Khudzlin's page

Arcanist-style for the win. I'll NEVER play a Vancian caster, it's too much of a hassle to choose an exact combination of spells every day.

I do have to disagree with khudzlin, though. yes, it's more important in a game design sense that the classes are balanced against each other

Not just against each other, but also against the challenges (monsters, traps, whatever) the characters face. There's no fun if things are too easy or too hard.

Yes, this could be done at a higher power level (it could also be done at a lower one).

Comparing PF2 characters with PF1 is irrelevant. What matters is PF2 characters being balanced with each other and the challenges they face.

The wikipedia article for Pound (mass) says the US and the Commonwealth agreed on a common definition (based on the kilogram). So I'm assuming an error in that table, especially given how small the difference is (about 0.2%).

Let's just complicate matters a bit more and consider that UK pounds and US pounds aren't even the same.

Using Bulk instead of those was a good idea, even different imperial unit users couldn't agree upon their units of the same name.

Pounds are the same (there are 3 types of pounds, but only 1 is commonly used, so I'm assuming that one). You're probably thinking of pints (and gallons).

Vic Ferrari wrote:

graystone wrote:

2Zak wrote:

Hrothgar Rannúlfr wrote:

Also, would characters in game think in meters?

Do characters in game think in HP, BAB and dice rolls?

Well in pathfinder classic, it's possible to find a creatures level, feats and exact HP total as PC's.

And in PF2, the Grim Reaper "automatically knows the Hit Points and emotions of all creatures it can see, as well as all conditions and afflictions affecting those creatures."

The grim reaper is known to cheat. This is why you should never challenge it to a game.

Or do it like Gary Gygax.

Also, would characters in game think in meters? What would be their in world reason for doing so? Feet, yards, miles, gallons, etc... seem like they'd be more natural, to me.

Characters would think in whatever units they grew up with (just like players), which would be neither metric nor US units, but Golarion-specific units (possibly ancestry-specific* or regional units). Using real-world units is a translation convention for the players' convenience (just like characters speaking in Common translates as players speaking their common language).

* After all, there's no reason for elves and gnomes to use the same units, absent a worldwide standardization effort.

The translated versions are in metric (and use the rough conversion @GRuzom described). That said, plenty of players still buy English versions even when a translated version is available for their language.

I've played a D&D campaign in English a dozen years ago, and the hardest part wasn't the foreign language (I'm French), but the unfamiliar units.

Also, the explanation in Create Water is necessary as written because US gallons and Imperial (UK) gallons aren't the same size (due to the UK redefining some units after the US gained independence), so confusion could arise between English speakers from different countries.

Here's the kicker. And everyone seems to be missing this point. With their non-rolling system, no matter what you do, you CAN'T get more than 18 in a single stat. You simply CAN'T. No matter what you do.

But if you roll your stats, you CAN. Because say you roll all 18's. Slim chance, granted, but it's a POSSIBILITY. And not only is it a possibility, it's an INEVITABILITY. Because the law of large numbers. Someone, somewhere, sometime, is GOING to do this. So what do you do? At that point, you can't apply ANY 'Boosts'. At all. None. Zero. Zip. Nada.

Rolling has never allowed higher stat caps than other stat generation methods. The rule about applying boosts to other stat is there to enforce the same limitation as on players who use the standard method, while still giving you options. You're asking for a free benefit by pretending you're being punished.

The probability of rolling an 18 on 4d6 drop lowest is about 1.6%. The probability of rolling 6 of them is a bit less than 1 in 50,000,000,000. You'll need a lot of gamers rolling a lot of characters for the law of large numbers to apply. And even then, a character with all 18s is already so busted it doesn't matter that you can't give it any boost.

If you want choice, why are you rolling stats in the first place?

As much as I love what you've made, I feel obligated to point out the boosts rule where if gained at same time, multiple boosts would have to go to different stats, so the three instances of Intelligence boosting from the free boosts wouldn't be legal. Probably doesn't change too much, though.

Yeah, you need to take that into account for ancestry and background boosts, too.

Free ancestry boost #2 (Human): 1d5 (skip the previously boosted ability)
Free ancestry boost (other than Human): 1d4 (skip the 2 already boosted abilities)
--
Free background boost: 1d5 (skip the previously boosted ability)
--
Free boost #2: 1d5
Free boost #3: 1d4
Free boost #4: 1d3
Or alternately, roll 1d6 and 1d5 for the abilities you don't boost.

You're forgetting that proficiency gives other advantages (like turning crit fails into regular fails) and some uses of skills require certain levels of proficiency.

One thing that struck me is that the description for Assurance (on Kyra's and Valeros's sheets) says "do not apply any of your bonuses, penalties or modifiers". That seems a bit weird, though maybe it works better that way because of stuff we don't know yet.

I'd like to see the size system completely reworked, so that it can be extended indefinitely on both ends and that you only have to care about the difference in size categories, not what the size categories actually are.

Starting with Fast Movement for the first level of Barbarian.

It certainly can be abusive and even obstructive. "Why does your Rogue have two levels in Paladin?" "Cause saves." "But you're a thief." "A thief of Iomedae."

Use Unchained's fractional bonuses. They really cut the crap out of multiclass saves, whether they're over the top (combining good saves - like Reflex for a Rogue/Paladin) or absolutely tanked (combining bad saves). They also prevent tanking BAB when combining non full BAB classes.

high G wrote:

I had thought for rolling dice? (dice has n sides)

- average = (1+n)/2

- variance = (n-1)²/12

Not quite. The variance is determined as Sum of (n-(n+1)/2)^2/n from 1 to n.

For example a d4 is ((1-2.5)^2+(2-2.5)^2+(3-2.5)^3+(4-2.5)^3)/4
Which is ((-1.5)^2+(-0.5)^2+(0.5)^2+(1.5)^2)/4 = (2.25+0.25+0.25+2.25)/4 = 5/4 = 1.25

Compare this to (4-1)^2/12, which is 0.75. That formula isn't correct.

Yeah, the correct formula for the variance of 1dn is (n²-1)/12, which gives 5/4 for 1d4 and 35/12 for 1d6.

Of course you're going to face tougher challenges as you level up. You'd get pretty bored if you kept facing the same old challenges...

One thing I would recommend is Pathfinder Unchained Fractional Base Bonuses. This prevents insane Save building (the best candidate I can think of for worrying about power gamers dipping), but in exchange, it hoses Base Attack Bonus less — on the one hand, you can’t get the starting +2 twice to the same Save, but on the other hand, 1/2 BAB really means 1/2 BAB and 3/4 BAB really means 3/4 BAB, and the fractions stack to make whole numbers (often accompanied by smaller remaining fractions).

You don't get the +2 twice, but you also don't get hosed with the fractional saves. With fractional base bonuses, a Fighter 2/Cleric 1 gets +3 FORT / +1 REF / +1 WILL instead of the +4 FORT / +0 REF / +0 WILL you get with the CRB. In short, it puts multi classed characters' saves and BAB in line with single classed characters'.

Let's run the math.

[...]

Interesting that the expected value peaks when rerolling half the time (10 or less).

1) Anne's fighter has BAB +1, strength 18 and is using a masterwork greataxe. She is fighting a monster with AC 20 and 15 hit points. She wants to kill it as quickly as possible. Should she use power attack or not?

2) Character Generation

Part A. Bill is about to play Rise of the Runelords. His referee says he can choose between 15 point buy or rolling 3D6 six times and assigning. Bill wants the highest stats he can get for his character - is rolling 6 * 3D6 likely to be worth more or less than 15 in terms of point buy?

Part B. After a party wipe Bill's referee gives his players the option of 20 point buy or 'roll 4D6, drop lowest' - now which option gets Bill the higher point buy value on average for his new character?

ETC...

1) Power attack reduces her to-hit from 35% to 30% (a 17% decrease) [+1 BAB, +4 STR, +1 masterwork, -1 power attack], but increases her average damage (per non-critical hit) from 12.5 to 15.5 (a 24% increase) [+6 STR, +3 power attack, since a greataxe requires 2 hands]. Additionally, she can now hope to one-shot the monster without a crit (her max non-critical damage goes from 18 to 21) and is sure to one-shot it with a crit (her minimum critical damage goes from 14 to 20).

2) These questions need a clarification: how do you value rolls than can't be obtained in point-buy (3 to 6)?

Though I'd go with the point buy in both cases, because I believe 15 point buy is supposed to be equivalent to 4d6 drop lowest (though I've seen people argue that 20 point buy is closer).

Another "rolled" method would be to randomly determine the increases that you would get at each step. For example, at the background step, you could roll 2d6 (rerolling one of the dice if they roll doubles). That roll determines which two ability scores are boosted by your background.

I like it.

Is it the case then thata spontaneous caster will need to learn spells at higher levels or can they upcast on the fly?

Apparently, spontaneous casters don't get to upcast.

Seems to me to be another way PF2 is turning into 5E in Golarian.

I'm sure there'll be plenty of differences between D&D5 and PF2... One of them being that pure Vancian doesn't exist in the former (prepared casters work similarly to the PF1 Arcanist). Another being a bigger gap between characters of different levels. Casters being toned down doesn't look like a big problem to me...

Or,

1-2 = -1
3-4 = 0
5-6 = 1
7-8 = 2
9-10 = 3
11-12 =4

You can't get 1 on 2d6... Not to mention, you're skewing in favor of high scores compared to the old methods. Going from 2d6+6 stats to mods would give:

2-3 => 8-9 => -1
4-5 => 10-11 => 0
6-7 => 12-13 => +1
8-9 => 14-15 => +2
10-11 => 16-17 => +3
12 => 18 => +4

I wish they would scrap ability scores and just use mods (which mechanically they have). In this new version you could just roll 2D6 and end up with -1 up to +4. Then at levels 5, 10, 15, you could just add +1s to 4 mods. /claps dust off his hands

Rolling 2d6+6 will give you results between 8 and 18, true, but you'd still get odd scores half the time.

Ah that's a nice feature to have. I'm also impressed you managed to perfectly roll average there

The more dice you roll (and the smaller they are), the more likely that becomes (can't be bothered to calculate the probability on 10 dice that aren't even all identical right now).

That sounds slow. I played Wrath of the Righteous (which I assume is one of the longest, seeing as it takes characters from level 1 to level 20/tier 10) on monthly 6- to 8-hour sessions and it only took us about 2 to 2.5 years (even though we skipped some months due to schedule incompatibilities). The GM knew the rules well and always prepared for the session (and we did too, since he always told us when we were going to gain a level or tier so we could advance out of the sessions).

A concealed Dominate might take four actions (and thus normally not allowed), but if you can split that across two rounds, you can potentially cast it in social situations where that extra round doesn’t hurt at all.

You're probably not counting time in rounds in such a situation anyway.

Gorum is far too chaotic and grim, a paladin worshipping him would need to get regular atonements, or risk falling, I assume thet the 'gods of war' mentioned in the paladin fluff means Iomedae, or the likes of Heironeous in non Golarion settings.

Since a paladin receives his powers from a deity, it certainly means that only a deity who accepts paladins would be a viable choice. A chaotic deity like Gorum (or even Cayden Cailean) probably wouldn't grant powers to a lawful character in the first place.

For comparison, you can look at the 3.5 Paladin of Freedom (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/extras/community-creations/house-rules/classes/pa ladin-of-freedom/).

For shrinking, you can reduce the damage type. It is easy to go 1d6 -> 1d4 -> 1d3 -> 1d2 -> 1 point. It's harder to go 1d8-> 1d10 -> 1d12 -> 1d14, because we don't have 1d14s. And if you go 1d20, the step is too big, and the next step (1d100) is absurd.

So adding dice for extra damage is good enough. You only need to reduce damage for size a few steps anyway. Small does the same than medium. There's tiny, then diminutive, and Fine does not really matter, unless we start seeing mosquitos wearing two handed swords.

Actually, Tiny is almost the smallest you will find ever.

There are d16s and d24s (not part of the standard set, but not as weird as d100s). The progression could go 1d8 -> 1d10 -> 1d12 -> 1d16 -> 1d20 -> 1d24 (the old progression was 1d8 -> 1d10 -> 2d6 -> 2d8 -> 3d6 -> 3d8, so it's not unreasonable). Though I doubt Paizo will do that. And flat negative modifiers on top of reduced STR scores make very small creatures not deal any damage at all.

Dragonborn3 wrote:

Now on to a bit from the blog. A great sword is now 1d12 instead of 2d6. Will similar changes be made to other weapons that had more than one die, like Falchion?

Yup, it was confirmed last Friday's twitch stream that base weapons won't have multiple damage dice anymore.

Now I wonder how they will handle size, because the damage progression relied on multiple dice.

I think enchantment bonuses only give bonus dice.

Also, I'd really like to see magical navigation require a skill check for success. Teleportation is a little too easy a means of transportation in the current edition of pathfinder. Why wouldn't you need to make a knowledge geography, local, or planes, to teleport?

That wouldn't slow wizards much, given they have all knowledge skills as class skills and a load of skill points thanks to their maxed INT. Other casters might have more trouble, but Knowledge (planes) is pretty useful for identifying outsiders.

Nah, sometimes just DR can make a fight nigh unwinnable, depending on party makeup. For instance, DR 5 at low levels when your party has no big single hit characters.

We had a fight against an enemy with flight, invisibility and DR at level 2. We're lucky that enemy failed every single save against my color sprays (and that we were able to track it around so I could aim those color sprays). I was out of spells after that fight (sorcerer with maxed CHA). If things hadn't gone so well, we'd have needed to come back with stuff like powder of apparition.

What you're really asking about is the "extra" attacks granted by TWF in PF1.0. We don't know anything about that yet.

Personally, I'm hoping that instead of true extra attacks, TWF grants special reaction actions or defense actions, which would be far more thematically appropriate for TWF than a raw number of extra attacks.

Perhaps we'll find out soon what the Paizonians have in store for TWF in PF2.0.

Yeah, that's what I'm wondering about: what you can do with TWF (keeping in mind that simply switching between weapons isn't TWF).

It appears that anyone can use a second weapon in their offhand, and freely choose between the two on each of their three actions.

It's already possible in PF1 with iteratives. TWF penalties only apply when you're making extra attacks over your BAB's baseline. No reason to change that (though I wonder how TWF will work in PF2).

I imagine they will already have done this - Starfinder had their feat trees done in this manner with things like

Psychic Power;
Psychic Power, Minor;
Psychic Power, Greater.

For those, the logical order would be:

That is, put the feat in the order you have to take them. Those feats usually refer to the less powerful versions.

Darigaaz the Igniter wrote:

Khudzlin wrote:

Yaba wrote:

Some liberties do need to be taken when converting a cone-shaped spell from square to hex.

Out of curiosity, how do you do it?

Pick one hex adjacent to the caster, draw out two lines at a 60 degree angle starting from that hex, fill it in.

The cone starts at either a corner or an edge of the caster's hex. This is accurate when starting at a corner.

When starting at an edge, start with a single hex. Advance the cone forward, then outward, then forward, then outward, repeat.

Demo Image

Ah, so you make the cones 60° instead of 90°.

It does seem cheesy. On the other hand,the default assumption should be that the cannons are manned...

Not at all Luzeke.

If I do 10 attacks of 10 damage, and you do 2 attacks of 50 dmg, we both do 100 damage. But for you, DR 5 is a 50% decrease in damage and for me it is 10%

You swapped the percentages, though I agree wholeheartedly with the "full attack" perspective, because the measure of effectiveness is damage per round (DPR), not damage per attack.

Some liberties do need to be taken when converting a cone-shaped spell from square to hex.

Out of curiosity, how do you do it?

Having to choose my spells exactly, to the point of preparing multiple copies of the same spell if I want to cast it multiple times, for each day, is a hassle I don't want to deal with. Arcanists still have some choice after selecting their daily spells.

+1 for Arcanist-style casting. The reason I've never played a caster before 3.5 or a divine caster before PF is that I hate Vancian casting. And though I wouldn't play a Wizard, I'm willing to give the Arcanist a try.

To be honest, I'm waiting for more information on how casters work (especially spontaneous ones, since there's been no blog entry on them yet) to decide whether there is such a nerf.

Spontaneous casters being nerfed in comparison to prepared casters would be a big turn-off for me. I hate prepared casting.

It's not just a trick of the mind. 1d8+6 averages to 10.5, so DR 5 is about half of it; 1d6+3 averages to 6.5, so DR 5 is about 3/4 of it (also, DR 5 can reduce the latter to 0, but never the former). Also, if you normally deal the same total damage across more attacks, DR will reduce your damage more, since it's applied separately to each hit.

I think changing it to "complication" would cause more confusion than it would resolve. As an abbreviation "comp" is most commonly used to mean "complimentary", and more colloquially "computer". So you're replacing a word that's potentially confusing with a word that is at least equally capable of confusion.

In French, we use "comp" for "compétence" (meaning "skill"). And "complication" would likely stay the same, so it's guaranteed to create confusion.

My strength 7 sorcerer spent low levels leading a horse called Handy Haversack. The only reason he did that was because of encumbrance and yet it was memorable and added to the game. At higher level he bought an actual handy haversack and routinely relied on other people in the party to cart around the treasure.

Got a horse as well, as a gift from an NPC (a rich and generous one, since he gave one to each party member). I certainly plan to rely on the other party member to lug around the treasure, though a haversack will certainly come in handy.

It is not a direct cause, but an incentive.

The ONLY use a caster has for strength, is carrying stuff. If that is handwaved, dumping Str is free.

It is pretty easy to be encumbered with Str 8, just with the weight of cloth, food and coinage. Weak characters suffer a lot in inventory space, but as weight encumbrance is a real PITA, nobody uses it, making dumping str absolutely free points.

That is another reason to use bulk, because bulk IS easier to use than weight.

I'm currently playing a Sorcerer with STR 7. I make sure I don't exceed my light load by cutting down on what I carry (it helps that I don't wear armor and that I don't need a spell component pouch). The stronger party members can carry the loot (it's a complete reversal compared to my previous character, a Barbarian who was eventually strong carry the whole party and our gear without breaking a sweat).