Easl's page

Easl wrote:

Could you free archetype (or just archetype) into wizard, witch, or sorcerer, take Reach Spell at L4, then go to town with your 3a, 30' ranged two-target striking amped IW? It's not great range, but it's out of melee.

You can't metamagic amp cantrips. So, nope :)

Hmmm I'm not seeing that in either the AoN Spellshape entry or the Psychic text for Amps. Could you point me to where it says that? Is it because "you can amp it by spending 1 Focus Point to add the amp effect" counts as a free action? There's no free action symbol next to the "Amp" entries in AoN.

Any tangible dream psychic that wants to use imaginary weapon is not going to do melee. It's going to use ghostly carrier for it which turns it into a 120 foot ranged spell that hits 2 targets. As long as you can keep the ghostly carrier alive anyways

Could you free archetype (or just archetype) into wizard, witch, or sorcerer, take Reach Spell at L4, then go to town with your 3a, 30' ranged two-target striking amped IW? It's not great range, but it's out of melee.

Easl wrote:

You've got some folks saying make L1 encounters survivable without knowing all the tactics (i.e. allows for incremental learning).

There's factually no link between incremental learning curve and L1 survivability. You are reaching a conclusion based on a ton of untold assumptions.

I'm in a game with my kid right now. Guess what approach we're using. Guess whether it's been working or not. That's anecdote, but I'm a bit surprised you're so negative on the thought that someone who has used such an approach in a wide variety of board and card games and yes ttrpgs must be wrong about it. Of course you can think you're right and I'm wrong. But you asked someone who does it what worked for them, and I gave you my answer.

Using a lower threat for players who don't know tactics is still challenging to them, because they don't know tactics. In fact, that's the way you keep the encounter challenge steady across the learning curve. Example: let's say you're running a written encounter, but for some reason you choose to remove all PC powers to buff themselves and debuff the enemy. But you want your modified encounter to be no more difficult to beat than the written one. You don't want it tougher - or easier! You just want it simpler. Do you keep all other enemy stats the same? Or do you lower them to account for the lack of PC abilities to buff themselves/debuff the enemy? The latter, yes? Well, that's the situation for beginners. You get the same encounter difficulty out of lower statistics, until they learn tactics.

(I must admit, I have hard time seeing how I could sell PF2 to kids).

By introducing the complex rules set incrementally. Which is kinda the whole point here, right? You've got some folks saying make L1 encounters survivable without knowing all the tactics (i.e. allows for incremental learning) and others saying no no make it tactically full-game-on right from the start (no increments; know everything all at once or you're dead). Because (at least in one opinion) 'it's good to weed out the folks who can't handle it', though I suspect the more common reason for wanting full-on L1 encounters is 'because as an experienced player, I too want to enjoy those L1-5 APs...and I don't want to have to upgrade them.'

I was able to teach my kid Terraforming Mars at age 8. But I didn't do that by forcing him to know every detailed rule in the very first run through. The first run through used some of the rules. Then the second used more. Then by the third time, he got it all. So now we play tons of games together. Had I insisted on the full rules set and just focused on whomping on his a$$ that first game, I doubt we'd be playing complex board games together today as much as we do. There is good long term fun value in giving beginners a low slope learning curve.

Nobody has put forth a convincing argument that this is a problem aside from the odd poorly balanced encounter, a GM that runs through Grand Central on a fixed schedule, or simple poor luck.

When a single crit drops a PC from 100% to down, the single crit chance is 5%, and the GM makes 10-20 attack rolls per session, then PCs going from 100% to down is not bad luck, it's a predictable and expected outcome of the game system. It gets significantly more expected when you look at L+1 or +2 opponents. This is why trip and mathmuse are talking about the math being part of the problem.

That something that has gone wrong could just be poor dice luck.

This is a misunderstanding of the statistics.

Aside from a few players in this thread who think every player death and party wipe should be telegraphed and only occur because the players messed up,

...and this is a straw man. Nobody's saying that. "Every player death and party wipe" is an absurd exaggeration of "one-shot-downs in level 1-3 play are somewhat too probable."

I can think of dozens of board games played wrong for a session or two because the host who swore they read the rules and watched tutorial games missed something. No game was ever shelved during those first few sessions because of such mistakes; complex Eurogames can take time to master, and it wouldn't be fair to judge them so quickly without having played them correctly. If something is shelved quickly, it's because the theme is a poor fit or we confirm that our issue with the game isn't due to any mistakes made or a lack of system mastery.

I don't think expecting people who will stick with TTRPGs long term to have some grace and self-understanding is unreasonable

You are an adult with strong experience in board and ttrp games. As I said before, you probably think this level's about you. But it isn't. It's about my kid's junior high role playing club, which has a massive 40+ kid membership and organizes 8-10 tables of low-level play every Wednesday. Those are Paizo's 2030 customers, the people who will buy their content long after you and I stop. As a direct competitor to that other game PF2E is, yes, going after the "played once, or haven't yet played but interested" market. Not just folks like you or I with decades of experience and a 'seen it, done that' equilibrium towards tpks. Paizo does make lots of content for us. But not 100% of it. Having the early level content to be for folks like that club rather than folks like you or I simply makes a lot of sense. At least, to me.

RPG-Geek wrote:

Then laugh it off as both sides being new and roll up a new game

This is a thing I like to call "the assumption of competent incompetence."

This sets up that a group trying out a game did not have the off-the-bat understanding of the system to produce an outcome they liked with it, which shows the group lacks competence in the relevant areas. It then rolls on to the next point and presumes that in the complete lack of reason for any changes in competence that the group will have enough competence to identify the difference between "we goofed" and "this game sucks."

And the entire idea that this kind of "filter" is actually a good thing because players should either have off-the-bat understanding or else a high tolerance for what appear as failings of the game so that they can "earn" the ability to have the fun they came looking for is just elitism

Fully agree. I have no problem with individual tables ramping up the difficulty of their play to make it more enjoyable for their experienced players. That's just The First Rule in action! But I think the 'as written' material that Paizo produces should try and be accessible to a wide range of skills, not just experienced players. And a good 'middle way' to do that (not "everything beginner", but also not "nothing beginner") is to make early level play something that beginners can manage and experiment in without having to generate new PCs every session because the as-written play simply kills them. Then bring on the scenes and opponents that require use of tricks and tactics in the later levels, when the players have had a chance to experiment and now have a pretty good idea of what tactics work and what doesn't. At least, that's how I see it.

I find there are 2 kinds of players/GMs when it comes to difficulty: Those who consider that character death should always be on the table and those who consider that character death should only happen for a reason. And in general they can't play together without a lot of frustration on one side or the other.

There's just been a couple hundred posts with one set of folks suggesting that some adjustment be made to early levels to reduce single-bad-roll character death likelihood, but not necessarily objecting or saying anything about later level play. The above split is thus, IMO, a very inapt description of the discussion going on here, since neither side of this debate fits either of your two categories.

Your mention of crunch is relevant though. I'd say part of a 'doing a better job teaching new players' request would include encounters built so that players with limited understanding of all the crunchy maneuvers and options are still likely to beat the enemies. For the first few sessions. Then yes making that crunch a more and more important part of needed game play as the players grow more proficient in the game system. But that's only my opinion. Very clearly, there are players who think anything less than 'full crunch mode on, you'd better have memorized every action starting from encounter 1 session 1 or you're gonna die' is diluting the purity of the wonderful swingyness the game should have.

1) Those early levels, being as they are, serve a purpose even if you dislike that purpose.

You mean "weeding out" the player base? Two role-players enter, one leaves!

Yes I dislike that idea. I think it's pretty terrible actually. Terrible for people looking to introduce their friends to the community. Terrible as a business strategy. I also think Paizo didn't design the system to push fence-sitting roleplayers out of their game either. Rather, I think the ease of PC death at low levels in PF2E is, as Mathmuse said, a result of an attempt to fix that self-same problem occurring in 1e and in D&D, but which didn't get it quite right. Rather than an intended feature to please advanced players, as you seem to think. But clearly, we disagree on some fundamentals here about the audience for low level play.

Easl wrote:

I'd like to see the system allow for newbie groups and GMs to run APs "as written" with low chance of dying at early levels...

APs are written by various people who are all humans and will build their encounters differently or even make mistakes. I'm saying that they *should* have included extra guidance for low level or new players including GMs...

Can I ask, why are you opposed to reverse, where the baseline AP is written so that beginner GMs just feeding the encounters to beginner players will do fine, and Paizo includes extra guidance for advanced players and GMs on how to upscale it?

I mean, we're talking about levels 1-3 or levels 1-5 here. It makes little sense to me to tune that for advanced players and GM and then include guidance for beginners on how to make it easier. Writing a series of encounters that require a high level of system mastery to GM and for PCs to survive through, but then adding text telling beginner GMs all the modifications they will need to do to make it suitable for beginner players, is pretty much the poster child for the thread title "not doing a good job of teaching new players how to play."

Quote:

GM guidelines are good but GMs can be newbies too, and it's unrealistic to expect them to memorize the book and know all the tricks. So strong disagree with your overall position: I do indeed think L1 introductory scenarios and scenes should be designed so that death is not expected. I'll again make the point that it is much much easier for experienced rpgers to succesfully increase the difficulty of their L1 game that it is for inexperienced rpgers to successfully decrease it. Seems kinda selfish to me for us fogies to demand these early level products be tuned to our advanced play style. How does the song go? 'You probably think this level's about you...'

Then laugh it off as both sides being new and roll up a new game. If you can't handle dying, it's possible that GM, that module/AP, or the system itself just aren't for you.

To turn it around, if you can't handle beginner levels being tuned for beginners, maybe this game just isn't for you. 'Darnit! Who's idea was it to make this beginner box be for beginners! It should require the players to know and use all available tactics to survive! It should be made for advancers! Like meeeeee!' No thanks.

I care about Paizo creating good experiences for beginners because that grows the player base, which drives more content creation. If a game starts catering solely to the people who have played it for 10 years and demands new entries know every rule intimately to even survive a session, I would expect that game's market share to contract and die.

At this stage I get the feeling most of the issues in this thread are a blend of GM and adventure writer issues rather than a system level issue. So the most reasonable takeaway for me is there should be a small amount of extra guidance in the encounter guidelines for lower levels and/or new players.

I'd like to see the system allow for newbie groups and GMs to run APs "as written" with low chance of dying at early levels. There are multiple different ways to fix this - some system ways, some AP ways - but I think putting it on GMs to ensure it doesn't happen is the wrong fix, because GMs should be assumed to be on a learning curve too. That's like saying an encounter will is easy as long as the players simply remember this special specific rule on p39 of the third supplement to the umpty ump book; sure, that could work. But it's really a fix intended to serve the advanced player community, not the new player community.

Set good session 0 expectations or have NPC healers around to revive fallen PCs for free

So, this is the greater realism of deadly combat you are driving towards? ;) Sounds to me like you've just reduced 'death' to functionally equivalent of knocked out. That's not realism, its videogameism.

If we're worried about new players we should give GMs guidelines for handling character death and new players, not design the game so you need to go out of your way to die at level 1.

GM guidelines are good but GMs can be newbies too, and it's unrealistic to expect them to memorize the book and know all the tricks. So strong disagree with your overall position: I do indeed think L1 introductory scenarios and scenes should be designed so that death is not expected. I'll again make the point that it is much much easier for experienced rpgers to succesfully increase the difficulty of their L1 game that it is for inexperienced rpgers to successfully decrease it. Seems kinda selfish to me for us fogies to demand these early level products be tuned to our advanced play style. How does the song go? 'You probably think this level's about you...'

Imagine a fresh, green, level 1 party going to their first dungeon, and they are told there is some extremely dangerous ogre boss down there. Now, imagine that the wizard of the party is a carefree sort of fellow, who is haphazardly and noisily opening doors left and right, without any regard to whether there might be any enemies behind the door. Inevitably, the wizard is going to open a door and find an ogre waiting for them. In this scenario, going from full to Dying 2 is the least I would expect. I would argue that the wizard should be turned into a fine pink mist outright, but low level PF2e has already been tuned so that this is not going to happen. This is the TTRPG equivalent of running into an obvious landmine.

Considering the thread title, I'd argue that your example is a really great example of a "doesn't do a good job of teaching people how to play" scenario. Why would you ever use an extremely dangerous ogre instead of, say (cough cough), a small pest in someone's cellar? Are you trying to kill your fresh green player's wizard? Seems like you're throwing the kiddies into the pool and saying 'well if they can't swim, that's their fault not mine.' Instead of, y'know, teaching them how to swim.

I like realism because it adds stakes and takes you out of the gamified, every combat is a puzzle, mindset people fall into. It's more interesting to play in a world where the best solution makes logical sense rather than existing solely because players like swords and want to hit stuff with them.

There's absolutely nothing realistic about d20 level systems, with their ever-increasing bank of HP and armor that changes your probability of getting hit. Nor is there anything realistic about the premise behind fantasy adventure stories. If there was, downtime employment would yield far more skill improvement and money than treasure hunting, and the 'logical solution' to gaining gp and experience would be to never go adventuring in the first place.

But I think in terms of this discussion, is that you're saying you like combat to be always risk-of-death because that's the way it is in RL. Fair enough. What I'd say to that is that it's terrible game design (not just ttrpgs, but board games) to have any chance of a player being knocked out of a 3-hr game in the first 5 minutes. That's a bad game for just about any player, but it's a particularly bad game if you are introducing new players to it and trying to get them interested in playing it every week with you. So I think yes some consideration does have to be given to early level APs having an 'artificially' low chance of that happening. The other option is less personal investment in your character. I.e. troupe play, or simple characters that are so easily generated you get back in the game with a new PC in the next scene, or stuff like that. But that's generally not PF2E. Players get invested in their characters right as they make them, and we old fogies should give consideration to the fact that it can be a real gut punch to a newbie, when that investment in time and creativity is wiped out in the first encounter.

Early APs/adventures made the error of featuring tough early game but it's now over. As a GM, you should focus on a nice and fast early game, keeping the tough things for later.

Can you name a bunch of low level APs that you think get the balance right? Witch mentioned Season of Ghosts, so that's one I guess.

That's a GM problem, not a game design problem. We've had plenty of times when a GM miscalculated and wasted us. GMing isn't easy. Getting that sweet spot making something difficult without killing the PCs takes time to learn.

I don't know how you fix that other than gaining experience GMing.

You fix it by writing low-level APs under the assumption that the GM and players have little experience. You use predominantly low and moderate encounters with lots of written-in story clues so that the characters can figure out when combat is coming and can choose whether to engage or not. This allows unexperienced GMs and players to play the game without getting one-shotted or TPK'd. You also then write the forward to the AP with instructions letting experienced GMs know that this is designed for inexperienced groups, and that they may want to add extra minions to bring encounters up to Severe if their players are experienced and already know and make good use of tactics.

It's not that difficult. It just brings on complaints from folks like you because you want to be the one that the out-of-the-box L1-5 AP is designed for, and folks like me are disagreeing. The beginner should be the target audience for those, and groups like yours will be the ones needing to modify the AP 'up' to make it more to your liking.

Now, in contrast with low level APs, experienced GMs with experienced play groups wanting a tough challenge absolutely should be the target audience or 'out-of-the-box-built for' group for higher level APs and end-campaign encounters in longer running APs. IMO at higher levels, the 'burden of fine tuning' flips, and instead of it being up to the experienced GMs to upgrade encounters for tactically savvy groups, it is now up to GMs to downgrade encounters for groups who like to play simplistically.

Per the thread title, if you want to teach newbies how to play a game that has heavy tactics, you do so by introducing those tactics and battlemap concepts incrementally. L1-3 is the videogame starting area, where it's teaching you how to press the buttons. If an experienced player wants to play those regions but harder, then they can crank up the difficulty level themselves. But they shouldn't expect, demand, or insist that starting area be designed with them in mind.

They should have some treasure rewards, maybe one of the level 2 permanent items and probably moat of the consumables. Hopefully by this point the GM has trained the players on basic gameplay. If not dont throw a +2 creature at them.

So again, for me this comes back to core design. Should an AP be written to expect the GM has done all that? If so, then advanced players will be pleased with that AP as written and beginner players and GMs who don't do all that may get their clocks cleaned (unless the GM cheats in the players' favor). OTOH, let's say the AP is written with an easier "last encounter before L2" or more loot in a box right before it etc. etc., because it doesn't assume the GM will make all those "should"s happen unless the written text practically forces it. In that case, the beginner players and GM will enjoy it, while the advanced players and GM will think it's too easy...unless they upgrade it.

The difference, however, is that the advanced table is much better at doing upgrades than the beginner table is at doing downgrades. Right? So what should the written text of the AP be geared towards, and which GM and player group should be given the 'job' of modifying it to fit their table? Remember, we are talking about an AP that is covering the advancement of Level 1 to Level 2 here. If your answer would be completely different for an AP written for Levels 11-15, that's totally okay by me.

Its not a guaranteed one shot. Its not actually they case that any given enemy striking your character can or will one shot the pc.

In fact most of the time odds are against it happening.

The odds are not against it because of the number of attack rolls a party sees.

So for instance, if your party faces 16 to-hit rolls, the chances of one of them critting is almost 55%. That's a pretty easy number of GM attack rolls to reach in a single gaming night. E.g. 2 attacks per enemy per round, 3ish rounds per combat, 3-4 enemies per encounter, 2-4 encounters per session.

This assumes just a 20 does it. If you're fighting L+X and the crit chance goes to 10%, your group will see a crit against it every 7 attacks or so. That's practically once per encounter. And the damage is likely to be higher on a higher level enemy, too.

So yeah if an enemy crit will do enough damage to take a PC from full health to dying, then your party is likely to see "one of our PC's will go to dying this evening" a lot.

With a lot of rolls, the unusual becomes usual. This is especially true on flat distribution rolls i.e. rolls of a single die, which is what d20 games use for skill and attack rolls.

To mention the obvious, why not the Beginner Box?

I wouldn't go so far as to say there are Objective, Platonic Truths about what makes Good Design.

Me neither. There are very deadly ttrpgs...there are hard-to-be-killed games. There are tactical miniature games, there are theater of the mind games. There's wildly swingy games, there's no randomness at all games. Me, I like a thousand flowers bloom i.e. better to have the variety than make them all the same.

But for d20-and-level ttrpgs, I generally don't like the frustration of one bad roll killing my character at low levels. That's a bit too swingy for me. And the closest thing I have to an "objective" argument (which it's not), is that it's probably bad business to kill off the characters of newbie players trying to decide if they like this game or a different one instead. Because that's a good way to get them to go for the different one instead. Old fogies? Well we can die five times a night and still enjoy it (bring on Paranioa!). But truth be told, it doesn't make great game design to cater to us, because let's face it, get five friends in a room with us and we'll play just about anything. :)

The way I've "solved" it? Just don't do as much direct combat in early levels

That's a solution for a home brew campaign. Not great for APs.

But almost exactly the same solutions could be used if the early level encounters were less deadly, by GMs and groups who want a tougher challenge. I.e. play a level down. Add enemies. Upgrade enemies. Drop cash instead of immediately useful items, so that it requires a trip back to town to get the benefit. It's a mirror.

So IMO what this discussion comes down to is "who should the base game be designed for, and who should be stuck with modifying it." My preference is base game = newer players and GMs, while modifying = advanced players and GMs. It could easily be the other way around, but this is my preference because it puts the modification job into the hands of the people who are most skilled at modifying it, rather than putting the modifying job into the hands of the people least skilled to modify it. The downside is that - like a bad phone service plan - this makes longtime players who want that big challenge feel like least valued customers. They're not being catered to. Now, that's easy to fix too - Paizo can easily put out "advanced" APs for them. But in my mind, it makes more sense to put the actual system for early level characters as well as the the for-everyone early level APs in a no-you-probably-won't-TPK-even-if-you-didn't-read-all-the-tactical-options- and-you-just-leeeroy place.

Making it easy from first level when the game gets progressively easier as you gain more power means the game is easy from level 1 all the to level 20.

There will be no sense of mortality left in the game. It will be a padded walls and corners game

That wasn't what I was suggesting at all. I'm suggesting better evenness across levels, or even perhaps that the game get more risky as you get higher in level. Right now, getting one-shotted is primarily an early level phenomenon. Why should that be the case? What's the logic of making it easier to one-shot a newbie's first PC than an advanced player's umpteenth 10th level PC? Shouldn't it be the other way around? I.e. that the advanced player has to make greater use of tactics, preparatory buffing etc.? Because they're going to know how to do that stuff, and the newbie won't. Because they won't lose interest in the game because their umpteenth PC got ganked, while a newbie in their first game easily could.

So, the question boils down to: Has this encounter real risks of ending with a PC death? If yes, then raise the downed PC. If not, they please don't

Well that's not exactly the sense I got from your prior comments this. The new comment amounts to: don't waste time in combat on healing that could be done out-of-combat. To which the answer is: of course not! AFAICT nobody is suggesting that. They are suggesting healing in combat in situations where healing out of combat would be too late, where the consequences of waiting are dire for either the party or the player of the downed character.

For myself, I can think of twice in the last four sessions where I've gone down. Got healed both times, and then went on to contribute damage in the next two rounds. IOW, significant contribution. Not because the GM was being nice, he wasn't. But because when you go down and come back up, you're usually not going full steam attack any more, so a monster looking to take out the biggest most immediate threat is reasonably going to go after the party member punching them in the face, not me doing cast n' cover from 40' away.

Back in comment #53 I said that we needed a free Strategy Guide on the Internet. Earlier commenters had suggested that Paizo publish a Strategy Guide, but most new players have a low budget for buying books. I am working on writing one again. I will need months to finish.

Community strategy guides are great! But I would favor a fix over them for a couple reasons. Not every player will want to read them. Newbies least of all. Second, early level APs should not require reading a community strategy guide to survive.

Frankly, IMO, early level APs should not require heavy use of tactics to survive at all. Their importance in combat should ramp up so that players can learn how to use them over multiple sessions. But that's just me, and I totally get it if old hands want more complex, tough L1-5 APs that challenge their system mastery starting in the first encounter of the first session. I can imagine a player base appetite for such product...it's just a really bad product for new players.

We old fogeys can reminisce about when wizards rolled 1d4+CON for their entire 1st-level hit points and could end up with fewer hit points than a house cat.

I'm an old fogie too...and I also remember that since the 90s at least (maybe 80s), non-d20-level systems solved this issue when they wanted to. Some chose not to because they wanted their games deadly right from the first session, but others fixed it so first session death wasn't such a looming problem. The point being, the only thing that keeps beginner play far deadlier than higher level play for d20-and-level games is cultural resistance to change. It's certainly not down to an inability to figure out a fix, because game designers have been successfully overcoming this problem for 30+ years.

Easl wrote:

Can you give an example that has come up in your game? I find that a lot of hypothetical problems disappear when you work through concrete examples of play

I use the custom unnamed conditions created and defined in some spells. For example the concrete example of Command. A critical failure result of Command with an order to 'release what you are holding' would qualify as...

Thanks for your examples, Command is an interesting case. But I was really thinking about the OP and what their in-game problems are. Because maybe we can solve those for them, without having to solve the bigger harder question that, frankly, Paizo is not completely clear on.

To add here, ttrpgs generally dont play in realtime like a shooter or an rts.

You have a moment to talk with other players and formulate a plan of action.

So the solution is to slow down combat scene game play? I don't want that. I want the strategizing and coordinating to come on line with player experience, so that as they become faster deciding what to do, they get more options and thus the combat scenes don't slow down...but also don't stay repetitive level after level.

It is much easier for an advanced GM to increase the difficulty of an encounter for their advanced group, than it is for a beginner GM to lower the difficulty of an encounter for their beginner group. Because the advanced GM knows what they're doing. So make the low-level APs tuned for beginner groups and GMs, and while yes this might be unpopular with groups who have been playing 2E since 2019, because they want the "out of the box" experience to be strategically difficult, they will have a much easier time adjusting things than the group coming over from D&D who just bought the beginner box and an AP or two.

We are approaching a point where the problem feels like GM Core advice on how to deal with groups that aren't as tactical. That's not even a new player thing. I know extremely established players who are aveese to to "free damage" tactics like switch hitting at low levels or snares at mid levels, because it is more fun to run in and mash face.

I don't necessarily disagree, but I would favor a 'belt and suspenders' approach where the GMC has a good paragraph of advice and each AP gets the two sentence version with a GMC page reference. If you want to argue that those two sentences should be generalized to "non-tactical players, such as groups that don't use them or beginners that don't know them", that's fine by me.

But even so, a lot of groups just ignore stuff like that and play it straight. So I'm glad to hear that new APs are more survivable "played straight," since we'll always have to assume that that's the default way most groups play them.

First of all, what is a negative condition.

PC1 p10; An ongoing effect that changes how a character can act, or that alters some of their statistics, is called a condition. The rules for the basic conditions used in the game can be found in the Conditions Appendix at the back of this book.

So it's an ongoing effect that changes how the character can act or alters their statistics, in a bad way. Note the lack of capitalization; lower-c 'conditions' are the things like those listed in the Conditions Appendix.

Note that the word Condition is not capitalized meaning that it does not necessarily reference conditions like Stupefied or Clumsy but could be applied on a much wider scale

Can you give an example that has come up in your game? I find that a lot of hypothetical problems disappear when you work through concrete examples of play (though it must be said that, at the same time, concrete examples often bring up other problems that aren't obvious from merely reading the book).

I can't say I agree with the OP's conclusion...,I think a more likely conclusion to draw is that the fragility of low level characters plus the overturned difficulty of early APs and original bestiary monsters means many players will give up before they reach the higher levels of play. But if someone sticks it out I expect they will learn how to play the other levels as it becomes gradually relevant.

Okay, but that's a problem and it needs fixing.

For obvious reasons I have not read the APs I'm playing in. But a simple fix that doesn't mess with the mechanics would be for the APs to strongly and clearly advise GMs of first-time groups to play with PCs one level up. As someone mentioned earlier, this is already a pretty natural 'fix' for groups who complete the beginner box, level their characters up to L2, and then want to start a new 'level 1' AP with the characters they already have.

1. Choose a single action or free action your character knows how to perform.

2. Choose a single action or free action that is valid for your character to perform at this moment.

If someone is reading as per #1, then there is no conflict...If someone is reading per #2, however, using a Finisher on the first action would prevent readying any action or one-action activity that has anything that includes the Attack trait.

Fair enough. If it ever comes up (we have no Swashies), I'll recommend the GM use #1, so as not to create TBTBT. To prevent TGTBT, I think judicious GMing of "you might sometimes need to put limits on what they can choose" should solve the problem. That requires brains rather than a mechanical, written heuristic. But so it goes.

What rank of slot did you use to cast it on the druid? Rank 2 or 3?

In the original question, I don't get the distinction being made. Dirty Trick also is an attack just like Trip. So neither should be possible to Ready in that scenario

Why not? Ready doesn't say it takes on the traits of the readied action. So "[1a finisher], 2a Ready" is not taking an attack action in your turn after the finisher action. Your action with the attack trait doesn't occur until someone else's turn. Which has to be legal otherwise finishers would prevent all reactive strikes and the like. I'm with Norr on it being allowed...I just think the GMC guidance is calling for the player to specify a reasonably narrow set things as the trigger. Not "GM aha i gotcha" narrow but not "everything but the hokey pokey" broad either.

Easl wrote:

Otherwise the player could argue for "if they do anything other than the hokey pokey" and thus make Ready allow them a reactive strike on any combat-releveant action the enemy does.

I'd allow it as long as you are triggering your Ready action immediately when they act.

Well no wonder your OP question sounded like you were worried about the game balance aspect of it. The way you'd allow it to function is quite powerful. Not RAI, either, IMO. 'Name something as your trigger' /= 'name everything as your trigger.'

What possible trigger could trigger of the Step if the trigger isn't based on movement? When step itself is only observable as the character moving.

... actually I did think of one but I dont think I would personally allow it because its just to broad and not a specific observation, "They do anything other than attacking"

"If they try to step away" would be narrow enough that a GM worried about game balance might still reasonably allow it. After all, that doesn't expand the things covered, it just 'flips' (and narrows) the classic reactive strike concept from "step immune, stride attacked" to "stride immune, step attacked." I doubt that's unbalancing except for the unpredictability factor.

But yeah that last one is waaay overbroad and clearly not the intent. Otherwise the player could argue for "if they do anything other than the hokey pokey" and thus make Ready allow them a reactive strike on any combat-releveant action the enemy does. Again, that's clearly not the intent. The intent is that the player describe a specific something their character will react to, and to have it be described in in-game observable terms not meta terms like traits or "1a actions" or things like that.

One other strategic thing to think about is that Readying dastardly dash to trip someone trying to move away from you wastes half the feat's value, since it also gives a move which you aren't using. The player may be better off using a readied DD for something like: "when the archer over there gets ready to strike me, I'm going to trip the guy next to me and then stride behind that barrier"

So it's not possible to Ready an action on a specific trait.

The trait Concentrate is used in the GMC as the 'negative' example, but the specific wording is: the trigger must be something that happens in the game world and is observable by the character, rather than a rules concept that doesn’t exist in-world

If your GM thinks stride actions and leap actions can fit into the same observable "something" bucket, let's call it "a vernacular move," I could see readying an action against both as reasonable. But that's up to your table. There is wiggle room here as to what the GM counts as a singular 'thing' in 'something' and possibly even reasonable disagreement over what counts as 'observable by the character', so I think there's some table variation that could fit under the RAW.

A GM who demands the player pick Move or Leap, and then has the enemy do the one not picked, is not playing fair. OTOH a GM who allows "my ready action will trigger on anything with the 'move' trait" is also not playing fair: the concept of 'having the move trait' is a rules construct, it doesn't describe some observable the character can see. IMO a Ready that covers stride, leap, stand, tumble and every feat/impulse/spell that has the trait like Lightning Dash is not RAW. "I will react if they try to walk or jump away from me" to cover just those two obvious and mundane possibilities seems reasonably RAW to me.

I think you're trying to fit a round peg (the idea of a tank) in a square hole (the Champion). Instead of trying to make it fit, it might be better to adjust your view and find the proper hole for your peg.

We will have to see what the finalized Guardian looks like when it comes out, but for right now my advice would be that in PF2E "Tank/aggro" is best thought of as a tactic, not a class. High HP, high AC, damage absorption are needed yes, but as the OP says, you can get those through several different classes. What distinguishes one high HP/high AC martial from another in terms of tanky aggro is how the PCs manipulate battlefield positioning to make one of them the enemies' rational target.

So in fact it's not just a tactic, it's a group tactic to boot. IOW it's not just going to be your ability selections that help you take on that role, it's going to be the ability selections of others in your party to funnel enemies, put down difficult terrain, push, pull, trip etc. that contribute to them attacking you instead of other party members. Class and feats don't make you the aggro-getter: standing in the doorway does.

I tend to think of these things more in thematic terms than mechanical. Lean in to the edicts in your roleplay. Maybe pick up Performance because it's an obvious fit to "express yourself through art and song." She's got a few good domain spells so that might be another way to express your Desna-ness. But in terms of Str/heavy vs. Dex/med, I'd go whichever way you want. A Str/heavy with Agile Feet for that supernatually light dancing step is IMO as thematically valid as a Dex/med who just is nimble via Dex.

As a side note, I disagree with you about Concentrate actions being indiscernible.

As Norr figured out, I literally took it from the GMC's example of what doesn't work.

I agree that many (most?) actions with the concentrate tag will be in-game discernable - I think what the GMC is trying to say is that you can't use "any action with the X trait" as your trigger - you have to specify the action not a general trait, since traits are rules concepts and that would be quite meta.

So for example, the way I read it the GMC guidance allows "I ready my Dastardly Dash to trigger if my opponent casts a spell" even though spells typically have the concentrate trait, but the guidance is trying to steer GMs away from allowing "I ready my Dastardly Dash to trigger if my opponent does any action which has the Concentrate trait."

Spring 2025 errata is out, and it's short.
Better start repeating your requests in a Fall 2025 thread. :)

Ok, well, it looks like I'm the only one to consider that strong.

It sounded to me like this was theoretical/future, and you haven't at this point had game sessions where the Swash did this and it turned out to be TGTBT. By all means come back with stories about how it plays/played out.

But also...as you know as a regular poster, in the rules forum you'll tend to get rules answers. If you were looking for someone to give feedback on how this played out in a game and whether a forum GM found it too powerful, maybe repost a "have you found this to be too strong" version of your question in the general category?

"Once you use a finisher, you can't use actions that have the attack trait for the rest of your turn" PC p163. Their reaction is not on their turn, so I can't think of any rules reason they can't do this. Subject to the GMC caveat that Ready must have a trigger which is game-world observable. When an enemy moves yes. If an enemy takes a concentrate action no.

Better hope the enemy decides to do your trigger. If, in your example, the enemy doesn't take a move action, then the Swash has wasted two actions and a reaction to accomplish nothing.

Tho, on the main point: the aura i could get reduces frightened, which Is usefull when it's usefull but also insanely situational,

Well 4th level also gives you the feat Security. You said above you're specifically looking to buffs to sword and board, and that you want something like aggro i.e. to give the enemy a reason not to attack your teammates. Well, security is a sword and board buff that makes it less optimal for an enemy to attack your shielded target. Does it work well in play? That you'd have to ask someone else. But it seems to tick your boxes in terms of the sort of feat you're looking for.

Like, nothing really "adds" tò my character, they give some situational stuff which Is cool but meh.

Yes, a LOT of PF2E feats are like that: they may be good, but they often add 'horizontal' capability rather than 'vertical'. I.e. they do not make your Plan A attack do more damage or hit more often, they instead give you Plan Bs, Plan Cs etc. that you didn't have before. There are some exceptions of course, but not every class has them. It seems to be both a common design element and a common player complaint, and it's not limited to Champion. PF2E is designed against winning combat via character generation or just picking the right feat combos as you level.

I do agree with you about the reaction thing though. It does get a little frustrating having feats that add reactions to a class which is given a class defining reaction as one of it's core 1st level 'things'.

-i get no progression, It gets boring when you basically gain NOTHING of value inbetween level 1 and 7 (1 to 6 feats suck and everything you Need Is already given at level 1)

Blessed, a couple 'bonus to save' feats, auras, expansion of auras, a full reactive strike if you don't like how your champion's reaction is working. It seems like a pretty solid set of options to me.

i wanna be a tank and play Someone big with a shield but now shield Champions get basically nothing for being shield Champions (worst remastered change ever, if i wanna play something i Will be able to spend Gold for It)

They get several abilities that buff the use of their shield - making it tougher and blocking more useful or buffing shields of the spirit.

But as someone else mentioned, there is no equivalent of 'aggro' in this TTRPG. Enemies can choose to attack whom the GM wants them to attack, and you have to use tactics (i.e. get in their way, with a reaction, or have your other party members move to unattackable positions) to prevent them from attacking other targets.

***

If you are looking for aggro specifically, then the upcoming Guardian may be something you should look into. While it got mixed reviews on these fora during the playtest, it seems pretty clear Paizo was at least trying to give that class an "attack me not them, or suffer bad consequences" vibe.

I'd rule like Yuri.

Yes in a 30' room it goes only 30' and there is a final square of the line, that's the square next to the wall.

No you cannot voluntarily end the line early, such as having it go 30' in a 45' room.

AFAIK no line effect gets that. You can't do it for lightning bolt etc., and you can't do it with this. Each AoE shape has it's inconveniences, this is the line one. But I just looked up "line", maybe there's another section of the rules I missed.

Easl wrote:

So it's been almost a week now since you started the thread. Have you been able to talk to your GM about it?

I've been waiting for the next session to bring it up since the GM is hard to reach between sessions and generally doesn't like to be bothered by such things unless we're in session.

Well good luck. I'm 90% sure this isn't about DCs and it's about your description. Hopefully either they give you guidance on what sort of description will count, or you can throw some ideas at them and see which ones they would agree to count.

The GM controls which skills are valid to use for Aid. The GM controls the DC.

If you don't like the results you're getting, examine those two things and ask yourself if you're being too permissive.

Yes exactly. I don't see any reason to add mechanics, change the rules, interpret it to be like some other bit of rules etc. to 'keep it in check'. Maybe some tables don't like the whole judgment call aspect and would prefer the GM create additional rules that dictate exact skills, bonuses, penalties to rolls etc. If that's their preference, I guess making up more structure makes sense for them. We're old fogies though, GM judgment calls and even intentionally breaking the rules for some cool roleplaying reason is just part of what we see as the ttrpg experience. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. :)

If I take a very simple example: A Wizard who happens to carry a bow and uses their third action to Aid their Greatsword Barbarian player first attack. On paper, it's not the most impressive use of Aid one can think of, it's still as good as the same Wizard with maxed out Dexterity and a fully Runed Bow (including Elemental Runes) making an attack but with no character investment but level.

If this Wizard starts giving a +3, or even better a +4, because the GM is nice it becomes the de facto third action as it now competes with a martial second attack.

No wizard gets +3 or +4 by using a bow attack Aid, because they don't reach Master or Legendary in bow.

So this example amounts to saying "if the GM houserules Aid to be much stronger than it is in the rules, then Aid can be disruptive as a 3rd action option." Sure. How does this matter to GMs who are following the RAW?

So I highly disagree when people say it's not disruptive. All it takes is a permissive GM and a bunch of optimizers to turn it into a real high level issue.

"All it takes is a permissive GM" is a wild card argument. "A permissive GM" using house rules could create all sorts of imbalances and shennanigans in any part of the system, not just with Aid. The ability of a houseruling GM to make Aid disruptive doesn't mean Aid is disruptive, it means that GM is disruptive. If you follow the rules, it's +2. Which you yourself said less than an hour ago wasn't an incredible bonus.

That doesn't seem to be the case. A couple times I crit succeeded against 15, which would have been at least a success had the GM been assuming DC 20 instead. Yet, he said I had failed altogether.

So it's been almost a week now since you started the thread. Have you been able to talk to your GM about it?

Also, I love when some of you use the argument that Aid should work like "other reaction attacks" but then you bring the argument that it shouldn't work like Ready (which is the closest reaction attack to Aid in the game).

That's not the argument.

So why so much back and forth discussion? We don't read the same intent, which is fine.You won't prove me wrong because you just can't, rules allow me to use my ruling. Both our rulings are legitimate. So we should just agree to disagree.

I agree the rules let you apply any numerical penalty you want. I don't agree with your reasoning or your contention that the rules are supposed to work that way.

Aid is quite simply not a subset of Ready. Aid requires only one action where Ready requires two. Ready always has the concentrate trait; Aid does not (unless the GM imposes that). Ready converts any single or free action into a reaction but cannot create new actions or bonuses. Aid is the opposite: it cannot convert any existing action choice into a reaction, but it does create a new bonus. Claiming it is the intent of the rules that Aid be adjudicated as a type of, subset of, or otherwise using the specific, unique rules for Ready is IMO getting the RAW wrong.

Easl wrote:

Why is Bob the fighter aiding by a reaction 'attack' (which does no damage) harder than Bob the fighter striking by a reaction attack?

It's not harder.

Bob strikes twice. He then uses Aid. Bob now has a choice about how to use his reaction: during the opponent's turn, if opponent moves etc. then he can reactive strike the opponent. There will be no MAP. Or during his friend's turn, he can use the Aid reaction at -10 MAP penalty. That is how you would GM it, correct?

First, yes, you the GM applying that MAP is indeed you making Aid harder.

Second, that seems just incorrect to me. It's saying a feint to distract is harder than actually attacking someone.

If I were a GM who wanted to increase the difficulty of Aid for "feind to distract" type of aid, I would probably choose to increase the DC to opponents' AC-2 or something like that. Using the reasoning that to distract an enemy, you have to pose at least a credible threat to them. I do not get the logic of increasing it by MAP, particularly since the MAP section of the rules very clearly states that reactions don't have that penalty.

The closest rule to Aid is Ready which applies MAP.

There is no need to use any "closest rule" proxy to determine how Aid works, because Aid has it's own rules.

So, when a player wants to Aid through an Attack Roll, I give the Attack trait to Aid. And the Attack trait is affected by MAP.

Attacks taken as part of your turn are affected by MAP. Attacks made as reactions done during someone else's turn are not.

But I think we may be arguing in circles, as this exact point was brought up by another poster earlier in the conversation.

But the Aid reaction gives me leeway to increase its difficulty if tasks are harder. And penalties are clearly making a task harder.

Agreed, as the GM you have the choice to increase the difficulty if tasks are harder.

Why is Bob the fighter aiding by a reaction 'attack' (which does no damage) harder than Bob the fighter striking by a reaction attack? I will presume you don't add MAP to the latter, so why are you adding it to the former?

Simple, I just tell the player that an Aid through an Attack will be affected by MAP.

Its simple. It's not RAW because MAPs don't apply to reaction attacks. And there's zero reason to call the penalty you give to Aid a MAP penalty since there's no requirement to call it or categorize it as anything other than a penalty to Aid for attempting to do something especially difficult. But you've also, in my mind, not articulated why an aid-attack is especially difficult compared to a non-aid reactive strike.