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I'll ask again: What's our plan for the next scenario? Originally we had planned Devil We Know part 1, then we had talked about potentially replacing it with A Case of Missing Persons. Does anyone have thoughts on which way we want to go? It looks like no real decision has been made yet. Since Kate and Lady Ladile haven’t played TDWK, let’s keep with the original plan and run those two.
Or have failures on the Aid subtract 2 from the best result, and critical failures subtract 4. Make the table need to think about it. Please, not that! It will make people less involved when it isn’t a skill they are good at. I want people to feel like they are contributing to the adventure. On the secret rolls, they would have to know that they are making the checks in order to Aid Another. Many Perception checks are made as a reaction, so those would not allow for Aiding. If they are searching, I see no reason to not allow it. It makes for less dice rolling for the GM. Personally, I feel they went a little too far with the secret rolls. I would have to look again at Treat Wounds, but I’m really not sure that is so bad. I would limit how many could help on that just because there is a point where there isn’t room for everyone to help. As for Disable Device, given my experiences with the playtest it might allow people to finally succeed! They currently require three or more rolls to pick a lock. In the adventures I ran, every single lock caused at least one breakage. The Disable Device has the same multiple rolls required mechanic where the chances of critical failure are pretty good. Another thought would be to say if there are any critical failures, you must have more successes than critical failures or the critical failure happens. Taking the example of a trap, if you had three people attempting to neutralize it and one got a critical failure, if neither of the other got some sort of successs (normal or critical) then the trap goes off.
The normal rules for Aid Another are that you have to pick who is leading in a skill before rolling. The person Aiding gives either a +2 or +4 to the skill check on a Success or Critical Success. I have seen a variant in multiple adventures for PF1 and Starfinder where everyone rolls, the highest result is the skill roll and you treat the others as Aid actions. I like this method a lot better since it uses the most favorable roll. If you have two characters as the table both good at a skill, it tends to promote a friendly rivalry (let’s see who finds it first!) and doesn’t make someone who rolled really well feel like their roll was wasted because they chose to Aid rather than roll for the skill. I know this would give a higher result than the current method, but is that really that bad? I would like to suggest this be the default Aid. I wouldn’t mind if the bonus from the Aid were reduced to +1/+2 because of the higher chances of success.
Life Science should play a part for another reason as well, so they know what foodstuffs are safe for the different races. “”Although the Vlara may look like canines, they have no problems eating chocolate.” I would probably make it with an Envoy, although the other ideas are good as well. If you were to do it with a Mechanic, it would more likely focus on different cooking utensils and best way to use each. More of an instructional chef, teaching people how to achieve various effects. You might even use Corporate Agent as the theme for that one.
Generally spellcasters will reduce the damage done to party members more than take out the monsters directly. Battlefield control is all about getting your people in a favorable position and neutralizing the opponents advantages. Fog Cloud to interfere with archers, Wall of Fire to restrict attack lanes, etc. They also have the protective spells and buff spells that allow groups to minimize enemy damage or gain an advantage. They also should be the ones most capable of countering or undoing the enemy magic, but in general that hasn’t been practical for most in PF1 and doesn’t appear that good in PF2. It does work with some cloud spells and light/darkness spells, but those are specific instances rather than a general ability to counter enemy magics. The Arcanist with the correct feats and exploits in PF1 can make a go at counter magic. Blaster casters are easy to understand and can play a part in the group, but they don’t tend to be the magic damage dealers against singular opponents. Note that in PF1, the ‘problem spellcasters’ were the ones that could take a boss out in one shot. There is a lot less of that in PF2 from what I have seen and I think this is a good thing.
IDK if I'd say that a string of lucky rolls is more likely to bring down a player in PF2 as you surmise but you could be right. But I think it's worth noting that due to the dying rules a string of lucky rolls is mch less likely to KILL a player than in PF1, so there is that. Think of it like this then: In PF1, the best you could do with a critical was 25% chance and that was only possible on certain weapons. Many of the highest damage weapons would have a maximum of 10% chance and that required investment. In PF2, just having a hit chance of 75% gives 25% chance of critical. It doesn’t matter what type of weapon it is, all weapons have the same chance of critical hit assuming equal investment. Some weapons (such as rapier) do more on a crit, but the chances of the crit are mostly determined by relative level. I do agree that the chance of direct death by crit is much lower in PF2 than PF1, especially at medium to high levels. I don’t have a good feel yet as to which is more likely to cause a death spiral because of a crit landing at the wrong time. Take out the wrong person, and the whole party is likely to go down.
Encounters are just as likely to put you against groups of monsters of lower level. The standard high encounter includes 4 monsters at APL-2. I've run several of those recently, and the PCs crit all over the place. If the monster does out level you, then you definitely outnumber it and can use stuff like flanking or demoralize to increase the chances to crit and hit. Debuffing is much stronger in PF2 than it was in PF1, especially since many of them will reduce the AC of the affected creature. Unless they are going to change a lot of standard plot lines though, boss fights are against something better than the group. I can’t think of an AP or module where that isn’t true. It is usually the case for scenarios as well.
Strange, because my reaction is just the opposite. First of all, I don’t find it particularly fun as GM or player to watch people the time it takes to total the dice. Watching people count dice is the opposite of exciting in my opinion. I also would rather the crits did less, especially since it is the NPCs and monsters that are going to be getting more crits. Often encounters are against opponents that are higher level than you. They frequently will have an attack bonus that has a greater than 50% chance of hitting. With the new mechanics, every bonus to hit also means a bonus to crit. This means that the monsters will crit more than the PCs. A streak of lucky rolls is even more likely to take out the PCs than it was in PF1.
Strange, because my reaction is just the opposite. I would rather the crits did less, especially since it is the NPCs and monsters that are going to be getting more crits. Often encounters are against opponents that are higher level than you. They frequently will have an attack bonus that has a greater than 50% chance of hitting. With the new mechanics, every bonus to hit also means a bonus to crit. This means that the monsters will crit more than the PCs. A streak of lucky rolls is even more likely to take out the PCs than it was in PF1.
How many weapons are you going to buy? How many can you *carry*? I had envisioned a melee weapon and a ranged weapon, and maybe a second melee weapon. Okay, and if you're a rogue, maybe a half-dozen daggers - but do they all have to be +5? Is an extra +1 or +2 really that important, especially for a secondary or tertiary weapon?Cost. You can only afford so many +5 weapons, even with a level 20's WBL. Never mind the not-weapon things to buy (+5 armor at the very least).having multiple weapons with the runes doesn’t seem practical.Why not? Resistance can be to Blunt, Slashing, Piercing, based on Alignment, material (Cold Iron, Silver, Adamantine). If the resistances are to be meaningful, you have to make them enough where it can make sense to switch weapons when facing the creature. If the damage from the magical rune on your primary weapon gives you such a damage boost that it more than makes up for being made of the wrong material, the only time someone will use the special materials is when they specialize in a certain type of creature.
Thanks! You have made it possible for us to play today!
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I just had a player drop from today’s Playtest run. The reason? They didn’t have time to build the character. Does anyone have a reasonable 9th level fighter build I can use to fill out the group? The original player had gone Human Sword & Board with Furious Focus.
I would like some of those to be handed out to the venture agents that have to organize tables. Sort of like the Glutton for Punishment boon.As a VO, I do not want to have to manage replays. I already have enough to do. I don’t want to manage them either, but I would like some help figuring out what people can play. The Glutton for Punishment boon can make that easier, which is why I mentioned it as an example. As an organizer at a location, having a few replays you can give away so you can run a legal table would be nice.
Some have alluded to it indirectly, but how does the potency rune figure into the golf bag of weapons that a warrior type is expected to have? Resistances have changed a bit, but they still exist. Creatures like the Barbed Devil have:
With something like that, you are not going to switch to a silver weapon unless your average damage stays within 10 on the other weapon. If your primary weapon is +2 but your silver weapon isn’t, you probably do not want to switch. You have some of this in PF1, I’ve certainly had encounters where just the loss of attacks meant not switching to a more appropriate weapon. It looks like it may be much more prevalent in PF2 because so much of your damage comes from the potency rune and having multiple weapons with the runes doesn’t seem practical.
If we need over a dozen replays, I would like some of those to be handed out to the venture agents that have to organize tables. Sort of like the Glutton for Punishment boon. Allowing someone to replay in order to make it easier to schedule a table is something I would love. I know this could be abused, but hopefully the venture lieutenants and venture captains would control that.
My technomancer has used Fabricate Tech to get a radio jammer (when the bad guys had a detonator set on a lot of explosives), a set of speakers (wanted to give a concert and has Profession: Musician) and a Tier 3 computer to hack with. It has proven to be more valuable than I had expected.
If I were to do it again, I think that I would have the group see Cybelle on the slab and smell the lurkers. When within 5’ of one, they would know what square a lurker was in. That would allow them to act in the surprise round without giving away the lurkers exact location.
Honestly, I would like some promises about this sort of thing because I think it would help keep people engaged in 1e. Being able to tell people that their 9th level Noble can hand down a knighthood to one of their characters would make people take notice. Minor mechanical benefits (such as giving Lore: Grand Lodge faction as a trained skill to use current playtest terminology) would also be welcome. I think there are a number of minor but colorful benefits that you could allow a character to bestow. I would prefer it not require a Seeker level character to do so, but even if it does that may cause more people to try and get to level 12. Please consider at least doing a blog to at least discuss this in more detail.
I like the concept of Option 3, especially as an organizer because I think it would create an incentive to run a variety of scenarios rather than repeating the same ones over and over. I am concerned about how anyone would track it. It is already challenging to track play history and replays.
I have an Envoy who will eventually get Skill Focus and Expertise in Medicine. Skill Focus doesn’t stack with Envoy Expertise. They both give an Insight bonus. Do one or the other, not both.
Medical Expert can be done by any class, although the Envoy is the best since they can get their Skill Expertise with Medicine skill. The only other class I know of that can get a bonus to that skill is the Operative. I agree that it doesn't compete with the Mystic for healing. What it does do is give other classes a way to heal people other than themselves. The Medical Expert allows you to do that slightly faster than normal and allows you to provide Long Term Care with just a medkit. Normally Long Term Care requires a MedBay or Medical Lab. With this feat, you can do it in the field. I don't think that Medical Expert is a strong feat, but it does fit some builds.
Really, I see the problem as hardly anyone gets better with armor. Just as classes have skill increases, I think they should get Armor Increases and perhaps Weapon Increases. Ways to choose where to focus their training with Weapons and Armor. We have a new proficiency system, but with the exception of skills we aren’t really given choices on what to improve.
Science Officer’s first priority is the ship scan. After that, targeting systems wipes out any patches the other sides enginerr may have put in place. Once you have hit a system, you generally want to continue hitting that system. They can also rebalance the shields, which may be better than diverting power depending on the situation. Engineer really hopes they can divert power, it is bad when they have to spend time on patches or quick fixes. On smaller crews, the Engineer and Science Officer are often the same person switching positions.
Thanks for the new avatars!
Although some of it is familiarity with similar rules from 3.0, I do think that the PF1 rules are slightly better. Neither is great, but PF2 requires you learn more of the rules before you can try to play it. They certainly need a better way of presenting the rules. Personally, a basic concepts section with forward references to where the details for something is probably the direction I would try..
When will we a scenario where the character levels aren’t all exactly the same? Right now, I’m concerned because it looks to me like being the low level person playing up is much more deadly and much less effective. Think of the person playing a level 6 on a 6-9 table, the bosses are going to be capable of critting about 25% of the time and almost guaranteed to hit. The spells will be especially effective against the person playing up and they will have less resources to mitigate it. I would really like to see some tests with a group of mixed levels, like it typical in a PFS game. In a home game, it isn’t too tough to keep everyone within one level of everyone else, but I really don’t see that as practical in PFS.
Walter, Hilary has already mentioned the PSA slots from PaizoCon 2017 that I ran. PaizoCon 2018 GM BretI, 141981-701
Sorry, I do not have any of the player information. I did not take a picture of the slip. I know it was legible because I remember the person at Registration reviewing it and pointing out I had forgotten the reporting boxes. That is where I learned that some locations cross out all the boxes to indicate no boxes checked.
One thing that I would like to add is that the new sections for each of the specials were at the end of each special. I think this was a big contributor to the the player fatigue. They had already been playing for a long time before they saw any new content. I have not yet finished the final section in any of A/B/C as a player. There just wasn't enough time to do it at mid to high level. I have played and GMed all three parts so far. I agree with everyone saying that cutting in the middle of a battle is extremely frustrating. I would love it if specials would have the transitions be a little more flexible. I love how it was done in the SFS Scoured Stars Invasion special. That solution wouldn't work here, but perhaps you could have a transitional section so that people have time to finish the current encounter they are in the middle of?
Dumping in PF2 is just not using a boost in the attribute. At worst, the penalty is -1 for normal play. Yes, you can take a Flaw but that isn’t something encouraged by the rules. Still, their assumptions with the skill DC table don’t seem to take into account that characters can’t be legendary at all skills nor have very high scores in all six attributes. Even at high levels, I expect many will still have attributes of 10.
Why not remove the level increases to skills and then have a table that has the DCs based on Easy to near impossible. If you removed it from skills, you would need to also remove it from Attack Bonus, AC and all the other things using the proficiency system. The system is meant to allow you to use skill vs. attack bonus, armor class or saving throw.
Given what I have seen of the surveys, they really don’t have the information to sort out how “hard core” a GM is. Filling it out as a player, it wasn’t even possible to indicate when a fight was ended by two lucky strikes.
CDGs are vicious. Focus fire is not vicious; it's simply smart. Any enemies with an INT or WIS above 8 should easily grasp this concept and should do it like their lives depend on it. Because they do.The GM is free to do this with any given encounter. If 2e's combat balance crumbles apart the GM decides to play enemies as especially vicious, then something as wrong. Strange, because I’ve GMed for plenty of tables where the players didn’t have their characters show that level of tactics. I’ve seen plenty of instances of players show-boating with something like “This one is mine!” and going one on one with an enemy. It is a common trope in fantasy media as well. Common bandits aren’t likely to work together like Roman centurions, yet I’ve seen GMs go “hive mind” and execute near perfect strategy. Typical goblin strategies when given often are sub-optimal. When their lives depend on it, some of those opponents should be deciding running while the others in their group fight is the smart move. The people trying to kill them would go for the ones still fighting rather than the ones running away. For anyone who wants to argue what is realistic, it might be useful if you bring in desertion rates in various military. Some groups are looking for tactical challenges and that is fine provided it is made clear what the setting expectations are. This is supposed to be shared story-telling so it is important that people understand the type of setting they are in.
I wish the surveys had asked what feats you would never take in each section. This would have potentially pointed out problem feats. If a large section of the respondents give the same answer, there is a problem there. Now that problem may just be people underestimating a feat, but in that case something should be done to show it is worthwhile.
I need to ask, how are you controlling the data so it gives valid results? Resonance use in a party with a Cleric is going to be very different than a party with an Alchemist. Use at low level will be harshly limited by funds as well since the consumables one might carry are relatively expensive. As people learn the rules, new strategies are likely to be invented. Changes to the rules will cause these strategies to adapt. You get into a situation where the changes cascade and it is difficult to know how to interpret the data. I like that you are gathering data and analyzing it. Please just have some checks that you have correctly identified cause and effect.
The fact that they combined the heigthened spells, the nerf of spell slots, and the nerf of spells is what makes me think Spellcasters in general are bad now. You have less spell slots - it could be okay by its own. But now, the spells have been nerfed, making a bunch of spells useless at their PF1 level (Mage Armor being +1 to AC only for exemple). And, now you have to heighten your spells to make them usefull : you need a 6th level Mage Armor (if I remember correctly, don't have the Rulebook on me at the time) to get back this +4 to AC, and you have to heighten Phantom Steed to get what it did in PF1, while this is a purely utilitary skill for a Wizard. Your argument would have been a lot stronger if you had either left out the Mage Armor or done a more complete analysis. In PF1, Mage Armor gave the same AC bonus as a chain shirt (+4) but started with a duration that may require more than one casting. In PF2, Mage Armor lasts all day but starts at about the protection level of leather armor. As you heighten it, it keeps pace with about where leather armor would be assuming you upgrade it. Heightened to 2nd level it would be on par with the Chain Shirt or magical Leather. Heightened to 3rd level it would be about where magical Chain Shirt would be. It continues to increase the protection and always has an excellent duration. In both versions the Mage Armor has features that makes it better than armor: no weight, no Dex cap, etc. You need to evaluate the bonus against the new values that armor gives. It is complicated since most armor gives a lesser protection against TAC and then you have the enchantments that give the save bonus. Note I am not saying there aren’t problems here, only that comparing directly against the bonus given by PF1 can be misleading because equipment scaling has changed as well.
There are a few worthwhile things left to put on yourself, like Mage Armor, False Life and Mirror Image.Actually, no, Mage Armour is abysmal because of the way armour proficiencies work in PF2. All you lose for wearing armour you're not proficient in is 2 points of AC; until the very high levels a wizard gets a better AC by just wearing the heaviest armour he can afford and not casting mage armour. Even if he didn't bother to get proficiency. And that way he can also dump dexterity to no higher than 12, rather than raising it at every possible opportunity to maybe be competitive with the armour-wizard's AC. And he doesn't have to spend one of his highest level spell slots. I can see multiple ways to work it. * Use your [max level -1] slot for Mage Armor. When you get level 4 slots, use a level 3 slot. This still gives you all of your highest level slots to sue for offense.* Buy Bracers, which give about the same bonus as the above Mage Armor with cash. * Spend a single feat for light armor proficiency and spend money on armor. * Spend several ability points and a feat on Fighter Dedication. Most likely this means a 16 Dexterity in which case you will not be doing heavy armor. You are still spending money on armor, but now it might be Breastplate instead of light armor. Only one of these options doesn’t involve spending money. None of them work at level 1.
You missed the most important detail on this spell. It does splash damage and swarms have a weakness to Splash Damage. Given past experiences with how much Paizo loves swarms, I think it becomes a must have Cantrip. Dancing Lights became less useful. Before it was a mobile light source, but now I’ve been told you become fatigued if you concentrate one a spell for too long.
Every software project is easy for the person that doesn’t have to do it. ;) Rather than continue down the rabbit hole of speculating on infrastructure, perhaps it would be better to concentrate on the use case so that they can clearly understand what it is we would like. It is very useful to be able to get a list of scenarios played by character. In most cases, it is better if the list includes both played and GMed. Sorting by date also helps greatly. As stated before, this helps people check the acccuracy of their records. If I had the option, I would allow public viewing of scenarios played on a character. This would make it easier to coordinate with others whne trying to select something to play and help a GM check if the character has done a linked scenario. Some of the scenarios link back to previous ones, incorporating characters and events from the other scenarios. Although I like it for verifying my own records, I don’t think there is a need to show event description/name (which usually gives away the location) or date. Just the scenario name should be sufficient. VCs likely need more information than the general public. Since I am not a VC, I will allow one of them to state what they need and how they use it.
Because you may want to multiclass into Wizard or Cleric. Another reason would be if you wanted 3 16s instead of 18, 16, 14. At 5th level, those 3 16s turn into 3 18s. Having an expectation of how long the campaign will last can make a difference in stat generation.
@GM Lorenzo Sorry, I was mistaken. I confused greypark for greysector. Oops! Bret
It wasn’t quite gestalt. You got half hit points from each class and the progress tended to be a little more than one level behind. Going triple class was a bad deal, you were far behind everyone else after they got to 2nd level. I do agree it wasn’t balanced, but neither was a lot of the other things in A D & D. We will hopefully see if the playtest version of multiclassing is balanced or not. I don’t think that allowing it to start at level one would create new balance problems though.
You could never multi class at level 1 before. Actually, you could in 1st edition AD&D. I can't remember if second edition allowed it, but I think it was AD&D 3.0 that stopped allowing it.
The reason they should start with two classes is that they split their study between the two fields. Instead of having this represented by cramming on the second class in order to learn it during 2nd level, you allow them to start closer to what the person was probably imagining -- someone who learned skills from both disciplines.
I agree that allowing them to start at level 1 makes sense for a number of character concepts, especially for the multi-class options.
Heya! This change to remove the sessions tab from /people pages was intentional and came from a view different vectors. Sessions are still viewable from your My Organized Play page.Why on earth would you do this? At a guess, the stuff in My Organized Play has minimal interactions and dependencies on the forum software. If that is the case, it may be easier for the web developers to change that section.
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