CrystalSeas wrote:
I see a new errata, but not this clarification anywhere in there. If anything, it became more confusing. This is not what it says in the new text.
Coldermoss wrote:
They Might be affected by MAP, as described on page 446. Page 446 wrote: The second time you use an attack action during your turn, you take a –5 penalty to your attack roll. The third time you attack, and on any subsequent attacks, you take a –10 penalty to your attack roll. So attack rolls take a -5 penalty. The errata just said they are no longer considered to be Attack rolls. They are actions with the "attack" trait, or "attack actions". Page 446 would need to be re-written to say "A -5 penalty on your check to perform an attack action". Skill check might take a multiple attack penalty, but I can't find the cirucmstances where it does.
masda_gib wrote:
So are maneuvers affected by MAP now? It says any action with the Attack trait increases MAP, but it only applies a penalty to attack rolls specifically. CRB page 446 wrote: The more attacks you make beyond your first in a single turn, the less accurate you become, represented by the multiple attack penalty. The second time you use an attack action during your turn, you take a –5 penalty to your attack roll. The third time you attack, and on any subsequent attacks, you take a –10 penalty to your attack roll. Every check that has the attack trait counts toward your multiple attack penalty, including Strikes, spell attack rolls, certain skill actions like Shove, and many others. So do you get a -5 on your grapple/push attempt?
I'd like for the Arcane schools to be revamped a bit, kinda like how DMW's house rules improves them. For example, Evocation school giving you the benefits of Dangerous Sorcery will have a positive impact throughout that char's career as they build for blasting and do less mediocre damage (still far from good damage). Changing the focus spells could be done like the specialized schools in 1E, so for the second edition in a row we can get rid of the useless single magic missile in exchange for something relevant.
I've found the damage spells to be very weak on Wizard. Almost always feels like they should have tried a debuff or other disrupting spell instead. When the enemy has an elemental weakness, cantrips are preferred since the extra damage is flat. Have a campaign where 2 of my players have started spamming Lightning Bolt and it does like 20-30 from the 4d12. Enemies save almost as much as they fail the save, at which point it's a light breeze for most enemies. Granted, I try not to use mooks that are lower than party level -2 because they're just a waste of precious session time most of the time. You kill them to speed things up and clog the battlefield and not because they pose any threat. Need some scenarios where you fight 10x lv-3 or -4 enemies for them to all crit fail and get obliterated. Might as well use something like Glitterdust or the multi-target fear most of the time. Those really get the job done against most enemies.
Refining the idea of +1 proficiency jumps a bit, my group came up with a potential house rule to address these issues that would not require updating every statblock in the game: If your character is a spellcaster, you get a +1 proficiency bonus to attack rolls. If you are a martial, you get a +1 proficiency bonus to all spell attacks and save DCs (for all traditions). This is in effect starting on level 1 (thought there's an argument to start at 5). No effect on Magus for now. It seems pretty jank and backwards (It is a half-baked house rule, after all), but the goal is to make characters more competent at stuff that is already suboptimal for them, in case they want to build around it. Enemy stat blocks don't have to be adjusted (Hell, most NPCs already have something like this), and you can have Melee Bard, Melee Druid, Melee Sorc (after jumping through some hoops), and a very nasty Warpriest. On the flip-side, it also helps Martial-first gishes that want some offensive spells. Will be playtesting some version of this in my games. I expect it might be too strong during the few levels where caster weapon proficiency overlaps with that of some martials (1-4 and 11-12), but that is yet to be seen.
I have started to believe that the PF2 playtest had it right with +1 for proficiency levels, rather than +2. At the time it really looked lame to have a +30 to-hit, of which only +4 come from being LEGENDARY in weapons; but by playing a lot of PF2 you realize that's just a perception issue. A +2 to hit compared to non-martials that is essentially insurmountable is HUGE and will be felt! It took until the game came out to realize how big of a difference a +1 is! Playtest multiclass combinations could achieve some really interesting things because proficiency wasn't so throttling. Those -2 or sometimes -4 differences are painful when enemies are benchmarked to challenge optimized fighters. It's compounded slightly by non-martials being unable to get a starting 18 on STR/DEX and usually not getting the potency runes as fast. I might be experimenting with that as a house rule to see if it makes people become able to play things like melee focused Bard/Druids/Oracles without making the dedicated martials feel unimpressive (which can be fixed with more feats or something). It could also make martials with MC spellcaster or some other form of spells with bad scaling become more palatable. Should allow more "dabbling"! Think 5E kinda had it right making the underlying math be equal for everyone, with the actual abilities from your class being the main differentiators. Fighter has the same to-hit as the Wizard at every level, but they have better weapons, better class support for weapons and multi-attacks, so they're still top tier fighters.
I mostly play the regular Paizo APs in Golarion and very rarely some PFS here and there. I noticed the Society is basically a non-factor outside of PFS modules, which makes it really difficult to incorporate them into other Adventures in Golarion. As it is, it's very difficult to have an AP player character belong to the society, as it'd just overcomplicate party dynamics. This means the PFS have to be used as NPCs, possibly antagonists. Maybe that's something we'll see in the future? Gotta think of some ideas where any of this lore and options would be relevant to players outside of Organized Play.
I didn't see any rule that advertising something like this was not allowed, so let me know if I should stop! So here's some shameless self promotion of the Venture Captains Youtube Channel,
Feedback is very important to us! Let us know what you think. Cheliax is personally my favorite location in Golarion, and HV has been one of the most fun Adventure Paths to play. While working on the episode I noticed how much this nation got screwed during the lifespan of First Edition. Is the time for a glorious comeback coming in 2e!?
Deadmanwalking wrote:
Can I see your full homebrew for the spell attack items?
I've been GMing Second Edition for almost a year now (going great!) and my #1 problem has been that whenever there's a loot drop, the game just grinds to a halt. By the core rules, it takes 10 minutes to TRY to identify the properties of a magic item using Arcana/Occultism/Religion/Nature. Often, multiple small magic items drop in 1 encounter/treasure room, after that, the all items have to be individually checked for magic and then identified, usually taking over 30 minutes of in-game time and a buncha dice rolls. This has started to annoy my players as well, since they want to ID everything as soon as they find (otherwise they'll forget to do it later). This takes longer at the table than I'd like to admit, with 4/5 chars just twiddling their thumbs (They say they'll refocus or something). I realize there's some value in not immediately telling them what each magic item is, so they can fail to ID an item and either experiment with it (they'll never do this) or be unable to use until they retry the next day. Sometimes this just feels like a relic of old school D&D and it's not adding a lot of value... If they don't ID the item on the first try, it just gets ignored, possibly forever. Do any of you house rule this? How? I remember IDing was automatic in the playtest. I'm looking for ideas of what to do with this slow system. Perhaps only high-level items should require Identification, or maybe IDing takes just a few seconds if the item is low level.
Watery Soup wrote:
Pretty sure Fighter and Rogue are very good! Nobody complains about those classes. They are the gold standard. EDIT: Champion is good too!Those classes just have BIG NUMBERS, solid without relying on 1 gimmicks. I like Swash, but it feels like it's forced into very linear gameplay just to be equal to other classes.
Everyone keeps saying there's not enough Spells that use spell attacks. You are right, however, there are 3 important cantrips: Produce Flame, Ray of Frost and Telekinetic Projectile, that do use spell attacks, and they are a staple of most spellcasters. People in this forum probably don't know those spells exist because they use Electric Arc instead, but they're real. You'll see a lot more spell attacks than you'd imagine just because those spells are very spammable! They start of pretty decent, but become kinda unhittable later even for the low damage they do. +1 to spell attacks is worth having in the game if only to keep the power level of cantrips a bit more consistent.
Bumping this because my Barbarian just got Swipe: If I use Swipe against an Orc and a Goblin, dealing 1d12+4 (6+4=10) damage:
If my Swipe crits BOTH the Orc and the Goblin, then can I deal the crit spec 6 damage to both? Crit on Orc applies to adjacent goblin and vice-versa?
Well, they're just very early level 10, versus lvl8 monsters, so they don't have any +2 Equipment yet, making them have less to-hit as a result. Yeah, the AC and HP are tight depending on the char. I think those level 10 PCs might be able to 1v1 the lv8 enemies (Bestiary 1 was VERY lacking on lvl8-9 monsters I wanted for this random encounter). They would probably be annihilated at 8, though. I do agree those weren't the best enemies, but it's what I picked when I needed a random encounter for them on hills, lacking much better selection... Worth nothing the party didn't suffer that much. It was just very slow and grindy. Flame Strike from the Cleric Sneak attacks were the most useful things I noticed. By encounter building rules this would have been "Low".
Aratorin wrote: Yup, works fine. My Ranger with Rogue Dedication and Sneak Attacker does this in underbrush. I don't mind if they're using the terrain for it, at least it's creative and requires some awareness. This combo just feels kinda dumb since most of the time it's available off the starting positions in a fight and it will work anywhere.
Just throwing this out there, but I don't think a Non-Fighter can 1v1 an on-level opponent in a lot of occassions. I was running a lv10 party the other day (Champion, Rogue, Bard, Cleric, Ranger) against Stone Giants and Bulettes (level -2 enemies) and those monsters had higher to-hit, higher damage and higher AC (except champion) than anyone in the group. It took over 2 hours to resolve that battle. It balances out when the party is working together and the enemies are dumb. Haven't had a chance to GM enemies that have the tools/INT to do smart tactics (Humanoids seem to always be low level in books compared to monsters).
Elorebaen wrote:
I believe you can just spam Step until you get in range, assuming the Bounty Hunter never gets out of cover during this movement. The Bandit had their chance to spot your char, and failed... Wait why is this in encounter mode?
Wanted to ask about all the rules interactions going on with this combo. I have a PC playing a Halfling Rogue with this Ancestry feat and this combo has beem coming up excessively. It seems that a Rogue with a shortbow (and distracting shadows) can stand behind some random PC, use the Hide action and then shoot. If they did well with the Hide, they become Hidden from most enemies and so they are flat-footed to these attacks. This can be repeated every turn for the entire fight if the Rogue is far enough in the back. With a shortbow it's just 2d6 damage (1d6 bow + 1d6 sneak), though the crits are extremely nasty. I think there is a -1 modifier to the attack from the Soft cover provided by the ally, but the flat-footed condition more than makes up for it. This has become very boring, but it looks completely intended. Am I missing something?
KrispyXIV wrote:
Just use a wooden shield from levels 1-20, I guess. It gives you the same benefit as pretty much any other shield and breaks just as easily as non-sturdy ones. I guess there's some shields that don't require you to Block to activate that can be helpful, but I still find that arugment disingenous. Seems pretty clear to me that shields scale by becoming more durable.
MaxAstro wrote:
With old school AOO I'll whack them for trying to run past me! Ideally with something like "Stand Still" to block their movement. And yeah, Tangled Forest Stance is really cool for this.
Kyrone wrote: It was mentioned that Beastmaster would be able to get temporary Animal Companions depending of their current environment and in some occasions (focus spell maybe?) even being able to have two animal companions at the same time. I hope it isn't like PF1 where you some archetypes allowed more than 1 animal companion, but they were ultra low level. There's no room for anything underleveled in a PF2 party.
HumbleGamer wrote:
I do like poisons in this edition. The damage is not going to amount to much, but inflicting Enfeebled or Clumsy on a tough enemy is just a tasty -1 that almost always stacks with stuff and pushes the odds in your favor. Flank + Inspire Courage + Clumsy on enemy = Crits incoming!
The Raven Black wrote: Note that some posters wish for a Medium ancestry that is considered Large for some purposes. The Giant instinct for Barbarians might provide a good basis. But in itself it is problematic: if your character is Medium but considered Large for this instinct, they can wield Huge weapons. Which starts sounding awkward. Can't small races wield large weapons with this? Seems like a similar comparison: 2 sizes larger.
siegfriedliner wrote:
This has been done before but it looks ok. Main thing is that which saving throw you target has a huge impact on those save probabilities. I guess yours makes sense if a random one is targeted.
I will continue to say that Bestiary Monsters have more "awesome" than any available PC option!!! Body Strike and Whirlwind Throw from Dropillu are so amazing! Please release these as high level Barbarian feats! My players always wanted to do this in PF1 and now we have a cool example of how it looks.
Sporkedup wrote:
Smash your way in or try to pull enemies out! A non-PFS Group will always figure a way around things. If the entire thing is a narrow dungeon then it'll take more work, perhaps re-designing, shaping the stone or finding an alternate way in... But it's not impossible. Jank is in the spirit of roleplaying games! PF2 might be one of the most conservative games so far, but it can still try silly things.
Midnightoker wrote:
I hope Cackle actually does something now. Imagine using a Class feat to change the concentrate trait for auditory on sustains...
I don't think it'd be too crazy to have one token "Large-size" ancestry, at least as a novelty. I mean, yeah, it will make the gameplay different and not fit into adventure design assumptions. I don't think this is necessarily bad! It'll at least spark player and GM creativity and be "different". Better than another ancestry just being "Humans but X" and playing the exact same. It would probably need to be banned from PFS though, which is understandable. Could be a good candidate for the "Rare" keyword to keep it from appearing much.
I don't think the baseline %s are bad in PF2, but what I think could be improved are the ways you can hedge the odds in your favor. Circumstance bonuses are so ubiqutous that most of the time you can't do much to improve your odds further. Think status bonus are fine, though! Melee martials can flank, that's -2 Flat-Footed which is pretty good. But if you try to flank a prone opponent while your ally is grappling them and you still get that same -2 AC. -2 is not bad, but a very tactical party in PF1 could engineer much more favorable situations with their tactics when the party all worked in tandem. To get any better, you need a status penalty, so demoralize is allowed to stack, but not prone. A lot of weapon traits can allow a random +1 circustance to hit, which also won't stack with, say, the Aid action for some reason. Again, getting multiple party members to contribute giving diminishing returns.
If you're a caster? lol, Frightened condition is basically all you got. (Clumsy/Stupefied/Enfeebled for 1 specific save I guess). If you're the only caster vs a strong enemy your debuff spell is gonna run out before you can leverage it next turn (they're making the save). There might be some value in allowing circumstance bonuses to stack in some scenarios if the party is going out of their way to "set up" for one big roll. There is a lot of options in this game, but a lot of times you can't actually squeeze anything out of em. Right now, I feel playing smart is more about mastering out the stacking rules and getting the right combo than actually doing things that seem smart from an in-game perspective. And don't get me started on drinking a mutagen and getting only the penalties because you happen to have a magic sword.
Town Guards are probably paid according to earn income equivalent to their level (or less if it's a very low level area). If you're hiring mercenaries to protect your stuff, it would be more expensive for sure, but it's nowhere near "go adventuring with the party" levels of danger and pay. So yeah 2x or 3x the Earn Income for their level, or the level of the task if there's low competition in the market. If they're joining you on a dungeon crawl or w/e then they're the same as any other party member unless their roles are limited. In which case maybe they can get half a share of loot (or of the reward!) for just following orders in battle. EDIT: I agree this doesn't really work for APs, which are setup so party can always stick together and nothing crazy happens. Very important for sandbox, though!
If you want to do the most authentic/faithful possible converion process from PF1 APs to PF2 and want to make sure WBL and power balance is respected, you'll have to do something like this: 1- List all PF1 items from the entire AP Chapter, level they're obtained at, and their gold cost. It's entire chapter spanning 3-4 levels to minimize the effect of lulls or spikes in wealth (it should average out over that period). Mark whether each item is consumable, permanent or cash equivalent. 2- Add up all the worth of the items and get the totals for permanent, consumable and cash. Mark in which spots the party is expected to level up. 3- Get what % of the total each of the 3 categories contribute for. 4- Use the PF1 WBL tables to see how much it deviates from the expected total. Combine all levels covered in the book to get the total. 5- Convert items to PF2 the best you can, ignoring "Big 6" that don't exist anymore (Cloaks of Res, Rings of Prot, etc). Use this opportunity to customize for your party. Write down the item level. Make sure you drop +1 Weapons around 2, Striking Runes around 4, etc... So that entire party has access to all fudnamental runes no later than 1 level after the item level. 6- Do the same with that list, except now using the PF2 "Treasure by level" tables to get the expected totals and percents. Compare your numbers between PF1 results and expected PF2 results and adjust accordingly. If PF1 dropped 150% of expected loot, you might be able to get away with 150% of PF2 loot too, it would balance out because they won't find/loot a lot of the items. 7- Count how many items per item level you dropped and compare with expected values. Change some items to get closer to this. 8- During gameplay, as the party gets or fails to get some items, observe whether the party is staying within expected parameters. Here's an example of how I did it for Hell's Vengeance 3: The Inferno Gate (Spoilers). It was very time consuming. Here's my improved PF2 WBL tables. In my case, this was for a party of 5.
If you wanna nerf Darkvision, we can always look at the old-timey INFRAVISION, which actually had several drawbacks and limitations.
Unicore wrote:
I think it would be amazing if shields could have Potency runes (hardness and HP) that let you stay competitive with sturdy shields, and also property runes that let you add cool abilities to the shield similar to what we have or even more generic things like "Hardness is doubled vs Fire damage". Actually balancing this would be really easy, PF2 abounds with tables and examples of what any equipment of a given Item Level should be able to do and how much of it PCs should have.
Aratorin wrote:
CRB wrote: Animal companions calculate their modifiers and DCs just as you do with one difference: the only item bonuses they can benefit from are to speed and AC (their maximum item bonus to AC is +3) So it does not work on ACs. I'm pretty sure this spell is useless after the monk gets +1 handwraps.
HumbleGamer wrote:
Clerics can increase their shield durability too! I think this is a fine ability. The time will come when, once the dust is settled, they'll start printing power crept options to balance/fix the game.
Themetricsystem wrote:
Pretty much every Shield Feat and special ability works off the "Shield Block" reaction. It's not like some obscure bonus rule that only jank characters use, it's baked into Fighters, Cleric Champions as the main way the engine allows them to make defensive builds. Shield system was designed so people would block with it, it's the only way to use all of the shield abilities or to distinguish shield specialists from random people with a shield. If anything, the +AC is the throwaway part because you already get the best possible value from a lv1 metal shield and it cna never improve from there.
Just the concept that is is the first RPG I've sever seen (and probably ever) where shields are not meant for blocking attacks is silly. This goes beyond game mechanics and more about the theme of Pathfinder: The most heroic high fantasy game with no grittyness, but shields break in one hit if you try to use them. I realize the shield mechanics were to make them more interesting, but it just doesn't mesh with the rest of the game. Everything should be breaking, then? Or maybe items should be used in the same way they are in any other game/movie/story.
mrspaghetti wrote:
Yes and No. Save spells are indeed much better than Attack spells since they can actually hit enemies sometimes. This doesn't mean attack spells deserve to be bad. That'd be like saying that Fighters should get a -2 to range attacks because their melee attacks are good. There should be scenarios for a class to use all of their different tools at their disposal, and there is no scenario for spells that never hit and aren't even stronger than the saving throw ones.
Ravingdork wrote:
Don't forget the Item bonuses at 4, 10, 16 that applies to Martials only. At level 13, for example, they're gonna be 4 points behind a Non-Fighter Martial. non-Fighters already have like 50% chance to hit same-level enemies (or less), this puts Casters at 25-45% chance to hit (depending on level) any time after level 4. This is pretty silly since evn at 19 when they get legendary they are still behind martial chance to hit (+2 from proficiency -3 from runes). These are the same chars that are trying to land their one Disintegrate they prepared that day. Hell, with good runes, there's a few levels where Wizards have equivalent chances to hit with a sword or arrow compared to the spell. (+2 from rune -2 from low prof). Levels 19-20 are still kind of a myth compared to 4-18.
Working on a new Lorefinder episode over here and I opened up Lost Omens: Gods & Magic to get the latest information on the Goblin Hero-Gods: Hadregash, Venkelvore, Zarongel and Zogmugot. Turns out they are completely omitted form that book, the book that is supposed to have all of the deities and even has some that are less relevant than the Hero-Gods. I checked the old Inner Sea Gods to make sure I wasn't imagining those deities existing and they're still there, so this is a pretty glaring omission. I can understand not featuring some guys like Socothbenoth, but why would these be removed? With Goblins being a Core race now, one would think they'd be important to mention. Are they just omited from the book or have they been retconned from the setting? An official answer would be very welcome since this is for an educational video and we don't want to add something outdated.
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