KohaiKHaos's page

The biggest issue I see with 2E multiclassing is that ultimately you are always your first class. Which works fine with some concepts but not with ones where you turned your back on your old life to pursue a new one.

If my Rogue decides to give up his life of crime and devote himself to the church. He's never going to become a Cleric or a Paladin, he will always be a Rogue. He might pick up a few divine tricks but that's the best this system offers.

Okay but at the same time as you call the current system unrealistic and say that it hurts concepts, I honestly find that a lot of PF1 multiclassing hurt concepts too.

A soldier who has never learned a single magic trick in his life can just suddenly swap careers before fighting through a week or two of monsters and decide to start studying magic.
And at the end of that week or two of monster fighting he'll have learned as much magic as the person who spent years of their life just to get to level 1 in their spellcasting class. The soldier just up and starts casting spells like the wizard was at level 1, except he put in nothing even slightly comparable to the effort and just teleported across career paths.

On the other hand, as to that rogue example, I'd say that someone who grew up as a rogue, started the game as a rogue, and then turns to the church, will still think like a rogue. The way they do things will always be rogueish. They'll pick up their new talents as a cleric or paladin or whatever, sure, and that's how they pick up the class feat(ure)s of their adopted class. But unless they invest some serious time and effort into specifically reconditioning themselves out of the headspace they spent most of their life developing (i.e., retraining), they're not going to just jump out of how they grew up and survived. Especially not by just punching monsters for a few weeks. The rogue in particular is a bad example just because the class at this point has a somewhat tangential connection to actual thievery, and the plentiful skill feats and upgrades let you throw yourself into basically any skillset if you want to.

And before someone reverses it into a cleric having a crisis of faith and turning into a rogue who wants nothing to do with his former beliefs, I'd say that working through the crisis enough to even function as an adventurer would be aptly represented by retraining out of cleric, and anything less is unlikely to lose you the favor of your deity.

The guy with the +4 2h can swing it all day long for 5d12. 6d6 attacks from 3rd level slots are in no way even remotely competitive with that, and they're a limited resource on top of it. At that point, the caster might as well just use their own +4 weapon.

I'd just like to address the obvious failure in noting that the level 16 or so fighter is being compared, roughly, to a specialist wizard who has burned through all 5 of his 8th level slots, all 4 of his 7th level slots, all 4 of his 6th level slots, all 4 of his 5th level slots, and all 4 of his 4th level slots, for having already tossed out 21 leveled spells today, so we're probably in encounter 5 or 6 by now (assuming you cast 3 to 4 leveled spells per encouter today), is not holding an advantageous position when it comes to doing damage. Oh my the wizard isn't that strong after he's used more than half of his spell slots today. What a shocker. Well, unless he remembers that his 6d6 fireballs can hit more than 1 person. And that he might even be able to catch more than 4 people in the AoE...

Just to illustrate why the whole multi-target thing matters...If the fighter hits with two attacks in a round, he does roughly the equivalent of 20d6 with the dice end of his attacks. That's nice, but what do you think happens if a wizard tosses 6d6 on 4 enemies and one of them saves? 21d6 total distributed amongst the enemies. But since people focus so hard in on single target damage, it seems that people forget that wizards get to walk around doing AoE damage.
And just as a reminder, this is the wizard tossing out his 22nd leveled spell of the day.

Meanwhile, the wizard was tossing out 9d12/8d12 chain lightnings earlier that hit an arbitrary number of targets and don't hit allies, but I don't see anyone on the martial end complaining about that.

It's just kind of infuriating every time someone compares a weapon attack to an AoE spell...using the spell's single target damage as the mark of how much damage it does. It's absurd that this is the metric people fall into using, because if AoE spells did as much single target damage in a round as a swordfighter, then nobody would have any reason to play the fighter. It's extra ridiculous when people feel the need to use spell slots 5 levels down from their max to make this point. As if by the point the playtest wizard is pulling out those spells because he ran out of everything higher, the PF1 wizard was doing just fine for slots.

As for the proposals
A. Most casters don't really need more slots, with the fact that DCs no longer scale down and AoE spells are relevant as long as you use them in sane and intelligent ways, they don't need the extra 1 or 2 slots of their next-to-highest spell levels, because all of their spells can actually hit now.
B. You do have automatic scaling. It's automatic scaling of hit chance though, and not of effects. If you got back automatic scaling of effects, you'd have to remove the free DC scaling, and welcome back to 1st level spells can't even be used to hit or debuff things. And welcome back to spells 2 levels lower than your max being pretty bad when used offensively too, honestly, thanks to the -10% chance of it sticking.
C. Some things need to be buffed up for their level. That much I can see. I particularly see this as a problem with single-target damage spells, which have always suffered due to their damage scales being typically linked to that of AoE spells. Polar Ray is bad and was always bad, we could make it not bad now. Durations could totally be stretched out, for the most part.

I don't really care which they go for either. But it's kind of annoying when the people who claim to Carr about the method ignore that monster stats can and do get inflated (sometimes massively, the Succubus has at least +7 Cha and +9 Nat armor) to meet a number goal

* Skills being trained or untrained only: Yes there's different levels of teml in PF2, but it's still basically the same boolean system instead of the more versatile skill ranks.
* Item levels: I don't know about anyone else, but it's rather immersion-breaking for me to find something described as a "Level X item" when levels are, in-setting, not a known or quantified factor.
* Monsters using different creation rules than PCs: Thankfully not using 4e's minion/standard/elite/solo ranks, but the opponents in PF2 are still merely presented as stat blocks with numbers meeting benchmarks with no explanation (# of hit dice, BAB, saves, etc) why they're achieving...

I don't really see why people keep trying to argue the first point here; how is the ability to choose to be incompetent at completing level-appropriate challenges "versatility". That's not versatility, if I wanted that "versatility" I'd just let you decide to automatically fail checks.

And half-investing in two skills is just investing in inability to succeed at level appropriate challenges in two places rather than just one. Which you'll be happy to know that plenty of people seem happy to complain about being the result of not putting continuous investment in a skill. So you can still have that too.
Or is your definition of versatility when the wizard gains a point of Int at level 16 and goes from totally untrained to a complete master of some skill?

Items have always been leveled in some way or another. Items that cast spells have caster levels. Magic swords have a definite + number that makes no sense in universe. These sorts of numbers and direct level relations are not new and people roleplay out how they're described in universe all the time.
A level 5 potency rune is no more versimilitude breaking than a +1 sword.

And as for monsters, them playing by player rules has been a boldfaced lie for nearly 20 years now. Go open up a 3.5 monster manual and tell me that the Succubus plays by PC rules. Monsters have had the targets for the end result set, and then it's someone's job to build back from that to figure out how to make them fulfill those numbers for a long time. And most of the time, the raw numbers are lacking, so they get numbers inflated. Whether it's absurd "racial attribute bonuses" or natural armor, they are brought as close to the prechosen end result as possible.
And now they're cutting out the ridiculous middleman.
And yes it is kind of unfair to use the Succubus, because it's one of the most egregiously "I wasn't made by player rules" monsters in the first manual.

The Erastil-following Cleric can take 0 feats and take only -2 within 50 feet with his longbow, or any cleric can invest a single class feat in Fighter Dedication and run around with a shortbow because they can, in fact, do that.
If they are dedicated to going full archer, sure, they're welcome to grab Point Blank Shot for some icing on top. If you want to round out the archetype with a third feat invested into the Fighter Dedication (for some reason) you can steal Attack of Opportunity or even wait until level 12 to become an Expert archer.
You don't need a way around the Longbow volley property if you go into Fighter Dedication. You *can* if you're dedicated entirely to going longbow for that +1 average damage per die, but is it really fair to consider it so onerous to be making an equal or lesser relative investment to get to the same place?

So at best, PF2 costs 1 feat instead of 3, because if you're that concerned about the -2 from volley you'll use a shortbow to completely circumvent it, and if they release a cleric feat at some point for Erastil followers that lets them ignore the volley property, you'll still be at 1 feat. So even if clerics had a native way to copy point-black shot for the one God with a favored bow, it'd cost just as much to get to it as just using shortbows.
And if they ever print a god with shortbows favored, you can get down to 0 feats to competently wield bows with no penalty. And the people who want to specialize and be better at bows than other clerics will still be going Fighter Dedication -> Point Blank Shot -> Weapon Expert because that's just how you show that you're the better archer.

You make it sound like some kind of massive step backwards that the cleric can invest *less* of his feats or class levels into this for the same result as the previous edition. A PF1 cleric could have invested those feats into being more clericy too, but he chose to throw 2-3 archery feats in instead.

But you have to roll it, because that nat 1 is not just a failure but a crit failure, so you must have your 5% chance to look like an idiot. If you don't make rolls that would normally succeed on a 1, there's no reason to even have a special rule for a nat 1.

Under the implication above that someone expects this should be DC 12, that's both within Assurance for an Expert climber and is also such a low DC that by the time someone might consider such a climb within your level, your bonus is at least +12.

Which means it's no longer a critical failure on a 1, but a normal failure.

KohaiKHaos wrote:

The DC table is not to be read as "Your character is level 10, and this is a Hard challenge, so you get the Hard Level 10 DC"

Climbing the statue ain't CR10 unless it's some mountain sized statue, and a single roll doesn't work for that anyway.
So your level 10 master climber rolls against a Hard...CR 5 DC, just because it's 200 ft. He can go slower or faster to shift the DC if he wants. And then he basically auto succeeds, because he's level 10 and that's not even a challenge to him.

Or, we could go back to the PF1 paradigm where climbing the statue is, say, DC12 no matter what level you are.

I'm not sure how to tell you this but that is the PF2 paradigm.

The DC is based on the challenge itself, irregardless of your level. That is how the DC chart actually works. That is what it says and what it means.
That certain people go out of their way to misrepresent it as something else is not my fault.

SuperSheep wrote:

To those people who want to hit 90% of the time on their optimized rolls... "Why?"

Because the game is/can-be about things you can do.

If I build a character who is highly optimized to reliably succeed on say... Climb checks, that adds to the list of things the party can do. When faced with physical challenges, I can offer solutions. "Klarpreet can climb up that 200 ft statue, and scout things from there." "Klarpreet can climb up the mast of the ship, hide and wait for the dragon to swoop down onto the deck then try to drop a net on it from above." "Klarpreet can free-climb down that pit and bring a potion to save the princess."

What gets seen from scouting position has chance of failure. If the net catches the dragon has chance of failure. Rescuing the princess has chance of failure.

But the climbing? If it's reliable, or mostly reliable, knowing its in the tool-kit opens up possible solutions that have their own chances of failure.

If climbing has a 50/50 chance, Klarpreet's not volunteering to fall off the statue, fall off the mast, or enter the deep pit. Because it's a bad gamble. Find another way. Get a familiar to deliver the potion, drill a hole in the wall by the statue, or dive off the ship so the dragon's flyby attacks don't work.

Point is, if you know you can succeed at Use Magic Device, you can start safely incorporating scrolls or wands into your tactics. If you know you'll probably succeed at Bluff, you can include elaborate, sustained, clever lies into your roleplay. If you know your armor class is abnormally high (at the cost of say... saving throws), you can incorporate otherwise risky positioning when you don't think you're up against spells or poison.

Being able to mostly-reliably do X lets you use X to try A, B, and C. If your ability to do X is unreliable, including A, B, and C in your planning is dumb, because you stand a good chance of having screwed things up before you get to enact...

Just grabbing this one because it goes into depth, but unless the statue in question is a greased pole, I'd assume it's not significantly more difficult for a trained climber to ascend than a tree. The only issue at hand is endurance, due to the 200 ft height.

The DC table is not to be read as "Your character is level 10, and this is a Hard challenge, so you get the Hard Level 10 DC"
Climbing the statue ain't CR10 unless it's some mountain sized statue, and a single roll doesn't work for that anyway.
So your level 10 master climber rolls against a Hard...CR 5 DC, just because it's 200 ft. He can go slower or faster to shift the DC if he wants. And then he basically auto succeeds, because he's level 10 and that's not even a challenge to him.

People need to stop acting like all their skill challenges are at CR=level. Because those things you were auto succeeding in PF1 certainly weren't.

KohaiKHaos wrote:

The rogue doesn't need to have to be auto-succeeding at rolls the fighter auto-fails at to be better at stealth. Just needing to roll 10 instead of needing to roll 15 means you're already twice as good as the other guy.

The problem is, "twice as good" is still not good enough. Let's presume, again, that we need to bypass three different guard patrols. The fighter has a 50% chance of succeeding each time, for a total of only a 12.5% chance of overall success. The Rogue has a 75% chance of succeeding each time, for a total of 42.1% chance of success. So the rogue is actually three times better than the fighter in this situation, but he's still not good enough to pull it off consistently.

I'd say that the rogue is doing pretty amazing if he can beat 3 APL+0 encounters in a row without any expenditure of resources 40% of the time.

He's not sneaking past worthless mooks with those numbers, he's sneaking past guards that are as elite as he is. And that seems to be the hole here: these guards are at the rogue's level, not below him. If he's sneaking past a series of them successfully, the logical setup is that they're not on the same level as the rogue.

If equal level enemies should be massively inferior at stealth and detection than players, then shouldn't they also be significantly worse at combat?

If I could, I'd say the fix for stealth is to make it assymmetrical as such:
Player stealth as follows:
Perception always starts as a DC for stealth to beat.
Failure on stealth should not break stealth, it should make people suspicious and have them start rolling.
Critical failure on stealth does what failure does now.
And critical success on stealth breaks suspicion.
Similar things should be applied for deception and pickpocketing, actually interacting with the whole +-10 system

Player perception:
Works as per now, with single success determining detection, so ambushes aren't crippling and players don't get everything stolen off them by attrition

Lausth wrote:

Well...stealth isnt that much different than first edition. You usullay failed not because of your +900 stealth modifier but because of your fighter with 12 dex -5 acp and no investments to stealth anyway. Either that happened or that adventure turned into a hide and seek game while your party waits for you to finish it for like 30-40 minutes

I realize a lot of people just turn their nose at it the moment they see that fighter with a -4 stealth check, but it is completely doable. Let's just use the hypothetical example of say... a party climbing a mountain only to discover they've stumbled into a manticore's hunting grounds :-)

So the PF1 manticore has +9 perception and your fighter has -4 stealth. So the first thing I'd do is have the party hear the beating of large wings. They look and see a large flying creature approaching from the distance. There's a rocky outcropping nearby, and I ask them if they want to try to hide. I have the manticore pass within 200 feet and have it take 10. This works out to DC -1, so even the fighter can succeed on a roll of 3. This is a scare roll, the party isn't meant to fail it. The party has seen the manticore and now has a chance to discuss how to deal with it. They could take time to observe the manticore's hunting patterns, choose to take more secluded paths up the mountain, or use any other abilities at their disposal. The idea is to put themselves in a position where even with the fighter's non-existent stealth skill they can still avoid being spotted. This doesn't invalidate the rogue, either. While the fighter might have to dash between areas of total concealment, the rogue could hide behind cover to scout for the manticore and give an all-clear sign when it's safe to scamper up to the next position.

That's great and all, but once the manticore ceases to be 200 ft away, for whatever reason, the fighter isn't the only one rolling dice and he isn't trying to roll a 3 anymore, he's trying to roll a 23. Which is significantly harder to do on a d20, let me tell ya.

If your conceit is that PF2 doesn't have distance modifiers on perception checks and doesn't have working total cover, I guess you've got it all figured out. But since your conceit seems to be against the system itself, and not the missing features, well, I'd have to say that the fighter probably has a better chance of not setting off a combat encounter that everyone is trying to avoid in PF2, especially if he continues to employ all of those same tactics and strategies. He's not really a match for the rogue, since the rogue probably has +5 or more to stealth over the fighter when the fighter isn't wearing his armor (and heading towards double digits when he is), but that's okay. The rogue doesn't need to have to be auto-succeeding at rolls the fighter auto-fails at to be better at stealth. Just needing to roll 10 instead of needing to roll 15 means you're already twice as good as the other guy.

Yeah, you're looking at those numbers way off, and I'm pretty sure this is a false dichotomy to begin with.
In PF1, unless your party is composed entirely of rogues, you probably have some fighter or paladin or something in heavy armor with a +1 dex mod and no ranks in stealth.
And the proposed comparison is up against equal level guards to the party, since they're so competitive with their stealth rolls...and by level 10 that whole idea becomes a little unfeasible without abusing Invisibility.
Because it's not unreasonable for level 10 guards to be sporting +16 to +20 on their perception checks in PF1. So the level 10 guy in armor either sits out the stealth section of he takes off his armor and tries to use his +1 stealth mod against people with at least +15 over him. You'd need to find some kind of circumstantial modifiers to toss him up +15 just to get him to 50:50 failure on each of the 3 checks he has to make (for an 87.5% failure rate on the total of the encounters, just from this one guy, it's worse if you have more than one), and you'd need another +10 to be reasonable sure to avoid the fights.
The only way you're getting that is probably Invisibility...and that has, quite frankly, a ridiculously large bonus to a skill check even by PF1 standards. And which is countered quite easily, so it's not really foolproof at that point. The moment someone walks by with some kind of see invisibility effect, it's game over.

Meanwhile, in PF2, you're in the same situation, except the guards have a raw bonus of only +5 to +7 over the untrained fighter by level 10, with magic items in play. So instead of going up against an average roll that's 6 to 10 higher than the highest he can possibly roll on the die, and instead of a best case of the guards rolling 1s and he's trying to roll 16 to 20; he's dealing with a raw DC of rolling 15 to 17 before any circumstantial modifiers or expended resources come in. It is actively easier for the fighter to join and contribute to this encounter.

As for the maxed out trained rogue in both systems, I'd hold that grabbing every little circumstantial modifier so one guy can sneak past through sheer number crunching and no rolling, with no real chance of failure and no actual threat, is far more gamey than an attempt to sneak past against people who are on your level being a proper and real danger to you, with real threat of detection.
If you're able to get to the point where you are rolling 1s on your checks and still succeeding, why bother even narrating that part of the tale; there's no journey and no threat of failure. You could just put the dice away at that point and let the DM regale you with how you snuck past as if it was nothing.

Oh, and by the way, 3 groups of 4 guards, equal level to the party, are probably APL-1 or APL+0, each. Especially if there's a threat of an even stronger encounter should you fail the skill checks, on top of the combat encounter on a failure. So you just had 3 encounters and gone up nearly a quarter level doing this sneak past. It probably shouldn't be a cakewalk.

EDIT: Stealth has problems, but aside from making it asymmetric between player and enemy encounters, it's probably not something that can be fixed.
If you make stealth checks a series of checks, where a single failure means total failure, then players sneaking into an area are penalized.
But if you make them a single check, where a single success means you can sneak through a whole area or past a specific group of people for an hour, then you penalize players when they travel into an ambush or are otherwise trying to perceive stealthy enemies.
So long as stealth and perception are symmetric between players and non-players, one of the two will pop up as a problem.