I want to give thanks again for all of the players and especially the GMs who continue to make this game day happen. Cheers! Our games day is now FREE at The Round Table in Guelph. Our next event will be at Gryphcon Shadow at the University of Guelph on November 2, 2024. Our Facebook page is
The funniest scenarios depend on the players (and GM), not the scenario itself. As for the fun coming from the scenario itself, there is some potential humor in the following: Sandstone Secret (Durvine Klein)
I don't mind buying scenarios, but now I'm going to really start thinking about whether I need to buy it or not (I've purchased scenarios I haven't used in the past). I'll probably be taking the VL up on the offer to provide them for free in the future. Gamers are notoriously cheap (far cheaper than myself), this move really surprises me because scenarios are supposed to be "loss leaders", they're used to promote their other products. They aren't supposed to make money, it's marketing. Anyway, thought I'd share that I was concerned and surprised as well.
Name of PC: Mousey
It happened twice as well technically, as one of her friends opened the other door. Elf with low HP. The group is a bunch of kids, so I was soft and didn't auto-kill them, especially since they didn't even know about the rule. Instead I destroyed their light armor.
Given that this is a dangerous AP and you never stay dead long in it, I thought it would be fun to have an obituary page, in the same vein (heh) as Rise of the Rune lords and other APs. Where and how have my fellow GMs killed PCs? Please try to include
Most of all, I'm disappointed in spells like Ignition, which is meant to replace Produce Flame. Produce Flame did an average of 6.5 damage, Ignition now does 5 damage at range, and 7 damage in melee (which is not ideal for a wizard, especially considering how low their AC and HP are). The last thing spellcasters needed was a nerf. They should have been given a huge buff. If they were going to do that with Ignition, why not make it one action, since spellcasters also get the multi-attack penalty? That would at least be a reasonable trade-off. In previous editions, casters were glass cannons. They had low hit points and armor class, but to compensate, they had huge offense and utility. Now Wizards have low HP, do less damage than martials, and have low utility because skills seem to have taken over. It seems like every class that was weak in PF1 was made powerful, and every overpowered class in PF1 was made weak in PF2. The alchemist is the perfect example.
It won't be. Thanks for the reply. That's too bad. I don't agree with the reason for not sanctioning it. I'm playing it now, with 10 year olds with non-evil characters. The plot still makes sense, the Pathfinder society is trying to get a Pathfinder Lodge in Geb and Berline is providing that opportunity. The horror element isn't too much (it really depends on the GM). It's certainly not worse than Rise of the Runelords, especially with the incestuous ogres (if you want, you can take that way way over the top)... Then again, we're just playing the first book, and will probably head back to PFS scenarios afterwards. So I don't know what happens throughout the entire campaign, maybe there are evil actions to take, I don't know? But so far, not at all. To me the reason not to sanction is because it's open ended and takes so long. Would be almost impossible to fit a book into an 8 hour slot. That bank is deadly and so was the ostovite nest.
Any idea when this might be sanctioned for organized play? This campaign is really good stuff.
Your customers could really use a preview of what the maps might look like. Currently, I watch unpacking YouTube videos, otherwise I just don't buy them.
Nice to see Sheila Heidmarsh back.
The WoTC crisis, but I think that the end of COVID, lockdowns, mask, and jab requirements is a bigger factor. Locally, GMs and players are coming out again. Origins is also sold out. I'm glad to be doing in person gaming again!
I had a similar problem with my daughter, who played a druid, and always used and befriended animals creatively. It's actually a super useful and extremely powerful ability when used creatively (and given the time to do so). The problem isn't the Pathfinder game. When I was playing with her solo or with her friend who was similar, we came up with lots of alternate stories, creative solutions, and cool ideas. I was actually more satisfied with those stories than "normal" stories. The problem is when I added my brother and his two children into the mix. They wanted to kill everything and got extremely agitated when my daughter tried to find alternate solutions, or less direct methods. In the end, she just got used to killing everything and as a player, doesn't try to use her resources as creatively. Which is kind of sad now that I think about it. I think the answer is that someone's play style has to compromise. If they won't compromise to her play style, then perhaps you're better off doing solo games, or taking only a few trusted players with her.
I'm super confused why the bestiary needs a new version. Is it because of legal matters, and to accommodate the Open RPG Creative (ORC)? Will there be new art again? Or a mix of new art and existing PF2 art? Honest question (and maybe it's too early in the marketing), what benefits would an existing PF2 player or GM get from these new core sets? Atm, we're still launching PF2 in my area thanks to the lockdowns.
Where is a watermarked image of the final map? And the other side?
We need preview images please.
Being involved with the creation of Vampire: The Masquerade, Magic the Gathering. Employee #1 at Wizards? And Pathfinder of course. Wow, you've had an amazing career! Thanks for having a hand in making some of the best games ever!
Virtually every scenario can end with a non-violent solution. It depends on the GM and the players if they want to make it happen and are creative enough to make it happen. Sometimes it means making deals with evil creatures/enemies though. Is that really better than having a violent solution? I don't think so, but to each their own. I'll give you some examples of scenarios where they assumed you'd have a violent ending and my group (of children age 8-11) turned it into a non-violent ending. Doom of Cassomir example:
The hag at the end, the party druid (who wanted to save the frogs and crocodiles of the swamp) made a deal with the (evil) hag. They negotiated the following:
Shadows and Scarecrows bounty:
The bounty assumes the party will defeat Tefla, who is evil. Instead Tefla offered the group a deal, defeat Kareida and help her track down the other refugees, in return for more gold than the rancher was offering. So they took the deal. I ran this 3 times and only 1 group took the deal. They actually didn't know Tefla was evil (no Religion), Tefla was an authority figure, and they didn't investigate enough to know what was going on (the first location they investigated, they had the skills to track down the refugees). So they didn't knowingly work with evil, it was done more because of ignorance.
Oh this is an old thread, sorry for continuing the zombification.
1) You read each review with a grain of salt. 2) You take an amalgamation of all of the reviews. Often there is a common theme that runs through all reviews, it depends on how the GM and players like it. 3) Read the reviews, run a table, and compare that to what other reviews have said. Find a reviewer you agree with and follow them. I find the reviews extremely helpful in knowing whether I want to GM or be a player in a scenario, much more helpful than long winded "professional" reviews. After about 20 reviews, the star rating is pretty much spot on, at least for me. There have only been a few times when I've disagreed with it. I wish there was an easy way to see new product reviews, like we had before on the front page. I loved logging each day and reading what people thought on different products. I think Paizo really screwed up when they removed it from the front page, I don't log onto this website much anymore.
I must say, I'm starting to see WotC's point - okay so cantrips aren't meant to impress, but if you can do something impressive three times a day, I'd prefer it if what you did then actually impressed. In short, where are the "striking runes" for spellcasters? This forum is going to disagree with you, but I agree with you. I like 2E, but spellcasters are under powered in it. It's like you say, since their spells are limited, these spells should be impressive, but they aren't, they're often not even as good as a martial attacking. Fireball isn't a good example btw. A good example would be Acid Arrow or Spider Sting. But yeah, what can you do about it? At home, make house rules, at conventions, play martial characters.
The PF2 rules are good in general, but bulk is just one case of many where Paizo blew it. Characters can't carry enough. Sure, characters in PF1 could carry too much, so much so that we never tracked encumbrance, but now it just swung to the other extreme. Tracking bulk is not fun, this is not why we play adventures. Which is probably why the pregens ignore it entirely. If each character could carry 2 bulk more, I think that would be enough.
The biggest problem with your online guide is that there are no links to it from most of this website. For example you main page is still showing PF1 links.
Luckily I remembered this blog post, but most people don't even visit this web site. I know that you lost a web master, but the web site is really a mess considering you just launched a huge new product. I guess at least the forums still work.
Also, the Downtime section is too large. I'm not sure what you have planned for it, but I can't imagine downtime being too exciting. It can probably be combined in notes, or on a single line. Items sold and conditions gained could be one a single line or just in notes. I've had three level 12 characters now and on each I've sold maybe 2 items each. This section should not have more space than items. Even "items bought" could be reduced a line or two. In the items section, I think you could save space by not writing the book where the item comes from. Today's gamer just Googles the item and finds it in the SRD. The book's name can be found easily enough and is not needed.
Some late feedback to this post. Hopefully it will still be read and considered. Adventure Summary
Having said that, the Adventure Summary section is too big. Most scenarios can be summarized in one sentence, three sentences at most. And if it takes longer I don't want that much detail. Items section larger
What goes in the items section?
A) The price is discounted. (And I think ALL items we find in scenarios should be discounted 10% by default!); or B) The item is unique. This would greater solve the problem with that section being currently too small.
In a game where spellcasters have lost a lot of their utility and have an even more limited use of spells compared to PF1, a subtype like Evocation wizards should be doing comparable damage, and more top end damage for their best spells, compared to martials. I actually played a wizard in playtest to level 10 and it was disappointing. In PF1, the only people playing blaster wizard or sorcs were people who had extreme game mastery and had planned them out from level 1, using traits, obscure feats, and of course metamagic. Any new player who tried to play a blaster "out of the box" (or played Ezren in PFS) was very disappointed and wondered why they were so terrible when everyone had been telling them how amazing and overpowered they are. In PF2, metamagic isn't the same. In PF2, touch AC isn't a thing, it's almost the same as AC. Which means a highly reduced DPS for arcane blasters, and nothing has been done to compensate. Sorry, some of you are saying an arcane spellcaster is there just to buff others and for utility, but I completely disagree. Sure, that is one way to play them, but that's just one play style. And surely players have noted how nerfed spells like Haste have become right? In PF1 it was great (and should have affected only 1 target), now it's just terrible. I was really hoping blaster wizards/sorcs would be fixed in PF2, that you could make a reasonable blaster wizard or sorceror without game mastery, and without the ability to make it too good. For Wizards, I don't think they do enough to make the schools stand out. Not all wizards should be able to do better DPS, but it should be possible for evocation wizards.
Great art as always.
Thanks for writing that.
Although not an NPC, more of Moloch from Citadel of Flame. Cyflymder from Tide of Morning. Jathyl from Flesh Collector. Sheila Heidmarch (because she’s the best). Chrysalis Black from The Golemworks Incident. Michellia Blakros (?) and Damian Kastner from the Blakros Matrimony. A followup would be... nice. Kalkamedes from the Night March of Kalkamedes. The entire cast from Shores of Heaven.
Making lots of characters feel very samey. With lots having 18 Dex, Wis, and Con as they level up. While I don't agree with your solution, I do agree that it's super annoying that all characters and all stats converge to 18 as you approach level 15. It's also annoying that boosts after 18 are lower. In PF2, you can't "master" anything. At level 10 in PF1, our characters didn't have the same stats, the same cannot be said for PF2. Hopefully they reduce the power or number of boosts you get every 5 levels so we don't all morph into Greek Olympians at level 15.
Actually interested in this book, bad timing for it however.
Disarm should be under Acrobatics. An argument could be made for Trip.100% agreed on both. It bugged me that all the combat maneuvers are locked into a strength skill. Hi. As someone who does MMA, judo, wrestling, and kickboxing, there are weight classes for a reason. STRENGTH MATTERS. Tripping (which is judo) uses technique, but strength makes a huge difference. Same thing with shoving, same thing with grappling (wrestling, jui-jitsu). You could make the argument that disarming has more to do with dexterity. You could also argue that Feint has to do with dexterity as well (it has NOTHING to do with Deception, the best liars in the world aren't the best boxers). There should be two skills because the strongest guy isn't necessary the best at all aspects of sport. Dexterity is about being a gymnast and being able to control your own body weight. Jumping, climbing, and swimming have a lot more to do with dexterity than strength, so I don't agree with Paizo on how they've categorized them. Michael Phelps might not be the strongest guy, but I bet he can beat the strongest man in the world at all of those things. I also don't think he can do the lifting the strongest man in the world can do either. And no, just because you're strong doesn't make you the best climber. In my experience (because I've done rock climbing), it's actually the opposite. But yeah, rock climbers have good grip and back strength, but again, it has to do with controlling your own body weight, like a gymnast. I obviously think there should be 2 skills, I just think many things are not in the correct category.
Proposal D is probably the best, but the survey is not asking the right questions. Pregens should be easy for a new player to read and digest. Only the essentials should be on the 1st page. 1) Stats: Your stats don't actually help players play the game. Skills do. Stats should be a the bottom of the 1st page, hidden away somewhere. Defenses should actually be at the top of the page, under the basic information. 2) "Strikes": You should include 2 spells (ray of frost and lightning bolt for example) for ranged instead of the crossbow. Show the players what they can do. Proposal D had ray of frost as a strike, which is good. 3) Feats: Feats on the 1st page are just confusing to a new player. Feats are more advanced and are mostly used to build a character, they should be on the second page. 4) Organization: I don't think spell casters should necessarily have the pregens organized exactly like martials. Don't be beholden to "the formula". 5) Spells: Put the spells section together with the spell rolls, at the top of the 1st page in the 2nd column. 6) Equipment: This doesn't need to be on the 1st page either. If you needed to include it, it shouldn't be at the top, it should be last. Better yet it would be better on the 2nd page where equipment is explained. 7) Spell Choice: Why did you pick lightning instead of fireball? Fireball in general is more effective, would work with the staff of fire, and allow new players to have some fun and be effective. Fireball in general is more useful than lightning bolt. The rest is in the survey.
First of all, thank you for listening. This seems like a huge improvement. Limiting items to 10 is not a bad thing and the way focus works seems promising. So this is good. Having said that please don't nerf magic items any further. Or spells. It's gone too far actually. Focus is extremely limited, I don't want to see a regular potion of invisibility last only 1d4 rounds! I want invisibility to last 10 minutes, because that's how long it takes to infiltrate a location. ^^^And in scenarios, that's what it is typically used for. You asked can we still create stories and scenarios like PF1... well the answer is NO if you continue to nerf magic and spells like this! So next on the agenda, could you please improve spells and magic in general?
King Arthur: Well, we'll not risk another frontal assault. That rabbit's dynamite. This edition is seriously not ready.
Third round, bad guys, being intelligent, focus fire the cleric down. Wizard (who has multiclassed into cleric) brings cleric back up. Yep, PF2 is a different game than PF1. In PF1, you could not out heal incoming damage. Clerics in PF2 can now heal more damage than PCs can take. As long as you don't run out of healing, your party is unbeatable. I have to say, I don't like this feeling, at all.
Do you have a cleric? In PF1, you couldn't out heal in-combat damage. In PF2 you can. This means that my party is almost unbeatable until we run out of channels. Channel is especially effective against undead, it's not a good baseline encounter.
Snares are pretty much a useless mechanic to have for PCs. I can count on my hand the number of times PCs have set a trap. Mostly, PCs go into enemy territory. Snare feats shouldn't be in core, they should be in a later supplement.
So there are 2 ways to add oomph to casters: auto-eightening to all spells(so that even at class lvl9 those lvl1 spells are meaningful) or making their at will spell more impactul. Becaus at this point, cantrips leads to a pattern of being a simple attack roll-damage roll in between phone sessions(we just finished Lost Star and for our Wizard it was like this). I'd rather see them auto-increase the effectiveness of all of their spells. They'd have to be careful about this, like cantrips, but this would be the best solution. I've played a wizard at 4th and 5th level and you run out of effective spells too easily, and always run out of all spells (if you even want to use them since they don't scale, cantrips can be better than lower levels spells). More often than not, I was using cantrips all of the time. It's a very redundant and un-fun play style. I'd much rather be getting use out of buffed level 1 spells, that would be slightly better than cantrips. This is not only for variety, but since spellcasters are so limited now, to keep lower level spells relevant.
Same thing that happened with the OP happened in my playtest on Friday. An extremely long battle (9+ rounds) where it was only long because our spells were ineffective and we couldn’t hit. My level 5 wizard did not feel good with the opponent getting crit success on 2 out of 3 fireballs. I LIKE long fights, but I like them to be eventful and long for the right reasons. Agree that AoO needs be available for ALL MARTIALS at level 6 (barbarians, rangers, monks don’t get it!). AoO not being there for levels 1-5 is good, it let’s people learn the game. Beyond, I’m not sure it’s needed. Having said that, the penalty for getting hurt by an AoO is much more severe now, that would need to be changed. Maybe healing is a problem as well. Maybe touch healing should take 2 actions instead of 1, maybe range healing should go away? I noticed this as well on Friday, basically we were unbeatable until we ran out of healing. It certainly is different than PF1, in PF1 healing did not scale with damage, now PF2 healing outscales damage.
I am actually really enthusiastic about errata 1.3. First of all, they’re actually listening. Even if we/they don’t get it right the 1st pass, they’re listening. YOUR FEEDBACK ISN’T WASTED. Second, they fixed many things which I’ll be trying out soon. Third, they’re going to change things like resonance, they just need time. I’m not sure how you can say untrained at -4 is nice, let’s wait and see. It certainly has a huge effect on lower levels and makes spending skill feats in “Skill Training” crazy good. When we wanted variance among skill ranks, I think most of us wanted more than a +3 difference between being “trained” and being a “legend”. And the big problem is that skill feats don’t do a lot to distinguish the two. I hope they remove “1” as an autofail and “20” as an auto crit from skills as soon as possible. I like the 4 degrees of success, but not with 1s and 20s. Well, those 4d6 you get by 20th level aren't going to make you better than a fighter using the stock mechanics and a d12 weapon, because math. That and magic weapons are a problem anyway that I HOPE they address soon. Nothing can compete with magic D12 weapons, certainly not puny D4 daggers. Maybe you should take some weeks off and come back. Do what makes you happy. Honestly, the play test is a bit like work. But they are listening to us and making changes, so your time isn't wasted.
I'd like to see Alchemists get a class feat that allows them to add Int to the amount of damage healed by infused life elixirs(so 1d6 + Int mod instead of just 1d6), but it only lasts 1 day. This would allow them to take on the main healer role in a party if they wish. I like Treat Wounds but I'll have to see if it results in too much rolling when I play test it. It might need to be adjusted.
The healing is NOT unlimited. If you crit fail, you can't use it for 24 hours. I have a healer-less playtest group and I'm eager to test this out.
I'm OK with difficult terrain and how it worked in PF1. Yeah, forget about feet, using the number of squares you move and difficult adds one. Counting by 2s... shouldn't be hard.
All spell attacks should use the characters prime stat, especially considering that TAC is no longer a thing, it's no longer significantly lower than AC. Just another problem I have with the new system. If they're going to keep it simple, then keep it simple.
PF2 appeals to a different player base, the same player base that D&D 5E appeals to. Beer and pretzel guys, the guys that can't spend a few hours reading the rules or looking at character options. This is not the same player based we have in PF1. The only thing I disagree with:
The only thing I disagree with is that I'm glad ranged weapons have been reduced in power. In PF1, it was very optimal to make archer or gunslinger characters. Too optimal. They had feats that melee characters should have had, not the other way around. It's risky entering melee, there should be a payoff. Sorry, too many PF1 games have been ruined by archers basically soloing encounters. I'll end up playing PF2, I like Paizo as a company and I love the stories they write. But if there is a company that continues PF1 and cleans stuff up, I'll end up supporting that as well, maybe more.
I agree, I'd be much happier going back to more frequent stat boosts (every 4 levels) and have them be +1 only. At level 10 your PC is no longer defined by their stats, they are just an amorphous blob that is good at everything. Level 15 and 20, everything is 18 and 20. I don't like it at all. I just bolded your statements that I particularly agree with. Thanks for posting this, if we had more frequent but smaller increases, it would address all of my concerns.
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