Brain's page

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.

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.

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?

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

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