Dilvias's page

I have a house rule where assurance is the floor, where you can’t roll lower than your assurance score. Definitely more useful, almost everyone takes it now, at least for their most important skills.

Might be too useful too be honest.

I'm honestly suprised we haven't got a Tome specific familiar yet. A sentient book floating around seems right up the Wizard's ally.

I actually did something like that, but using an inscribed one witch. Took tough, construct and flight. Played it like a wizard who found a sentient spell book. Worked well.

Unicore, thank you very much. I have never really looked at Proficiency without level and summoning spells before. Normally I play standard so I have very little experience with it. And summoning spells are off the charts amazing when playing PWL.

The sheer versatility of a conjuror wizard is staggering. The thing that holds back summoning spells in regular games is that you summon things that are woefully under-leveled vs. the things you’re fighting. But in PWL, a level one wolf or hunting spider is nearly equal to something 4 levels above it, especially when you use augment summons.

There are so many creatures that are simply broken in the hands of a PC if the GM allows unlimited access to monsters. For example the level -1 ether sprite, which has a one action at will confusion ability, so a summoner can use one of his actions to confuse two enemies. If he has access to the summon fey spell natively, he can do this at level 1.

It is hard to grasp how strong summoning seems under PWL. Maybe I am missing something. I hope so.

At lowest levels, before your martials get their striking runes, Magic Weapon is the strongest spell in the game. The two handed fighter’s extra damage? That’s damage that you did.

No spell in the game does as much potential damage than Magic Weapon while it is relevant.

The new kineticist dedication is going to profoundly change the caster meta. If you play free archetype, it’s going to be an auto pick for casters. Even if you don’t, for many casters (*cough* wizard) almost no class feat comes close to kineticist dedication feats, especially early on.

I really hope that they remove the sentence about only being able to use stances during encounter mode. There are many stances that would be useful outside of combat.

Ectar wrote:

Don't spend 3 actions striking

Sort of, but not quite. Like doing knockdown for 2 active followed by a strike is a bad idea.

Maybe we should phrase it as "never make an attack when you have -8 MAP or more" but that doesn't roll off the tongue

Even that’s not universal. There are situations where making a third attack at -10 may be the best choice.

Like say your bard critically succeeded an inspire heroics on you, the enemy is clumsy 3 from synesthesia for just this round, and the rogue just moved into flank with you.

In that case, swing away.

Kekkres wrote:

i wish my experiance mirrored yours unicore, from everything i have seen in my playtests, i have found kineticitst to just be doing everything badly, (two level 6 kineticists, one dual air fire dex man, the other dedicated earth str man) they do an awful lot of stuff badly, save for the one impulse they get off at the start of a fight before enemies can all run and get tangled into your front line. I know that the utility impulses do get very good later on, and i do like that part of the class, and my dual air fire guy would have benifited from picking up fair winds, but my players felt like they got to do "cool kineticst thing" once per fight and after that they where just sub par at everything

They were clearly doing it wrong.

jk ;P

You are joking, but it’s really easy to build a subpar kineticist. I’ve done 2 tests so far, one with a 10th level water kineticist, and a 1st level air kineticist. The 10th level water kineticist was amazing. The first level air kineticist… was not.

I’m allowing elemental weapon (composite longbow) for the playtest, but earth blast does the same damage and water 2 points less, although with much lower range. Doesn’t change the fact that when built in a very specific way kineticist can do reasonable damage.

It’s why I want CON to damage, so it allows more builds to do similar damage that they can already do without jumping through all the hoops.

the problem is, past the earliest level the damage output of a kineticist using 3 or 4 action impulse routines vs a martial using strike, strike third action is so incredibly lopsided that the chance you actually save your martials more then one action over the course of a battle is pretty slim

level 11 kineticist outputs at best 4D8 or 4D10 depending on weather they using a 3 or 4 action routine (18 or 22 damage on average respectivly)
a barbarian at the same level can be putting out 2D12+14+2D6, or 34 damage on average with ONE action, about 60 whith two when you work in the decreased accuracy of the second strike

so comparing against all given hp values your impulse has saved your barbarian one action 2/3 of the time, but dropped an enemy a round early only 1 third of the time. for FOUR ACTIONS you have a reasonably good chance to save one character one action and a less reliable chance to have dropped an enemy a turn early. and sure, that sounds pretty alright right?

however, if there are one or two enemies, any character with a scaling spell dc and electric arc does this better, if there are three or four enemies, a flurry ranger does this MUCH better by just spreading their shots out to different targets (not technically aoe, but with the same end result over the two turns it takes a kineticist to use a 3 action impulse). It is only once you are hitting 5 enemies that you are actually achiving resourceless free wide damage in a way that has better...

If all you care about is damage, at level 11 a kineticist can do 2d12+2d6+7 melee or 2d8+2d6+5 with a 100’ range, with any element, as a single action. Not barbarian numbers, but respectable.

I’m more worried about there being a one true build.

Kinetic cover, kinetic healer and slick. Water has something like them but much higher level.

Getting rid of NPC classes. In my last PF1 campaign they were an important part of the world building so I was extremely worried. Turns out the new NPC rules work great and I don’t miss them.

Since it looks like we will not finish due to work and stuff, I’m going to go ahead and talk about our testing of the psychic.

We wanted to try something we’ve been meaning to do, the super fighter team, focusing on making a fighter the best they could be. We had a fighter (obviously), bard, eldritch trickster (divine) rogue and an infinite eye psychic. We were going to try multiple levels but only did level 1, and only 1 session at that.

General comments: Super-fighter was super-effective, at least at this level. At one point the fighter could crit on a 7, for 6d12+17! Granted, it was against a zombie shambler, but still. Even the rogue was seeing good results and they weren’t the focus.

Psychic comments:

We went with spell attack for the mental scan roll. Cooperative Nature is very strong with mental scan, maybe too much so, especially with the cooperative soul follow-up. It makes humans the go to choice for psychics.

The psychic chose mage armor as their one spell per day so it would have the biggest impact. They said that they would probably never cast true strike and hated that it was required. They requested maybe object reading as an alternative. Not sure about that one. Home game I’d allow it.

They never amped detect magic, and only amped guidance once, which turned out not to matter besides taking a 10 minute refocus to get the point back. Hopefully there will be more options to use amps when the book comes out. On another note I never realized guidance and aid stacked before which is nice to discover.

While we only did first, the psychic was underwhelmed by the feat options. They said in an actual game most class feats would be used for archetypes.

Combat was very samey. Amp mental scan a target and TK projectile or daze, depending on what the results say. Partly because the fighter was wrecking everything.

For something called infinite eye, their perception was pretty bad, tied for lowest in the party. Not a big deal, but was mentioned.

Overall feeling is that with a little tweaking psychic will be in a good place but not quite there yet.

Magic Weapon. By 3-4 you are going to be retraining it out, but for the first couple of levels it’s the best spell in the game.

Magic Weapon, inspire courage and move to flank gives the fighter +4 to hit and an extra die of damage.

You can take the versatile heritage instead of skilled for your general feat and then take natural skill as your human feat. This gives you an extra skill at trained.

It seems that many people have an issue with the verisimilitude of battle medicine and not using a kit or empty hand. Let’s see if we can come up with a justification for it.

Let’s say I am playing a monk with battle medicine. I want to define this as striking certain acupressure points causing the body to release its own resources to heal the injury. (It’s also why I can only do it once a day as it takes that long for the body to recharge.)

I then point out that I can do it with, say, a stick instead of my fingers. I am still hitting the point only with the stick after all.

I then teach my friend the fighter how to do it as well, using the hilt of his sword. He picks up the skill and feat so now he can do it too.

Finally, I actually did this a thousand years ago. This knowledge has spread to many healers throughout the land.

There. We now have an in-game reason why people can heal without needing a healer’s kit or an empty hand.

In pf1, dwarves got the trait “hatred”, which gave a bonus against goblinoids. In pf2, the ancestry feat “vengeful hatred” no longer includes them as an option. I assume that this was deliberate.

I made an elven wizard just to see if this is an issue. I ended up with the following skills: academia lore, arcana, crafting, elven lore, medicine, nature, occultism, religion and society with 3 skills left to choose.

I think wizards are fine.

I have a player who likes playing support characters. You know what her favorite class in PF 1 was? Kinetic Chirurgeon. She loved the class. She said that it was the first time she felt like a real healer, because the healing wasn't limited in how much healing she could do, but how much healing the others could take. She also had backup abilities to help the support role (slick for making people trip or drop their weapon, kinetic cover for battlefield control) plus an okay damage to contribute to damage.

It was an interesting way to play, really. The group was never in danger of being killed, but as the day progressed, they became easier to knock out, so eventually they would have to rest to clear all of the non-lethal damage. It did seem that they were much more willing to press forward, even "injured", because there was less of a fear of losing their characters.

Since PF2 is getting rid of non-lethal damage, I'm not sure how such a class would work. I'd still like to see a similar class.

Well, thanks to this thread, I now know that if my shield gets broken I can now pull another light shield from the four stored in my belt pouch and continue fighting.

Good to know.

Kineticist

Staff of Minor Healing

For chapter 2 of Doomsday dawn, the druid was deciding between a Staff of Minor Healing and Hide Armor +1 as her level 3 magic item. She liked the fact that she could substitute slots for charges, since it meant you didn't have to memorize heal spells. Then she noticed that using it with either charges or slots still cost resonance.

Her response: "You mean I have to invest a point of resonance and it still costs resonance to use? Screw that, I'll just use a wand of heal instead." (She used a word a bit stronger than "screw".)

She did convince the barbarian to use one of his level 2 items for a backup wand.

While I am still getting the issue, I wonder if it is related to the Paizo cookies footer that has never gone away for me. Anyone else getting the banner issue also have the cookies footer that doesn't go away?

I believe that bolding or somehow letting the reader know that this word is a key word, with a quick comment at the beginning on where to find the key word descriptions would help.

Orcs' Ferocity in the bestiary is not listed as 1/day. Is this correct?

Humans get "One additional language, selected from
those to which you have access" but does not explain which ones they can access.

Below is a list of all of the healing classes and methods of healing ranked from best to worst, at least in my eyes.

Hopefully others have found this useful.

"When a character Crafts an item, use the high-difficulty DC
for the item’s level as a baseline—for example, the DC for a
common level 5 magic item is 21. If the item is uncommon,
you might increase the difficulty to severe and rare to extreme." (p. 337)

A level 1 high DC is 14, so to craft a common level 1 item has a DC of 14. So the Int 14 level 3 expert crafter (+6) would need an 8 to succeed. Since he is 2 levels above the item, it only takes 2 days to complete if he was willing to pay full price for the item. As long as he doesn't crit fail, he doesn't lose the materials and can try again. Even if he does crit fail, he only loses 10% of the materials. If he critically succeeds (on an 18-20), you are considered 1 level higher for reducing cost.

So for the 4 minor healing potions, after 2 days, you spent 6 gp (60 sp). You can now spend the remaining amount (60 sp), or reduce the cost by 4 sp for each day over the amount (6 sp if you critically succeed). (p. 148)

You do also need to spend the 10 sp for the formula in the first place (p. 188). The basic artisan's tools are 50 sp. You could also spend 200 sp on expert artisan tools for a +1 to the roll (p. 184). Of course, they are bulk 8, so you aren't carrying them around in your backpack.

If you have a friend, they can provide an additional +2 if they get a DC 15 aid check (+4 if they critically succeed, -2 if they critically fail) (p. 307). If your friend is a bard with inspire competence they cannot fail or critically fail to provide aid, and they use their performance skill to boot (p. 233). (Note that if the person you want to aid you has the higher roll, you should be aiding them.)

These rules are scattered all over the book, so it's not unreasonable for you to have missed them.

Fabricate is just gone.

Create Water is now first level and creates a maximum of 2 gallons.

Mending is also first level. It does subsume make whole (Heightened 2nd) but also completely nerfs it. (Goes from a object 10 cubic feet per level to an object of at most 1 bulk (2 bulk with Heightened 3rd).)

I believe what is supposed to happen is that high level skill feats are supposed to be gated by proficiency level. The problem with the playtest is that there are simply not enough high level skill feats. Most skill only have 1 master level and 1 legendary level skill feat. Some don't have any.

Even then, many of these feats aren't very good. Kip Up, for example, is the only master level acrobatics feat, which allows you to stand up without triggering a reaction. I see this at best as an expert level skill feat. The only legendary skill feat for acrobatics is legendary contortionist which allows you to move at full speed while squeezing. When I think of a legendary acrobat, I don't think of someone squirming through tunnels.

Now this will change once we get some more and better skill feats. What I hope is that we will get supplemental material to support high level playtesting.

Speaking of signature skills, the wizard multiclass feat Expert Wizard Spellcasting requires master in Arcana. How can you get that if you can't make Arcana a signature skill?

You get free skill increases every odd level, and can take a skill to legendary at 15th level.

Armenius wrote:

What's the reasoning for requiring 16 in the primary stat? I remember it being stated a cleric with next to no wisdom would be viable. Strange that a rogue who spends one feat on clericdom has to be wiser than a pure cleric.

I don’t like it either, but if they are using Starfinder-like ability adjustments, it may be a pretty easy prerequisite.

I'd prefer 14 for the first dedication feat, 16 for the next one.

Well, now if you want your Paladin or Ranger to cast spells, you can multiclass into cleric (or eventually Druid).

Fighter/Cleric will make pretty good pseudo Paladins for other alignments.

Succinctly, why is the optimization window, for Rogue, drawn around, say, Garrett from Thief or the Grey Mouser, but leaves out:

- Wesley from the Princess Bride, who choked a giant and crack-climbs like a master,
- Indiana Jones fist-fighting nazis,
- Not to mention the most celebrated Rogue of all times, Conan the Barbarian.

Wesley is a level 15 rogue dealing with level 5 enemies. Of course he looks impressive.

Indiana uses a whip (finesse), his fists (also finesse) and a gun (dex based). That said, he has more even stats. Probably something like 12/16/12/16/12/12 at first level. He also isn't a first level character.

Conan is a barbarian who is trained in thievery. Just because you have the thievery skill doesn't mean you are a rogue.

Depending on how rituals work, I can see an Indiana Jones type archaeologist being a rogue who took the ritual skills.

Since alchemical elixirs can be permanently crafted so they take no resonance to use, why would I use potions over elixirs?

Dilvias wrote:

I assume that both wands and scrolls cost 1 resonance to use. Given that one of the objectives is to "level out" of items, why should I invest in a wand as opposed to a few scrolls?

I think it's literally a volume discount - a wand with 20 charges is cheaper than 20 scrolls of that spell.

As an aside, do wands still need 50 charges? Now that the days of "we're gonna to cast CLW via wand 600 times to do the entire dungeon without resting" are over, perhaps making them smaller (and cheaper) is in order.

Wands will likely be cheaper per charge, yes, but how many charges of the wand will you use before you should be using the next higher level of item? Say I have a wand of a first level spell. Since it sounds like I am only going to be able to use it once or twice a day, I might end up using only 5 to 10 charges over the life of the wand until it is no longer an effective use of an action. If that's the case, the scrolls are actually the better deal, depending on pricing.

I am... concerned. From what I can tell, compared to PF1 monk, PF2 monks lose all weapon proficiencies, increasing damage dice past the first level, stunning fist, bonus feats, wisdom to AC and fast movement. Some of these can be bought back as class feats I presume, but doing so means you don't get ki powers at the appropriate levels. Flurry seems worse as well, going from -1/-1 to 0/-4.

In PF 1, based on what most mundane gear is worth, 1 copper piece is worth approximately 1 dollar in modern terms. (There are some weird exceptions, of course.) The 1 silver per day for "untrained" workers is how much it costs to live at a poor lifestyle (3 gp/month). So this is basically what it costs to pay for your worker's room and board (i.e. apprentices and slaves). The actual beginner's wages is about 4 to 6 gp a week (about $400-$600/week in modern times).

I use this as a price guide when someone wants to buy gear that doesn't have a price listed, and have modified some prices (mostly down), especially for alchemical and masterwork items.

What this means is that magic gear is fantastically expensive, and rare. Most commoners will never see it, beyond maybe a low level potion. It's one of the ways to have a mostly mundane world at the base, while still having high level gear. Sure, those powerful nobles (or oil execs and CEOs) might be able to afford things like carpets of flying (or helicopters), but the commoners won't bother.

So if PF 2 has redesigned the item price list, they need to make sure they base it on how much a silver piece is worth in modern terms and price accordingly.

While not a deal breaker, it would make me sad to see the NPC classes go away. It's an important part of my current campaign.

I am a bit worried at the comparison between first level clerics from 1e to 2e. Let's compare:

At first level, a 2e cleric gets 1 domain, getting one power powered by their spell pool equal to their wisdom bonus (let's say 18 wis, so 4 times per day). They get their deity's favored weapon. They get cantrips. They get 2 first level spells. They get channel energy which lets you heal 3 + cha times per day (let's say cha 14, so 5 times) that lets them cast the heal spell (1d8+4 hp).

Now for the 1e cleric. Let's assume the same stats (wis 18, cha 14). At first level a cleric gets 2 domains. Let's say they pick Travel and Trickery. From travel, they get +10' movement and the agile feet power 7 times a day. From Trickery they get to add bluff, disguise and stealth as class skills, along with the copycat power 7 times a day. They get 3 Orisons per day. They get channel energy 5 times a day (1d6 hp). They get 3 first level spells (1 base +1 from stat +1 domain spell) 2 of which can convert into cure light wounds. They also get the deity's favored weapon.

So for the 2e cleric channel energy is stronger, but you only get 1 power, compared to the effectively 4 powers for domains, and can use it less. Hopefully that one power will be more powerful than the 1e powers. You get 1 less spell and the spells are slightly less flexible. Cantrips may be more powerful than Orisons at higher levels, but what about at level 1?

That said, some of the power might be able to be made up for by rituals and more useful skills. The cleric is now effectively a full BAB class, so battle clerics should be easier to do. Ancestry and Backgrounds might also make up some of the difference between the 2 as well. Or they may not. We will have to see the rules in full to make a final judgement.

Slayer is even easier. They're like the ranger, but without spells and the animal companion.

Worst is Medium. You need to learn 6 different classes and you need to be careful or you become an NPC.

Even with Handy haversacks, carrying capacity matters. Take a swashbuckler. Chain Shirt, Rapier, Buckler, Handy Haversack. That's it. Weight load: 37 lbs. You have to have a strength of 11, or you are now in medium load. Two more pounds (say a dagger and a torch), you now need strength 12.

Being in medium load, your max AC to dex is now +3 and you move 20' instead of 30'. That can easily be the difference between life and death.

You can invest in mithril armor to make your gear lighter, but that's the point. Carrying capacity makes it a meaningful decision. At low levels, you can (and really should) invest in a pack animal for your party. With the encumbrance rules, you understand why it is important.

I'm not completely opposed to bulk, but it does need to make sense and provide those meaningful decisions. Hopefully it will do both.

How much does 1 coin take up in bulk? How about 50 coins? 5000 coins?

Does it matter if it is loose coins or in a bag? I can easily carry 5 pounds of coins (or 2 kilos) in a bag. It would be impossible to carry them loose in my hands.

Let's say 50 coins in a pouch is (L) bulk. What about 75 coins? Do I round up or down? What about 95 coins? 55 coins? 49 coins?

If 49 coins in a pouch is negligible weight, what about 2 pouches? 10 pouches? 100 pouches?

What if each pouch only had 3 coins in them?

The advantage of weight over bulk is that you simply add up the pounds (or kilos). With abstractions, you open up the possibility of people gaming the system. And if you don't think people will try to game the system, you haven't played with some of the people I've gamed with.

Now I'm wondering how much bulk a Handy Haversack will hold...

I am glad to hear that there are practical methods of healing and condition removal available to any class. It sounds like the method is outside any class gating, which I think is great.

Perhaps now characters can emulate what Strider did with leaves of the Athelas and boiling water to heal Frodo’s knife wound. There are also lots of similar things in literature using various bandages, herbs, alchemical healing ingredients and such.

PF1 had those options. The problem was that they were so expensive, it was usually cheaper and easier to just buy the appropriate potion.

It will make translating Kineticists to PF2E much harder.

Okay, I took the original concept of a big stupid scary tiefling fighter who wields a large greatsword to see what I came up with at level 10. I went with standard wealth by level, but included no outside buffs.

Out of combat he has a few roles. He is a a quite competent tracker. He can intimidate pretty much anyone. With the adamantine greatsword he can smash most things to rubble. He can carry over a half ton, and briefly lift over a ton. He has a +12 will save to help keep from killing his friends.

There you go. A big, stupid terrifyingly effective fighter.

I know some people have a problem with the class, but I have a player who is playing a Kinetic Chirurgeon and she loves it. While they are still low level, the amount of healing she does is insane. She says that for the first time, she actually feels like a healer.

I hope that something similar is included in 2nd edition.

At this point, probably the best thing to do is advise the player that after checking the rules he can't flurry with the dagger, but to make up for it, a merchant has heard of the weapon, and has lined up a buyer for it. Since he really wants to turn it over quickly, he is wiling to give everyone in the party credit to purchase what they want at the shop for more than the normal sale value. Depending on how many players you have, offer 6000 to each player if it's a party of 4, 5000 if it's a party of 5 or 4000 if it is a party of 6. (Normal sale price is about 16000 for the dagger.)

Yes, this is way over the wealth by level of the party, but at least it spreads it over the entire party, as opposed to concentrating it into one person's hands.