I was thinking about the Pathfinder 2.0 play test and I was wondering how many participants Paizo would need in order to get feedback that is representative of the entire population of Pathfinder players. It turns out that the number is surprisingly small if my base assumptions are correct. These are my assumptions:

* There are 1,000,000 (1 million) or less Pathfinder players.

* The people within the play test are a random selection of the main population.

Then if I select the following parameters:

* A confidence level of 99%. Which means your answer is wrong 1% of the time.

* A confidence interval (margin of error) of 5%. This means that the true answer will fall within plus or minus 5% of the value obtained 99% of the time (since that is the confidence level selected).

Based on my assumptions and the criteria selected, it turns out that the minimum number of play testers required is: 665 people.

To put this into context with an example. If Paizo were to ask 665 play testers the question: should goblins be a core race? And the response was 80% "yes". Then they could be 99% sure that if they were to ask all 1 million Pathfinder players the same question the "yes" response would be in the range of 75% - 85%.

The parameters I have chosen may not be accurate, this website has a calculator which lets you vary the parameters.

https://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm

I was looking at a few different threads discussing the various character roles and thought it would be a good idea to create a consolidated list. Here is what I have so far:

Character Roles

Battlefield Controller. Typically a wizard, this character uses their abilities to change the battlefield conditions so as to be favourable to their allies and/or unfavourable to their enemies. This is effectively an indirect form of buffing/de-buffing.

Blaster. Typically a sorcerer, this character specialises in inflicting large amounts of damage to multiple enemies, usually through area of effect spells like fireball. A Blaster that can inflict huge amounts of damage but is relatively weak defensively is sometimes referred to a glass cannon.

Buffer. Typically a bard, cleric or wizard, this is a character who focuses on directly improving the mechanical abilities of their allies.

Crafter. A character who builds or supplies equipment, which could be mundane, technological or magical to benefit their allies. This is typically the party wizard.

De-buffer. A character focused on reducing the mechanical effectiveness of their enemies directly rather than indirectly through battlefield control or tactical means. The witch is the classic de-buffer character class.

Face. This character is focused on the social interactions within the game. Any character class can be the face of the party but in practice it tends to be classes that favour high charisma scores like: bards, paladins, sorcerers and clerics.

Healer. A character focused on healing damage and condition removal, sometimes referred to as the healbot. This is typically a cleric or oracle and other classes like alchemists and paladins can make good secondary healers.

Leader. The party leader. This character is focused on getting the party to cooperate and pursue a common goal. This can be any character class although in practice most players will build a character that makes sense mechanically, for example they may have high charisma and/or the leadership feat. The Leader and Face are often the same character.

Melee Fighter. A character focused on engaging the enemy in melee combat. This is typically a monk, barbarian, paladin or fighter. Melee Fighters often fulfil the role of Tank.

Ranged Fighter. Typically a gunslinger, alchemist or archery focused ranger or fighter. This character specialises in dealing damage to the enemy from a distance.

Scholar. This is a character who focuses on being very knowledgeable and sharing that knowledge with the other characters to improve their decision making. Mechanically this is a character that focuses on knowledge skills such as a bard or wizard.

Scout. This is a character who specialises in finding potential threats and other things of interest without revealing their own location. Typically rogues and rangers make excellent Scouts.

Skill Master. Also unkindly referred to as the skill monkey. This is a character with a large number of skills at a relatively high level. Their role is to fill the skill gaps within the party. Typical classes include: bards, rogues and wizards although other classes like alchemists, rangers and inquisitors can adequately fulfil this role as well.

Summoner. This character summons, creates or otherwise procures NPCs to support the party. This is most commonly summoners or druids but can also be specialist wizards like conjurers or necromancers, or any character class with the leadership feat.

Survivalist. This character helps the party find food, water, shelter and cope with various natural hazards. Typically, rangers and druids.

Tank. A really tough character that is hard to damage and/or can take a lot of punishment. Ideally when in combat they are positioned so that they can prevent enemies from engaging more fragile party members like glass cannons (see Blaster). Tanks are typically barbarians, fighters or paladins and often fulfil the additional role of Melee Fighter. In some groups the Tank is replaced with summoned creatures that are uncharitably referred to as meat shields.

Transporter. This character improves the mobility of the party. At mid to high levels this is usually wizards, sorcerers and clerics.

Trap Master. This character is focused on finding and disarming traps and opening locks. Traditionally this is the province of the rogue, but other classes like investigators and rangers have archetypes that can perform this role as well.

Have I missed anything?

Some players like to have highly specialised characters that are really strong in one area like an unusually high DC on a particular spell, untouchable AC or incredibly high diplomacy skill. Sometimes this can trivialise an encounter or have the opposite effect and expose a glass cannon.

How do you deal with hyper specialisation at your table?

I know what you are all thinking. What these forums needs is yet another alignment thread. In honour of this being the 666th thread on alignment (okay not really, but let us pretend) imagine each evil alignment were to state their case for being the most evil as follows:

Chaotic Evil: I am the most evil. No rule binds me, I acknowledge no master and have no principles. I wallow in my evilness leaving destruction in my wake.

Lawful Evil: I am the most evil. Only I have the discipline to pursue evil in every facet of my existence. I will be evil in every action and every thought until the end of all things. The others cannot claim such commitment to evil.

Neutral Evil: I am the most evil. The others are distracted by their lawful and chaotic philosophies. Only I am truly evil above all other things.

Neutral: You are all a pack of bastards. None more evil than the next.

Who is correct?

GURPS is running a kickstarter for their dungeon fantasy game, which is their version of D&D style high fantasy. I am of two minds about the idea of participating. I like the GURPS rules and the Inner Sea Region of the Pathfinder Setting, but I don't know if I can be bothered doing the rules conversions.

Here is the page if anyone is interested.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/847271320/dungeon-fantasy-roleplaying- game-powered-by-gurps/

The latest Tarrasque thread has got me thinking (always a dangerous thing). The Tarrasque does not instil the fear it should into high level characters, because every veteran player has memorised the entire stat block and theory crafted many different scenarios for dealing with the mighty beast.

But what if there were some important details, information lost over the centuries, that we didn't know about this fabulous beast? For example: a common tactic is to suffocate the mighty creature. But this is a foolhardy idea, many eons ago the Tarrasque chomped on a particularly delicious wizard carrying a bottle of air. The wizard slid down the gullet quite nicely but the bottle of air went down the wrong tube and got wedged open in the lungs forever making the creature immune to suffocation.

What are some other interesting ways to make the Tarrasque the formidable opponent and harbinger of destruction it is supposed to be?

I never really liked the idea that spells replenish every 24 hours. I am tinkering with the idea of having magic ebb and flow according to the phases of the moons.

The way it works is as follows:

There are three moons that cycle through their orbits every: 11, 17 and 41 days respectively. On the day of a full moon a caster may memorise new spells. About twice a year two full moons appear in the sky together and a caster may memorise twice the normal number of spells per level. Roughly every 21 years all three full moons coincide and this will trigger a major magical event (the kind mentioned in prophecies). Other astronomical events like comets and eclipses may have small effects, I haven't decided yet. Spell like abilities, supernatural and extraordinary powers replenish every day as per the current rules.

Obviously this scheme significantly reduces the power and versatility of casters, which is probably a good thing. I am interested in discussing the implications: pros and cons of having magic operate this way.

I was mulling over a background idea for a new Pathfinder campaign where Hell is at war with the Abyss.

In short: Asmodeus decides to expand his territory, his legions have grown in strength and numbers over many eons and they stand ready for a major invasion. But where to start? Invading any of the good or neutral realms seems a risky proposition, no doubt they would all aid each other and he could end up fighting a war on three or more fronts at once. But the Abyss has no allies, demons are hated by everyone, they are disorganised and their territory is vast, possibly infinite in extent. Asmodeus shores up his defences by signing non-aggression pacts with Abaddon, and the neutral and good realms and then marches his forces into the Abyss.

From this point events could transpire in many different ways, and I have not decided yet where the PCs fit into all of this. I thought I would open this up to general discussion. What are the consequences of Hell being at war with the Abyss?

In order to give a more mythic feel to the game perhaps we could use a different dice mechanic to the standard roll one d20.

For example instead of rolling a d20 for a strength check the player rolls a d6 instead and keeps rolling until they roll a 1. The result becomes the number of dice needed to roll a 1. So if it take 5 rolls of the dice before a 1 comes up then the result is 5. The advantage of this system is that it is theoretically possible to roll any positive whole number but larger numbers become increasingly unlikely. So truly amazingly high results are possible but unlikely. Using a d6 there is a roughly 16.667% (1 in 6) chance of rolling a 1 on the first roll giving a result therefore of 1. There is a roughly 1% chance that you will need to roll that same d6 25 times or more in order to roll a 1 therefore yielding a result of 25+. And roughly a 0.01% chance (1 in 10,000 chance) of getting a result of 50+. Possible, but unlikely.

The average result using this system will generally be equal to the number of sides on the dice +1. So for a d6 the average result is approximately 7, but since the distribution of results is uneven, low numbers (below 7 in this case) will be more common that high numbers (above 7). The occasional very high number is what brings the average back up to 7. If GMs think 7 is too low an average they can use different dice, although d12 is about as high as I would recommend.

Ordinarily it would be a pain to have to roll so many dice to establish a single result, but these days it is so easy to create a spreadsheet that can effectively roll hundreds of dice at a time, thus giving an instant result.

Below are the rough probabilities of results of 1 through to 50.

1 16.667%
2 13.889%
3 11.574%
4 9.645%
5 8.038%
6 6.698%
7 5.582%
8 4.651%
9 3.876%
10 3.230%
11 2.692%
12 2.243%
13 1.869%
14 1.558%
15 1.298%
16 1.082%
17 0.901%
18 0.751%
19 0.626%
20 0.522%
21 0.435%
22 0.362%
23 0.302%
24 0.252%
25 0.210%
26 0.175%
27 0.146%
28 0.121%
29 0.101%
30 0.084%
31 0.070%
32 0.059%
33 0.049%
34 0.041%
35 0.034%
36 0.028%
37 0.024%
38 0.020%
39 0.016%
40 0.014%
41 0.011%
42 0.009%
43 0.008%
44 0.007%
45 0.005%
46 0.005%
47 0.004%
48 0.003%
49 0.003%
50 0.002%

51+ 0.01%

I am interested to hear what others think.