We've released a trailer using footage from the pilot episode to give a bit of an idea of what to expect. Not long now!
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Hope the Sunken Gun makes an appearance!
We're a bunch of Pathfinder fans from Australia and have been wanting to create a series ever since PF2 came out. We finally got off our butts and did it, and we hope you'll come along for the ride. Check out our announcement here! In this discussion we talk a bit about our play history and give a bit of a teaser about the campaign to come. Ask us anything about it here!
Page 278: In critical hits, "When you make an attack and roll a natural 20...or if the result of your attack exceeds the target's AC by 10" was too broad a brush and thus slightly inaccurate for how to determine a critical hit, in an attempt to state the conditions succinctly. Replace the first section with "When you make an attack and succeed with a natural 20" so that it's clear the natural 20 must succeed based on the total result in order to get a critical success.So, a natural 20 is not a crit anymore? It has to beat the AC or DC by 10 now? I think it's just clarifying a natural 20 isn't always a critical hit, as is the rule. It would have needed to be a success for the natural 20 to turn it into a crit. If you were to fail with a roll of a 20, it would still upgrade to a success, but not a critical success.
So Grapple not being an attack roll anymore means that it does not suffer MAP on the roll, but would increase it for the next action?
I spitballed an idea of making Striking Spell a unique cantrip that uses your weapon's damage, and can be interacted with as both a Strike and a Spell for the purposes of feats and abilities (eg. Metamagic and combat feats) You can then get unique heighten and rider effects based off of your magus synthesis or feats. I really don't like that the only role of Striking spell is to combine a spell and strike damage for the purposes of action economy/crits. That feels boring to me. I want it to be a magical strike that feels unique and can be interacted with meaningfully.
I spitballed an idea of making Striking Spell a unique cantrip that uses your weapon's damage, and can be interacted with as both a Strike and a Spell for the purposes of feats and abilities (eg. Metamagic and combat feats) You can then get unique heighten and rider effects based off of your magus synthesis or feats. I really don't like that the only role of Striking spell is to combine a spell and strike damage for the purposes of action economy/crits. That feels boring to me. I want it to be a magical strike that feels unique and can be interacted with meaningfully.
My campaign is using automatic bonus progression - would it make sense to wrap a bonus to spell attacks at the same levels everyone receives their attack potency increases? At the moment it kind of feels like a "you get nothing, good day sir" level for casters.
I rule it that you need to come out of any cover to use a bow, and so would have to take an action to take cover again (I don't know what the rules from firing from cover actually are, though) With a crossbow you can fire from cover and stay in cover. Seems to work fine, it doesn't make them better than bows, but allows a situational playstyle (sniping from safety).
Yeah, I think for the 'master summoner' variant, instead of having no eidolon: skinning it as though you have access to plural eidolons (albeit weaker ones) that take the forms of summoned creatures would allow more of the existing class feats to interact meaningfully. Would require some hard rules about what or how eidolon feats/evolutions interact, but means there isn't a whole pool of dead feats for the subclass.
This is just a spitball, and may be entirely off the mark, but thought I would throw it out for discussion. Please forgive if it has been raised elsewhere, this just occured to me while playing a bard last night. At the moment striking spell feels kind of meh to me personally, and it feels like a negligible difference from just casting a spell and striking as normal. The whole "I have this spell I can cast, I'm also going to sneak some strike damage in" feels kind of... boring? with the new action economy allowing for that double up fundamentally. As a magus, you should be able to do it as part of your core routine, like a bard's composition cantrip, without feeling like it's a burden. What if your strike was placed in a cantrip wrapper? That is, you gain a magus attack cantrip with a range of touch that deals damage equal to the damage of your weapon strike. It could be textured as a magical energy placed into your weapon, or even a held weapon created out of magic itself. The key here is then the interactions you can get from applying spellcasting effects to your strikes. For one thing, you could get unique heighten effects depending on your synthesis or feats. I'm hoping we see new spellcasting feats and metamagic feats in the new book, which is a perfect opportunity to use them in a unique way. Reach Strike? Cool.
We can then use the real estate of magus potency for focus spells that may give you free metamagic or combination effects. This then allows the magus to then apply their magical upgrades to their martial prowess pretty organically. It means they can keep their identity as a intelligence caster, but one that is just trained to use it more directly in combat. Obviously there would be things to consider:
This may be too out there, but keen to hear any thoughts on it.
Instead of the Eidolon flavours, choose from three distinct playstyles: Companion Eidolon, Synthesist Eidolon, and no eidolon but more interesting Summon X abilities.
Yeah honestly this is what I had expected of the summoner paths, not flavours of eidolon. I think it's more meaningful to fulfil the three familiar playstyles of the summoner as the base options, as you say: 1) Partner eidolon, with teamwork and casting focus
Then the flavours of eidolon and their abilities are much more ripe and extensible for class feats. Add a breath weapon to your partner/battlesuit/summoned monster.
Thanks for your input folks. I appreciate the balance issues, and by no means would this be for everyone. But putting some hard limitations on it like incapacitation makes sense. I just like being able to offer some agency while the party is stealthing without resorting to all out fights. I trust my party - it's more a thematic and narrative enabler for investigations and heists than a hard encounter solve.
My party loves stealthy approaches, but one trope we've always missed having access to is knocking out an unsuspecting guard or similar with a single knock to the head. It's nearly impossible to emulate this with current rules I feel, other than simply dealing enough damage in one blow and these scenarios often almost end in standard brawling. Has anyone created or played with their own ruling on this? I'm thinking somewhere on the lines of requirements being:
Well, they're competing for my class feats, so that's something! But yeah I guess it depends if you have any other use for a reaction competing with nimble dodge. Thanks for your input!
I'm trying to work out what the use case is for taking overextending feint (OF) over nimble dodge (ND). ND gives you a guaranteed +2 to AC against one attack at the cost of a reaction. OF requires you to feint, then only on a success do they get a -2 to their next attack with the opportunity for a -2 for all attack rolls against you. This is at the price of a feint action, the risk of not succeeding, and the trade-off of making them flat footed. Is the reaction that valuable? The only scenario I can imagine OF being better is if one opponent is making multiple attacks against you, and you just hope for a crit success.
I made some graphs a while back that show this and some other things. the graphs are here, you can make your own too with the tool. Yoooo this is exactly the data I was looking for, thanks for your work!
Hey everyone, I know the tighter maths and associated stats have been covered here quite a bit, but I cannot for the life of me surface the relevant threads. Is anyone able to summarise this for me or point me to a past discussion? I'm trying to get a measure on how much a +1 influences success rates. My initial interpretation was that against a matched DC it affected three potential faces (CF->F, F->S, S->CS), ie 15% of your rolls would be positively impacted. But I realise now that (I think) it's not possible to have a situation where all three faces are relevant without a 20 and 1 being present (thus two impacted faces becoming redundant anyway). So in what scenarios does that +1 have affect 0%, 5%, 10%, 15% of your rolls? I also know there was a theoretical 'DPR' % increase floating around, can someone break down that maths for me please? FWIW I'm trying to get a better touchstone on it for the purpose of creating custom items/effects, and want to be careful about numerical effects. Thanks!
These are all great thoughts and suggestions. Will definitely help with how I think about using the actions moving forward. Thanks everyone!
I've been a long time 1e GM, and moving to 2e has been great in many ways. One double edged sword I've been struggling with however has been running multiple enemies in combat. While the 3 action system opens up a lot of interesting things with monsters and npcs in combat, I'm finding it really difficult to run them efficiently. In 1e I would usually be able to deal with an individual enemy's turn by going "what is the main thing they'll attempt this turn". Now I feel a lot greater cognitive load having to execute 3 actions for every monster. This is not such a problem with one or two enemies, but I often run games with 5 or 6 players, to which I usually increase the minion count. Even with 4 enemies, that's 12 actions I need to calculate, and I'm finding it's really bogging things down on my turn. So does anyone have any advice or tips on running multiple baddies smoothly? Thanks!
Bespell at 6 for sorcerers but 4 for wizards?The errata has which number is wrong backwards, change the table to match the text (which is 6 to 4, not 4 to 6). Ah, that makes more sense. Thanks for your work Mark, some good changes!
Bespell at 6 for sorcerers but 4 for wizards? Isn't the feat listed as 4?
I know it says specifically "You don’t gain any other abilities from your choice of deity or cause", but it feels odd to me that you would get training in all armour types, and access to other champion feats, but not a weapon specific to your new devotion.
That's all very valuable insight. Thanks for sharing. I was thinking a similar thing with the NPC cards so they can keep an inventory of who's available to talk to. I might do that for the next session. One thing I'm worried about is introducing Hallod as they enter the Feedmill. If we're setting him up as a bit of a jerk, I feel my players will probably attach any malfeasance to him (knowing what they're like). Is there any risk if they want to go investigate him as a lead from the get go? Thanks again!
That is all super helpful - exactly what I was after. Thank you so much for your time!
I'm running Fall of Plaguestone soon, but my book only just arrived last night (Australia QQ). I've had time to skim read the beginning and some of the gazeteer & characters, but feel wildly unprepared for setting up any kind of mystery. So, any advice on the key beats I should hit for the first session to lay the groundwork? What's important to know about the encounters/story? Thanks!
I'm running Fall of Plaguestone soon, but my book only just arrived last night (Australia QQ). I've had time to skim read the beginning and some of the gazeteer & characters, but feel wildly unprepared for setting up any kind of mystery. So, any advice on the key beats I should hit for the first session to lay the groundwork? What's important to know about the encounters/story? Thanks!
I think Moment of Clarity is included specifically to open up the spellcasting barbarian, which I think is fine. Maybe when we see some sort of skald class or archetype it'll add the rage trait to compositions or add some new ones :)
Thanks for the responses everyone, I had missed the traits on components. Prototype does seem to be quoting a specific exception though - is that working as intended for rage? If you swap out the verbal (concentrate) for a focus (manipulate) then would you need to stop raging? I'm not trying to cheese, just a curious gm. But an angry vuvuzela, or shredding a lute, does sound fun.
Looking at a barbarian with bard multiclass, rage specifies you cant do anything with the concentrait. From what i can see that only applies to sustaining a spell over multiple rounds - does normal spellcasting have a caveat Im missing? And since Perform is concentrate, how does that apply to composition cantrips? Is there any restriction there? Whats the case for moment of clarity?
Was this supposed to be an answer to another thread? Or is the actual question just missing? :) My bad, I edited my original post and deleted it by accident. Was just asking how you actually gain composition cantrips through multiclassing as they are focus spells, which Blave answered :)
Accidentally deleted my first post, whoops. Thanks yeah, just saw it then - wasn't expecting it to come in so late! But that's fair I guess. Cheers.
P 458. In the Affliction Example text box, about 3/4 down "Succeeding at your second save would reduce the stage t by 1 to stage 1..."
Thanks for the input! Looks like landscape may be the way to go.
I hadn't heard about that - are there details somewhere for it? Do you know makes it 'advanced'?
I've been deliberating on which version of the GM screen to order. What are the major differences? Is it just art & layout? What will everyone be picking up?
Is the champion the paladin of any alignment? That would be awesome. Yes Champions are now the broad bundle of the holy martial class, with separate alignments deceiving different names. Paladins retain their LG status.
I really, really hope that Paizo makes available a black/white printer-friendly PDF version of that character sheet. The one in this blog post has so many coloured areas, which uses way too much ink/toner and makes them useless for writing in remarks and the like. :( I posted this earlier and Erik Mona confirmed there will be a printer friendly version :)
Praise Desna!
All I see is a dwarf suplexing a lich.
This is excellent - thanks Mark (and Rei for getting it up!). Excited about all of the nuggets here. Only thing I'm slightly disappointed to see confirmed is the colour scheme on the character sheet. Here's to hoping there's a cleaner, print friendly version. But excited regardless!
Do these eps appear anywhere other than on twitch? Would love to listen at work but can't use twitch :c
It would be really helpful if Googling anything related to Pathfinder Spoilers didn't mostly give me car accessories... You can always exclude results in google using '-', eg. '-car' '-nissan' in the keywords
Here you go: Bestiary, 2nd Edition Oh snap I didn't even make the connection that they were kobolds. Cool, thanks!
Apologies if this was higher in the thread or elsewhere, I couldn't seem to find anything, but has anyone got a link or an image of the new design? I haven't seen it.
I've always felt the biggest reason for the quadratic growth of casters comes down to the daily refresh. At low levels you have few spells/day and expending them all renders you useless. At high levels you have more spells/day than you could possibly want and so you can just throw out powerful effects one after the other and do it all again the next day. It's usually not a matter of IF you're going to use your resources - just WHEN. Meanwhile, martials are just... consistent. /theorycrafting tangent I've always been interested in a system where your spell pool doesn't reset each day, but rather it recharges at a certain rate, and spells all draw from the same pool. Say you have a spell pool = to your level + casting stat. You recharge your pool every day by an amount, lets just say half your level for now. A level 6 Sorcerer with 14 Cha = Pool of 8, recovering 3 each day. Each day you could cast a total spell level up to your pool. Two level 3s and two level 2s, 8 level 1s, 4 level 2s, whatever. But if you expend your pool, then the next day you only have 2. I find this more immersive having an energy capacity and more powerful spells drain more than having arbitrary limits per level. It also allows mages to go full nova if they want, but it comes at a cost. It allows more powerful options, but these arent just added to a growing list of resources. I don't know, maybe a bit late now, but I wonder if this is a way to mechanically distinguish sorcerers Now obviously there are other balancing concerns here, but personally I think this would allow for more interesting choices and opportunity costs. It adds in the IF of using the resources, as well as the WHEN.
I like the way Pillars of Eternity did it. Every stat contributed to most things. You had Might, which scales the damage/healing of all your effects. Dexterity increased recovery time between any attack. Intelligence increased durations and aoes. Mind you that system would not translate well to tabletop due to its percentage nature, but the core design is interesting.
I think Bulk as a capacity catch-all is a good concept, but agree it could use a different approach. My shower musings on how it could work differently: Bundle in "inventory space" to the formula. This could be as simple as making a 10ft long pole, which may not weigh a lot, have a higher bulk due to its space requirements. Eg (at a simmered down level) A lighter, smaller object - 1 bulk
The more complex version of this is stretching it out over light + bulk items, to alleviate the "I carry 300 daggers" absurdity. So while light objects may be light, they still occupy space. Removing the 10 light = 1 bulk system and just have everything scale on a "capacity" so light objects still occupy a space. I realise this is approaching the old system, but you could keep it abstracted and the numbers simpler than realistic weights. Think inventory space in games like Diablo (but without the tetris). Another approach would be to split the light objects and bulk objects into 2 scales. Light objects operate on a quantity scale realistic to how many things you could feasibly hold and store. Instead of 10=1, you can hold up to X light objects, which is easy to track with rows and numbers on a sheet. This doesn't necessarily even need to be tied to STR, but could be a function of armor/backpacks/bandoliers (the fighter's plate armor doesn't have pockets, but the rogues leather armor does). Bulk objects have the same grounding in weight as they do at the moment, but don't need to equate to numerous light objects to be realistic, and can have a closer tie to STR.
I concur with above sentiments that CON should play a role in rage capacity. It keeps its legacy interaction (more CON = more rage), and makes more sense thematically for barbarians as the CON class. Counting 3 on 1 off is easy.
I like DM's suggestion of guaranteed rounds = CON modifier, but would change the flat check to be 11+ or something after that. So 3-5 guaranteed rounds depending on how you build your character, then some chance rounds after that when you start to flag. The probability of continued rounds at a 50% success drops significantly as well, but allows for those awesome "Oh wow another one" moments. Gives some design space to influence the flat check as well through feats as others have suggested.
There's a lot of this going on on both sides. Sure, we don't have a "my group is quitting the playtest" thread without some people chiming in to agree and give their reasoning. There's also a contingent that shows up to those threads to dismiss the OP with comments such as "playtesting isn't for everyone," "the playtest is designed to be fun," and "I hope you filled out a survey" (with an implied "because what you say in your... Oh don't get me wrong, I have no issue with people posting their experiences and think it is 100% a valuable contribution. I was directly responding to the insinuation that devs are actively censoring opinions they don't like - the "there is something creepy/unsettling" and "I won't say more because my posts are getting removed" kinds of posts. I don't think there is any place for those sorts of comments on the forum. IMO all playtest discussion should be on the game itself, not on the folks at Paizo or how they run their business. Anyway the irony is that I've derailed with a post of my own, ha. Apologies. |