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I was thinking about how cool it would be to have weapons that have special actions that can be made with them in addition to their special abilities. Things like a Scythe allowing you to spend two actions to make an attack that trips the target, Rapiers having a two-action costing disarm attack, bows having a two-action “overdraw” that allows for you to add your strength bonus to damage, two action Attack with a Katana that can only be made with the Katana starting in it’s sheathe and catches the opponent flat-footed, and other cool unique functions.

I saw a user online suggesting a huge sword that takes additional actions to use at all, so like a vertical strike that takes two actions to make, and a horizontal strike that takes three actions but makes a strike against three enemies in range, starting off with a penalty on the first target due to the weight but then a smaller penalty on the second and a bonus on the third as you built momentum.

Might be a level of complexity that the devs want to keep to special and rare weapons, but I think it would be awesome if most weapons, even if just kept to martial and above and not simple, had a special attack that they could do. Would make weapon choice an even bigger part of what makes the character build what it is.

I have been thinking about proficiency levels lately, and what they will mean for weapons. With skills we know that different proficiency levels will enable new things you are able to do with those skills, but what will weapons get other than a bonus to attack?

That’s when I thought yo proficiency unlocks for each weapon group, giving you a benefit to your attacks and boosting what the weapons do well.

I assume that I am probably very wrong about this idea and it is far from what Paizo is doing, or if they are then I will be off. They are probably just going to have feats that require certain proficiency levels with certain weapons, but it was fun to brainstorm a couple different weapon groups proficiency unlocks.

First up I have axes, a pretty self-explanitory group name. The whole point of an axe with it’s curved short blade is to focus as much force into as small of a contact point as possible to cause maximum splitting of wood, bones or whatever you are chopping. So in my mind, someone who picks up an axe wants to see lots of blood, and being better at axing means being able to do more with fewer swings, so having explosive rolls that cascade through your opponents flesh felt super appropriate.

Axes:
Expert: When successfully making a strike with an axe, the target begins bleeding 1d6 for each max die rolled for damage (8 on a d8, 10 on a d10 etc.) at the beginning of their turn.

Master: Each enemy that you threaten and is adjacent to the target of your strike with an axe takes the minimum damage from your attack as splash damage.

Legendary: When rolling for damage, each time you roll max on a damage die (8 on a d8, 10 on a d10 etc.) roll another of those dice and add it to the total damage. Rolling max on these extra dice will add another as

Then, I did Heavy bladed, Longsword, Katama, Greatswords, Falchion etc. these weapons are chosen by warriors who want something tried and true. So the skill unlocks I opted for were about taking ones skill with the blade and using it to be more reliable and consistent. So you don’t have to worry about enemy reactions that are triggered by critical fails, and their minimum damage with swords will be more consistently higher.

Blades, Heavy:
Expert: All Critical Failures made when striking with a heavy bladed weapon are treated as regular failures instead.

Master: When striking with a heavy bladed weapon, any time you roll a 1 on your damage dice, you may reroll that die and use the new results.

Legendary: Whenever you reroll a damage die from a heavy bladed weapon, you may instead roll two of that die and add both results.

Thoughts? I know I formatted these poorly?’c but if anybody else wants to take a stab at some other weapon groups or something more balanced than what I put here I would love to see what other people would do.

Back in the day, when 3rd edition and imthen 3.5 was being developed, there was a clear desire among all of the base races introduced and used: no racial bonus to strength or intelligence. It was feared with strength the bonus to attack and damage would be too unbalanced, and so the only race to get a +2 to strength also took a hit to two of their other attributes and got shit racial abilities. And nobody got an Intelligence bonus. Somehow, it was feared that a bonus skill point would be broken, and let alone a boost to wizard shenanigans. In better times, Pathfinder got away from these superstitions, and bounteous racial bonuses to the two attributes were had by many.

This was ok, because each attribute had it’s own uses and benefits to all characters, and taking many of those higher was not upsetting any balance for the most part. Especially since skills were super one-dimensional and getting a single bonus skill rank really didn’t have the impact that was feared. Then came 2nd Edition, and everything changed.

The info we have gotten has lead to wild speculation, with lots of new info leading to lots of debate, but one thing I have not seen discussed; What the heck will Intelligence be used for? Skill points are no longer a thing, you now get a bonus equal to your level and instead increase your proficiency between several ranks on set level intervals. Intelligence seems to have nothing to do with how many proficiencies you can increase. So what does the attribute do for players who are not int-based casters other than giving a bonus to lore skills?

They seem to be revamping all of the attributes more than is being let on. Charisma is now tied to your resonance score, which makes it much more important than in the past, what other changes are being made to make attributes more important? Without skill ranks players will need some reason to want to avoid a penalty to Int, but I can’t really think of anything. Is it used to ignore an amount of armor bonus to an enemies AC? Is there some new pool of points used to power witty comebacks? What do you think will be the new use for intelligence?

As a long time player, since OG 3rd edition, my favorite classes are Rogue and Alchemist. These two have always seemed to be real big on poison use, for flavor reasons of the Rogue and mechanical support for the Alchemist. But for years I have never picked up Poison Use for the Rogue, and it’s always one of the first abilities I am willing to trade out for an archetype with the Alchemist. Reason being? Poisons kinda suck. They are too expensive, take tooo much of your turn to apply unless you invest feats or class abilities, they target the highest save of most monsters, and they take too long to kick in with too little effect. I have never been a fan of this and really wish poison was good for something other than putting in the food of NPCs. II get that poisons can’t be too good, otherwise it becomes a necessity for all PCs wanting to hit with weapons to get the most out of their attacks. But for the people who do choose to invest in poison use or choose a class that does they should be rewarded. So what can P2 do to make poisons more viable?

I think a good start is using the Unchained rules for poison. There each poison affects one attribute, and goes on a track that the higher it goes the worse a status effect is incurred, with the final track being death. So a poison that targets strength puts a penalty on the victim’s strength based attack, damage and ability rolls at it’s first stage, then worsens that penalty before also making the character immobile and then dead. While a Charisma based poison gives them a penalty on CHA based checks before also making them basically mind-controllable them dead. Poisons start at different tracks and can end earlier than death, so not all are fatal. With the removal of ability damage this seems the most likely to me, but also hopefully some poisons that deal direct damage as well.

With the new action economy is seems like poison use will be simpler, one action to apply poison, then two more actions to move or attack. Or would it be one action to pull out a poison, one to apply, then one to attack? With class feats for Rogue or Alchemist to draw and apply poison with one action? Seems cool to me.

So as well poisons should maybe be more cost effective and haarder to make saves against, thus more consistent I feel. If that doesn’t make them too powerful, or maybe have a larger amount of poison to choose from, or each poison have different levels they can be made at that will have higher saves needed.

Anything else my fellow toxologists would like to see introduced for poisons in 2nd edition?

So The Souls games are absolutely one of my favorite RPG franchises, and one of the things I love about them is that you don’t actually have a class for your character, your weapon choice is your class. You pick a weapon then increase your stats to maximize damage output and meet it’s prerequisites as you upgrade it, then your fighting style is based around the speed and reach of the weapon.

I really would like to see Pathfinder go a similar route, which the weapon abilities seem to be a step towards. Such as the sweeping property on Scimitars, hopefully having feats and other options that will reward a player for focusing on that usage or allow them to better take advantage of it. Really focus on making each weapon play differently and utilize a different attack strategy, making the weapon choice an even more tactical one.

Also, and this is probably less likely for the devs to go for, prerequisite for weapon use instead of class based proficiencies. Longswords requiring a minimum strength, Rapiers a minimum Dex, some weapons a mix of both. This would allow more flexibility in builds as a character would be able to choose any weapon they are able to wield with their stats instead of only knowing how to use certain ones because of class reasons. Again, probably not likely to happen but I think it’s worth the suggestion.

And of course I want to be able to dodge roll as a reaction. That is probably the most important Souls mechanic that should make it’s way into Pathfinder. Something like an acrobatics check to move 5 feet and nullify an attack, while receiving an Armor check penalty and also being hurt by encumbrance.

Any of this too dumb or anything else from the Souls series or other RPGs you would like to see make their way into 2nd edition?

I had a funny idea and was curious if it ever came up during development or in discussions with anybody else.

So D&D has the game run by the Dungeon Master, when Paizo was releasing Pathfinder they changed this to Game Master( for legal reasons or just to set themselves further from Wizards I am not sure), so I had the idea that why don't we change the name of the role for Starfinder? Something to give the game more of it's own identity and add some more fun flavor for people switching over. It helps give other games a sense of uniqueness (like White Wolf games having a Storyteller) and I think would have been a great idea here. In my games I am going to refer to myself as the "Game Commander," although "Star Master" also sounded like fun I like the official sound of Commander.

Anybody else going to do something like this? Did it come up at all in development that anybody knows of?

Not sure if this is the place for sharing story ideas yet, but all of the speculating about technology and hard/soft sic-fi in other threads got me brainstorming something fierce, so here is something I came up with:

The Crew, after gaining the attention of some higher-ups of a Starfinder Faction by completing a few risky missions, are called upon to investigate an anomaly in a distant part of the galaxy. A star system that was referenced in documents from a few hundred years ago as being a place of interest is no longer visible where it should have been, and there have been reports of ships disappearing in the vicinity.

The Crew arrives after a couple jumps to discover a dim solar system, punctuated by beams of lights as if spotlights from a prison guard tower illuminating planets and other objects in an almost paranoid

As the players venture further into the center of the system they are contacted by an unknown alien and learn the truth of the system: the star is still present, it is just completely enveloped by a Dyson Sphere.

The sphere is a large solid metallic object with many nodes over it's surface, many closed and several open with bight light pouring out, pointing at some of the planets providing them with the sunlight needed, others left in a frozen darkness.

The lone inhabitant of the sphere contacts the players, it is not immediately revealed but they are an ancient alien from another galaxy and a civilization far advanced beyond what the pact worlds are capable of. The Dyson sphere has a lot of it's power output used in a nearby fleet of planet building machines, and most of the planets it orbit are artificial with abnormal environments and landscapes. The gap affected all of the alien's memories, and now they do not know why they are here or for what reasons they are in possession of this solar system.

So then things get "Saw in Space" up here, the alien informs them that they are now part of a game he has been playing while trying to figure out what to do about it's situation for the last few hundred years.

Some of the planets are points of interest for the alien's system, noted by the sphere, but the alien is unable to leave the sphere, so it traps vessels entering it's sphere of influence with a threat: Investigate the surface of these planets and try to activate the points of interest, or else be fired by concentrated solar rays from the Sphere. The sphere is able to narrow the solar energy through is nodes t'd project it in a destructive beam to the very edge of the solar system and is accurate enough to obliterate a planet or even just a single ship.

So the alien begins directing the party from planet to planet, where the party has to deal with local flora and fauna as well as the crews of other ships that either crashed or escaped the notice of the alien on the surfaces and in orbit of several of the planets, given a set amount of time on each world before the alien overheats the surface, killing all life and leaving it empty for the next team it traps in it's solar powered web.

The campaign would mostly consist of the Saw-like, high-pressured missions with no real tangible time-limit, just the hanging threat of one to keep the players moving forward, then ending in the Dyson Sphere with the players potentially gaining control of the mega-structure. I'm trying to come up with interesting ideas for planets with different environments and challenges to overcome. Has anybody else run a similar style of campaign and have any advice on how to not stress the players too much or just have any fun ideas for artificial worlds?