GreatCowGuru's page

53 posts. No reviews. No lists. No wishlists.



1 person marked this as a favorite.
Palinurus wrote:
KungfuCracka wrote:

So I've go through the rules and forums. There is a lot of debate and interpretation, enough to confuse someone working out some of the details. So here is my question.

When Alchemists do their daily prep? Do they use RP (Resonance) to make bombs? Potions?

I know other PCs use RP to drink potions and Alchemists use healing potions they made with quick alchemy at no additional RP cost. But I'm trying to nail down their daily prep costs.

Also, does daily prep for an alchemist cost money to make bombs/potions as well as a craft roll?

Thanks.

It doesn't cost money, but they do spend resonance for items like bombs and healing elixirs (but at the rate of 1 RP for two items). Quick alchemy is more flexible but is 1 RP for any item in their formula book.

Also of note these items have the infused trait which means that the alchenist doesn't have to pay any additional RP cost of the item. For example during daily prep you make an elixir of life, when you go to drink the elixir later you don't have to pay a point of resonance. However, if you pass that elixir off to someone else they do have to pay 1 RP to drink it.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
JoelF847 wrote:
runestone - what exactly does this do? Just act like a piece of paper you can put a rune on? Why would you do that ever? Just to carry in your pocket and smile? How does this help you in any way?

I could see some use in this for keeping extra property runes around for when they're needed like one for each element change then out as needed. Also keep in mind its a 3gp slate you can slap any rune on instead of needing the proper, and very expensive eventually, master and legendary quality items for potency runes.

As for basically everything else yeah i generally agree items need to wither be invested or cost per activation never both. Also alchemical items should never have cost resonance.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Kong wrote:
HWalsh wrote:

Rysky is 100% right:

All of the things the OP said apply to a lot of things, and Rysky is right about the reply: Money.

---

I need a series of surgeries and medical treatments. Why don't I get them? Money. I can't afford them.

This applies to the peasants and wands, or potions.

According to the book a peasant makes like 1 SP in a day of downtime.

If a minor healing potion costs 3 GP that means 30 days of savings with no money going out.

If we assume the average peasant pays out 50% of their funds for housing and food that means they have 3 SP 5 CP per week for savings barring other needs.

Of that we can assume 2 SP in miscellaneous expenses.

Leaving 1 SP 5 CP per week.

Assuming nothing else comes up that means in 20 weeks (5 months) a peasant can afford 1 minor healing potion.

Magic is awesome and expensive.

Money isn't a control factor. It doesn't work now, nor has it every really worked.

They book says a peasant a makes 1sp, sure. But that is just an arbitrary number that has no real basis in reality at all.

In 3.5 your average peasant farmer can make 250gp to 300gp a year, with out much of a problem. And that is with giving half his production to lord of the land. Nor does that take into account livestock and things like butter, cheese, eggs, and milk production.

The idea that a peasant makes 1 sp a year, is just idiotic. It shows how little effort paizo actually puts into the foundations of various game mechanics. And why what they build on top of has little substance.

First of all I have to agree with the above posters that this sort of change doesn't fit with the basis of pathfinder.

That being said to address a few issues, first, pf2e assumes a sp based economy not a gold piece functionally 1sp in pf2e is equivalent to 1gp in 3.x so the numbers you listed aren't really any different.

Second, cantrips for the most part are now useless to peasants there are a few that could possibly be used but most wouldn't impact their lives in any significant way.

Third, spellcastees have massively fewer slots now then they use to this couple with the fact that most casters in the world are of an extraordinarily low level means that access to any truly useful spells is not a common occurence to beginwith. On top of that is the issue that they might not be free to spend their spells slots however they dictate, perhaps they need the slots themselves, perhaps their church restricts how their low level clergy use them, or we get into the next issue.

Fourth, commoners and the general people without class levels effectively have their racial hp and that's all. Spending money on a healer or on a potion or wand is pointless when you can rest up for a few days and be alright. In cases where the healing is urgent? They wouls porbably recieve magical healing but those cases would come along far less often.

Fifth, magic is substantially less awesome in pf2e. Most of those defensive spells you keep mentioning those past mostly 1 minute now, some last 10 minutes. When all casters have a very limited number of slots bundled with substantially shorter spells means that casters have to spend their slots wisely.
It's going to be rare seeing that king or queen who wants a thousand spellcasters on staff to refresh a spell on them every minute.

Lastly, resonance which exists to fix the issue of people utilizing more cost efficient low level magic items and trying to deck out their magic item slots. The only problem is people decked out their item slots to get as much of an advantage as they could because to some extent the games math expected it. In 2e theirs so few bonus types that resonance isn't even necessary and consummables are still as cost inefficient as they always have been when looking at stronger versions of the same item. All that's led to is more clerics to replace the clw wands. Resonance as a whole woulsn' be necessary if the basic design philosphy wasn't attrition of hp, so they tried to limit item based magical healing which has sort of worked? It's made a decent bit of people dissatisfied, but ultimately they simply don' want infinite healing if the party has to stop and rest occasionally problem solved for them.

Oh, and one last thing the choice of continuing on and suffering major side effects or resting to spend spell slots later isn't anymore or less of a choice and limitation then the current systems. People will stop and wait over accepting side effects unless there's a time crunch in which case the same is true for the current systems. If the adventuring day is 8 hours or 30 minutes doesn't matter if you accomplished the same amount of work.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Steve Geddes wrote:

It’s definitely a function of how much detail you want. Personally, I’d much rather they introduce gradations of wounds rather than encumbrance. The abstract nature of hit points is way, way more immersion breaking to me than bulk.

The situation of carrying twenty shields doesn’t come up much when we play, so all that matters is the overall effect (which seems roughly right most of the time in aggregate).

I always find the situation of high level PCs dying is much harder to grasp: I’m fine...I’m fine...I’m fine...I’m unconscious and dying. It still bugs me after years of playing.

Well I wouldn't be opposed to seeing a wound system over hp it was certainly something in Dark Heresy and the other 40k rpg line that kept death and dying a very real and immediate possibility even at high levels. I think something thats less gritty than that but more threatening than the current death and dying rules and hp would hit a good balance, though it might just be one of those things people would consider breaking from tradition.


3 people marked this as a favorite.
thenobledrake wrote:
GreatCowGuru wrote:
...an empty vial has no weight and a filled vial weighs the same as padded armor, a javelin, a handcrossbow, or a light steel shield.

That's a "I've not completely grasped what bulk represents" issue, as the game does not in fact state anything even close to those items weighing the same.

Here's what the game does say: "The Bulk value of an item reflects how difficult an item is to handle, representing both weight and the size of the item."

Emphasis mine.

Thats actually exacty what the system insinuates by making all of those items have an identical bulk value, which isn't a real value but a nebulous amount less then 1 full bulk.

That being said lets look at two examples here then shall we. An empty vial weighs absolutely nothing even if you have 10 of them unless the GM decides otherwise, 10 filled vials automatically counts as 1 bulk. Lets compare that to your points of emphasis the filled vial is no more difficult to handle, is the same exact dimensions as the empty vial, the only difference is weight which jumps from nonexistent to .1 only it's 0 till you reach 10.

Second example filled vial versus padded armor. The vial is smaller the padded armor, more easily handled, so the weight would be the only point at which it could be bulkier then the padded armor. The question is, does a small glass vial holding 1 ounce of liquid weigh more then padded armor does to justify them being the same bulk. My personal answer absolutely not, but due to everything less then 1 bulk being categorized as light bulk they functionally fall into the same height, weight, ease of carrying range and that simply feels wrong.

All of that would generally be summed up as the point of my original post which is to say how do people feel about expanding bulk ranges and dealing with slightly larger numbers so there can be some actual specificityand differentation among the bulk of objects.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Just out of curiosity how would people feel about effectively multiplying the current bulk system by 10 and eliminating L bulk entirely.

Bulk capacity becomes (5 + str mod)*10
L bulk becomes a number from 1-9
1 bulk becomes a number from 10-19

And so on,that would at least eliminate odd cases where an empty vial has no weight and a filled vial weighs the same as padded armor, a javelin, a handcrossbow, or a light steel shield. You lose the general vague category numbers but you end up with things having more realistic relative weights.

As an added bonus a belt pouch would now hold 4 bulk rather then 4 L bulk which might hold like 4 filled potions but not 4 lught steel shields.


9 people marked this as a favorite.
Xathos of Varisia wrote:

My chief concern with Resonance comes from the viewpoint of a Wizard character player. The limitations on spell slots is crippling for a Wizard. To address this we have to use scrolls or wands which now cost Resonance meaning we are limited in item usage along those lines as well plus we have to invest our magic items via Resonance. We're getting a double whammy here.

I do like what you are doing with the Resonance Point system and why you are doing it. I am all for it. However, I think we need to address spell slot numbers for the casters. We no longer gain extra spell slots for our high Intelligence scores so you could say that's a triple whammy to Wizards. I realize that some people think Wizards are overpowered and we are to an extent, but a triple whammy to spell slots has seriously underpowered us.

Something has to give here. I would like to keep Resonance working along the lines it currently is. I am happy to see the unlimited healing addressed via it along with the Christmas Tree effect. But we Wizards need to have some of the spell slots restored so that we are on a par with melee classes. I don't think we need the number of slots we had in PF1. Four was the limit per the Wizard table 3-16 plus a school slot and anywhere from 1 to 5 per Bonus spells due to Intelligence.

Granted, not everyone will have that high an Intelligence. Usually 3 bonus spells would be in play for a total of 8 spell slots for most Wizards for L1 spells, 7 spell slots for L2-4 spells by 11th level or so, and so on. I think to address the triple whammy imposed in PF2 Wizards should get 1 to 2 more spell slots per spell level spread out over the levels OR put the Bonus Spells back in due to high Intelligence scores.

I am personally in favor of the Bonus Spells due to high Intelligence being put back in.

Alchemists have it even worse spend resonance to actually have alchemical items for the day, want to benefit from class feats that actually add effects to your bombs spend resonance on quick alchemy inefficiently, at the same time having to save enough resonance aside to be able to use any magic items at all, and elixirs of life which require you to spend resonance to make and other people have to spend resonance to drink to heal less then an equivalent level potion or heal spell.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
shroudb wrote:
GreatCowGuru wrote:
Just mildly curious if this has come up in the thread as well, but Fighters in particuliar get expert, master, and legendary proficiency in their weapon group at levels much earlier then a Wizard, all spellcasters actually, get the same proficiency in their spellcasting, yet spellcasters lose their 12th and 16th level class feats while Fighters get the proficiencies as part of their free static progression. This stacks with weakened spells and fewer per day and really comes off as poor class design just because spellcasters get fewer core class options to justify being able to cast spells.

i think that's because of "free" spell powers from bloodlines and such taking the space of "class feats", not because of proficiency.

but that's just a general pf2 problem:

in general, there are a lot of stuff in the class feats that should have been baked into the base classes (just take a look at poor alchemist as an example, half his "class feats" should have been base features, I mean, he has to pay a lvl8 feat just o get his class dc to his class abilities...)

I do think that a lot of class feat trees need in general to be remade almost from scratch, and regardless of balance, not getting a class feat because of a reason or another just feels bad.

Oh I agree, with both that I can understand the 1st level class feat for spellcasters effectively being their spell point and first power but to lose 2 class feats for a +1 number boost which doesn't even put you ahead of the monster scaling it just keeps it on par feels terrible.

Also while it's a bit of a tangent I agree wholeheartedly about alchemists the most disapointing thing for me is being forced to use quick alchemy instead of your daily prep to benefit from any of their extra bomb effects that you've spent class features on.


4 people marked this as a favorite.

Just mildly curious if this has come up in the thread as well, but Fighters in particuliar get expert, master, and legendary proficiency in their weapon group at levels much earlier then a Wizard, all spellcasters actually, get the same proficiency in their spellcasting, yet spellcasters lose their 12th and 16th level class feats while Fighters get the proficiencies as part of their free static progression. This stacks with weakened spells and fewer per day and really comes off as poor class design just because spellcasters get fewer core class options to justify being able to cast spells.


3 people marked this as a favorite.
John Lynch 106 wrote:
I'll be honest: not really. At level 3 (assuming wisdom 12) you'll have +5 to the roll. Your chance at crit failing is fairly low. If you use a healer's kit that gives you another +1.

It's a lot worse then you might think in that example you have a total of +6 to medicine with the healer's kit this gives us

Crit Failure 20% average damage 5.5
Failure 50% average damage/healing 0
Success 25% average healing 6.5
Crit Success 5% average healing 12

Which averages out to only 1.125 hp recovered per target per use.

The potential amount isn't necessarily the issue so much as the likely results of the roll being 70% to not recover hp when used.

The sample char used above with a 16 wisdom has somewhat better odds with their +8 on this same roll.

Crit Failure 10% average damage 5.5
Failure 50% average damage/healing 0
Success 35% average healing 8.5
Crit Success 5% average healing 14

Which gives us an average result of 3.125 hp recovered per target.

Again I feel like the issue where non-spellcaster healers fall short early on is in consistency of their healing which heavily impacts their perfomrance into being very swingy, that is if my math is at all correct.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I really don't see where people are are finding issues with the shield block and item damage rules so lets try to break it all down together.

Item Damage wrote:
An item can be destroyed if it takes damage enough times. An item reduces any damage dealt to it by its Hardness. The Hardness of various materials is explained in the Materials section on page 354. If an item takes damage equal to or exceeding the item’s Hardness, the item takes a Dent. If the item takes damage equal to or greater than twice its Hardness in one hit, it takes 2 Dents.
Shield Block wrote:
You snap your shield into place to deflect a blow. Your shield prevents you from taking an amount of damage up to its Hardness—the shield takes this damage instead, possibly becoming dented or broken. See page 175 for rules on dented and broken items.

Alright so when you shield block your shield reduces the damage you take by its hardness the shield also takes this full damage value as well.

Step 1 Reduce damage to the character by the shields hardness value.
Step 2 The shield does the same for itself.
Step 3 The shield takes a number of dents equal to how many times the remaining damage can equal its hardness.

Example A hardness 5 shield is used to shield block a hit for 11 damage. The character blocking would take 6 damage. The shield wouls reduce the 11 damage against itself by 5 points leaving it taking 6 damage as well. Since that value of 6 hits the items hardness of 5 one time leaving a remainder of 1 damage the shield takes a single dent.

Yes, I do see the point David was making about shield block not functioning by raw as the wording really needs to read more like.

"Your shield prevents you from taking an amount of damage up to its hardness-the shield then takes the full damage of the attack, possibly becoming dented or broken."


3 people marked this as a favorite.

SUMMON MONSTER to me seems like it was nerfed beyond what it needed to be. Can only summon 1 monster now, use an action to give the monster 2 actions, if you don't concentrate to give the monster actions the spell ends because it requires concentration every turn or the spell ends early, monster cant take reactions, and the level scaling seems as bad as in pf1 despite in pf1 being able to summon multiple weaker monsters and not having to deal with the 4 levels of success.

Heightened (2nd) Level 1.
Heightened (3rd) Level 2.
Heightened (4th) Level 3.
Heightened (5th) Level 5.
Heightened (6th) Level 7.
Heightened (7th) Level 9.
Heightened (8th) Level 11.
Heightened (9th) Level 13.
Heightened (10th) Level 15.

So even with a 10th level spell slot you can summon a monster most likely 5 levels lower then anything you're dealing with and with a 9th 7 levels lower. Oh, on a similiar note GATE can no longer be used as a calling spell its just transportation now, and while neither of these are game changers I seriously doubt summon monster will see much use now and gate is only useful because plane shift is an uncommon rarity spell now and all tuning forks for the common planes are uncommon while demiplanes and the less common planes have rare tuning forks.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Kaemy wrote:


And for your second answer... The playtest is played with pre-made characters... I asume they got a list of what that Iconic Wizard was carrying?

Just wanted to comment that unless you were referring to the sample games at conventions and such so far that this is absoluely incorrect. During the playtest period and for the playtest adventure the devs have stated wanting to test character creation extensively and will not be using pre-made characters.

As to the other point the int modifier + x is for raising untrained skills to trained and only skills as are the skill increaes gained every other level, Mark has stated that increasing saves, weapon and armor proficiencies outside of your class features will be much rarer if you will be able to at all in certain cases. I would assume you could still take a general feat to become trained with all simple weapons but thats quite a cost seeing as we ony get 5 general feats as far as I remember.


6 people marked this as a favorite.

While I'm sure it's much too early to say that the ki abilities are weak or downgraded from pf1 I do have some concerns with how long it will take for them to really come online. The example we have for the only entry into ki powers in the playtest feels very underwhelming to spend a point from a limited pool to get a +1 bonus to a single attack roll. I understand the math in pf2 is much tighter so even a +1 bonus is useful but for spending a spell point I don't see why it wouldnt at the very least be for

1. All attacks this round

2. A bonus to attack and damage

Hopefully the ability scales to some degree that we haven't seen otherwise I have serious doubts it will ever see use once other ki powers have been taken making it seem quickly obsolete.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

They just havent charged yet, they've said the payment option will be charged in late July before the books ship out.

Predorder FAQ


4 people marked this as a favorite.
John Lynch 106 wrote:
Sebastian Hirsch wrote:
I was kinda hoping that magic missile would no longer be an auto hit..
It was even an autohit in D&D 4th ed. It was always going to be an autohit.

Not sure if someone else mentioned this yet, but in 4e magic missile actually required an attack roll initially. It was errata'd to be an autohit after a lot of outrage which is why it's probably not a good idea to do that again.


5 people marked this as a favorite.
Mewzard wrote:
Artificial 20 wrote:
Imagine a cleric of Shelyn sees someone peacefully destroying art and can only stop them by striking first.

Actually, that's quite interesting. Challenging one via ethical dilemmas can make for fantastic roleplaying scenarios.

The Cleric has mere moments to decide which of the two tenants of Shelyn would be most forgivable to break. Assuming Shelyn doesn't already have an established priority of her ethos, of course.

There is also the possibility to not have to break either. The cleric in question could interpose themself between the work of art and the person in question and/or plead with the person to stop destroying the work of art. Not every conflict has to be solved with weapons but you sure wouldnt know it reading through the arguing over the strike first tenet, it's almost as if the diplomacy skill doesn't exist.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I feel like one aspect of more useful, auto heightened cantrips that people seem to be forgetting is that using wands now cost resonance to use. It was very easy for a wizard to pick up craft wand and very cheap to craft a wand with 50 charges that very much could be used all day long. The way I see it cantrips being boosted is to account for the fact that, that is no longer possible and to alleviate some of the issues that people could have had with no longer having a fall back spammable spell. On that note, I've rarely seen wizards even at very low levels really run out of spells if they adequately prepare scrolls and wands, so some of these supposed situations of saving just the right spell for just the right moment seems unlikely to occur if the character is moderately prepared utilizing wands for spells that need to be cast a lot and scrolls for utility spells that come up on occasion and lastly their spell slots falling somewhere in the middle.