Charlaquin's page

Also suprised none of larger swords do bludgeoning since that was point of using one to pommel people in armor, if ever actually used in war.

Generally if a weapon doesn’t do a certain damage type natively, but a player wants to use it in a way that would logically do that sort of damage (such as a pommel strike, or cutting with the edge of a spearhead, or something), I treat it as an improvised weapon.

Charlaquin wrote:

Bandw2 wrote:

Edge93 wrote:

Katapesh Fried Chicken wrote:

Game mechanics aside, why is there even a Bastard Sword in the game? It's literally a Longsword IRL. They're the same weapon...

Isn't a Bastard Sword what's also known as a hand-and-a-half sword? Which is different from a Longsword, isn't it?

** spoiler omitted **...

Very good analysis, though I would suggest that the primary distinction between “short*,” “long,” and “bastard” sword actually has more to do with the length of the hilt than the length of the blade. Also the terms referred more to the technique than to the sword. Longsword fencing involved the use of two hands, but there are depictions in treatises of swords with clearly two-handed grips being wielded in one hand, with shield in the other.

If I had my druthers, the breakdown would go:
Simple, 1-handed
Knife: 1d4 p, agile, finesse, thrown 10, versatile s

Martial, 1-handed
Dagger: 1d6 p, agile, finesse, versatile s
Bastard sword: 1d6 p, two-hand d10, versatile s
Arming sword: 1d8 p, versatile s

Martial, 2-handed
Longsword: 1d12 p, versatile s
Greatsword: 1d10 s, reach, sweep

*I prefer the term “Arming sword” over “short sword,” personally

The bastard sword in that example struggles to find a niche, just as it did in PF1 because why use a weapon that sucks both as a one-handed and two-handed weapon when you could just use a weapon that just deals more damage in either? In particular, your arming sword would be JUST as good as the Bastard Sword with the Dual-Handed Assault Fighter feat, which largely eliminates the use for a bastard sword at all.

That said, I really enjoy the idea of a two-hand only sword that's got reach, because that's really the core fantasy of someone using a giant f%#%off sword. I think that would make a great martial weapon, and a D12 version would make for an excellent advanced fullblade.

Yeah, in that setup, the bastard sword is a worse one-handed sword than an arming sword and a worse two-handed sword than a longsword. But I kinda think it should be? It’s a compromise weapon, naturally it’s going to underperform compared to weapons optimized for either of the two niches it’s trying to cover. And it does kind of have a use for the sword and board fighter, as two-handing it can give you a damage boost if your shield breaks after a block. But an alternative might be just to consolidate the longsword and bastard sword into a single d8, two-hand d12 piercing or slashing weapon. Then it’s strictly better than the arming sword (or whatever you call the one handed d8 p or s weapon), but I suppose you could just charge more for it. Or maybe you like... have clumsy 1 when you one-hand or or something?

EDIT: Actually I really like that last suggestion. Just get rid of the bastard sword entirely and make longswords d8 weapons with two-hand d12 and a property that gives you clumsy 1 when wielded in one hand.

Re: the greatsword, in my opinion it should absolutely have reach. Zwihanders, Bihanders, Montante, all those big-ass “swords” were, as near as we can tell, made for fighting pikemen/billmen/halberdiers/etc. They were really not used like other swords, which were sidearms, they had a completely different fighting style, which was all about swinging in wide arcs, keeping that momentum going, to keep anybody from getting close to you. I think d10, reach, sweep or backswing is nice and balanced compared to other reach weapons, and does a better job of modeling how such swords were (probably) actually used than jusr a d12 two-handed weapon.

i had written a bunch more on this but i'll just quickly recount what i said.

Longswords were called warswords, why? they're unfit for general protection or travel as they're very heavy, but are very deadly.

oh and longswords are called longswords because they're unique feature is how long they are.

arming swords were called arming swords, because they're cheaper and could more easily be used in the creation or arming of an army.

a cutlass is called a cutlass because it was basically a big knife to cut rope on ships while also usable as a sword.

blah blah, humans are great at naming things.

Yeah, ultimately what we call the different categories of fantasy sword isn’t terribly important. But it would be nice to have the categories break down by use. You’ve got your light, one-handed shank (I like “knife” for that, personally), your slightly longer, one-handed cqc blade (I like “dagger” for that), your long-bladed sidearm with a one-handed grip (I like “sword” or “arming sword” for that), your long-bladed sword with a two-handed grip, which may or may not be usable in one hand (I like “longsword” for this, though separating two-handed and hand-and-a-half into two separate categories of “longsword” and “bastard sword” works too), and your polearm with a swordlike blade (Honestly I’d just call this a two-handed sword, but “greatsword” is fine).

You could further break it down by differentiating single-edged cutting swords from these. I’d just lump the whole Elmslie typology into two broad categories of single-handed “long knife” or “backsword” and hand-and-a-half “war knife” or “great backsword,” the same way that the Oakashott typology gets lumped into “longsword” and “bastard sword.” And for simplicity’s sake I’d just call katanas “war knives”/“great backswords” from fantasy Japan.

I think for the sword stats i'd replace greatsword's sweep with backswing or shove, as the weapons benefits were it's ability to control people that moved beyond your reach and it’s a fairly large weapon and this hard to get past what with most of the weapon being a sharp edge.

I went with sweep because what few historical sources we have on two-hander technique involves a lot of big, sweeping motions, basically just warding any attackers off the big ol’ area around yourself. Sweep seemed like both a fitting description, and a decent mechanical representation for a weapon that is primarily used for fighting multiple opponents. Backswing would also make a ton of sense to me. Shove... I get it mechanically, but you’d need to narrate it as warding them off with your whirling blade rather than physically pushing them away with it.

Edge93 wrote:

Katapesh Fried Chicken wrote:

Game mechanics aside, why is there even a Bastard Sword in the game? It's literally a Longsword IRL. They're the same weapon...

Isn't a Bastard Sword what's also known as a hand-and-a-half sword? Which is different from a Longsword, isn't it?

** spoiler omitted **...

Very good analysis, though I would suggest that the primary distinction between “short*,” “long,” and “bastard” sword actually has more to do with the length of the hilt than the length of the blade. Also the terms referred more to the technique than to the sword. Longsword fencing involved the use of two hands, but there are depictions in treatises of swords with clearly two-handed grips being wielded in one hand, with shield in the other.

If I had my druthers, the breakdown would go:
Simple, 1-handed
Knife: 1d4 p, agile, finesse, thrown 10, versatile s

Martial, 1-handed
Dagger: 1d6 p, agile, finesse, versatile s
Bastard sword: 1d6 p, two-hand d10, versatile s
Arming sword: 1d8 p, versatile s

Martial, 2-handed
Longsword: 1d12 p, versatile s
Greatsword: 1d10 s, reach, sweep

*I prefer the term “Arming sword” over “short sword,” personally

It... might be working as intended, actually. Note what the CRB says about changing alignment on page 29:

Alignment can change during play as a character’s beliefs change, or as you realize that your character’s actions reflect a different alignment than the one on your character sheet. In most cases, you can just change their alignment and continue playing. However, if you play a cleric or champion and your character’s alignment changes to one not allowed for their deity (or cause, for champions), your character loses some of their class abilities until they atone (as described in the class).

“As you realize that your character’s actions reflect a different alignment” ... “in most cases, you can just change their alignment and continue playing. Of course, page 28 does also state that “The GM is the arbiter of questions about how specific actions might affect your character’s alignment.” But that still seems to me to indicate that in PF2, a PC’s alignment is meant to be up to the player to determine, with the DM providing a final decision when questions arise over specific actions. Under that paradigm, the sorcerer struggling against their bloodline would probably bounce back and forth between evil and neutral more or less as the player feels is appropriate, with the DM being the final arbiter of whether or not the character’s actions merit an alignment shift if it’s in dispute.

The suggestion of “I’m feeling a little evil, let me just change my alignment to reflect that” and “Oh, I’m over it now, so I’ll go ahead and change that back to neutral” as soon as the encounter is over may be a bit of a hyperbolic example, but in principle, it seems to be in line with the RAW. Of course, as the arbiter of questions about alignment, the DM would also be acting in line with RAW to tell the player that no, going back to Neutral is not that easy, and they will have to display a consistent effort to redeem themselves before that can happen.

This is excellent, thank you for posting it.

Most birds don't lay unfertilised eggs. Chickens are an exception

That’s not quite true; while it is relatively rare for wild birds to lay unfertilized eggs, the only reason they don’t do so is because they’re reliably getting their eggs fertilized in the wild. On the rare occasion that a wild female bird isn’t successfully fertilized during its mating season, it will still lay the egg, and even attempt to incubate it.

So, do tengu lay unfertilized eggs? Depends if she wants kids.

Charlaquin wrote:

Worth noting, the whole “an unskilled laborer makes X amount of Y currency per day” thing is very rooted in modern economic thinking. A feudal system just plain doesn’t work that way.

Golarion is not a feudal setting. In almost no places does it behave as one. It's much more Renaissance in technology, and almost 1800s in terms of things like schooling (even small towns have a schoolhouse, paid for by the town, and literacy is almost universal). Really, judging it by feudal terms is incorrect on a lot of levels.

Which doesn't mean we should focus too much on the economic system, mind you, but seems worth noting.

Right, sorry, Pathfinder noob here, not terribly familiar with Golarion. Feel free to disregard my earlier comment.

Worth noting, the whole “an unskilled laborer makes X amount of Y currency per day” thing is very rooted in modern economic thinking. A feudal system just plain doesn’t work that way. Accordingly, I don’t sweat the price of various goods as compared to the abstract income of a hypothetical laborer. For the vast majority of the population, what they’re actually doing is working land someone else owns, tithing a portion of the goods they produce to the landowner, and living off the rest. Most people rarely, if ever, exchange actual coins.

Charlaquin wrote:

graystone wrote:

Captain Morgan wrote:

There are other traits you could benefit from as well, such as using a Parry weapon in your offhand.

But for parry, you're using it more as a shield than actually attacking with it. A Main-gauche in an offhand for AC only isn't my idea of 2 weapon fighting.

That’s funny, because rapier and main-gauche is pretty much THE definitive two-weapon fighting technique. In real life, fighting with two weapons is relatively rare, and is most often done simply because carrying a shield or a two-handed weapon is impractical, but fighting styles that do involve the use of two weapons tend to focus on using one weapon offensively and one defensively (and changing up which is being used for which as the situation demands).

Ithink PF2 does a pretty good job of modeling reality with its rules for two-weapon fighting (or lack thereof). Whether or not modeling reality is a desirable goal in this instance is a matter of personal preference, but it seems to be the way they went with it here.

I don’t play fantasy games for reality, however. This argument is one of my pet-peeves of ttrpgs. If everything was held to the same standards as people hold martial combat, the true-to-reality assumption, then there would not be wizards or alchemists, dragons, or extraplanar travel.

Right, which is why I noted that it’s a matter of preference whether or not you consider modeling reality here a desirable goal. Personally, I don’t really care about realism. I do like that the advantage of dual-wielding is in expanding your options than in granting additional attacks, but I would like to see more support for wielding a matched pair of weapons (as long as it doesn’t invalidate mismatched dual wielding). I also think the agile trait looks a little weak. Maybe if having an agile weapon in each hand reduced your MAP to -3 and -8, that could kill both birds with one house rule.

If the intent of removing level bonus is to allow lower level enemies to remain threatening, what would actually be more helpful is robust horde/troop rules for large numbers of enemies. More than just stats for a few common hordes like zombies or orcs; the ability to convert ANY enemy into a horde would be highly useful, as it will both allow individual mooks of low level to be trivial to defeat for a high level PC, and to simultaneously allow an entire army of mooks to pose a truly epic threat.

I don’t know about anyone else, but for me, allowing lower level enemies to remain threatening is a welcome side-effect of removing level bonus, not the primary goal. The primary goal, for me, is to make the numbers more manageable. I’m with RangerWickett, give me +8 against a DC 22 Ofer a +23 against a DC 37 any day of the week. If trimming down the number bloat also makes it possible for PCs to punch above their weight class with the right tactics and keeps low-level monsters viable threats in large numbers, so much the better.

It sounds like there are two kinds of ‘feat tax’.

1) prerequisites tax; I.e. combat expertise

2) math balancing tax; I.e. iron will

I would put the ubiquitous ones into the second category.

There’s a common theme behind these. People call a feat a tax when they feel like they “have to” take it. “I don’t want combat expertise, but I have to take it because it’s a prerequisite for the feat I do want” is pretty universally agreed upon as being a tax. “I don’t want iron will but I have to take it because if I don’t I’ll fall behind the expected Will save bonus for my level” is a bit more subjective, but it certainly can feel like a tax. I think what it comes down to for the latter type is whether or not the perceived necessity of the numerical bonus is in fact necessary. Does the DM and/or the AP writer expect every PC to have Iron Will, and balance encounters using that expectation as a baseline? Then Iron Will is a tax, because you genuinely do have to take it to keep up. Does taking Iron Will put you above the expected baseline for Will Saves? Then it’s not a tax, it’s a true bonus you might choose to take over other Feats.

I know Paizo has teased a discussion about this in the upcoming APG.

Thing is, I don't think you need to much at all for the Core Rulebook to remove level from proficiency. Basically revisit the tables for DC (Simple DC and DC per level); that's pretty much it.

However.

For the Bestiary, it's a massive headache if all Paizo is planning to do is give us the advice "and subtract level from any attack, save DC or..."

What would be FANTASTIC is if Paizo were to issue a Bestiary PDF where level has already been taken out of all the numbers! :-)

I was not aware they were planning to talk about removing level from proficiency in the APG. That is fantastic news to me, whatever they do with it, because even just having it mentioned as an optional rule in a printed 1st party source makes it a much easier sell to players. An adjusted Bestiary PDF would be the cherry on top of the icing on top of the cake for me.

I like it, but I wish prices were always listed in terms of sp. The equipment tables in PF1 a rapier cost 20 gp, not 2 pp. Why does it cost 2 gp instead of 20 sp in PF2? If the sp is the standard unit of currency, it’s the unit prices should default to.

I haven’t looked at the pregens or starting packs, but is it possible that Bulk stored in worn containers (such as backpacks) is not meant to be counted against encumbrance? Would that be able to account for the apparent miscalculations?

Superstitious, as it was in PF1 was probably too good. And it certainly wont provide the same sort of scaling bonus to save against magic like it did.

I would expect it to be something like the Spellbane feat in Starfinder. A flat +2 bonus (at most) to saves against spells (and similar) abilities.

I don’t know about that, I didn’t really play PF1. I was talking about the Superstition Instinct from the PF2 playtest.

Charlaquin wrote:

David knott 242 wrote:

I recall from one of the Gen Con panels that it was the not playing well with magic-using party members bit. They didn't want that to be part of the core rules, but they might reconsider when they can give that option a more specific context.

Ahh, ok. That makes sense, even if it is a little disappointing. Ahh well, hopefully it’ll make a comeback in some later book.

As an aside, if there's something you liked in the playtest that got cut, it is really easy to add it back in for your homegame. I conveted the Cavalier into PF2 with zero issues.

Yeah, that’s probably what I’ll end up doing if it’s not going to be in the APG.

I recall from one of the Gen Con panels that it was the not playing well with magic-using party members bit. They didn't want that to be part of the core rules, but they might reconsider when they can give that option a more specific context.

Ahh, ok. That makes sense, even if it is a little disappointing. Ahh well, hopefully it’ll make a comeback in some later book.

I absolutely loved the flavor of the Superstition Barbarian in the playtest, So I was pretty disappointed to see that it didn’t make it into the CRB. I’m just wondering if it was just cut for space and might return in the advanced players guide or some other future supplement, or if it was cut for some other reason (e.g. not playing well with magic-using party members, or being overpowered against enemy magic-users or something.) Anyone have thoughts on the matter?

As a GM, should I be telling my players with Assurance what the DC is so they can decide whether to use it or not?

I certainly would, but I’m a proponent of always telling the players the DC (whether they have assurance or not). A lot of GMs are pretty vehemently opposed to that practice though.

Captain Morgan wrote:

There are other traits you could benefit from as well, such as using a Parry weapon in your offhand.

But for parry, you're using it more as a shield than actually attacking with it. A Main-gauche in an offhand for AC only isn't my idea of 2 weapon fighting.

That’s funny, because rapier and main-gauche is pretty much THE definitive two-weapon fighting technique. In real life, fighting with two weapons is relatively rare, and is most often done simply because carrying a shield or a two-handed weapon is impractical, but fighting styles that do involve the use of two weapons tend to focus on using one weapon offensively and one defensively (and changing up which is being used for which as the situation demands).

Ithink PF2 does a pretty good job of modeling reality with its rules for two-weapon fighting (or lack thereof). Whether or not modeling reality is a desirable goal in this instance is a matter of personal preference, but it seems to be the way they went with it here.

1 point for showing up each session.
1 point for doing something that helps the rest of the group in-character.
1 point for doing something that helps the rest of the group out of character.

Keeping it focused on helping the group, for me, makes it feel less like accepting a bribe or handing out a benny for “good roleplaying” and more like acknowledging something you did to make everyone’s night better.

Vidmaster7 wrote:

Yeah I've been saying that heavy armors should give a bit of DR myself.

Yes, someone in amour is not harder to hit than someone that is naked. The person in armour might be easier to hit, depending on the armour (more surface area, and they might be slowed a tad). Just if you do hit, either, the armoured one might take less damage, or no damage, depending on where and with what you hit them with.

Pathfinder (and D&D) abstracts that into AC. Higher AC from armor does not mean harder to hit, it means harder to hit in a way that will do damage. The surface area of a person in plate armor is greater than the surface area of a naked person, but the majority of that surface area is protected enough that hitting it won’t meaningfully harm the person. The surface area that is vulnerable is significantly smaller on someone in armor than on a naked person.

Charlaquin wrote:

I agree to an extent. It would be weird, for example, for a half-orc to start out not having darkvision, and gain it later when they leveled up. That’s a physiological trait, and suddenly developing it after killing enough monsters is super weird. On the other hand, I have no problem with an elf starting without proficiency in bows, but acquiring it over the course of their adventuring career, even improving it beyond other proficiencies at higher levels.

I agree, how do you feel about spellcasting, like drow gaining advanced innate casting as an option?

I can go either way on spellcasting, just depending on the fiction. If drow magic is an inherent trait, that drow just have the inborn ability to produce certain magical effects, then put it under Heritage. But if rather than an innate ability, drow magic is a tradition practiced in their society, then it makes sense to be an Ancestry Feat. I could even see, if all drow can innately cast certain spells, but the advanced drow magic is something that has to be practiced and learned, having the former be part of the Heritage and the latter be an Ancestry Feat that requires drow Heritage as a prerequisite.

I just think anything that fits under Aptitude could still be categorized as either inherent or cultural. Where is, say, goblins’ propensity for dealing fire damage coming from if not either their genes or their culture? These aptitudes don’t come from nowhere. Either gnome magic is in their blood, or the gnomish people have a tradition of practicing it, but the gnomish knack for magic can’t just have manifested ex nihlo.

Cylerist wrote:

I still think its odd that you need to advance in levels to become " better " in your race- oops ancestry

Agreed. There are a number of conceptual problems.

1. It seems odd to consider traits acquired by these Feats to be 'Elvish', 'Gnome', etc when most members of that Ancestry won't actually possess them.
2. Travelling away from your homeland and people to go on adventures seems like, it should broaden the mind and make one more cosmopolitan rather than move you some stereotypical uberdwarf.

Overall, it feels more like your character's mutating or something and, frankly, it's kinda gross...

I agree to an extent. It would be weird, for example, for a half-orc to start out not having darkvision, and gain it later when they leveled up. That’s a physiological trait, and suddenly developing it after killing enough monsters is super weird. On the other hand, I have no problem with an elf starting without proficiency in bows, but acquiring it over the course of their adventuring career, even improving it beyond other proficiencies at higher levels. Weapon training is a learned trait, so it makes sense that you might not have it at first, but acquire it over time. I think I’d really like this latest take on Ancestries, on the following conditions:

1. Ancestry Feats are entirely non-physiological. Weapon and Skill Proficiencies, bonuses against certain types of enemies, that kind of thing. Any physiological traits like vision type, special resistances, or inherent magical traits are exclusive to Heritage.
2. You get all features of your Heritage at first level. If my half-orc is going to be able to see in the dark, she needs to be able to do so from birth. If my dwarf is resistant to poison, it needs to come from her inborn dwarven hardiness, not from building an immunity over time.

5. While it's simpler than PF1 it still is going to be a lot of peoples second game coming from 5e since that is just the TTRPG landscape thees days. I think if they want to get players they should make sure it is an easy jump from 5e to PF2.

I think this is really important for Paizo to keep in mind. When PF1 came out, the majority of the 3.X veterans who served as the gateway for new players to join the hobby adopted it, which meant it was still a lot of new players’ first system. If you were a newcomer looking to get into the hobby, and you knew someone who played, there was a good chance you’d ask them to teach you, and there was also a good chance they’d tell you “You’ve probably heard of D&D, but D&D has kind of drifted away from what made it cool lately. You should try this other game called Pathfinder that’s like an unofficial spiritual successor to D&D. It’s what most of us have switched to.” Whereas, nowadays, a potential new player is probably more likely to look to streaming games like Critical Role than to veteran players, and most of those are D&D 5e. Plus, while many of the 3.X vets are still playing Pathfinder, some have gone back to D&D, as have a significant portion of the OSR crowd. So now, new players are more likely to play D&D first again, which puts Pathfinder in a very different position than it was when it started. Instead of being the 3rd party game that does D&D better than D&D does in a time when popular wisdom says D&D has lost its way, Pathfinder is the 3rd party game based on an outdated version of D&D in a time when D&D is doing better than it has done in decades. It can no longer sell itself on being the better version of D&D, so it has to find its own unique selling point. It will probably be most new players’ second game, so to keep them, it has to do something they can’t get from their first.

The blog where they first revealed that half-ancestries would be done as Feats did mention that, optionally, the GM could allow those Feats to be taken by characters of races other than human. But as we're still in playtesting phase, we should stick as close to the letter of the rules as possible in order to provide accurate feedback.

The problem is that if you roll a natural 1 on Stealth, the natural inclination is to change your mind about sneaking in the first place.

Player: I'm going to sneak into the campsite!
GM: OK, make a stealth check
Player: I rolled a 1... I guess I just won't go

But you've already decided to sneak, so to change now because you had a bad roll is metagaming, and in my opinion not fun. So to play it right you have to sneak knowing you have absolutely no chance of success, which is a bummer.

Player: I'm going to sneak into the campsite!
GM: OK, make a stealth check
Player: I rolled a 1... but you guys have to be ready to come save me when they see me in like 5 seconds.

Neither option is appealing to me. The GM rolling for Stealth in secret takes away the "metagame or suck" choice, while also keeping an element of risk in sneaking. If the player doesn't know what their Stealth check was, it's much more suspenseful.

This isn’t an issue if you only call for rolls when there is both a risk of and a consequence for failure. Instead of having the player make the stealth check as soon as they say they are sneaking, wait until they are actually within sensory range of something that might spot them. Then it makes sense for them to know they failed, because the creature will be attentive to the PC’s presence.

I see what you’re saying, but the thing is, GMs who want to make secret checks are going to make secret checks, whether the rules say to or not. I, personally, am a big proponent of all rolls being public information on both sides of the screen, and PF2 allows me to do that as a GM. (See page 294 - “The GM can make any check secret, even if it’s not usually secret. Conversely, the GM can let the players roll any or all of their checks even if they would usually be secret, trusting players not to make choices based on information their characters don’t have.”)

Ultimately, I think putting the “secret” keyword on certain rolls is going to have little to no impact on how most GMs run their games. Most folks will just keep making (or not making) secret rolls in exactly the same circumstances they always have. Mostly, the keyword just communicates to the players what kinds of rolls they can expect will most commonly be made in secret, and which ones they can generally expect to be public.

Draerden wrote:

In the past I've most often run settings involving great a great deal of skullduggery and in many ways I'm very pleased with the rogue in this new iteration. Many of my games have played out like Assassin's Creed, Metal Great Solid or Splinter Cell for example.

One thing that surprises me is the apparent lack of rules for eliminating sentries undetected or performing an assassination. This seems strange as the obscure concept of landing on people in aerial combat surprisingly has a rule! Have I missed something?

The addition of ancestral hit points for low level characters plus the lowering of sneak attack damage would seem to indicate sneaking into fortresses and eliminating common guards could be very, very problematic for low level characters.

Yeah, I was thinking the same. Adding to this, does stealth really work this way? If so, you could never use it as a skill to gain sneak attack. Paizo, you called it *sneak* attack...

From stealth skill's Sneak description:
"If you do anything else, you become seen just before you act. For instance, if you attack a creature you’re unseen by, that creature is not flatfooted against that attack."

It still works because of Surprise Attack. Since rogues treat enemies that haven’t acted yet in combat as flat-footed, it doesn’t matter if they see you just before the attack hits, they’re still flat-footed to you. That does mean only Rogues can catch enemies flat-footed out of stealth though.

1. No

2. No

3. Yes.

4. All of the above.

5. It’s very important.

6. I don’t believe accessibility needs to be sacrificed to gain the above, so no. But to be clear, I don’t believe complexity and accessibility are mutually exclusive. A complex game can be accessible if it is designed and presented well.

7. Of course.

8. I’d like to see more options at the early levels. More of the high level non-magical options becoming available sooner (for example, the Fighter Feat that lets you add your shield’s AC bonus to Ref saves is really cool, but really weak for an 18th level Feat.) Stronger non-magical characters in general. Less bonus inflation, especially at high levels (I’d be in support of just removing the +level to Proficiency and adjusting DCs accordingly). Fewer niggling situational modifiers to keep track of. Maybe a little less technical jargon - I like the clarity of the technical language, but it’s a little too much.

Tithron wrote:

No one is forcing you to stop playing PF1. Especially if you are really enjoying it. Paizo seems to be trying to reach a new market outside of "die hard 3.X fan" which is a bit of a niche. Time will tell how it goes.

Paizo is never going to win the 5e crowd. The 5e crowd plays 5e because of the name recognition advantage D&D has and because that system requires zero mental energy to create a reasonably successful character.

I honestly have no idea who PF2 is supposed to appeal to. On one hand it presents itself with far more depth than anyone interested in 5e would ever want, and on the other hand all of that depth is for nothing because trying to build Your Dude and making something that doesn't play exactly to the type Paizo envisioned involves trap option after trap option after trap option (hello, signature skills).

The world isn’t divided into “die hard 3.X fans” and “the 5e crowd.” As you rightly observed, the 5e crowd is not a fertile market for Paizo. But neither are die hard 3.X fans. 5e fans will keep playing 5e, die hard 3.X fans will keep playing PF1. PF2 is aiming for people who want more depth than 5e can offer, but less complexity than PF1 asks you to manage. People like myself.

There is absolutely a strength rogue option. The very first Class Feat on the rogue list, Bludgeoner, lets you use Sneak Attack with one-handed clubs and maces without the finesse trait. Amd you Slow the target when you crit with such a weapon, which is pretty rad too.

There’s no round 2, friend. The new edition is coming out in about a year. This is your one and only chance to provide your feedback, use it or lose it.

Fabius Maximus wrote:

Visanideth wrote:

Fabius Maximus wrote:

(Also, the fighter would be at negative hit points and close to death in your second example. I would imagine him bleeding out on the ground.)

Instead he's standing with 23 hp and full combat capabilities, so the question still is: did that 1500 lb sword hit or not?

He's lying on the ground bleeding. 23-31 equals -8, does it not?

Forget hit points if the "abstraction" causes so many problems. Let's use "unconscious and dying." There's no more abstraction. There's no more figurative anything. The state is what it is. It doesn't matter how you got there. It doesn't matter if you have "literal sword wounds." Or if you fell from a great height and broke bones, or just "suffered the abstract consequences of a great fall."

You are "unconscious and dying." It is what it is.

And the soup line of naked medics can still fix you up better than the cleric wielding healing magic.

Or at least, they can do more in volume. The clerics run out of spells. The soup line can fix a constant stream of "unconscious and dying" patients. Right back to full health. Thousands of "unconscious and dying" patients a day. With no resources. And no limit. Other than they can only see each patient once.

Yes, and 10,000 peasants can launch a spear at supersonic speed just by passing it from one to the next in the course of a 6-second round, but nobody cares because we understand that this little quirk is an unavoidable result of the fact that the game rules are not designed to account for such situations. But if you use them like a normal human being who isn’t out to prove that they can fabricate a situation where the system’s logic breaks down, then they work just fine.

Visanideth wrote:

Lucid Blue wrote:

Visanideth wrote:

Your example doesn't work because in the "floating in the energy void" case the character wouldn't be allowed the check to look for food, since he's floating in the void.

Yes it does. That's exactly what it does. I can search for food in any plane of existence. Even planes that don't contain food.

You still need to be able to perform the action of looking for food, which floating in the void precludes.

It's like wanting to hold a sword without having hands. The rules never exclude the use of common sense.

And I would agree with you. Except that's not what's in the book. The book is explicit. A master level Nature skill with Planar Survival "can forage for food even if the plane lacks food that could normally sustain you."

Bolder for emphasis.

The food isn't there. By fiat. But I can MAKE it be there, simply by searching.

Food that coins normally sustain you isn’t there. That doesn’t mean food isn’t there. The point of the Feat isn’t finding food where none exists, it’s derriving sustainence from sources you would not otherwise be able to.

If you go looking for ways to “dissociate” the mechanics from the narrative, you’ll find them. All RPG mechanics are necessarily abstract to a certain degree, so they will never hold up if you look at them too closely. However, if you pay attention to what the rules actually say instead of actively looking for the most absurd interpretation you can think of, you’ll find that most mechanics are indeed rooted in the narrative.

Balance and options are all good. But a lot of 4E mechanics were simply bits of math that got applied to the world, without ever explaining HOW or WHAT was going on. It was just a catalog of powers that applied math to a situation.. Which made it feel very video-gamey because it lacked any explanation or way to mitigate the effects. (But what kind of damage is it? How did I take it? What if I was protected situationally? Doesn't matter. Math is math. World be damned. Mark it on your sheet.)

You sure didn’t play the same 4e I did.

For the most part, it seems that Pathfinder has taken pains to avoid doing that. (eg. A DC10 tree is a DC10 tree. It doesn't get harder to climb as the PC's gain levels. Making the tree adjust it's DC for the climber feels video-gamey because there's no in-world explanation for why it should change.)

DCs didn’t change as characters leveled up in 4e either. That was a common misinterpretation of the rules (probably an intentional bad-faith misinterpretation in some cases), but how it was actually supposed to work was the same way it does in PF2 - The DC chart is based on the level of the challenge, not the level of the character attempting it. The DC to climb a tree is the DC to climb a tree, regardless of your character’s level, but the GM should be aware that climbing a tree is a Trivial difficultly task for a level 0 character. A more appropriate climbing challenge for your 15th level party might be a wall of ice in a rainstorm.

But then we get to things like Planar Survival... Where "you can forage for food [on another plane of existence] EVEN IF THE PLANE LACKS FOOD THAT COULD NORMALLY SUSTAIN YOU."

I can't think of a worse example of Dissociated Mechanics.. And it's exactly the DC10 tree issue. The plane DOESN'T EVEN HAVE FOOD. But you can forage for it anyway. The plane suddenly has food BECAUSE THE PLAYER LOOKED FOR IT. "Elemental plane of fire? No problem. I have Planar Survival! Let me scrounge up some berries. Negative Energy void? Pfff. There's small game around here somewhere."

I think “normally” is an important word you’re kind of brushing over. The plane of fire doesn’t have a lot of berries to forrage or small game to hunt, but it isn’t completely devoid of anything edible. Maybe the local flora and fauna couldn’t normally sustain you, but your mastery of survival is such that you know how to prepare these exotic ingredients in a way that makes them safe to eat.

Combat Medic is another. I can literally wipe away severe sword wounds in two seconds...

Either you’re ok with abstract HP, or you’re not. This isn’t something most people are ever going to be convinced to change their stance on. To me, battle medic is perfectly reasonable because being at less than full HP doesn’t necessarily mean “severe sword wound”, restoring HP doesn’t necessarily mean the injuries recover completely, and being at full HP doesn’t necessarily mean you’re in perfect health. If you view HP in a more concrete sense, then non-magical healing is always going to seem off to you.

kogarou wrote:

In order to schedule players, I need an estimate of how many 2 or 4 hour sessions are required for each Part of Doomsday Dawn. Can we do one 4-hour session every 3 weeks, or will we need weekly play of our typical 3-hour sessions?

I mean, hopefully this info will be in the PDF tomorrow, but getting a group together and scheduling is hard - I can use all the time I can get. Anyone have a good sense for the timing?

I think each section is meant to be roughly 8 hours or less total playtime, so 2 4-hour sessions during each two week schedule.

I'll see if I can scrounge up the quote.

EDIT:
I'll continue searching (although I'm afraid that it might have been in one of the Friday live shows it was mentioned), meanwhile here's something to give an idea:

Mark Seifter wrote:

Shadrayl of the Mountain wrote:

Mark Seifter wrote:

Shadrayl of the Mountain wrote:

It's been mentioned that we'll have about two weeks for each segment of Doomsday Dawn in the playtest. Is there going to be maybe an extra week at the start to allow GMs time to read the adventure 1st?

Personally, I plan on running playtests for several different groups if possible, but I like to read adventures at least 3 times before I run them, in order to really do it justice.

Ah, I didn't remember the two week thing had been mentioned, and that was what I was dancing around before. It's not a hard limit by any means; it's sort of Jason's best guess for a good pacing to give most weekly groups time to run it and then we all (by which I mean the designers as well as all of you) talk about how that chapter went in particular as a group, but if your group marches to the beat of a different drummer (either faster or slower), you will absolutely still be able to do your thing and send in your survey results, you just might be off-synch with our most direct discussion focus or videos.

Thanks for the clarification, Mark! I was wondering if it was going to be a "pencils down!"

...

Thank you so much! This is extremely helpful information, and very much puts my mind at ease.

So... I have a game going on currently, that will probably take about a month to wrap up. I really want to run Doomsday Dawn, but I won't be able to start until my current game ends. Will my group still be able to provide feedback on the playtest if our surveys are in a month or so late? Or will the devs already have moved on to the next round of surveys by the time we get ours for the previous period in?

I guess what I'm asking is, how strict are these two-ish week windows? If we start doing the 1st-level character segment 9/3, will our feedback still be taken into account, or will the devs already be focused on the surveys for the 8/27 4th level character segment?

While the Action Economy is my favourite part (I also use the RAE from Unchained, with a few extra tweaks to help it along), but all the micro-action terms: Operate Activation action, Basic interact action, etc, have me concerned.

I agree, but I’m cautiously optimistic that most of these jargon terms aren’t going to matter much in play, and are mostly there to allow the devs to use more precise technical language in the text.

Souphin wrote:

Does this means just carry several shields?

You can:

- Carry several shields. (If they’re available at first level, they’re eventually pretty cheap.)
- Only block one attack per combat and repair after.
- Learn the Shield cantrip as a backup.

I’m pretty sure your second bullet point is the way the Power is intended to be used, and all the stuff about hardness and dents is there to obfuscate the fact that Shield Block is, functionally, an Encounter Power. Your third bullet point is just the Wizard version of the Power, which gets away with being more direct about its one-minute cooldown because it’s a spell.

Re: I like playing characters with “non-viable” Multiclass combinations! Does that mean I’m having badwrongfun?”.

No. You’re not having badwrongfun. Obviously, if it’s more important to you to express your character by having the combination of class names and numbers you want on your character sheet than it is for that character to be able to contribute to the party on the same level as optimized characters, that’s torally fine. You do you. But you’re not the only person who plays Pathfinder, and lots of players have a bad experience when they build a Multiclass character they think sounds cool, only to find out that it’s worse at everything than the rest of their party. It’s one thing to build a suboptimal character with full knowledge that it won’t be the best, but that you know you’ll have fun playing. It’s a very different thing to build a character you think is going to be great but turns out to suck because you didn’t know better.

A system that reduces trap options will necessarily reduce your ability to play bad-but-fun characters on purpose. I think that’s a worthwhile trade off for reducing the risk of non-expert players creating bad unfun characters by accident.

John Lynch 106 wrote:

Nathanael Love wrote:

The irony of people on these boards now saying, "Hell yeah it's like 4th edition- and that's why it's Grrrreat!" is really messing with my mind.

One of a few scenarios are happening:

1) The differences in implementation are producing very real and tangible differences in how it will play out.
2) People are willing to accept it because Paizo is producing the rules.
3) The makeup of the forum has changed to no longer incorporate a whole bunch of anti-4e grognards and we now have a whole bunch of ex-4e players.

I won't speculate as to what category people actually fall into. But expect a whole lot of people claiming to fall into either #1 or #3.

That all may be true, but I'm just going to say it doesn't alleviate any of the irony of a company/game/messageboard that only exists in its present form specifically because of 4th edition's problems/departures from 3.X now whole heartedly embracing moving away from 3.X even further than 4th ed did and incorporating some of the least popular mechanics of that system.

History may not repeat itself, but it sure as heck rhymes.

Most of the folks who left D&D for Pathfinder specifically because they didn’t like 4th Edition have gone back to D&D now that 5th Edition is a thing. The folks who stuck with Pathfinder are the ones to whom it appealed for more reasons than just not being 4e. Now, plenty of those people didn’t like 4e either, but disliking 4e isn’t the main reason most of them play it any more. But a lot of 4e fans are none too happy with 5e. So, since PF2 is embracing some of 4e’s better mechanics, and even improving on those ideas, a lot of 4e fans are thinking it looks like a preferable option to 5e. So now you’ve got a combination of PF1 fans who are more willing to accept certain mechanics that happened to be in 4e, as long as they serve PF2 well, and 4e fans who are just getting into Pathfinder now because it’s more to their taste than D&D 5e.

It’s not exactly the same situation as you had before, but the irony of 4e fans abandoning 5e for Pathfinder is not lost on me. Like you said, it rhymes.

Cantriped wrote:

John Lynch 106 wrote:

What you can't do is multiclass or even spend general feats on these feats. I'm still not seeing the flexibility.

General feats will have their own, hopefully build defining uses.

Is that confirmed? Do we know whether General feats are locked to being used only for General-type feats, or can they be re-purposed to some degree? For that matter, has anyone given any examples of what counts as a general feat? Sorry for going off-topic, just curious.

Well, Skill Feats are a subcategory of General Feats, so you can always take another one of those in General Feat levels if you want to. Other than that, we actually don’t know a ton about General Feats. I think the only example of one that’s been shown was from Ezren’s reference sheet. At 1st level he has the human ancestry feat General Training, which we know from Mark’s comments lets you take a General Feat. His General Feat is called Great Fortitude, and while the reference sheet doesn’t say exactly what that Feat does, but we can infer from the fact that he has a 14 Con and a +4 Fort save that he is an Expert in Fortitude saves, so we can assume that expertise is coming from Great Fortitude.

So, I’m guessing General Feats are effectively going to be like Skill Feats for things that aren’t Skills. Saves, Perception, weapon and armor Proficiencies, etc.

Odd question for those that really seem to love how flexible this is supposed to be.

Why do we even need classes at this point? Just double the Class Feats we get and do maybe some work on the Skills.

There, classes system that lets you build anything.

Classes provide a strong conceptual baseline and mechanical framework to start from. Sure, a classless system allows you to build any character you want, but it also requires you to build that character from the ground up. Now, as a crunch gal, I’m fine with that, but a lot of players don’t want to have to put that much work into the mechanics side of their character. Classes allow those players to just say “I want to be a knight” or “I want to be a wizard,” and the class does most of that groundwork for them.

There’s also the fact that restrictions breed creativity. When your character can be anything you want, you often find yourself not knowing what you want that character to be. I love classless systems, but I do find myself making the same kinds of characters over and over, because with nearly limitless options, I just end up falling back on my go-to favorites. Classes give you a smaller number of easier to weigh options, and then Class Feats and Archetypes give you the tools to break free of the constraints of the option you pick.

There’s also the unfortunate fact that Pathfinder is a child of D&D, and being a child of D&D comes with baggage. We’ve seen what happens when a game from the D&D family tries to venture too far from player expectations. As someone who loved 4e, it is abundantly clear to me that even a well designed game will fail if it challenges too many expectations too fast. Classes are one of those things that players expect out of a D&D-family game.

I just thought of something. All these multi class feats add a ton a feats to the book. Each class has 6+ multiclass feats? That alone is intimidating to new players. I am concerned in general about the feat chapter. It may be bigger than the spells section.

I doubt there will be one single Feat chapter. More likely, ancestry feats will be in the ancestry section alongside the ancestry they go with, class feats will be in the class section alongside the classes they go with, Archetype Feats (whether Multiclass, Prestige, or otherwise) will go in their own section probably after the classes, skill feats will go in the skill section, and general feats will go in their own section. That way, you only have to look through the section with the feats you can actually choose from at the level you hit. That's how I'd do it, anyway.

And yes, it does sound a lot like 4e. That's not a bad thing.

Unicore wrote:

A Ninja Errant wrote:

PossibleCabbage wrote:

Some archetypes from PF1 don't make sense except as something built into your backstory, but some archetypes don't really make sense as something you *can* be at level 1. Like a level 1 monk is not a Drunken Master- they're not a master of anything!

Drunken Boxing is a style of Kung Fu. Sure you're not a master at first level, but you most likely started out training in one of the drunken styles of Kung Fu. The drunken boxing style is built around a totally different style of movement than most other styles have. Your master was a Drunken Master, why would he have taught you something other than his own style?

And a drunken style feat for every level of monk that gets class feats could represent this entire character concept without requiring an archetype.

But since something as bland as "pirate" is now an archetype, I cannot imagine that they print a "drunken style" feat that doesn't require "Drunken Master Dedication" as an archetype.

I disagree. We’ve seen things as specific as Crane Stance expresses as Monk Feats in the previews, so I don’t think a drunken fighting style is too specific for a Class Feat by any means. I do think it might be too specific for an Archetype though.

I think people are getting hung up on the word “Archetype,” thinking of them as replacement class features, often highly specific in concept and tied to a specific class. But in PF2, name for the thing that occupies that design space is “Class Feat.” The word “Archetype” is now reserved for replacement features that are broad enough in concept to be applicable to any Class.

EDIT: Actually, this is a much better way to phrase what I was trying to articulate here:

PF1 archetypes seem largely implemented in PF2 class options. PF2 archetypes seem more like multclassing into Expert(pirate). And really, thinking about it that way makes me feel a bit better about PF2 archetypes.

What I don’t understand is why it’s so important to so many folks to have an archetype, seemingly just to have it. In my view, the point of Archetypes is to allow you to further customize your character by trading in base class abilities for some other abilities. But, like, you can just do that without an Archetype now. Every class has that modularity already built in, and Archetype is now ultimately just a keyword meaning “Class Feat any Class can take.” Whether the example is Pirate, or Samurai, or Gladiator, or whatever else, you don’t need the Archetype of the same name to express that concept. The only reason to dedicate Class Feats to an Archetype is if that Archetype’s Feats better suit the character you want to play than your base Class Feats.

Had a thought this morning about how these multiclass rules lose flexibility. Not only does it interfere with also taking an archetype but it makes it impossible to multiclass into an archetype for your 2nd class. Let's say samurai is a fighter only archetype. If you're a wizard who wants to multi class to fighter you're fine. But if you're playing a wu Jen who wants to multiclass to samurai you're out of luck. Multiclass rules as written only allow the base class, no archetypes allowed. That's a flaw with the rules for me

I don’t think Archetypes are going to be class-specific any more. If there is a Samurai archertype, it should be available to anyone who meets the prerequisites, regardless of class.

I reread the whole and kinda stumbled upon something in the wording.

The Wizard dedication feat says you get two cantrips and doesn't state anything about their power.

The basic Spellcasting tells that Cantrips, Spell Powers etc are scaling at half you level.

I guess the info how all the wizard related stuff scales should be in the dedication feat (or individual in the feats with only the stuff its relevant too listed)

It also opens up the question what the cantrips strength is withoug basic spellcasting

and how well half your level is when you want to use cantrips in high level

I’m pretty sure it’s a universal rule that cantrips automatically scale to the highest level of spell you can cast.