Oh, and I don't need an extra feat to use Frostbite with Spellstrike.

Because it does something other than single target damage - it is objectively a worse choice to use it for a spell that just does single target damage. It opens up your options - it allows you to debuff an enemy at the same time as Striking them, or it allows you to do multitarget-damage at the same time as Striking one target. It's a very powerful option as-is, and I don't see any way within the vague confines of the magus class to turn a crit on your attack roll into a crit fail on an enemy's save without it getting very imbalanced.

Arcaian wrote:

That being said, I do think it's clear that 5e has a retention problem with gamers - there are definitely some people who have been using it for a decade now, but much of the online discussion from those who have extended experience with the game are criticisms of the balance and the gameplay issue resulting from it, and many people who play other games have left 5e because of these sorts of issues.

That's a massive statement to make without proof. It would be like saying League of Legends has a retention problem because a vocal minority quit - or claim to quit - loudly in response to any changes they don't like. The proof can only come once player numbers start to decline and for both games that hasn't happened yet.

I see no reason why you would need to wait until player numbers start to decline to say that the balance issues contribute to issues around player retention - a problem with retaining a population of players doesn't mean that the system is in decline, or that it has to be loosing player count. It's plainly true that a significant amount of the popularity of RPGs that aren't 5e is that they can address problems some players find with 5e, and I'm saying that the balance (and associated strains on the GM) is one of the most commonly-cited causes of people leaving 5e for other games. This can all be true while the game continues to become more popular, because 5e has always been about getting more people into the hobby.

Quote:

At the very least I think I can say with about 100% certainty that appealing to players frustrated with the consequences of 5e's terrible balancing is an effective route to gain new players as an RPG in the current market, and PF2 has done so well.

It's an effective way to carve out a niche, but as a long-term strategy to gain a larger percentage of the total market, I doubt it's a winning one. Paizo has higher sales now than they did when they were the market leader, but they've clearly ceded overall market share with PF2 and there's no indication that it's been regaining that share even with WotC's PR struggles.

I don't know why people keep trying to push this narrative that PF1 was once the most popular game on the market. We have zero proof that Paizo was ever meaningfully the market leader; for one, no-one has the data to back that up, and people instead rely on the very shaky foundations of ICv2 - a survey of some hobby stores, not even a comprehensive accounting of all of them, ignoring online sales, sales from larger places where only d&d is sold, and a myriad of other sources. Even then, ICv2 only puts Pathfinder in front for a short period of time starting at the end of 2011, when 4e had almost entirely stopped releasing major products - there were no new Core Rules books by that point, and there was only one release left in the character options, optional rules, settings, and spell books lines (at least according to wikipedia, I'm not double checking that even more). Outselling 4e in a limited sampling of some hobby stores, while excluding major areas that 4e is sold and PF isn't, after 4e has already just about finished, and continuing that for another quarter in which 5e was announced is really not a very convincing argument for "Paizo was the market leader". Pathfinder never outsold D&D, and is very unlikely to do so in the future. Paizo has never been the market leader; Wotc isn't even really competing with Paizo, because they've been so dominant for so long that their growth is fundamentally about attracting new players to the hobby, not taking players from other systems. Paizo isn't going to take the market leader position without a catastrophic collapse of WOTC, and that's not an issue - Paizo is clearly making much more money now than they ever have before (as seen by hiring practices and has been publicly stated by many members of staff), and are more successful now than they were in the PF1 era by every meaningful metric. They may or may not have ceded market share - it's literally impossible to know. I see no reason to think that Paizo's primary goal is to attempt to gain a larger market share instead of the obvious goal of being a more profitable and successful company, in which the current strategy of "making a well-balanced game that stands on its own, and that will be attractive to players frustrated with the flaws of the market leader" seems to be excelling.

Arcaian wrote:

There's a reason that just about every game currently being published has a majority of its userbase be ex-players of 5e - the lack of balance absolutely is the cause of a large proportion of people stopping engaging with 5e. In the case of 5e, it is big enough and has enough of a hook into pop culture and streaming that the amount of new players coming in clearly outnumber the amount of older players dropping out, but that doesn't mean shoddy game design decisions aren't causing people to stop playing the game.

That would be true of anything that is a massive market leader. It's like saying the majority of Bing users have previously used Google. It has no bearing on the quality of Google as service and in no way suggests that Bing is a better search engine or that Google is an inferior one.

No-one has the numbers to prove any of this right now (likely not even WotC), so it's all just our opinion. That being said, I do think it's clear that 5e has a retention problem with gamers - there are definitely some people who have been using it for a decade now, but much of the online discussion from those who have extended experience with the game are criticisms of the balance and the gameplay issue resulting from it, and many people who play other games have left 5e because of these sorts of issues. At the very least I think I can say with about 100% certainty that appealing to players frustrated with the consequences of 5e's terrible balancing is an effective route to gain new players as an RPG in the current market, and PF2 has done so well.

Nintendogeek01 wrote:

In game design it is important to balance the player-facing options as much as you can in order to avoid flagrantly overpowering options so that you broaden your appeal to an audience interested in a variety of options and keep the existing audience engaged in coming back to try new things. Gamers tend to gravitate towards optimum options but that's not good for the health of the game in the long-run, as the same obviously better solutions will get repetitive quickly and hurt long-term engagement with the game.

If this idea was actually true then 5e wouldn't be the default TTRPG because everybody would have optimized the fun out of it and moved on years ago. Instead it's 90% of the market and second place is only even known by the hardcore TTRPG fan. This desire for strict balance with no need for GM intervention is a bias among PF2 fans because it's what differentiates your favorite system from what everybody else plays.

There's a reason that just about every game currently being published has a majority of its userbase be ex-players of 5e - the lack of balance absolutely is the cause of a large proportion of people stopping engaging with 5e. In the case of 5e, it is big enough and has enough of a hook into pop culture and streaming that the amount of new players coming in clearly outnumber the amount of older players dropping out, but that doesn't mean shoddy game design decisions aren't causing people to stop playing the game.

Personally, the set of themes and narratives I'm most interested in exploring (at least that the setting currently supports - I'm not going to suggest a Darklands AP until we get a little more information about them) is related to the Sarkoris Scar. I've been really glad to see Paizo making some changes to how it is presented over the years - the people of Sarkoris have a really interesting culture, and at times they were presented as almost entirely dead and gone, with the focus being on the Crusades and on the crusaders themselves. It has been lovely to see the Sarkorians get more narrative agency over the end of PF1 and the bits we've seen of them in PF2 - and I think it'd be a good time to do something more with this plot thread.

The obvious route for a Sarkorian AP is to focus on reclaiming the Sarkoris Scar from demonic infestation, and I do think that has to be part of the AP. I think it would be very interesting to explore the different ways that Sarkorians survived an apocalypse, and how that shapes their desires and methods for a new Sarkoris. Between the small groups who survived within the Scar itself, those who survived in neighbouring lands that faced threats from the Worldwound like the Realm of the Mammoth Lords, and those who went further afield (like the clan we know most about afaik, the Farheavens who fled to Iobaria), it seems like there would be pretty substantial differences.

Thematically, the narrative could focus on how one resolves the conflict between these different visions for a new Sarkoris, how (and whether) one should try to reclaim the previously-important, now fiendish settlements and locations of interest, and importantly I think how much to involve both Mendev and the ex-crusaders in this process (and the associated topics of how to handle the outright genocidal practices performed by the cursaders). I think it would be an AP that makes sense for the Wardens of Wildwood-style level 5-15 range - you start off powerful enough to be involved in reclaiming the Scar directly, but don't get so powerful that the most terrifying creatures in the Scar become trivial to you. Also on a purely straightforward level, the God Callers are very interesting and we've got new (and very well-written) lore on that front in the War of the Immortals, so that's an interesting part of the setting to be able to explore further. I imagine you could do it as a new take on Kingmaker - you become the head(s) of a new polity centred in the Scar, but I don't think that would necessarily be the most interesting way to do it. Pivoting you away from being the central decision makers into being one of a diverse group involved in making decisions seems more fitting for the themes being discussed - it's not about a small group of Sarkorians forcing their idea of what Sarkoris should be onto the rest, it's about a collective decision of the Sarkorians as to what their new polity should look like (and that's another reason I like the level 5-15 3-book AP range, it's more grounded in terms of the power the party will have).

Arcaian wrote:

That's a really interesting idea - I know it's not normal for Paizo to lock your PC's narrative in too much from the AP premise, but when they've done it before it has really worked for me. Without spoilers, Strange Aeons has a pretty restricted set of narratives available for the last several years of the PC's lives, and I've got a lot of positive feedback on that from people. In this case, saying all the PCs start off working for - though not necessarily agreeing with - an exploitative group that is harming nature gives you some really interesting room for different possible character arcs. Especially with how common 3-book APs are nowadays, it's much less of a risk than it used to be.

The tricky bit would be that it's still an AP - so they need to change their mind at the 'right' time - which is why I think your idea of them ending up opposing something as messed up as fiends is a good way to do it.[..]

I think the real triky thing here is that historically, AP were the PC morality is meant to shift within the story is difficult to pull off, since unless the player know what's expected of them and are really on board, they risk to either "switch side" before they're supposed to, or to refuse to do so when they should (Second Darkness being the most blatant exemple). It's going to feel really railroady if the narrative force them to work for the bad guys for a while, and then to switch at a specific point. This kind of story can be great, but work way better in movie, books or videogame.

Another (better, or at least safer) way of doing so in tabletop roleplay would be to bake this "side switching" in the basic synopsis of the AP itself, that is, to announce to the player that this is an AP where they play people that used to work with the bad guys but switched side. But this really limit the amount of "pre-switch" content the AP can include, because if this is announced in the player guide itself, then it's going to be limited to the backstory of the AP and maybe the...

Yeah, it's definitely a tricky one to pull off - and definitely safer if it's something everyone knows going in. If you wanted to extend how much pre-switch content there is, you might be able to have the PCs coerced into continuing to work for the 'bad guys' side at the start? They've already realised the problems of the people they work for and want to leave, but they need to do something to get the freedom they need to work against the people they work for. It wouldn't hold up for a whole volume of an AP, I think, but you could probably do it in an interesting way for a level or two - and it'd be a good way to get the major antagonists with a lot of screen time early on, plus it establishes a very personal reason for the players to care ("I remember when that villain refused to let us leave before we got him the McGuffin, I'm not just going to let him get away with this").

So, maybe a reverse WoW, where PCs start as believers in progress and taming the natural world and end up protecting it and fighting the daemon-inspired profiteers who just want to increase their power and wealth, no matter who suffers.

That's a really interesting idea - I know it's not normal for Paizo to lock your PC's narrative in too much from the AP premise, but when they've done it before it has really worked for me. Without spoilers, Strange Aeons has a pretty restricted set of narratives available for the last several years of the PC's lives, and I've got a lot of positive feedback on that from people. In this case, saying all the PCs start off working for - though not necessarily agreeing with - an exploitative group that is harming nature gives you some really interesting room for different possible character arcs. Especially with how common 3-book APs are nowadays, it's much less of a risk than it used to be.

The tricky bit would be that it's still an AP - so they need to change their mind at the 'right' time - which is why I think your idea of them ending up opposing something as messed up as fiends is a good way to do it. Book 1 could be setting up the expectation that you're fighting some group that are being 'too extreme' in their protection of the wilderness against your employer's encroachment, only for the twist to be that your employers are doing some real nasty things that you can't work with - like your fiend example. Then the next two books can be about working against your former employers, potentially alongside the extremists you thought you were going to fight. It'd need a well-written player's guide - you'd need to make sure that everyone going in had a reason to distrust or dislike their employers to some degree. If it was pulled off well, I think it could be a very compelling narrative, and it could have a lot of interesting themes - the way that what might seem extreme can be a reasonable response when you're fully informed, the obvious 'nature vs exploitation' themes, but also some more subtle themes about getting yourself mentally to a point where you can change sides and oppose the exploitation, about the conflict between two groups who are on the same side but have a conflict-ridden history, and more. I think it could be really fun!

The Forsaken initially planned to use the power of their worshippers' souls to escape the Netherworld, but before they could do so, they disappeared in an enigmatic calamity.

If the Forsaken disappeared like the Osirian and Hag deities, why are they not listed in In Memoriam (Other dead, missing, or unaccounted for gods)?

Where can I learn more about the Green Man Faiths? They look interesting. Thanks.

The recently-released Wardens of Wildwood book 2 has a 6-page section on the Green Man Faiths! :)

As a forever GM I find anybody who needs a simpler game must either have a group that is extremely difficult to GM for, is lazy and doesn't want to spend time on game prep, or is simply a poor GM. It isn't hard to have a rule zero, set expectations for the kind of character power levels you're comfortable GMing for, and then fix any outliers as they pop up in play. This forum makes it seem as if Pathfinder's player base can't communicate with their fellow players and nobody has friends to play with and has to resort to PUGing with the dregs of the earth who live only to break the game and make the GM's life hell.

What a dismissive perspective. For one, you're wildly underestimating the time issue - I still have the notes from when I was in university and turned Serpent's Skull into a 20th-level mythic campaign instead of 17th level non-mythic campaign for PF1. I think I had about ~100-150 pages of statblocks I created for only book 6 of the AP. It took an immensely long time, and was only possible because I was in university - I'd never have time to do something like that now that I'm working full-time and have other responsibilities. A rulesystem that allows quick, effective, and fun creation of new content would allow me to do that in a fraction of the time it took in PF1, and with a better experience for players. That's very valuable, regardless of your assertions that this is only needed if you've got a terrible group, you're a bad GM, or you're "lazy and don't want to spend time on game prep". I'm happy to spend time - I can spend an hour sometime in the week getting the next session's content ready. I'm not happy to spend 10 hours in a week getting ready for the next session - especially as I GM Pathfinder twice a week; I'm not looking for a 20-hour/week part time job creating content for my campaigns just because someone is theoretically interested in maintaining parity between PC and NPC options. If I had 20 hours/week to spend on ttRPGs, I'd far rather do much more interesting work than laboriously making sure that they fey creature I'm making has enough hitdice to get the BAB they need, but not so many that their Will save is completely out-of-balance, and that's not laziness or lack of GMing skill, that's desire for better design. I don't even know how the "group of players that are extremely difficult to GM for" is relevant, as this is far more about 3.x making a GM's life difficult when trying to make custom content that fits the rules of the game than anything about a player's reactions.

P.S. you can still play a monster in PF2 if you want to. I can just give you the stat block for a dryad and you can play them. Does that mean there's almost perfect parity between what monsters and players can have? No it doesn't - as in PF1 and 3.5, the rules for how a human fighter and a dryad's stats are constructed are fundamentally different.

This trend of further distancing NPCs from PCs regarding how they work and their abilities is a blight on the industry. It kills any sense that the game is anything but a game and doesn't even attempt to obfuscate the various tricks that have historically been used to make NPCs seem closer to PCs. At this point why even have the same core stats for NPCs/monsters? Surely we could make the stat blocks trimmer by cutting anything that isn't specific to their role in the game.

This trend of further distancing enemies from PCs by giving them 'natural armour bonuses', 'special abilities', and 'monster exclusive feats' is a blight on the industry. It kills any sense that the game is anything but a game, and doesn't even attempt to obfuscate the various tricks that have historically been used to make NPCs seem closer to PCs - they're not even trying to rely only on giving monsters huge ability scores to give them the power level they need, instead they're just giving them arbitrarily abilities that PCs can't get for no reason. At this point, why even have feats and bonus types for monsters?

(the game is in fact a game! it's good to make game design decisions that make life easier for the GM, especially for making custom content! this is not reflective of the mythic rituals discussion, but neither is your post!)

Witch of Miracles wrote:

Errenor wrote:

Witch of Miracles wrote:

I've seen this error several times now: Sneak and Hide are always against perception DC. You don't roll perception against sneak.

Error here is absolutely yours. Look up Seek action.

Search and Seek are not the same action. Having someone need to effectively stealth twice to succeed is obnoxious.

What? You haven't been writing about Search or Avoid Notice. You've wrote 'Sneak' and 'Hide'. They go along with Seeking which absolutely rolls Perception. Or have you just meant that Sneak and Hide themselves don't roll perception? That is true (and obvious as there's no such thing in their texts).

Witch's original point here was that you don't automatically Seek someone when they Sneak. If you're trying to sneak past a bunch of people cooking food at the campfire, you just role your Stealth against their Perception DC as you Sneak. They're not Seeking you out if they're chilling at the campfire, so you don't end up having to roll twice and fail most stealth attempts. In the situation where there is someone actively observing - their Seeking takes as much effort as long distance walking does, it's not a casual glance around every once in a while from the campfire - then they can make Seek checks against your Stealth DC to spot you, but only if they include you in the correct area of their Seek. If you're sneaking in the air grate and they're looking only out the front door, they can't spot you at all.

Then why use a ranked spell with a save for Spellstrike? You'd probably be better off a higher-ranked spell with an attack roll.

In short, you're adding an attack roll to Spellstrike... without getting any real benefit from it, compared to simply casting the spell normally.

You're doing it because it's normally impossible to Stride up to an enemy, Strike them, and then Cast a two-action Spell, but you can Stride up to them and Spellstrike with a two-action spell using Expansive Spellstrike. That's a very nice action economy booster - it's only a 2nd level feat, after all.

Also archetyping Magus isn't mandatory, and spellstriking every turn isn't mandatory. Magus is a perfectly effective class with getting a spellstrike every second turn, and relying exclusively on Magus class feats. Those are needed to get the very highest possible efficiency Magus has available, but that standard simply isn't required for magus to be effective.

See? That's my problem: you essentially have to rely on archetypes to make the Magus more appealing, because it fails at this on its own.

Good lord the exaggeration here - you absolutely can spend your focus points on more efficient recharging of your spellstrikes on off-turns and then spellstrike with cantrips and the occasional slotted spell to get a fully effective martial with interesting and unique gameplay. Yes, magus is one of the few classes for PF2 where you can somewhat significantly raise the power level of your base class abilities through archetypes, but implying that the magus fails to be appealing on its own says more about ones need to be maximizing white-room DPR than anything about the magus itself, I think.

My apologies, I'm simply getting worked up over the fact that the Magus's main gimmick isn't as powerful as I expected, given the risks you must take to use it and the payoffs you receive.

If it helps, Spellstrike in PF2 is comfortably the largest damage spike in the game that has a chance of being consistently pulled off, and directly leads to Magus being considered one of the most damaging classes in the game - especially so if you lean into something like Imaginary Weapon, but honestly it's still scary as hell without it; a hero point is all that's really needed to throw off the game maths pretty substantially here.

With the mechanics as they are now, spell attack rolls are what you use when you want to deal massive single-target damage, and Expansive Spellstrike allows you to also pull out a wide variety of other spells for action economy if the situation demands it (but it is more situational).

TLocke95 wrote:

Just cross-referencing Arshea's entry here with their recent remaster write up in Curtain Call - their level 1 cleric spell is listed here as jump instead of mystic armour and they've lost their alternate change and repose domains - can someone help me make a call on which is well 'more' official so I can guide any Arsheans at my table?

AP stuff is where Paizo gives freelancers the opportunity to scribble with a crayon for rules additions in the backmatter of their book, and the developer only checks only to make sure it’s not an obscene drawing before they publish. Everything is more official than AP rules stuff.

What a dismissive and hurtful way to describe many people's hard work.

Trip.H wrote:

In Strn o Thousands, we cleared one farmhouse of hostile boggards, then rested for 10min inside to get our focus points back. If foes were smart, that would have been a lethal "mistake" for our PCs to do.

Not Strength of Thousands but a group that I was introducing PF2 to decided (well, one player in particular but the rest of the group were also unhappy) the game wasn't for them when there was a situation where, in game, they were expected to take some time to regroup/refocus/heal but it really made absolutely no sense in character to suddenly stop and spend 20 minutes or so resting.

The current "You almost always get at least a 10 minute rest between encounters" model can be a MASSIVELY counterintuitive thing in world. As in Really, Really, Really immersion breaking.

I've managed to internalize it and not notice it but it IS an issue for some players.

I do find that it's a much easier sell if you give them the slightest push towards not being able to rest in an obviously terrible place. The boggards are cleared from the house and not the barn and you're trying to rest? "You hear the sounds of the remaining boggards geting organized - do you want to risk resting here, engage them directly, try to retreat to a safer location, or something else?" If they make a basic effort - for example, retreat into the woods near the farm - then the boggards are very unlikely to come after them. Is there a big difference mechanically between "We rest for 20 minutes in the room we fought the encounter in" and "We retreat to the forest, rest for 20 minutes, and then return to the farm to finish the remaining boggards"? Not at all, but making them change plans slightly when they were aiming to do something kinda weird really helps, in my experience. Similarly, small reactions from the enemies helps - if your resting party hears the sounds of hammers, and then the remaining boggards have barricaded all entrances but one into their barn to funnel the party in, it feels a lot better, even if it doesn't change the encounter that much.

This is all a bit too much to do for a long dungeon between every combat, which is why I honestly think dungeons should either be kept a bit shorter, or should be designed for some encounters to join together.

I strongly disagree that the systems can be used to tell all the same stories. The general design ethos swung hard from simulationist to gamist. The balance and math changed radically. Swaths of characters can't be ported because of the system's aggressive niche protection, even if we only restrict ourselves to non-splatbooks with 2E equivalents. All of this adds up.

I also think you're already sort of looking at narrative in a 2E-friendly way. Most of the people I know who are still attached to 1E take every action in the game to literally be a part of the narrative. The fact you can't hold down the caster and keep them from casting does, in fact, mean you can't tell the same story to them. Most people who disagree sound more like they think that entire way of viewing game narrative is wrong.

On a larger scale, 2E is also just pretty bad at some game types and narratives 1E had no issue with. Hexcrawls are probably the most prominent example. Higher level hexes in the middle of lower leveled areas are a staple of hexcrawls, but tightly bound range of acceptable encounters in 2E makes those a deathtrap. The travel system isn't terribly functional for hexcrawls, and you're better off making a unique subsystem to handle how much you can explore in a day, ala some APs. Survival gameplay also isn't terribly interesting in 2E, nor is it well-supported—especially resource management. But 1E handles these things fine.

I think the thing that makes differences most obvious is trying to port APs in either direction. In every AP, there are loads of underlying assumptions about what characters, NPC allies, and enemies can and cannot do; how players will approach problems and spend their in-game time; the kinds of encounters that're acceptable to present and those that aren't; and even something as basic as the reliability of a skill check. There's a reason the worst 2E APs and modules, mechanically, are the earlier ones made with a 1E design ethos; they're grueling, overly lethal, and don't take great advantage of the things the system has to offer.

===

N.B. For what it's worth, there are narratives that 2E is better at than 1E, as well. I'd rather try to simulate a JRPG-styled game with 2E (though, admittedly, I'd prefer to go out of the DnD lineage entirely if I wanted to do that).

I do agree that people who are attached to PF1 tend to view the game engine as a more literal description of reality - the classic argument I saw back in the day was "does falling damage actually only increase in-universe every 10ft, or is that just an abstraction made for easier play? do people in the universe know there's something special about a 10ft fall that means you're no longer immune to any damage?" Which is a position that I seriously doubt would have substantial support from the PF2 player base. However, to say that means that Paizo gave a commitment to those details being the same in PF2 is just not a reasonable reading of the sorts of statements Paizo made at the time. If one requires that level of detail be maintained, PF1 wouldn't be able to tell the same stories as D&D 3.5 - why are people now automatically equally well-trained at spotting and listening?

I think it's very clear that when a game company that routinely publishes adventures says "the same sort of stories can be told in the new edition", they mean that there won't be a meaningful change in the capability of the engine to tell the sorts of stories available in the adventures they're publishing. I do think that was very true on PF2's release - as evidenced by the vast majority of PF1 APs that people liked being converted to PF2, and even some people converting PF2 APs back into PF1. With the presence of the Remaster, that's no longer as true - it's still true that the vast majority of adventures Paizo published for PF1 work fine in the PF2 Remaster, but there is a meaningful chunk of stories which are now complicated to tell. I've been GMing PF2 since its release and always had at least one converted PF1 adventure going since then, and never had any issue with the narratives being incompatible.

On the topic of Hexcrawls, I think you've provided a description of both systems being bad at the sort of stories you're trying to tell. Higher level hexes in the middle of lower level areas are put there with the intent of giving you something to get back to - initially you find the evil temple that's too scary for you, so you back off and come back when you can deal with it. PF1 is arguably worse at that - barring your party having some magical options for escape, it's so swingy that you might well be dead before you get a turn. But neither PF1 nor PF2 are good at giving you the opportunity to escape from a situation where you're clearly out of your depth - you can choose to initiate the Chase rules in both, but it's really up to GM fiat. What PF1 allows with these hexes and that PF2 does not is being so optimized that you can overcome an area that you weren't intended to be able to overcome. That's not engaging with the story element of "temple in the centre of the forest that's too scary for you to fight, so you must come back later"; that's engaging with the story element of "there's a very difficult fight in the centre of the forest at this temple", which is entirely a narrative you can tell in PF2.

I don't think there's any real point in talking about market share or relative sales - literally no-one, not even the companies themselves has the information to do that. What is clear is that PF2 has been a substantial commercial success for Paizo - the Paizo dev team has increased in size substantially over the last half-decade, and they seem to be feeling pretty confident about the future.

TBH, Paizo did repeatedly undersell the extent of the mechanical and practical changes to the game. There were a whole lot of reassurances that you'd be able to tell "all the same stories" and somesuch.

It really does seem to me that this is true. It seems uncharitable to me to assume that "the same stories" was meaning that all characters would be able to do the same exact things to the same enemies in the same way they used to - what would be the point of a new edition in that case? But the same stories can be told - maybe now for the monk to consistently fully restrain an enemy out of a fight the monk needs to be significantly higher level than their opponent. But the overall story very rarely relied on that level of detail - and if you need to make the creature the antagonist is fighting a few levels lower, it's not the end of the world.

From my perspective as someone who GM'd but not played the original Oracle multiple times, the Remastered Oracle is substantially more powerful than the pre-remaster one, and I don't think it's particularly close. However, it lost a great deal of the uniqueness it once had - playstyles that it previously enabled are not enabled anymore. When comparing mysteries that hewed closer to the classic casting playstyles - Cosmos, Time, Flames, Ash - I believe it's not quite a straightforward upgrade, but it's a pretty compelling rework. When comparing mysteries with more unique playstyles - like Battle, Ancestors, or Life - the Remastered oracle is more powerful but less interesting.

Functionally having two focus pools is very strong, being a 4-slot caster is already very strong, and you've still got some fun and interesting focus spell options, like Debilitating Dichotomy. If it was the original release of Oracle I imagine people would mostly be OK with it, but it's disappointing to lose those unique playstyles.

So with the Focus Point Refocus changes and both the classes of Animist at level 10 and beyond, also with Oracles now receiving 4 slots of spells each rank can Psychics get an Errata to be come 3 slot-casters? Instead of this odd focus point master which sits along side Druids and Monks.

I think they could definitely do with a bit of a look, but I'd much rather they make the rest of their kit more powerful than make them a 3 slot caster. That'd be a power boost in the most generic way, I think it'd be a lot more fun for them to keep their current identity instead.

Wands of Tailwind are, and first became, so absurdly "meta" because of the actual mechanical reality of the benefit they offer. They really are specifically "problematic" from a power PoV. I only have some game dev experience, while that GM is a full time professional.

For what it's worth, I've not seen Wands of Tailwind actually become meta anywhere I've played - back in the old PF1 days, the meta items were very real in my experience. Everyone had a wand of CLW to ensure they could get up to full health in-between combats, for example. Wands of Tailwind are objectively a boost in power for very little cost, but I've never seen one in a game - it's just not that relevant a boost to care that much about for most of my players. That isn't to say that they're not meta at the tables you're playing at - these things vary across a wide number of factors. But I wouldn't make recommendations for others to change their gameplay on the assumption that wands of tailwind are absurdly meta personally.

Wait... I thought playing a Cleric/Champion of a cause was ALWAYS a thing. One can have faith in something besides a deity, after all.

It sat in a spot that caused a lot of confusion historically - because the RPG line had no setting content at all, quite strictly, until about 2017-2018 (whenever Adventurer's Guide released), the rules differed from the Pathfinder 1 Core Rulebook to the Lost Omens setting. To maintain compatibility with 3.5 (I think), the PF1 CRB explicitly allowed clerics of a cause. However, the Lost Omens setting has always disallowed it historically, with pantheons being the beginning of walking this back, and covenants seemingly pushing that even further :)

Arcaian wrote:

exequiel759 wrote:

They clearly choose to kill a god that wasn't in Starfinder and (AFAIK) there's nothing in Starfinder that directly contradicts Pathfinder or vice versa.

There are actually contradictions between the settings at this point - things like Nocticula still being a demon lord with her old areas of interest. Changes to deities that are shared between the settings since Starfinder's release haven't been applied forwards - you could argue that they all just regress in their changes, but that seems like bad storytelling and a bit of a stretch.

Actually, I'm pretty sure the only instance in which Nocticula is mentioned in SF was in one of the early SF1e books when Nocticula was still a demon lord in PF1e too, so unless they mentioned her again at some point and I'm not aware (which is totally possible, I'm not big on SF lore) this is just a quote that didn't age too well.

Even if that were to be the latest reference to her, it'd still mean that the latest info on Nocticula in Starfinder is contradicting the latest info on Nocticula in Pathfinder, right?

They clearly choose to kill a god that wasn't in Starfinder and (AFAIK) there's nothing in Starfinder that directly contradicts Pathfinder or vice versa.

There are actually contradictions between the settings at this point - things like Nocticula still being a demon lord with her old areas of interest. Changes to deities that are shared between the settings since Starfinder's release haven't been applied forwards - you could argue that they all just regress in their changes, but that seems like bad storytelling and a bit of a stretch.

Do you also penalize characters with average charisma for rolling too well on charisma skills? If not, why wouldn't you treat that character giving a great speech about something they know well as that character rolling high on said check?

That's just a completely nonsensical comparison. The criticism is that the player is not roleplaying their character; if you're playing an 8 CHA character with no training in any social skills, they might know the subject matter very well but they can't give a great, convincing speech on the topic. That's what an untrained, minimum-stat character means. If they're lucky they can still give a solid one, and I'd be tempted to give a nice circumstance bonus on the check if it's a topic that the character knows well and cares about - they might even break DC 20 on a good roll with a circumstance bonus. Good roleplaying isn't about giving a convincing speech, it's about playing a character well. The mechanics of the game mean that if you want to be good at influencing people, you should either be charismatic, well-trained in the area, or both (with some fun exceptions letting you use something like Society, which I think honestly should be more common than they are now). If that isn't your character, you're not just not embodying the character with your masterful speech, you're actively neglecting the character's established traits. That is bad roleplaying. Penalizing a character with average charisma for rolling too well on cha checks is a complete non-sequitur - it has nothing to do with roleplaying, which is what the comment yu're replying to is about.

There's a fair critique to be had for Pathfinder centralising all social interactions behind CHA without using specific subsytems - nerding out to the engineer with a Crafting check, or convincing the cleric with your knowledge of their Religion are interesting ways to embody a character, good roleplaying, and are a reasonable way of befriending those NPCs. The Influence system helps here, but given it has to be GM-applied, I can see people being frustrated with their character being locked away from these interactions. That's not what people are looking for here, people are looking for the ability to succeed at an in-game skill check through out-of-game skills. Wanting your players to be more engaged with the game, and rewarding them for being engaged, is also reasonable - but don't pretend it's about roleplaying if they're being wildly out of character to get those rewards.

A Soul Anchor is close, in that it allows you to keep your memories after you die and become an outsider. Everyone retains the broad strokes of their personality, I think. Becoming an outsider without death, or an oni, isn't something I know of an in-setting example of, at least off the top of my head.

If the character came back as a Living Vessel through Pharasma's power, it seems more likely they'd have psychopomps than angels being the outsider bound to them. In that case, psychopomps are likely happy to accept the destruction of a soul in exchange for the removal of a powerful undead from the world.

The idea of a "local optimum" is not what it is. My players would walk into any game anyone on this board does and rip it apart unless you are employing house rules or take direct effort to make sure they don't.

For one, you are literally employing house rules that make (prepared) casters better, so it feels weirdly hypocritical to say that you're at a global optimum unless house rules are employed. Secondly, different playstyles are not direct effort to counter you specifically. If your players walked into a game from someone on this board and they were playing in such a way that your tactics are less effective, that's not them countering you intentionally or playing incorrectly. Your playstyle is not the only one, nor is it more correct.