Doktor Weasel's page

So I'm one of the guys who aren't quite happy with the reduced number of spell slots, combined with the need to heighten many spells, which further reduces the number of effective spells per day you can use. Everyone in my group is also in this camp from what I can tell. Seeing the Refocus rules gave me an idea though. How about a way to regain spell slots through the 10 minute rest cycle? It would be similar to Focus Spells in that you have less firepower per encounter, but outside of combat you can exchange time for the ability to regain some of that power, so you're not significantly hampered in how much you can do in a day. I love this mechanic for focus, would it be too out of balance to apply something similar to spell slots? I'm looking for feedback on this idea and ways of making it work so it doesn't dramatically unbalance things.

My first thought was to use Focus points to regain slots, which ties it directly to refocusing. I was thinking 1 focus per spell-level, but now that I see you max out at 3 focus, that doesn't seem to be an option, or else you'd be limited to 3rd level spells or less. So my next thought is to just directly get back slots by spending 10 minutes of study, prayer or meditation per spell-level to regain it. So to get back a 6th level spell slot would take an hour. I'm thinking for prepared casters it just regains the cast spell, like the old Pearls of Power. So if you cast fireball, you can't use this to gain lightning bolt instead. For spontaneous casters it'd just regain the slot straight up. Is this too unbalanced in favor of spontaneous casters? How about adding an extra ten minutes to regain a slot, but with a different known spell? Would that put things back too much in favor of the prepared casters? Would that step on the toes of the Spell Substitution Thesis too much? Should the time be higher? Lower? Does someone have a completely different approach towards the same ends?

So I'm getting ready to play in Heroes of Undarin this Saturday. The gear selection is different than the other parts. It mentioned that you can select a +3 weapon. Can this be cold iron? This is the Worldwound, I was under the impression that cold iron weapons were basically standard issue for anyone fighting there. Is this the case, or are we stuck with standard weapons unless you shell out for them separately?

Ok, it's been mentioned repeatedly in the past that the multiple uses of the word Level just invites confusion. And the more I've been looking at and thinking about the playtest, it's much worse in this edition.

The rules for heightening spells, powers and cantrips makes this all very awkward. Cantrips and powers are automatically heightened to a spell level that is half your level rounded up. So if you're 7th level they're 4th level and grow to 5th level at 9th level.

The addition of item levels makes this even worse, a 4th level wand is a level 8 item and a level 4 wand is 2nd level. The levels of items in the treasure section are sometimes different than the levels on the treasure tables, is this yet another usage of level that isn't fully explained, or are these typos?

And then you've got counteract levels which having read four times in a row, I think I'm finally getting. it's a way to get these different level scales working on the same scale, but the wording and usage of level in different ways is awkward.

Spell levels really need to be renamed (I'd suggest Spell Order, like 4th order spells). Item levels might need to be as well, but possibly not if spell levels change. Then all levels will be on the same scale. And counteract levels, well they need to be clarified and probably given a different name too.

Now someone level with me, are all these different levels on the level or do we need to level the playing field before we can take the game to the next level?

A friend of mine just launched Mytreasurey.io, a web-based tool to quickly and easily look up and calculate prices for items for the PF2 Playtest as well as PF1. I've been helping with data entry and bug-finding. It's intended to help speed things up while calculating the value of the loot the party is selling or buying. You can quickly calculate the price of armor and weapons of varying quality, size, material and potency and property runes. If there's enough demand we've got ideas for extra functionality such as keeping a running tally of your treasure, what's been sold and what's been allocated to which character as well as supporting more games. Let us know what you think.

So the size of an item changes it's price. Does that apply only to the standard quality, or does that change the price of other quality items? The base price of the item is ignored in favor of the item quality price, is the size multiplier only for the base item or also the item quality? So would a Gargantuan Legendary greatsword be the same price as a medium one, 65,000 sp, or is it 8 times as much, so 520,000 sp? I know that it's the same price as a Gargantuan Legendary dagger, which is a bit odd. Unless it's a special material, in which case the bulk dictates price so they'll be quite different. And I'm assuming for the different materials the price multiplier isn't used, and instead we just use the price based on bulk, otherwise things are double counted and a Legendary Gargantuan Adamantine greatsword would be an insane 1,920,000 gp instead of 240,000 gp for a 16 bulk item. And likewise, I'm assuming size doesn't change the price of potency or property runes.

There's a lot of weirdness and unclear writing with the way item prices are now sometimes substitutions and other times multipliers or adders. Like quality and special materials replacing the price, but size multiplying (and the question of just when it multiplies and when it doesn't). I'm helping a friend on a web based tool to automate item price calculations, and we've been running into it a lot. Oddly the simplifications actually have been making some things more complicated. There's less math, but more exceptions.

This might not be the most pressing issue. But talking with my group, we're all finding the reduction of Unseen Servant to 1 minute and requiring concentration kind of destroying it's flavor use as a housekeeper or butler etc. Apparently it's been reduced to keep people from abusing it as a trap triggering sacrificial creature (what we call the Bomb Monkey, due to us using monkeys to defuse bombs in another game).

One player hit on a good solution. Make unseen servant a ritual. Takes a day to do, lasts several days, maybe weeks depending and is tied to a location. This will prevent the abuse, while preserving the flavor usage. And as it is, I often see in APs and such various buildings that had unseen servants bound to that location. So lets get a ritual to do those. I want my tea-serving unseen servants, and unseen housekeeping staff!

Not a major thing, or even a complaint. Just an observation that being skill-focused can quickly eat up all your starting cash.

I built an alchemist for Doomsday Dawn, Part 1. I decided to be a bit of a skill monkey because we look like we won't have a rogue. So I took thievery (disabling traps will be nice), Medicine and Craft (both fit the theme and are signature skills. I figured I'd do some non-magic healing and repair people's damaged items). But the prices of the skill kits required for many skill rolls means I wasn't able to take them all.

• Alchemist's Tools 60 sp
  
• Healer's Tools 50 sp
  
• Repair Kit 30 sp
  
• Thieves' Tools 30 sp
  
• Writing Set (for dealing with a formula book) 15 sp
  
• Disguise kit 20 sp
  
• Artisan's Tools 50 sp
  
• Snare kit 50 sp

Just the Alchemist's Tools, Healer's Tools and Writing Set take 125 out of 150 starting sp, and I see that as a pretty standard load-out for an alchemist. I took the Thieves' Tools instead of the Healer's because of the lack of rogue. The biggest ticket item are the Alchemist's tools. So for a rogue (the more typical skill monkey) they'd have more to play with. But things can still get expensive fast. And this doesn't include weapons or armor which can get pricey. Thankfully Alchemist gives you the Formula Book (10 sp) for free.

Like I said, this isn't really a complaint. I'm not sure that this is a problem, but it is something to be aware of and take a look at. It does make sense that tools can be expensive. But a multi-skilled character shouldn't be too prohibitive. I suspect that one level of adventuring would be enough get kits to accommodate the rest of your skills. Bulk could start to be an issue though. So mostly just a 1st Level Problem.

I've noticed that some classic items are missing from the playtest. For example Handy Haversack, portable hole, boots of speed, Blessed Book, Figurines of Wondrous Power, Efficient Quiver and Wings of Flying. Is this because this is simply a playtest document and won't include all options, or are some of these items being removed? I certainly hope it's only the former and all will show up in PF2 (although I can understand if some don't make it into the core book for space reasons). I just hope it wasn't decided to remove things that were 'too powerful' or whatnot.

So we've got less than a week to go before the playtest drops, so I've been thinking about just what I plan on testing. I think my group is going to go through Doomsday Dawn, so what characters am I going to test at the various levels?

My understanding is that in Doomsday Dawn you'll make five different characters. Four are played for one adventure at a set level and the first one will be played in three different adventures at first level, some intermediate level and a high level. So what to play?

I'm not really a big player of casters (I've never actually played a full caster, although I plan on doing one soon to try to get out of my comfort zone, but I think the playtest isn't the right time for that. I think it's better to test what I know, so I have a better frame of reference to judge by.), so it's probably best to leave those to members of my group who are. One guy tends to play wizards almost all the time, so that's covered. Another loves clerics and paladins, so I think those are covered. I think my repeated character might be an Alchemist, because I'm the only one in the group who's played a PF1 alchemist, and trying it at three different levels makes sense because it's the most unique and changed class. Ancestry-wise, I was kind of tempted to make him a goblin, but currently I think I'll probably do a half-elf or half-orc, because of the recent info drop about how those are being handled in PF2 and the resulting controversy.

I'm not quite so sure as to the other 4 characters, and which one to use at which level. A rouge in there somewhere is a given for me and a ranger is also highly likely. I'm thinking maybe a goblin barbarian, both because that sounds fun and to see how a small strength-penalized barbarian fares. Might even go with a dex build as opposed to working to get him to 16 str. Might do that as the highest level character other than the repeating one to see how it goes on in the late-game. As for the final character, probably fighter. Which adventure/level for the fighter, rogue and ranger is probably going to be mostly random. Also not sure on ancestries. I'm not a big elf fan (paladin/cleric player is, so again probably covered). Maybe gnome for the rogue, straight human for another and for the third maybe dwarf.

So there's my reasoning. What classes/ancestries are you planning on playingtesting in Doomsday Dawn and why? Or are you not going to be doing Doomsday Dawn, if so what do you plan on doing for the playtest? Homebrew? Conversion of a PF1 AP?

This has come up a few different places, so I figured it's time to create a thread just for this kind of thing. A new edition is a chance to clean up some of the weird and confusing word choices. Although some of what I'd prefer to change likely won't because they're so ingrained in the tradition of the game.

Spell levels are a big one that could use some changing. Having a 12th level character who's a 8th level wizard, with a caster level of 10, casting 5th level spells, on the 3rd level of the dungeon can get a bit silly. This of course has been mentioned a lot already.

The big one I'm currently thinking about that I'm not seeing mention of is Critical Failure. I think this is a problematic term that should be changed. First it gets a bit wordy and awkward to discuss critical successes and critical failures. Critical success tends to just get shortened to crit. But with critical failures in the mix we've got to clarify that to crit fail or crit success which kind of defeats the point of shortening things.

Secondly is the implication that it's a disastrous result. You didn't just fail, you failed critically! This instantly brings to mind all those absurd and arbitrary fumbles from tons of games over the past few decades. The rules clearly are not indicating that, but implicit meaning from the word can and does color how they're treated. For many situations a critical fail is identical to a normal fail with the exception that perhaps an opponent getting an opening for an ability.

My proposed replacement: Complication. You can shorten it to comp. Crit and comp. Two distinct monosyllabic words. It also sheds the implication of it being extra bad, but instead might just be trickier. Instead of "You critically fail!" which sounds really horrible you've got "You've got a complication." which isn't necessarily so earth-shattering and can be more of a narrative thing.

There might be better terms, but this is just to get the ball rolling.
*looks at post* Speaking of being overly wordy...

I'm a novice GM running Carrion Crown for my group. Next session (October 1st) we'll be finishing up Haunting of Harrowstone and moving on to Trial of the Beast. But I'm considering throwing in a bit of a side adventure in between, an opportunity to let the players "off the rails" a bit.

Tamrivena and the area around it seems the most likely location. Not only is it on the way to Lepidstadt, it's also home to the Palatine Council for Canterwall, with whom my PCs have some business. My players love owning property and have asked for Harrowstone as part of the payment for cleansing it (they want to rebuild it and turn it into a fortress and home base). But as it's County property, the Ravengro council is passing on the request to the council in Tamrivena. I'm thinking that this is a good hook to get the PCs involved in some kind of intrigue there. My problem is that I'm not sure what.

My players prefer role-playing and investigation to pure combat, so I was hoping to add more here. Also this may be a good place to give some more hints that the Whispering Way is up to something sinister. Perhaps the Whispering Way is conducting negotiations with a Belkzen orc tribe to get soldiers or just riling up the orcs as a distraction from their own actions. Nervous councilors may send the PCs to investigate odd orc activity as an aditional condition for giving them control over Harrowstone.

I welcome any ideas and advice.