Search Posts
if Paizo is likely to address the issue. It seems unlikely they're going to address something that they don't see as an issue, but instead is working exactly as intended. PF2 is a large, complicated game and with so many elements there are always going to be some individuals who won't like how a specific part works, and Paizo can't be expected to address every single one of them.
You're just overthinking things. There are aspects of the game that won't make sense in the real world, because it's a game and sometimes fun and balance come before reality. And if you think how crossbows work is crazy, I'd avoid the Magic chapter- people in the setting can shoot fire out of their hands or heal grievous wounds with a chant!
It's not an "odd perception thing". It's a perfectly understandable thing. Most of the text blocks for the Witch look just like the text boxes for every other caster class, except for this obvious section with that enticing Action symbol in it. The fact that most people read it and wonder "what exactly does this do" is exactly the kind of design issue Playtesters are supposed to highlight, so that the Designers understand there's a potential perception issue. They may decide it's not a big deal, but that doesn't invalidate the value in people telling them their expectations and disappointments.
Or put another way; if building sherlock holmes (high Int, low Wis) as an investigator is really sub-optimal, that’s a flavor fail. Sherlock Holmes is not a low Wis character. He's one of the most observant characters in fiction. His dump stat is Charisma.
I guess you haven't been paying any attention at all to these forums if you think nobody said anything before these errata happened.
In fact it was the opposite, PF1 encouraged multiclassing so much that people would complain about how its "munchiky", "too anime", etc. That wasn't encouraging "multiclassing" though, it was encouraging taking a single level of a class and moving on. You weren't playing a Fighter/Rogue, you were playing a Fighter who took a single level of Rogue to get Sneak Attack, or a Sorcerer with one level of Oracle for Cha to AC. Sure it was called multiclassing, but people rarely used it to represent your character trying to bring two disparate ideas together. The "bottleneck" in PF2 isnt combat options due to the better base. It the part where can get a combat option, but then you delay getting an animal companion, and if you pick a dedication you have to wait a lot to get another. Unlike PF1 where you could get multiple of those simultaneously. Ex: Animal companions are now a feat tree. And the trade off is that now you don't have to spend the same Feats for being good with a Bow to be good with Medicine or Thievery. You can make a fully competent healer or party face without diminishing your combat effectiveness in any way. It seems like you are cherry picking certain mechanics (like Animal Companions) and ignoring the ones that benefit from the change. And Animal Companions are an especially strange choice for this, since they required a Feat (Boon Companion) to be viable for most builds anyway, and generally couldn't be acquired by Rangers at level 1, unlike now.
The problem with overly reductive arguments is that work just as well the other way- a Tengu is just a human with a beak, a Lizardfolk is just a green human. At the end of the day the characterisation comes primarily from the player, and we are sadly mostly human, so in general most people will play their characters as "Human plus stereotype". The background for all the Core races highlights that they can be very different from humans if played that way.
Because it's a one action Ranged Unarmed Attack, not a two action Spell Attack. It's basically a Sling you don't need to take an action to reload, that benefits from your Handwraps. It's a solid option for the likes of Animal Barbarians, who otherwise have a hard time attacking at range when Raging.
I am personally happy that they didn't go that direction, and wouldn't consider it to be "better than ever before" if they had. Most of the options in the LOWG and LOCG are situational, only being worth taking if they suit your character, rather than being the automatic best choice for a class. That is a good thing, because it's how you avoid massive power creep. Sure, some of the options are never going to be worth taking, but a lot of them are worth it in the right build.
The damage dealt to early AL by unlimited replay was telling, and even opening a permanent limited amount would be harmful for PFS. As I haven't been around for the 10+ years of previous debate and don't really have a strong opinion one way or another, can I ask what was the damage done by unlimited replays in AL?
If the BBEG fails his initial save against a 5th level version he takes 10d4 damage immediately, which is less than he would take from a Cone of Cold (12d6) or a 5th level Magic Missile (9d4+9). If he's really worried about the 5d4 Persistent damage he can try to shake it by taking an action to try get rid of the Sickened before he would take the damage, and even if he fails he still gets a DC 15 Flat check to shake it after taking the 12 or so damage. It seems an okay spell, but not amazing. Obviously if your target keeps taking actions to get rid of Sickened and failing then that works out to be super effective, but it seems unlikely for that to be the case with a powerful higher level enemy.
A single level one skill feat shouldn't negate most of another skill, with specialized Treat Wounds being Medicine's most common application. Why not? A single level one skill feat gives you another skill. Obviously Natural Medicine would be better than taking Skill Training for Medicine because you would benefit from Proficiency upgrades, but Skill Training is generally weak choice anyway.
Minion (trait) Minions are creatures that directly serve another creature. A creature with this trait can use only 2 actions per turn and can’t use reactions. Your minion acts on your turn in combat, once per turn, when you spend an action to issue it commands. For an animal companion, you Command an Animal; for a minion that’s a spell or magic item effect, like a summoned minion, you Sustain a Spell or Sustain an Activation; if not otherwise specified, you issue a verbal command, a single action with the auditory and concentrate traits. If given no commands, minions use no actions except to defend themselves or to escape obvious harm. If left unattended for long enough, typically 1 minute, mindless minions usually don’t act, animals follow their instincts, and sapient minions act how they please.
I feel like it's not any harder to teach someone how to play the few notes over and over again on the piano than it is to show them how to sneak silently past a wary guard or climb the side of a mountain. Plus, it's a setting where people shoot fire from their hands on a routine basis. If you start modifying simple rules to be more complicated in frankly minor edge cases just so that it feels a bit more realistic, you'll end up just confusing players with your arbitrary house rules.
You are not using Treat Wounds when you preform Battle Medicine, you are simply using the same DCs and results. This is sometimes a benefit (not needing to use a Healers Kit) and sometimes a drawback (you can't use Practiced Medic with it).
I think my favourite thing so far about Pathfinder 2 is that nearly every time there's a post with someone pointing out some rules issue they think they discovered, it's just that either didn't read it correctly or they decided to interpret the written rules in as obtuse a manner as possible. It shows how great a job the design team did, that the vast majority of "mistakes" are actually non-issues.
This section is explicitly about getting additional Focus Points from multiclassing. It's unclear if it applies to multiple abilities from your own class.
I don't understand this point. When levelling your character and deciding what Skill to improve the Proficiency of, why does it matter "where you took it"? You are either Untrained, Trained or Expert when making the choice- I don't see the additional bookkeeping factors you are concerned with. If the Goblins in your example both wanted to be Expert in Intimidation, why wouldn't they just Train it at Level 1 with their default free choices? This seems like a "I didn't pay attention when building my character" issue, and the only real solution to that is to make every option identical, which I am not a fan of.
So it's not offensive to do a bad French or Irish accent if you feel you look like a French or Irish person? I know this might blow your mind, but sharing a skin colour doesn't suddenly make a s&*&ty attempt at an accent any more or less offensive. And, this is definitely going to shock you- French people and German people and Italian people and Irish people and Russian people all look different from each other. I understand than for Americans everyone gets lumped into groups based on skin colour, but that's not how the rest of the world actually works.
This seems like something that would only exclude players seeking a reason to feel excluded.
Yeah, you don't get to act like having to have some common sense when building the character means you're limited when it comes to roleplaying. Unless you can somehow explain the difference in approach you would take when roleplaying a character with 12 in a mental stat compared to a 14.
I disagree with this entire premise.
No other spellcaster gets 1st level class feat. It's not a nerf to Wizards, it's how they were designed. It's simply a fix to a typo, to put them at the power level they were meant to be.
The answer is mechanical balance. The flaw in the logic is yours, not the worlds. Just because these are the Core Book rules for PCs crafting in Downtime doesn't mean this is how crafting is traditionally done in the setting. Instead it is simply mechanical rules for PCs to craft in Downtime.
The answer is mechanical balance.
At level 7 you aren't using Wild Shape, you're using Dinosaur Form, so you wouldn't be getting the +2 Status bonus to attacks from Wild Shape anyway, so your own attack modifier would only be +13 (+14 w/Handwraps) compared to Dino Form's +16.
But they don't though, unless they forget how to take the armour off. Retraining is a core aspect of the game.
Wild Shape won't give you Dino Form until level 8, so you'd have +1 to hit from Proficiency over your math.
You move the goal posts massively between your initial requirement and what can actually be done. A PF1 Rogue is in no way more swashbuckly than a PF2 Rogue. There are no "single one-handed weapon feats" in PF1 Core that you complain the Rogue in PF2 is lacking. The rest of your examples are equally hypocritical. And you apparently never bothered reading the Focus rules.
(since "four goblins" will cease to be anything but a trivial speedbump). If 4 regular CR 1/3 Goblins were more than a speedbump to a Level 2 PF1 party, then that party had built their characters very poorly.
And it won't be once more than one book exists. There has to be a baseline starting point to grow from, and I don't think "Heavy Plate Wizard" should be expected to be part of that baseline, because nothing about Pathfinder has ever implied it would be.
I'm confused by the "Punishment" part. If the new AC is higher, switch to Light Armour. If the new AC isn't higher, don't switch. If the new AC is higher, that's a win. If the new AC isn't higher, then nothing has changed.
Yes, but not this one. The decision was made in 3.0 for the Crossbow to be the backup ranged weapon for Wizards, and that was kept with PF2. Because of that it's unlikely to ever be as good as a Bow, because a Crossbow is a Simple weapon and a Bow is Martial. The Heavy Crossbow is one of the most damaging weapons in the Dark Eye RPG, with the trade off being that you'll shoot it at the start of a fight and pretty much never get to reload it. It's an alternative take on the weapon that suits that style of game better than it would suit Pathfinder.
Except that this isn't how the rules are written at all. Ravingdork misrepresented what is actually written in the book, and people are commenting without actually reading it. They explicitly say most of the time you won't change anything, and then gives guidance on how and why you might change it, presumably to help new GMs understand some of the flexibility of the system.
I was genuinely impressed that they got through three combats on top of character introductions and some roleplaying scenes. I don't know if it's that PF2 is that much quicker at resolving combats or that my playgroup are just terrible at staying focused, but either way it's a good amount of content to get through in three hours.
What I think is that the rules explicitly say most of the time you don't adjust the DC. "The number of dice being rolled means that there’s a very high chance at least one of them will succeed. Most of the time, that’s perfectly fine" It then gives advice to GMs if they want to make the check result uncertain. Advice that gives insight to newer GMs, without actually being the rules declaration you state it is in your post.
As straitjackets go "You have baseline access to Common options and Uncommons that your build choices have unlocked, plus more if your GM gives the okay" seem fairly loose... If you want to build lots of characters without access to a GM, then you use Commons, and Uncommons you've gained access to via Feat choices. It's not that complicated. The fact that Learn a Spell might allow you to learn Uncommons is irrelevant, because without GM to say what Uncommons you could learn using it there are none available for you to learn. The Rarity system is good because Blood Money was a stupid spell that was supposed to only be available to people who had a specific spellbook, but if you didn't run that campaign you weren't likely to know that. And besides automatically making it obvious a similar spell in the future isn't available to everyone, the Rarity System also takes the pressure to say no off the GM, so he doesn't always have to be the a+@$$*# telling his players they can't do something.
Feels like the title should have been "I would like PF2 to have more ways to improve weapon proficiency".
3 Focus Points seems like a perfectly fine cap to me. You're supposed to be able to use a Focus power every fight, but you're not supposed to use every Focus power every fight, otherwise they wouldn't both with having Focus Points in the first place. It's a resource to manage, a choice to be made.
Considering the OP stated that Alchemist's Fire cost 30 silver a usage, and two actions to draw and attack, I presume he is not discussing the bomb throwing Alchemist, but rather characters that don't have class abilities that improve alchemical items.
Why did anyone ever throw Alchemist's Fire in PF1 when a Greatsword was doing 2d6+9 damage? They did it because it was worth it at the time due the situation they were in and the enemy they were fighting. Why would this not still be the case in PF2?
advanced here... rather implies cultural superiority, unfortunately. Only if you're someone that considers one culture to be superior to another, and that each individual weapon is tied to one singular culture. Fortunately since neither of things things is true, it's a non-issue.
It costs half the purchase price to scribe a scroll. A scroll sells for half its purchase price. There's not really any profit to be made. More info can be found here but the basics are that the price of a scroll is equal to the level of the spell × the creator’s caster level × 25 gp, so for a Wizard the purchase price are the values listed below, and the crafting and sell values are half that. 0 12.5 gp
Yes. All of these heritages are about the influence of magic on an individual, and there's nothing to prevent that magic from suffusing an Android's body, even if the actual DNA doesn't.
I think your views on Heal are biased by the fact that your goal when GMing is to kill the party, which means you are inherently going to dislike abilities that hinder that. When a GM isn't actively trying to kill the characters in every encounter but instead focused on working with the players to tell a story then healing effects are incredibly useful for getting the players through tough fights and onto the next part of the quest. Unlike PF1, healing mid-combat in PF2 is actually good, and nerfing that to make healers feel worse seems like a mistake.
My thoughts are that posts like this are patently unhelpful, and do more to sap the will of Designers to interact with and seek the insight of the community than they do to spur the Designers to suddenly agree that everything they've designed is bad and wrongfun. My thoughts are that too many people on this forum think that Open Playtest means they get to be Game Designers when they participate, something they have displayed zero aptitude for. Our role is to provide feedback as requested, not demand whole systems be changed to suit our own particular gaming fetishes. My thoughts are that this is one of the best Playtests I've ever been involved in, and I've been playtesting games for years. Paizo have provided good information on what testing they want done, have proven they'll listen to feedback and make changes and have genuinely worked with the community to create a better game. My thoughts are that whilst I agree I wouldn't buy the game as is today, I will absolutely buy the game that will be printed.
|
Pathfinder Society GM. 159 posts. No reviews. No lists. No wishlists. 4 Organized Play characters. 