Christopher LaHaise's page

I've been having a bit of a discussion involving the Thirsting Blade (Scaling Magic Items).

It starts with this:
This long, curved +1 dagger gives off a contented hum when soaked with blood. It can be thrown normally despite its length and has a critical threat range of 18–20.

Then it gives this:
8th Level: The thirsting blade is a +1 keen dagger.

The way I understand it, the 18-20 is an intrinsic part of the dagger itself, and not a magical modifier, meaning that making it keen would give it a critical threat range of 15-20. Some people have disagreed, saying that the critical threat range would be 17-20 (as a normal dagger would), and that this overwrites the 18-20.

I'd really like something official one way or the other, but I'm pretty sure that you aren't waiting 8 levels for a +1 keen dagger.

As a comparison: Armaggeddon Plate:
A suit of armageddon plate acts as +1 full plate for nearly any wearer—it automatically resizes when donned to fit wearers of size Small to Large. The armor is blackened, with joints and helm in a style reminiscent of the legendary tarrasque.

8th Level: Armageddon plate retaliates against melee attackers when its fortification ability triggers. When an attacker strikes the wearer with a melee weapon and the armor negates a critical hit or sneak attack, the power of the armor leaves the attacker shaken for 1d4 rounds (Will DC 16 negates). This is a mind-affecting fear effect, and can stack with itself to make an attacker frightened or panicked.

I think it would be wonderful if the Bestiaries in 2.0 balanced out the creatures across the full range of alignments. It's nice to have people to beat up, but putting as much emphasis on the creatures which may / may not be enemies, or even be allies, would help. For example, if you did a 'haunted wood' there's scads of adversaries you could put in from the Bestiaries, but if you did a 'faerie wood' or a 'blessed wood', the variety suddenly drops like a stone. The number of creatures you can put in without doing reskins is a lot less.

And on the flip side, if someone's running an Evil Campaign, there's a lot less non-evil opponents to use. So there's that, too. I do feel it would be beneficial to provide creatures across the alignments, without focus on 'evil' or 'hostile' - sure, that can be a part of it, but it doesn't need to be the majority.

One thing I'm hoping we'll see in PF 2.0 are options for characters who don't want to do physical combat. In our group, there's a lot of social activity involved in our encounters, before we even get to the weapons, and it would be great to see character options which step away from physical combat and go more into social conflicts. Whether it's trying to negotiate with a hostile force, convert people to the cause, or cloak and dagger in the king's court, having characters able to do more outside of combat would be a godsend.

Think about it - a cleric who's more oriented towards uplifting spirits and inspiring the faithful than about smiting undead and fighting on the front lines. A magician who's about bewitching and entrancing opponents with words and illusions than fireballs and lightning bolts. A rogue who can talk anyone out of their goods, convince everyone he's on their side, while walking away with their belongings.

I would love to see archetypes and feats that put as much emphasis on social activities as they do on combat activities.

Shooting for the moon, I was thinking about 2e Pathfinder, and something I'd kind of like to see - though in no way would I expect to see it become true.

Release the core rulebook - sure, no problem. Base Classes, Base Races, Base Spells, no problem - I'm fine with this idea.

Expansion Books - because we know sourcebooks would be coming sooner or later - I would love to see act as a 'collection'.

The Book of Classes - takes all the Classes from 1e, tweaks and updates them, and releases all of them in a single book. ALL of them. Take the old Prestige Classes, turn them into Archetypes.

The Book of Magic - an encyclopedia of all spells produced for Pathfinder, plus a few score new spells. Clean them up, touch them up, there we go. Words of Power could be fleshed out in this as well.

(And as an aside - I hope overcasting is going to be a thing in 2e - take a lower level spell, cast it as a more powerful and potent spell at a higher level - 5e got THAT right.)

The Book of Races - all the Races from 1e, plus a bunch of new ones - discussing 'half + X' races, so dwarf / human? Sure. Elf / halfling? Okay. Have it talk about how the different races of dwarf, elf, etc, produce different hybrids. I'd love this. We could see tiefling elves, or genasi dwarves.

So, my sister cracked open the book, and the first thing she saw was 'envoy'. This filled her with joy, because she wanted to make a social-fu character - someone who hob-nobbed with the upper crust, made allies and connections, and had a lot of pull in social circles.

Sadly... envoy isn't a social fu character.

I tried looking for a wireless hacker type - someone who connects to machines remotely (kind of like blutooth and wifi in this day and age). I either missed it, or it simply doesn't exist - anyone know where it might be?

The other idea was a 'rigger' (ala Shadowrun) someone who builds and buys drones, gives them a Smart AI that can do some limited thinking, and then runs them remotely. I don't think I found anything about buying and programming drones, though.

Am I missing something?

The 1st level PCs are investigating goblin activity in an area. The encounter incoming is a goblin warband, 15 goblins. You roll for encounter distance, and get a reasonable amount of distance between the two groups.

The goblins make their perception checks to spot the PCs. The PCs fail.
The goblins go into surprise round, and rain arrowy death on the PCs. Then you go into normal initiative - and the goblins have most of the PCs dead by the end of that round, and will get another shot or two off before the survivors can engage in melee, and can easily continue the attack and hound the survivors if they flee.

So, presuming all dice are rolled in the open - what would you do differently? I'm inclined not to fudge / cheat, myself, so...

I have noticed in d20 / PF gaming, that when monster books come out, the vast majority of the entries - especially the intelligent ones - are evil. Pages and pages of horrors, villains, and adversaries to pit against the heroes. That's nice and all, but that kind of skews the idea that the entire ecology of the world is designed to wipe out the demihuman races, and for all practical intents and purposes, they'd win.

What I'd really like to see are more entries slanted towards Lawful and Good creatures. And I don't mean 4-5 in a book, I'm talking a good quarter-to-half of the book, showing creatures you might encounter that you could team up with, interact and trade with, and generally don't need to sweat encountering.

Or, perhaps, creatures whose alignments swing through the entire spectrum, much like humans, elves, dwarves, etc, have. Basically, 'just people' - a society that you can encounter where the entire race wouldn't be bent on killing you. The Bestiary books are cool, but my world-building looks at all of this and asks me, 'how on earth would anyone survive?'