Crouza's page

I can't help but wonder if what people would want is like, wave casting but with like 3 or 4 slots over just the 2. Because I can't image just having like, 15 spells in total like how Kinetcisit works, or just having cantrips and the psyhics amp feature is really satisfying to most casters.

Maybe this is my own bias with casters but I like spellslots. I like being able to punch above and bending the rules that spellslots allow. Feels like trading that for just spamming damage spell is trading the bounty of the ocean of a lagoon of cheap tricks. I've gotten tons of usage out of my lower slots being for utility options or evergreen spells vs the big heavy hitters of my higher level spellslots, and cantrips do decent enough that I don't feel outpaced by my fellow players.

I've never had more than like, 3 encounters in a game and I don't see myself wanting any more than 3. I don't see the so called value of "You can cast all the time" when that kind of game would be absolutely boring and soul crushing to play through for me. I just do not see this as a selling point and I do not get why this is the be all and end all measurement for if a caster is good or bad.

Crouza wrote:

I mean if you're going to go that route and just not have spell slots, are you prepared for all spells across to the board to receive massive nerfs to bring their power in line with cantrips?

I can't speak for everyone else here, but I personally would, yes. I don't think cantrips would necessarily have to be the benchmark, given that the Kineticist is a clear example of an at-will magic-user and their impulses are definitely stronger than cantrips, but I would personally prefer a world in which casters were no longer bound by daily attrition to one where they were, but got a handful of moments in the day where their turn was much bigger than anyone else's.

I'd also go as far as to say that a world in which casters are no longer bound by daily attrition or spell slots need not exclude those high moments either: if we keep a mechanic like focus spells where you can recharge in-between encounters, make those above-average in power, and make other effects slightly below-average in compensation, then you'd still get to have those big bursts of power that would let your class shine at their brightest, and every encounter to boot. We all assume that casters need spell slots to have that differentiation from martial classes, but I don't think that's necessarily true, and a game without that subsystem is still one that could make casters feel different from everyone else.

What's the point of being unbound by attrition? Like, realistically, how many encounters between long resting are you actually want to play in a session that casters need to lose their ability to nova or provide stronger utility in exchange for like, what? Being able to run 10 encounters in a row? Is that honestly what people even want when playing this game? More Combat?

Crouza wrote:

I mean if you're going to go that route and just not have spell slots, are you prepared for all spells across to the board to receive massive nerfs to bring their power in line with cantrips?

If cast w/ 0 FP, then yes, of course.

I think the healthiest thing to do is not only to require multiple FP to boost spells up to max potency, but for the genuinely 0 FP option to be sub-par, and certainly no more potent than current cantrips.

In pf2, as crazy as it is, cantrips like Electic Arc can genuinely do more dmg than slotted spells. That causes all kinds of player weirdness in reaction to that.

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I think a good base spell design that could work with an "expect to burn FP to get to base spell power" would be for spell text to include:

Heighten: this is mostly unchanged, spell guidance for how they scale with increasing Rank. Note that spending FP now affects the end Rank.

Focused: this entry can keep portions of the spell's power to only activate when any # of FP is spent casting the spell.

This new idea is the main tool for all spells to have "cantrip versions" that keep their identity intact, but power limited. Something like Fireball could start as a 2x2 burst when cast at 0 FP, gaining its usual AoE, airburst mechanic, etc, in its "Focused:" entry.

Amp: not required, but it would be super great if some/most spells came with their own specific meta-magics listed that can cost FP to achieve. If all spellcasters have & use FP at baseline, this becomes a new possibility enabled by the system change.

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In that system, cantrips as a concept would become L 0 spells that do not hold much, if any, power behind a Focused: entry, Heighten smoothly, and therefore are comparatively friendly to being cast w/ 0 FP.

Focus spells would be more akin to "always memorized spells" that you have at your disposal every day. And if they also cost FP to cast at baseline power, then Class Feats/Features have much more power budget room to be generous...

This doesn't seem to solve anything. You're just taking the so called problem of "I have only these high level slots and then i'm worthless" and turning into "I only have 3 spells I can cast and then im worthless".

I mean if you're going to go that route and just not have spell slots, are you prepared for all spells across to the board to receive massive nerfs to bring their power in line with cantrips?

A lot of the sustainability thing makes me also curious on how people run PF 2e. Because depending on how a person runs it, you can have running out of slots be a constant problem or not a problem at all. Like for example, a lot of my game usually involves like, a singular fight that entire session, and very rarely do we do dungeons where it's fight after fight after fight. And in those, spell resources are rarely an issue because that's the style of game being run. There's no minimum "Run this many encounters a game to make a balanced experience" at least not one that i've seen, so it feels like if people are noticing players struggling with resource management no matter how much they try to optimize their castings, maybe just cut down the amount of encounters?

I like the theory I've seen circulating that Gorum was a false deity, and that discovery made him fair game for Achaekek to take him down. Perhaps Grandmother Spider or Norgerber let Achaekek know that bit of information, but it wasn't known amongst the wider gods, and thus sparks a massive war off that misunderstanding.

Or perhaps Gorum does something that makes him lose what one might call the divine spark, or is subjugated to some form of powerful magic that makes it so? I'm going to have to buy so many AP's to find out, because I wanna read it with my own eyes.

Im not going to say the name of a PF 1e class I want, but more the concept I want. I want a character who channels primal magic into themselves in order to empower themselves in combat. Barbarian doesn't quite hit this and summoner is a different vibe. Basically I want more a Champion with like the heaviest or hardest Druid dedication to them, but as a bespoke class with primal magic baked right in.

Crouza wrote:

Sanityfaerie wrote:

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

And while Paizo was certainly affected by the OGL scandal, I don't think Paizo was meant to be the sole target of it; while Paizo is a notable utilizer of the OGL, it certainly wasn't the only one.

Sure, WotC was trying to eat everyone's lunch. I'm not going to argue that. Still, there were some pretty strong indicators that some of it was explicitly targeted. Like, at one point when WotC was backpedaling about the "and we get 20% off everything you make forever just because" they said, in essence "Oh, we didn't mean that to target the small producers - just the big companies that make millions of dollars." As far as I'm aware, at the time the set of "big companies that make millions of dollars" using OGL was pretty much just Paizo. Then, too, there was the fact that they kept up a pretty strong front until Paizo came out and said "actually, we don't *need* the OGL. It looks like it's time for us to make our own license." Then they crumpled hard shortly thereafter.

...and, of course, there were the occasionally unpleasant arguments in various places in the months and years leading up to the whole thing where people were trying to convince each other to switch, and influencers were occasionally hopping sides and so forth.

I mean, it's not a hard guarantee or anything, but it sure looked to me like WotC was perceiving Paizo as a competitor and a threat (at least potentially) and hoping to use this to break them.

Didn't turn out like that.

It's critical role. What you're basically missing is that WOTC is seething that critical role has as good of brand recognition as DnD does, along with all the other homebrew companies. They've been on amicable terms but this was new management seeing the old managements decision to let Crit Role still operate without paying royalties and license fees and absolutely fuming about it.

Also the VTTs and the rest of the digital ecosystem. Imagine AI OGL...

I agree that they want to create a singular ecosystem for all of DnD, roll20 and foundry and the like are most likely seen as competition, and even dndbeyond was seen as competition even after they bought it.

But what I think really sparked the OGL and its wording specifically on royalties and all future profits was CritRole, and I can pinpoint the exact moment they got it in their heads to change the OGL. That being when Critical Role got to put the Legend of Vox Machina on Amazon. Not even in terms of like, a rivalry to their streaming or anything financially damaging. Just the fact they released a major commercially popular product using their IP, and there wasn't a single thing they could do to weasel their way into that Amazon deal.

I genuinely believe that was the moment WOTC decided to shoot themselves in the foot, a moment of just petty jealously that another company could use the game they own and make a successful property with it, and now do the kind of things DnD was aiming to try and do in becoming a multimedia brand.

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

And while Paizo was certainly affected by the OGL scandal, I don't think Paizo was meant to be the sole target of it; while Paizo is a notable utilizer of the OGL, it certainly wasn't the only one.

Sure, WotC was trying to eat everyone's lunch. I'm not going to argue that. Still, there were some pretty strong indicators that some of it was explicitly targeted. Like, at one point when WotC was backpedaling about the "and we get 20% off everything you make forever just because" they said, in essence "Oh, we didn't mean that to target the small producers - just the big companies that make millions of dollars." As far as I'm aware, at the time the set of "big companies that make millions of dollars" using OGL was pretty much just Paizo. Then, too, there was the fact that they kept up a pretty strong front until Paizo came out and said "actually, we don't *need* the OGL. It looks like it's time for us to make our own license." Then they crumpled hard shortly thereafter.

...and, of course, there were the occasionally unpleasant arguments in various places in the months and years leading up to the whole thing where people were trying to convince each other to switch, and influencers were occasionally hopping sides and so forth.

I mean, it's not a hard guarantee or anything, but it sure looked to me like WotC was perceiving Paizo as a competitor and a threat (at least potentially) and hoping to use this to break them.

Didn't turn out like that.

It's critical role. What you're basically missing is that WOTC is seething that critical role has as good of brand recognition as DnD does, along with all the other homebrew companies. They've been on amicable terms but this was new management seeing the old managements decision to let Crit Role still operate without paying royalties and license fees and absolutely fuming about it.

I'm someone who might be considered a grognard by age, long in the tooth as it were. I've seen the entire systems where 3e exploded, 4e became a thing, pathfinder blew up, and then 5e took over everything. I've seen a ton of different systems go through edition changes and I have seen entire systems and settings razed to the ground to make way for a new thing. I'm going to give you a bit of advice that I think you need to learn to embrace.

The system you love will never die as long as you're willing to play it, but nothing is meant to last. Pathfinder 1e had it's time, it lasted long, and then it's time passed. That is the reality and nothing is changing that, and no throwback will happen to recapture that if it has not already happened. Hell, 2e will have it's time in the sun now, but even 2e will one day be left to slowly shrink. But, you will find a lot of people willing to keep it alive, to put in the work to do so.

There are people even now who think 1st or 2nd edition dnd was the best and keep it going within their own community. People who actively still work to keep 4th edition games running. Speaking of, 40k for example is currently in it's 10th edition but you can find small pockets of people willing to play 4th edition and aren't interested in newer rules. Warhammer fantasy was destroyed and ended for Age of Sigmar but people still play fantasy. Shadowrun is in its 6th ed but there are still dedicated die hards playing 3rd or 4th ed or 5th ed. Heck I'm pretty sure you can find a few people who even still play Chain mail.

You love pafhfinder 1e. Do not think your option is limited to what paizo is doing. You can find people out there who still want to play pathfinder 1e, and explore the decades of offical and 3rd party content to make new build horizons to discover. Just do not expect it to ever come back beyond that, and you will do fine.

I would be incredibly concerned if Paizo announced PF 3e now, after slating all of their big releases, their remaster, and everything else they've done.

It is inevitably that PF 3e will someday arrive. Hell, as some pointed out, its possible it'll be in the next few years at 2029. However, while I could see the Developers making some changes to the games balance, perhaps loosening the math slightly, or perhaps not at all. What I can I say I cannot see is them returning to the PF 1e dark days of "I'm just your class but better" era of class design.

I remember the days when Rogue got all of its features poached by other archetypes cannibalizing it, fueled by the need to always be making more options, than it had to be given a complete overhaul in Unchained. Archetypes where the fighter could just give up some features and be a better gunslinger than the gunslinger class. Hell, when casters could replicate some of their martial counterparts with just a wave of their hand and a proper spell cast, while still having their entire arsenal of spells to rely on.

Nobody on the team looks back to those times and goes "Yeah, this was when pathfinder was great." and that's just an immutable truth. As others have said, what you want is accomplished via variant rules. They are kept variant for a reason, and there is where they should remain.

I'm curious what this class will do that the Marshall archetype doesn't, but I haven't played the battle lord or whatever Michael Sayre called his 3rd party class. But Path of War rocked so I'm optimistic.

Wait did he actually cite the Warlord from Path of War as a inspiration? I wasn't able to catch the stream when it happened.

Kilraq Starlight wrote:

I am not sure "lot" is the right word there. To my eyes only about 3 posters really have potentially political focuses in their divine focus. Some of them could be political if you stretched what was said though for sure.

The most common political stance is fighting intolerance: seek to understand the struggles of others (Anathema) Force others to accept your customs and ideals, actively seek converts to your religion, proselytize, dismiss or judge others or their creations for being different, Hold onto prejudices when confronted with truth, spread false generalizations of other people, Dismiss someone's expression of themselves, Disapprove of a person just because they're weird or abnormal, Disapprove of or oppose a mutually beneficial relationship just because it's weird or abnormal, Judging another hastily, attempt to change others to be more like yourself

With the subsets of anti-racism: (anathema) advocate for the superiority of one culture over another
anti-specism: (anathema) Show needless cruelty to animals
And anti-ableism that I read a lot in Ardee but that I can't really quote.

There's also a lot of individualism with the subjects of:
Self expression: help people to express themselves, Events in life are not fair but people should strive to be
Self acceptation: follow your own laws, strive to be true to yourself, Be true to your own desires even when doing so harms others, if you’ve done no harm then you don’t owe people explanations for who or what you are, Redeem yourself for past regrets
Self improvement: train to achieve perfection, Try to suck a little less today than you did yesterday, learn from your past mistakes and successes, learn from the failings of others to better yourself and how you treat others (anathema) Refusing to admit you were wrong when you are, Waste not the talents that come natural to you.
I could even add: Seek advanced technology and use it

Anti-slavery positions: fight those who would oppress others (anathema) abuse...

To be completely fair though, this was going to be the natural course of the exercise. It's what "you" would be like as a deity, which means people are going to look at their own values, their beliefs, and their drives, passions, flaws, etc and make them into a deity.

Which means, if you're here engaging with pathfinder and the myriad of changes that have come about, you're likely not going to be the kind of person whose edicts and anathemas are gonna read like the biggest and loudest self report ever.

If the question was "You get to make the next Starstone god", the answers would be radically different because people would be looking at interesting characters to elevate, not their actual selves.

Like, I myself tried to look at my positive and negative traits. I'm tolerant of others and often am used as a person to give advice to others when asked, because I feel it's my duty to help others with that. I'm also very much someone who pursues entertainment and fun to my own detriment, I wouldn't have issues with time management and weight if that weren't the case. Stuff like nationalism, cultural supremacy, and the like just never came up because they aren't important to me, and in fact tend to annoy me enough to get me into a foul mood when I see people spouting about it. The only reason I didn't include family and stuff is like, if I were to include all aspects of myself as a deity there'd be like 15 domains and 10s of edicts and anathemas.

And when trying to fit into the confines of what Paizo does when printing a god, and sticking to that format as part of this mental exercise, you tend to prioritize what you care about the most. Which is what makes it fun in the first place, imo.

Crouza, The Ruinous Revelry

Areas of Concern: Pursuits of happiness, seeking joy in difficult situations, taking pleasure in others misfortune, tearing down those who oppose you.

Edicts: Find joy and fulfillment in living and help others do the same, help people to express themselves, fight those who would oppress others, make mockery of those who stand in your way.

Anathema: Dwell on topics of sadness or pain, Allow an insult to go unanswered, Stop another from pursuing fun unless it is harmful to others, Dismiss someone's expression of themselves.

Sanctification: Holy or Unholy

Domains: Introspection, Dreams, Freedom, Destruction, Zeal, Indulgence

Divine Font: Harm

Spells: 1st: Liberating Command, 2nd: Enhance Victuals, 3rd; Firework Blast

Divine Skill: Diplomacy

Favored Weapon: Machete

I am not that good of a person, I wish I was better but I know who I am, and I know that as a god it would take my best and worst tendencies and only make them worse. I myself have been known to pursue those things that make me happy to the determent of other things in my life, be it staying up a little too late playing games, scheduling too many pathfinder games in my life, eating a little too much, or spending more than I should have on dice and minis. Additionally, my own post history should show I am more than willing to fight others and die on hills in internet spats, especially if its to stand up or defend things I like, and make passive aggressive quips at those I don't like.

Combining all of this into a divine being would not make a good god. It'd make a god who can have good aspects, but taken to the extreme with nothing to ground me back own to reality. And the fact I know all of this about myself I feel would be incorporate as well, hence the desire to be true to who you are and be genuine, even if who you are is a genuine piece of s$#$.

This was a fun mental exercise, thank you for posting this prompt.

In this installment of Godsrain prophecies, Razmir seethes, copes, and malds, as cayden the lair does what he couldn't.

To me it's not even a debate, the character that killed the bandit did an evil act, full stop. Because if you've already managed to subdue the enemy enough to where all they can do is lay there and answer questions, the encounter is over. The threat this person poses is done, and it doesn't seem like there's any kind of pressing time limit. You should have killed them when you were fighting if you didn't want to be evil, instead of ending the fight and then killing them anyway.

A DM of ours did this for 2 players when they had to make new characters, they started 1 level lower than us and cause we did milestone, after they completed an adventure with us, they'd level up.

It was surprisingly okay, but I definitely do not recommend it. It caused way more issues than it was worth, and those tended due to a combination of poor tactics and lower level ended up going down more often than the rest of us.

I love this. I love the idea that the doomsday prophecy can't come true as is, because all prophecies ceased to work when Aroden died. But, that whatever force was aiming for this end of the world scenario is instead trying to manifest itself in a different way.

It makes sense in this system since bombs are just a martial item anyone can pick up and use. There's no point in treating them like any other weapon and excluding them from consideration for weapon familiarity.

I mostly take the view that there is room in tabletop roleplaying for the dark themes and sanding the edges of everything leads to everything becoming duller.

But that's mainly a stance I take for people complaining about darker themes in media, massmarket censorship where material doesn't get published because it could offend because most subjects with any weight can offend someone.

I believe that their are some roleplaying games that can reach the level of art, I have seen one or two streamed call of chuthulu games that were genuinely chilling and I have had moments in games I have played that transcended the game and the mechanic and became something more.

Most of the most memorable scenes I have roleplayed or seen were people (pc) standing up in the face of unspeakable darkness and horror and so I have to believe there is a space for such in roleplaying games.

You realize they aren't getting rid of combat, right? You still roll dice and resolve issues via those dice rolls. You people talk like Paizo staff came here and say "Violence is bad. No more combat in any APs" like a bunch of weirdos hyperbolizing when the Ogre's don't *check notes* sexually assault people as a joke.

Yeah real "endeavors to be art" there, making a reference to The Hills Have Eyes and Deliverance. The reason I harp on this specifically is I'm sick and tired of stuff like this being used as some kind of rallying cry to "fighting against censorship" that grips certain fandom communities. You for example use a ton of flowery language to frame this as a great loss of art and creativity and "Sanding down the edges" but what we're talking about is Ogre's violating people against their will and engaging in non-consensual sex.

You still face unspeakable darkness, you still face off against world ending evil, you still face off against monstrous people. The difference being is that Paizo is endeavoring to not just go for an easy shock value shlock for their players. Like f!!&ing Christ, they literally just got done releasing an entire horror themed AP and you're like "Mass Market censorship has killed the dark themes of pathfinder".

If the only dark themes that matter to you are SA and Slavery, that speaks more to you than it does to the setting at hand.

The Contrarian wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

What you're seeing in Pathfinder, Aenigma, is a reflection of how society has grown and matured and become more open-minded and welcoming to their fellow person in the past 20 years...

I just don't see it. People in the last 20 years seem to have become FAR more closed-minded and defensive then they've ever been in my lifetime. So, so many people today are just too terrified of even talking to others for fear that they will say the wrong thing and end up with a mob putting a target on their back.

Thing that I think is different is that 20 years ago people seemed to care less about people hurting other people :P

Back to ogres, as far as I can see, Ogres were never retconned to be nicer in pathfinder, it just become one of those topics that aren't discussed on screen in published material. Like discrimination, people enslaving individuals(they removed slavery as institution, but that would't mean that group of bandits wouldn't kidnap people to force them work as labor or etc), etc, exists in Pathfinder setting, but they are considered uncouth topics to explore in published adventures and left to home gms.

I don't really see why they would be retconned in future, I think people are kinda overly afraid of setting becoming sanitized when we have velstracs, eldritc horrors and plenty amount of body horror still around.

20 years ago you could casually just call other people slurs and that was seen as peak comedy. That was the entire joke as well, someone did something stupid and you called them R****d, or someone did something slightly effeminate and got called a F****t.

SA against a woman was not a monstrous trait that should only be tackled seriously but a joke to play up for laughs about how a character was "Just a bit of a touchy guy" with a laugh-track to accompany it.

For me, I do not get the mindset of someone who wants to return to those times. As someone who was both the out-group receiving the negative behavior, and as someone who committed those vile acts on others, it was a horrid time that is better off remaining dead and gone.

As for Ogres, I don't want to open up an AP and read "The Orge r**es the female NPC" as a plot point. There is nothing about it that services the plot than to make the Ogres seem more reviled. And if you're encountering Orgres they're already likely looking to kill and eat you, or possibly kill you by eating you. That's already vile enough for the PC's to want to fight them, without adding an element of sexual violence into the mix serve as meaningless edgy flavoring.

keftiu wrote:

I think the fanbase and Paizo's bottom line both prefer books with mixed player-GM usage, rather than books only a GM would ever buy. You can sell one Bestiary per Pathfinder group... but *everyone* in it might grab a book that also has new classes!

It annoys me and has actively turned players of mine away from buying certain books.

It is at its worse when they do a Dark Archive and stupidly split the GM content up and scatter it through the book.

I also wonder how many players are buying books these days with pathbuilder around. I know some folks like analogue, but they are getting fewer and fewer; collectors were buying everything anyway and can be discounted. I guess there is exploiting PFS players, but I know more than a few players who are annoyed at paying for a full book when only 1/4 to 1/3 is player facing.

You know sometimes, even when something is free, people willingly give their money to the maker of that product as a way of thanking them for the product that they get to enjoy. There are also those who enjoy the lore and stories those books have inside of them, the expanded descriptions that the Apps/Nethys do not post, and the art inside said books.

I want them to organize their book better than Dark Archieve, but the way you describe the process of getting this content makes it sound so...utilitarian.

I love the idea of changing directions of some monsters to be closer to their mythological counterparts, even if I do love the more pop culture versions of them. I also enjoy the transparency.

Funnily enough, the Mummy's abilities remind me of the 1999 mummy for some reason. I think it's the taking away abilities from creatures and sharing pain just for some reason strikes a familiar cord with me on it.

On the topic at hand, it is a little disheartening to see how long it's taking to implement the content. I've given to the patreon because they honestly deserve it, but it's starting to cause issues. I've had players who are used to using nethys citing the outdated rules for things, and it's definitely caused some confusion in our foundry game. "What the hell is Courageous March" type moments where they don't realize it's just the new term for Inspire Courage.

Sometimes I think the ambition to make a toggle may have simply been too much compared to creating a new tab for the Remaster. I can see why they might be hesitant to do that though, as its a ton of repeated content if they do. I really hope the manage to make a breakthrough and this doesn't end up becoming a major delay for the site.

Jacob Jett wrote:

IMO, Paizo could seriously help them out by handing them a copy of the manuscripts going to the printers so that the AoN devs can get a jump on encoding all of the changes. But the changes are so major that the workload is much greater than standing up AoN in the first place. (And speaking from experience, I might have simply rebuilt the whole thing from scratch since I think that might actually have been less work. Data and information are tricky this way.)

AFAIK they received a copy two months earlier than release, which I think is nearly a few weeks after the first previews of the Remaster were revealed.

Alchemic_Genius wrote:

The main issues is that they are really underfunded. It's just pateron and ads to work with as far as hiring people. If they are working as the official place to get information on the game mechanics they should be funded as such and not have to ask for donations

To this day I don't know what Paizo was thinking with Pathfinder Nexus. I get the wanted to have their D&D Beyond, but why give yourself the trouble to pay another company for a rules reposity + character creator when you already have Archives of Nethys and Pathbuilder. If anything, pay the guys behind those two to work on their respective projects faster and with more dedication. Archives of Netyhs in particular already works with Paizo, since they have DNAs and other stuff to not filter the content of the books earlier, so this whole situation seems really weird.

In this case though, I think something should have happened to the AoN staff because it is really weird is taking this long. They initially stimated a 2-3 week delay with the Remaster content, and it's not like they are unexperienced programmers that didn't know how much time it would really take for them to entry all the data and program whatever was necesary, so I assume something behind the scenes happened which slowed down everything.

I enjoy the way they format their content over both Nethys and Pathbuilder. That and the ability to get the PDF's when I want to from Paizo is also an added security to me should something happen to nexus. The normal PDF's feel a bit cramped for me compared to Nexus. I enjoy having links like Nethys does but formatted in a way more similar to the PDF, with the accompanying imagery and descriptive text not normally in Nethys.

The only real reason I use Pathbuilder 2e is because the mobile option is hands down the best way to play at my IRL games. If I am playing at my computer, I'm likely going to end up playing with Nexus because the layout for the sheet is more appealing to me, and I have the capital to give it while being happy knowing that the money I pay also goes to Paizo.

Low key, I hate the look of it.

Part of the beauty of R20 and Foundry character sheets is that they resembled the physical sheet.

Its one thing to improve the automation and make everything work better.
But don't reinvent the wheel: present it in a form where people don't have to hunt for things

Interesting. I'm the opposite if I'm completely honest.

To me it's like imitation meat. I'd rather eat the beans, tofu, or veggies prepared in a nice way that makes them taste good, then to see them pressed, contorted, and mashed into a "close enough approximation" of something else. I don't like being sold 1 thing being making it look like it's something else that I actually like.

Much the same way, if I want something that looks like the physical sheet, I'd rather just use the physical sheet for the full experience. The lead smears from erasing and rewriting my ammo and hp. The feeling of the paper, the actual look of it changes depending on the light you have available.

Comparable, digital paper copies just don't feel good to me. If it's digital, I want the interface to be a good digital interface that takes advantage of what makes digital interfaces good. Sleek design, collapsible tabs, easy navigation, links that can jump you to other sections or open up book entries, etc.

I will say that a full on rework of Fury would be greatly appreciated, as it does feel like it's lackluster compared to the other instincts. Perhaps make it's gimmick getting damage resistances earlier, or higher than other barbarians, in exchange for the lower damage. Would be nice to have something beyond Animal Instinct for those defensive barbarians.

Also the proposal for making rage just give Clumsy 1 is intriguing. Making it something that's likely to stack with other sources of -1 but also making it lower your saves could have some pretty interesting gameplay implications.

I don't think people really think things through when they ask paizo to get rid of the drawback to rage. The entire balancing point of giving you such large static damage bonuses and allowing you to use them the entire fight is because of that -1.

Without that, Rage damage and potentially Barbarian HP is going to be reduced. Or, Rage is potentially going to become an on/off state for the barbarian that is lost after 1 attack, and then has to be regained in combat. This brings a non-penalty rage in line with other abilities like Finishers, Spellstrike, and Unleash Psyche. Unleash Psyche is actually probably a good indicator of how Rage would be balanced, get a big bonus that lasts a fixed number of rounds, and then gain a negative condition that lasts a number of rounds.

Personally, I'd prefer rage remain as is. It's a risk/reward that works for the simplistic mechanic it is, and there's no reason to take apart a fence that's serving its job just fine as is.

Ravien999 wrote:

They don't have ownership of a common dictionary term being utilized for its understanding of a common dictionary term.

Yeah, Hasbro would never sue for saying "Humans, Vesk, and Shirren are different species" any more than they would sue a Star Trek RPG for saying "Humans, Romulans, and Klingons are different species" or a Babylon 5 RPG for saying "Humans, Minbari, and Centauri are different species."

Hasbro would never, except for early 2023, when they tried exactly that to leverage their market dominance over the TTRPG space. I never say that people would "never" do something once they've already proven they would.

I want to just say that I love expanding ancestries to include more details about them. I enjoy learning about their cultures, beliefs, and expectations because I love to play my characters either leaning into or going against those as the basis of my rping. Just more details are always appreciated and I personally think the strategy of making sure there are more ancestries in every release is a good way to approach the volume that existed in SF 1e.

I mean, Pathfinder already has ancestries that don't have parents or even relatives: poppets, skeletons, leshies, etc.

But I don't think having one-for-one substitutions replacing fantasy word for SF word or vice versa is really a problem, since the point of using the same basic rules is not so that specific characters are interchangeable. Like if they wanted to rename "Thievery" as "Security" and "Craft" as "Engineering" that would be fine, so I'm fine with either Species or Ancestry.

There's also another fact to consider. 5e changed their terminology from "race" to "species". So yeah, can't have that in the ORC.

That's so much extra bookkeeping and so much more homogenization for extremely little return. For myself, I already have a somewhat hard time remembering all the feats I've taken. Now I'm going to be adding 25 to 50 feats that I need to write down on my sheet, just because my character has a couple of proficencies in skills.

Playing a Rogue or Investigator with your rules would be an absolute pain because now every decision is going to need to be looked at thinking of every possible skill feat in the entire game and how it applies, all because some people didn't like this extra step in customizing their character.

IF you had this house rule at a table, I would legit request the ability to opt out of it. No thank you, I have enough choice paralysis leveling up than to have to deal with this horse s&%+.

The issue is balancing "I can fall off a skyscraper, dust myself off over 10 minutes, and be fine" with the hideous grind of editions like AD&D.

You really don't want to have to balance combats around PCs entering them with variable hit point pools. That way lies a barrage of TPKs. They did the right thing with 10 minute rests.

The issue is that it makes for some WEIRD interactions that you would never see in real life, where PCs are willing to walk through hellfire at the drop of a hat because they know it's just damage and they'll heal at the end with no consequences.

But that was an issue in PF 1E and 3.5 too. If you don't believe me, talk to my sack of wands of lesser vigor.

I was going to say, is it any different from the 2 room adventuring days that you'd get in pathfinder 1e where once your healer hits their limit for the day, you pack it up and try again tomorrow, even if it means the dungeon turns into like 7 in game days despite it being 1 session of time.

Crouza wrote:

My least favorite as of this moment is Lay On Hands because it feels like a must-pick option for any caster via blessed one. The bang for your buck return on a reliable 6 hp per spell rank every 10 minutes is just way too good not to snag, and I wish there were like, 3 different lay on hands style heal focus spells to make a bit of variety to this choice.

How does it have anything to do with "caster"? It's an archetype that has no requirements, based around a spell that doesn't care what your casting proficiency is. If anything, I'd think it was stronger for front-line martials than for casters, as the "range: touch" is much less of an issue when you yourself are likely to be the one that needs healing. There's one feat in the entire archetype that is significantly more advantageous to a caster than a martial.

Now, it is a pretty efficient way to turn class feats into party healing capacity, but it's one that anyone in teh party can do... and I feel like if everyone is doing it, then you might find that the market for party healing is a bit glutted.

Casters get easier, built in focus points. It means you can use lay on hands more often, and regain more of your focus spells. The new remaster rules for refocusing means casters get slightly better benefits from focus spells.

Granted however, Monk does get the same benefit. So yeah, it's good for all classes. I just wish there were more healing focus spells to make Blessed One/Champion not be so frequently picked.

Healing options are very strong in PF 2e, and sometimes border on too strong. Not because of their healing output, but rather simply because compared to other non-damage options, healing well and truly shines above both other skills and other spells when it comes to utility. But yes, healing is in a amazing space, S tier no questions.

Fresh Produce will never not be funny to just make a fruit or vegetable appear in someones hand. My least favorite as of this moment is Lay On Hands because it feels like a must-pick option for any caster via blessed one. The bang for your buck return on a reliable 6 hp per spell rank every 10 minutes is just way too good not to snag, and I wish there were like, 3 different lay on hands style heal focus spells to make a bit of variety to this choice.

I hope that Operative will be able to get a Trick Attack ability as like, a feat that you can optionally take. Similar to how with Monk in 2e, you can opt into having Ki or not.

I don't know, it's something I'd like to see with them not lose entirely like how grit was dropped from Gunslinger. Even though without the extra damage, I don't know what purpose it'd serve.

You know, I was going to say that letting you sell spellbooks for 1/2 cost of each learned spell was going to be too much, because it breaks the economy and make spellbooks too lucrative an item, but doing the math I'm not sure.

Let's say you find a 5th level wizards book. Thats 10 cantrips, 7 1st rank, 4 2nd rank, and 2 3rd rank spells. All together that's 90 gp, halved to 45, which overall isn't that much gp.

Karmagator wrote:

The only thing I've seen so far that SF2 for sure will not replicate is extreme character-internal synergies.

Oooh, yeah. Good point. That is another thing that they mostly got rid of. I actually miss it, kind of. It means that I can't seriously get my CharOp on as a form of recreational solo play. If I'm going to run serious character optimization in PF2, I need to know who my fellow party members are - both what their rough intended builds are as characters and what kinds of strategies I can expect them to support as players.

Even weird little detail stuff like "how many of my fellow players can be generally expected to have empty hands at any given time" can make a notable difference. Questions like "Can I trust my allies to hold back and wait for the enemy to come to us when appropriate rather than just charging in immediately every time?" are a much bigger deal.

BigNorseWolf wrote:

It is in no way , shape, or form "ridiculous", munchkining, or any of the other aspersions you're casting on other players to want a character with four arms to act like they have four arms and have it be SOMEHOW different than just slinging things in your pack.

That's true, and we're all hopeful that the four-arms thing will work out well an feel satisfying. That's not what they're talking about.

I've never actually played PF1 or SF1, but I have played 3.x, and I understand that the results were toned down but not by any stretch eliminated. I once put together a spiked chain specialist who could opportunity-attack basically everyone who did anything in his absurd-tier reach, and then trip them after he hit them... where "standing up", "crawling", "casting spells", and "making ranged attacks" all counted as "things I can punish you for". He was great at level 6, and would likely have been largely obsolete by level 10. I built a character who was able to consistently pretend to be four different races to four different magical items in order to punch... well,...

Sometimes I miss the combing through PFSRD or Nethys for every feat, looking up info on forums or reddit, cross referencing bonuses and what stacks with what, trying to backtrack through splatbooks to find out the wording on specific archetype abilities. I remember the first time I discovered stupid combination of things like Crane Stance and Swashbuckler nonsense because Dodge bonuses all stack, or when I found out the Power Attack + Furious Focus and trying to get Vital Strike to work with it on a Unchained Barbarian.

I've had other friends who made absolute beasts with stuff like grappling enemies or absolutely cracking magics, and it is fun...at first, for me. But the novelty has worn off as I have aged. Perhaps it's because I work as an accountant, or perhaps just having a job vs having more free time from when I was a full time college student. I have found my love of combing through all this infromation to build a character has turned from joy to dread, and turns a hobby I use to relax into one of tedium that I dread.

Even now I still get a lump in my stomatch when I realize I need to bust out the Excel spreadsheet to calculate what's happening with my character in PF 1e. Starfinder 1e doesn't have as much bloat, but I can see it now that I've played a more streamlined experience. I can see how Starfinder was written to be easier than Pathfinder in terms of what you need to make a good character. But it was done in the lense of someone whose favorite program is excel and who loves nothing but to dedicate a weekend to researching and theory crafting the highest bonuses one can get for a character to succeed.

It's not surprising, that audience was the cornerstone for pathfinder 1e, why wouldn't that audience also eventually move over to try starfinder out and bring that same energy with them. But building and trying to find out if I'm building a good character has dredged up those old negative feelings of needing to comb through Nethys to find out what I need to not make my character fall behind an invisible curve of game expectation, while also trying to not over-shoot it so that I end up overly dominating the game and cause the difficulty to raise for my less optimized party members. I do not enjoy this tightrope and it is why I am looking forward to SF 2e, so I can just pick up the game, make my character in 15 minutes, and be ready to just go knowing whatever I pick, as long as my stats are decent and I'm playing what my class is designed to do, that I'm going to be a-okay no matter what I pick.

The only thing I've seen so far that SF2 for sure will not replicate is extreme character-internal synergies.

One of the explicit goals of the system was to not have the game be won or lost in the character creation/advancement phase. So synergies were limited internally and many of the components distributed so that you would have to work together to achieve them. Hence the higher emphasis on teamwork is far from "corporate execuspeak".

And I don't see SF2 deviating much from this line, because that sacrifice helps solve a couple of very important problems. Those extreme synergies are one of the main reasons why characters don't fit into the same party. They are far too often either too strong or too weak for that level of play. It is also a core reason of why games like this break tend to break down long before the theoretical maximum level. Past a certain point it becomes a matter of trading super-attacks (aka "rocket tag"), as the monsters have to keep pace to still provide a challenge. Combat stops being fun, so people stop playing.

In my experience this sacrifice was absolutely worth it. On the other hand, if that is a main part of your fun playing games like this, then yeah that sucks.

I definitely am looking forward to a retooled CR system. Getting to experience old school CR has given me a reinvigorated appreciation to how good the PL XP based system for PF 2e is.

Crouza wrote:

Maybe you can help me out here. What is it at lower levels that I should be doing to experience this wonderful bredth of variety that puts Pathfinder 2e to shame?

3-5

Your mechanic is already seeing it apparently.

I'll sure hope so. I don't know if the beginning adventure is just particularly rough or if our GM is just not running it right, but it has been a very deadly and not-encouraging AP.

Like, we flew out to a derelict ship and had to fight like 5 asteroid louses who damn near killed us, and then got told "I removed the other 10 that were supposed to be on the other floors" cause of our near tpk. It's been...rough, to say the least. And it hasn't given me a lot of glowing praise for Starfinder as a system.

Like, not even Age of Ashes was this rough at level 1, and that ones notoriously rough.

Crouza wrote:

As someone currently playing Starfinder and starting at level 1, I do not see this mystical wheee factor that's being talked about. We've almost died 3 times during our playing of the beginner box.

you're playing level 1, just learning to play, playing the beginner box rules not the actual starfinder rules, and haven't had the chance to max out your credits going through the Sears Santa Catalog goodie list of gear for stuff yet.

That makes it a very hard reference point from which to see any real differences.

Your statement, word for word, "Starfinder lets characters do things at lower levels , ie, the levels you will get to AND the levels where you will spend most of your time even if you DO get the higher levels. Ysoki can have scurry and swift action cheekpouches right our of the gate whereas you need to be level 10 as a ratfolk and still don't have all the goodies that come with those feats."

I'm at lower levels. I'm at the lowest of the levels you can be. I ain't seeing what the you mean when you talk about this.

Maybe you can help me out here. What is it at lower levels that I should be doing to experience this wonderful bredth of variety that puts Pathfinder 2e to shame? Like, what lower levels is lower levels to you, so perhaps I know when I should expect to encounter this amazing time of expression that is currently lacking in my playthrough?

As someone currently playing Starfinder and starting at level 1, I do not see this mystical wheee factor that's being talked about. We've almost died 3 times during our playing of the beginner box.

I've made a Rogue for SoT and an Operative for the BB, and I feel like my Rogue has had a tremendously more expressive start. I made them with a 16 in their attack stat in PF 2e, and I have felt less punished than I do in SF 1e playing a 17 in my dex.

I have all these skills but nothing feels like it matters right now because I literally have nothing to do with them outside of Acrobatics. Trick attack lands 25% of the time I use it because I either fail the DC 21 checks or I fail to land the hit with my +3 to hit against KC.

Our engineer seems to be having a ton of fun hacking cause they've done stuff like shut off gravity or vent areas into space, but for the rest of us the enemies hit so hard and moving is so punishing, our only real engagement has been make an attack, miss, and than wait to get hit.

In PF 2e my Rogue was a Ruffian Rogue, so they focus on strength. I've felt like I'm able to actually rp my character in more inventive ways in PF 2e. My character got Survey Wildlife at level 1, and I feel like i've been able to rp with that and my strength to make a Steve Irwin esque person whose thrilled to wrestle and learn about dangerous animals. I've felt my character develop more and more into a vetrenarian who also applies their healing arts to their comrades by focusing on medicine.

So I guess from my POV, I feel like SF 1e doesn't have this facilitating freedom that I see priased as a selling point above PF 2e. To me it feels like the opposite, where I didn't pick the correct flavor of Operative, or didn't build them right, and now I get punished for it in-game vs PF 2e where I can make a less optimal build but still feel like I'm contributing to the game and having fun.

Operative being legendary was a mistake, sadly. It has the normal martial progression.

I'll wait for the actual preview for the Operative like we got with the Solider to see if that's the case. It's all in the air till we have something approaching concrete to actually see.

I think my biggest concern is that they make some of the SF2s classes worse so they don't step too much on the PF2 classes toes. Like the inventor shares a lot of design space with the most hypothetical mechanic classes, however it is mostly (curranty) unusable similarities, as the inventor does not work very well in a sci-fi setting, being firmly grounded in steampunkesk fantasy. Hopefully, they either ignore the inventor and make a great mechanic, or they reinvent the inventor to make it work in space. However, the worst case scenario is they don't want to change a PF2 class in SF2, nor do they want to step on any toes, and so leave a pretty big hole in SF2 that can only be filled with extensive reflavoring. From what we've seen so far, not stepping on a PF classes' toes seems to be a factor in the devs design, but that could just be for the CRB/early books. So hopefully that changes, or they are fully comfortable taking PF content and making it fully theirs. Or they use the fact that the inventor is OGL and ignore its existence, negating this particular example, but not other examples.

Considering we know the Operative has Legendary in Firearms, I would say the fear that they aren't going to make classes with similar niches to PF 2e is definitely not the case. The devs statement regarding the PF classes is "We don't want starfinder to be beholden to the idea that we need a "Fighter in Space" or a "Rogue in Space" like there was with Solider to Fighter, Operative to Rogue, etc. They seem to want to do their own thing. So IMO, they want to make their own classes that do their own things, and if they happen to cross paths with other classes, so be it.

Prof.Dogg wrote:

Perpdepog wrote:

I look at it as more of a "moving on" rather than a "burning down," myself.

That's a fair assessment for now, but I also foresee it as the obliteration of a fun game as it's assimilated into a larger game that is differently focused. All of these universal game systems (GURPS, HERO, etc) have their place but I've found a real comfort in Stardfinder being a unique world / system (even one based on Golarion's history). You can always bring in more PF elements as you wish but the universe of SF is so much greater. I especially like third party content that could be set in nearly any Science Fantasy universe. Grimmerspace had so much potential. I really wish it had gotten off the ground.

But it's not? Like, none of the things you just said are happening. Starfinder is no more being assimilated into PF2E than it was assimilated into PF1E or D&D 3.5; it's just using the same game engine. The two games are going to be compatible, but not perfectly so--this has been stated multiple times in multiple places. The baseline assumptions of Starfinder, everyone has guns, folks can easily fly, etc, are still going to be there ... all of which would make it a nightmare if it was being assimilated into PF2E, which hasn't got those assumptions.

As for the claims of PF2E being a "universal game system," and Starfinder's world going away, I've got no idea where those came from. I haven't heard any inklings of Paizo intending to broaden PF2E's engine out into becoming a full generic/universal system anywhere, and I consume far more Paizo and Pathfinder-focused content than is good for me. Starfinder's world is, as you've noted, one of its big selling points; it's pretty universally beloved, pardon the pun. Paizo would be shooting themselves in the foot to get rid of it.

It's wild to me as well to claim that PF 2e is a universal game system akin to Gurps or HERO because Paizo only makes the two games, and they make them with a ton of pre-established lore to boot. Universal game systems don't usually come with any lore, because they know the lore changes between the tens or hundreds of splat books. Paizo isn't publishing like a ton of different settings and then just having PF 2e do back flips and loop-de-loops to fit into whatever setting it has.

It's got Golorion, and then Post-Golorion, and that's it. That's your two settings, or arguably their one setting. Feels a lot like just doomposting if I'm perfectly honest.

Leaving aside the critique of their personal character, even if what you’re saying is true, doesn’t that all the more emphasize their point that AI has little utility to them, personally?

I mean, I took it as them saying things like character art and bios have no use for anyone, period. It very obviously will hold no value to them personally just as a new ferrari holds little value to me. I who get nervous if going faster than 60 MPH/97 KPH and who can't drive a stick shift have literally 0 purpose in this pure stick shift racing car. Character portraits and writing prompts are the only thing the AI does competently besides voice mimicking, which would take way too much time to process to be pragmatic to a game. If you don't value character portraits or writing prompts, AI is more worthless than Cortana on Windows.

1 - Character Development: I don't see any reason to use an AI for this like, at all. If I'm theory crafting I don't care about a bio or anything like that for a character. If I'm running something and I need a character on the fly, I'm a creative guy with some Improv training, I can make up an NPC faster than typing some junk into an input box. There is nothing in this realm that AI can do better or faster than me. Useless.

2 - Artistic Endeavors: I've tried using art for characters. I hate it. Very little pulls me out of my game faster than "Hey look at this picture of my character!" It does less than nothing for me. When my friends and I were starting a Return of the Runelords game I got all excited and comissioned art of my character so I could show her off. I've looked at it like three times, showed it to my friends once, and then it's just sitting in a corner of my drive unused. Waste of money. When I play online over some VTT, I can just grab an image of a sword or a bow or whatever weapon my character is using. If I'm feeling really picky I can design a character in hero forge or something, download the png, and then make a token out of a part of that. No endless typing of lengthy descriptions that you have to retype and retype and fiddle with words or anything like that. So again, AI is useless.

3 - Game Mechanics/Rules: Theoretically I am already using an AI to look up information on AoN or whatever. I just use the search bar on AoN, or Google, or whatever. Just as fast, get my results, and works within my whole "Okay, we're going to give it 3 minutes before I make up a ruling that we can revisit later." Three in a row, AI is useless.

Honestly, aside from my pedantic gripe that it isn't AI it's just some advanced algorithims, I honestly cannot find a use AI at all in my life. I'm not saying that my life and 'AI' don't interact, just that I don't make any effort to use it.

Especially the first part, and I hate to get all boomer, but this is a game about creativity and you want to hand that...

I'm going to be brutally honest, it feels less like this is a shortcoming of AI art as much as it is that you as a person simply do not have interest in certain kinds of creative expression. Not caring what your character looks like and seeing biography as irrelevant doesn't seem like it's something exclusive to AI art, at least from my pov.

The algorithms aren't doing anything that artists haven't already been doing for centuries. All art is, to some extent or another, derivative of someone else's art or idea.

I'm an artist (graphic designer/ technical illustrator) by trade, and regularly work with and associate with numerous other artists. Most are excited for the new technology and some will tell you that they would be flattered to hear that someone was trying to emulate their work. That's how artists are made.

I can totally understand the fear of losing one's livelihood, but demonizing the tech itself just doesn't make any sense to me.

The problem is the tech has no guard rails against abusive actors. Example, in the vtubing space an artist vtuber angered a group of people by simply saying she didn't wish her art to be used for AI. This group had their AI draw exclusively from her social media accounts so it was trained to specifically imitate her style, and then had it draw porn of her model in her art style and flooded said social media with that.

And there's nothing you can really do about that. Since so many places use algorithms to detect stuff, people reporting the porn got her own accounts punished for it alongside the harassers. It took the actual devs stepping in and manually banning the offending accounts IP address and tracking their IRL info down((this occured in china)) for it to stop, and even then the damage was already more or less done.

Such a thing can be done to anyone. Anyone can have their art specifically targeted as a narrowed training model. Until there is like, any kind of recourse at all besides "Grow adamantine skin and power through the harassment", I don't blame anyone for feeling intense fear at AI when it's already shown to be a powerful tool of targetted harrassment.

1. Character Development: I personally find that most AI's tend to be super generic in what they come up with character-wise, unless you find a way to like, trick them into thinking they're someone else? Like telling the AI "Pretend you are a famous horror author, who is making a character with these traits". Just telling it to generate a character with traits you want often turns out incredibly bland regurgitation of what you typed.

Personally, I find it more trouble than it's worth. The time it takes to finely craft and narrow down on a description means it's not good for creating stuff on a time crunch that a simple RNG prompt generator couldn't replicate. And without the time crunch, I already have enough time to write a flavorful idea without needing the AI.

2. Artistic Endevours: Yeah this is basically a great boon for anyone without art skills. I personally rarely need this due to my massive hoarding of character art scrounged from all over the internet over the course of like, 15 years I've been into TTRPGs and creative writing. But on those rare occasions you need something like "Elf whose skin is made of wood with vine dreadlock hair" it cane save me time to create than then trying to find it in my massive collection or find something similar on google.

3. Game Mechanics and Rules: Do not do this. The AI is very dumb and will lie all the time. My friend has ended up making wrong rulings or giving out treasure that doesn't exist because he used AI as if it were google to "Find me interesting treasure for a level 3 pathfinder 2e party." or "Tell me the pathfinder 2e rules for using a rope to cross a river." It has generated loot from 5e and 3.5, loot with 0 rules on how they work, said once than a Moderate Healing Elixer heals 2d12+12, and that monsters can use an extra action at the end of initiative if they are a higher level than the party.

The AI is f!$!ing stupid and a pathological lair. Do not rely on it for rules.