Crayon's page

Consulting the Ars Magica supplement 'Lords of Men' lists the following examples:
- Margaret of Beverly
- Eleanor of Aquitaine
- Sikelgaita of Sicily
- Petronilla of Leicester
- Matilda of Tuscany

Also much later, but Charlotte Stanley Countess of Derby might qualify as well.

I don't think the Trung sisters or the Order of the Hatchet have been mentioned yet..

Naah, we've moved on to 5e.

In any case, there's no shortage of d20 content that's 95% compatible with PF1 if that is still your thing.

MaxAstro wrote:

... they've been using PF1e-like tactics not much more complicated than "hit it until it dies".

I hear this a lot about 1e, and it's never been my experience except with very unimaginative GMs. I mean, most combats boil down to dealing hp damage but in most of my experience combat has been just as dynamic as 2e.

That was always my favourite part of PF1. Combat is always boring regardless of system, but fast and simple trumps slow and complicated.

So far, I hate 2E, it's the worst of D&D's 4E with 5E gimping. Sure, there was a lot of rules bloat in 1E but you don't have to use everything, if you keep it simple and gradually integrate. However, 2E and D&D 5E will get right back to rules creep because of eonomics, selling one-shot modules and adventure paths don't pay the bills, sourcebooks in which everyone in the group "must own" does.

5e seems to be doing OK so far with a limited release schedule. Paizo likely could too though I think it's unlikely that they'll actually do so.

I do think Paizo would like to put some brakes on the supplement treadmill as well - that business model's pretty much dead as it is and beyond a certain point you're just competing against your own product which means greater overhead/production costs for the same income.

Personally, I don't really care for either game - too modular for my tastes, but there's no point dwelling on that. Just play something you do like instead.

Most Move actions, Standard action, etc are treated identically under the rules though which is most definitely not true of PF2 where they're still subdivided up into lots of categories that reflect how they function.

In practice it's no better than PF1 and arguably worse since at least in PF1 almost everything was followed the rules for either standard, move, or full-round.

Another problem I noticed is that a lot of the sheet is wasted at low levels

Those are... very blue and beige. They're a bit of an eyesore.

You're not wrong, but that seems to be par for the course where colour CSs are concerned - just stick with the printer-friendly one.

So I was reading the Paizo Blog post, Adventure Marches On

And I noticed this

Pathfinder 2nd Edition wrote:

Brutish Shove
Feat 2
Keywords: Fighter, Press
Requirements: You are wielding a two-handed melee weapon.

Effect: Throwing your weight behind your attack, you hit your opponent hard enough to make it stumble back. Make a Strike with a two-handed melee weapon. If you hit a target that is your size or smaller, that creature is flat-footed until the end of your current turn, and you can automatically Shove it, with the same benefits as the Shove action (including the critical success effect, if your Strike was a critical hit). If you move to follow the target, your movement doesn't trigger reactions.

This strike has the following failure effect.
Failure: The target becomes flat-footed until the end of your current turn.

And I was reminded of the D&D 4E Power, Tide of Iron:

Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition wrote:

Tide of Iron
At-Will
Keywords: Martial, Weapon
Standard Action
Requirement: using a shield
Target: one creature
Attack: Strength vs AC
Flavor Text: After each mighty swing, you bring your shield to bear and use it to push your enemy back.
Hit: 1[W] + Strength modifier damage, and you push the target 1 square if it is your size, smaller than you, or one size category larger. You can shift into the space that the target occupied.

Increase damage to 2[W] + Strength modifier at 21st level.

Now obviously the maneuvers are still different. Notably:

• - Brutish Shove requires a Two-Hander while Tide of Iron requires a Shield
• - Brutish Shove inflicts the Flat-Footed condition, even on a Failure (but not a Critical Failure).
• - Brutish Shove has the Press trait, meaning it cannot be the first attack

...

Unknown and probably unknowable.

PF2's mechanics doesn't really seem to have any more in common with D&D 4e than they do with 5e so I don't think there's any direct connection there.

Ultimately though, to what extent, if any, PF2 borrows from 4e is purely an academic matter and the system needs to be evaluated on its own merits.

The only thing it really seems to be actively emulating from 4e is that game's emphasis on tactical movement and combat which, for me, is reason enough to avoid it, but ultimately it will depend on what aspects of 4e you liked or loathed.

Crayon wrote:

Alternately, take a look at the playtest files if you can find them anywhere (I'm told Paizo pulled them from this site).

They just moved the playtest files.

- Original version and update 1.1

- Update 1.6

I still have my copies, but thanks anyway...

You realize all of this is pointless without some objective measure of whether a given character is 'playable' or not.

Having myself participated in many session with characters that the denizens of this board would decry as non-viable, I really do think some people have very odd standards on this...

Even if you like Feats (eww), it's hard for me to see how anyone could think there're too few of them in PF2. It seems very much the opposite as far as I'm concerned...

My limited understanding is that both methods are used in qigong. Colloquially, they're referred to as Buddhist and Taoist breathing and have very different purposes in the meditations, but I can't expound further than that as my personal experiences were both very limited and happened over a decade ago...

Few if any.

The class bloat of PF1 was one of its worst features and the new class design should make it possible to represent a much broader subset of character types with each individual class.

With the benefit of retrospect, a lot of my complaints with the art have come down to pose and positioning and probably results in the pictures having to be dynamic and exciting, but without anything to give them context.

I may not know why Kyra's standing with her legs spread so wide or why Amiri's making that duck-face, but while they do look a bit weird at times, it's ultimately preferable to the characters looking as though they were posing for DMV photos (Harsk does come close, but it kinda works for a dwarf)

Well, the cloak makes it easy to imagine shoulders so that's a plus and this dress is nicer than... whatever she was wearing prior.

That said, her legs are oddly far apart and she's wearing a weird grimace for some reason (maybe she got lunch at the same place as Amiri and it ain't sitting right?)

I like the changes. I still think the shield should be a kite shield but at least the tower shield is appropriate for a heavily armored warrior. I don't understand the choice of a long bow over a short bow.

Unless Seelah's 8-9 feet tall now, that looks like a shortbow to me.

I wouldn't say cuter, but the older ones don't scream "the art director said make them cute and marketable," to me.

TBH, I've never really been a fan of that set of proportions. It works for comedic and it works for being creepy but outside of that I have almost never come across it working.

The old kobolds had an awkward gangly appearance that I found endearing while the new ones look more muscular and imposing to me...

YMMV, but for my money the old kobolds were cuter. *shrug*

Well, his head looks less triangular now that it's coloured which is good, but the anatomy still strikes me as 'off' somehow. Particularly with regard his neck and shoulders...

Always thought it was 'Kee-ra'

Apart from that, it's pretty good though her legs seem awfully far apart which conveys a more stable approach to combat as oppose to the mobility being cited in the video - though perhaps she just completed spin and is regaining her footing...

Open-ended campaigns are generally a bad idea IMO. Have a clear beginning, middle, and end planned for your saga, map out the types of enemies you want the PCs to fight at each stage, and design your adventures accordingly.

With all due respect... I actually prefer if Paizo'd gone full-hog and just REPLACE the Iconics for 2E

I agree that a new edition should, ideally, feature new iconics. It would represent a firm break with the past and would allow Paizo greater latitude in terms of what classes and ancestries they include in the books as well as how they're presented in both the rules and lore. That ship has sailed, however at least so far as the core book is concerned.

Amiri looks sicks... quick, somebody give her some chickensoup!

From the thumbnail, I thought she was an undead being of some kind. Perhaps she will look better in the finished illustration, however...

Has consideration been given to increasing casting times? Kind of like a reverse cooldown effect...

If traits were meaningful in PF1, then by extension heritage and background are meaningful in PF2.

They weren't.

Racial Traits, Background Traits and Archetypes shouldn't be considered to be meaningful precisely because all they are is mechanical bloat.

Agreed.

I really don't think Heritage, Background, or 'Class Path' should be considered to be meaningful precisely because all they are is mechanical bloat.

I always thought it was particularly silly for clerics to call upon the holy power of their deity to tie their shoes or warm their breakfasts...

Too Monty Python for a serious campaign...

No, the message received was /not/ harmful to a huge swath of people. What % that is, who knows. And ultimately, it's not harmful to anyone. Certain individual's interpretations of a word or phrase, or personal sensitives or predilections may make them offended by the word, but nobody is "harmed".

As well, anything can be offensive or harmful to someone, somewhere, at some time. The term "race" is used everyday in innocuous ways, in real life. It's laughable to suggest that people who hear the term in real life can't handle reading or hearing it in fantasy fiction.

Perhaps, but the term is inaccurate in the context of the game. Even more so when where things like half-elves, tieflings, and the like get involved. Nothing resembling these creatures exist in the real world which is why no specific real world terms apply to them. Hence we're left with three options:

Personally, I favour option 3.

Hopefully, with the cumbersome new approach to Ancestries in PF2 we'll see the number of playable creature-types strongly reined in.

I'd personally prefer if they just divorced mechanics from ancestry altogether and made it a purely aesthetic choice, but that seems decidedly unlikely at this point...

Has consideration been given to simply eliminating Wands from the game altogether? They were always a particularly dull type of item anyway so they'll not be missed

Really? Because looking at the PF2 CRB classes versus the PF1 CRB classes they get many of the same hard coded abilities (or an analogous one) as the old versions. I keep hearing the watered down, stripped out arguements against PF2 classes, but when I brought up in another topic that the PF2 Fighter has all the same core class elements as the PF1 Fighter (just converted to the new framework) things went quiet.

If you equate identity to game-mechanics, maybe. In terms of theme, however, how does Fighter, for example, differ from say a Barbarian or Ranger? Or a Sorcerer from a Wizard? Or a Druid from a nature-themed Cleric?

Do you mind listing the differences from the PF1 core rulebook vs the Playtest rulebook that makes you think so? I'm not convinced that's true. Why is Monk or other non-cleric spellcaster's roles "hard to wrap your head around"?

I already have. The classes don't seem to have any identity beyond, maybe maybe lending itself to a particular combat role. Given the difficulty of describing something that doesn't exist (from my perspective), I'd argue that burden of proof is on you.

What do you think a Wizard's identity is in PF2?

While the classes in PF2 may, perhaps, have clearer mechanical roles in the game, their identities seem far weaker to the point I find it actually difficult to describe them to people who haven't read the playtest document and even then there are a few classes it's hard to wrap your head around (Monk, any non-cleric spellcaster)

I kinda prefer them. It helps add a sense of danger to the situation and quests to find a cure can be a source of future adventures for the party

I'm not sure Rarity has any use for players or GMs. The initial description made it sound like the rules were instituted for Paizo's convenience.

Crayon wrote:

I don't know, I think I'd prefer if they dropped the mechanics from Ancestry all together and made it a purely aesthetic choice.

It's simpler, makes more sense, is more balanced, and presents more character options.

Pretty tough when you have races that for story reasons have innate differences, biology, or special abilities and all the NPCs have these and the PCs have no access to such things, or if NPCs also do not get it, it feels very flat and setting voiding to strip all those traits from things that did have them considering they are maintaining the same world.

I'd argue that 90% of biological differences can be handled by the player using existing mechanics by simply taking Ancestry into consideration when making other choices - Do Elves really need +Dex, and Int and -Con and then have subraces that subvert it? Why not just rule that differences between them and humanity are negligible and let the PC allocate the scores how they want?

Other stuff like Ancestral weapons don't make any sense either except maybe as a cultural trait which then raises the question of why different human cultures don't follow similar rules. Other stuff like low-light vision can be made General Feats and made available to anyone who would benefit like miners or thieves as well.

Neither the PF1 or PF2 versions of successive +s do much for me. The ability to hit harm creatures immune to non-magic weapons is cool and evocative, however, as are some of the other benefits you can realize.

The biggest weakness I see with the PF2 version is that monsters' HP will likely be scaled based on the idea that PCs will have magic weapons of a certain level which could cause familiar problems.

Frankly, a lot of them aren't even as good as that since, in most instances, there's no difference between Critical and Regular Failure anyway.

That said, my own problem relates more to added complexity with no apparent payoff in terms of fun.

Abilities don't make sense fullstop. Seems like we're stuck with them for the foreseeable future though so the current arrangement is about as good as we're likely to see.

Honestly, if your concept requires drastically different distribution than is ideal for your chosen Class I would humbly suggest that either your concept is intrinsically flawed or would be better represented by a different Class...

I don't necessarily think it's system mastery at work as I play plenty of other systems and don't usually have these kinds of problems except for stuff life Exalted or D&D 4e where there are lots of ways to do pretty much the same thing, but in mechanically different ways.

Basically, PF2s engine is lacking internal consistency which makes it harder to learn since you can't just extrapolate from similar rules elsewhere in the system. It also has a lot of moving parts that require more extensive bookkeeping than we enjoy.

Certainly familiarity with a system can speed things up, but if you can't understand how something's supposed to work at all (shields, steath, etc) how do you gain experience with those rules?

1. Create a new edition of Pathfinder that's much simpler to learn and play—a core system that's easy to grasp but expandable—while remaining true to the spirit of what makes Pathfinder great: customization, flexibility of story, and rules that reward those who take the time to master them.

2. Ensure that the new version of the game allows us to tell the same stories and share in the same worlds as the previous edition, but also makes room for new stories and new worlds wherever possible.

3. Work to incorporate the innovations of the past decade into the core engine of the game, allowing the best rules elements and discoveries we've made to have an integrated home in the new system (even if they aren't present in the initial book).

4. Forge a more balanced play environment where every character has a chance to contribute to the adventure in a meaningful way by allowing characters to thrive in their defined role. Encourage characters to play to their strengths, while working with others to bolster their place in the group.

5. Make Pathfinder a game that's open and welcoming to all, no matter their background or experience.

1. While there are some moves in this direction, they just didn't take for me. Specifically, I'm usually pretty good at learning and remembering rules, but if there are a lot of steps to follow, I tend to become confused very easily so things like trying to coordinate keywords or deal with Conditions, or having each Action have its own unique rules more than counteract any benefits realized from the RAE. It does occur to me that this game may be more playable at its most basic level (player doesn't know the rules at all), but I also can't see myself ever GMing this edition without stopping the game every few minutes to consult the manual. Therefore, I can only consider this a Failure. 0/5

2. Well, you certainly CAN, but you can do it just as well, if not better, with any edition of D&D or any of a dozen other Fantasy RPGs. Let's call this a partial success. .5/5

3. I never really paid much attention to most of the optional rules in the various PF supplements so I don't really feel especially qualified to evaluate this, but many of Unchained's missteps seem to have been repeated here so we'll call it a 'success' (for what that's worth) 1.5/5

4. This is probably the most controversial point on the list as it really encompasses several different ideas and there are semantic issues that have been brought up previously to boot. Personally, I don't consider any of these to be positive developments anyway, but I'm also not really sure whether they've been achieved so let's call it another partial. 2/5

5. Nothing seems especially offensive to me (cringe-worthy as the section on ethnicity is). Still, there's no way to actually evaluate this until the book hits the street. For now, I'll give it a partial. 2.5/5

50% Overall grade: D+

Vic Ferrari wrote:

I think for PF2/Golarion, they could have included a more interesting race, fresh, something new for a core race, not necessarily new to the game/world. Maybe a quadruped?

I've never quite understood why PF and D&D seem resistant to the idea of the Centaur. They don't have to be silly, nor do they have to be overpowered. First of all, you don't even have to make them so big that other PCs can ride them, (maybe halflings, goblins, and gnomes, but not medium guys).

I see them as like Game of Thrones Dothraki with the horse-part built-in. Main features would probably still be an enhanced carrying capacity, movement rate, and something that makes using spears awesome for once.

Well, Centaurs used Medium weapons so the benefits and drawbacks of Size generally balanced out - if anything I'd say it left them a tad on the weak side since they often had trouble moving in enclosed areas. Their unique anatomy played havoc with Item Slots, Trip, and certain skills like Climb or Swim though.

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.

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

The best math is a sticking point for me. Many people can see that Option A is better than Option B and insist that only a fool would chose Option B. But my mathematical lens sees a little farther. Imagine that Option A actually is better than Option B, but only by 10%. And Option B opens more doors for future development, so in the long run, it is better. Nevertheless, I will still see people writing that only a fool would chose Option B.

People usually can't see how small the gap is.

The sneaky PF1 archer rogue pressured into Point-Blank Shot and Precise Shot? Those feats are not necessary if he is not regularly shooting into melee. The alchemist bombing in crowded hallways? Precise Bombs makes good sense. Good teamwork usually trumps better damage.

I tried writing several examples for this post, even a spoiler-free one taken from this week's Doomsday Dawn game. But I realized that people won't be able to see how the non-obvious choice was better than the obvious choice. Even an explicit example requires a paragraph of detailed explanation.

My wife and I dominate the battlefield with unexpected builds: infusion-donating alchemist, high-mobility time oracle, melee bad-touch aberrant sorceress, battlefield-control gunslinger, and PF2 Raging Athlete barbarian. They work better than the well-known optimized builds, because the greater variety gives us characters that fit the team and create teamwork.

There's also the point that a lot of people simply don't care so long as the Feat in question fits what they want to do thematically.

I don't real see any point in trying to balance a game where everyone's playing on the same side. If the players and GM are having fun nothing else really matters. If they're not, the goal should be to make the game more fun - which may or may not involve modifying certain rules, but is, at most, only tangentially connected to the concept of balance.

On a related note, due to variations in playstyle, campaign, etc. I'm not really convinced it's even possible to 'balance' a tabletop RPG in a way that will actually withstand contact with reality.

So.. of interest to me here...

PF1 had 34 conditions in the back of the Core Rulebook

The playtest has 42, of which 2 are helpful (accelerated and quick) and 5 are attitudes (which were in PF1 but not well codified). If we yank those out, we are down to 35.

So, I am not sure if the confusion is coming from the number of conditions (which seems to be about the same) or the fact that they can be different values.

Just trying to track this down. I see a lot of folks saying that various aspects of the playtest are more confusing or challenging that PF1, but in most cases we worked to make sure that the new system was at most, the same complexity, if not simpler.

So.. is it something I am not seeing or is it that its new, and that in and of itself is a challenge. So much of the old system is like second nature now that I take it complexity for granted.

Speaking purely for myself, while playing PF1, my players and I were very conscientious in our choice of spells, feats, monsters etc to ensure that we rarely, if ever, had to actually use any Conditions in play - it is very possible to do so up to about Level 5 (and possibly beyond, we've never really tried).

As such, my complaint would be that Conditions and persistent damage seem to come up a lot more frequently in PF2 and indeed seem almost unavoidable based on the current roster of spells and feats as well as the bestiary we've been provided.

So far as critical success/failures go, it almost seems like a move away from d20 to something with a bellcurve like 3d6 might work better. Obviously 10 would be less useful as the margin used as it would rarely see use, but it seems like something could be managed. Possibly the margin could be based on your proficiency or something of that nature?

I've playtested for several other games. The problem is, there's not really much criticism to give when you viscerally detest nearly every aspect of a game.

Sure, I could write up a playtest report detailing the problems with the Action Economy, +10/-10, Forced 'Optimization', and the excessive usage of Conditions and/or persisting damage, but in the end all it comes down to is that this is a game I would never, ever play - which means Paizo's probably not interested in my feedback since to appeal to me, they'd pretty much have to do away with their entire design philosophy for the new edition. Frankly, I don't really care much either as there are lots of RPGs I do enjoy so dropping PF from the roster isn't a big deal.

I will stick around until the final release, however. I have little confidence that the finished game is anything I'll actually want to play, but if nothing else, it should interesting to watch the creative process involved as the game slowly takes shape.

So, I'm just now diving into the playtest, and I'm having a hard time understanding a couple things.

Am I correct, that with the current rules, I can't essentially play what would have been a standard dwarf in previous editions because each separate racial ability that has been the norm, is now an ancestry feat?

Am I also correct in that a first level 'human' with a 'half elf' or 'half orc' ancestral feat, basically pays a feat tax and can't actually buy any of the racial traits at first level?

Maybe it's because it's late, maybe it's because I've been drinking, but I can't find anything saying otherwise, and if that's the case, I think I'm done with new Pathfinder before it's even begun.

1. Sort of. It's more complicated than before since a lot of the racial features would've been inapplicable to a lot of characters anyway.

2. No. They receive the Half-Elf or Half-Orc feat which allows them to select 2 of 4 minor benefits (take languages, Low-Light Vision doesn't actually work in PF2). This is easily comparable to the benefits of most Ancestry Feats other characters will be selecting.