Hurká's page

[forgive me if I'm glaringly missing something here; I've drank too much wine today]

Why does attacking and defending work differently for physical combat than magical combat in 2E? i.e. physical combat (strikes, shoves, etc.) are all rolled by the initiator, but for most magical combat (except aimed magic like rays) the defender is the one who rolls. I get why it was that way in 1E (because 3.5 worked that way), but why not in 2E?

I'm playing a wizard right now and combat seems kinda flat. For example, when my ranger strikes and I roll an 18 I think "yeah! this character rocks! swoosh swoosh!" but when my wizard casts dominate and the enemy rolls a 3 I think "I only succeeded because the enemy can't keep the drool from dribbling down his chin."

Is there a reason that I can't switch to a system where Save DCs work like AC (i.e. 10 + proficiency + mods) and have all spells with degrees of success/failure are rolled like spell attack rolls? I have a sneaking feeling that there must be some balance reason or complexity that I'm not seeing, because otherwise it seems to be the simple "just makes sense" system that 2E would have implemented in the first place.

There are three additional bonuses to this type of system I see here:
1. Storytelling-wise it makes more sense for a lot of spells that "your wizard fumbled her complex arrangement of hand motions and incantations", rather than "mook #2 felt particularly steely minded in that moment".
2. It makes things faster, especially when there are lots of enemies affected by a spell, the GM doesn't have to roll and do math for 5+ enemies
3. It puts the power back in the hands of the PC to be inventive. Frequently I see physical combatants be like "can I throw the chair at the jug to knock it over onto his head with a difficult DC?" but never hear "can I try to widen the cone of this spell on the fly with a more difficult DC?" Maybe it's me, but with the character rolling, they might be more inclined to be more inventive in combat.

What are the drawbacks I'm not seeing?

I just finished watching the Paizocon panel on PF2 design philosophy and I was a bit bummed that there weren't any questions asked about the basics of the system, both mechanically and roleplaying-wise. I was hoping that by posting here you all could direct me to the design team's answers elsewhere.

On mechanics I'd like to know why the design team chose to keep certain fundamental mechanical systems: six stats, levels, classes, initiative, hit dice/points, alignment, spell levels, attack rolls, armor class, and saving throws. This is not to say that I'm disappointed that they kept these mechanics, but I have roleplayed in systems that have none of these mechanics. The design team must have spent some time evaluating alternatives before keeping them and I'm interested in knowing how these decisions went down and what considerations they made in keeping them. They obviously had these discussions, because they introduced backgrounds, ancestries, and proficiency which introduce major fundamental mechanical changes. I would love to have been a fly on the wall when they talked about everything they ended up keeping. That--to me--is the fascinating part.

It's easy for us to assume that some of their decisions were about simplicity, tradition, marketing, d20 mechanics, etc. but I'd like to hear some of the more nitty gritty reasoning that the design team went through. Do we have any quotes from the design team about about how they came to the decision to keep these mechanics?

Also, the panel talked about how they wanted Pathfinder to feel like Pathfinder, including how players roleplay. While this sounds like an obvious assumption, I imagine it too was something the Paizo team labored over. There are a lot of radically different roleplaying paradigms that have been developed in the last 10 years that PF2 could have incorporated. I'd love to hear more about how they chose to keep basically the same roleplaying paradigm, but I assume that they have not posted anything about that on the forums.

One of my players was playing an cleric in Chapter 1 and his building out his character for Chapter 4. Due to events with Pharasma in Chapter 1, his character wanted to abandon his deity for Pharasma and become a wizard. Not multiclass as a wizard, but dedicate himself to wizardry.

The deity change is doable with retraining, since it's a "selectable class option". However, I don't know how to do the class change in general. In PF1 this character would just be a Cleric 1 / Wizard 8 character. That's not possible with PF2 as far as I can see.

Do any of your know how this is done in PF2? If it's not, this is definitely something I find lacking in the rules. I thought my player was taking a very cool roleplaying element to make an interesting character, but I'm kinda blocked here at the moment.

The Pathfinder Playtest Rulebook does a poor job representing the ancestral diversity I find in the PCs at my table. Just as in real life, where racial representation in media affects society's perception and acceptance of those races, Paizo could do better by a most ancestries by simply representing them more frequently in their artwork and other media.
[I'm in no way trying to equate RPG ancestries to the plight of RL minorities. I'm simply saying, "don't be surprised if most people play humans when >40% of your core ancestry artwork features humans."]

I went through the Playtest Rulebook and took count of every discernible face shown in the pictures. Here's the ancestral breakdown.

• Dwarf: 8
  
• Elf: 15
  
• Gnome: 7
  
• Goblin: 18
  
• Half Elf: 3
  
• Half Orc: 2
  
• Halfling: 7
  
• Human: 52
  
• Not Core*: 20
  
• Can't Tell**: 20
  

Things I noted while taking count:

• 1. 4 of the 5 appearances of Half-Humans are on Page 23 alone!
  
• 2. 13 of the 18 appearances of Goblins are on Pages 273 and 335, and all as enemies.
  
• 3. 4 of the 7 appearances of Halflings are of the bard iconic, Lem. 2 of the others are for the ancestry face plates.
  
• 4. 5 of the 8 appearances of Dwarves are of the ranger iconic, Harsk. 2 of the others are for the ancestry face plates.
  
• I know some of this is due to reused material, but there's got to be left-over material of other Halflings and Dwarves. They aren't pigeon holed to one class.
  

Paizo! Give us more ancestral diversity in the artwork for the Official Rulebook and other media when 2E is released!

I am very happy that sign languages are getting more attention in 2E, but the implementation seems half-way and unrealistic. As I'll show below, it could easily go all the way without adding to the page count. [Though it does slightly add to the complexity.]

Sign languages are very different from written languages. Someone who learns ASL can't read English without separate training. The syntax, morphology, etc. are all different.

Yet the Rulebook states:

[In the case where your character uses sign language to communicate instead of spoken language], your character can communicate using the sign languages associated with the languages she selects, as well as being able to read and write the written forms of those languages.

I understand why there would be distinct sign languages for each spoken language, but couldn't we decouple the signing and the reading/writing? It would be very simple.

The same sentence could read something like this:

[In the case where your character uses sign language to communicate instead of spoken language], your character can communicate using the sign language associate with the languages she selects, as well as being able to read and write the written forms of as many languages as she can sign.

Most of the time players would choose the same languages, but this would give them the flexibility they have in real life. This type of situation isn't unheard of in real life (e.g. deaf scholars who can read/write fluently in multiple languages they can't sign in), but almost never happens with non-deaf people (e.g. I've never heard of a non-deaf person who can write fluently in a language but can't speak a lick of it, even with "dead languages" such as Latin).

The same could be done with the lip reading feat. For example, you could have a group of human slaves who had their tongues cut out and grew up signing Common behind the backs of their Orc captures. They can read and lip read Orc, but they can't speak Orc nor speak, write, or read Common.

In the end however, I am not deaf, so more than anything it would be good to hear from Paizo about the feedback that they have gotten from the deaf community on their implementation of sign language. I've got my opinion, but they are kinda secondary. I'd love to hear what the deaf community thinks.

I've usually bought my Paizo books at stores, so I'm unfamiliar with how Paizo handles release dates.

Does anyone know how Paizo ensures that our books arrive on--but not before--August 2nd? In past releases did people have to wait a while for their books to arrive?

I may not play Paladins, or hate Vancian magic, and I don't particularly care about alignment. But my ultimatum with RPGs is that I won't buy it if it doesn't encourage good roleplaying.

I know that pushing this roleplaying agenda of mine sounds selfish, but hear me out!

PF1 is a very good system. And while I'm looking forward to every single one of the slated improvements in PF2, I'm not sure if the new system will make for a better roleplaying experience for most players once the novelty wears off and the games settle in. I'm especially excited about what's around the corner with downtime and exploration modes, but I doubt that will do much to elevate mediocre play. There is a lot of mediocre PF1 play out there and it's really getting me down.

You know what would make for a better RPG? Better roleplayers! And what better place to groom gamers' roleplaying ability than in an all new CRB.

Sure, great roleplayers are great because of experience, talent, and enthusiasm, but roleplaying is very much a learned skill too and I hope that Paizo does more to help us hone it in PF2. New and experienced players (e.g. me) could benefit from a chapter that gives us exercises, tips, prompts, experiments, and other tools for us to bring our roleplaying (and in particular, my roleplaying) to new heights.

Most guides have a small section that outlines a sample session, talks about dealing with groups, disputes, GM/PC interaction, etc. No core guide that I've read delves deep into how PCs can work to better inhabit their characters, buff their acting skills, encourage creative problem solving through roleplay, and other such skills that excellent roleplayers employ. Having a large section of the CRB dedicated to roleplaying would differentiate PF2 and be a real boon to all players, especially me.

I hope that Paizo puts their wealth of latent roleplaying knowledge to ink in PF2 for us--but mostly me--to benefit from.

Question about the Wyrmwitch: https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/witch/archetypes/paizo-witch- archetypes/wyrmwitch-witch-archetype/

From the end of the section on the hoard:

If the wyrmwitch does prepare spells after properly sleeping on his hoard, he gains the ability to call on his hoard to cast any one spell it is holding and that he is capable of casting, even if the spell is not prepared. This spell is treated like any other spell cast by the wyrmwitch, including when determining casting time, duration, and other effects dependent on the wyrmwitch’s level. This spell cannot be modified by metamagic feats or other abilities.

Is this 1/day, 1 spell/day, or unlimited/day?

Example with Sleep:
1. I can cast Sleep 1/day even if I haven't prepared it.
2. I can choose to cast Sleep unprepared, but then I can only use Sleep unprepared that day (but unlimited times that day).
3. I can cast any number of unprepared spells (including Sleep), just without metamagic feats.

I assume it's #1, but I'm not used to the rules not stating the times per day.

Abstract
My opinion is that "path" is a more appropriate term than "feat" for use in 2E. I will attempt to convince more people by stating my opinion in a contrived academic structure.

Introduction

"Feat" has always been a weird word for me to use in 1E. Sure, being able to draw a weapon quickly (as per Quick Draw) is kinda a feat, but is being slightly more alert than average (as per Alertness) a feat? It's awkward at best, in my opinion.

Materials and Methods

My opinion was formed in a near-catatonic hypnotic state, on 3 hours of sleep while futilely attempting to soothe my infant son's cries in the middle of a packed flight out of Dallas.

I spent 10 minutes with my 7E Roget's International Thesaurus to make sure I couldn't easily find one I liked more than "path".

I also went through the feats in the CPG, APG, UC, and UM to make sure I prefer "path" more than "feat" with most of them. Which I in fact did prefer, thank you very much.

Result

"Path" just makes more sense to use than "feat", imho. "Feat" makes no sense in the context of ancestry. "Feats of skill" are the results of skills not the mastery "feats" would provide. "Feats" only make more sense for a narrow set of abilities, e.g. "Dazzling Display".

Examples
Ancestries: "I get a +4 AC because I chose the path of hating giants"(!!) makes more sense than "I get a +4 AC because I choose the feat of hating giants"(?!)
Skills: "I have/choose/am on the path of the artisan", yes. give it to me. all of them! oglogloglogolog... "I have/choose/am on the feat of the artisan", what?
General: "I can take Trample because I am on the Mounted Combat path", beautiful. "I can take Trample because I have the Mounted Combat feat", meh.
Class Feat: "You need to be on the Weapon Focus path to unlock Weapon Spec." is certainly no worse than "You need to have chosen the Weapon Focus feat to unlock Weapon Spec."

Also, it's in the flippin' name!!!!
Pathfinder. Now that so many character building decisions follow the same mechanic, call that mechanic "paths".

Strawmen

Here are some easy counterarguments I thought of and rebutted. So if your counterarguments resemble these at all, even if they are robust, well reasoned arguments, I will immediately dismiss them in the most petty way I can:

• "The couple of times 'feat' sounds appropriate, it's a bit better than 'path' (e.g. Tripping Twirl feat)." But out of the hundreds of feats I glanced through there were only a handful of those.
  
• "It might make it a bit harder to use 'path' in a non-technical sense." But as my Roget's tells shows me there are plenty of alternative words. Also, when my GM says "You were able to climb the tower barehanded. Quite a feat!" I'm not confused as to what he's saying, now will I be with "path".
  

Errata

Apologies if this has been suggested before. It's kinda hard to search in the archives for "path" and "feat" :P

Discussion

See below :D

I'm trying to make a back-story for my tengu bard(archaeologist), but I don't see any mention in the Advanced Races Guide or the Inner Sea World Guide of where Tengu usually reside around the Inner Sea. So, which regions of the Inner Sea do Tengu usually live in?

I was interested in playing an aasimar monk who grew up in the Mwangi Expanse. However, that led me to a questions about aasimars and ethnic languages:

Do aasimars know the ethnic language of the ethnicity they grew up in?

I asked several knowledgeable people here in Boston and I got conflicting answers. My Venture-Captain, Don Walker--who worked closely with Paizo on the 4.2 PFS Organized Play Guide--didn't know definitively and encouraged me to post here. So I am :)

The reason I've gotten so many different answers is probably because it doesn't appear like there is any such rule on the books and I couldn't find anything here on the boards. I bought Blood of Angels and the Advanced Race Guide, but no luck. Below I'll discuss the evidence I've found on the topic, most of it supporting the notion that aasimars know their ethnic tongue:

The simple argument against aasimars knowing their ethnic language is that 1. Aasimars aren't human and the 4.2 rules clearly state that "you gain free languages granted by your race, ethnicity (for humans), and class" 2. Aasimars can't have an ethnicity (at least the books don't say they can have an ethnicity).

However, the first line of the aasimars section in the Advanced Race Guide states that "aasimars are humans with a significant amount of celestial or other good outsider blood in their ancestry". Unlike half-elves and half-orcs, who don't automatically know ethnic languages, aasimars have a significantly larger proportion of human heritage (otherwise they'd be half-celestials), so it's not clear if they qualify as "human enough" or not from this passage alone.

Some might say "but aren't they outsiders? How can they still be human?" Yet no one would argue that a monk can't know their ethnicity's language after attaining Perfect Self (regardless of Tongue of the Sun and Moon).

But what about aasimars having an ethnicity at all? This question probably deserves another post and answer, but I should mention that no one that I asked thought that my aasimar couldn't learn Polyglot, just that she might have to take a rank in linguistics to do so. There was consensus on this point even though the Advanced Race Guide and Blood of Angels do not list any of the ethnic human languages as accessible to aasimars.

Also, the level to which an assimar can assimilate into their local society would indicate that they can speak the ethnic language. Blood of Angels says that "Most aasimars are born to human parents and live in mainly human settlements. An aasimar might spend a good portion of her childhood thinking of herself as human". Zenj don't know Polyglot because of their Zenj blood. They know Polyglot for the exact same reason that I know English, because they grow up speaking it. It would be odd if my character grew up in the middle of the Mwangi Expanse, considered herself to be Zenj, but found herself incapable of learning any Polyglot.

So, could someone at Paizo please answer these for me:
1. Can aasimar have an ethnicity? If not, please clarify why the evidence given above does not apply.
2. Can aasimar gain any or all of the benefits of being a particular ethnicity (languages, traits, etc.)?
3. If "No" and "No", can aasimar learn ethnic languages with ranks in linguistics?

Left Field question:
4. If "No", "No" and "Yes", could my aasimar know Polyglot and Celestial but not Common or do all PCs have to know Common? I suspect PCs don't have to know Common because deaf oracles don't have to know Common, but it would be good to have that clarified. Not knowing Common would probably make more sense given my character's background and she only has 10 Int, which is why I ask.

Thanks! :D

Edit: Another question:

5. Do all of the above answers apply similarly to tieflings?