Captain Caveman's page

Pet peeve of mine, so pardon my being pedantic again.

This isn't the law of large numbers. It would either be binomial probability or poisson probability. I'm not entirely sure which, and I think it depends on exactly what you are wanting to calculate.

It's actually the Law of Truly Large Numbers. Try something enough times and highly implausible results will still happen.

To the original poster: yes, PF2 plays a lot more like survival horror than high fantasy, particularly at lower levels. Even when you use all the advice given (and yes, teamwork, flanking, intimidation, etc. all matter), there will be times against higher level solos where you will be barely hanging on hoping to get some lucky dice before your party gets flattened. Or when a PC is trying something in their field of expertise and still failing about half the time.

It's not for everyone. Personally I don't love it either, but I have a group that wants to play it, and I like them more than I dislike the system. :)

An important thing to remember is that a +1 (or -1) on a d20 can affect 15% of your results, instead of the 5% that most people have been trained on by other systems. As opposed to PF1 or 5e, where a +1 modifier can only change a fail into a success, in PF2 they can make your critical fails into fails, fails into successes, and successes into critical successes. In practice it will come in significantly under that hypothetical 15%, because of things like crit fails not always mattering, but still, every +1 or -1 is much more significant than it used to be. Don't consider them minor or irrelevant bonuses. Try to grab them whenever you can.

Not having to put up with the baggage of arduous feat chains or hyper specific and ultimately underwhelming options was going to be one of the big great things PF2 could accomplish by standing on its own as a system.

Then one or two books out of core we're seeing highly situational circumstance modifiers, which in a way is even worse than PF1's since at least a lot of those were untyped and GMs are supposed to hand out circumstance modifiers when relevant anyways.

Plus feat chains that ask you to spend two feats that do absolutely nothing except let you qualify for a third feat that lets you qualify for a fourth feat that lets you qualify for a fifth feat that lets you qualify for the feat you actually were planning on taking.

That doesn't feel great and it reads less like a bold new beginning and more like... second verse, same as the first.

There wasn't anything inherent in the 1e mechanics that required the dev team to create junk feats or long feat chains. They were made either by choice or by mistake, depending on your beliefs. Whichever way you see it, though, they were a trend that didn't really change in all the years of 1e.

Given that 2e has basically the same dev team as 1e, why expect different results?

Or maybe things in the core RULE book are rules.... I mean, if you want to say because a shield bash says it "is not actually a weapon" this implies that is is a weapon, because... it's descriptive text for a weapon? You are trying to minimize *some* text as rules text but elevate other text. That's not a valid argument.

I do agree that there's a lot of ambiguity here, but to argue that we should ignore the description of the attack that specifically calls it out as "not a weapon", isn't really fair. There's text describing each weapon, so when a weapon is called out as "not a weapon", that's rules text that's valid to take into consideration.

Uhhh..what? There are things all over the "RULE" book that are quite obviously NOT rules. Like...all over the place. For example, nothing else in the list of weapon descriptions is a rule. They are flavor. "Staff: this piece of long wood can aid in walking and deliver a mighty blow". Flavor. Why aren't we all scrambling for clarification on rules for how the staff helps walking?

A shield bash is not a weapon because the shield is the weapon. You yourself referred to a shield bash as an attack. Why? Because a shield bash in the English language is not actually a weapon. It's something you do with your shield. It can be called an attack, a maneuver, an action...whatever...but it's not a weapon, hence the description. You wouldn't call a sword thrust a weapon either, but that doesn't suddenly call into question what a sword is. To describe a "shield bash" as a weapon is just linguistically incorrect.

I anticipated this response in my original post though, and you didn't answer the question that went with it: If the sentence for shield bash is a rule, where is the common language description of the shield bash? Every other entry in that weapon list has a description of what it is, so where is the shield bash description if the one sentence that is there is a rule?

Rules for shields are in the shield section: "A shield can be used as a martial weapon". "You can also buy and attach a shield boss or shield spikes to...make it a more practical weapon". You don't make something a "more practical weapon" if it isn't already a weapon. Even the "you can't put runes on shields" shows they're a weapon. You wouldn't actually bother to write that rule if they weren't weapons. What would be the point? You can't put weapon runes on non-weapons! You only need to call shields out as an exception if they ARE weapons and you don't want runes on them.

Anyway, I have no particular delusions that I'll actually change someone's mind on an internet forum, so this is probably my last post on the subject. Just realize you are quoting from a section that is clearly labeled "Weapon Descriptions", and that this section is otherwise universally just plain-English chat about the various weapons in the table preceding it.

...

Folks, you need to stop, take a step back, and think about the context of what you are quoting and what the authors are writing about.

For example, let's say you are an author working on a list of weapon descriptions for Chapter 6 of the PHB. Most readers know what a sword is, but maybe they've never met a real live gnome before and don't know what in the world a "flickmace" is. Thus, you have to write a list with a sentence or two for each weapon to describe what something like a flickmace actually *IS*.

You start your list, working from Alchemical Bomb through to Whip. You let people know that a Flickmace is "more a short flail than a mace...", and that the blade of a Kukri "curves inward and lacks a a cross guard at the hilt". You're working your way down through Scimitar and Scythe, and then you hit a problem...you can't give a description of what a "shield bash" weapon is. Do you know why? It's because...

"A shield bash is not actually a weapon, but a maneuver in which you thrust or swing your shield to hit your foe with an impromptu attack".

That's it. It's descriptive text for that "weapon", just like every other entry in that list. It's not intended to be anything else.

Or, alternatively, if you really believe that that sentence is a rule, where is the descriptive text telling everyone what a shield bash is? Why is that the only entry not to have a description? Why are there ZERO other rules in that list that aren't covered by the weapon table on p. 280?

Yeah, I don't think I'm doing 1am slots three nights in a row again. I might just skip them altogether. Those slot times make it almost impossible to hang out with friends afterwards. People doing other games are often wrapping up 1-3 hours earlier, and it's rough asking them to sit around idle for that long just to hang out for a bit (on a weekend where everyone is perpetually short on sleep, no less). Also, the restaurants have stopped serving food long before then...even getting a beer can be tricky that late. In the early days the Ram and others would serve 24hrs but most of that is long gone.

I miss the days when slots were 4.5 hours. There's no reason adventures can't run a little shorter. Lots of other RPGs only have 4 hour slots and still tell great stories, and 8am-12:30pm, 1:30pm-6pm 7pm-11:30pm is a pretty relaxed schedule.

I'd even settle for just skipping lunch. It's not that hard to eat breakfast, plan to bring a snack, and then grab dinner. 8-1, 1-6, 7-12 is still a huge improvement over this.

Hello,

You are correct by my reading Bihalurzakas. mostly due to the first paragraph in the Recovery Saving Throws section. "Recovery Saving Throws: When you’re unconscious, at the start of each of your turns you attempt a special Fortitude saving throw to regain consciousness, called a recovery saving throw."

As stated, you only have to make the recovery saving throw if you are unconscious. If you are conscious, you just have to keep yourself from dropping to 0 hp, and the dying counter will tick down automatically.

I was at that same table, and we couldn't find any rule that said you automatically become conscious once you are back to positive HP. As far as we could tell, the rule you quoted is the only rule for becoming conscious again, i.e. you have to make a recovery save with the DC of whatever made you dying in the first place. The DCs on ours were high enough that players were not regaining consciousness for several turns even after they were healed.

Maybe we missed a rule, but I checked again after the slot was over and couldn't find anything. Possibly it's a purposeful change to make combat deadlier, but I didn't think it made for a particularly great player experience. We had a couple of players rolling recovery checks even though they were healed up to half their max HP, and a couple of others enthralled by harpies.

I definitely agree that if we were playing it right it's unnecessarily clunky. It's not clear why you should have to be conscious for your dying condition to decrease. Positive HP seems like it should be enough? Spending round after round making recovery saves after you've already been healed seems a little questionable also. Just my opinion, of course.