Dead Phoenix's page

Characters do not get a reaction until their first turn and they gain all their actions. The feat lets you ignore that and get a reaction right away. Its extremely limited in useful still, though when it does come up it is very nice to have, if my experience playing champion is anything to go by.

Personally I found the shifter to be pretty great when I played it... though to be fair, that was the adaptive shifter, which just from looking at the base vs adaptive archetype, is way better. Frankly if shifter came back I would want it to be that. Of course in a party with a bloodrager, it didn't always feel like it we were playing the same game, but other then that it was really cool. Sadly my attempts to get a decent build for that character in pf2 has failed(wild druid shapeshifting from the archetype just sucks), but maybe with the upcoming wild mimic plus the natural weapon archetypes I can piece something neat together?

my bets on the Grazing trait. we've long needed a weapon that can heal 1-4 hp per turn

My experience with bard must be very different from most peoples because being a 'Anthem bot' is the least of my problems(in fact I don't really have any problems, it turned out better then I expected, especially compared to the envoy I've been playing in sf1, until it hit level 6+ recently). And its only gotten better with the remaster. Get 'em seems even more constraining since you have to take a second action just to get the damage bonus, and you can do multiple directives on one turn so you have less excuses to not do it even if you are opting for a different one in a turn. Not really a complaint though, having a really good 'third action' is only a good thing in my mind(and its SO much better then low level sf1 envoy).

Also I find the idea that you will get the Saw It Coming bonus 'often' very unlikely unless the gm is setting it up for you regularly.

I like the class overall, though 2 things kind of bug me. First, I feel like Size Up needs a little bit more of... something at its base function(the feats can make it way more interesting, but I don't think it should need that). I first idea is some way to combine it with directives and/or the leadership styles, but really it could be anything.

And the second thing is the key attribute. Should envoy be key CHA? Probably, but then why doesn't it use it in a cool way in battle. As is, if you ignored cha, it doesn't feel like you would even be losing much more then most other martials(you even can get bonuses to make up for it). Even the leadership styles look like they were built to give you a extra choice for key abilities.

imo the sf2 field-test mystic is arguably one of the most stacked casters in 2e, it is anything but weak.

pf2 swashbuckler does trick attack better then the sf1 operative. outside of ranged attacks of course.

Karmagator wrote:

Sorry, but pretty much anything is a better solution than messing with player level. That isn't a solution, that's creating a problem.

Oh, I'm sure that we could come up with something that's worse.

Admittedly, I'm having a hard time thinking of anything.

3.x-style multiclassing and ancestral hit dice, maybe?

No thanks, pf2 got away from 3.x multiclassing for the better and even pf1 didn't have racial hit die iirc. the only solution(other then the one they already have) imo would be to give ancestry abilities with the same level of power, which is probably hard enough to do as is.

i've played pfs session with wildly different character levels and its crazy how much a difference level makes. warpriest clerics are good in general, but give them 2 levels on the rest of the party and the fights become (even more of a) joke. the existence of the level bump mechanic make its even more clear to me its something they have to work around to make society play work then something that is a viable form of play. and personally, when i first started running pf1 way back i did the whole 'you dont gain xp if you arent in the session' but eventually realized that just makes the experience worse for everyone involved. so yeah, the way pf2 works(and really, most d20 games i've played) i dont think mixed level parties are a good idea unless you want to suck the fun out of the combat for people who are to low level to help in combat or makes the enemies so easy the higher level people are given a challenge(which i guess, tbf, some people would enjoy).

you can already do that by readying an action. only reason people dont really do that as is, is because it takes 2 actions to do it(and if no one actives your trigger, its a complete waste of 2 actions) and under most circumstances you are better off just shooting twice(plus some other useful action). though some kind of class feature or feat that make it more effective(only costs 1 action, gives you multiple reactions, whatever) could be interesting.

pf2 hasnt added any new traditions, in large part because the entire point of only having four traditions was to avoid all the problems of creating a new spell list for every class. sf2 could add a one, but the way the system works it would not be worth doing when the much easier option is just to create new spells that work in the four traditions as is. maybe also give access to spells from other traditions, which is already pretty common for spell casting classes.

oh i forgot about four winds... haven't had a chance to play my air kineticist yet and that move is the a huge part of the reason i made one. that said i find hard to believe movement is less valued. unless you start battle in the perfect position you are probably going to want o move, and being able to saving an action on that is amazing. i've got a character that uses 'To Battle'(from marshal) and another with 'Loose times arrow'(the spell) that i've used to great effect. obviously great for melees, but if cover is gonna be a common thing, people are gonna want to get there with as few actions as possible.

while the ability to give the entire party a free move on the envoy's turn is absolutely wild, i doubt they will give them a way to provide free attacks to the party(maybe at a much higher level, maybe). as is the -1 to ac is pretty damn good for most characters(even spell casters can opt to cast attack spells) and the bonus damage is gonna be useful for everyone. porting over to pf2, a shortbow envoy looks very good to me looking very good next to my pfs bard right now. melee envoy with marshal dedication has the potential to be an absolute beast.

Lastly, the AC difference between a Mystic and Soldier is 1 for the vast majority of the game

this is just not true. im gonna go out on a limb here and guess that soldier will have champion armor progression and mystic will have caster progression, which means by level 7 soldier will always has a +2 from proficiency until level 17, when it becomes a +4. even if they get bumped up to other martial armor progression for some reason, mystic will still be behind by 2 for more then half the levels.

with the 3 action system you can cast a cantrip and make a martial attack(especially ranged) very easily. that's pretty much my go to strat for my bard after i get my lingering courage started, and its very effective if i dont think i need to spend a slot slot or something(and in that case i can still attack afterwards most of the time). but they will never get spell casting prof for weapons. at best they might get a way to use int for attack rolls... but one class has that and its pretty much their biggest mechanic, while technomancer will likely be much more focused on casting spells.

With regards to the 4-slot-per-rank caster topic, I, as someone who fully intends to mix and match PF2 with SF2, am curious about how sorcerers, wizards, and witches will fare compared to the beefier mystic.

Of the three casters I'm playing in campaigns(well, when the scheduling actually lets them happen), I feel like it blows my primal sorc away, compares favorably to my life oracle, and only really the bard comes out ahead in my mind, though that is in large part because he's a buffer who heals on the side(and bard is really good at buffing). Time and playtesting will tell, but as is i think you could just make the mystic a 3 slot caster and it would still be really good.

But yeah, melee is an as-yet unsolved issue, as is how weird swapping can be. If it is really annoying, try adding a custom version of area fire to your melee weapons.

Could be some interesting space for combination weapons with soldier, that use explosions(or w/e aoe) instead of guns/bullets. Perhaps a feat that lets them quickly swap between modes, assuming that isn't something they decided to make easier in starfinder 2.

We know precious little about the 2e operative. In the Know Direction Beyond interview, no one said anything about the Operative being, or not being, a skillmonkey. There was discussion about there being a sniper build for the Operative, persuant to the sniper operative spoken about in the first Reports from the Field Blog. And, at the 46 min mark, they talked a bit about class design, in that they don't want a class, like Operative, that can be good at everything, but that was in reference to everything everything, not just "skills" everything. I.E. The Operative won't be the best at melee and the best at ranged and the best at non-Cha Skills and the best at Party Face Skills. But I don't think we're to take that to mean "lol Operatives aren't skillsy anymore."

Ditto re: envoy. They said envoy's different, but still satisfies that quick quip throwing party leader vibe. Nothing was said about skillsmonkiness (or lack thereof.)

In short: it's a bit early to talk about any class being, or not being, "the skills one" (or if there will only be "one.")

at about 58 minutes they very explicitly say that the operative is not a skill monkey, the envoy is. even using the word skill monkey specifically. they also said the operatives skills are 'to kill you'. this doesn't mean operative will have the lowest number of skills in the game, in fact they might end up in a area like swashbuckler who get extra skill feats and the like without going full rogue with the double amount of skill increases(in fact, envoy might not even get that much).

Hero points are very much a meta currency that doesn't really interact with the rest of the game. The way they currently work and are gain do not fit the role of resolve points without a serious overhaul... at which point they should just port over resolve point instead. Personally I could see them as a form of focus points that you can use as a martial with 0 magic(and being recovered on a 10 minute rest keeps it from being a daily resource which martial generally dont have in pf2).

And personally I'm terrible at remembering to hand out hero points, which would be terrible if it was an expected resource to have for your class to fully function. The hero point deck is probably the best options if you want to get more out of it, not that I would know since my players don't even remember they have them...

Rue Dickey wrote:

"Oh no, the gunslinger doesn't have a cell phone!!!" is one of my favorite lines of in-game dialogue, no lie.

Who doesn’t give the primitive timetraveller here to fight space fascists a phone, or at least an ear-piece/comm unit? Sounds like inefficient use of available resources. Rookie error.

You ever had to teach a grand parent how to use a phone? Now, imagine that, but they dont even know what a radio is. Also the phone is built with technology thousands of years in our future and is being used by people who for generations, literally cant remember the time when they didn't have hand held phones and have probably never had to teach anyone how to use one. Even spending time in Numeria would not prepare the time traveler for all this honestly.

They will probably make more undead full ancestries. or they should, so you can make a vampire ancestry, with the vampire archetype, so you can be a double vampire.

Excellent write up and I am excited to see where things go.

Question: Did you modify a PF2e game system on Foundry VTT for the test? Or was it a complete rewrite?

(all hail the Foundry PF2e community)

well they had inspire courage going(i assume from the mystics song ability or w/e), so im going to guess they just used pf2e system and changed the name of a few things. and it looks like they might have even manually rolled damage(when needed).

Dead Phoenix wrote:

this i couldn't disagree with more. having more ancestries is fine and all, but classes are a much more interesting thing to play around with since that is the number one thing that changes how you actually play the game. SF2 is likely due to have far less classes for several reason, but i hope one isnt just to fit in more ancestries.

I agree that I care about classes more than ancestries, but Starfinder has averaged about a class a year for its lifetime and PF2 is easily twice that. You can also pick up some of the slack by importing actual pathfinder classes for specific niches.

Like if you wanted to be an "Intergalactic Rock Star" you can literally just be a Bard- the envoy doesn't necessarily need to support this anymore, which is fine since Envoys in my experience were more about "diplomacy and celebrity" than "music." If you want to be "Moriarty escaped from the Holodeck" likewise the Investigator works. These are people who are guest stars on Star Trek etc., not "members of the bridge crew" after all.

doing make overs of pf2 classes would be great, and personally wouldn't mind doing a couple classes like that instead of a single new class. but if its just 'drag and drop' them over from pf2, i dont really think thats except-able, especially if that is used as a reason to make fewer classes. i assume in general the largest reason sf1 had less in the first place is the smaller team and fewer books in general and assuming that continues to be the case, swapping out a potential new class for 4 ancestries or whatever just does not seem worth it to me... or really any number of ancestries, since you can only really play 1 at a time anyways(well... 2 with Versatile Heritages, but still).

really though, there's a lot of room to play with for SF classes that pf2 classes wont easily fit and i think they should do as much with it as they can.

PossibleCabbage wrote:

I wonder if one way that Starfinder 2e can preserve "the Cantina feel" is by devoting less space in sourcebooks to new classes, and more space to new ancestries. Starfinder has added something like 6 classes since launch, whereas PF2 has added something like 11. Now PF1 was a game with like 43 classes while Starfinder is a game with about 12.

Rage of Elements devotes something like 26 pages to the Kineticist, which could be as many as 4 new ancestries instead.

With classes being compatible between the two games, this is a lot of classes. It gets hard to create new classes that are different from all the other classes when you have that many. Species, on the other hand, are easier to come up with. I'd much rather new classes come out when there is a need for a new class to fill a hole, or there is a really great idea for a new one. I don't need a new class every time a book comes out. New classes might be more important to Pathfinder than Starfinder. I tend to build my characters around their species more than their class.

We don't have a two-headed playable species yet I'f love to be able to have my character argue with themself, or have to bluff their other head into doing something.

this i couldn't disagree with more. having more ancestries is fine and all, but classes are a much more interesting thing to play around with since that is the number one thing that changes how you actually play the game. SF2 is likely due to have far less classes for several reason, but i hope one isnt just to fit in more ancestries.

BigNorseWolf wrote:

breithauptclan wrote:

If you are actually playing that in PF2 you won't have large size or flying from your ancestry at level 1. But it has already been mentioned that such things are still potentially on the table for SF2.
.

At what level does your build get

Large size: Permanent large size isn't a thing in PF2. Temporary large size a Draconic Sorcerer can cast Enlarge at level 3.

there actually are a couple options to get large size permanently, and not to mention we have 2 up coming ancestries that are large starting at level 1(with an option to be medium). its very possible this will be more common in SF2 as well, once more ancestries get released.

i think if they did make technomancer a wave caster, it would get rolled into mechanic as well. get yourself a drone that lives in the space between summoner and inventor companions or exocortex and become a magus that magically hacks people with their weapon... or something.

I wonder how tough it'll be to get decent armor on a 2e Envoy. As a child of the D&D 4e days, there's been a Warlord-shaped hole in my life ever since, but I don't know how much love there was for an Envoy who could take a beating in melee in SF1.

not that hard in pf2. assuming they start with light armor(and who knows if that will be the case in sf2), you can pick up something like the sentinel dedication feat and get medium armor, then at 3 you should you can take a general feat to get for heavy armor, and thanks to sentinel, it will automatically scale up with your class. down side is unless you are playing versatile human to pick up the armor feat at level 1, you wont have heavy armor till level 3. though i could see some kind of battle envoy being an option for a 'subclass' that starts with better armor.

It sounds like the SF2e Envoy will be more combat capable. But that could just mean, from the sound of it, more flexible to be able to use Envoy abilities and still fight at the same time. Perhaps since they will be expected to be more directly involved in combat might get some upgrades to their current armor or weapon use.

i was just playing an envoy last night, and i would have killed to just be able to shot(or use inspiring boost), Get 'em and move on the same turn

pf2 has plenty of crunch and synergies. its just not stacking up numbers with feats that combine in just the right way that rolling becomes an afterthought. you've probably heard it before, but in pf2 optimization happens at the table, not the character sheet.

@wolf
i've seen plenty of characters doing wild stuff i did not expect by people far smarter then me. hell even i was able to make an effective melee summoner based on a spiritualist i played in pf1. if you think you are just 'picking a character' in pf2, i'd say that is just your own limitation. i would believe that its not to the level sf1 is(which is a a far cry from pf1 as well), in fact i would say its the thing i still want the most from the system, but to say its somehow missing from pf2 is just not true.

free archetype did a lot to make me more interested in pf2 because i thought it was lacking in customization, and while i generally prefer to have it, most of my time with pf2 has been organized play so I've not even used it half the time, and there's still plenty of customization. Hell I just almost completely retrained my champion, from sorc dedication to marshal(plus a couple other feats) and while i haven't played the remade version yet(scheduling is truly the greatest villain) i think he is going to be a very different beast.

then there is the kineticist. what a monster of a class... like, imo they should be looking at it when coming up with future classes/editions.

Very excited for this. Marshal is nice, but I want a full class for this. While there may be some issue with getting a gm to let me play it, especially since I mostly play society... if its even an option I imagine it would be very hard/costly to get the permission to use any SF2 class.

Will be interesting to see how well it works with marshal as well, since I doubt with will have an aura stance or anything like that(based on SF1 envoy, which could very well change).

I mean it is very clearly the #1 design goal and percieved selling point for Starfinder that it be 100% cross compatible.

I would have much rather seen this game try to advance and improve on P2s engine rather than copy it myself. But easy and full compatibility is just so clearly the bedrock of the design philosophy they have done to this point and I do not anticipate any amount of feedback shifting them from that.

I do think as a design goal it is extremely disappointing; Starfinder has always had its own vibes and I dont think they match pathfinders 1 to 1. I think Starfinder will have to give up some of it's identity in order to be fully cross compatible with Pathfinder. But its gonna be what its gonna be, we can only hope they really nail the equipment/enhancements and tech aspects to help it still feel distinct from the fantasy game.

Back on topic somewhat, I anticipate all 6 classes are going to be the sort of niche experience the soldier is. I dont anticipate the 6 are necessarily even going to be 6 of the 7 from the starfinder core book.

After all we dont need a generic fightyman or generic magic-user; Wizard and Fighter are gonna be usable. So maybe technomancer doesnt make the jump. Do we need an operative when we have a rogue? We are gonna find out I guess. What does mechanic do that Inventor doesnt already do? Maybe we see Biohacker and Precog instead.

The moment they mentioned 100% compatibly I felt like it was a huge missed opportunity. Could have been a chance to try and take pf2s systems to the next level... While that may still has happen in some ways, it's going to be extremely restricted, which I think is quite unfortunate. That said, it's a great idea for marketing, as it now means pf2 huge playerbase with 0 interest in SF might pick up books just for more options.

... Personally hoping they can be pushed to make stamina the core assumption, if only to expand the mechanic for both games.

The chance to miss on the first Chain Blast and entirely waste two actions that you precommitted is not that low. I’m not sure it’s good enough for a feat investment given the frequency of situations you’d want it (4-5 enemies within your first range increment but not within a reasonable substitution overflow AOE).

Yeah I've been wondering about this whenever i hear people talking about how amazing it is. Hitting 5 people with your full blast damage sounds great, but one miss and you feel like you wasted 1/2 extra actions. Off hand i don't think any 'make multiple attacks at full MAP' are dependent on the previous ones hitting, even if they lose some bonus effects. If you've got good luck and some hero points its godly, if your luck sucks its probably feels terrible to have 'wasted' your entire turn on it. I'm sure there is room for a 'high' risk/reward ability so idk about replacing it, but I don't feel its broken or anything(having not yet used it myself of course).

Foundry this, Roll20 that... isn't anyone else running Starfinder games in a cobbled-together macro framework in MapTool?

A friend of mine built up a framework for both pc and startship combat, but after finishing the first book of dead suns, the gm had to put the game on hold and since then half the party has zero interest in playing more starfinder(including the person who made the framework) so we've just been playing pf1 since(the same two players dont want to play pf2 either, after doing the playtest anyways). Thankfully I recently found a SF game to join, though that one is played in roll20(im not a fan but good luck getting people to use something else, even as they complain about how much roll20 sucks themselves).

Baldur's gate is turned based, it just does not auto pause between turns by default. It is a setting you can change in game :)

Yeah, and it plays terribly like that since it is not built for it.

And yeah, I'm super excited for any potential 2e game. Apparently when they first started developing the king maker game they argued whether to go rtwp or turned based and I think the changes to 2e will go a long ways to then going turned based off they have that discussion again for a next game(here's going there is one!).

Maybe a strange question, but how well would the eldritch heritage feats work with the phoenix bloodline? I already have a spiritualist(with a cha base archtype) planned for my next campaign, but I really wanna try out the phoenix bloodline, so I'm wondering if I can combine the two...

Lyee wrote:

I would like to see an option to reduce your level for the purpose of both healing and DC, if you want a more reliable recovery but don't need a huge number. So a level 15 medic could act as level 5 if they only needed to top up 5 hp, rather than try their normal DC they could fail.

Especially important since a secondary medic might never increase their wis, prof category, or item bonus, meaning they fail *more* from level 5 to 15, where their bonus increases by 10 and the DC by 12, under the current system.

I just wrote exactly this preference--to be able to reduce DC in exchange for healing less damage--in another thread, as I hadn't read this one at the time. If it doesn't get made a rule, I'm house-ruling it 100% of the time, but I genuinely think it has to be a rule in the game.

Other than this issue, I like Treat Wounds.

The problem with this idea, is that it makes it easier to crit on the check, which might actually make reducing the dc to reduce the damage healed... actually make you heal more damage(on average due to the increased odds of criting). This could be changed by removing or changing the crit success effect though.

ENHenry wrote:

Rameth wrote:

While Critical Successes will shorten that time even healing a 10 Con Character to max will still take 30 minutes if you get 3 Critical Successes in a row.

Also, you may have figured this in, but to call it out, it's not automatic, even someone hyperspecialized will fail 1 out of 3 attempts, which makes it a bit longer.

Personally, I'm fine with it, because it's cheap healing, but still has a cost: Time. If you're not in a time crunch, just figure an average healing rate given percentage of success, and say, "after x Hours, the group is patched up."

Hyperspecialized would also include 'Assurance', so you don't have to roll. Once you get skill to master, you are effectively auto-rolling a 20 + skill each time.

Incorrect. Assurance at matter level gives you a flat 20 to your check. Your skill bonuses do not apply, which by the time you are high enough to have matter in a skill, the DC is probably too high for a 20 to pass. Maybe a few levels at best...

But here's the thing: You don't NEED that many feats to get back the agency. What if you only got 5 feats throughout your adventuring career, and one of them was: "Animal Companion: You get X benefits, and at X level, X level, X level, and X level you select from these improvements." That would be an amazing, build-defining feat, and you'd sit there in eager anticipation reaching for 5th level because you'd get ANOTHER build-defining feat. You could also have a "Natural Lore" feat that gets you things like Wild Empathy, Superior Tracking, Nature-based Spells for Spell Points, etc., all tied to a theme, all for one feat. Again, in a 1 feat/5 levels, that'd work, because every feat would be huge. All PF2 needs to do is strike a balance given their current...

I was just thinking the same thing. Maybe not less feats, but having the feats scale more instead of taking feats just to keep your abilities relevant at higher levels would feel a lot better I think. I like where they are going with the class feats, but it feels like the chassis of most of the classes got striped so much that I would have to spend all my feats getting what I need to keep up instead of getting something that lets me do something new. In pf1 this wasn't so bad because often feats were something that was outside of your class, which had more then enough stuff going for it(well... maybe not all the classes), but even then, few people liked feat chains(my group's house rules largely involved reducing feat chains or at least reducing the restrictions on them), and yet now it feels like they are back and more important then ever, even if the actual prereq's are no longer as much a problem.

I like stamina... but i don't like resolve(as it is in SF). In fact I'm not a fan of the whole, 'everything runs off of one pool of points' thing a lot off people seem to be really into, so to deal with stamina, they have to come up with something else. Though maybe resolve just being for stamina healing and not dying(instead of hero points)could work.. for me at least.

The occult spell list has the spell Soothe, which heals the same as a 1 or 2 heal action spell, and gives +1 vs mind effects for a minute. and it cost 2 actions to use. outside of battle, its about as good as heal if you aren't group healing, though not as good as cleric's heal. which should do the main healer job just fine, if not as well as divine healers.

EDIT: Double ninja'd... oh well.

Oh wait, I missed soothing ballad. It does a couple things, but one of them is 7d6+modifer to up to 9 allies and scales up. its POWER 7 though, so... I assume you get it around level 14 making it a bit less useful.

I say keep dex to damage as an option for most classes(perhaps free for rogue and possibly roguish classes released later, but i'm good either way) and just try to make sure str has enough reason to be used regularly so that not everyone can ignore it in a party easily.

Elleth wrote:

Holy shoot persistent damage looks annoying.

Plant monsters are gonna immolate.

The DC 20 flat check to end seems like a typo. That, or something that needs to get fixed in the playtest. :P

Probably not a typo. In the glass cannon podcast playtest they got persistent bleed from bats and it was 1 hit per round until they made a flat dc 20 check. But I believe you can spend all your actions in a round to make a roll to end it sooner. Or they could just get healed, though that likely only works for bleed.

Here's a weird balance issue with the extra dice from potency : a +5 greatsword would do 7d6 damage on a swing (the base 2d6 + 5 extra dice from potency) for an average of 24.5, a +5 longsword would be on 6d8 for an average of 27.

On another note, ranged weapons now have builtin damage boosts thanks to potency. Less need for deadly aim or dex to damage is good.

Weapon dice have been changed. They are all one dice now, and I am pretty sure greatsword is 1d12 now(1d10 at worse), so a +5 would be 6d12 damage making it an average of 39 damage.

The age of myth 2: electric bogalio has begun. We just don't know it yet. And will forget it later when the gap happens.

I think that if inspire courage gives a +1 (and eventually higher) to attack to all allies, it is going to take an action every round to maintain.

They've talked about bards using an instrument as the verbal component for spells, so I'm thinking maybe they have to use an action to maintain inspire courage, but that action can serve double duty as your verbal component for a spell.

So first of all I like what I am seeing, but I would also like some way to challenge people during downtime. (Which ofcourse a dm can and should do without needing a rule for it.)

I recently read Xanathars guide to everything and I liked the random tables that made really easy for weird and bad things to happen during item creation or when purchacing magic items.

Obviously I understand that in pathfinder buying a magic item and then finding out its a fake isn't par for the course (since magic items are propably not as rare and outside the norm as in 5e), but a table where in X days of downtime certain things can happen doesn't seem that bad. Is there any chance sth to that effect will be included in downtime? A short of bad/annoying/weird things that can happen in downtime table?

Pathfinder already had(optional) rules for this, in relation to crafting and I absolutely love them. Its called dynamic magic item creation(its in the pathfinder unchained book) and it actually makes building items interesting(imo anyways), and better yet, it brings the other characters into the action occasionally. Its all skill checks, so if you had the right skills and they were really high, its all good, but some interesting stuff can happen on a couple bad rolls with instantly destroying an item or anything(though... this can happen if you are really unlucky). Sadly my hopes that this would be the core system for magic items have been dashed, so I hope it shows up in a later book(but not to late, please!).

Dead Phoenix wrote:

Vidmaster7 wrote:

I like that pretty well my prediction that you wouldn't need the shifter class if the druid has a shape shifting specialization holds out and pretty well their we go!

Sure, but isn't there a large group of people who want a spelless shape shifter? I assume that was the reason the class was made in pf1 more so then the full bab... getting it at level 1 was probably also pretty important, though the shifter class didn't get that, but no reason they shouldn't get it here if druid already can.

You might be right but a class focused on shape shifting if they gets some spells isn't that rally just gravy at that point? I guess They could make an even better shape shifting class but I guess I'll have to see the complete collection of options for the druid.

I certainly won't complain about having spells, but we all know there are some people who avoid them like the plague, prepared spells even more so. I also think there is a lot of design room for the aspect system shifter had in Pf1 for them to mess with that maybe the druid wouldn't mess with so much... and maybe this time let people actually make their bearowl shifter.

I like that pretty well my prediction that you wouldn't need the shifter class if the druid has a shape shifting specialization holds out and pretty well their we go!

Sure, but isn't there a large group of people who want a spelless shape shifter? I assume that was the reason the class was made in pf1 more so then the full bab... getting it at level 1 was probably also pretty important, though the shifter class didn't get that, but no reason they shouldn't get it here if druid already can.

John Lynch 106 wrote:

Weather Report wrote:

Some of the double weapons are absurd, the dire flail, was it?

Based on everything else that is dire it's clearly a flail that is doubled in size compared to a "normal" flail.

Does power attack still have an attack penalty? If so, some of these weapon qualities have given power attack a pretty significant downgrade which means your less likely to always use power attack and instead decide based on the enemy's AC (or just always full power attack and the consequences be damned!).

IIRC no attack penalty on Power Attack, but I forget it's full mechanics. It was the cause of much consternation when it was announced.

Power attack is two actions with no penally to attack, but only gives 1 extra weapon dice of damage, plus one more at higher levels iirc.

This blog about deities mentions favored weapon, which reminds me, do we know anything about weapons in 2e? In 1e, one of the key distinguishing features of weapons is their crit behavior (range and/or multiple), buy crits work rather differently in 2e. Do we have any idea what, for instance, makes a 2e longsword different from a battleaxe?

Yes we do! For the most part the crit ranges are going to be gone, but in there place every weapon has various abilities. Like a scimitar has an ability that deals extra damage when attacking a single character multiple times in a row and also has one that makes it so when they attack multiple opponents in a row, in a single round, the attack penalty decrease. Light weapons appear to have only -4 on additional attacks, and a rapier does an extra +1d10 damage on a crit. There are probably other examples out there, but I think you get the idea. Personally I think it sounds pretty rad, which is good because I'm not a fan of the lose of differing crit ranges(love a good crit fishing build myself) so this is at least makes up for it.