Bill Dunn's page

Conventions aren't a 'perk of the job' that you get sent to in order to have fun. They're sending you to work.

They're a bit of both, actually. You're there to work, but you also get to network and meet people - which helps you develop professionally and personally. You also get to participate in the community you support in your job in a way you may not be able to from the offices.

Why it should do something if cast at its minimum caster level?

AFAIK there is no one pointing a gun to your head and ordering "you must learn and memorize Keep watch at first level".

Do you honestly think anyone is going to intentionally publish a spell that does nothing the first level you're able to cast it? That makes absolutely no sense to me. It makes sense that the author of that spell made a mistake about the round-off rule or that writers may forget when a 1 round duration spell ends, and it makes sense that editors might miss that. People make mistakes.

But to intentionally publish a 1st level spell that is useless to a 1st level caster with the understanding that they technically don't have to prepare it, they can wait until they're 2nd level? That's daft.

Bill Dunn wrote:

Valandil Ancalime wrote:

I wonder if they just forgot to add "minimum of 1" to the spell? That is how I would rule it.

This is my assumption. There's no way the spell would be a level 1 spell and have no effect. Any GM making that ruling deserves to be thrown from his chair and replaced by someone with a bit more adjudicational wisdom.

Edit: Alternatively, they assumed that normal, generally known to the public, rounding rules apply - and that means round up at .5 rather than Pathfinder's round down.

It's mostly confusing because

sometimes they do specify the minimum, which implies that there's no minimum, though I don't think the rules can be read that closely.

I'd assume that a spell, at it's minimum level, does something and that implies a minimum effect even if it's not specified because of editorial oversight.

I wonder if they just forgot to add "minimum of 1" to the spell? That is how I would rule it.

This is my assumption. There's no way the spell would be a level 1 spell and have no effect. Any GM making that ruling deserves to be thrown from his chair and replaced by someone with a bit more adjudicational wisdom.

Edit: Alternatively, they assumed that normal, generally known to the public, rounding rules apply - and that means round up at .5 rather than Pathfinder's round down.

I understand why the blog post was locked, but I'm extremely disappointed that it was before Erik could reply to the question that I and several others raised.

If staff had raised concerns about potentially problematic material, but it was not taken seriously or ignored, then what steps are Paizo leadership doing to keep it from happening again in the future?

This is extremely important to me, and I can't continue to support Paizo-published adventures until this is addressed. Because I know this is not an isolated issue - I have spoken to other people that have worked for or contracted with Paizo over the last decade, and this issue has come up before.

So, what is going to change moving forward?

You might want to consider your own bias here. You've taken Erik's statement that some members of the staff raised concerns that didn't dissuade him at the time and made that into "not taken seriously or ignored". In other words, it looks to me like you've already rendered judgment when it may be that their objections didn't outweigh support from other staff members when making the decision to go forward a year ago.

I appreciate the statement on the blog, but honestly, I was never particularly worried. Did anyone really think Paizo would be putting out a cop-themed AP that didn't at least try to be sensitive? I'd have thought their track record bought them at least some benefit of the doubt there.

I had been thinking of canceling my AP sub, mainly because PF2 isn't really grabbing me like PF1 did and was really grappling with losing my charter subscriber status. But Paizo's statement has convinced me to stay the course, at least for a while. I don't want them thinking I'm dropping because of extremely unfortunate and unpredictable timing that interfaces with their subject matter that they have no control over. The contribution to the NAACP defense fund is unnecessary further inducement as far as I'm concerned, but serves as a nice bit of icing on the cake.

This player came to me with an interesting concept, one I found genuinely compelling. But their execution of the concept has been deliberately bad. Example: in my houserules, Skill Focus gives either a +5 to one skill, +3 to two or +2 to four. They wanted to take the feat twice, +3 to four skills total. I pointed out that they could take +2 to four twice and get +4 to all of them. They insisted on keeping in the same.

I can honestly see why that would be confusing. Under the normal rules, you either have skill focus in a skill or you don’t. You can’t really double-up on it, but your house rule apparently allows it (which brings up the question - would you allow someone to take the +5 to one skill more than once?). So this may also be a subtle signal that they don’t fully approve of your house rule or feel it’s too exploitive to use that way.

Perhaps Clea. She is a major character in the Strange universe as his apprentice/lover.

Yeah, but you have to admit, she's exactly the character you would most expect, not least.

It's not just players that have to metagame/do something. The rogue is now waiting till the 3rd Initiative count to actually fire the crossbow but the guards have to do something on their turns. What should guards who beat a yet to happen threat should be doing before the threat. Thats where the disconnect he is having comes from. Everyone is now Spider man once we move to encounter mode regardless of what skill they roll for init.

Again, I think people are not understanding the situation. Since this is basically an ambush-type situation, the presumption of correct initiative checks would be stealth for the rogue, perception for the guards. If two of them beat the rogue's stealth for the initiative roll, it basically means they've spotted him and can do something about it! Perhaps they spotted his motion as he got his crossbow into position - exactly how they spotted him does matter. What matters is that the rogue's attempt to shoot his crossbow unseen has been spotted as he's setting it up.

The first person to declare something doesn't automatically succeed at being first to implement it. And that's been true in D&D/PF for a long while.

Smart play should be rewarded. If negotiations are breaking down, knowing when to strike is key. It is the definition of "seizing the initiative".

I would have really hoped that smart play would involve more than an open attack because negotiations are breaking down. I think that in a negotiation between potentially hostile groups things suddenly coming to a fight would be a highly likely outcome - they'd be watching for such shenanigans. Smart play would be piling on the deception or other subterfuge so they are less likely to see it coming or from where.

Situation: During a peaceful conversation, barbarian player says to GM they want to initiate combat by charging at the opposing side. Barbarian character has quick-draw like ability.

Initiative is rolled. Opposing wizard beats barbarian in initiative and fireballs the barbarian. Barbarian dies without having drawn his weapon.

Assuming the barbarian character didn't obviously roleplay hostile intent, the wizard has now killed the barbarian based on whatever was perceived by the initiative perception check. This is possibly a gut hunch or sixth sense. Depending on the current setting, the wizard is accused of first degree murder. After all, there's very little tangible evidence that the barbarian had hostile intent - weapon was not drawn. A case of self-defense cannot be made.

This seems absurd to me. Thoughts?

In a word, No.

The logical issue I have with that order of events is that that would require the barbarian to announce his "triggering" action before it's even his turn and then stick to his decision regardless of the actions of everyone else. Because without the sudden charge, we would not have entered combat at all, so anything but having that action as the first action in combat doesn't really work. Instead of having an advantage by rushing the enemy by surprise, he quite possibly gets a major disadvantage that noone else in initiative order normally gets.

Imagine being Irving, the 142nd fastest gun in the West. You draw thinking you're drawing on number 143 and it turns out to be 141... and he draws faster than you... (props to "The Ballad of Irving")

That is the situation anybody would be in if they want to start hostilities without either catching their enemies by surprise or suckering them some other way. There are plenty of examples in appropriate media of someone trying to start a fight but being outdrawn. Well, in game terms, they tried to start the fight... and rolled poorly on their initiatives. They basically started making their move but got beat by a fast reaction (everybody who rolled better initiative).

Bill,

I doubt they'll recast Pietro and probably just bring back Aaron-Taylor instead...

I admit it's a bit of a dark horse. But I'll laugh loud and long if they do it.

Since it's the Multiverse of Madness and the X-Men films are now available to Disney and the MCU, it could be the Evan Peters Quicksilver from Days of Future Past. The whole multiverse angle makes it easy to cheese in any of the X-Men as portrayed in the X-Men movie line by Fox.
Plus, Peters is only a couple years older than Elizabeth Olson so he could easily pass as a twin.

It must be the Diabolical Rick Jones.

]I just wish casters got more opportunities to use the 3 action economy. They really only get 1 or 2 actions: Cast a spell usually takes 2 actions, and sustaining a spell is often their 3rd action. In effect it feels like there is a split, with martials getting to do 3 things and casters getting to really do just 1 (I feel maintaining concentration should be a free action, or reaction at least, so they could at least move or raise a shield or something...)

To me, that seems about right. Given the power and scope spells can have, they should have to devote more of their actions to them. It's like finally heading back to incorporate some 1e balancing mechanisms to spellcasting.

In D&D3 if something could be Critically hit it seemed like it was a matter of internal organ damage. So anything without internal organs or where those organs weren't important, was immune to Crits.

Pathfinder made it more about, how important is the physical body to the creature being functional.

Yes, I pretty much agree with the assessment. From a game design perspective, going with that route sounds fine, as does the Paizo approach of looking at it as critical damage not just to organs but potentially to structure. Which one you go to is a matter of art and experience. 3e chose the one way (internal organs) which meshed well with earlier edition concepts of backstab. But then, I believe, years of experience in seeing how that played out at the table convinced Paizo to go the other way. And I think, in the end, Paizo's decision was the better one.

I can't speak for anybody but myself, but I do feel a bit of a reluctance to take up PF2, this despite my enjoyment of PF1.

I haven't had much time to play it - just a bit at GameholeCon last month (I hope to have more time to try it at GaryCon in 2020). And there are things I definitely like... but there are things that still nag me about it. I know that's going to be true of all games but it's hitting me especially hard this time. So for my pros and cons:

1) I really like the 3 action feature.
2) I like the idea of having different skill tiers.
3) I like the different options for spells and degrees of saves/fumbles, some different options if a spell is cast with 1 action, 2, or 3.

-1) I'm not sure I'm too keen on everyone making multiple attacks from 1st level/1 HD.
-2) I'm not keen on using the different skill tiers more broadly just because it was a cool idea for skills (I'm finding it really problematic for armor).
-3) Too many crits - when we played at Gamehole, there was a lot of yo-yo mode going on between PCs dropping due to crits and healing.
-4) I very much appreciated 5e's approach to bounded accuracy and am not loving the level-up vs monster treadmill. It was one of the things I didn't like about 4e and I don't think I really like it here either.

I guess I shouldn't necessarily be too surprised. While the playtest and delivery of PF1 had me thinking that the Paizo developer simply understood where I was as a gamer and inhabited the same preference space, as PF developed more and more fiddly classes, I started to get a bit frustrated with the game and direction of development. And maybe now PF2 just tipped over that edge. I'm not sure yet.

So, adoption is not smooth with me. I'm right now in that space of whether I want to shift to PF2 for my main PF group, stay with PF1 since I have plenty of AP material to play yet, or focus on 5e and convert/use the PF APs with it since then I get to avoid the fiddlier classes and spells (and general bloat) that I don't really appreciate in later PF1 books.

Gonna preface this with a bit of backstory: I've been a D&D player since 1981, AD&D 1e through 2e, though after trying some Player's Option: Skills and Powers stuff, I realized that not all changes were good ideas (PO: S&P was NOT good as far as I was concerned). So I was wary of announcements about 3e in the works at D&D's new home at WotC.

Fortunately, most news about 3e (particularly as reported by Eric Noah's 3e news site) was positive and increased my interest in the edition. We gave it a try by running through converted 1e/2e modules and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. I picked up my subscription to Dungeon Magazine at a Gen Con right around that time and had my first introduction to Paizo, their willingness to listen to their readers, and their commitment to quality products/customer services. I was impressed by Paizo's efforts to improve the magazines and enjoyed the various module lines that were soon to follow, particularly because they often had sidebars about how the adventure was designed and why some decisions were made.

Then the first shoe dropped with WotC's decision to not renew the magazine licenses. That was worrying - but Paizo made good with the new AP line and offering to extend subscriptions to that format. And while the typography of the first AP was kind of hard to read, the content was AMAZING. I was sold on Paizo again.

Then the second shoe dropped with the 4e announcement. I was actually excited about this. WotC had delivered a great game with 3e, I hoped 4e would be even better. But this time, the more I learned about it, the less I liked. And then the word came (third shoe dropped?) that there were issues with the 3PP license - OGL was not going to apply, Paizo was reporting that the upcoming GSL was late and there would be problems about getting new products out in time for 4e's release. So I followed the news here on the Paizo boards closely.

That's how I learned about Pathfinder, the RPG. Right here, watching the company grapple with what it was going to do after being hit with more than one existentially threatening decisions from WotC. I don't feel the game designers/developers at WotC ever had any ill will toward Paizo, I'm not so sure about managers higher up the chain.

But I was determined to at least give 4e a fair shake. The marketing was abysmal and alternated between clumsy and stupid. The gameplay was merely OK and not good enough for me to overlook the other problems. 3e had made substantial mechanical changes but emphasized a classic dungeon approach. 4e made even more substantial mechanical changes and threw all classic approaches out the window. In the end, because 2 of the players were really keen on 4e, we shook it out for about 9 months. Then even they were finding it kind of tedious and we shelved it for good. That group went back to 3e.

The other group I was in never even contemplated 4e. If we wanted cinematic action, we broke out Feng Shui. We went right to PF and have stayed there ever since.

From a rule balance perspective, the crit/precision damage immunity undead and constructs had to go away in the 3e -> PF conversion because they nerfed the hell out of rogues. Both are highly thematic - if an adventure location is going to have them, they’re gonna have lots of them, and the rogue will be pretty useless. Age of Worms kind of drove this point home.

From an in-game point of view, even if neither will bleed or suffer shock, both have differentiated parts that move or could be more vulnerable to the lucky shot that will undermine their ability to withstand opposition in a fight, even golems.

Ascalaphus wrote:

Well, did you have your heart set on a standard races campaign? Otherwise, why not roll with it?

While there's nothing inherently wrong with playing non-standard, or even homebrew races, for first timers it feels kind of like starting a new video game with a bunch of mods and cheat codes. I mean, don't you want to at least see if you like the core game first, before you start tacking on a bunch of bells and whistles?

<snip>

Guess I'm ultimately just worried they're going to shoot themselves in the feet before we even begin, not have any fun, and give up on the game before it has really had a chance.

Ultimately, as the GM, this is on you. If you wanted them to do something a little more normal, you should have limited their choices. Instead, you opened the door to wider choices and they took them. Now, help them be successful with their characters.

How does she feel about butchered animals? Would recently butchered pig chunks like heads be similarly problematic? The cruelty is over by that point but the results still gross. It would reduce the complexities of handling the live pig as well.

Or, considering the vicious ankle biter angle, goblins dressed as pigs? Then they can fight back a little.

Mathmuse wrote:

I view Juran's player as metagaming.

I view what happened in that scenario as cheating.

Calling it "metagaming" just muddies the definition of the phrase and confuses discussions on the matter.

It isn’t necessarily either. Juran is asserting narrative control via his character’s actions in that situation, entirely reasonable for some styles of play - just not the traditional D&D/PF style of play.

Gloom wrote:

Honestly, the main thing that disturbs me about crafting is somewhat unrelated to crafting directly. It's the fact that you can only sell loot in town for 50% of the value.

Currently, if you wanted to craft something you can spend 4 days of build up time and 50% of the value of an item to start the craft. Then you have to make up the other 50% of the value of the item either by additional downtime work at similar rates to what working a profession would give you, or by paying the amount off directly in resources or coin.

Effectively, you're paying full value for any piece of gear.

This means that when you are only able to sell something for half value you are only getting back the initial investment of materials and all additional time or money is simply wasted.

The way I see it, the rules as a whole (particularly in the core book) are written with the assumption that they are going to be used by adventurers and that the focus is on adventuring. They are not meant as a life simulator. So the downtime rules that apply to adventurers are not necessarily the ones that apply to NPCs making and selling stuff.

So the Craft activity is for making things for your own use, or for your friends to use. If you're making things to sell, that uses the Gain Income activity instead.

But, really, that was the point in 3e/PF1 as well. The loot selling/crafting rules were designed to make life easy for a player to get to the adventuring and not having to engage in an economic simulator. It's just that the calibrated expectation was that characters would use the craft feats to convert magic gear they found but didn't want into something they did want at a 1:1 exchange. Sell for 50% of market, craft for 50% of market - a 1:1 ratio. With PF2 it's a 2:1 ratio - sell for 50% of market, but anything you make for yourself with the proceeds is at 100% of market. Characters are no longer converting found treasure value at equivalent value.

Nefreet wrote:

Pathfinder is a permissive rules system. What you need is evidence showing you can hold or save your increases for a later level.

I'm not able to find the word permissive in the core book. Page 444 talks about "Specific Overrides General," but I'm not finding statements corroborating that broad of a paintbrush across the game. It's unreasonable to expect everything you can do in a roleplaying game to be limited to what's "permissively" written in the book.

Indeed, player characters can always try all sorts of things to do that the rules haven't thought of. That's normal for an RPG - there is always a universe of things that can happen while the rules have to be a finite list of guidelines.

That said, manipulating the metagame mechanics is different from living in the story of the game world. In a situation like that, you generally have to approach the rules as being permissive in that they define how those metagame elements can be manipulated.

So if I understand this right, A Grizzly Bear is less intimidating than a Kobold Scout, because the bear can't speak common?

To be fair, you can't really understand the grizzly bear grunting that he's going to eat your entrails quite like you can hear the kobold scout saying he's going to wear your intestines as a necktie.

That said, the grizzly bear also starts with a much worse Charisma than the kobold scout so he's generally less believable as well.

At the end of the day, it's worth noting that the GM isn't stuck with just using Charisma to intimidate someone. That bear's got a Strength bonus of +4 - it makes sense for him to use that instead, particularly if his intimidating display also emphasizes his size and strength.

Or... possibly it was a rule created by human developers who were only thinking of humanoid interactions when they made it.

Oversight and all.

I doubt they were only thinking of humanoid interacts in general. More like that's the default - anything beyond that or being able to do the same thing but with a substantial amount of the information transmitted by words lost requires more investment.

This has nothing to do with characters needing to fundamentally change because the game system's rules are different, but it has everything to do with this particular enemy being more threatening than it used to be.

----

To point you at an example of where balance has flipped the other way, take a look at ghouls between PF1E and 2E (Also a CR1 / Level 1 enemy). In PF1E, charging a ghoul as a 1st level character was very dicey. If you hit, you had a good chance of taking it down. But if you missed, you would eat three attacks, each of which has a solid chance of paralyzing you for the rest of a short and brutal combat.

In PF2E, charging a ghoul as a 1st level character is a pretty even fight. None of its attacks hit for more than a third of your HP, and it takes iterative penalties with them rather than getting them all at full bonus. Its paralysis can be broken out of each round. It would struggle mightily to defeat a PC fighter in a single round.

I don't think I can agree with your analysis very much. It does come down to changes in the rules, at least as embodied by relatively low-level opponents. In the case of the goblin dogs, each one now subjects a PC to 2 attacks that are no less likely to hit than PF1's version of the same creature (considering the 1st level PC's AC is probably only a couple of points higher than in PF1). And even in the case of the ghoul, while the PF1 version had 3 attacks that didn't decrease in their modifier, the PF2 is now much more likely to get at least one in, and the second attack is still as strong as the PF1's equivalent.

Unlearn all you have learned.

Eh, if that's what I want out of an edition change, I'm not necessarily wedded to sticking to the same game line. There's a balancing point between continuity and change that new editions will sink or swim on.

I don't think PF2 has positioned itself the same way 4e D&D did by upending both rule and setting continuity (this is a good thing), but there are people for whom the amount of changes and their nature may be over their threshold of wanting to have to unlearn/relearn. Personally, I'm not entirely sure I want a deadlier or swingier PF, so I'm watching these kinds of discussions carefully.

Years and years of the system not having a consequence for it has resulted in this belief. But now with the 3 action system, it's actually best to make your enemy use actions to get into position whenever possible.

That was true once your opponent got multiple attacks in the 3e/PF family of games already. If they had more than 1 attack, you wanted to keep them from taking a full attack action. Now, in a sense, the same tactic has moved down to level 1 as well.

martyrn wrote:

If combat becomes too tactically based (I'm not moving up because then I can't attack 3 times but they can; I am going to move to the edge of their movement to force them to stride twice to reach me; etc) it starts to play more like a board game and less like an RPG

This entire sentiment is bankrupt. Might as well have said "plays like a video game." Even if you are right and the game play does share traits with another type of game, role-playing isn't inherently excluded by that nor is it even necessarily diminished because there are in-character role-based (and I mean the role of the character as a character in a story, not role as a member of a party such as "the tank") reasons for the behaviors being represented by the actions taken.

Not sure I entirely agree with that. It depends on how you like the interaction between the game mechanics and role-playing the PC. If you approach the game from the perspective of mechanics being the way you operationalize what the player wants the PC to do from an in-person point of view, then there's a lot of potential for the specifics of the mechanics to get in the way of smooth immersion. It may be a valid tactic to hold back and force your opponent to come to you, but spending the effort to make sure that has to be more than a single stride action may detract from play even if that's a stronger strategy on the game board.

This, by the way, isn't limited to RPGs. You see similar artifacts of the mechanics in board games too that don't make sense from a simulative point over view even if they are advantageous in play. (Example from Advanced Squad Leader - assault moving away from an enemy position during movement to break a line of sight and avoid defensive fire and then advancing back into the space during the advance phase - it totally exploits the segmented nature of defensive fire to deny targets, when a real squad would likely have been safer sitting in place)

Despite our annoyance, I can totally understand why Paizo is doing it. After all, if you don't agree with the mob, you get tossed into the fighting pits to entertain and die. Like anyone else, Paizo wants to have a future, and so they are kowtowing to the largest (apparant) common denominator.

Huh. Treating people as equally valuable regardless of how different they are is somehow controversial. If you think that's 'kowtowing to the largest (apparent) common denominator" you may embody the problem Paizo is trying to address.

I suppose it may be the way power of creatures in PF depends heavily on their level. So if you have various monsters waiting for players in your sandbox it doesn't matter as much in which order they encounter them for the challenge to stay relevant in 5e, compared to PF.

That's my best guess as well, particularly when I saw that Gleeful Grognard preferred 5e for sandboxing and thought the entire 3e family (which includes PF) sucked for sandboxing. I don't know that I'd use the term linear as the alternative. The play doesn't have to be linear, but I think there's more pressure on the GM to make the encounters tailored to the power level of the characters (mostly with an upper limit). That's easier with a linear-style campaign, but not necessarily impossible with something non-linear.

It depends.

For the most part, rule changes don't bother me much (unless I find the changes themselves problematic). That's because the rules serve a secondary purpose in the game, as I see it, and that purpose is to operationalize what the players want their character to do. How exactly they do so can vary - so the specific rules aren't necessarily that important.

But when a new edition comes along, I'm looking for there to be substantial continuity in the lore and the niches classes, items, and monsters fill. Exactly how they do so may be flexible or they may have more options, but I don't want the old ones closed off. Too much re-imagining and I'll be re-imagining myself playing another game.

Ultimately, this is an exploit of the rules because the rules allow it. It isn't necessarily how a group of orcs is going to behave from an in-character perspective.

If this is fine for your style of play with more focus on the mechanics and clever use of rules than characterization, then have fun with it. But I'd be disappointed if my group chose to play that way and I wouldn't be sticking around very long.

But I am getting sucked in to my example, I wasn't intending this to be an argument about spellcasting, but rather about the setting of DCs in general. "Being easy" is a terrible argument imo, adding 11 should not be difficult for anyone.

It's not about being difficult - it's probably all about being easier than 11. And it is.

Interesting note: because fighter riposte happens on the enemy's turn, that gives you a full round to exploit it and go for that fight-winning critical success.

And yes, knocking a greatsword fighter down from 4d12+possibly some d6 down to 1d4 is basically fight-winning.

That’s assuming he can’t retrieve it or has no backup (which would be dumb on his part). Dropping it in his own space isn’t exactly a show-stopper since it would just be an interact (probably giving up an AoO) to pick it back up. You’d have to assume the PCs would succeed at picking it up and getting away, and I’m sure that’s a given.

It just feels like it should be uniformly easier, against a qualified opponent to feint them, grab them, knock them off balance, etc. than to force them to drop their weapon.

I'm not sure how you model this aside from "disarming requires a critical success".

Wouldn’t that be true even without a critical success being necessary? Level’s already baked into the attack bonuses and defenses.

I'm surprised there seems to be so much resistance to our wanting a little more rules visability.

I think it's less a case of resistance to more visibility and more a case of "just because you didn't spot it doesn't mean it's a trap" or intent to "hide" rules by the writers.

I'm curious where people get the notion that the majority of the populace only worships one deity. Surely it cannot be solely because of the limited space on a character sheet? Said character sheets also only have space for one character name, but that doesn't mean a character cannot have nicknames or aliases.

This has been a long-standing issue in the fantasy role playing community. I don't know if it's because we've been living in monotheistic cultures too long to really understand polytheism or what, but the idea that a character primarily venerates a specific god in D&D games is probably as old as the game itself.

No, we have, with the plethora of other things that were changed. Tier 4 and 6 casters do not exist anymore. Paladins can not lay on hands and smite in the same combat. Even if a strength spell does come back, odds are it won't increase your character's carrying capacity the same as it did 10 years ago.

Option 1: Things did change, but our characters lack the ability to observe and record this fact.
Option 2: Things always worked like this.

Option 1 is not possible, because otherwise the lore would need to provide an explanation to all of the wizards who have noticed their numbers are completely different now, for all of the Paldins who can cast lay on hands far fewer times in a single combat. That leaves option 2, and if things "always worked like this" then continuity doesn't matter.

There is no option 3 where all of the details are different but somehow continuity is important.

Ultimately, why would issues of in-character continuity be that important? I can see why players may have a problem with an edition change - because things work differently, because things they liked in one edition are changed or gone, etc. But why would anyone feel it has to manifest as a continuity change in the campaign setting that characters would perceive? I really don't understand why it would be an issue.

If you're converting from one edition to another in the middle of a campaign, you're simply going to have to deal with the fact that some things changed form one edition to another whether it's dressed up with a "campaign changing event" or not. That's simply part of changing editions in a rules set when the changes are significant. If you don't want to deal with those changes, then don't change horses mid-stream. If you want to proceed with the switch, I suggest lots of hand-waving and not sweating it as the price you pay for switching.

If the conversion from one edition to the next is between campaigns, then it won't matter. You can just say "Things have always been this way".

Well "why" it's needed is because without it, attack accuracy would increase every level while defenses would not, but I don't think that's exactly what the question is.

Oh, you certainly could increase defense without using the proficiency system - you'd just add it directly without the proficiency structure.

What would be the point of created a supposedly "universal" proficiency system and leave one of the three most important numbers on the character sheet out of it?

This is the issue for me. You may have a cool proficiency idea - but is it right to shoehorn subsystems into it that may not make sense just because it's a cool idea?

As it is, I'm sorely considering ditching the whole level addition if I decide to run PF2 for a home game. A gap in proficiencies like lore may make sense as characters level, but the defensive gap for putting on non-skilled armor is insanely deadly.

2nd Ed AD&D was the beginning of the ranger losing its identity; all that Drizzt baggage got attached.

The publication of the 2e PH was before the first of the books that featured Drizz't (who was never meant to be the main character either). So, technically, the TWF ranger was an independent development - if a weird one.

Before 2e, most players I know who picked rangers had focused on archery as a more hunty type of weapon.

I don't really see why there's a limit in the creatures types that can be favored enemy.

Seriously, what is it about the ranger that:
1) invites so much redesign from edition to edition
2) is so oddly done on the first iteration (PF1 excepted)

Not really, a player being unhappy and leaving the game is almost as likely to end it as a DM being unhappy. Sure this is less of a concern for society games and the like, but people generally don't want their friends to be unhappy or have them leave/be kicked out of the group.

That might be a problem for groups without a lot of options or a small player pool. But it hasn't been my experience in general. GMs are far harder to find/recruit. Even for the groups I play in - both of which have been together over 15 years - it's still mainly the same few people running games in each one. And if they are gone, the group isn't going to be playing, while they probably will if it's just one player being the hold-out.

As a result, I definitely come down on the side of the GM being the final backstop on campaign theme, tone, and approved/banned content. If a GM isn't happy with the game, that affects everyone. If one player isn't happy but the others, including the GM, are, that affects the one player.

Unless there are pineapples in it.
Or unless you have a vegan in your group.

Who could have ever guessed that pineapple would replace anchovies as the most polarizing pizza topping?

There were also few things about 2e, that were more difficult as a GM than I expected:

First up: Action List. When I played to 2e at Gen con and I said “I swing my sword” Jack, our GM, would often correct me by saying “Ok. You take a strike action.” I found it irritating at the time, but now that I have a game as GM under my belt, I know why he did that. Each of the actions have different attributes. The GM needs to understand clearly what action you are using because these actions may trigger certain reactions. For example, if you say “I take a potion out go over to James and pour it into James’ mouth” what you are really saying is “I use an interact action to take out a potion. I use a Stride action to move to James. then I use my final action to use Interact to poor the potion into James’ mouth.”

Yeah, I'm with Malk_Content in that you don't need to be that anal. You could say (and I'd hope to see more of this): "I take a potion out, go over to James, and pour it into his mouth. That's an interaction, stride, and interaction for my 3 actions, Dan."

I've been chewing over this issue for a few days. At first my reaction was "Of course a 13th level alchemist's armor proficiency improvement should only apply to the armor types inherent in the class" (or weapons for various classes where that applies).

But thinking more about how the proficiency bonus actually works (and doesn't work) has got me going the other direction. I don't really think that a 13th level alchemist should get better at heavy armor, per se. Rather, I think folding the level factor into specific armor and weapon proficiencies is problematic for a couple of reasons:

1) As a character levels up, the gap between using a trained weapon/suit of armor vs untrained widens. Higher level characters don't get broadly better at combat, they get better at just their class's specific gear. Anything outside of that is, ultimately, self-defeating and in an increasingly big way as the character levels up.

2) If a character broadens their skills by taking an outside weapon or armor proficiency, that skill falls behind as the class-based ones increase. And that devalues the choice (though not completely since you're still adding your level, which is not an insignificant benefit).

I think a better option may be to have offensive and defensive proficiency. The increases from a class would be to the overall offensive or defensive proficiency from trained to expert to master, etc. Then the weapon and armor proficiencies would just determine when you get to add the full value of those proficiencies or suffer a -4 untrained penalty.
So the 13th level alchemist wouldn't get Light Armor Expertise, he'd get Defense Expertise. Any armor proficiencies the alchemist has retain the full relative value they've always had.

Ultimately, this debate has also gotten me thinking that differing levels of armor proficiency other than untrained/trained for each class of armor is kind of silly and overly complicated. It may represent too much of an attempt to force a proficiency system that the designers thought was cool for skills onto places where it doesn't fit.

It's also complicating my evaluation of PF2. There are plenty of places I see improvement and then there are places like this where I would rather scrap it.

Your level is encoded in the proficiency bonus.

This also means the gap between using something you're at least trained with and not trained with--whether a skill, armor, or a weapon--will increase as characters level up. Another reminder for PCs to stay in your lane.

That may have always been the case with skills in PF1, but that's a new feature with weapons and armor. So, suppose a 10th level bard gets disarmed of his long sword, can't get it back, and there's a scimitar lying on a nearby table - that scimitar is a no-go. He'll suffer at least a 12-point loss in attack bonus in PF2 compared to 4-points in PF1. And he shouldn't even think about putting on the guard's chainmail if he breaks out of a prison cell, his AC is much better if he's naked.

I bet that trips a few players up for a while.

For instance, taking a level of druid or shifter, now you may ask any question with the spell in druidic. Since they must answer in the same language asked... torture.

Sure, but since I can use a fireball to kill all the kids in an orphanage, is that also evil? In the PF cosmology, there are things that are inherently evil because they tap into evil forces. Even if they're used for a good purpose, using them involves doing at least some evil. There are also things that don't use inherently evil forces but can be put to evil use - using them isn't necessarily doing evil.

You may not like the way Paizo has defined those things, and you can change that in a game you run. But, frankly, I don't really have a problem with it. I kind of like the Confess spell - it fits right in with what I expect a class called Inquisitor to incorporate. It may be a little dark, but so's the whole idea of an Inquisitor in the first place.

He's an NPC, and what's more a 2E NPC. He can't "level up" per se.

That’s about as ridiculous a complaint as I have seen. As an NPC, he’s as tough as the story (and GM) choose to make him. And yeah, he can get tougher even if he doesn’t do so the way PCs do.