Ascalaphus's page

I think it's not so much about strict physics realism, but more about whether it goes with or against the grain of your imagination. This isn't the first time the subject comes up. Big weapons = big damage is a popular trope.

But, so are "fast small warrior running circles around a big oaf of a giant" and "big weapon awkward in tight dungeon". PF1 had rules for polearms not working well against close by enemies, as well as bonuses to AC and to-hit for smaller creatures. Overall, PF1 definitely put more mechanical importance on size than PF2.

I've enjoyed my PF1 goliath druid that terrorized enemies in a 25ft radius by shapeshifting into a troll wielding a big horsechopper. It's an entertaining fantasy.

But what I couldn't really do in PF1 is play a goblin that's just really angry and has a hammer and will really do a big number on you. Because small PF1 races unless you were exactly the right class were just always at a disadvantage if you want to play a martial.

I think you can come at this in two ways:
- Let people build many different fantasies, and some will appeal more to some people and others more to other people.
- Strongly favor some kinds of fantasy, but to do that you have to make some others harder to do.

If you go really hard on "bigger weapons and bigger characters do much more damage" you might make it really hard for someone else to have fun playing that kobold with the bizarre pick axe weapon because he's not getting all those bonuses. Either you're too strong compared to game balance baseline, or he's too weak.

I remember fighting a balor two rooms off from what was probably gonna be the campaign's final bossfight. We'd also figured out that knocking it unconscious was a good idea, but I wanted to just toss it into the next room and the detonate it. Make it another monster's problem.

I've been reviewing the recent encounters where they struggled (including this one) and there is definitely one key factor in all of them; AOE damage dealers really hurt them a lot more than they should, especially when this damage comes from a higher-level monster that has a DC hard enough that some of them fail their saves on average.

NPC spellcasters sometimes seem like they're split between absolute jokes and absolute horrors. Sometimes they're placed in such bad tactical situations that they have no will to live. And sometimes they hit so hard that it's hard to see that the party had any chance against them.

The thing with the really dangerous ones is that they often have a combination of these factors:
- they have high save DCs for their level
- they are higher level than the PCs, so the DCs were hard to begin with, and their spells also do a lot of damage

It's sort of a multiplication problem. High damage spells times high DCs means lots of failures and critical failures.

The warpriest has the Harm font and doesn't prepare many Heals, so the group relies on the Witch casting Soothe, Life Boost and Summon Unicorn to keep them going, and despite her best efforts if more than one of her allies is getting damaged each round she can't keep up.

I think from a GM perspective, if I avoid using creatures with high damage + high save DC area damage abilities against them in general, then the difficulty scaling of encounters should be more accurate. Their low mobility and quite strict action economy (for everyone except the rogue at least) leaves them sitting ducks for this kind of foe.

Another trend I'm seeing here is that it feels like the players don't really analyze and adapt to things that repeatedly cause a problem for them. The low mobility of the frontliners is something that the casters could help out with by preparing Fly and Haste for example.

I don't know if they realize this. Or maybe they're having difficulty seeing the patterns - if you use different monsters all the time, they might not connect the dots that all these monsters cause them the same problems. If you left clues that they might run into more of the same monster, that could cause them to do more of that preparation caster stuff.

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Anyway, I think what the others have said is true; this party has a lot of weak choices in it. If those are the characters the players want to play, fine. But then maybe it's time for you to just make encounters easier. One or two weak characters could have been fine, but if all of them are weak and they're not adapting & teamworking, then this is just not a party that should be playing at "default" difficulty. Dial down the numerical difficulty a bit.

If you're using a published adventure, just put weak templates on some of the monsters in most fights. Or if you're building your own adventures, just use a lower XP budget to construct encounters, and use few L+2 monsters. Again, if you wanted to use a particular monster but it's L+2, just put a weak template on it to make it more like L+1 instead.

I'm intrigued by the idea of spellbook-based casters spending an action to interact with their (worn or held) book to switch a prepared spell. Yeah, that's spell substitution on steroids, but it would finally drive home the point of wizards really being the most adaptable. You'd still want to have prepared the right spells just for action economy, so we don't lose the "thinking ahead" theme completely.

Also it puts the book much more in the spotlight instead of being just something that happens over breakfast. You could build on that with feats and special spellbooks that do something interesting when you're "must consult my notes"-ing.

(Also, I like how simple it is to implement.)

I think over the by now decades the idea of what class does spells in what way and why has drifted. Perhaps drifted a whole lot faster in PF2 than before.

For me one of the key elements of the "wizard fantasy" is that a wizard goes out into the world to learn new magics and is really excited to get hold of a defeated rival's spellbook. If you just knew all the spells already it'd take a lot of the wind out of those sails.

But it's already a bit busted in PF2. The "Learn Spell" activity can also be done by talking to someone who already knows the spell, doesn't require it be the same tradition. So a wizard can just find a druid buddy who automatically knows all the common primal spells. And then just take notes on all the spells that happen to be on the overlap of the arcane and primal list.

The way that clerics and druids automatically know all their common spells also seems like a bit of an archaism to me. Back when, a fair bit of those spell lists were really really circumstantial things. Not spells that you'd normally use when adventuring, but things that you might use to run a temple as a social organization, or to position yourself as the mysterious person in the wood who's awakening animals. A lot of that stuff has been turned into rituals instead (which helps trim the spell lists down to stuff that makes sense during encounters).

My big dream is that by the time of PF3 we'll mostly migrate to everyone using spontaneous casting, but that classes like the wizard have a better ability to switch a few spells from their repertoire during the morning.

It's already pretty rare that you switch a majority of your prepared spells. Usually you just make a few tweaks. Often you can't really predict what you're gonna face, so you pack a fair amount of generic spells that work well against any kind of enemy. I don't think the supposed advantage of the wizard of being much more versatile and preparing the perfect silver bullets (compared to a sorcerer) is really happening. In fact it's more likely that the sorcerer sometimes happens to have the silver bullet in their repertoire and just keeps pumping it out of every possible slot.

I think AoN should maybe make it easier to switch modes between a "core-oriented" mode and an "everything" mode.

Like, if I'm GMing and I give out a piece of AP-specific loot, it's convenient if players can look up the description themselves, I don't have to fuss with index cards or such. So that's when I want to use the "everything" mode.

But when it's about the players shopping, I might want to encourage them to focus on a "core + a few other books" subset.

I think you can already filter by sources a bit, but I'd want something big and obvious. One toggle you can switch that's quite visible in the UI, not having to remember to select stuff separately on every page.

Of course agreeing which books are core-ish apart from the obvious ones is another story.

I'd look at Ooze Form. It's not always going to be a good idea, because PF2 just isn't PF1. But there are some moments when it really does work well.

A friend of mine is fond of using it in PFS whenever we get into one of those "and then they drop a bucket of rogues on you" encounters. Turn into a large ooze that can't be critted, doesn't take precision damage, resists piercing and slashing damage, and gets a bag of temporary HP. Sure, they'll hit almost every strike they try against you, but they might not get through all of your temporary HP before the encounter is over. And any strike they're doing for pitiful damage on you, is a strike they're not doing efficiently with sneak attack and possible crits on another party member.

Ooze form makes for a remarkable tank, in the kind of encounters where it matters. But this being PF2, that won't be all encounters. PF2 just goes out of its way to make sure the same trick doesn't always work.

Keep in mind that as a wizard you can juice up ooze form quite a bit. Tailwind is a status bonus so it'll work fine to increase your bad battleform speed. Haste works too. So would Heroism if someone puts that on you.

It would be a bit more of a "wizard with tricks" build; you'd want to pick up some other spells for other occasions too. It's more a playstyle of "what does THIS encounter need" instead of "how can I make sure my standard plan is reliable in every encounter".

With regards to players feeling "too attached" to their items.

The players enjoying the game in their way is the point. Saying they're not enjoying the correct thing is not the way to go.

I think the rune system is genius here. PF2 makes it way easier to cater to different things players enjoy:

- someone who wants to keep using the same weapon across all levels, and doesn't want it to become numerically irrelevant

- someone who wants to switch weapons mid-career as it turns out a different fighting style appeals more, without having to start buying everything from scratch

- someone who enjoys finding an unexpected weapon and pivoting their fighting style to a signature weapon that came from a big story reward

Rune-swapping being fairly cheap combined with easy retraining rules and feats not requiring the narrow dedication to specific weapons make all of this very doable.

Static item DCs however get in the way of these.

Ascalaphus wrote:

I still wanna do a level 1 zombie horror adventure where at some point you make it to the local temple and there's a bunch of rank 3 Heal and Fireball scrolls in a "break the glass" case, and the casters can just lay waste and see the zombies driven before them.

I do feel that those rank 3 spells would still be incredibly effective in the hands of a level 1 party even if the party members were to use their own DCs. In general I don't think item DCs are what necessarily make higher-level items more interesting, so much as the effects they have -- if you give the party a potion of retaliation or a penultimate heartbeat, the fun factor will come from the retaliatory damage or the post-death explosion, and giving those when they're high-level items for the party will feel awesome even if they don't use an item DC. In the case of effects that deal damage, the double whammy of high DC and high damage I'd say would even be overkill -- you don't need to hugely rely on the former when you've already got tons of the latter.

When I look at consumables like bombs and scrolls, I feel pretty okay about them. Because they have a good balance between static power and level-scaled power.

Even a level 1 fire bomb in the hands of a level 10 character is pretty accurate based on their weapon proficiency, and you just need that splash damage to stop a regeneration. So it's effective. It doesn't do quite as much damage as a level 9 bomb, you're not gonna be mainlining level 1 bombs as your primary battle plan. But you feel good about it as a backup plan for regen monsters.

A scroll of Laughing Fit is likewise pretty good at any level as a backup plan, because the DC scales with your level. It's not as powerful as a rank 6 scroll of Roaring Applause, it's fair for its price. But if you're dealing with a boss with a reactive strike that's just wrecking your casters, it's totally fine.

And the level 1 party that gets a scroll of fireball as an ace card for a final battle, well the DC isn't crazy high but the damage is.

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The common thread here is that the effect of the items is in line with the item level, but the DC is in line with where the players are right now. If the effect is relevant at a higher level, the scaling DC means the item also stays relevant. But at level 15 you're not gonna be using rank 3 fireball scrolls as a main tactic, there's no need to worry that this is gonna totally skew balance.

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So I guess what I'm coming to is that I think higher level items should aim for better effects. Maybe they do more damage. Maybe they have more targets. Efficient actions.

Just like higher rank spells tend to start out more powerful than a lower level spell heightened to the same rank. The new toys are more powerful so that they'll get your attention, but your low rank spells in heightened slots aren't worthless.

I think I just talked myself into maybe letting item DC scale with level for free (I was expecting to ask money for it). Maybe like this, to minimize the amount of bespoke work needed?

If you're higher level than the item, increase the DC of the item's ability by the difference in level.

Note that this will lag a little bit behind after some levels. So when you get the next tier of the item you'll jump a bit in DC probably. I'm fine with that, the next tier should mean something. But until you hit that tier, your lower version of the item doesn't become completely obsolete within just a few levels.

I think the general issue is players approaching magic items as character defining game elements and that is very much against the design philosophy of PF2. Those kind of items are a part of a class kit like the exemplar. There are mandatory magic items for keeping up with numbers, but those items enable your class abilities (like weapons, shields, armor, etc). They are not character defining by themselves.

I'm wondering though. We've been doing this for half a century now. Game designers insisting the players should enjoy these items, and players saying Nope, I don't want it that way.

I feel like there's this ongoing struggle between designers insisting that a particular design is rational and balanced and exists for good reasons, and sure, I can be convinced of the sound reasoning.

Like the demon mask. It's pretty much a design rule that you can't have items that only give a +1 to a skill without doing anything else. And there are some of these items that are well-received, like the mage's hat that gives +1 arcana and prestidigitation. On the face of it, Intimidate is probably a more useful skill and prestidigitation isn't supposed to be powerful. But this feels like a nicer item than the demon mask. You can wear a wizard hat and just wave your hands at the dirty dishes.

But wearing a demon mask is a bit of a weird gimmick. Are you gonna wear that just walking around on the street? RP-wise it's kind of a big commitment, but mechanically it doesn't give you a lot back for that. A fear spell that is kind of marginal because it has a fading DC and also you probably already had Intimidate anyway because you're the one who cared about getting a bonus to the skill.

That said, there really is one single game mechanic that is the tarrasque in the room.

The fact that all consumables (and static dc perm items) can be mulched for gp and put toward something really beneficial is *terrible* for consumables/items in pf2. I really want to use these neat summon-elemental gems we found, but they were -1 level when we found them, and now they are -2 level.

I *should* mulch them, and could instantly get a useful utility wand for the party, one which doesn't suffer from a static DC.

This is an interesting point. But we actually have some interesting sources to test this;

* PFS has always had a rule of your final gold reward for the adventure being about FINDING the item, doesn't matter if you used it up. If you find a consumable, you might as well use it, you won't have any less money at the end of the adventure if you save the item.

* Starfinder 1 went with a resale value of only 10% of the purchase price for all items.

In both cases, that should have led to more enthusiasm for using found consumables. But that's not what I saw in practice. I think what bites with a lot of consumables is that they're just not that good, compared to other things you could be doing.

You could use that healing potion to heal for 1d8 HP (spoiler: you're gonna roll a 1). But you need an action to draw it and an action to drink it. Oh, and were you using a two-handed weapon? Also an action to juggle that. Oh and it has Manipulate so you might wanna disengage from the enemy too.

I think the things that really get in the way of people using consumables is that:

* Hand economy is a real thing.
* Action cost is important.
* For items with a variable effect, how much am I gonna get at minimum?

Or to put it another way: my priority every round is to cast a spell or make at least one attack. You have to be driving in the direction of victory. I'm okay to forego an attack that already has MAP to use a consumable. But consumables that are so demanding that they eat up all your actions (like an oil that needs two hands to apply to a weapon) need to have totally transformative levels of power to be useful.

This is why talismans like the allow orb are well-designed. They don't mess with the hand economy, don't take too many actions to activate, and you're pretty sure they'll do something when you use them.

Bombs are also well-designed. You'll typically reach for them when fighting an enemy with a weakness that you'll gleefully try doing persistent damage to, or at least you'll have some splash damage. So the minimum effect is still satisfying. Especially splash damage vs. regeneration.

These elemental gems though... overpriced ways to get a so-so summon? I just don't think there will be a combat round where I feel that's the best way to spend my actions.

So even if you can't make money by selling them, I still don't expect to be using them.

I hope by the time PF3 rolls around we get a better take on weapons vs unarmed. There's so many feats that casually mention weapons and thereby exclude unarmed strikes when it doesn't feel like that was a particular balance goal. Just habit of phrasing.

I'm also still miffed that rangers are not that good with claws. As a nature-oriented class they should have nice synergy with close-to-nature ancestries with nice unarmed strikes, but instead it's a big nothingburger.

I feel like even if having a GM star system of some kind only moves the needle 10% on GMing, that could still be a really good return on investment.

Because making it happen for donuts 1-4 is mostly a one-time cost of having an engineer implement it in the website. You have the occasional five-donut review and some backend admin. But is that a net cost, or is it compensated by having some good news content to put in a blog post for marketing?

Sometimes that's a problem with authors putting low-level flavored problems in chases for high level characters.

A low level chase is about "how fast can you get everyone over this garden wall". A high level chase problem is "a magical sandstorm is specifically chasing after you and seems intelligent and doesn't want you to dodge it".

I think we should celebrate that at some level, some things just aren't a reasonable obstacle anymore. Like at level 5, it's ridiculous to worry about provisions during hexploration. You've just graduated from those beginner level problems. It's time to start doing things where you run into much bigger scarier problems.

In any situation where you can't think of anything better, you can always have them run away at full speed. 3 actions going away means it'll take them 3 actions to come back too.

Making attacks against your other enemies is always a solid choice too, especially if you know they have a high level spell or something you'd rather see them spend on your enemies than on you. Super fun if you can get them to point a breath weapon or other effect with a cooldown at enemies instead of you.

For weapon-using enemies, throwing away their weapons (not just dropping - throwing them into the ravine) can be good too.

Having them drop prone is an option. So is making them try to Grab your other enemies. And you can have them jump of a cliff.

Your spell isn't normally Subtle, so people probably know the target is controlled. If you can make it Subtle, you could also try to have your target order the other enemies around.

PFS specifically asks the GMs not to get away from what is written. I can totally see GMs sticking to the letter of this.

Over the years PFS has added more nuance to that. This snippet has been in the PFS rules since at least 2014:

Creative Solutions

Sometimes during a game, your players might surprise you with a creative solution that the adventure did not anticipate. Rewarding the creative use of skills and roleplaying makes games more fun for the players. If your players find another solution that resolves or bypasses an encounter, give the PCs the same reward they would have gained by resolving the encounter as the adventure anticipated.

The Pathfinder Society never wants to give the impression that the only way to solve a problem is to kill it.

They also added a lot of clarification about GM adjustments to unexpected player actions here ; that part is more of a change, loosening previous "run as written" instructions a fair bit.

It would be bad if having a high speed auto-solved every chase, or if it gave you a bonus on every chase skill challenge on every obstacle.

But it's also not cool if it never plays a role at all even when the particular obstacle clearly calls for raw speed.

I think it's good as a GM not to cling too tightly to your skill challenges. Sometimes, someone has the perfect feat, magic item or spell to just totally own that problem. That's okay if it's just "well, the AP writer is asking for you to do this, but your solution makes sense and would just completely do it", once or twice. It's not as much fun if it works on every skill challenge. But if you pose the problem and a player goes "I have the perfect solution for this", okay that's cool.

But that should be occasionally, not all the time. Sometimes in a chase, being really fast should matter. But not all the time on all obstacles.

(...)

I guess this counts as a narrative approach in which the GM does not fully control the narrative.

I like to think of this style of GMing as "I'm putting a problem in front of you. I've made sure that at least some solutions exist, so that the adventure won't stall. But it's totally cool if you bring a different solution. The key goal is that you have fun engaging with the problem and the story it tells."

I will tell them which skills are available and which ones are easier or harder (but not actual DCs). I want players to be able to make informed decisions, not have to resort to betting or trying to read my mind.

I don't often have the problem of a player trying to talk me into letting them use their best skill for everything. I'll usually set a higher DC for alternative skills unless it truly makes sense that it's a really good option that the writer just totally overlooked.

Ascalaphus wrote:

A lot of GMs don't like the narrative jank that arises from the strict attended/unattended binary. At that table, the GM allowed Dispel Magic to work on foe weapons.

I have no idea if "a lot" of GMs have any feelings about it, it's a question that I rarely see come up.

The player did not then pivot into using Dispel on armor or other items, but that is what such a ruling opens the door to.

So you're saying that deviating from the standard rule opens things up to a situation that is unbalanced?

Don't do that then.

I suppose it could go into the Lost Omens Campaign Setting forum instead, but it doesn't feel egregious here IMO.

I wouldn't consider it metagaming to prefer will saves against a monster that behaves like a big dumb brute. It's an educated guess, you might be wrong. It's a reasonable guess because it's likely that its fortitude is going to be really high because it's a hulking brute, so then you're better off targeting something else.

If guessing isn't to your taste you can Recall Knowledge. Metagaming would be sneakily looking up the monster's stats on your phone.

If it's something you as a player can figure out but your character can't figure out, that's metagaming. But if it's a reasoned bet that your character can make based on the evidence your character has, that's fine.

APs being a bit linear is inherent to the format, because book 1 has to get you to the starting point of book 2, and book 2 has to get you to the starting point of book 3 and so on.

You could do it really different and make "the level 1-4 sandbox for this part of the setting" followed by "the level 5-8 sandbox". But part of sandbox adventures is that you're never going to see most of the sandbox. You chose to go in direction A, so you didn't get to see the low level encounters in direction B and C before you became so high level that they're kinda pointless.

Also, if you can make some strong assumptions about what people do in each book, you can make more of a story-set-up towards plots in later books. If people kinda walk around in a sandbox, setting up a big plot finale is really hard.

That doesn't mean sandbox adventures are bad, but what you get out of them is very different than a "big story" adventure setup. Paizo is mostly into the "big story" style of writing.

You can do sandbox style Pathfinder, no problem, but that does require a very different style of campaign plotting. You might get a lot out of blending the campaign design that you get in Sine Nomine games (Stars without number, worlds without number, wolves of god etc.) which is a lot about at the end of each game session asking the players "what do you plan to do next session?" and they HAVE to give you an answer. Then you prep one session ahead only. You're not going to create thousands of pages of content for directions you don't know if the players are ever going to go there. (Sine Nomine is also cool because they make a lot of random setting/encounter generation tools that work very well in other game systems. If you're doing sandbox and like the Pathfinder rule system, Sine Nomine can be the stuff you use to make your GM prep easier.)

ElementalofCuteness wrote:

Never used items with set DCs. Never will I ever touch items with set DCs as I do not wish to be stuck in the loop of liking items then it becomes useless then I see it then buy a new one and repeat. It feels sooooooo useless to me.

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There's a good point here. One of the reasons we play RPGs is to take a few hours break from reality. And lately reality is full of annoying subscriptions.

Lately PFS is full of soldier-flavored enemies with Reactive Strike and Shield Block (thanks, Battecry!), and Laughing Fit is really valuable.

Virulent is an interesting one. Especially because it's such a rare trait! It feels like there are more feats talking about how to do better at saving throws against it, than there actually are virulent things. Nethys counts:

* 4 virulent diseases, of which 1 is from an AP.
* 13 virulent poisons: 3 from the core books, 4 from treasure vault, 6 from adventures.

I feel like the affliction duration system is a bit half-baked because they had ideas about what they were gonna do, but then in practice didn't really pursue that direction all that much. Maybe they were looking for a unified approach to spell durations, poison durations, and "anonymous owner" condition durations like Frightened, but couldn't quite manage to get them all working the same way.

Also keep in mind RPG rules are not quite like computer code. If you write some inconsistent rules and send them to the printer, they'll just print that for you. There's no formal logic proofing or compiler errors.

I also think the line about processing afflictions at the end of your turn is over-interpreted. I think it's just talking about sequencing.

Once you've done all the things you want to do with the actions you have available, you reach the end of your turn. Take the following steps in any order you choose. Play then proceeds to the next creature in the initiative order.

* End any effects that last until the end of your turn. For example, spells with a sustained duration end at the end of your turn unless you used the Sustain a Spell action during your turn to extend them. Some effects caused by enemies might also last through a certain number of your turns, and you decrease the remaining duration by 1 during this step, ending the effect if its duration is reduced to 0.
* If you have a persistent damage condition, you take the damage at this point. After you take the damage, you can attempt the flat check to end the persistent damage. You then attempt any saving throws for ongoing afflictions. Many other conditions change at the end of your turn, such as the frightened condition decreasing in severity. These take place after you've taken any persistent damage, attempted flat checks to end the persistent damage, and attempted saves against any afflictions.
* You can use 1 free action or reaction with a trigger of “Your turn ends” or something similar.
* Resolve anything else specified to happen at the end of your turn.

Clearly you're not meant to roll a save every turn against poisons with an interval of 1 minute. But there's no difference between the phrasing of an 1-minute poison or a 1-round poison. In both cases, the affliction rules (not the end of your turn rules) talk about "durations", which are elsewhere defined as working in whole rounds.

The section here about saving against afflictions at the end of your turn should I think be read as follows:

IF you have an affliction that asks for a save at the end of your turn, THEN you do it after persistent damage but before resolving other types of conditions.

In other words, that paragraph is just talking about if you have any of those things, in what order you should do them.

Maybe what's missing in the RK system is the "famous" trait.

I feel fundamentally, adding rarity modifiers to RK was a bad idea. Most of the time the monster you really want knowledge about is 1-3 levels above you so the level-based DC is already tough. So it makes RK just really hard.

It's worse with bosses because the boss monster is the most likely not to be common. A level +2 rare boss is about 8-9 above the normal level based DC for your level. For example, a level 1 party trying RK about the rare level 3 boss monster is rolling against DC 23. If the boss is unique then it's actually DC 28 which even on a nat 20 a level 1 character (+7 mod) will still fail.

I don't think the game becomes more fun when RK is extra hard. Because it means RK often just doesn't work. So you don't have special information about how to fight the monster and the most important fights are the most likely to be "I dunno, have you tried just rolling really high on to hit and damage?"

Actually finding actionable information on monsters and changing how you fight them is more fun than not doing that. So RK really shouldn't be facing some of the highest DCs in the game.

If you just ignored the rarity modifiers to RK it would still be tough just by the monsters you really care about being higher level than you.

AoN is great as a reference, but I think the books work better for seeing the overall structure of the rules. With AoN you can dive right to the part you're looking for, but you might miss the stuff a little further around it that you should also know exists.

I think SuperParkorio has a point.

Suppose an enemy hit you with two poisons, one which has an interval of 1 minute and one with an interval of 1 round.

You wouldn't insist that the 1-minute poison triggers again at the end of your next turn, and your turn after that, and the one after that, because then clearly you're not getting the poison ticking in 1-minute intervals.

But there's no language there saying 1-round poisons should get different interpretation from 1-minute poisons.

I think it makes more sense to decide that the mention of afflictions there is vestigial, from an aborted attempt to make the timings of all things work the same, which turned out to be not really possible. I mean, most negative spells will still end at the start of the caster's turn when their duration expires. So a very large category of bad things aren't going to end on the victim's turn anyway.

You wave your hands, mumble some incoherent phrases and fire appears in the distance. But it's utterly unbelievable that you could do that without looking?

I don't really know if the game really locks down the idea that you aim by looking and sort of throwing, or that you might as well just close your eyes, point in a direction, and say "50 feet in that direction"? Or "where I just heard that noise", because an enemy wasn't bothering to Sneak, so is only Hidden anyway?

The wording is a bit awkward but we should remember that abilities are meant to work. You have to read the text in a bit forgiving way so that it can accomplish what it's intending to do.

When I play a magus I usually use my slots for buffs, utility and AoEs. Spellstrikes, I'll do with cantrips. At that point, DaS isn't really all that useful because I'm not that worried about missing and "wasting" a cantrip.

Okay, this certainly looks quite interesting. I'll have to dig into this a bit deeper when I have time.

Tridus wrote:

(I also know in at least one of my games, the other players would react badly to what this player is doing. Animal cruelty is just a hard nope and it would turn into an out of character problem

I know that behaviour like this would definitely drive me from a game.

The player is either treating her character as a cartoon with no feelings or like a psychopath. I've got better things to do than spend my gaming time with a scumbag like that.

I've seen a lot of new players go through an initial psycho phase, and then settle into being normal fun players. I think it's part of figuring out just how free you really are in a tabletop RPG. So I wouldn't judge the player's entire personality on it.

But, that doesn't mean I want it happening in my real campaign because it's pretty disruptive to the story and can be immersion-breaking for other players: "why would our characters want to associate with this maniac?"

I feel like PF1's "We be goblins" adventures were a nice way for people to get stuff out of their system. Go play pyro psycho baddies for a bit and have fun, and after that we can talk about a campaign with more composed personalities.

I also feel Assurance could have been simplified if instead of the complicated "no bonuses or penalties" they'd just phrased it as "Take 7". (But, now you do get to add your ability modifier etc; it's a normal roll, just pinned to a 7.)

If all the feat did was allow you to Take 7 on that skill, I think it would have been pretty transparent when it's good and when it's not. It's clearly only good for reliably doing tasks that you usually succeed at anyway.

It'd no longer be a weird MAP trick, but still good for climbing, swimming, or deciding to not take the hardest DC at Treat Wounds/Battle Medicine.

Was making an archer animist, that circumstances made me had to switch to a thaumaturge, and it made me realize, would be nice to see Thaumaturge have an avenue toward two-handed weapons. Or at the very least 1+ handed weapons.

You're not prohibited from using those. You're proficient (martial) and exploit weakness works just fine. It might be a bit difficult to activate exploit weakness because you need to be holding an implement for that, but you could do that just fine if your weapon implement has the two-hand trait.

What it doesn't let you do though is implement's empowerment with a 2H or 1H+ weapon. The probable reason for why it was designed that way, is that IE is meant to compensate you for the lower damage you do because you need a hand free to hold implements/esoterica.

IE is roughly comparable to 2 damage die sizes, which is also roughly the difference between 1H and 2H weapons.

If you found a way (like, a weapon implement with two-hand trait) to hold implements and use a 2H weapon, then you wouldn't need to be compensated anymore because you aren't actually falling behind in damage.

I think it's more a case of people having mental holdovers than an actual rule. They've seen an object once that had crit immunity and now think all objects should have crit immunity. I really dislike it.

There are object things like wall spells that have really low AC and immunity to crits. That's very reasonable. But if a hazard has high AC and significant hardness and HP, it needs an actual good reason for having crit immunity.

This is PF2, the design paradigm of things having lots of immunities "just because" should stay in PF1/D&D3.x

Also, as a player, it's not a great thing to build around, since:

- It wouldn't be useful against the many, many, many monsters that just don't need gear.

- You'd be destroying a lot of loot and making yourself poor.

You generally can't. You need specific abilities that allow you to directly attack an attended object. (Even attacking unattended objects isn't that well supported in the rules.)

I think it's a deliberate design choice in the game to discourage attacking gear. It's hard to balance properly, because either it doesn't really work, or it works too well. Items don't have the sort of AC, hardness and hit points that make sense if they were really something that people could target directly and attack.

You can see in the Disarm action that it's supposed to be pretty hard to actually disarm someone outright.

I think the problem with Assurance is that it works fine for some really specific things, but that's not how the feat "sells" itself; it sells itself as being far more generally applicable.

There are backgrounds that give you assurance in skills that don't really work with it (Student of the Canon, Religion). There are skill feats that let you use assurance with Recall Knowledge, which would fail to identify any monster of high enough level compared to you that knowledge is really important.

Abilities that can't do what they promise are not fun design. The ability might be okay for other things, but then the promise should be more tailored to not give you the wrong expectations.

Ascalaphus wrote:

Have you encountered actual play where Ready was too powerful to leave alone, or is this disallowance preemptive?

It's absolutely a preemtive one. I'm fairly sure that I would really dislike it if this became a repeated thing in my games. Yeah, it's quite a visceral dislike.

You can try it in your games of course. Maybe it turns out to be fine. Or maybe it doesn't. Maybe it turns out you're having a good time but other people are frustrated. You won't know for sure until you try.

You asked if anyone had any experience or prior thought about this, and yes, I see it pop up in rules discussions periodically as someone discovers these rules. I've given you my rules perspective which boils down to:

* Ready isn't like the other, more narrowly defined reactions. It's much more subject to GM say-so. Including "for the good of the game, I'm just not going to allow that particular ready".

* Ready, as an essentially free ability, shouldn't overshadow other reactions that you have to pay for. If Ready mimics one, it should probably do so in a weaker way.

* Unexpectedly invalidating enemy actions is really powerful. We consider Slow to be a good spell because even on a successful save you've traded two of a PC's actions and a spell slot for one boss action. Given that encounters are often decided in a few rounds, wasting one or two critical enemy turns really is very powerful.

The thing is, discussions about this topic tends to come down to a "but RAW I can do this" vs the GM's "but I really hate it if you do it in MY game" argument. That's not an argument you can really win. Even if you browbeat your GM into accepting it, if it's ruining their fun then you're reducing the life expectancy of the campaign.

So sure, give it a try and see how people react, but it's best to not over-commit and build an entire character around it right away.

I am also wondering if anyone has experience with this or similar Ready use, as well as if this has been banned / greenlit at tables you have encountered.

It's an idea that gets brought up by someone on the forums at least once a year. At first, it seems like solid RAW. However, it tends to immediately make people think "that can't be right" or "that's seriously irritating" or "this is really cheesy" or "I don't care what RAW says, NO!".

But let's try to do a bit better than a knee-jerk refusal.

If you look in the GM Core, for Ready it has a section of advice:

The Ready activity lets the acting person choose the trigger for their readied action. However, you might sometimes need to put limits on what they can choose. (...)

It goes on to give some reasons for limits, but doesn't quite state the one I'm gonna bring up. That's actually covered one section later in the same chapter:

This section covers a few ground rules for how to best respond to PC tactics, when to apply ad hoc bonuses and penalties, and when to use certain tactics for NPCs. When PCs put effort into getting advantages against their foes, there should be some payoff, provided their tactics make sense in the narrative. Ad hoc bonuses and penalties give you some mechanical tools to emphasize that. Also keep in mind that you can change the flow of the story to respond to tactics as well. Altering an enemy's behavior can be a more satisfying consequence than just getting a bonus.

When you're determining whether to grant a special bonus that isn't defined in the rules, including when a player asks you whether they get a bonus for doing something, ask yourself the following questions.

* Is this the result of an interesting, surprising, or novel strategy by the character?
* Did this take effort or smart thinking to set up?
* Is this easy to replicate in pretty much every battle?

If you answered yes to either of the first two, it's more likely you should assign a bonus—typically a +1 or +2 circumstance bonus. However, if you answered yes to the third, you probably shouldn't unless you really do want to see that tactic used over and over again.

I think this advice is also sensible advice for adjudicating Ready.

Ready isn't really like most other reactions. Most other reactions are a lot more locked down in exactly what they can do and why. To me that suggests that Ready should be run more cautiously by the GM. If there are regular reactions that do a particular thing, that you had to pay feats to get, then a "free" ability like Ready should not be miles better than that.

This would in many occasions be better than actual "dodge" abilities that tend to do things like "Step and gain +2 vs the triggering attack", or even Shield Block.

So when as a GM I'm looking on whether this should be allowed, I come around to the Too Good to be True principle. Accepting this interpretation of RAW would result in an ability that's too good to be true, and also really annoying to play with. So I feel justified in disallowing it.

I think there's a noticeable gap between how (some) players like to do their items, and what game designers think you should be doing. Note that I said "some" because it's possible that there are plenty of players that aren't so bothered. But I've seen plenty that are bothered. There's some common threads:

- People value permanent items much higher than consumables
- People like item continuity, instead of trading for a new thing

This was really noticeable in Starfinder 1 where you had to switch armors and weapons every 2-3 levels to stay numerically up to date, but the higher version of the particular weapon or armor you liked might not be available until 5 levels later.

I think to some degree the aversion to consumables isn't really rational; if you think about it, any permanent item that doesn't level up with you is also a bit like a consumable.

Although I also think that consumables aren't quite priced right in terms of purchase cost, sale value, action cost, and effect. A healing potion that costs a noticeable percentage of your wealth and takes an action to draw and an action to drink and you might need to spend actions regripping weapons, and then could end up healing only 1HP - why would you buy that? Even if you found it, would you use it? Or does it make more sense to sell for half price?

Note that SF1 let you sell stuff back only for 1/10th the sale price. I think for consumables definitely the sell-back-price compared to utility ratio leans far toward selling back.

A lot of the new talismans are a happy change in that regard. They're things that make sense buying a few of and restocking occasionally. I think that's the price point to aim for: that consumables are something that you'd buy some of, but not so good that you'd spend all of your money on consumables and not care about permanent items at all. But right now there's only few consumables (mainly talismans and lifesaver utility scrolls) that I'd consider buying.

Coming back to item DCs: I think scaling the DC on those should come with a monetary cost, but that pricing formula should be available. If there's a kind of consumable that helps you make a nice character build, that should continue to be viable across more character levels.

Free archetype allows for a lot more character customization and options. Without it, it can feel like you're just picking from a few pre-fabricated versions of your class. Relatedly, it's also something that's more valuable for players who aren't new to the game- trying out PF2 Fighter or Thaumaturge for the first time, the new system provides some of the novelty. Once that wears off, I find free archetype helps keep things fresh and varied.

If the group enjoys free archetype that's fine of course. But I don't agree that it's required to overcome this staleness problem. I think the root cause of the staleness problem is people feeling that some of their main class feats are already locked in. That you couldn't take a "paid" archetype because you MUST take so many of your regular class feats.

Can't you live without them? Doesn't the "paid" archetype give you something comparably good?

I'm having trouble with the idea that on the one hand the archetype isn't good enough to take if you had to pay for it, but on the other hand that without it the game isn't fun enough. Is it valuable or not?

(I'm not against enjoying free archetype, but I'm skeptical of "needing" it.)

IMO the best option is to simply houserule things to allow items to be upgraded by crafters, using similar rules to Crafting, adjusting gold costs and time (depending on rarity).

That way, there is a way to keep certain items the party wants, but it requires investment - so new items have a way to shine too.

Yeah, something along the lines of "if you upgrade an item by X levels, the DC goes up by Y, at a cost of Z". And if you upgrade an item the level of the next "official" version of the item (if any) then it becomes that.

Calculating X and Y is fairly straightforward, with some study of DC tables. Figuring out how to calculate Z would take some more research but it should be doable too.

I don't think free archetype is going to completely break your game. The extra power you get from it is real, but it's not so much that the game can't handle it.

However, you may get the feeling that characters are a bit more samey if the players all move toward the same archetypes that seem really optimal. Also, it can be fun if characters aren't flawless - they can't cover every angle, for some things they're gonna need help from another PC. Free archetype can get in the way of this if you use it to sand down any rough edge and fill any gap yourself.

I really don't agree with the theory that FA isn't a power increase. Yeah, you can take some archetypes that don't move the needle much. But there are also really straightforward choices that do;

* Pick any martial archetype with a "resiliency" feat. You just increased your average HP/level by 1.5. Better than Toughness, which tends to be rated as a good feat.
* Rogue, Barbarian, Swashbuckler, Monk and probably others can get another saving throw to Master. How is a +2 to saves anything else than vertical power increase?
* Rogue dedication is pretty bonkers: pick up light armor (good for low level casters), surprise attack, go on to Mobility (great for casters that need to exit a nasty melee enemy), Dread Striker, Gang Up and Opportune Backstab; add Skill Mastery, Uncanny Dodge and Evasiveness.
* So is Champion: heavy armor, a feat to reduce the action cost of using a shield while striding around, a free reinforcing shield rune, extra reactions for shield block, your pick of the champion reactions which are phenomenal, lay on hands, and all your strikes potentially being Holy
* What about exemplar to just get +2 damage per damage die?

Those are the low-hanging fruit I can think of right away, but there's a lot more. Yeah, you need to be a critical customer because you can only spend so many actions. But many of the things I cited don't cost you actions.

I'm not saying you're lying about how you experience and enjoy the game. But I don't agree with your analysis, and I think you worded it very strongly.

It's just fundamentally a better way to play Pathfinder.

Calling that hyperbole is reasonable. You like it more that way, but you say it as if it's an absolute truth for everyone. That's a fast way to get geeks arguing with you :P

I think the design intent is to make sure you eventually move on to new items as the old ones fade. That way, you'll actually care about new treasure, instead of going "yeah but all my investment slots are already taken".

Telling people to like it doesn't mean they end up liking it though.

I would really like a solid formula for "how much gold do I need to pay to upgrade this item's DC to the DC appropriate for my current level?"

I think some of the stuff said about it is a bit overblown.

I don't really know how many groups use it vs. not use it. PFS doesn't use it however and that alone makes for a big chunk of people who get by without it. It's clearly not necessary for the game to be playable and enjoyable, with the tens of thousands of people playing PFS as evidence. In home groups it seems to be not all that unusual though.

I've played two campaigns 1-20 so far without it and that worked fine too. I did use archetypes that I had to "pay for out of my own pocket" in those. There are plenty of archetypes that are good enough that you'll still consider taking them if you don't get them for free.

It's more of a horizontal versatility boost than a vertical power boost. But it definitely can also be a vertical power boost; you can end up with more HP, damage bonuses, better saving throws, more expert/master skills and so forth.

The most negative stories I've heard were from campaigns where almost everyone ended up playing a fighter (because you can't get the +2 to hit otherwise) with archetypes to get some class flavor from other classes.

I'm using FA in one of my campaigns (Strength of Thousands), but it's limited to wizard and druid archetype. Because the theme of the campaign is that everyone is in magic school, but it doesn't require everyone to play the same class. With free archetype everyone has enough reason to be in the school without limiting character building too much.

FA with significant campaign-thematic restrictions, instead of just total free choice, is a totally legit way of doing it.