I can assure you however that I have taken everyone's advice on board and have removed them from my games swiftly and thoroughly.Removed what from your games? The offending parties involved. They must not be named, for they never existed.
I also had the issues where my players much prefer the original games material, adult adventures written for adult players. Also a decade of a system is a hell of a drug. I would recommend using the GMG rules of:
PF2e feels like a slide towards the Disney Cocomelon Fantasy PG-13 demographic with PCs being offered to be flowers or dolls, which is no doubt better for younger players or family groups- but we're 30 to 40 something year olds who want sex, blood and naughty words in our RPG; not trying to figure out how to make friends (Fist Full Of Flowers... never again). It can be really hard as a GM to have to 'damage control' the changes as they come. I feel the Remaster has been a speedbump that was hit way too hard and fast (understandable as to why) but it has only led to unclear rules. We ended up dropping everything and just using the Remastered Core and nothing else. It's just easier this way. Less is more. Abomination Vaults is a very good adventure and you can immediately step from Beginner Box (Menace Under Otari) straight into Abby Vaults (Ignore Trouble In Otari, it's a 6/10 rats in the basement snoozefest) Abby Vabby at least has a horror theme, though quite tame- I recommend adding some flair and spice to it and ham up the atmosphere; make them fear The Empty Death!
As an Arodenite I haven't figured this out yet.
I don't think I've ever had a game where everyone was at the same level at the end of the campaign.How do you distribute XP? Sorry for not following this up sooner, I just use the normal XP system in PF2e but if players don't show up for sessions or die they don't get XP for encounters. In addition some players will complete individual milestones for their characters which is usually something that is roleplay dependant and flicks them a moderate XP bonus. PF2e in general seems to be very good at rubber banding players together, at my table after everyone finishes a combat I tell them "You just defeated 3 5th level creatures and a 6th level creature." and they look up the XP table appropriate to their current level. Players that rush ahead tend to slow down while those left behind get sped up. EDIT: Also worth noting that my group migrated to Proficiency Without Level about 4 session in to speed up the game and reduce math load.
I had a group start with the beginner box and another group learn the game because I gave them all photocopies of the GM screen and it feels very surreal to see what feels like the majority of players not playing the game as written. But there's also a lot more about the rule set that that has terrible presentation and organization, mostly because the system seems absolutely terrified of tersely explaining things within a single action or topic. For example the Stunned condition could just say "you can't use reactions" but instead you have to read an entire other section of the book (I'm not going to tell you where, go find it like I did), not referenced in the Stunned condition to figure out what the intended rule is. This is terrible design. But I'm also excited to see who or what else people have been doing wrong for the past 4 years. I bet the Perception rules are a hot bed of completely different takes, did you know being invisible and in a Silence spell adds no bonus to stealth checks, but being behind a waist high wall adds +2? I wish the Remaster was an actual complete rewrite of the rules from the ground up; instead it feels like a Repost.
Can you please remove descriptions from the book that say "As Per X" or worse, "Look above this" which doesn't appear above but actually appears on a different page altogether and also never do it again. Page: 256 + 257
You heard it here first folks, Australia just got Tasmania'd.
I really hope alignment is still going to be functional within the system in some regard as I can't see Outerplanes/Planescape adventures working without it. Not to mention I love the quirks of picking up a sword that has bad vibes and one player knows for a fact that it's evil while another thinks it's just +5 jealousy-invoking sword. Splitting the books between players and GM is a bit annoying because I'd rather every player have the tools on hand to run the game instead of having the excuse of "Woah woah I can't run the game I don't have the game runner book!!" Please please please revise the PF2e character sheet too. The current sheet is fully and without a doubt not too crash hot at the table and 4 A4 sheets is a bit much to juggle.
So good it made sure people who have never played Pathfinder get to experience trying to use Paizo's website!!
Yep, it's better than a spell. But that doesn't mean the Wizard can't pick it up. :) "I would like to Scare To Death the minion by informing it that I have prepared Power Word Kill"
Please please please PLEASE sell these dice sets, reference cards & character sheets separately. Don't make me buy 5 separate boxes :(
I much prefer how monsters work now in PF2e. They feel quite powerful and able to harm the players pretty consistently. I like that as a design philosophy. When I'm in the kitchen I make sure the knife is sharp and I am just more careful with it, as opposed to making sure its blunt and using it carelessly.
Cafe Latte - Item 1
Saving Throw Fortitude (DC 11); Onset 1 day; Stage 1 Addiction (3 days); Stage 2 stupefied 1 and you become irritated if you haven't drunk Cafe Latte within the past 4 hours (3 days); Stage 3 stupefied 1 and drained 1 and extremely irritable and nervous unless you have drunk Cafe Latte within the past 4 hours.
I really don't agree with the idea that the real mythology creatures that Paizo release are a disservice or harmful to the original source material or culture they are derived from. If anything, they expose a wealth of hidden culture, charm and knowledge to people who might never have been able to experience it. It is the melting pot of world I love, multiculturalism is a beautiful thing, I want to see all that it has to offer and I never want to be stifled with boarders, let along imaginary ones under the false pretense of 'protection'.
I really like the way Pathfinder 2e deals with the power scale. I like how things are basically level vs level with a bit of wiggle room for mastery in a certain domain. It really makes executing ideas and monsters far faster and more fluid as a GM and also signals to the players that there is danger on the table. The idea that a monster that is way above their level is somewhere in front of them actually makes them play the game differently. There isn't a "just have a bigger number!" game of trying to brute force everything. It puts the fear back into players who know that if they fight something, one or several of them will die doing it. I love that. On the flip side monsters that are below their level are pretty much dismissed with an almost always instant critical handwave. Players get a lot of satisfaction in having such power to basically dictate what happens- and I don't even need to roll dice in some situations, the outcome is immediately obvious. Both these elements speed up play and make the game less about "I hope I roll good" and more along the lines of "I hope I pick my battles". I much prefer this type of play not only from a mechanical stand point but also from a storytelling stand point. Long gone is the era of "you will win if you -build- your character powerfully". I hope more role playing games use this style of play, I think PF2e really is onto something with their new system.
I think it would take a very very long time for any dwarf to trust a goblin. it would be like asking a lion to get along with a hyena. Dwarves as a race are inherently conservative, and for much if not all of their history they have been at war with goblins. Despite only making up 5% of Player Characters, Goblins start 80% of the orphanage fires. *Crosses Dwarf arms*
"Negative Energy" and "Negative Damage" work differently. Or I could just cast Disrupting Weapons on my dagger and stab you to health.
As someone who largely ignored potions in PF1 other than 'hey emergency fighter backup', what was their price scaling in PF1? Click the "in this side by side comparison!" text in the first post.
So I was going over my current campaign that's soon to move to PF2e and I noticed that a lot has changed for gold cost, however one thing has caused me a great deal of irritation has been that potions and scrolls basically cost the same as you can see in this side by side comparison! So my question is, how come my fighters baby bottle is now the same price as the wizards quadratic formula? Potions are basically better than scrolls as far as who can use them (anyone) with no skills required. Is there something about PF2e's gold/item cost that I'm not understanding? Please point it out for me.
You want to install Bluestacks and within Bluestacks install Pathbuilder 2. Bluestacks:
Pathbuilder:
Have fun! It should look like this.
3 action economy makes things fast and fluid Everything is determined almost entirely by level vs level, extremely easy to adjudicate. Players basically instantly kill anything 10 levels lower or run away from anything 10 levels higher. Building a character is (slow and dumb) easy to choose customization without creating massive power differences between players characters.
I don't want the flavour text to go away. I think flavour and fluff should have its own section in the spell list, similar to how monster stat blocks have a separate section for Description/Ecology. Maybe if it was listed somewhere in italic text, something like this:
I would feel bad killing a shiny Kobold.
I can't stand not looking at it any longer!! Special shout out to my two favourite new iconics:
Regarding what specifically effects what; I also noticed this wording on the wall spells, which to my frustration are all separated into their own special little individual spells. You raise a blazing wall that burns creatures passing through it. You sculpt a barrier of ice that blocks sight and, once shattered, freezes foes. You create a barrier of gusting winds that hinders anything moving through it. You shape a wall of solid stone. . Fire effects any creatures
Obviously Game Masters will be able to arbitrate what each wall will do in any given circumstance, but the rules are a bit capricious if you try to follow them directly as written.
All magic in general was limited a fair amount. I like some of the changes but others I'm no so thrilled about. One thing I do like is that the really really terrible effects that were basically save or die still exist, but only as critical failures. Another thing I feel that casters always forget to factor into their casting is their Focus Spells. These are always cast at the highest slot and come back with a 10 minute refocus. Basically casters now have their big feature/trump card ability available to them every single combat encounter. Wizards have always been a very technical class with a lot of their 'over powered problems' coming from particular players. While martial characters have definitely been improved I still can see the invisible, flying wizard fireballing things with broken impunity.
Just enjoying reading the Bestiary 6 and I am gobsmacked with the excellent art and design that went into these creatures and I was wondering, has Paizo released all it's art in a book that I can put on the coffee table for guests to enjoy?
I never buy that smelly argument. If they wanted it to be a exercise in a e s t h e t i c s then they would of created entire different measurement systems along with days and seasons and volumes and portions. "I hope you have your Ponfanks of water ready for the Zoot-tow Blam we'll be travelling, it should take several Aleyoopahs but we're hoping to cut a few Mergurgles with secret a route. Remember that the cart can only carry Yubyubs of Goinkeets excluding your Bag Of Prangangaranga (Translator note: Prangangaranga means Holding)" No one ever said "10 kilometers to the Lake of a million liters" and flipped the table because of their 'immersions' breaking. I still use the correct measurements at the table because players already hate remembering arbitrary values to swords and hats, let alone trying to use a inferior <10% of the population measurement standard.
So, I was running a game this one time, in which I had a succubus to mess around with, and one of the PCs ran up and grappled her.
"No actually, there's only one character with the grappled condition in this edition" "Hmm... lets go back to Pathfinder one for this okay?"
Yes please! I'm guessing 90% of PF players are yankees so it probably won't happen.
I have a feeling some of my gripes would be solved with an online SRD. Basically creating a character takes a while, you have to jump around a lot to find what you're looking for, especially for a spell caster (Even with the mighty ctrl+f function). It doesn't feel as fast as Pathfinder 1s character creation. I don't know if the problem is that things are too modular or that the races HP is only listed between flavour text on the race page above the art work. I do like the skill system thus far. I feel like DCs are much easier to estimate as a GM and the 3 kinds of success make things more interesting.
If undead don't have to be evil I also demand room temperature fire elementals and civilized bugbears and every other postmodern whim of fancy I come up with.
A 'return to the start' maze works in D&D. You simply show them a map they can travel through and then describe the world acting non-euclidean. GM: There's a thick forest grove up ahead, it splits off into 3 directions other than the entrance you're at, North, East and West.
And so on until they get the patter right. Of course this is D&D so every time they fail feel free to add in a bad effect, an annoying but quick combat or a loss of time negatively impacting something.
You're inside the cave, there's a funny tingling salt scent in the air. The chamber opens up to a perfectly clear pool full of bleached white rocks. Player 1: Uh, I throw the end of my rope in the pool.
It's a bad idea to punish players because they don't embellish their actions; it's not like in that 10 seconds where you explain that their 'role-playing' wasn't good enough they're suddenly going to have some introspective moment where they see the error of their ways. But it's a good idea to reward players who do go that extra effort. This is also something that should be outlined as an expectation during session 0. As long as they can preface their action with some sort of description that is perfectly fine. Like say for example they're trying to intimidate a band of hobgoblins to back down from a skirmish. "I intimidate for 42"
"I cut my hand and wipe the blood across my brow before giving my warcry. 42 intimidation!"
And I mean... a lot of tabletop players are charisma -4. If you catch my drift. Try to meet them half way.
It seems to be a problem on forums but not so much at the table. "We played D&D and the wizard ruined everything!!" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
As far as content goes Paizo write some really amazing, well detailed and compelling adventures. A typo or spelling mistake is like a fart in a tornado.
Taverns are the Starbucks/McDonalds of Golarion One adventure party please, hold the Drizzt clones.
Summon some sort of planar creature who be mad at the Earth blowing up. Sort of like a telephone call. "Uh, hi. Wizard here, your house is on fire. Yeah. Yeah. Mmmhm. No like there's all the bombs- ... Okay, sure well I can't really do anything except tell you. ... No I'm not allowed to use Wish ... No I mean I'm arbitrarily not allowed to ... are you dissing my build? Screw you then I have a demiplane I can chill in- forget you"
Get your 'to hit' and 'damage' numbers higher than any other numerical value on your sheet. If you don't do this then your character is a pile of garbage and you deserve to lose. ---meanwhile elsewhere--- I picked up skill focus: knitting because I think my character would be good at it. Also I made their charisma really high eschewing most of the other stuff because I want people to like them lfg barbarian
Whenever I return to the messageboard this thread is the one true lighthouse- the anchor I can hold onto in the wild sea of threads. Thank you Sin of Asmodeus.
Ghoul feaver? Brain worms? Mummy rot?!! Good grief the clients of the cheapies are extremely varied. Supernatural STDs.
I do agree with what you're saying about the cultural homogeneousness some people have with fantasy. I think 'morality' in this situation is the wrong concept. What we're really discussing is reputation; how actions will reflect on how others perceive us. Picking your nose is not an alinged act, but you'll definitely get reactions.
Caster Martial debates always happen because theory crafting (90% of the topics) benefits prepared casters to the point where they can kill anything that is stated up. Of course, in a real game it's a bit harder to always have the answer with all the things up in your grill and the GM only gives you 30 seconds to deliberate. Don't worry though, nothing on this board has ever ruined my games... Except for that thread about jumping over a 10f pit.
It seems to be RAW, as much as this here text : "A wish granted by a glabrezu always fulfills the wisher’s need in the most destructive way possible" Now you're just being silly, clearly the wishes would always be horse related and travel orientated. Also the horse is chaotic evil. Too bad it wasn't manifested with Summon Instrument which is also 100% legal.
The more skill points, the better. Love them skill points.
Three words: Living Grimoire Inquisitor. I approve of this self-insertion rules lawyer archetype.
Wait, you're using a level 1 spell as a 9th level spell to get a 9th level spell? I'm pretty sure with highten spell you still can't get a level 1 spell to emulate a level 9 spell. And I'm sure I've read that exact phrase somewhere in the RAW.
I love the idea of being part of a secret good aligned cult. Like, living in the Underdark you secretly believe that there's a sun somewhere and that you worship Serenrae. Secretly drawing pictograms of lense flares and dawn landscapes.
How about an angel of unrequited love? Tasked with consoling the rejected, overlooked, and scorned in an effort to prevent them from becoming bitter and forsaking love. Rebound angel! Rengel! Time to stat this up... |
