Karys's page

That brings to mind Fantasy Flight's Genesys system they released some years ago that was released as a generic TTRPG system with setting books that grafted on to convert it into fantasy, cyberpunk, sci-fi, etc. Genuinely one of my favorite RPG systems I've played for various reasons, so if there was a set up like having a core setting agnostic book with Starfinder and Pathfinder having books to graft onto that core, could be neat.

Because Paizo is too busy making a better game than them

The way I see it, the first clarification was how they envisioned it in the first place, as it worked exactly how I read the rules since release. So the wildly different versions feels more because of how bad a reaction everyone had to being told it played differently than they thought, not because the developers don't know their game.

Question : Is there only poeple outside of US encountering this issue. Could it be linked to an Issue with Eu payment in the states ?

As far as I can tell it's happening everywhere, as a US subscriber experiencing the same troubles.

The immunity override rule exists to fix/prevent a bug that would otherwise cause problems, where immunity to one type-trait, like [fire], would sometimes end up nullifying acid damage, because that spell effect has all the traits & damage in the same place, in one big instance. The system lacks the granularity to say "nullify only the child instance with the matching trait."

This has nothing to do with instances of damage and everything to do with how traits work in the game. Larger effects gain the traits of everything inside of it, so technically everything inside it has all of those traits, that would include both separate instances of damage as well as a combined instance.

If the acid damage was split into its own instance without the fire trait, that rule would not exist.

The rule literally has to exist regardless of separate instances of damage, otherwise trait immunity would immediately nullify the whole effect. You're grasping at straws to prove this whole "impact is one instance" idea.

This will finally reveal Aroden faked his own death to take a vacation.

Sounds like the gremlins are already loose if book listings are going up early then vanishing. I for one welcome our new fey overlords!

Also very excited to see a fey versatile heritage!

I would guess the devs did their math on the assumption players were using normal builds and not these outlandish builds people were coming up with to create and exploit weaknesses. When played normally, the original rule worked fine, but everyone panicked so they had to revise it because of a niche build supposedly everyone will abuse.

Mangaholic13 wrote:

...Someone mentioned Blue Mage?

I'm now imagining a Tripkee Wandering Chef Slayer who hunts monsters mostly in order to use them as ingredients for experimental dishes. The trophies are more so they can remember the flavor of certain monsters in order to figure out what seasonings and other ingredients work best.

I didn't expect a Quina reference today, though being totally fair, the only other Blue Mage is Kimahri and most people forget he exists lol.

Are we really erasing Quistis and Strago? smh lol

A class built around adrenaline and using what they can around the map to do risky maneuvers? Guess it's time for me to build fantasy Jason Statham, virtually any role he's had, but primarily Crank.

Slayer I think means pulling out my old Bloodborne styled Slayer from PF1..

However, there is one HUGE problem in need of ERRATA:

"On Borrowed Time" does not list its action cost! Please fix that immediately, Paizo!

This was actually addressed in the surprise errata the other day:

Page 189: On Borrowed Time is missing its action symbol. It takes 2 actions.

Not in particular, no. I haven't noticed any significant change in quality since I started paying attention to Pathfinder 10 years ago, despite many claims to the contrary.

To be honest, I always wonder if the spell attack rolls were made this way on purpose or they just forgot to compensate for removing touch AC and/or the dueling wand after the playtest. They really are just in such an awkward position I find it hard to believe it was intentional.

And although Magus it's the worst offender, it's not the only class where Psychic Dedication itself is one of the strongest level 2 feats in the entire game. It's not quite as bas as Exemplar and basically any martial, but it's up there. If you compare Imaginary Weapon to Fire Ray for a Magus to get, Imaginary Weapon is stronger and cheaper. It really shouldn't be both of those.

If the ability to Amp was a second feat, it's...

How is Imaginary Weapon cheaper than Fire Ray? It is indeed better, but they both need two feats to learn. Psychic Dedication only grants you a standard psi cantrip, so you still need Psi Development at 6th level to learn Imaginary Weapon. Same as Oracle Dedication needing to take Domain Acumen at 4th level for Fire Ray.

Favorite thing is I'm really happy to see draconic kobold options to have a bit of the old kobold flavor if anyone wants it

I've just received my email but it appears the store transition changed my default address back to somewhere I no longer live, so here's hoping my email gets through to fix that..

Edit: my order's shipping address has been corrected, record time there, customer service. Thank you

The end times are nearly upon us. Praise be to Groetus for bringing the old store's existence to an end.

You are wildly underestimating what can slip by even good QA teams. Not to say the errors aren't bad or shouldn't be fixed, within the context of how much had to change in such a short time under the duress of the remaster, it's crazy to expect perfection even if the error seems obvious.

Spambot Necromancers. The spam gets removed, but the thread remains revived and others reply to it.

Normally that's true, but this was a genuine post complaining about PF2. I assume they woke up from a 6 year sleeping curse of some kind and had the page open before it was inflicted on them.

If the system says "this stat is the key attribute for your class and many of your abilities will use it" and you don't get it at least close to max, that's not a system problem, that's just learning an extremely basic function. Even making your stat slightly sub-optimal is still easily playable compared to old systems completely falling apart if you don't have the right stats and choices.

All games in any form, video game or TTRPG need you to learn how it works which may involve making suboptimal choices the first time around. That is not ivory tower design, that's just how learning to do something works. So comparing all of these games to this situation means nothing.

The point is the game is still playable with sub-optimal choices rather than essentially unplayable with them.

It would perhaps help to list the variant, so that people can know what is actually being talked about. Incidentally, actually listing the variant I think tells a different story:

I shared what I knew about it as was told to me, so thank you for pulling the full rule. I mostly wanted to share here that it existed so anyone who might not see the Starfinder side might see and look into it if they wanted once the book is fully released and circulating.

Anyway, yeah, tailoring it as appropriate for your campaigns or limitations on what skills you can take seems like the way to go. I don't quite see the same issues as everyone else, but I probably just have a different kinda play group so don't really look at it that way. So tweak it, build off it, have fun with it, seems like a decent baseline to make a milder or more specific variant.

This thread has been a lot of words and borderline personal attacks to say "use or make hazards that suit your table or adventure"

I envision this being akin to standing on a world map in an old JRPG. You can see there are forests, mountains, hilly terrain, maybe a village all near you. But you're not seeing anything more detailed than that, and once a day have a radar ping for large groups of things moving together.

To know anything more detailed than that you'd still need to scout to find useful info about the finer points of the area. Using the hexcrawl example and the base assumption from GM core that a hex is 12 miles across, I doubt you'd really know much from the map besides what type of terrain the hex has and *maybe* a landmark or buildings being there if they're large enough or form a town, you'd still need to explore the hex to find out what might be there. Useful but not game breaking imo.

Karys wrote:

I'm just following the RAW for what the climb action and the climb speed rules say, just like you are for trip and other actions. You can't say it's not true then omit the rest of the rules of climb speed. Sounds like someone arguing in bad faith imo.

As has already been pointed out, the follow-up to that line does not contradict it. Failing to acknowledge this and trying to argue that monsters can't use their own Speeds without hands is an obvious bad-faith argument.

You pointed nothing out, you only pointed out the descriptive text of climb speed saying you can climb on a surface while ignoring the actual mechanical text of the rule because that benefits your argument. Please point to me where in the climb speed rules it says you don't need hands to use the climb action, which you would still need to make to succeed at it with a climb speed. But I'm sure I'm the one arguing in bad faith again.

Karys wrote:

I don't think it's particularly reasonable to apply the necessity of hands to whether a monster form can do athletics actions in combat the same way it applies to the humanoid PCs it's typically intended to apply to. If we started applying those restrictions, even the forms that have climb speeds couldn't climb, as the action requires two free hands and a climb speed only makes you automatically succeed at the athletics check but says nothing about altering the requirements.

No part of this is true:

Climb Speed wrote:

A climb Speed allows you to move up or down inclines and vertical surfaces.

A climb Speed says you can move up and down inclines and vertical surfaces, so you do. Similarly, here's what the Grab monster ability says:

Grab wrote:

If used after a Strike, the monster attempts to Grapple the creature using the body part it attacked with.

If there was no hand requirement involved, why then would these abilities need to specify that you're grabbing with a certain body part? I get the impression there's a general misunderstanding in this discussion of how Athletics maneuvers work on monsters and battle forms, such that people have been house ruling their Druids to let them use Athletics maneuvers freely regardless of their form. This is such a massive buff that I'm surprised nobody would have noticed an excess in performance at early levels.

I'm just following the RAW for what the climb action and the climb speed rules say, just like you are for trip and other actions. You can't say it's not true then omit the rest of the rules of climb speed. Sounds like someone arguing in bad faith imo.

A climb Speed allows you to move up or down inclines and vertical surfaces. Most creatures need to succeed at Athletics checks to Climb, but if you have a climb Speed, you automatically succeed and move up to your climb Speed instead of the listed distance.

And again, Grab gives you a MAP-less grapple after a strike instead of needing to eat MAP doing both on the same turn, that's the advantage. As far as saying "using the body part it attacked with" just comes across as explaining in what grab does because that's how you explain things, not making an exception because it doesn't have hands. Lets take a look at Knockdown, the creature ability that gets a MAP-less Trip attempt after a strike:

Requirements The monster's last action was a successful Strike that lists Knockdown in its damage entry;

Effect The monster attempts to Trip the creature. This attempt neither applies nor counts toward the monster's multiple attack penalty.

It mentions nothing about using the body part to make the Trip attempt like the Grab entry, so if we follow the logic that Grab is explicitly making an exception, then Knockdown is not making an exception and doesn't work.

Other funny little things, you can go into Ape form using Animal Form, which does not say you have hands, but attacks with a fist and we all know apes have hands. Can you trip in ape form? Every depiction of an Arboreal I can find depicts them as humanoid shaped trees who have hands, can they not grapple something?

My entire point here is these battle form spells are very ambiguous, not perfect, and don't follow any common sense if you assume they (and the creatures the forms represent) play by the same exact rules listed for the usual medium human shaped PC.

yellowpete wrote:

That changed a bit in the remaster – the monsters actually need to perform subordinate athletics maneuvers now rather than just applying conditions with Grab, Knockdown etc. directly. If they can't, they're in trouble.

That doesn't actually change it -- you still had to perform the ability before anyway, now you just roll a check for it. The monsters could always perform that ability, as it was special-cased for them.

yellowpete wrote:

But also, from a practical standpoint, I don't think it's very common for GMs to deny their players the ability to grapple or knock over enemies while shapeshifted. At least I haven't seen it. Would in fact raise some eyebrows to do that, especially if the form was something that's inherently known to grapple things like a cave worm

If your GM is ruling that your battle form effectively has hands regardless, then for sure, you're massively buffing all battle forms, while trivializing the battle forms specifically built to let you use Athletics maneuvers like the flytrap form for plant form. For all the ambiguity in battle forms, this is one of the more clear-cut cases: Athletics maneuvers specifically state you need a free hand, and battle forms explicitly state when you have hands. When you don't, they also explicitly state when you can use Athletics maneuvers. This is less arguing on the ambiguity of those rules, and more wishful thinking.

I don't think it's particularly reasonable to apply the necessity of hands to whether a monster form can do athletics actions in combat the same way it applies to the humanoid PCs it's typically intended to apply to. If we started applying those restrictions, even the forms that have climb speeds couldn't climb, as the action requires two free hands and a climb speed only makes you automatically succeed at the athletics check but says nothing about altering the requirements. And allowing athletics actions wouldn't diminish anything about the Flytraps abilities as its Grab ability allows it to make a MAP-less grapple as a follow up to a strike which is a benefit in itself over just making a grapple.

I saw mention of how 4e splits descriptive text and mechanics, and it made me realize I've never looked at 4e in my life, so I went and looked at a few examples. All I'm going to say, is that I want literally anything other than that for Pathfinder, it took me a few seconds to even realize the descriptive text was there in the first place.

To be honest I didn't need any convincing to get into SF2e as I already love Starfinder in general. I'm less likely to really combine the two games' options on the player side (unless they get sent to Numeria, then cowabunga it is), but am absolutely looking forward to taking creatures from either game and using them in the other as desired.

Agonarchy wrote:

Slide pistol is pretty close to a revolver already.

A double-action revolver wouldn't cost an extra action for a follow-up shot. So it could be 6 shots as fast as you like, and then 3 to 6 actions to reload.

Precisely what I was going for, still something of a hassle to reload during combat that a Gunslinger might have an edge on using. But useful for anyone proficient in it to get a few shots without needing to reload, spend actions to change barrels or be relegated to an air repeater.

I think it's high time someone in Alkenstar invent a proper revolver to solve these reload problems.

Edit: Ok, that was like half joking, but I just found out there were revolvers in Ultimate Equipment for first edition, what's the deal? Why can't we have those here? I might actually be kinda upset now cause those would be a big help lol.

Gorgo Primus wrote:

Animated Broom (pg.18) has its AC listed as “15 (13 when broken)”, but under its Construct Armor section it says it has AC 14 when broken.

I just got the PDFs and downloaded them from the humble bundle, so presumably they are the most up to date.

The PDF still has this issue, did we ever find out which it was post-broken, 13 or 14?

Page 18: Change animated broom’s construct armor ability to say “reducing its Armor Class to 13”, matching its AC entry.

Looks like that was corrected in the last fall errata pass. PDFs won't reflect errata changes until the physical book is due for a reprint, I believe. So going to the FAQ section for errata updates is the best place to check after picking up a book as they may not be incorporated into the PDF yet.

Perhaps a companion themed martial akin to the Hunter from PF1, focusing on teamwork with their companion, with more companion customization and options built in would be an idea to work with. Like a more martial take to what summoner is.

Because, again, RNG goes both ways. It was genuinely a gameplay problem that Belcorra could and did roll a 1 vs Slow, and get completely deleted as a threat.

Same thing happened to another single foe fight, one that the GM worried might TPK us. It makes for genuinely "bad gameplay" if and when fights are decided by a single bad roll. Everyone at the table knows it's b+!#$~&&, even when it's in our favor.

It damages the fun every time it happens.

I'll be completely honest in that I don't know what the goal of this thread is anymore, because it seems wildly off topic now more than ever. All I can say is if being downed by an errant crit or having a boss downed by an errant crit early in battle isn't fun, that's a problem for your table to solve in how they run encounters somehow, or by removing/modifying degrees of success. But this really has nothing to do with teaching the game anymore and is just complaining about unrelated parts of the system, so I'm checking out of this.

This arbitrary yardstick to measure "good" and "bad" design wildly changes shape and size depending on what table is looking at it, so it's meaningless. Your complaints are with GMs and writers making scenarios that take your agency away and can kill you outright. This is yet again NOT a system issue, because no duh throwing a full PL+4 boss at you is gonna end badly (or being ambushed at an inn while sleeping with a full room chain lightning, for that matter). But I got curious and went to read some of that AP's suggestions for using her ambushes, as I haven't touched that AP.

All in all, this is a collaborative game. If the players aren't doing their part playing the game as the table would like (i.e. being murderhobos, being disruptive, infighting, not being interactive, whatever) or the GM isn't being cooperative (antagonistic design that harms player fun, railroading, giving no chance for player survival) Then someone at the table is in fact making an error in these suggestions of "no error full to down = bad gameplay" because the only "objectively" bad gameplay is when the table isn't enjoying the game. Which sometimes could be not connecting with a system as written. It would be great if there was a system so perfect everyone could enjoy it exactly as it's written, but I find it doubtful such a thing exists, there's always going to be something in the designs of these things some players disagree with and that's why it's a collaborative effort to find a way to play it that the table enjoys.

You're not wrong for not enjoying what has happened in your games, however that's an issue to take up with the way your table handles adventures, I'm also not wrong for thinking those possible outcomes are good in my games with my own groups because it is good for us. And it all circles back to the whole point of this thread: "GMs and/or players could be taught better" to balance things out for their play experience, especially for the GMs who are the main arbiter of game difficulty.

Yes, a BBEG curb-stomping the party can be "cool" from a narrative PoV, but if it's still a "no misplay full-->down" event, that it still invokes the "... is bad gameplay" follower.

If your table doesn't want that as a possibility from the BBEG, then the GM should have had a discussion with the players about expectations long before arriving at the 3rd book of an AP (that they've presumably read and have seen the encounter, and should have an idea how it can play out). The GM is a player too and the error could come from them just as much as any PC's player. And similarly, pointing to an AP boss ambushing and harrying the party is not a system issue, if it's an issue it's a writer issue and take it up with them, not the system.

And yet again, just because you say it's bad gameplay doesn't make it objectively bad gameplay from a system level. People simply have different preferences.

That SoT ambush has been brought up numerous times, and while I have not run that volume yet, I plan to in the future so have read through all of the books a couple times over. The way your GM ran it is 100% different than how I read it, so I'm not exactly sure how much mileage you can get from that claim. And I've never really seen anyone say anything about the encounter in any forums while looking for others experiences with the AP, which I would expect to see if it was notoriously dropping players.

If anything it speaks to poor writing and leaving it too open ended to read it as being excessively deadly. Which is why I can only see most of the issues here as GM or adventure issues.

Can I ask, why are you opposed to reverse, where the baseline AP is written so that beginner GMs just feeding the encounters to beginner players will do fine, and Paizo includes extra guidance for advanced players and GMs on how to upscale it?

I mean, we're talking about levels 1-3 or levels 1-5 here. It makes little sense to me to tune that for advanced players and GM and then include guidance for beginners on how to make it easier. Writing a series of encounters that require a high level of system mastery to GM and for PCs to survive through, but then adding text telling beginner GMs all the modifications they will need to do to make it suitable for beginner players, is pretty much the poster child for the thread title "not doing a good job of teaching new players how to play."

As far as I'm aware APs aren't designed for beginners or experts as a whole, they're just prewritten adventures to save time. And you're putting an argument out that I never made so I'm genuinely not sure what you're talking about. My suggestion of guidance is for in a book like the GM core, not APs. I'm suggesting that paizo should have done a better job having the GM core teach. Literally what this thread is about.

Karys wrote:

At this stage I get the feeling most of the issues in this thread are a blend of GM and adventure writer issues rather than a system level issue. So the most reasonable takeaway for me is there should be a small amount of extra guidance in the encounter guidelines for lower levels and/or new players.

I'd like to see the system allow for newbie groups and GMs to run APs "as written" with low chance of dying at early levels. There are multiple different ways to fix this - some system ways, some AP ways - but I think putting it on GMs to ensure it doesn't happen is the wrong fix, because GMs should be assumed to be on a learning curve too. That's like saying an encounter will is easy as long as the players simply remember this special specific rule on p39 of the third supplement to the umpty ump book; sure, that could work. But it's really a fix intended to serve the advanced player community, not the new player community.

APs are written by various people who are all humans and will build their encounters differently or even make mistakes. I'm saying that they *should* have included extra guidance for low level or new players including GMs. So what are you talking about on that last part?

At this stage I get the feeling most of the issues in this thread are a blend of GM and adventure writer issues rather than a system level issue. So the most reasonable takeaway for me is there should be a small amount of extra guidance in the encounter guidelines for lower levels and/or new players.

Karys wrote:

This is the "better game" to me, so I'm sorry for having the wrong fun, I guess?...

Again, with all due respect and without being mean, yeah you're kinda wrong.

There Is One such things as personal preferences (which are sacred and i cannot argue againts them) and game design (which can be treated as an academic subject), and here we are talking about game design, not personal preferences.

Like, i know this metaphor might sound stupid but It's the best i can come up with: i'd rather read furry smut all day long than reading the kharamazovs Brothers, and those are my personal preferences, but i would never, in a discussion that tries to be objective as much as a discussion can be, Say that an ao3 monster hunter world's smut fic Is Better than One of the greatest novels to ever be written

Yes, that's why I said "to me," felt I made it abundantly clear that it's my opinion and preference. The game design is fine to me based on my preferences, so to me it is good game design, but I don't expect it to fit everyone's preferences. So what is your point?

Karys wrote:

Personally I agree with Deriven on this, there's no real issue with these numbers. It makes the early levels "more deadly" because honestly, why wouldn't they be? You're new to adventuring, or at the very least out of practice and likely to take a beating in all out combat.

And these HP numbers are perfectly in line with leveling up in video games I've played when you take into account characters in most RPG video games grow from level 1 to 99 or so while PF2 characters only go to 20, so the growth has to be spread differently. The games I'm familiar with also function on a similar philosophy that you will likely die if you make a mistake or bad decisions, or simply have a bad dice roll particularly at low level. These types of games exist, and they're not wrong for existing with that as a baseline, but much like PF2 they have an easy mode option that weakens the enemies and strengthens the party if anyone isn't skilled enough to complete...

The thing about video games is you can typically reload your save. With a tabletop, the default is permadeath until you have access to in-game resurrection.

The punishments are on an entirely different scale of inconvenience and frustration. Very few games are designed such that a character death is permanent for a "playthrough" that could last hundreds of hours, but that is the default for a game like PF2E. This combination of playthrough length and permanence is basically unseen in video games, because it's considered bad design in that space. It's so unusual that games that buck the convention are usually either roguelikes (which often have short playthrough lengths anyways) or take on metafictional qualities just in virtue of bucking the convention and calling attention to it.

An unfair or difficult level 1 is fundamentally different when there's a "retry" button.

I very much know the difference between the mediums, I was using the comparison to explain my personal preferences and opinion that lead me to my view on this, and because the comment about FF13's character growth made me think about comparing the numbers to some games I've played with similar lethality. I just wanted to state my view on the matter, so the permadeath thing doesn't really change my opinion whatsoever because I'm into that feeling.

To be clear, I'm not *against* something like say PF3e moving the lethality needle in a way that suits the majority judging by this thread, I simply also just don't see the need on a personal level.

This kind of reasoning Is, and i don't mean to sound unkind, genuinely the reason the ttrpgs space hasn't evolved much in all these years: you're applying narrative "common sense" reason while we should all apply ludo-narrative academic reason in such situations.

The main purpouse of EVERY SINGLE GAME EVER Is to be fun, not to be realistic, not to be accurate, but fun, this Is the reason there's not a secret roll to see if you're gonna die from a stroke all of a sudden, It's the reason that shooters gun don't work like in real Life.

If we Want to create Better games we should completely ignore common sense and focus on academic game design

This is the "better game" to me, so I'm sorry for having the wrong fun, I guess?

Deriven Firelion wrote:

And I don't know what you want. Less damage from the monsters? Fourty hit points at first level so you never have to worry about getting crushed?

Example HP gain on that example Alch level up:

L1 --> L2: 15 -- +9 --> 24 | + 37.5% max HP

L4 --> L5: 46 -- +10 --> 56 | + 21.7% max HP

L9 --> L10: 105 -- +11 --> 116 | + 10.4% max HP

L14 --> L15: 174 --> +12 --> 186 | + 6.9% max HP

This math is stupid.
In almost all games where characters gain HP via leveling, they start with a substantial base pool, and have rather small [% total] gains, especially during the early levels (which can even have artificially limited leveling/stat growth for the sake of tutorialization & fun; think of skill/stat trees like FF13's crystarium that cap and unlock via story progression).

Pf2 not only has the starting HP pool be way too tiny, but it also has the % total gain stay crazy high for quite a number of levels before the single levelup gains start to become more reasonable with the growing total.

Personally I agree with Deriven on this, there's no real issue with these numbers. It makes the early levels "more deadly" because honestly, why wouldn't they be? You're new to adventuring, or at the very least out of practice and likely to take a beating in all out combat.

And these HP numbers are perfectly in line with leveling up in video games I've played when you take into account characters in most RPG video games grow from level 1 to 99 or so while PF2 characters only go to 20, so the growth has to be spread differently. The games I'm familiar with also function on a similar philosophy that you will likely die if you make a mistake or bad decisions, or simply have a bad dice roll particularly at low level. These types of games exist, and they're not wrong for existing with that as a baseline, but much like PF2 they have an easy mode option that weakens the enemies and strengthens the party if anyone isn't skilled enough to complete the game on the normal difficulty. a GM is the arbiter of this difficulty setting, and when it's realized the players are not ok with that level of deadliness, it gets tweaked.

On the actual topic of the system teaching you, I look back to my experiences in the video game RPGs I've grown up playing. Simply put, my favorite ones didn't do any teaching, I was thrown in, picked a party of various classes and came out with dead party members, game overs, and experience. But I understand this being a collaborative game needs more nuance in learning, so I agree there could be better guidance on expectations and especially on what enemy level compositions are more viable for lower level PCs to handle for a slightly lower stakes adventure.

So they altered the text to correct that. And now it functions the way everyone wanted it to function.

Not a single word of Blessed Armament was changed in the errata, meaning it always functioned the way everyone wanted it to. Assuming they changed a feature to be a dead option feels like an extremely bad faith reading in the first place.

Spamotron wrote:

Movie Smaug is explicitly a bad example for your argument. Because it wasn't arbitrary. There's plenty of interviews explaining that his initial design was based on the original four legged artwork but they couldn't get the model skeleton to move naturally and he came across as a blatantly artificical. The "wyvern," redesign was as much a practical decision based on technical limitations as anything else. Given that Smaug is what a lot of people consider to be the best thing about those movies. Often citing how impressively he moves. It was almost certainly the right choice to change him.

Well guess we should make vampires into glittering vegetarian xmen then after all so many teenager girls loved it.

I agree. Mythological creatures can and should be adapted into a multitude of different concepts and there's nothing wrong with that. I don't even care for the glittering vampires but I'll defend to death that it's fine to make a vampire concept like that because who cares. Dragons are the same, make them whatever way seems cool for what you're doing.

Fabios wrote:

On most level, a fella here did the calculations above, shields break with four non-crit hits. Four shield blocks, for a Quick shield block champion that's ideally two turns

'Ideally'? You're a champion with your shield raised, what the heck are you fighting that even if everything is attacking you you're consistently getting hit twice per turn by on-level attacks? And are you never using your other reaction for, like, your Champion reaction? You also have Lay on Hands and a good HP pool, you can facetank and heal damage if your shield is close to breaking. And if you took some of the specialty shields, their abilities could have saved you from getting hit.

Note they also want to be using effects like Shield Warden or Shield of Reckoning to also be shield blocking for their allies, contributing to all of these blocks per turn. It feels like they want to be playing as a tank in an MMO intervening for any attacks against the party, which is frankly an excessive expectation if so.

Karys wrote:

Fabios wrote:

Because It doesn't really do that, since It gives you ONLY the rune appropriate for the level your shield won't have the maxed out stats. You Need lower level runes anyway (this Is how It's written, i Hope i'm wrong)

I'm not perfectly fluent in all the rules, so someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but reinforcing runes are fundamental runes and those simply get replaced/upgraded as they increase, you don't put previous runes on. Unless reinforcing runes are different in some way that I'm unaware of.

That Is, i think, the problem. You're still required to buy shield because the rune on its own doesn't get you a shield as strong as a sturdy One (aka, the bare minimum).

One Major point of this ability Is to save cash, and It fails in that too lol.

I'm becoming increasingly confused. It saves you the entire amount you'd spend on a rune for your shield, which i believe tops out at 32k GP at 19th level. Which lets you use that on any other equipment or even, as mentioned, a second shield to add more longevity to blocking by having a backup. And a sturdy shield isn't bare minimum, it's just the highest amount of blocking power, the runes bridge the gap for other shields with unique effects to still be useful while not making the sturdy shield obsolete.

Being able to prepare two whole staves and get the charges for both combined seems kinda broken in a bad way. Definitely feels like an error that was fixed, not a nerf.

I'd disagree that there Is any fundamental difference in concept inbetween a mmo tank and a ttrpg tank.

A tank has to do Two things:
-take aggro
-being able to resist damage After taking up aggro.

How would you define a tank otherwise? Cause every glass cannon can take aggro quite easily

An MMO tank takes aggro because you're fighting AI enemies that follow programming about who to attack, that doesn't work in a TTRPG so they're inherently very different. Any GM might run creatures very differently to another GM in how they react to seeing a heavily armored Champion, a Barb lugging around a sword twice their size, and a Wizard throwing fireballs at them.

So the Champion went the most likely route to being a "tank" for a TTRPG, and can actively mitigate and prevent damage for the party, potentially drawing attention to themselves who can endure the hits but aren't necessarily taking them all.