ClanPsi's page

I commented on the video on YouTube, but just in case you don't read the comments there, I'm adding it here as well due to time constraints. The sooner you read this, the sooner you can fix the book before it goes to print:

Could you please, PLEASE, fix item DC? They should all scale based on the Standard DC table, and all items made with infused reagents should use class/spell DC. It's the main house rule I always use and it's SO MUCH BETTER. It improves quality of life dramatically (you don't need to keep looking up items every single time you want to use them, and they remain useful for more than one level of gameplay) without affecting game balance at all (the effects don't change, so they still aren't particularly great as levels increase). You could even put a small box labelled Item Save DC on the first page of the character sheet for even easier reference. This is the one change I've asked for since the 2e playtest and the one thing you've constantly ignored, even though it's objectively superior to what exists now.
The only thing it affects negatively is the Toxicologist, but let's be honest here, that research field is an absolute pile of hot shyte and should be removed from the game entirely.

Also, why do Celestial Magic and Fiendish Magic have different prerequisites? The former states, "... or another lineage feat associated with celestials," but the latter doesn't have something similar with regards to fiends. The first PF2e books had similar inconsistencies all over the place, so please comb through this release as best you can to try to avoid them for the remaster. I'd honestly suggest just releasing the books on PDFs to the community so we can help. Crowdsourcing is really useful with this kind of thing.

Thank you!

Paizo updating the rules is fantastic news. Here are some things my group and I agree desperately need to change. We have experimented with all of them and there have been zero balance issues whatsoever. I've ordered them in order of importance.

1) Item DCs. All items which have a DC need to be changed to scale based on the Standard DC table. It's ridiculous that items are only useful for 1-2 levels. This would make items useful for much longer. This would also lead to poisons being useful for everyone, not just Toxicologists, but of course a Toxicologist's poisons will have higher DCs. I still think the subclass would need more added in order to make it a worthwhile option, though.

2) Talismans. They should be changed to 1/day. As they are, they are *terrible* value.

3) Animal Companions. While we like how they work in general, the maximum 2 actions per round is severely limiting and leads to some really bizarre interactions. The extra feat to give 3 actions for 2 is not a sufficient solution due to it requiring a certain character level, so it should honestly just be removed entirely. Any companion rider should be able to give one action to their companion mount at a 1:1 ratio, regardless of how many actions that companion or mount has used that turn. The 1:2 ability should be a special ability only usable once per round. This solves the movement problem of spending an entire turn moving on a mount. As written currently, you waste an action every round you're mounted on a companion because they're only allowed to move twice.

4) Cackle. A witch's cackle should be a flourish cantrip, not a focus spell.

As far as I've been able to find, there's nothing in the rules that states infused items (those created using infused reagents during daily preparations) have an effective level equal to your level. This is a massive oversight, which severely impacts the effectiveness of things such as poisons with the incapacitation trait. Adding someting similiar to the following into the next errata would clear up a lot:

Infused alchemical items you create during daily preparions have the following benefits: You may change the save DC for alchemical items created using infused reagents to equal to your class DC, and their effective item level is equal to your level.

Errata 2 gets rid of the Powerful Alchemy feat and gives it to Alchemists for free. How does, or should, this affect the Poisoner Archetype? Do they still fuction as written?

Also, why doesn't Poisoner get a way to increase the DC of poisons they create? It seems like a pretty severe oversight. One solution could be the following.

Expert Poisoner:

Your advanced alchemy level for poison increases to your level – 3. You can change the DCs of your infused poisons to [10 + your advanced alchemy level + your Intelligence modifier] if it's higher.

When I first read the rules for Cackle I thought it sustained all sustainable spells at once, so I thought it was really interesting and unique. Then I read it again and realised that isn't the case. I think my version is better. What do you think? Should Paizo change it for the full release to be like what I originally understood it as?

I just read through the creature creation rules and I must admit, they're pretty useless. It gives a very basic description of each template trait, but doesn't actually tell you what anything is.

Take Demons as an example. It says they have Sin Vulnerabilities and Sin Abilities, but it doesn't actually tell you what they are. The exact quote is: "Sin Ability Demons also have a special ability based on the sin they represent, which either makes them better embody the sin or instills that sin in others."

Are you just supposed to make something up? If so, what is the point of the book in the first place? Why not just bullsh!t everything about a creature and save yourself the money?

I don't get it.

A creature is flat-footed (taking a –2 circumstance penalty to AC) to creatures that are flanking it.

Flanking is no longer a buff you get, but rather now results in the flat-footed debuff condition that the flanked creature receives. If it's now a condition, why does it only apply to some attackers? It's the only condition that is selective like that and kind of breaks Paizo's own rules. If a creature is flanked and has the flat-footed condition, that condition should apply across the board. Thoughts?

Let's be honest here, PF2's magic system is... not good. 5e isn't a great system for customisation, but it got magic right. It took what was great about the PF1 Arcanist and expanded upon it.
How would you fix PF2's magic system to be more in-line with modern game design? Here are some of my ideas:

1) All spells which can be heightened are spontaneously heightenable.
2) Spontaneous casters don't need to re-learn higher level versions of the same spells.
3) Prepared casters are able to use their spell slots to cast whatever spells they've prepared. Not prepare-per-cast like it is now.
4) Spontaneous casters need new abilities to make them more unique and interesting, especially Bard.

The first three are easy enough to implement, but #4 is a bit of a doozy. Does anyone here have any suggestions?

As the subject implies, what are the rules for casting spells into darkness, magical or otherwise? Most spells require a target, whether it's a creature, object or point in space. The best I can find is to roll a 50% miss chance or lose the spell. Is that correct?

*I posted this in another thread, but thought it might deserve its own.*

I was under the impression that the activity you do during Exploration Mode is used to determine your initiative at the start of a battle. Specifically, the roll you make to determine how good you are at that activity is also your initiative roll. That's how my group has been doing it and it works fantastically well - combat starts so organically - but it appears we may be playing it wrong.
Under Avoid Notice it says to make a separate Stealth roll at the beginning of combat to use as your initiative. Why? That character has already rolled a Stealth check. Why are they rolling another one? Am I fundamentally misunderstanding something? How do you play it?

On p455 it says: "Reach greater than 10 feet is measured normally; 20-foot reach can reach 3 squares diagonally, 25-foot reach can reach 4, and so on."

I believe it should read: "... 30-foot reach can reach 4, and so on."

Speaking of which, why is there no thread for posting mistakes for future erratas? Paizo, please add one.

I know that attack spells contribute to MAP, but since they essentially just involve waiving your hands around, are they considered agile? For example, if you attack with a sword with your first action, would your second and third actions being used as a spell attack be at -4? It seems like the most sensible conclusion given that unarmed attacks and light weapons are all agile.

I just got the condition Cards pack. I was led to believe each card was going to have nice Goblin art on them, but mine show nothing but text. What is going on?

The ability lets a Ranger sleep in light or medium armour without being fatigued the next day. That's cool. Why is this ability level 19? The campaign is ending in two sessions by the time you get it. The Ranger should get this ability at level 1.

I was going to contact directly, but I figured I'm not the only one with this problem, so hopefully starting a thread helps more people.

What is the best way to go about getting the English version of the 2e books in August while living in a non-English speaking country? I live in Japan, so every TRPG book I've seen sold in stores is always in Japanese. Ordering from Canada or the US is possible, but international shipping is often quite pricey. Are we able to order directly from you and not have to pay international shipping? I'd be willing to pre-order now in order for you to group my English books in together with the larger shipment of Japanese books.

I haven't heard anything, but I sure hope so. Proficiency is more than enough. Just have UTEML at 0-2-4-6-8 and leave it at that. It'd be so clean and nice.

As many on these forums, including myself, have been suggesting ever since the rules first released, the way magic is being handled is less than optimal. 5e introduced a fantastic re-work of how magic preparation and casting is handled. Prepared casters can prepare a certain number of spells each day, and can use their spell slots (equal to or greater than the spell's level) to cast any of those spells. Heightening was spontaneous, with similar effects from spells as there are in the Playtest for casting using higher levels spell slots. Casters who spontaneously cast, such as sorcerers, were given extra special abilities to greater differentiate themselves. It also alleviates the need for boring, uninspired abilities such as a Sorcerer's "Spontaneous Heighten" (which isn't spontaneous AT ALL) and a Wizard's "Quick Preparation."

So my suggestion/question now is: Can we get a special mini-playtest, similar to what you did with Resonance, to test out a new and improved form of spellcasting? I know changing the entire rulebook right now isn't particularly feasible, so a mini-playtest 1-off with a small selection of spells would be the perfect opportunity to experiment with what is a vastly superior magic system to the antiquated rules the Pathfinder Playtest has currently.

Some people may say the prefer the PF1 system, and that's fine. They don't have to play PF2 if they enjoy PF1 more. The point of PF2 is to improve upon the previous edition, and making magic both more interesting and more enjoyable to play is extremely important for the future of Pathfinder. I believe this would also solve your current problem of people thinking magic is not as powerful as it should be, since introducing this system opens up a lot of opportunities for spellcasters that don't exist currently (for example, actually being able to prepare some non-combat spells without feeling like you're handicapping yourself).

Flanking rules as written are, as in D&D 3e and PF1, kind of dumb because the "flank" is the left or right, not behind. 5e, on the other hand, completely got rid of it, which I don't really like either.

Currently the rules read:
"A line drawn between the center of your space to the center of your ally’s space must pass through either opposite sides or opposite corners of the enemy’s space."

Suggestion - Change the rules to the following:

"A line drawn between the center of your space to the center of your ally's space passes through your opponent's space."

Then you can flank from the side, which is what flanking is. There's no logical reason why flanking should require two people to be on opposite sides. It is the most advantageous position to be in, yes, but it isn't necessary to gain a combat advantage against an opponent.

Sleeping gives Con Mod x Level healing. Treat Wounds does the same with a tiny chance of more on a critical success.
What?! Why is it so awful? It's on average 10% of your max hit points, or in other words half of one encounter. If a player doesn't boost Con then it's even less than that. You might as well not get any healing at all since it's almost completely useless.

Am I missing something important here? Why are the shoehorning everyone into boosting Con as high as they can? What's wrong with 5e's hit die system, and why doesn't Paizo adopt/adapt things that are proven to work well (I'm looking at you, Vancian spellcasting *glare*)? o_O

The changed it from a Fort save based on what knocked you out to a flat death saving throw. Personally I don't like this change at all. It's exactly the same as 5e now, and I do not like 5e dying rules. It's just as easy to die from a dragon's breath weapon as it is to die from a level 0 goblin scratching your toe. I much preferred the 1.3 rules.

Suggestion: If people are having trouble calculating a monster's DC, why not just put it in the monster's stat line? Then you wouldn't have to write it under each individual monster ability either. It'd make it much simpler while still being unique and interesting.

My group ran In Pale Mountain's Shadow yesterday and my god, the quicksand encounter was an absolute slog. Here are some of the problems we encountered:

1) It says the Ankhrav nest is next to the quicksand, but the area is insanely big with tons of sinkholes. Is there an Ankhrav next to each one? If not, why does it just to happen to be right next to the one a PC falls into? Pretty unrealistic situation.

2) The PC who fell in was riding a camel. Is he just unaffected by the quicksand for the first 2-3 turns while the camel sinks?

3) The first thing the party did was throw a rope. There are no rules for how that interacts with the encounter. Can the party pull? Does it give the trapped PC a bonus? If so, what is the bonus? Is there a cumulative bonus for having more party members hold the rope? What if they tie it to a camel to help?

4) Does the Ankhrav even need to appear? Can't he just murder everyone from below in the sand? Is there a limit to how many times he can f*ck up everyone's armour? If no, why not?

Are other hazards this poorly thought out and written? If the rules are going to be this vague I highly suggest Paizo actually finish the rules before they release them to the public for testing. The more I read and play of the Playtest the more clear it becomes that Paizo has no idea what they're doing with PF2 with no clear vision.

I really like how blocking with a shield is a reaction that grands DR, but can dent the shield. That's a fantastic option for combat. I also like how Half-Orcs can use their reaction to get a +1 bonus to spell saves. More options are almost never a bad thing, and both of these are great additions to the game.

What I don't like, however, is having to spend an action to prepare for something that might not even happen. It's really boring and uninspired design, they don't make any sense (Why would someone be fighting with a shield but not be using it? Why would an Orc be more susceptible to magic if he isn't squinting his eyes or whatever the f*ck the preparation action implies they do?) and their benefits don't warrant an entire action in my opinion. My suggestion: Get rid of the preparation actions completely.

For shields, give the AC bonus all the time and keep the reaction to raise it for DR.
For Half-Orcs, change Superstition to a reaction (similar to their new Level 9 Ancestry feat) and give them something more interesting at level 9.
Also, for Dwarves, change Ancient Blooded to be less like Superstition.

I, like millions of other players from around the world, come from a country where the Metric system is used for measurements. I don't understand Imperial. I suggest putting two values on everything in the game. Keep Imperial if you must, but adding in the exact number is squares afterwards in parenthesis would be absolutely fantastic. Thus, 30ft movement would be: 30ft (6 squares)

As for Fahrenheit, it is the most ridiculous measuring system ever created and doesn't belong in modern society. Please switch everything to Celsius. If you absolutely have to keep it (ugh...), then do something similar to what I suggest above and use parenthesis. It would look as such:
...
Just give me a second. Gotta pull out my calculator because Fahrenheit is so stupid...
-80F (-62C)
140F (60C)

I think the system of changing your initiative to right before whoever knocked you out is interesting, but not without flaws. It's fine when it happens once, but in the first module, every single PC in my group ended up getting knocked out by the BBEG. That meant that by the end of the battle the initiative order had changed to:

17

16.4

16.3

16.2

16.1

16

It's probably okay for groups who play with cards for initiative, but we put order on a whiteboard. Constantly reordering is a huge pain in the butt.

I get that Paizo is trying to make Horses as unique as other animal companions, but why are they the only mount? A quick look at pretty much any other fantasy game or movie shows characters riding a huge variety of animals. D&D ffs has Halflings riding dogs and raptors. So why is Pathfinder 2, a system which is supposed to give far more options than others, so limited?

Suggestion: Either get rid of the "Mount" keyword, or don't limit abilities such as Cavalier Dedication to only companions with "Mount." Then a Halfing Cavalier can ride a dog (or wolf, I guess... -_-) like an Outrider or a raptor like a Talenta Nomad as they're supposed to be able to.

They sort of fixed the discrepancy between trained and untrained in Update 1.3, but in my opinion a much better solution is:

Untrained = 1/2 level rounded down.

Thoughts?

1) Heightening Spells. Casters are already limited by their spells per day. There's no reason why heightening should be so limited, especially to Sorcerers and Bards. Any caster should be able to heighten whatever spell they want to.
2) Everything Scaling With Level. Attack bonus I can kind of understand, but AC? Skills, even those you're untrained in? It's really stupid that the difference between untrained and legendary is 5 at level 20, and that the biggest possible gap between AC of the PCs is 4. If everything in the game scales it would be better if nothing scaled at all.
3) Yo-Yo Death Rules. The rules right now are awful. I ran the first playtest module and the PCs went down about 20 times throughout the dungeon. Sometimes they were healed up, but most of the time they just stabilised themselves and got up, only to fall right back down again because they were at 1hp. As a DM I don't want to stab a PC who's on the ground, but it's the only logical step after an enemy sees a PC get right back up again.
4) Enemy Power. It's so out of whack with how the system is built, specifically with bonuses to attack. Why does a CR 0 mook Goblin have a +6 to hit when a level 1 super elite hero Goblin PC can only muster a maximum +5? F*cking clown shoes.
5) The 15-Minute Adventuring Day. As so many have mentioned here, why is there no rest mechanic besides sleeping for the night? The adventure I mentioned above took my PCs (ironically enough) almost exactly 15 minutes of in-game time to complete. What are they supposed to do when they run out of resources? Rest for 23.75 hours? That's beyond ridiculous.
6) TAC and Spell Attack Rolls. This relates to #2. TAC is on average 2-3 lower than AC to make it easier for spells to hit because casters use non-main-stats to attack with spells. The actual to-hit percentages are exactly the same, though (For example, a level 1 Fighter with STR 18 attacking AC 15 with a +5 to hit is a 50% hit chance. A level 1 Wizard with DEX 14 casting Ray of Frost against TAC 13 with a +3 to hit is still a 50% hit chance). Which makes me wonder WTF the point is of TAC even existing in the first place. Just have AC and make all spell attacks use the caster's main stat to attack.

Does anyone agree or disagree with my gripes? What are yours?

Under "Runes" it says:

Quality Max Potency Max Properties
Standard None None
Expert +2 1
Master +4 2
Legendary +5 3

But then it gives both a +1 Longsword and an Expert Flaming Kukri as examples of magic weapons. Thus, Standard quality weapons can have a Max Potency of +1, not None.

BTW, this wasn't updated in 1.2

Can anyone give a decent reason as to why this is so limited? Here are two really WTF choices:

1) Sorcerers need to re-learn a spell as a heightened version in order to cast it as a heightened spell.
2) Spontaneous Heighten isn't spontaneous at all. They need to be prepared at the beginning of the day.

If casters are already limited by spells per day, why even bother having a limit on heightened spells? If someone would rather cast a heightened fireball than greater teleport, why should they not be able to? It seems extremely reasonable to me to presume that if a caster knows how to put more into spells like Magic Missile for more missiles (adding in more components), then surely they also know how to put ever-so-slightly-more in (cast as a level 2 spell) in order to get one more.

I for one am house ruling these stupid limitations out of my games, but can anyone understand why they exist at all?

Why is spell preparation still so clunky and outdated? 5e isn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but they absolutely nailed spell preparation. Please, for the love of god, change your spell prep system to be more like 5e. Having to prepare each and every casting of a spell is beyond ridiculous, not fun at all, and completely unnecessary when there already exist way better options.