Delmont91's page

I tend to run my groups a little over geared. I make sure they get lots of consumables in loot, a good amount of useful items and gold. A new character coming in the middle of my.campaign will probably be behind 2 to 3 items and one of those will likely be above parry.

I start handing math fixes 2 levels early so by the time the part is the right level they already have 2 to 3 of them for a 5 person party.

It's more fun to be generous than stingy and a lot of these items make sense to nebin enemy hands or collections.

Campaign dependant but dream message is one of my characters most used wants.

Also its fine to ask your players too. Or listen to their laments when picking spells at level up and drip a want for the spell they didn't choose.

I still think it comes down to whether or not a core class feature the Magus is built around becomes a serious issue disrupting player enjoyment of the class. If Magus end up fighting a bunch of AoO capable enemies that make their class feature nearly unusable in the most important boss fights, then it will require a change.

Using spellstrike in melee is the core class feature the Magus class is built around. If using it is painful, then the Magus will suck.

And that's why we removed it triggering AoO and haven't looked back. Doesn't break anything and let's the magus use the core feature of the class.

Seisho wrote:

I can partially understand that

I am still wondering - why do you from paizo, with all those logistical problems around the physical version of the game keep to the point that everyone who wants the pdf, where the release should not be a problem and shipping is irrelevant, still keep the date the same?

It is not like the pdf is not already out there. It is just in the hands of a lucky few and everyone else is effed.

Why not split the pdf from the physical copy?

Because there is still no better marketing tool than having our books on shelves at game and book stores, and many such businesses see the fact that we offer PDFs at all as being an anti-FLGS / anti-brick-and-mortar practice. There is an extremely high chance that we would lose way more money by alienating game stores than we'd ever make back in early PDF sales. This isn't speculation, either. We know what our PDF sales are and FLGSs and chain stores are often not even a little shy about telling us when they cut down on how much of our product they order or move us to the back corner of the store instead of putting our product in the main display case, because they feel that we're screwing them over by having e-commerce options.

Right now we have a pretty functional relationship with such retailers who mostly understand that we're a small company like them and need that option in our repertoire to protect our interests. We'd be downright idiotic to endanger that relationship at a point in time where game publishers are going out of business left and right due to a variety of COVID-related issues and other obstacles.

God I wish this wasn't the case but it is 100% true. I love FLGS' and what they do for spreading our hobby but also hate how they clench their pearls when any thing that makes games more accessible doesn't go directly through them.

I would love to see a system where PDF and digital were released at the same time that retailers can take advantage of but haven't thought of it. That would be one fine silver bullet.

For my end I wait for the PDF for 2 reasons. Even with the delay I'll get it faster and I only can still play via VTT so integration with those beats out physical copies. I understand the delay, but I was one of those that looked at the store for the release date and had a disappoint when I refreshed it to find out its September. No shade, I'll read it soon enough

I like to run my own setting.

HyperMissingno wrote:

It's not like PF1 where I can make a PC and then just throw them into the game as an NPC.

You absolutely can.

Agreed. I've done this for a major recurring antagonist, a rival party of adventurers the group has fought and will fight again, ally adventuring groups and one off companions that join the group for a time then leave. It works really well.

And the question that needs answering here is: what do you pay for? Arguably you're not paying for a disease to be removed - you're paying for a spell to be cast.

and this is the crux of my reading. You're paying to have the disease removed, not a single casting of a spell. For things like PFS I can see the clarification needed as you're right, it isn't 100% clear.

Also as long as that's made known up front, the service you're paying for is me casting this one spell and it might not work and the players doing it anyway? Sure, that's what the players agree to.

As for why my PCs don't just sell spell services? I handle that IG, a lot of that cost goes to guild fees, space overhead, maintenance and such and the local guilds don't take kindly to poachers. But we like that nuance if we're going to go as far as having hired spellcasting fail.

I think rules as written a hired spell has a chance of failure for sure. The rules are unclear what happens when that does fail so up to DM. My advice, don't roll unless you want the opportunity to be conflict with that NPC.

Zapp wrote:

How do you handle a case...

For me, "that'll be 18gp please" occurs before the service is provided. In a world as chaotic as Golarion it is prudent to get paid in advance, especially from someone who can simply walk away after the service. In my campaigns you are not paying to have your disease removed so much as you are paying to have a spell cast on you, that just happens to be remove disease" and the NPC will be clear about that, unless they are unscrupulous. There is no guarantee of success, just like there is no guarantee your fireball will kill or even hurt the target. Magic is hard. If it was easy, everyone would do it. Is it unfortunate when a spell fails? Sure. Moreso when you are paying someone else to cast it, but for me, the rules are what they are.

If you hire a mercenary, you don't expect every swing of his sword to hit the target and they aren't going to accept a lower payment simply because every attack wasn't a 'nat20'. It stands to reason if you hire a spellcaster, not every spell they cast is going to be perfectly effective. Though as some have said, that opens the possibility of a dialog. Maybe the caster will give a discount on the (likely) follow up attempt/s. Or maybe they can be convinced to refund part of the fee due to a failure. Its just that the "standard" or starting point is going to be service paid, service failed. Transaction complete. Move on, next.
YMMV

Merc is on retainer to do a job or paid to get a job done. In this example caster is hired for the same, to remove a disease. If the merc is hired to deliver a VIP and doesn't you think he gets paid? Nope. Think he gets hired again? Caster is no different.

Now maybe a cunning one gets all the money up front and maybe a PC is dumb enough to do that. That's on them. But much more common in games I've played and irl is deposit of up to half up front and rest on satisfactory completion of task.

In my games I'd only roll this if I wanted the chance of conflict with the NPC and to turn it into a problem for them to solve. Otherwise your just screwing over your player for no plot purpose and giving them no agency. Not my type of game as a GM or player.

That's why you have the Great Axe Barbarian Readying an Attack to motivate them not to fail.

Haha, exactly. Their reputation is a big point too and why people in real life will go above and beyond often to fix something they didn't do right.

I'm fine with a caster saying "you pay x up front succeed or fail, live with it" and also fine with the PC looking for someone else who stands by their work or making it clear they're paying for the removal then negotiations happening. I mean, find a shoddy caster get shoddy work.

Delmont91 wrote:

I'd expect an RP interaction. Almost every character I've played wouldn't pay for a service that didn't work. As a GM a player pushing back like that can be fun RP and good world building.

Then again an experienced caster would have a failure cost in their contracts. 18 gold for success, half for the attempt and expenses in event of a failure as an example.

Real world case, what happens when you take your car in to get fixed and the mechanic doesn't fix the problem? I would run it like that if I was inclined to not just have it work.

In the real world, if the mechanic took the time to disassemble the engine and put it back together, you're gonna pay them for the labor. If they think they fixed it but then you start hearing that squeaking sound again, you don't get a refund on their previous work. Nor do you get refunded for medicine which doesn't work, either.

And again, a customers can just pay for a higher level of spell slot if they want guaranteed results.

In the real world the dealership redoes the work cause they didn't fix what they were paid to fix. If it's a mechanic they usually redo the work to get it right. I've had both happen, an individual mechanic on a civic and a dealership on a subaru. Both times the work was done again, with no charge to me, because their rep is important.

For medicine there's a thing called malpractice suits which can do exactly that.

In game this isn't as black and white as, you pay again or are SOL. The caster has their own reputation to protect. You hired them to remove a disease and they couldn't. Do they want that widely known? Are they scamming you for more gc? Negotiations in a one on one situation aren't that hard. If its guild then you have them, and their desire to maintain their reputation, to fall back on.

The player has leverage to use to either get discount or it done again. If the caster didn't get pay up front PC can just refuse to pay, then there's more fun RP with guild/guards. These things lead to fun.

I'd expect an RP interaction. Almost every character I've played wouldn't pay for a service that didn't work. As a GM a player pushing back like that can be fun RP and good world building.

Then again an experienced caster would have a failure cost in their contracts. 18 gold for success, half for the attempt and expenses in event of a failure as an example.

Real world case, what happens when you take your car in to get fixed and the mechanic doesn't fix the problem? I would run it like that if I was inclined to not just have it work.

I ran a game store where I paid GMs to run Encounters. There were premium player seats that guaranteed a spot or you could play free but risk not getting in. It worked great in that setting.

I can see exploring it as an option today, especially as you said you lost your job and are looking for work. I would think the trick is finding the customers.

There's a lot of hate for monetizing any hobby within that hobby's community. Look at paying to have your minis painted instead of doing yourself, people give a lot flack for that. A lot of people identify with their hobbies and monetizing it in ways they don't expect jars against what their idea of the hobby that is so close to them feels like it should be.

But here's the deal. Matt Mercer is a paid GM. Many of the content creators many of us watch are paid GMs. If you can bring enough to the table that people want to pay for your games great! The community has already accepted the celebrity paid GM. But you have to advertise where it's wanted and not burn bridges where it's not.

That's where I suspect the issue is for you. I suspect you pushed back against this reddit group the way you did here. That burns bridges and my suggestion is to find more friendly advertising space. Keep in mind you are advertising a business, and not everyplace is going to be ok with you doing that in their space. The goal is to find customers and you have to look at what your posts and content convey because those customers will research you. If you're not willing to abide by the rules of the group why would I think you'd follow the rules of the game? I get the rules changed here, but so do the game rules.

For me, being paid eventually runs the hobby part. I've lost mini gaming, Magic, and D&D that way so I don't do it anymore.

We have but don't have results yet. The first group is too low and still outfitting the martials with +1 runes. The level 6 group just had it allowed and the bard hasn't had the time to upgrade their instrument so no results yet.

The changes we implemented at our table are more general spellcaster focused than specifically wizard focused. The two players who were considering Wizard for either buff or control both ended up chooses other classes (bard and witch respectively) so I didn't go into Wizard specific fixes.

What we use:

1. New action available to full class casters (thinking of taking this away from Druid or making it just part of Storm Druid).

Quick Cast: 1 Action, Flourish
Cast a spell or cantrip that requires exactly two actions to cast. You cannot cast another spell or cantrip this turn that requires exactly 2 actions to cast.

This opened the action economy up for spell casters a bit while still limiting them to one regular spell per turn. We're thinking of removing the cantrip limitation on the second half of the action. An interesting side effect is increased the use of Magic Missile. For 1 action and a slot the damage wasn't enough but using the 2 action version after casting another spell has seen some use.

Fundamental Runes can be placed on spell focuses. This covers the attack spell accuracy problem. However, even the level 6 group hasn't taken the time to equip the bard with one of these and instead have been ensuring all the martials have their weapons set up instead.

These two changes seemed to shore up our groups issues with casters in general. For the Wizard specifically the issue was each player had a concept of what they wanted out of the character. They weren't building a wizard and then trying to build the strongest version of a wizard they could.

The player that went bard wanted a social spell caster and initially went wizard 'cause they didn't really want to sing. They looked at enchanter specialist and then looked at bard kit and decided singing was for them. The focus abilities for Wizard were lackluster in this context.

The witch did something similar, they wanted a debuffer and compared the witches focus abilities to the wizards and decided they were more valuable than an extra spell slot.

I think the key to improving the wizard is as many have stated. Make their focus abilities better or double down on the versatile, generalist caster (what I really see the wizard being) and make some of those features, like spell swapping, baked into the base class.

I do apologize for making this inquiry if the answer has already been discussed earlier in this thread, but do spellcasters get the same potential access to equipment that can improve their accuracy with their spells, as martials do with their weapons, in PF2?

No they don't, although it seems to be a semi common homebrew solution.

I think they're quite functional. I think the spell caster nerf swing went maybe 5 to 10% too far.

We've been experimenting with the flourish action to cast a 2 action spell for 1 action in my games and it has been really fun so far. Not game.changing for sure, but let's casters interact more with actions early game.

My bard is all about that staff and wand life. Plus things like diplomats badge that increase skills and maestro instruments are quite nice. Like your player I'm rarely in the thick of combat and have never, in 6 levels, actually hit anything with my weapon so also not interested in runes.

But there are a lot of other items to make the bard better at their job. Also crafting scrolls of your highest level soothe is nice so you don't have to save spell slots for emergency healing. In general I prefer wands over scrolls due to permanency but scrolls are better than nothing.

I agree MK1. I've also had trouble with stupid evil characters in my games and they can be very disruptive. Played well I think an evil pc/s bring a lot of interesting rp and exploration of tbe themes of right and wrong. I also don't think characters know their alignment unless an effect has told them and the, "what do you mean I'm evil?" Scene has been amazing to and points of character growth.

My own rule is you can play evil with my approval but not in your first game. I need to see how you play before I let you do that.

It's hard to do well and not all evil concepts work.

Delmont91 wrote:

I can think of many. Here are two:

The fighter who adventures only to increase his skill, at least on the surface. Really he just likes cutting flesh and killing. He doesn't care about the gold so gives most of it away. He spends most of his time adventuring because that's where he can do his killing. Cities are hard for him, he's always just a hair away from slicing into the wrong person.

Or a character who is nice and happy, loves his company and adventuring crew like the family they never had. They go on adventures, they get close, then one is captured. The prisoner the group has it the only lead and nothing can get them to talk. This evil character will do anything to save his family, a few minutes later, when the screaming ends, they walk out with the information and a smile. Let's go save our friend.

The key is as stated above, have a reason to be with the party and don't try to derail the campaign. An evil pc had to be smart evil.

This is what I mainly get confused about alignment. In general I just feel that your character doesn't do anything evil so how can he be evil.

For someone truly being evil in my eyes that would have to do evil thing regularly which your party would be against. I guess you could just be doing the evil things behind everyone's back but I would be worried they would find out and would cause lots conflict as stated from other posters.

As long as the good characters never found out about the evil things your characters are doing it would be fine, but if they did find out I feel it could become a mess. That is why I would be too scared to play an evil character in a good party.

I just find alignment kind of an unnecessary thing though since I feel it would constantly be changing and sometimes a character just doesn't fit a specific alignment.

I find alignment is about intent. I can be evil and do good things. But if I do good things because I really like hurting people and if I "protect the innocent" I get to hurt people without getting in trouble that's an evil character. If a character can brutally torture information from someone and sleep soundly that night, even if they don't do it often, that's an evil character. You don't have to be mustache twirling evil or do evil acts all the time. But if you are 100% ok with doing doing evil acts to reach your goals you're probably evil. Even if you make sure you do enough good that you aren't run out of society. There stupid evil and smart evil. Smart evil can exist right under society's nose.

I feel there would have to be an awful lot of reason for the group to stay together rather than find another party member... At the same time I am not sure I even like rigidly defining character to make them fit CE/LG/NE etc. I feel if you just make a personality that should be good enough.

I can think of many. Here are two:

The fighter who adventures only to increase his skill, at least on the surface. Really he just likes cutting flesh and killing. He doesn't care about the gold so gives most of it away. He spends most of his time adventuring because that's where he can do his killing. Cities are hard for him, he's always just a hair away from slicing into the wrong person.

Or a character who is nice and happy, loves his company and adventuring crew like the family they never had. They go on adventures, they get close, then one is captured. The prisoner the group has it the only lead and nothing can get them to talk. This evil character will do anything to save his family, a few minutes later, when the screaming ends, they walk out with the information and a smile. Let's go save our friend.

The key is as stated above, have a reason to be with the party and don't try to derail the campaign. An evil pc had to be smart evil.