Brain's page

One more thing. We also had trouble trying to select spells for the sorcerer.

A lot of Cantrips were upgraded to give the casters the ability attack with magic any number of times, but some of the 1st level spells were nerfed so hard that they are much worse than cantrips now.

Command: It takes away 1 action from the target. 2 if you choose the action correctly.

How does that compare to a cantrip that does d8 points of damage on a touch attack?

Mage armor providing 1 armor only? Now every random monster can easily smash the sorcerer into the ground with their bloated attacks. Even a puny goblin warrior crits him 25% of the time! No wonder my player felt powerless during the whole session.

I have only read the cantrips and 1st level spells and I generally agree with your conclusions. Only exception is that I think burning hands is one of the best AOE damage spells. It has the same damage as the 3rd level fireball but on a smaller area.

Hi,

I have started the first adventure with only two characters a dwarven barbarian and a goblin sorcerer. As they didn't have any healer Keleri lent them a magical glove that can restore d8+1 HP three times per day. And I have also halved the number of monsters at each encounter. I thought that this will be enough to run the dungeon without serious modifications.

Well it didn't go too well.

The monster stats in the bestiary are ridiculous.
Level 0 goblin warrior with +6 attack? Seriously? The barbarian with +4 str had only +5! It made the PCs feel weak compared to the cannon fodder goblins. Especially the goblin PC who is coming from the same tribe, has level 1 and still has lower attack then the basic goblins. His words: "Ok, can I change my attack to +6 as well?"

With these inflated attack scores the monsters kept hitting the PCs all the time thus they quickly run out of HP and used up most of their healing to get back to around 2/3 of their max HP.

But that is not enough. Turns out a single lucky shot from goblin warrior's shortbow can easily deal 15 points of damage (deadly d10) and sent the barbarian two dying 2.

BTW: I think the class DC for monsters are missing from the bestiary. At least I wasn't able to find it. I could calculate it for a goblin warrior, but what is the class DC of a sewer ooze?

The PCs managed to retreat and kill the 2 goblin warriors and the commando (I have reduced the encounter) but the sorcerer also managed to hit 0 HP in the process, while the barbarian knocked out the goblin commando.

The basic playable monsters are not following the rules from the rulebook. Why? AC and attacks are misscalculated a lot of places. Just check the entries for Orcs, Goblins and Hobgoblins.

We also had a lot of trouble finding rules in the book. Despite the fact we used the PDF version where we could easily search. We had trouble with:
- How long does it take to draw a sword? (I ruled it as an interact action)

- You can ready an attack, but you can't ready a typical spell. As spells are usually two actions the ready action is not working for them.

- We didn't find the rules for grapple as they were not part of the list of actions. I have later found them under athletics. Nice that these special actions are listed under relevant skill but it would be really nice to have a table with all possible actions listed with short reminder stats/rules.

- Identifying a magic item. Again I found it under the arcana/nature/religion skill that you can use it like this. But does this mean that only a priest (or someone with the religion skill) can identify a potion of healing? Which means a typical sorcerer won't be able to do that? Is this the only way to identify magic items?

- We used the pdf that could theoretically have links in it, but it doesn't. So for example to look up what the fear spell does, you have to read the spell. Then flip over to the conditions to read the frightened condition and then flip over to the fleeing one. And a lot of spells have similar effects. Not to mention when a conditions refers to another condition (flat footed is typical).

- We spent around an hour trying to find out the stats for small weapons or some explicit rule saying that they have the same stats as the normal one. We gave up.

We didn't really made friends with the resonance points.
The dwarven barbarian had chr -1. Which means he has 0 resonance points. After they found a healing potion in the dungeon (I decided that the potion had a label, as they had no chance of identifying it) it was very strange that he basically couldn't drink it. I mean he could, but there is 50% chance that it won't work. Which sounds strange. So they decided that the sorcerer gets to potion, but it really broke immersion.

We loved the combat with the new 3 action system. It really simplified things. Although finding the rules for actions and conditions weren't easy.

One strange thing is the complete absence of attacks of opportunity. With no fighter in the group and among the monsters. Everyone moved happily around the battlefield without having to worry about generating extra attacks. No more defensive casting in front of the enemy, just fire the spell and move back. This felt strange after PF1. I am not sure I like it. With the 3 actions and the step action I don't see the reason to basically remove the AoO from the game.

All in all: We have mixed feelings.
We like the character creation, the 3 action combat system, but the PCs feel powerless. Compared to the monsters they have lower stats. They have fewer abilities. Races usually gave more abilities in PF1 now they only get a single Ancestry feet at level 1. Same for classes. A lot of class abilities turned into class feats. And you only get 1 per 2 levels. For some classes like wizard and cleric this is an improvement. But for others like monk and paladin this is a significant downgrade. So converting these characters or recreating them in PF2 would mean that they lose powers and capabilities in the process.

Currently I am not sure if we are going to transfer to PF2 at all.

Hi,

I have just finished reading the list of conditions. There a few oddities here.

Paralyze: It says you're frozen. But you only get the flat footed condition and you can't act. That is only -2 AC. You don't even lose your dexterity modifier to AC. How is it reasonable if you can't move? Not to mention that you also keep your proficiency modifier to the AC, which causes the following weird scenario:

There are two paralyzed frozen characters next to eachother. None of them moves a bit or wear any armor or magic items. But you can easily hit the first one because he is clumsy low level wizard. But the other is untouchable because he is a high level dexteritious thief.

Same goes for the unconscious and asleep conditions. Except the AC penalty is -4 instead of -2.

That doesn't feel right.

Thanks everyone for the clarification on the Resonance and spell rolls. You are very helpful.

The only thing I would like to point out that key information is hard to find in the book. Despite the fact that you can do a computer search.

Don't go by monsters to determine player rules. Monsters do not follow the same rules.

And yes, you do add your level to your AC. AC is a proficiency, like pretty much everything else in the game. A trained proficiency is not +0, it's Level+0. the level is always in there.

Thanks for the clarification. But I disagree that bestiary entries like orc (which could be payable class) shouldn't follow basic rules. Orcs, Hobgoblins, Drow or similar humanoid monsters either should have an explicit feat that makes them exempt from the rules or should follow the rules. I have no problem with ooze or golem having different stats but for basically playable races this shouldn't be the case.

As for the sorcerer. I am still not convinced. They look like a wizard who only memorizes once per level. Ok I am exaggerating here, but still, a 10 level sorcerer can only cast 4 first level spells. One for each one he knows is very close to basically preparation.

Hi,

We had our first session of PF2 where we spent basically 4 hours just to fill out the characters. I did an additional 2-3 hours of reading to rules beforehand. So I can say we spent around 6-7 hours just to get familiar with system and create the characters and I still doesn't feel confident. We have been playing DnD 3.0 and PF (and a lot of other stuff before that) for 25+ years now so we are not newbees.

The barbarian was relatively easy, but for the sorcerer we really had to do a lot of reading as basically all the spells changed.

Everyone loved the simplified system so far. Our biggest concern is that the book is not well organized. We used pdfs, because of the ability to search but it still doesn't help much in some cases. For example when I tried to find how AC is calculated. It took me 20 minutes to find it as it was only mentioned at a single place at character creation in the middle of a wall of text.

Please put basic rules like this (HP calculation etc..) in sidebar or some highlighted background text in big bold letters.

Even after reading the entry I didn't realize that you add your level to your AC. Profiency modifier is easy to confuse with the TEML modifier (-2, 0, +1, +2, +3). I tried to find examples in the bestiary that would help me decided. Boy it didn't help. I used playable races so that no extra rules apply.

Example 1:
Orc
AC: 13 Poor Breastplate (+2) + Dex (+1) + level 0

Orc Warrior
AC: 15 Breastplate (+4) + Dex(+1) + Level 1
That doesn't add up. So you don't add your level to your AC?

Orc Warchief
AC: 16 Hidearmor (+3) + Dex(+1) + Level 2
That adds up. So what is the exact rule now?

Gnoll Warrior
AC: 16 Leather armor (+1) + Dex (+1) + Level 2
Again doesn't add up, but gnolls might have some inherent bonus to armor class.

Hobgoblin Soldier
AC: 15(17 with shield) No armor listed + Dex (2) + Level 1 + Shield (+2)
Doesn't add up! Has higher AC than it should have!

Hobgoblin Sniper:
AC: 19 Scale mail (+3) + Dex (+4) + Level 4
Doesn't add up, has lower AC then it should have.

Instead of clearing things up it really confused me! Based on the few character examples I found online I assume you should add your level to your AC.
I have also found mentions to an unarmored proficiency, but I couldn't find it on the character sheet and it only has mentions at the monk class. Is everyone trained in unarmored proficiency? Can you raise it's level?

It would really help if there were a couple of examples of how you create a character online step by step. Same is true for combat. I don't feel confident in combat, although we didn't get that far yet.

Another thing we ran into is character sizes and weapon sizes. We didn't find anything relating to smaller weapon sizes and changed damage. We spent 30 minutes trying to figure out the damage of a Large sized greataxe for the barbarian. We couldn't find it so he finally changed the Totem instead. I have a feeling that it's intentional that now all small and medium sized weapons are the same but I only have that feeling because of a half sentence that is mentioned when calculating bulk of weapons with different size.

"Creatures of sizes other than Small or Medium need items
appropriate to their size."

That hints that small and medium is not differentiated, but it doesn't confirm it. It also doesn't help me with the Large sized greataxe problem. From the looks of it even giants have the same damage with the greataxe (fire giant) as halfling. I am not sure whether they use the greataxe in one had or two though...

After spending all this time trying to get familiar with the rules I still have a couple of concepts that are unknown:

I found references to a concept named spell roll. But I couldn't find what it's good for.

I have also found that there is a concept of resonance points which is related to activating magic items, but couldn't find a rule for it. Do you have to to spend resonance points when drinking a potion? What about continuous use magical items?

Also spells changed a lot. Some of the cantrips are really powerful now, like Telekinetic Projectile or ray of frost. But some of the 1st level spell are now basically useless like: Command (target only looses 1 action instead of a round), Mage armor (+1 AC). Negate Aroma: seriously this is level 1 spell? While Ray of Frost is a cantrip?

One last thing about magic. Sorcerer. I saw that you have unified the spells per day tables. Now sorcerers can cast much less spells. Also the number of spells they know from a level is lower. They will only know 3 spells from a single level ever. Combine that with the fact that they can cast 3 spell from a level only and I don't really see the great flexibility here that will make up for the lack of spell they know. In PF v1. Sorcerers were could last several encounters and still have some spells left. Now they are not better than wizards. They are much worse. My player didn't like that.

So we are past character creation, and we will start playing in the next session. I come back to report after that as well.

We spent around 30 minutes trying to find anything on this. Finally I only found a small reference at bulk conversions mentioning that anybody who is not small or medium sized must convert. That is when I came to the conclusion that there is no difference between small and medium weapons.

This definitely needs clarification. Especially for someone coming from pathfinder v1. Anyway we started searching for the damage of a large greataxe, because of barbarian.

There needs to be some way of determining who is targeted. A mechanic like aggro is needed to determine who is targeted. When players learn how it is determined, they will alter their actions to manipulate who gets hit.

I think what you actually object to is an effective taunt.

Yep spells and abilities that manipulate aggro directly are kind of mystic braking. Kiting and training is also stupid. Yes you should be able to trick a monster to follow you. For a while, and it may change its target for some easier pray.

Mobs: all mobs are working on scripts. No one has a real AI working. All they can do is make the scripts more ornate.

Nothing wrong with scripting. I mean the whole thing is gonna be written in programing language. But if you have mechanics like agro then you can't have smart monsters. I mean even the gods in EQ followed agro instead of taking out the crucial players among the attackers.

Anyway I should really gather enough time to read the blog...

EQ was released 99, EQ2 NOV 8 2004, WoW NOV 23 2004.

If anything, WoW is a more popular carbon copy of EQ2 since technically it was released before WoW. My point is EQ was released before WoW was developed. Check your facts, Brain... and yes, read the blog.

I know that EQ was the first, and WoW is the clone. But quite a successful one. Still your argument doesn't counter the fact that all fantasy MMOs are the clones. I said WoW, you said EQ. Lets have it your way.

I chuckle when people make suggestions like this. And I suppose you think that there's going to be a Human like this available for whenever a player starts such a process?

It's one thing to be a personal GM in a game of 4 people, 8 people, maybe 12. It's quite another to manage that in servers of hundreds of players.

No you misunderstood. This is a completly different game than an MMO. You go online to play this game with your team which already has a DM. Or try to join an open team which is looking for players or a DM. And most importantly: Its not about character building. If you let players write modules, they will write adventures that are just giving out a whole bunch of magic items and XP. If you want to prevent players from doing that, you can allow any level of character with any gear to be created.

I don't know how can you make an MMO that is not WoW if you don't change the fundamentals.
If you have these items in the game then it's still wow with minor tweaks
- Dieing is part of the game and has no real impact
- Mobs are brainless scripted automatons with the IQ of an ant
- You have missions like: Kill N monsters, Escort X to Z etc...
- Everything is about the gear. Everyone is a number junkie looking for gear with better numbers.

Brain

You're thinking maybe something like this?

http://kck.st/KLrAuE

Not exactly what I had in mind, but this looks OK. This looks like a layer above what I said, but could work yes.

Is it PFO?

Brain

The alternative to making someone program is GUI tools that write the code for you, but are so complex they are actually much more difficult to learn (and much more limited) than the type of scripting and 3d mapping you'd need to make a module in say, the single player NwN. Neverwinter Nights (1 and 2) is about as close as we've come to what you described, but creation there definitely had a technical component to it that limited the number of creators making "quality" content.

As I said NwN is a really good example that shows how can you make it as bad as you can. I tried to create a simple adv. and I gave up when I had to write a script to simply move an NPC from point A to point B then off the map.

It looks like that the whole NwN toolset was designed by programmers for programmers. Userfriendliness was not among the requirements.

I think there's a great market out there for the kind of product you describe, but as a programmer with 20+ years of experience, and as a gamer who's diving into the weeds of MapTool, I can attest that the product you describe is not at all simple.

The key challenge is automating enough of the DM's job that they find the tool useful, but without restricting them so much that they can't tell the story they want to tell. And then add in the fact that the tool has to be simple enough that a relatively non-technical DM can make it work.

In the meantime, a fantasy sandbox MMO sounds pretty cool :)

The funny thing is that I'm also a programmer with 12 years work experience. :) And I partly agree with you about having to code something if you want a fully automated module. But there are two things:

Imagine the following features:
Create NPC -> Fighter level 3.
And the NPC is created in full detail with all possible other parameters choosen randomly (and appropriately for a fighter). I should have to power to change things but if you don't want you can use it as is.
You can add it to a faction. And it will behave accordingly. If the faction is hostile it will attack the PC-s.
You can set up a patrol route for him with just a few clicks.

You can create a tile based dungeon, and just need to select a theme for it and the program will automatically put props and design elements accordingly.

Or I just click on a tile.
Add Trap -> Cr6
A random trap is created. I can modify it and change it from mechanical to magical, etc... But if I don't want I can use it right away.

Some basic programing is also possible with adding triggers:
Place based trigger.
Time based trigger.
Event based trigger.

What happens when a trigger is activated:
Everything I can change in a dungeon can happen on a trigger action. It's like executing a change transaction log.

Dialogs. I click on an NPC and type a possible dialog option for the PC-s. Then record my own voice or type in the answer. Creating fully bloated dialog trees is tiresome, but hey if you plan to reuse the adventure several times you might just do that.

Of course you should have an option for scripting AI behaviour in a popular scripting language like Lua or Python. But there should be basic stances for NPC-s which are pre programmed and created that you can use. Like: Searching for PC-s, Random Wandering, Guarding, following etc...

I think if you put all these together you can have a quite decent tool that you can use to create the environment really fast. The story itself is still problematic to create and of course if you require special AI behavior you can either do it by hand, or write a complicated script.

But this will mean that there will be a few Adventures out there that can be played without a DM. Mostly the "official" ones and some fan made.

There will be lots of adv. that you need a DM to play. But hey they are mostly created in advance, and you as a DM can just jump in and play an adventure that someone else created. Hopefully they also filled in the background story and the comments section for NPCs and objects that needs to be controlled.

If you add an adventure "like" system and a scoreboard it will automatically filter out the bad adventures and make sure that there are top adventures ready to be played by the players.

Do you still think it's too difficult to code?

Brain

Hi,

I just want to share my concern about having another MMO out there which is trying to be different from WoW but essentially remains the same.

I think we have enough MMOs out there already. If you really want to attract tabletop gamers why not create a game where I can tell my stories to my players. Or any other players that are online.

The server is just providing the environment, game rules, and graphics, that make the DM's job easy. I would like to have tools that help me create a dungeon or NPC or whatever in a few seconds. I would also like to have the ability to create dialogs for my NPC-s or just jump in and do the dialog myself.

If I create a good adventure it can be reused by other DM's and players. If it's fully automatic (eg all dialogs and events are precreated) then you may not need a DM at all.

If the whole thing is set up in a persistent world with some ratings for adventures then DMs and players can choose to go on adventures they like. It can create a strong self supporting community.

You can provide precreated enviroments to help the future DMs, and you can also add "official" adventures dynamically to the system.

This is a completely different approach to online RPGs then anything that is available now. Neverwinter Nights tried to pull of something similar, but the lack of good tools and bad scripting engine killed the fun of writing an adventure for it.

What do you think?

Don't know if would be any faster but there is the by chapter PDF.
Only thing there would be to know which one to search in

I use the by chapter version. The single file version is even worse.

Dear Paizo,

I've noticed that the core rulebook and the bestiary pdfs are loaded searched much slower then the beta version of the rulebook. You can even notice it on high end desktops but on it's a real nightmare on netbooks and PDAs, ve use during a session. Now searching the core rulebook is faster by hand.

Is it possible that you create a stripped down version of these pdf? (eg Removing the background, and some design elements.) This would help a lot.

Thanks,
Brain

So the paladin with higher stats then normal fought against a weak enemy he's specifically made to kill, and he did really good.

And you're mad about it.

And you want to completely cripple him because of it.

Why not just whip it out and slap him in the face with it?

Hi,

I'm DMing for 17 years now. I'm way past that stage, when I'm mad about the PCs beating a monster.

The reason I brought up this, because the paladin made the other PCs practically useless, even the paladin's player agreed that. And with so many evil foes in the dungeon this will be the case in most fights.

Yesterday we played with our proposed modification and it worked quite well.

For the others: Thanks for the idea of simply increasing the HP of monsters. I think it will make a difference, how I didn't think of that earlier?

Brain

Hi All,

I'll try to answer all the things that came up.

1. It's not a self designed campaign. It's the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. So I have a fix series of Monsters, 90% Evil. So smite evil work most of the time. Also because of the other party members they rarely do more then 3 encounters in a day. So the Paladin can use smite evil in all of them. Usually it's pretty obvious who is the toughest.

2. My mistake: It was a Juvenile dragon not a Young. But the CR9 was accurate.

3. It was underground. And they locked themselves in a small room. Before that they managed to take part of the dragon's treasure because they used a Bead of Force to hold the dragon in place (SR passed, save failed). They got lucky. So they had 10 minutes. But also the dragon had 10 minutes, and used a Mage Armor spell on himself. After the Beads effect was over, the dragon was furious and went after them. Broke down the door, and used the breath weapon (26 damage for 2 player). In the same round it lost 70% of it's hitpoints. The next round he tried to kill the paladin (did 25 points of damage), and failed, then he was dead. The paladin also healed himself in the first round using a lay on hands (+3d6 HP).

4. CR7 by definition should mean challenge for 4 7th level characters. So putting a bigger dragon is not a solution.

5. He has strong abilities. Yes. We used the DnD 3.0 point by method (it's an old campaign) with 30 points (25 is standard). But not that powerful:
Str 16 + 2 racial
Chr 15 + 1 at level 4

Even if I had raised the dragons abilities it wouldn't have mattered.

6. I don't expect the paladin to do as much damage as a fighter or barbarian. They have tons of other abilities that a fighter doesn't have. Fighter should be the best fighter in the game. Hence the name. Against an evil foe paladin can outperform the fighter if he uses the smite ability. But we are talking about dealing more than twice the damage then a fighter of the same level. (having the same abilities, and equipment). Together with the lay hands ability as a swift action, he is practically two fighters in one. This is what I think is too much.

Of course, you don't have to agree with me.

Brain

Hi All,

we had an encounter recently in my campaign featuring a young green dragon. My party consists of 3 level 7 characters. One of them is a Half-Orc paladin. He and the others managed to kill the dragon in 2 rounds. But without the others he would have killed it in 3 rounds. No big magic equipment just using class skills.

He has str 18 and chr 16. He used a nonmagical great axe. He had 2 rounds to prepare and used magic weapon and bull strength. And he also used smite evil.

So at level 7 he attacked the dragon:
+17/+12
He dealt
d12+24 damage
With each hit. No damage reduction.

He hit the dragon 4 times in 2 rounds for approx 120 points of damage. The dragon had 133. The dragon did approx 40 points of damage in these 2 rounds (breath weapon 1st round, 7 attacks the second).

My problem is that this should have been a CR9 encounter for a level7 party. I don't think it is ok for a level 7 character to defeat a CR9 encounter without effort. And he can do it 3 times a day easily, using lay on hands to heal himself in betwean battles.

I agree that the Paladin is the champion of good, but this is way too powerful. None of the other classes can do this. A fighter or a barbarian may be able to defeat the dragon alone, with luck and serious injuries. A spellcaster can maybe defeat the dragon with a lucky spell, but they have to overcome spell resistance too.

I know that nerfing classes are not a popular thing. I would recommend reducing the duration of the smite for a single round. He can still kill the dragon in 3 rounds but he is using all 3 smite attempts to do so.

What do you think?

Brain

Hi All!

Can someone explain me the change in the 2nd level darkness spell?

"Normal lights (torches, candles, lanterns, and so forth) and light spells brought inside the area of darkness can brighten the area, allowing a creature to see normally in the light’s radius."

So it brings darkness into an area if you don't happend to have a torch with you? Sounds silly. And creatures with darkvision can see in darkness now? Why?

Brain

Well, you are still considered unarmed and you provoke Attacks of opportunity by making ranged attacks, don't you?

Not if you take a 5 foot step.

I agree that the ray will be fired a bit more often, but I think that at these levels the sorcerer has some other (better) options in combat around level 20 IMO.

Only you are talking about level 20. I was talking about low levels like 1-5.

Dazing touch is more powerful than the Daze spell. there is no save, so it means do nothing if I touch you.

Well no save yes, but you have to hit with that touch attack. Roll (will) is replaced by roll (attack), and you have to stand in the target's treat zone.

Law:
Of course, but it can save your skin. You'll be glad to have it when you are running over a narrow bridge (you can use it after you've rolled...).

So does a fire arrow, when an ogre is charging forward and only has a few HPs left, and you hit him with a fire arrow. Come on, this is no argument.

Protection: Aehm, this power says that you have a +1 bonus whole day and it increases every five levels. You can give it to someone else for one minute, but otherwise you have it all day long... hardly comparable to resistance spell.

Right. I missed that. Than it's ok.

No save for madness... I think it isn't that bad at all.

Still you need an attack roll. And the std clerics (dmg) charisma score 12. Meaning a poor -1 on attacks and saves. +1 for friends. Even a 0 level guidance can do more than that. Not to mention the 1st level bane/bless.

And you do chose the spell, when you chose the bloodline...

Not exactly. You choose a list of spells and powers, not individual spells.

I still fail to see how evil means villain. A paladin having to decide whether to help a stern, cold-hearted judge, who wants to maintain order and peace in the city (LE) or support a well-meaning, but radical rebel (CG) who wants to help the oppressed by revolution that can easily end in mass violence can be easily placed among classics.

Evil doesn't mean villain. But means potential villain. The villain is someone the PC are not aware of. The first time they meet, they will no that he is a potential bad guy. And so all his servants (who are generally evil too). So the plot changes from "who is the bad guy on the ship" to "why is the captain the bad guy on the ship". Or they didn't board the ship in the first place...

Anyway what about Darkness spell and the Hold Person. Got missed in the big discussion.

Brain

Elemental gets d6+10 ranged touch at level 20
Abyssal gets 2 claw attacks each dealing 1d8 damage + 1d6 fire + strength (not that hard to buff), they are magic and you are not unarmed with them.

Still ranged touch vs plain attack. And do you think this power will be used by a level 20 caster. This is a low level power, should be balanced at low levels.

There are protections against this spell even in 3.0 rules. Undetectable Alignment and Misdirection are level 2 spells, ... I think you can look for something else yourself.

I know of these spells but doesn't really help. Only undetectable alignment last long enough to be ready at all times. Anyway detect evil is level 1. These are all at least level 2 spells. Meaning that the one who cast them can be 3 levels higher than the characters.

Or give them something that lets them defend themselves when something runs around the fighter (fairly common thing, not everyone wants to attack the fully armoured sword guy when there are unarmored spellcasters standing nearby -...

Rays can be fired to adjacent foes. So this doesn't explain it.

Please read whole text. Touch of evil makes creature sickened
The character takes a -2 penalty on all attack rolls, weapon damage rolls, saving throws, skill checks, and ability checks.
The fact that target is considered good makes the character vulnerable to spells like Blasphemy.

Ok, I reread it, and found that these are the problematic domains:

Add the bonus spells for bloodline, it will even things out a little...

That is still only an extra 1 level spell at level 4, that is not choosen by me...

Brain

Hi Fellow Gamers!

First of all sorry, but I don't have time to read all the other messages. Please forgive me if I say something that is already discussed. I'am also not familiar with 3.5 rules, We use the 3.0 books. I don't know if a specific change comes from pathfinder or 3.5, but it doesn't matter. If it comes from 3.5 and it's wrong than it should be corrected.

After 4 sessions of playing Pathfinder beta, and 8 generated characters here is a list of thing I found worth to mention.

There are a lot of thing that I like.
The new skill system: Good that the skill are simplified, getting rid of the half ranks was also a good choice. New abilities of races. Rage pool and ki pool. Paladin's healing. Sorcerer's bloodlines, and wizard specializations. Removed the instant death spells (now they deal lot of damage instead).

I was unable to find the prices of poisons.

Sorcerer bloodline powers are greatly unbalanced. For example Draconic or Abyssal bloodline's d6 claw attack vs the elemental's d6+1/2 level ranged touch attack. Same for Destined (+1 save in the suprise round vs resitance to fire 10), or Arcane's metamagic adept.

You should do something about the detect evil spell. It can kill every intrigue. A single paladin can convert a carefully created intrigue game into kill the bad guys hack and slash, without a saving throw. No real defense exits against it.

I don't know if this is on purpose but I think you try to bring the sorcerer to the front line, by giving him power's with touch range: Abyssal, Fiendish, Draconic, Fey, Infernal, Undead all have touch ranged powers.

Domain powers are also unbalanced. Fire Domain ranged touch d6+1/2 level any number of times vs law domain take 11 once per day per person. Or Magic domain's hand of the acolyte (permanent mage hand that can fight from the distant) vs Evil domain's touch of evil (makes some count as evil for 3 round). I don't think these need more explanation.

For my taste the sorcerer repertoire of spells is too narrow. A level 4 bard knows more spell than a level 4 sorcerer, which is ridiculous. I gave the sorcerer +1 known spells for each level, that feels like ok.

I see that the 2nd level darkness spell is useless now. The fact that darkvision can penetrate it, is ok. But it can be countered (technically) with a single torch. Are you sure that was the intent: "Normal lights (torches, candles, lanterns, and so forth) and light spells brought inside the area of darkness can brighten the area, allowing a creature to see normally in the light’s radius."
While you are at it you can correct the anomaly that is around light/darkness spells currently: light (lvl 0), continual flame (lvl 2), darkness (lvl 2), daylight (lvl 3), deeper darkness (lvl 3). My problem is, that the 2nd level darkness spell can only be countered by caster of at least 5th level. Or by continual flame, which is a bit costly. Light and darkness spell should appear on the same level (like in ADnD 2ed). So they counter eachother.

Copy n Paste error: Under Wisdom entry it states that wisdom is important for paladins, it turns out that it's not. Paladins use charisma for casting.

Hold Person: Good that you tuned this spell down. This practically was a 2nd level death spell. But now it's a bit weak. Let's say an opponent's initiative is bigger than the casters. Then he has 2 saving throws to make. Before the caster had a chance to do something. Even command is more powerful than this. The target should roll a new saving throw on the caster's next turn.

Endurance: "Also, you may sleep in light or medium armor without becoming fatigued." Shouldn't this be medium or heavy armor? Anyone can sleep in light armor.

Why did you remove the differences between different degrees of cover? Instead of 25%-50%-75%-90%, you have 1%-49% and 50%+. I don't know why was this necessary. It wasn't that complicated.

You tuned down the shield spell +4 AC (instead of +7). It stops magic missiles, but that still doesn't make up for the 1 min/level duration. No it's useless compared to the mage armor +4 AC 1 hour/level.

Combat Modifier. Good that we have a common rule for this. Bad that this masks the difference between the various maneuvers. I don't think that it's the same for the hobbit fighter to push the troll, trip the troll and grapple the troll. By changing the size modifier back to standard (but it's still called spec size modifier, for whatever reason), it's easy for a human to trip/grapple a huge giant.

That's it for know. If we play more I'll write more. :)

Brain