Ironeyess's page

I agree with Claxon.

That said, it wouldn't surprise me if "pseudo-gestalt", one class feat every level, ended up being a popular house rule.

It's pretty easy to fix though. Just give PCs an innate bonus (maybe 1 point behind the expected progression so that getting the next plus of magic weapon is still beneficial and desirable). Obviously, the magic weapon bonus wouldn't stack with your innate bonus.

I realise some people disagree with me on this topic but at the end of the day this was OUR experience we play these games to play the characters we want and have fun, if we wanted to HAVE to build characters a certain way and do things the ‘right way’ than we’d just play a video game and that’s the problem when building characters in the playtest it’s like building video game characters where if we don’t use the META we’re punished, pathfinder 1st ed had bad options and new player traps but there was no right way to play, however in the playtest I always see people saying

“Well you didn’t have the most effective party”
Sorry but if I can play the same 1st edition module 3 times with different classes every time but a cleric is mandatory in the playtest then that feels like a step in the wrong direction.

It's an apples and oranges comparison. The primary purpose of a PF1 module is to entertain.

However, the primary purpose of Doomday Dawn (and the designers have outright stated this in design blogs) is to stress test the new system. It is only secondarily to entertain. This particular section was designed to test very difficult, single encounter adventure days. So, of course the encounters would be difficult for a small, non-optimized party.

Point being, you won't necessarily need to build optimally for a PF2 module that is designed primarily for entertainment. But that's not this chapter of Doomsday Dawn.

I see some issues with it.

Healing doesn't really scale with the level of the caster. It scales with the level of the spell slot powering it.

Let's say you scaled it such that each spell level was worth 10% max hp. That would make a level 1 spell slot essentially worthless for healing. You'd need to scale back damage dramatically at low levels because low level parties wouldn't have access to meaningful healing.

As the system currently stands, a 1st level Heal is a good chunk of healing for a low level character, but a pittance to a high level character.

In the case of healing being 1d6 per recipients level, I can imagine it leading to some really ridiculous scenarios where, instead of a cart of CLW wands, the party just carts around a group of level 1 clerics they hire on.

As to high level healing being unrealistic, I think that's merely a symptom of high level hit points being unrealistic. No real world person could survive being caught dead center in multiple fireballs, much less continue fighting unimpeded, but a high level fighter can do just that. (Don't get me wrong, I prefer hp systems for their ease of use; I simply don't consider them to be very realistic.)

A core problem of this is that the game is telling us the difference between "untrained" and "legendary" is only +5. That is a miniscule competency gap, and inevitably leads to the perception that the very best are not that much better than the worst, no matter how trained they are. There are of course other ways to increase that gap further, but there still remains the implication that it's entirely possible that the gap between "Billy Two-Left-Feet" and "Dave the Nimble" is a mere 25% chance of success.

That's ignoring all the factors though.

There's skill, which ranges from -2 to +3.

Then there's talent (ability score) which ranges (sans magic) from -1 to +6.

On top of that is also gear, which I think is -2 (improvised gear) to +3.

Finally there's level, but that really only matters when dealing with disparate levels, so I'll ignore it as a factor.

I might be forgetting some bonuses, but the above are at least most of the reliable, big ones.

So in actuality Dave the Epic Lockpicker has a +12 to his check with his great lockpicks, while Billy All Thumbs has a -5 with the rat bone he scavenged. Meaning that Dave has a +85% chance of success over Billy (and that assumes the DM allows Billy to attempt the check in the first place).

I think PF2 supports the game you want to play, you just kind of have to do a reverse E6. Just start at level 5 (or so) and make most monsters/challenges 4 levels below the PCs. They'll be hyper competent and rarely fail. They'll be able to cleave their way through hordes of enemies. Really, the only thing missing from PF1 is that the other party members will still be able to contribute / have a realistic shot at succeeding.

Having just made a monk the other day, I can confirm that at level 1 you can start with AC 16 (10 + 1 level + 1 prof + 4 Dex), and boost it to 17 with Crane Stance. Also keep in mind that with Flurry of Blows, it seems as though you can easily skirmish every other round and still have good damage (make 2 attacks, step, stride) meaning that an enemy whose speed isn't greater than yours (or is blocked by a fighter type) can only attack you every other round. Granted, that won't always be the case, but it becomes an increasingly effective tactic as the monk's speed increases at higher levels.

As I see it, this is problematic in the sense that the designers seem to want to keep magic weapons important by default, and the extra damage does so.

That said, these would be good as optional rules to enable low magic campaigns. You could even keep magic weapons in the mix by treating the extra dice as the same type of bonus. If the weapon would grant you more dice than your innate capabilities, then use the weapon's bonus instead.

Untrained use isn't the issue. I'm actually okay with that part. Any untrained person can attempt to repair something. But they probably suck at it. (Though this is another place where +1/level starts to creep in to weird effect, since a high level person can suddenly make better repairs to any object in the world.)

The big problem is that once you are trained, you are trained at EVERYTHING. They gated item quality behind proficiency rank. Which helps a little. But it also highlights the absurd side...

Consider this:

During an adventure, I find the formula for a Master level katana.

Back in town, we have a swordsmith, Hattori Hanzo. He's an expert with 30 years experience forging katanas.

Unfortunately, Hattori can't help. He's not a master. He can't forge that sword.

But all is not lost, because Dorothy lives down the street. And she is a master level basketweaver. She's never made a sword before. Can barely lift a hammer.

Not to worry. She's a master. So I hand her the plans, rent a forge, and she whips up the master level katana of my dreams.

Step aside Hattori. Dorothy is gonna show you how to make a TRUE samurai weapon!

IMO, that's because Dorothy isn't proficient in Crafting, she's a master of Lore:Basketweaving.

Lore is the new Profession skill (which I admit confused me at first too). As evidence, see the Blacksmith background (p 38) and the Experienced Professional feat (p 165). It is odd, since Lore doesn't indicate that crafting is possible, but given that it is defined that you can earn a living using your lore, and Lore: Smithing is a thing (and moreover the Blacksmith background talks about having learned to craft armor and weapons), that does appear to be the intent as far as I can tell.

Crafting as a skill is arguably reserved for polymaths (such as PCs) rather than any NPC capable of making something of value. Presumably, the same can be said about Performance. Your average NPC should instead have a Lore specialization.