Fernando Gonsalves's page

(First off, sorry about my English, not a native speaker)
For now at least, it seems this is the most divisise change made with Pathfinder 2, specially linked with social and knowledge skills - Why someone who never trained how to talk will be such a good diplomat?

I am in favor of the change, sincerely I think it brings a LOT of good stuff. But I do understand the logic behind the problem that some people see on it

But in my opinion, the solution is already on the system:

The book itself repeat a lot about skills gated by proficiency, which can be good and bad at the same time; if you gate too much, it will be way too hard to decide and we will have problems about super specializations back, if you give too much leeway we have the actual situation.

But... how about trying something like 'soft gating': increase the needed proficiency level of more activities, even using the Expert/Master levels...

And after that, give the opportunity of players trying to do something from one tier higher than he has with a penalty! An untrained person could try to do a Trained activity, but he would be worse than a Trained one. A Trained one could try Expert; but with a penalty.

• Example: Someone trained in Perception could find an Expert hazard, but he would get a -5 penalty (just a proposed number, no idea how much would be good)
• Recalling about the powers of a dragon would be something you needed to be trained, but an untrained person may have seen it - it would be harder, but possible.
• Only a Master could solve some of the problems related with a profession, but even though you're an expert, you could at least try.

This way, things that are harder for someone to do could still be viable, but with acceptable penalties connected with it, and not creating the immersion breaking feeling of 'well, yesterday I was trained, but as I am an expert today, everything changed'.

That's just an idea that crossed and sincerely it's not that worked out yet, but I think I can be into something.

Hello! I've been thinking about Crafting Batches and how the cost reduction works on it.

For example, let's say a Level 1 Alchemist is creating a batch of 4 Healing elixirs. Each costs 3gp (30sp), so a total of 60sp is paid for the crafting.

After 4 days of crafting, he rolls and succeeds, choosing to REDUCE the price, not pay the remaining value. Here is my question:

Usually, this alchemist would reduce 1sp of the price per extra day. But would he reduce it for each item of the batch (so, 4sp/day) or for all the batch once (1sp/day for all 4 elixirs summed up)

I've been rereading the rulebook to get ready for the next adventure and I got a question about Perception to detect hazards.

If the party is travelling (exploration mode) and no one starts the searching activity, do they have any chance on finding a hazard at all?

How long did it take to play this part of Doomsday Dawn:
About 4-5 hours of playtime. A good bunch of my players didn't read the Rulebook, so I spent a good chunk of time explaining and rechecking the rules

How long did it take to prepare this part of the adventure (time spent reading, gathering materials, etc.):
1 hour, but I feel I've should prepared more (as I play in Portuguese, sometimes I need to translate things on the fly, which doesn't help much)

How many sessions did it take for you to play through this part of the adventure?
1

How many Hero Points (in total) did you give out during this part of the adventure?
Other than the starting ones, 0.

How many times was a player character reduced to 0 Hit Points during this part of the adventure?
about 6 times. All of them on the centipede fight. Truth be told, my group had a LOT of problem with the poison, not that it was too hard, but because they had a lot of bad rolls in sucession, and even though they had +5s on Fortitude, they suffered a LOT with it.

How many player characters were killed during this part of the adventure?
0 - Two of them would've died, one of them 2 times even, if not for the Hero Point (I even went back to check if they removed the dying condition, which it does)

The party consisted of a cleric, a paladin, a wizard and a fighter

Gameplaywise, the party really enjoyed the system, the only one who was less excited with it was a new player who have only played D&D 5e.

I felt that the encounters were quite well balanced, and I felt that movement, retreating and vision were really important in the game, even more so than the old edition, which - for me - is a big plus. I felt that a more organized group of goblins on the first room would be quite deadly, with sneaking around and things like that for example.

Something that I feel that is important to note is that multiple monsters seem VERY strong, maybe because of low levels being quite weak.
As I said above, they had a lot of problems with the centipedes, they failed a lot on the poison rolls. Personally, I really liked how deadly those 'mundane' things are. It gives the idea that not only magic is deadly.

But I felt that the group resistance was very good for a level 1 group. The skeletons were easily smashed even though they had resistances.

The boss was quite okay. I liked that he had two 'modes' of damage, one with utility (grab), the other damage, and for me, it shone how much the action system gives a freedom of opportunities: For example, I didn't feel like I was doing a bad choice when Drakus tripped a player (he even critted for 4 damage!) - I will say, though, that I was a bit lost on the restrictions of grabbing, I felt that I was missing something, but I didn't know what (I will recheck the rules later to see if I did all correctly)

Now, my biggest problem and something that I think that it urgently needs to be addressed is: The character sheet and information.

I felt that the character sheet is clunky. The information is all over the place, there's no good place to note things like conditions, there is nowhere found to list something like Lores that you're trained. It's a mess in my opinion.

I think that there's a lot of important information that should be really visible, like Spell Power, Conditions and Resonance. They should be at the front sheet, not all over the place...

I will not extend too much on this topic, but I feel like information of abilities and activations are more important than ever on 2E, which is amazing! But I really think that a solution is needed to create a compact way for showing it (and I really disliked the spell sheet too...)

Hello! I've been rereading the Conditions and I really liked the variety of them.

I have only two points right now that I think that would be better.

Sensed: The wording on this condition is quite confusing in my opinion. If the same template used for Unseen was used here, it would be clearer who is flat-footed
"When you're sensed by a creature, that creature is flat-footed to you, but can target you with a Strike or another action that targets individuals (...)"

Sick: I think 'nauseated' would be a better condition name for it. Specially because on the description itself it says that retching can help recovering. Sickness gives the idea of something more 'enduring' in my humble opinion.

I know those are not the most important things for testing and checking right now, but even so, I prefer to share my thoughts! I am very excited to give a try GMing a table next week.