Bronzemountain's page

GMs and players get to determine when an encounter starts. It's entirely possible to Avoid Notice and sneak past a guard (if you beat their Perception DC) without ever dropping into initiative at all. You only go into encounter mode when it's important to know what's happening round to round. Now if you fail the Avoid Notice, then sure, dropped into encounter time.

Similarly, if someone in the party is Searching while moving, the whole half speed/investigating thing indicates that you spot the ambush (or indications that there's an ambush) before you trigger the encounter. Sparkleface, the unfortunately named grizzled dwarven veteran raises a fist, warning the party that something is wrong - the animals are too quiet, a twig broke the wrong way, why does the air smell like kobold, etc. They then huddle together and decide how they want to approach things. Do they spring the trap? Set one of their own? Move around it?

The whole 'stealth for initiative, and do I see individual kobolds' bit triggers only if the encounter actually happens, which is not a foregone conclusion.

Bronzemountain wrote:

The Archetype/Class swap between Cavalier and Paladin is an elegant solution.

A bit behind on this due to site maintenance, but I wanted to comment; This notion only solves the desire for a mounted knight of any alignment. Now, I'm not super against making a paladin an archetype, but the reasons that I'd want to play a CG paladin are not solvable by the introduction of the cavalier. Hell, it took until the introduction of the Daring Champion for me to even think about playing a cavalier in 1e.

To me, they operate in fundamentally different circles, despite having a couple overlapping features, in the form of both having options (or actually not having options, in the case of most of the life of the cavalier) for mounted combat, and having a form of anathema, in their order and code, for cavs and paladins respectively. But the reason I'd play a cavalier, is for the tactician-style buffing ability on a non-magical character, and the reason for playing a paladin is a divinely powered non(-traditional) spellcaster, with the flavor of divine power from championing an ideal (notably, an ideal broader and more core than found in a cavalier's order's edicts). A cavalier was never a substitute for a paladin of non-LG alignment, even in 1e, and is incapable of serving the same purpose in any edition, even if it were made a class instead of an archetype.

You're right, and I agree with you actually. What I meant with Cavalier/Paladin swap was more in line with what others have been saying - have a Knight or Champion (I like Champion, personally) class that covers smiting on behalf of grand powers and defending the party. And make the lawful-good-only version either a subset, or an archetype.

Subclass/subset/class feat path allows for Paladin to be more integrated as a version of the Champion. Archetype makes Paladin a function of spirit, virtue, and intent, more than of skills, and that has some really interesting narrative possibilities.

The Archetype/Class swap between Cavalier and Paladin is an elegant solution.

For those class feats that require that the fighter is 'wielding a two-handed weapon', does wielding a weapon with the two-handed trait in two hands count?

Okay, Pathfinder terminology turned that into a diabolically messy word mash. Specifically, if a fighter is wielding a Bastard Sword (has two-handed trait) in two hands, does that count as wielding a two-handed weapon for the purposes of, say, the Reeling Blow class feat?

For people who are dead set on Paladin being a Lawful Good fixed entity, the solution is to make Paladin an Archetype. Thus, anyone in any class who satisfies the requirements of being an unwavering champion of goodness can qualify and advance (similar to Gray Maiden, etc).

This frees up classes to remain broader toolkits for enabling and empowering character concepts. And toolkits shouldn't be so narrowly focused on something as arbitrary as alignment.

And to reiterate, Paladins were not grand champions of goodness, historically (no more or less so than people with any other skillsets), they haven't always been LG in previous editions of dnd, and 'this is how they started' is a problematic argument unless you want Elf to be a class again.

On point 2, Animal Druid Adult companions, of course, have some amount of agency in that they can take 1 action (Stride or Strike) on rounds when they haven't been Commanded.

Just ran part 2 of the playtest adventure, and one of the PCs was a Gnome Druid (a ... Gnomad, if you will) with a snake fetish. His adult snake was pretty deadly at 4th level, with caster-level hp and a very solid 2 weapon dice attack. Critically, as a caster, it opened up 'melee + cast spell' options from a safe range.

That said, the snake got pulverized down to 0 in one of the fights. Poor snek!

It's on the Pathfinder Playtest page, in the downloads section, under 'Rules Updates'.

I actually sit mostly middle of the road in this debate, as I am a fan of divine champions of faith and battle, not just clerics, for all dieties, but the term Paladin I reserve for purely LG diety champions, both due to its actual history with Charlemagne (specifically the built mythos around him and his Paladins) and the history the class has built through the systems.

Charlemagne's Paladins, in addition to being the source of the actual word, are often cited as the inspiration for the class (with Arthurian myth, etc, coming in as well). But Roland and Olivier, most famous of Charlemagne's Paladins, provide us some helpful perspective.

Roland and the Paladins' heroic greatness basically boils down to one thing: They very bravely killed a lot of foreigners. They were generally decent people, certainly, but they were not shining paragons of lawful goodness as we might imagine.

One of the famous Roland and Olivier stories, for instance, involves Roland explicitly lying to Olivier so that he can claim all of the glory of a battle (not for God or country but for himself). There's a moral at the end of the resolution and Roland is taught a valuable lesson by Olivier, but he is not a paragon of justice. He is a paragon of heroic combat - of courage.

This LG nonsense is a nostalgic hangover based on a malformed understanding of historic antecedents and an alignment system that provides no utility beyond telling us what Paladins must be and what deities you can follow, as if there's no possibility for evil people to revere good gods (again, many counterexamples in mythology and history).

It's interesting to me, also, that people desperately want ranged Paladins (not supported by anything resembling tradition or antecedent) but believe they should be LG.

A class feat for both Fighters and Paladins that provided a ranged option keyed to Attack of Opportunity and Retributive Strike would be excellent. It doesn't have to duplicate the feature at range, but provide some linkage.

For instance, Retributive Shot as a Paladin Class Feat might allow you to use your reaction (trigger: ally in range takes damage) to add +1 damage to your next shot against the offending enemy. It's a feat tax, but at least you'd have some Paladin-y ranged action.

I haven't found answer to this though: Can you add a boost in the same phase where you get a flaw?

There doesn't seem to be anything that explicitly denies this. Your Ability Flaw is, well, explicitly not a Boost. So, if you're a goblin, you can't throw your free boost into Dex, but there doesn't seem to be anything preventing you from using the free boost to mitigate your Wis flaw.

Did I miss something?

I see a patern with ranger in recent years

D&D 3.0 - ranger sucks
D&D 3.5/PF1 - ranger is good class
D&D 5e - ranger sucks
D&D 5e UA rework - ranger is a good class
PF2 playtest - ranger sucks

PF2 release - we will see if pattern continues...

+D&D 4e - rangers are murder gods

Clearly the new elven ranger is a Halfling ranger with a Sling staff (1d10, propulsive). Highly accurate, no volley restriction, bit of damage bump, and can reload on the move (at 4th level, I think).

Bilbo is the new Legolas.

I think the action system in PF2 is excellent - so good that other games should poach it, in fact. It's intuitive, smooth, flexible, and fast. I also like deterministic character generation, as they've implemented it.

So, as others have mentioned, much of the core system is quite solid. But, there are fiddly bits. And those fiddly bits seem to have been made extra super fiddly in ways that impede rather than aid play. These, obviously, are much easier to fix than core system issues. But I hope they do get smoothed off and polished before official release.

These are things like Signature Skills, monster/PC equivalency levels, death and dying, 'exploration mode' and so on.

And finally, there are some issues with how information is organized (spells/powers/feats in particular). These are the easiest to change, and will make a huge difference all by themselves.

That said, the dungeon-habit seems really hard to break because Starfinder's treatment of zero-G is pretty consistently stupid.

Hey, just a quick thought on the +1 ranged damage some of the enemies have. Is that because they're level-3-equivalent and have Weapon Specialization perhaps? 3rd level weapon spec on small arms would, in fact, add +1.

Great report, by the way, and supremely useful!