Chess Pwn's page

All 3 stack with each other.

very often they put reminding text into things, not to make them special, but to help you have all info in one place.
PF1 example is saying that a monk's unarmed strike doesn't have to be a punch.

Where in the surveys have we been able to say how often an animal went down or died?

Cause we playested a ranger and a druid with one for the lv4 game and they were down a total of 6 times and that's with the animal druid basically casting heal animal a lot in fights.

The lv 12 playtest one person commented that they wanted to play a druid with a pet since it was a lot higher level now, but when he saw that the AC was like 7 less than everyone else's or something and HP wasn't like 100 over everyone to compensate he changed his mind. Players get critted enough when we all have max AC, 7 less and he felt the animal was just asking to get crit all the time from their 3rd attack. Also that their saves were a little lower, not as super bad though.

But I've not seen places in the survey to share such stuff or how many times animals went down. So that's probably why they don't have much data saying they are.

So about the animal companion deal. Where in the surveys have we been able to say how often an animal went down or died?

Cause we playested a ranger and a druid with one for the lv4 game and they were down a total of 6 times and that's with the animal druid basically casting heal animal a lot in fights.

The lv 12 playtest one person commented that they wanted to play a druid with a pet since it was a lot higher level now, but when he saw that the AC was like 7 less than everyone else's or something and HP wasn't like 100 over everyone to compensate he changed his mind. Players get critted enough when we all have max AC, 7 less and he felt the animal was just asking to get crit all the time from their 3rd attack. Also that their saves were a little lower, not as super bad though.

But I've not seen places in the survey to share such stuff or how many times animals went down. So that's probably why they don't have much data saying they are.

Mr charisma has the right of what I was asking.
The question came up when I wanted to fireball a large event and not hit my 6ft half orc and the gm was saying that the half orc would be hit cause his head was in the higher square too

Can a medium creature mechanically be in two squares so that two splash damages that only hit one of the squares both hit them?

Your falchion averages 61 expected damage on a hit (6d10 + 2d6 + 7 str + 14 conditional),

How are you getting 14 conditional damage? the rage is only giving you 8 conditional. And the non-giant would only have a +4 conditional.

okay so if we are going with lv20

Cleric has 20+6+5+1 = +32 to hit, enemy AC = 44
so cleric needs a 12 to hit with true strike that's apparently a 69.75% hit rate.
greatsword for 6d12+6+10d8+6 ~ 39+6+45+6 ~ 96*69.75% ~ 67 not factoring in crits.

Hmm... If this is correct it's a fair bit lower than expected. Though Part of the plan was to benefit from having a more magical weapon than normally possible with magical striker, but since +5 is what we have we lose out on that.

Fighter with a pick is really hoping for crits.
A normal power attack hit with a greatpick is 8d10 ~ 44 but on a crit that jumps to 17d12+17 ~ 127.5 from just the weapon. so true strike to up our crits should let us get this massive damage more often.

again, this "does better DPR" when you're not lv20 because then you benefit from being able to activate magical striker for accuracy and damage.

The to hit seems wrong if the barbarian is the highest? How did he get +22? Paladin is an expert, while Barbarian is only trained. Barb also gets a -1 from using the big weapon. Something seems off...

I was thinking the same thing. 12+5+3-1 = 19 is what I clock the barb should be at. Meaning he is now just as accurate as the paladin that had a hard time hitting.

Also factor in his AC is is likely far less than the paladin and I'm surprised he didn't get killed by getting hit so much. I see 12+7(dex/armor)+3-1-1 = 20 AC while raging assuming dex maxed. That means assuming these numbers for enemies
Slaver Demons: +20 to hit, AC 27 TAC 25
Treachery Demons: +25 to hit, AC 32 TAC 29
That he is auto-hit by the slavers and critted on a 10, meaning their last attack only needs a 10 to hit.
And the Treachery needing a 5 to crit and to hit their 3rd attack should have had the barb getting ripped to shreds by all their crits. Did that happen and he was just healed as fast as he was hurt or was something else missing here?

I agree that this could be nice. I've gotten the names mixed up a lot already while playing.

I'd have to see some _very_ detailed math regarding the OP before I believe that this is optimal. I'm pretty sure that Giant Totem barbarian is a complete trap, so it's a bit odd to see it in an optimal DPR build.

My simulation models show that -1 to hit is certainly not worth the damage increase of even Giant Totem. I haven't updated those in a while, though.

The deal is the reliance on certain strike to guarantee damage. Having a raging bonus of +6 damage per hit is really nice when you apply it 3 or 4 times a round.

Something I found that does pretty good at damage is going cleric negative energy gorum with sorcerer dedication to get magical striker
and then doing true strike into channel smite. True strike helps you hit a lot and channel smite gets the most damage for a hit.

Similar strat with fighter and power attack using a pick, with it's weapon crit effect having lots of dice means lots of damage on a crit and true strike helps you roll high for those crits.

I'm not sure what their DPR would be since I've never been good with true strike in the equation, but I believe these are some of the top DPR.

Okay, so this is a change.

Some immediate questions though. Is it actually possible to create a character at level five with a requirement to use eleven resonance? If not testing the ten resonance is impossible.

And conflating the spell point pool with the Focus pool makes class abilities less attractive. Is this being compensated for?

I agree, one of my goals was to see if there was enough you'd want to wear that the decision of wearing something or leaving points to use for potions or activations was needed. I couldn't reach that point. The amount of invested permanent items was just too small for a character to care about.

Thanks DM_Blake, very well thought out responses. I'll take this to my group and hopefully we can figure out the rules we'll use.

Hey, I'm not sure which is in error but FIRE RAY for Kyra and the list are different.

Attempt a ranged touch Strike against the target. If you succeed at the attack, you deal fire damage to the target equal to 1d6 plus your spellcasting ability modifier. On a critical success, the target takes double damage and also takes 1d6 persistent fire damage. Heightened (+1) The ray’s damage increases by 2d6, and the persistent firedamage on a critical hit increases by 1d6.

You attempt a ranged touch Strike against one creature within 60 feet. If you hit, you deal 5d6+4 fire damage to the target plus 3d6 persistent fire damage. Full rules for this power are in the Resonance Test rules.

Kyra's makes it seem like you always to persistent damage while the text in the rules says only on crits. I know if I were to sit down and play Kyra it'd be with always persistent damage since that seems to be what the text says to do.

Right, those are the rules and I feel they don't answer any of my questions.

"You use your arms and legs to swim through water." Does this mean I need two hands free and thus can't have a weapon out to swim?

"If you end your turn in the water and haven’t succeeded at a
Swim action that turn, you sink down 10 feet or float up 10 feet"
Is there any guidance on this to have a consistent flow? My GM rules that he rolled a die and odds were sink and evens float up since it said we could do either with no guidance.

Same with all the other questions, I feel the rules don't give any clear guidance on these issues.

the DC expects everyone to roll which ups the chance that someone rolls a 20 to crit succeed.

At 9th? A Barbarian can get to Str 28 or so, but only very niche super optimized builds can actually get that high on Str, and not even then on Con (for the most part anyway).

I don't think so. Niche optimized builds can do far better. A lv1 human can reach a str of 26 while raging. doing nothing but buying a +2 belt and putting level ups into it gets it to 30 raging str.

Also, let's compare to PF1, shall we? The Glabrezu in PF1 has Str 30, Dex 16, Con 30, Int 16, Wis 16, Cha 20. Those are equally impossible for PC stats.

Well while the state spread is quite impressive and indeed hard to duplicate as a PC. Each individual stat is reachable by PCs in combat. 20 starting con greater rage for 6 and belt for 4.

Yes people usually won't have that high of a con, but it's reachable by a PC wanting to have a high con.

if I have HOLY CASTIGATION and CHANNEL SMITE does that let me channel smite with positive energy and hurt fiends?

I guess along with this is LIFE SAPPING and negative energy.

HOLY CASTIGATION: You combine holy energy with positive energy to damage demons, devils, and their evil ilk. Heal spells you cast can damage fiends as though they were undead.

LIFE SAPPING: You draw the life force out of your enemies to heal your own wounds.
When you cast a harm spell and damage a single living creature, you
regain Hit Points equal to the spell level of your harm spell. If you aren’t a living
creature, you gain no benefit from this feat.

CHANNEL SMITE: Instead of casting harm or heal, you siphon the destructive
energies you channel through a melee attack and into
your foe. Make a melee Strike. This Strike has one of the
following additional effects on a success.
• If you channel positive energy and the target is
undead, you deal extra positive damage equal to that
of a single-target heal spell.
• If you channel negative energy and the target is
a living creature, you deal extra negative damage
equal to that of a single-target harm spell.
If your Strike fails or hits a creature that isn’t affected by
that energy type, the spell is expended with no effect.
If you channel positive energy, this action has the good
and positive traits. If you channel negative energy, it has the
evil and negative traits.

For the most part, names aside, I like this very much. Seems to solve most of my problems with Ancestry entirely. I still think Ancient Blood is a bit overly punitive, though I suppose that depends partially on how they change Resonance...

Chess Pwn wrote:

so half-elf loses out on the speed aspect that old half-elf had?

Given that it's now cheaper and easier, something had to give. That being what went is fine with me. As others note, if you care you can grab the Elf Feat for that.

No I can't just grab the elf feat for that since I already had the elf feat. I'm wanting to go fast since movement is slow and now a big piece is missing that I can't make up. If there was a Half-elf racial to increase speed and stacking with the elf one THEN you can say I can just buy it back.

Chess Pwn wrote:

so half-elf loses out on the speed aspect that old half-elf had?

But can choose to take the nimble elf feat at lvl one. So... kind of back to square one but with more options overall.

but before you could get the movespeed from picking half elf and still pick up nimble elf feat at lv5 with fleet at lv3 meant base speed of 40 or 30 in armor. Now we're 5ft short of that. Just a little sad to miss out on that speed in heavy.

so half-elf loses out on the speed aspect that old half-elf had?

The Once and Future Kai wrote:

Ckorik wrote:

I suppose it'd work as a concept when you gain levels - but you need 18 in your prime stat to survive the first few levels.

Please elaborate? I've had a couple of players field non-offensive casters* with 16s in their primary stats and they've been fine in low level playtest sessions.

*Fey Sorcerer focused on Utility and Summoning. Bard focused on Utility and Buffs.

We have a goblin cleric of Pharasma in one of my home games who has a 10 WIS and hasn't bothered ever putting any additional points in. He's played the same character (with the occasional tweak or retraining as updates have come out or we've moved to different chapters) since the playtest dropped and he's consistently been one of the most effective characters in that group. He uses buffing and enhancement spells, a poisoned dogslicer, and typically opens combat by dropping forbidding ward on whichever ally he's going to be flanking with in the fight, or bless for a quick boost to attack rolls for the group before moving into position to attack. No 18s in any stat starting out and he's only even gotten close to being dropped once (and that wasn't until 7th level.) Teamwork and tactics undoubtedly contribute to his effectiveness to a significant degree but that's generally going to be true for any character.

Really a combat cleric is casting bless or forbidding ward? The action every round to maintain it seems quite the cost of these buffs going down.

So how many items can I have stored? Can I have 3 potions? 4? Like for an alchemist this limit I imagine would be important and probably reached for how much stuff they want in easy access. Is there something in the rules about how to decide if something can/is stored or in backpack?
For the upcoming playtest module one of my players is asking about this because he wanted to test a high level alchemist and how their combat economy is, but now we're stuck on if it'll be 2-3 or 1 action to draw his premade bombs

So I'm a little confused now. On page 307 it says the interact action is used to grab a stored object. But on page 175 it says 2 actions to retrieve an item from backpack and if your backpack you need another action to take off your backpack first.

What is the difference here? When do you use 1 action to get stuff vs 2 actions?

So if I'm wanting a wand or a potion or a backup weapon what actions does it take to get these?

John Lynch 106 wrote:

You have currently pegged everything at costing a feat

Hmm.. I have seen this, or something like it, in quite a few places. Its interesting because I think we are using the term feat for these options because they are selected and applied to your character in a shared way.

What they do not share is an equal value. A class feat is better than a skill feat. An ancestry feat is not meant to be the same value as the others. I see a lot of comparison between the categories and that alone might be the biggest problem with using the word "feat" for all of them. Useful to learn the system, but the baggage from existing users applying to word to mean "a rule with a specified amount of power and utility" is a barrier to overcome.

Hmm..

I am not sure we have made that clear.

(Normally I would just note this to myself and move on, but I felt like sharing this musing with everyone)

Personally I love it when you DEVs provide comments like this one. Getting a little insight onto the why and that some of the drawbacks were unexpected really helps us not feel like you guys are crazy.

Like for this, if we think that you thought all feats are the same and then we go crazy yelling about how these feats are clearly weaker is a lot of wasted energy for stuff that isn't true.

I don't believe 1 and 4 are being hit at all.
Currently there doesn't feel like any "reward" for system mastery but instead harsh punishment for not having it and the other part of this is that the builds that system mastery say are okay don't always feel like good characters. Also so far most characters feel very samey. All use weapons, even wizards, to have a good one action ability, the bulk of the builds are the same since since there are limited good abilities and combos and weapons and weapon styles don't make a good impact.

Also "allowing characters to thrive in their defined role." doesn't seem to be a thing either. Again similar to the first, it's more of being slightly okay at a defined role rather than thriving. When fighters miss on a 11 against a non-boss and need like a 15 to hit the "bosses" it's more like barely useful contribution instead of the master of combat.
Also I've not seen "Encourage characters to play to their strengths, while working with others to bolster their place in the group" supported by play or the book
Everyone rolls everything since no one is good at anything and everyone is kinda okay since they all get level so no one feels it's not worth fishing for a 20. So no one feels needed.

PF1 was where you had people that thrived in their defined role, damage dealers did damage consistently and well, supports could support well. A party with no wizard needed to play to their strengths to cope for lack of wizard. A strong fighter often needed a party to help with knowledges and talking and magic item identification. And the more mastery of the system you had the more solid and capable characters you'd have, people that could splash into other things like a diplomacy fighter or knowledge barb and have it feel fun and fitting while still being effective.

PF1 seems to be a much better fit of your stated design goals than the current playtest of PF2 seems to be and where it seems to be going.

So while playing the game we ran into a fight in the water and we were very unsure how it works.

Can I use a weapon and still swim? Does it matter the size of the weapon? Is there any guidance on floating or sinking, like does a person with no armor and only a dagger float or sink? If I'm 10 ft in the water how much do I need to swim up to get to the surface? Normally calm water requires no check to swim, should fighting in calm water make the water not calm? Is casting on the surface difficult or penalized at all? Can you concentrate when under water?

I believe the issue is how much the treadmill gets in your face and causes you to be unable to enjoy the gameplay.
Like yes, all leveling games have a treadmill in the back, but most you're not aware of and never think to ask if it's there.
Here in PF2 it feels like you're playing treadmill the game. You're started off with the treadmill going at a 9/10 and quickly get to 10/10 which isn't a fun or enjoyable pace, especially to start.

A 14 str reach cleric is very viable and able to hit and deal damage in PF1 for like 10 levels and minimal investment. In PF2 a 14 str cleric feels awful cause they are behind and always will be now and need to full invest to stay at bad and not fall to awful.

NielsenE wrote:

If the caster's spell has at attack role it still suffers the penalty.

To be more precise, the spell must have the Attack trait. Several cantrips and some actual spells have this, but a spell like Harm does not. (Bad touch clerics are probably the most destructive nova class in the game.)

We've been told that an offensive touch Harm/Heal gains the attack trait.

So I kinda really dig these newest dying rules of the wounds. My BIGGEST request though is making regaining consciousness when healed a player's choice.
Like I want to heal you so you don't die, but then you're forced to be conscious and so an enemy might hit you while you're vulnerable and now you're in a really bad spot.
Having the option would allow you to get up if it was necessary but you'd know it's a risk while the normal thing is to stay unconscious as to not draw agro while you're in a critical state.

It seems like they don't want wack a mole to be a thing. They want the idea of popping back up and fighting to be a rare risky thing.

so this chart is saying that a fighter does on average 16.5 damage at lv9 right? wow, let me tell you about this super OP damage build. It's magic missile. Like the full round action version does 10.5 average damage per heightening, and heightening happens at the same level that people are expected to have a magic weapon upgrade. So at lv9 MM is averaging 31.5 damage from your top tier spells and 21 damage from your second best slots.
These two tiers, lv5 and lv9 seem to be competitive and great for all levels. And the spell gets better from there. Super OP damage

Right, but Mark said in the other thread that enfeebled 5 would only apply a -4 as that's a cap.

But why is being enfeebled 5 not a specific rule as well overriding the general rule? If the barbs numbers going up indicate an exception then the enfeelbed number going up should do likewise right?

Nope, I saw this same issue last night as well. Either the conditions used to affect only their stat attacks and it was changed and not everywhere was updated, or it's a typo and it's supposed to only be their stat attacks.

Don't forget that if it does anything but HIDE or SNEAK that it becomes sensed to people as well. Rule found in the SNEAK action that this is the case for invisible people.

a nat 20 is a crit success for their sneak checks assuming a 30 beats their perception DCs and a normal success if it doesn't. So isn't that an auto success?

should it be ran that way for the playtest / is it okay to run it that way? Or should we stick to the current printed stats for it?

Is the poltergeist, an undead, really supposed to be resistant to positive energy? That seems REALLY dumb.
Look an undead, use this disruptive weapon to kill it, JK it won't help at all.

So I found out some of the rules are wrong when we did it.
If the ghost does anything but hide or sneak then it becomes sensed to the players and they know something is there and which square it is. So every time it attacks it would be seen. Still annoying because a stealth can auto succeed to rehide but it allows for readied actions and stuff.

The issue with your wording DM_Blake is that that changes what the spell does.

Level is the spell level
lv1 1/2 = 1d8+w, 3 = w
lv2 1/2 heal 3d8+w, 1/2 hurt 2d8+w, 3 = 1d8+w
lv3 1/2 heal 5d8+w, 1/2 hurt 3d8+w, 3 = 2d8+w
lv4 1/2 heal 7d8+w, 1/2 hurt 4d8+w, 3 = 3d8+w

The 1 and 2 action recovery version go up 2d8, but the 1 and 2 action attack versions only go up at 1d8 like the burst.

I think this wording is great. It goes up 1d8 for everything. Cool we have our base. Then it adds the exception, IF using it for recovery it's a 2d8 increase

yup, cause clerics can't do damage with their spells. All* their direct damage follows the 1 die per level.

*(okay it might only be most, haven't really dug into it to prove all, but it's all I've seen of theirs)

Sure, it's "definitely not" a company failure that we still don't have a clear answer on shields. Sure you flubbed not knowing on the live stream, sure that's not the company's fault. But to have us still not knowing is the company's fault. Like you've went and had a meeting about shields and if they have hardness or not but didn't address how shields are used.

I got REALLY excited by the active play of shields, it seemed so cool and I REALLY wanted to test it out. How does this shield play work and feel? Does the shield paladin feel cooler compared to just using a normal shield? BUT I've stayed away from shields due to not knowing the rules. And it seems I'll be finished with the playtest never getting to try them out at this rate.

Level is the spell level
lv1 1/2 = 1d8+w, 3 = w
lv2 1/2 heal 3d8+w, 1/2 hurt 2d8+w, 3 = 1d8+w
lv3 1/2 heal 5d8+w, 1/2 hurt 3d8+w, 3 = 2d8+w
lv4 1/2 heal 7d8+w, 1/2 hurt 4d8+w, 3 = 3d8+w

The trend is healing is dice = level of first getting that spell level. harm is dice per spell level. and AoE is 1 die less than harm.

Curious what people think of this idea.
What if proficiency gave a bonus to checks against people of a lower proficiency on opposed checks?

So an expert rogue trying to athletics to jump is the same along with trying to grapple someone who's an expert at fort, but an athletics to grapple someone that is only trained at fortitude gets like a bonus +2 or +3 to show that they know how to outperform due to their higher specialty.

damage for harm to a living target at lv7 is 4d8+wisdom. and AoE is 3d8+wisdom. The +2d8 is only for the healing version of harm to undead. Damage is only 1d8 increase a spell level.
Draco18s is correct that offensive use causes it to gain the attack trait.

oh if that's what it is that's a lot better. So only 1 dent that's good.

Well according to the post about the twitch stream "Jason is not sure whether the shield takes one dent and then all other damages are transferred to the user, or if it takes multiple dents."
So with the lead designer not understanding how it works I think it's fair that most players aren't sure how it works.

Chess Pwn wrote:

Like none of that seems reasonable. I'm glad that we finally got the clear question about shields, but SUPER sad that the answer was, "lol, who knows"

It feels within the realm of possibility that the devs could (in a group chat or something) say "okay so how exactly do shields work" and then tell us whatever they agree on.

Right, but that they haven't' when it's been one of the first and longest asked questions is very offsetting. We've had three errata documents, that is at least 3 times they've gotten together to talk about rules stuff that needs clarifications/fixing and decided to not address the shield rules which is either asking how it works or a minute long vote about which to use.