Search Posts
I haven't read all 500+ posts in this thread to see if this has been addressed yet, but I have to ask: Why are these books so expensive? 136 pages for $37 (or $35 in the case of the next one, Lost Omen Character Guide) is nearly twice the price per page of what Paizo used to charge for hardcovers in 1st edition. Compare to 256 page books like Ultimate Combat or Advanced Race Guide, which are only $45 hardcover today, and I swear I remember them being only $40 when they were new. And adventure paths used to be 100 pages for $20. I can understand that they need to raise prices once in a while, thus the 2e AP is now $25 per book, but it's still almost as many pages as this thing that sells for $37. Whatever happened to monthly softcovers that were only $13-20? I don't have unlimited money to spend, so I pick and choose which books to buy based on content. I'm still on the fence about 2e, having only bought the Core Rulebook so far. But if every monthly book is going to be this stupidly expensive for so little content, then the books I pick and choose to buy aren't going to be from Paizo ever again.
What part of "carry someone off the battlefield" is not clear? Who is naked on the battlefield...? Here's the exact quote from the book: You might need to know the Bulk of a creature, especially if you need to carry someone off the battlefield. The table that follows lists the typical Bulk of a creature based on its size, but the GM might adjust this number. It doesn't say that's the bulk of a creature and its gear. Just the bulk of the creature. The chart that follows has small creatures listed as 3 bulk. How can someone wearing 4 bulk full plate, a 1 bulk heavy shield, sheathed weapons that might add another 1 or 2 bulk, and a 2 bulk adventurer's kit in their backpack be only 3 bulk? As for who's naked on the battlefield, how about an ogre in a loincloth (once it drops its club), or a dragon, or any wild animal, or any of various other monsters that don't typically wear armor or carry much gear? Ask yourself, what's more likely: that Paizo's whole team of professional designers, writers, and editors are a bunch of incompetent fools who created a system that makes no sense... or that you made a mistake in your reading? You haven't been playing Pathfinder long, have you? I'm not saying that Paizo's staff are incompetent. But mistakes happen. Sometimes major ones. Nobody's perfect. When Starfinder first came out, the entire spaceship combat system just plain didn't work at high levels, because they got the math wrong, so an errata was necessary. When coming out with a 640 page rulebook for a whole new version of Pathfinder, something like doing the math on a small creature riding a medium mount to make sure the encumbrance works is a relatively trivial detail that I could certainly see them overlooking.
Except that "GM discretion" has always been a code word in Pathfinder for "this doesn't apply to Pathfinder Society". In PFS, the table GM is just a judge for that particular session. Whenever a Pathfinder book says "Your GM might allow this", the GM for the entire campaign is the one who has to make those calls, and for PFS, that campaign GM is the Paizo employee who manages the entire organized play campaign.
Exactly. Plus, some of us play PFS, which is RAW only. If the rules say something doesn't work, we can't just hand wave it away in PFS. And as far as I can tell, the rules say that small creatures riding medium mounts don't work in 2e. Except it's not clear that it includes the bulk of their gear. That's just the bulk of their body. Maybe. That's the ruling we need from Paizo. And until we get that ruling, anyone playing a small character on a medium mount in PFS is going to get screwed at some of their tables by GMs who don't agree with your interpretation of the rules. That's why I won't risk it. I'll save that build idea for when I'm 100% sure it'll work at every table.
Reality is, it is a non issue unless you run into people being willfully difficult. And they will cause issues regardless of the system.LOL, this is the appropriate response to at least 3/4 of the threads on this forum... Exactly. Plus, some of us play PFS, which is RAW only. If the rules say something doesn't work, we can't just hand wave it away in PFS. And as far as I can tell, the rules say that small creatures riding medium mounts don't work in 2e.
So it sounds like there's nothing in the rules that clearly contradicts my original guess when I started this thread. So a small sized PC on a medium mount just isn't a playable build in Pathfinder Society. Hopefully, someone at Paizo will change that answer some time soon.
For the horse and medium PC, I was figuring 12-13 bulk in equipment, plus the extra bulk of the person himself, which gets the horse close to encumbered, but not quite. So it works. I hadn't considered that the person bulk might include their gear. I was adding it to the gear, which is why I had trouble with a 16 strength medium wolf carrying an 18 strength goblin champion + gear that comes close to encumbering the goblin. But if that bulk is supposed to include carrying their worn gear along with their body, then it would work, though it wouldn't make much sense. How is a goblin carrying 8 bulk worth of stuff only counted as 3 bulk for the purposes of someone else carrying him?
So champions can select a mount as their divine bond. And for a small sized PC champion, a medium sized pony should theoretically work. Or a goblin riding a medium sized wolf after level 6 (the wolf is apparently too small to carry the gobbo from levels 3-5). The problem is that these medium sized creatures don't get an increase to their carrying capacity for having extra legs, the way they did in 1st edition. Thus, they can carry a small sized creature... but not a small sized creature in the heavy armor, shield, and weaponry that a champion is likely to be wearing. The champion is just too heavy for their mount to avoid being encumbered. And what kind of mount would they be with the clumsy condition and slower speed? Am I reading this correctly, or is there some way around this that I'm missing? Actually, now that I'm doing the math, even a large sized horse will be straining to carry a medium sized champion in full gear, though at least they can actually pull it off without being encumbered... barely. The encumbrance rules for non-humanoids just seem off to me.
The reaction takes place when you would take damage, which is step 4 of assigning damage. See page 450 of the Core Rulebook. Yup, breaking it into 4 steps is overkill. On the one hand, there seems to be a lot of that in PF2. On the other hand, I've seen all the rules debates in 1st edition that came from not having this level of detail in the rules, so I can see why they decided to err on the side of over-explaining everything.
Also, per conversation in another thread about the timing of shield block. The reaction takes place when you would take damage, which is step 4 of assigning damage. So you already know how much damage it is before you decide if you want to use shield block. This lets you do the math to see if it would permanently destroy your shield, and how much damage to the PC the block would prevent, before you decide if you want to do it. This may seem like metagaming, but it kinda makes sense in context. After all, your experienced adventurer will be able to instinctively gauge how hard an incoming blow looks.
So I'm finally actually building this PC, since I'll be playing him on Sunday, and I've got some mechanical decisions to make. Spoiler: Grunk the Drunk, CG Goblin Barkeep, Champion (Liberator) of Cayden Cailean
Str 18
I want him to be tanky and sociable, as reflected in his Con and Cha scores, and Barkeep background. I'll stick to his deity's favored weapon (rapier) and heavy shield, so I can Shield Block regularly if I'm attacked, or else use my reactions to protect my allies if they're attacked. Unfortunately, this means no free hand for Lay on Hands in battle, though that's nowhere near as important as it was in 1e. I trained Crafting, and I'll probably pick up Specialty Crafting as my first skill feat from leveling, to repair my broken shields. That was going to be the focus of the build (tanking and defense), so the original plan was the divine shield option at level 3, to buff the shields I'll be breaking regularly. But as a goblin, I can pick up the racial Rough Rider feat at level 1 and get a riding wolf as my mount at level 3 instead. So now I'm debating that. I have to look into the companion animal stuff and see how that works, and if it'll take too many actions to command the animal, when I already want to attack and raise my shield every turn.
Since the 52 gp is exactly triple the 14 gp per scenario, maybe that's the intended amount for a module or adventure path volume.
You know, with all the smaller adventures (mostly for PFS) in Tian Xia, it never occurred to me that there's never been an adventure path there. I was just going to say that the continents of Casmaron and Sarusan have been woefully neglected in Paizo's adventures, so those would be appropriate locations for APs. But Tian Xia probably deserves a full AP first.
In the Player Basics section of the Guide, the Purchasing Equipment section says that you can buy common items up to 2 levels above your current level. The Starting Wealth and Equipment section on the same page says that you can buy common items of your level or lower. Unless this is supposed to be a limitation only one new PCs at character creation, these seem to be contradictory.
And "We Be Heroes?", this year's free RPG day adventure using playtest rules and a different set of goblins from the We Be Goblins adventures. Of course, you do realize where the phrase "We Be Goblins" comes from, don't you? It's part of the original goblin song in Rise of the Runelords. The entire line is "We be goblins, you be food". So... not exactly friendly.
Maybe Try going into your "Organized Play", going to the "GM/Event Organizer" tab, and clicking the Recalculate button? I never noticed that was there. Just tried it. It didn't work. Then I tried it again. I think it may have worked the second time. Edit: Nope. My number of tables on the GM/Event page was updated correctly, but the stars still aren't showing.
This is oh so very complicated. I can't just show up? I guess I'll try to register, but I'll probably end up sticking to private games. If it's at a public gaming store or something, then sure, you can just show up. Most groups try to welcome new players and help new players learn as they go. But once you start making your own characters, and tracking which adventures you've played so you can advance that character, you'll have to be aware of a couple of the rules in the Guide. But again, you can easily learn as you go, and lean on the more experienced players in Society play to point you in the right direction, if you're overwhelmed by learning everything in the Guide, while also learning the new 2e rules. Edit: On an unrelated note, where'd my GM stars go? I know I haven't been around much lately, but I did earn 4 of them.
Here's the longer thread where we already had this conversation:
So in a 4 player party, with no overlap, that means 12 skills above trained, out of 16 + Lore skills total in the game. Including a rogue in the party, or having more players, increases the odds of having a specialist in almost every skill. And, of course, most people will specialize in at least one skill tied to their primary stat, so those will be better than your 14 starting attribute assumption.How often do we expect there to be no overlap though? I assume most parties are going to have overlap in skills like athletics, acrobatics, medicine and stealth. With quite a few parties overlapping on crafting, deception, and intimidate as well. Really, I wouldn't expect more than half of the skills to be covered by a specialist in a typical 4 man party unless you intentionally designed your characters in concert with that specific purpose. Or like you said, there's a rogue in the party. Depends on the party. In a home campaign, most groups intentionally organize to cover all party needs. For instance, my current (1st edition) campaign started with 5 players, and we intentionally went for an arcane caster, divine caster, two front liners, and an archer. We also went through the skill list and made sure we had every knowledge or other skill we were worried about covered by level 2. So it's not that hard to organize. On the other hand, random groups thrown together for Pathfinder Society might have trouble. But you're more likely to have 5 or 6 players, which helps, and I think rogues are likely to be more common than they were in 1st edition. And even then, you'll have players who show up with more than one PC and ask "So what does the party need?" to balance out the group.
But what PF2 clearly tries to do and what I'm quite okay with, is make skills challenging again. PF1 had a lot of "I got this, my skill bonus is so high, I can't fail" with skills. PF2 aims for "if you're rolling for it, then the outcome is really in doubt". And this is why all of my Society melee characters had a potion of Fly by level 5 or 6, and kept 2 or 3 of them at all times by level 8. In a party with a wizard, rather than random gatherings of PFS, make those scrolls of Fly, since they're cheaper. At low levels, you may need the whole party to make a check like this (but that's also where the best guy in the party goes across first and anchors the rope), but by level 8, the climb and swim skills in PF1 were replaced by magic.
So in a 4 player party, with no overlap, that means 12 skills above trained, out of 16 + Lore skills total in the game. Including a rogue in the party, or having more players, increases the odds of having a specialist in almost every skill. And, of course, most people will specialize in at least one skill tied to their primary stat, so those will be better than your 14 starting attribute assumption. The skill system was one of my complaints about Starfinder, which I tried out when it was new, but didn't like enough to stick with it. I was a little worried how it would play out in PF2, so I was very interested when I saw this thread title. But it's obvious that Paizo learned from their mistakes in Starfinder. It may not be perfect, but it's an improvement. I'm willing to give it time and see how it plays out.
Wouldn't it make more sense to compare their birthing process to birds? These are 3 times the size of Ostrich eggs!
I remember that most of the dwarven gods in Inner Sea Gods were related to Torag somehow. But other than that, there weren't a lot of strong connections that I remember. But I also didn't read it cover to cover - just used it as a general reference when making dozens of PFS characters and looking for oddball deities to worship instead of the standards.
I haven't actually built a character yet. Still reading the Core Rulebook and learning the rules. But I'm pretty sure I've decided what my first character will be, for Pathfinder Society. I've even written his goblin song already:
Sorcerer was actually going to be my next suggestion. There's synergy with the racial charisma bonus, and you can play it as serious as you want. I'm still not sure what I think of the champion class. I always liked paladins before, but this new version is so completely different that I'm not sure what to think of it, mechanically. Fluff-wise, I really like the idea of non-LG champions of deities we couldn't do before, like the redeemer of Pharasma or liberator of Cayden I suggested earlier. Also, with charisma being much less important to paladins than in 1e, and it being easier to make up for racial attribute flaws, I realized that a dwarven paladin of Torag is finally a realistic possibility. It's also interesting to note that your type of champion depends on character alignment, not deity alignment. So for instance, Sarenrae and Shelyn can have all three of paladins, redeemers, and liberators, depending on the alignments of their followers who choose to be champions.
I had the same question at first, but their example at the top page 20 answers this pretty clearly.
So it doesn't rule out charisma getting the free boost, which is the dwarven flaw attribute.
Want to avoid comic relief? Goblin Paladin!!! Or maybe a neutral good Redeemer of Pharasma with the Shining Oath (against undead). Or, using the exact same race and class, Goblin Champion of Cayden Cailean, and we're back in comic relief territory. I know you said bards aren't your thing, but I may consider one. Goblin songs are a Pathfinder tradition, so a singing goblin bard just seems very thematic, and works well with their racial stats.
So of the seven classes that have Focus Spells, three mention where to find them. If you happened to start on one of the other four, you'd be left wondering where they are (yes, if you turned to 632 in the glossary and index you'd find them, but I don't think you should have to do that if it can be simply referenced in the relevant text). As mentioned above, I started with the champion class. "Lay on Hands" isn't in the glossary and index, and it's referred to as a "devotion spell" in the class description, which is another term that's not in the index. I never thought to look up the term "focus spell" in the index. Looking again now, the term "focus spell" is used in the description. But it's not a section heading, it's not capitalized, it's not italicized or anything else like that, so there's nothing to make it jump out as a rules term. Like I said, I had to use ctl-f to go search the pdf for "Lay on Hands". If I only had the paper copy of the book, I never would have found it. That's a problem.
Each individual focus power lists the page number in the powers class feat section. For example the Monk focus power "Ki Blast" states to see page 401 for power details. The page number for each power is listed in the specific class feat entry that grants it. Not for all classes, they don't. I read the champion as my first class description. I couldn't figure out where the details of Lay on Hands were explained until I searched around for a few minutes, then finally gave up random searching and used ctl-F on the pdf to search for "Lay on Hands". If I'd been looking at a hard copy of the book instead of the pdf, I'd probably have gotten banned from these forums for telling Paizo what I thought of this book. Blind luck, or reading all 640 pages from cover to cover, are the only ways that anyone reading the paper copy of this book is going to figure out that the 100 page listing of spells is only alphabetized for 80% of those pages, and that there are other categories of spells that are separate.
As for the original topic, I don't think so. Actually, I'm expecting to see a lot more goblin rogues than anything else. I'm even considering making one myself. But I'm also considering a much weirder goblin build (champion of Cayden Cailean!), so I might do a different race for my rogue, just for variety.
There are two reasons for the iconics: 1. They are the pregenerated characters available for download here on the Paizo site. So if anyone ever needs a pre-built character on short notice for a game, there they are. This happens a LOT in Pathfinder Society. We often joke that Kyra the Cleric is the busiest adventurer on Golarion, since any PFS table that doesn't have a healer will bring her along. 2. The iconics also appear as the main characters in the Pathfinder comic books. I'm not sure if they're also in the novel line, as I've never really looked into those. I only have a few of the comics because of a humble bundle, and I never did get around to actually reading them, though I'm mildly curious to do so.
Playing Kingmaker now. Our party's "battle cry" (later became our national motto) is to wave and call out "HELLO, FRIEND!" as soon as we're close enough to see anything that might have language skills. So far, we've made friends with four faeries, two tribes of kobolds, a tribe of mites, a boggard, a ghost, a werewolf, and a group of travelling gnomes. I think the gnomes were actually the shiftiest of the bunch, and we didn't quite trust them. My character is a total nerd who spent years preparing for this expedition (elf with high int). He heard that there might be fae, kobolds, and/or mites in the area (info from the Kingmaker Player's Guide), so he made a point of learning the sylvan, draconic, and undercommon languages in advance, just to be prepared. So the fact that we could talk to all these critters, and tried to make peace, was something the printed adventure didn't anticipate in all cases, but we managed to do it. Of course, we've killed plenty of non-friendlies along the way, as well, including other werewolves, boggards, and even humans.
Which adventures? I own at least half of them and never came across anything like that. (Please reply in a spoiler for those who may yet want to play in said adventures.)Maybe that's how your group plays it, but Paizo has published adventures in 1st edition featuring social, non-combat encounters with all 3 of those races. Even if they're evil, that doesn't necessarily mean "kill on sight". I mostly play Pathfinder Society, so most of my experience is with those adventures. Now you're going to make me look up the exact adventures, since I've played hundreds of them and don't always remember which is which by name off the top of my head. Spoiler:
Goblins: Frostfur Captives, Rise of the Goblin Guild, Treason's Chains, and one other that I don't want to give away, because it really IS a spoiler that the goblins aren't behind all the evil in that one. Gnolls: Between the Lines Orcs: 4–24: Glories of the Past—Part II: The Price of Friendship - Had to spend some time looking this up to remember which scenario it was. The mission actually involves traveling into the orc nation Hold of Belkzen and visiting one of the orc cities. So you have to negotiate with orcs to get what you were sent for. Ironically, I've mentioned several times that you just don't see orcs very much in Pathfinder adventures. That last one I named where you negotiate with them is actually the only PFS adventure I can think of that features full blooded orcs (as opposed to the over-common half-orcs). I remember back in 1st edition D&D and AD&D, orcs were THE default humanoid enemy, but goblins and kobolds fill that role in Pathfinder.
I'll just add a "me too" to the requests above for a single page, easily downloadable version. The need to search the whole document at once, and to easily store it for offline access, are both absolutely essential. As with Balkin, above, I'm not entirely enthusiastic about the new version. Paizo is going to have to work pretty hard to get me into 2e, and fumbling this roll out on day one isn't a good start. Of course, I've been playing PF long enough to know that fumbling rollouts during Gen Con is an annual tradition with Paizo, but you'd think they'd learn from all those mistakes eventually. In this case, a blog post and permanent link here on Paizo's site, pointing us to the third party web site for the Guide could have been put up a month or two ago, even before the Guide was ready on that web site. Having the link up in advance, pointing to a page that says "Watch this space" for a month before the Guide was ready, would have prevented a LOT of confusion over the last week.
|
