Kringress's page

Ok it is 4:00PM on Friday and SNAFU is here. The main thing I was trying to get people to understand is that a 3 day time frame is not enough time to get anything together.

My point is the rules that we need to look even if they were on Nethys right away there is not enough time to be ready to use them. We need time to look over the rules implement them and then worry about enforcing them. The date should be in time for PaizoCon and not just 3 days.

I gave some time for things to happen, and yeah.

I am also going to calm your fears a bit, Kringess. Ninety percent of character creation in the Player Core -- other than name changes -- is the same as the CRB. It now really is edition 2.1 rather than 2.5, having read through it. There are subtle differences throughout, though. The most affected classes are wizards and clerics, but every spell caster will notice the change to cantrips where they get 2d4 at Level 1 instead of 1d4 + attribute.

Some may even be excited by changes in character creation as they'll get more bang for their buck with several ancestry feats, or won't have to create a character with a high charisma as a cleric.

I'm hoping that in the next few days we'll get people compiling master lists of all the name changes and the various subtle rule changes so that we'll get something we can print out and carry around, but for now, just do the best you can.

I am working on a mass email to the Minnesota player base about this right now, trying to set expectations and allay fears.

Hmm

Sorry, I should have put "I Know people who will not look at Nethys"

everyone, I get that old characters are not going to be effected. My problem is this, I have people that will bring new characters built to the 2.0 rules and not the 2.1 or re-master rules. They do NOT look at NETHYS for character build rules. They do not care what NETHYS says. How do I get this understood? PEOPLE DO NOT LOOK AT NETHYS!

Please I am trying to get a point across here and I have to get this understood. The remaster rules need to be an ADDITION instead of the default. I will have people that will look at me and say no and they do not care.

I understand the Paizo will not send out the Pinkerton's to get anyone's books. But I have to point out that many people like myself will not bother to buy the new books, or care if they ever get printed. I may only purchase the mini rule books when they hit my store, but not before that.
Others will never purchase the new books and just run under the older rules. This is a problem for Society play, and stating that these characters need to be built under one set of rules that they may never even look at is not going to work.

As I have games on Friday I needed a clarification of which rules we need to build characters under. What should have been posted is the rules for monsters, no need for alignment, the new rules for recall knowledge, and IF you had the new books this is how to build or re-build your character. This just created confusion where none is needed or wanted.

I am sorry if I swung the bat a little hard, but in Character Creation it states that use of 2.0 is available.

So please understand my confusion when there are two different creation processes here. and when it looks like in the re-master section you have no choice but to use the re-master rules.

Character Options

Beginning on November 15, 2023, no new characters may be created using the class chassis printed in the Core Rulebook if the class has been reprinted in the Player Core.
This affects the following classes: bard, cleric, druid, fighter, ranger, rogue, witch, wizard.
Characters with at least 1 game reported prior to November 15 may be built using the Core Rulebook chassis.
Previously-existing characters with at least 1 game reported may continue their progression using the Core Rulebook chassis. They may not use the chassis in the Player Core without rebuilding.
If a character option has been reprinted with the same name, use the new version as if it were errata. No additional retraining is necessary.
Example: divine lance has been reprinted with new Remaster-compatible rules. All PCs with divine lance must update the spell accordingly.
If a character option has not been reprinted, characters are free to use the option as previously printed, or to select it at any time.
Example: the brooch of shielding has not been reprinted. Characters may still purchase and use a brooch of shielding.
Example: the produce flame spell has not been reprinted, but ignition takes its place thematically. Characters may learn either spell anytime they would learn a new spell, and could learn both spells if they chose.
Example: the oracle class has not yet been remastered. Players may still build and play oracles using the rules in the Pathfinder Advanced Player’s Guide.
An oracle who learns divine lance must still use the remastered version of the spell.

Paizo stated that the rules were backwards compatible for 2.0 and now you are FORCING us to purchase the re-master? WTH is wrong with you! I am a VO that will not even mention this shit to my players. If you don't like it I do not CARE.

I have many players that will look at PAIZO and tell them Nope, done with this shit and leave the game and society if we force them to purchase the new books (which happened with the change from 1e to 2e), while stating the rules are on Archives of Nethis is not an option.

Please change your policy before it becomes a problem.

Here is what is needed:
Rules on refocus, Recall Knowledge, and Monster Abilities. Other than that there is no need to re-do characters unless the player wants to build under the new rules.

Yeah we just hit this rule last week, and what we did is put the NPC on the Dying track, with no saves.

I'll post what was a typical scenario for me.
In my case i had about 4-12 semi-active PFS players. I would schedule a game on wednesday nights.

I would post the game on meetup, "Hey guys, any requests for scenarios?" ...crickets...

"Hmm, i think 2 veterans and 3 relatively new guys (with level 2 characters) will probably show up." Lets try to find a scenario that they all haven't played and in the right tier for their characters...

"Damn, we've already played all of the current season tier 1-5..."
Level 2 is one of the hardest levels to accommodate because playing a higher level pre-gen can't be applied to them.

"Hmm, vet 1 started playing religiously after season 5 and vet 2 has been playing a lot but stopped playing during season 3 so i'll look through those..."
"Hmm, that one's dumb...but this one's cool."
I would post in the meetup, "Hey guys has anyone played this season 3.x scenario?" Vet 3 and a few newbies, "Looks good to me."

Awesome, i start...

Yes, been there Done that. I have over 200 play credits and 130 or so GM credits. And yes we have quite a few people in the same boat. We run 4-5 games a week with PFS and SFS and Cards. So yeah.. you can go to games Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday every other Saturday. Typical Friday nights is 4 tables, Sunday 1-2, the rest are variable. So I do support unlimited replay on all sceneraios.

1. Can you even have a cloistered Cleric of Gorum? Gorum requires armor, but the cloistered choice has no armor proficiency.

2.Battle Clerics get a boost to Deity's weapons if they are simple, but there is no boost for other Deity weapons.

3. How are Angelic/Demonic bloodlines supposed to cast spells like Divine Lance if they have no need for the Deity to give them that spell.

Okay then what replaces this feat? I can see this if you have a simple weapon, but then your deity should replace this feat with domain initiate feat if you do not need it.

Neo2151 that's because people do not how to use spells properly (most load heals in PF1) instead of Divine Favor/Power, Bless wand, Shield of Faith, and go to town.

Yes there is no "minimum stat" for casting, but all of your resists, bonuses, and to hits are based on casting stat+TEML+level of caster.

We be goblins, we be goblins 2, We before goblins.... and for those that play PFS look at season 10. Aww we just want to be friends and neighbors.

Illusion and then Evocation. Illusion has army killers in it so lower level monsters die fast from that. Evocation AOE decent, direct attack without using true stirk is damn iffy.

So yeah me and math at times....
Level 1: 17
Level 7: 25
Level 10: 29
Level 13: 32
Level 15: 36
Level 17: 39 (Item buff)
Level 20: 45 (Item buff)
1 F 4, R 10, W 7
7 F 15, R 14, W 17
13 F 26, R 19, W 24
16 F 32, R 26, W 27
20 F 39, R 35, W 34

Looks like its Reflex, Will then Fortitude for save preference.

Kringress wrote:

Looking at the saves for a moment, you get a base 10+cast Stat+ TEML: (maxing casting stat) 10+4+2=16 at first level, 7th level is 18, 10th level is 19, 15th level is 21, 19th level is 23, and 20th is 24 (25 with INT Item)

Going to use Demons for the saves CR 1, 7, 13, 16, 20
1 F 4, R 10, W 7
7 F 15, R 14, W 17
13 F 26, R 19, W 24
16 F 32, R 26, W 27
20 F 39, R 35, W 34

I will have to check other monsters but right now anything that allows a save above level 7 is not worth casting.

I think you're missing the part where level contributes to Proficiency Bonus. So for level 1 it would be 10+4+(1+2)=17. At level 7 it would be 10+4+(7+4)=25, and so on.

EDIT: And severely ninja'd.

Thanks for the edits, my mistakes.

Yep I screwed up forgot to add level, my mistake. Should just have level in those boxes. Yeash. Sorry about that.

Looking at the saves for a moment, you get a base 10+cast Stat+ TEML: (maxing casting stat) 10+4+2=16 at first level, 7th level is 18, 10th level is 19, 15th level is 21, 19th level is 23, and 20th is 24 (25 with INT Item)

Going to use Demons for the saves CR 1, 7, 13, 16, 20
1 F 4, R 10, W 7
7 F 15, R 14, W 17
13 F 26, R 19, W 24
16 F 32, R 26, W 27
20 F 39, R 35, W 34

I will have to check other monsters but right now anything that allows a save above level 7 is not worth casting.

First off, I hope that this is a very sucessful launch of a great product. However I will not pre-order anything for this system, I will wait until it comes to my local game store, so I can do a read through of the rules. This had better impress a lot of people, otherwise you are going to have the exact same drop that you had for playtest except it will be for the new rules.

Thanks for the information. This is great news, because then you just need to worry about immediate healing in combat that many classes can do.

Excellent points on this. I think you hit the major problems with Playtest.

I have already stated my problems with character generation, but by 10th level all characters look blah. Basically what is the main stat, and then 3 16-18's and 2 10-12s. I like the Starfinder rules giving me 10 points to put where I want, but the +2's should stop at 14 instead of 16. This gives a greater varaity of characters and who cares if you have a 15 con instead of a 14.

I Likes it. A very simple solution and gets rid of channel.

Yeah that is my impression of damage from the wizard point of view. Doing about the same damage as the Paladin (overall) with less resources.

I agree with DM_Blake about AD&D and 2nd ed D&D, fights got done in 1-2 rounds because no one had the hps to do anything else and you hope the cleric had a few spells left by that time. Healing potions were used constantly after the first adventure otherwise you might not have any heals.

For me I would ask the players if they would just agree to do average rolls at that point.

Just ran Heroes. We had a Barbarian, Paladin, Monk, and Evocation Wizard.

3 Combats ran about 1 hour plus each, so we only got through the first wave.

Damage on average for the all melee characters (including the wizard with a +3 Staff) averaged 30 points for a regular hit, and 60 for Holy Smite.

Wizard used 7 fireballs, 4 x 6th, 2 x 5th, 1 x 4th level fireballs, 37.5% Saves on all spells. Did less than average damage (rolled 3.2 average). Only once was able to hit more than 2 targets.

Most damage was done when wizard was hit by demon and Elemental Tempest did 12 D8 fire damage, doing almost 60 points of damage. Used 1 5th level Magic Missile 9 d4 + 9 doing 45 points of damage. Used 2 Cantrips for no damage. (roll to hit did nothing).

Party AC 34 Paladin, 33 Wizard, 30 Monk and Barbarian. (Wizard took Fighter and AoO feats). Barbarian took 95 HPS damage in 1 round, Monk kept getting hit 1-2 times a round, Paladin and Wizard took the least hits No one got below 0 hps but it was the first combat. Paladin used 3 lay on hands and 1 use of Wand of heal, 1 use of Heal potion.

Basically Wizard was out of high level spells by the end of the first wave, and healing would not have been a great option going onward.

The GM ran the monsters correctly so we could not concentrate on 1 target, No 3rd attacks landed and only on 20s were there any critical hits. My guess is that we would have died on the second or third wave as the Wizard would have been reduced to damage from swinging the staff and all the healing magic would have been used.

THANK YOU and your players for doing this. You are a DM after my own heart. I totally agree with what you are stating here and in all your posts. I hope to hell that Paizo will redo playtest because it is evident that the current playtest is not ready.

Excellent Post. Really gets to the heart of the problems with the bard

Personally I think bonuses should be:
Class: Anything granted by your class.
Item
Spell/Song

All of these are take the best of that category, you cannot stack the +1 bonus from the Bard and the + 1 Bless from the Cleric for example. If the Bard song is a +2 then you only get the + 2.

First is player participation, We started with 15 people at the beginning, we are down to 5 people right now. We lost most people to not liking playtest rules or losing interest.

Attacks, if I were to create a party right now I would have 3 barbarians/fighters and a cleric. Only once was anything written for a dedicated rogue. Spell casters other than clerics need not even apply. Spell casting other than healing needs a total rethink/write. After second level there is no need to have a rogue (better off having a cleric taking thief skills). As far as anyone can tell there is no niche for anything that is anything other than Barbarians, Fighters, Paladins, Clerics. You do not need anything else. This is a FUNDAMENTAL problem, and a bad design flaw.

The only time we had more than one spell caster was for the third chapter and we had 2 clerics who turned the fights into snooze fests with so many channels it was not funny.

Overall I would rate up to Mirrored Moon as the first chapter was interesting, and the others as have a cleric with a bunch of fighter types to absorb and deal damage. It has become how magical is your weapon vs how many hit points do the monsters have.

Just looking through the scenario how the heck is anyone supposed to get more than 3 RP and that at the very end? Most of the combat scenarios we were able to negotiate out of (Cleric 18 CHA). The ones we could not talk our way out of were dispatched with Barbarian/Cleric two hand weapons and a semi effective rogue. The Rogue did no where near the damage that the Cleric did.

So far TPKS for me only happen when the GM rolls massive Crits and drops the healer. Once that happens then the party has big problems. Play Test is heal heavy over arcane heavy.

Anyone know why even the most expensive non special material armor is 2/3rds the cost of the same level of bracers of Armor?

Also on the Ring of Wizardry 1 you get 2 1st level and one Zero? What the heck, how would you even put in a cantrip into the ring and could you cast it like the other cantrips?

Kringress wrote:

Adventures are equal to a gold rush in an area, so all prices should have a dramatic increase when they blow into town.

Cough.

That said I think you CAN mess with the actual price of things depending on circumstances.

Yep I think that would happen

Back to the fun here.

Adventures are equal to a gold rush in an area, so all prices should have a dramatic increase when they blow into town.

As to the skill bloat that is an easy fix. You get a Trait, A Feat, An Item, your Trained Bonus, your Ability Bonus and a Class bonus that may be in a book or a Splat book. No more stacking feats or class bonus to get a huge increase.

Just as a heads up folks, these are wide ranging, looking at game design. The opinions in them are my own and are not necessarily related to any of my work at Paizo (which is why they are in my personal channel and not Paizos). If you are here for the playtest, they might give you insight to my mindset, but they should not be seen as some sort of "behind the scenes" or "secret reveals".

I'm just talking about games...

Jason, I want to thank you for putting up those comments, and letting people understand where you are thinking about. Please keep on making those videos, and giving us an area where we can debate with you over game design. What I would suggest is setting up a page where this could be debated instead of Play Test.

Is there a nice quick and dirty summary of all the attribute combinations available for 1st level characters? I tried to search for such an overview but wasn't able to find anything.

Is the following possible for a human character to have the following initial attribute distribution?
Str 10
Dex 16
Con 10
Int 10
Wis 14
Cha 18

No because of the ABC rule.

Or

18 ABC +2
14 A +2
14 B +2
12 +2
10
10

Now to address the second part of Kong’s piece. How to limit magic.

Traditionally there are many ways of limiting magic, but what happens in my experience is unless the penalties are low, casters are quickly regulated to NPC status. Really who wants to play a caster or even be around that caster, that has a chance to be turned into a toad, get injured, get an extra-plainer entity involved, or even kill the party on a miscue? And yes I have seen all of these happen.

All of these limits take and niche a lot of games because of how bad they treat the casters. I have tried many different games, and those games that use magic and limit magic hard get put into niche slots. D&D from Chainmail on through have put a non-burden limit on magic, and thus those games have remained popular and all other game designers either work off D&D or run away from D&D.

Finally Vanceing magic, I like this magic system due to the ease of use, speed of learning, and versatility of the system. Most other systems are no where near as friendly to do what you want to do.
Personally I have used magic with point buys, with spell points, with other burdens on casting, and with ability drains, etc. I have found that all of these systems are usually harder to learn, do not give the variety of spells and abilities that Vanceing magic does and burden the player with a lot of tracking issues.

Kong, I posted this on the playtest facebook page, but a lot of what I stated here is what you are also stating.

From the Hobbit:
"Gandalf 'I am looking for someone to share and adventure I am arranging, and its very difficult to find anyone'

Bilbo 'I should think so - in these parts! We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner! I can't think what anyone sees in them!'"

So why should my wizard go on an adventure when he can make plenty of easy coin casting the cantrip Light (24 hours of light) 3-4 times a day, and 3-4 castings of Ant Haul (level 1 8 hours of 3 extra bulk). He would charge a meal, drink, and a CP (or equal) for the light, and 5-10 CP for the Ant Hauls. He would make about 3 SP easy a day or 8-9 GP a month without any problems.

And yes Rysky, all peasants would LOVE to be able to cast cantrips, Light, Ghost Sound, Mage Hand, Message, Prestidigitation, Produce Flame, Ray of Frost, Tanglefoot. All of these are great spells if you use them correctly, even in their nerfed forms for adventures. 24 hours of a light that gives you 20' of good light, without a Light Bulb. Can I have it now? Ghost Sounds 30' range up to 4 people shouting? Free Cheerleaders. Message, 120' private chat? Prestidigitation is cooking without fires, or cleaning without water, or minor conjuration? Yes please.

Ray of Frost, Produce Flame, Tanglefoot? Hell the police right now would love Tanglefoot, All of these unlimited casting with 30-60 foot range, and I can use ray of frost to make ice at anytime, letting me make iceboxes to keep food cold.

Magic is a force multiplier. You can now have people working 24 hours a day at a business, smithy, labor shop because you can see clearly at night. You can increase how fast you plow or harvest or increasing the yield. Thus a first level magic user can cause many people to work longer, faster, and not have a place idle to stop working.

End the end, most players look at magic as the Bang, not at what is being done all around them.

Here is a suggestion that I think will work.

You have 7 permanent magic item slots. These can be used for any non-one shot consumable items (ammunition/potions/oils/scrolls). You get a slot at these levels: 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, and 10. Additionally one half of each bonus in Charisma will either add or subtract a slot. (+2 Charisma will get an additional slot, +4 Charisma will get 2 slots, etc.)

This would allow for 1-2 weapons, armor, shield, and 3-4 pieces of other gear.

1. Splash Damage
2. Splash

Splash is in the trait section but there is nothing for splash damage

For the most part Paizo did a very good job on the design of the rule book, I think there a few organizational changes that need to be made and the dropping of Resonance.

Let’s look at organization. I would move Advancement and Options to right after Classes and change the name of the Spells chapter to Magic, with breaking out Powers and Spells into two different listings. And finally moving Alchemical items from the GM section to the Equipment section.

In the Character Creation section I would take and create a single level up chart that can be used by most classes, and have any unique features placed in the class description. I do not need a second chart that shows the alphabetical listings of the level feats. There are not that many feats that keeping track of them should be that hard.

I love the encounter modes. With the three action economy for encounter mode, the action economy helps move the encounters, but it does power down melee after tenth level. This is due to shield being a separate action instead of an automatic action.

Explorer Modes needs some work, but overall a great idea. Explorer Mode is where I would assign a 10 Skill check for how people are exploring, instead of secret GM checks. Doing this will decrease the time for a GM to handle stuff, and keep the players happy.

With the spells please change the superscript from H or U to the 2 letter College abbreviation. As a caster I need to know the college well before I need to know if it can be heightened. In the spell/power description the Trait Word box needs to be consistent with Alchemical Items. People will look at the Trait and if it is not in the box but in the description, they will say the spell description does not apply.

Resonance. Again a solution looking for a problem. With the removal of the protection items and placing protection into armor, the only character that Resonance applies to is the poor Alchemist and his bombs. For the most part Paizo fixed the wand issue with dropping wand charges by a fifth but only cutting the cost by a third, and by making Trick Magic Item a feat that you have to have training in the skill you want to use. It is cheaper, easier, and more convenient to have scrolls and potions than a wand. In our play tests we have only run out of resonance three times, twice on the Alchemist, and once on the Cleric until the cleric figured out that Combat Heal is a great downtime heal feat.

Lastly the character sheet itself, Remove the T,E,M,L circles and just put in a line for the -2, 0, 1, 2, or 3. This will help anyone who is running the pregenerated characters. This will also save room on the sheets that could be used for other things.

I posted most of this on the Facebook page, but have done some editing to hopefully make my concerns better

My impressions so far in Three Parts with the forth part being placed to go over the design of the rule book.

1. Character creation and Advancement makes blah characters.

After creating characters for PF2 and doing level ups all characters look the same. There is no room in the character creation process for any real uniqueness. To give an example:

At the end of character creation you will usually have 18, 16, 12, 12, 10, 10. This is due to the rule on page 18 on ability boosts “When you apply multiple ability boosts at the same time. You must apply each one to a different score.” With this you will have these types of scores:
Prime Stat: Secondary Stat, Save, Save, INT, CHA.
Level 1: 18, 16, 12, 12, 10, 10
Level 5: 19, 18, 14, 14, 10, 10
Level 10: 20, 19, 16, 16, 10, 10
Level 15: 21, 20, 18, 16, 12, 10
Level 20: 22, 20, 18, 18, 14, 12

Typical Dwarf Cleric
STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA
Level 1: 12 12 12 10 18 14
Level 5: 12 14 14 10 19 16
Level 10: 12 16 16 10 20 18
Level 15: 14 16 18 12 21 18
Level 20: 16 18 18 14 22 18

You will have at 20th level 4-6 18’s and there is no way of avoiding that. All your characters will have these stats. Blah, blah, blah. There is no variety, no creativity, no fun. This is also a big problem with Starfinder.

My proposed fix:
Change the 4 individual boosts to 8 points that let me put those points where I want them, and then change the level increases from +2 per stat under 18 to +2 per stat under 14 and anything above a 14 is +1. This should keep the base about the same but the increases will be vastly different.

Part II of Character Creation

Ancestry, Background, Class:

I LIKE IT.

Ancestry, by putting in feats you get to create a semi unique person that has things that the will do differently than anyone else. The only advice I can give here is to keep all the races at the same point buy system and have different feats that they can take.

Background, having a Lore and a Skill that starts at 1st level that people having a day job check on is great.

Class, is a good grouping of skills and feats that define those classes. Individual feats and class issues will need to be addressed, but in general the only big problem is with the casters.

First. having Expert, Master, and Legendary all jammed together at level 12, 16, 19. This would be better for all if they were spread out such as 6, 12, 19. This allows for better to hits and saves though the entire progression getting closer to a 50% to hit and to save.

Second, go to a 1, 2, 3 progression for spells and bring back the casting stat bonus spells. This will smooth casting progression and with the casting stat boost you will end most of the gripes from people who want to play casters. This way you get rid of the last 3 levels of stagnation.

Third, have fun.

Part III of Character Creation, The Final Chapter:

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The Good: General Feats. Nicely grouped, well placed and thought out. I may have a problem with a couple of the feats, but overall everything here looks very good.

The Bad: Skills. The grouping and consolidation of skills are good, along with what you can do trained and untrained. The very bad part is the automatic increases per level weather or not you are trained in them.

As an example, there is no way in heck that I am going to be able to compete with a trained person in any field that they are trained in unless I get lucky. Can I be trained in that field, yes. But will I know as much as an expert, master, or legend? Probably not.

Here is my proposed fix:

1. Unless you are trained in the skill you get a D20 – 2 + your skill modifier. This is no matter your level, the best you can get is an 18+modifier.

2. Bring back the skill points. As written you have to increase all the skills every level. Changing to Skill Points is not hard and helps keep characters unique. This will allow for greater role play opportunities and keep level bloat down.

3. Use the skill boosts to add Expert, Master and Legendary for the bonuses, and maybe additional things that you can do. This will give you 9 increases with maybe 3 skills in Legendary status.

4. Lore with the fixes above will be much better because you will have to train in a lore to be able to fully understand it.

The good part here is the Critical Failure, keep that it will make people who don’t have a reason to roll not roll.

The Ugly:

Whoever did the equipment section needs to re-look at this entire section. This is a solution is search of a problem. Go back to the weight system, it is better and cleaner because you still have to do the addition. Lets start with Armor, then weapons and finally gear.

Armor: All armor should have at least 1 bulk, (just the weight and how much sweat they generate), and remove the fragile and clumsy qualities from the armor. All of the metal armor can have the noisy quality. Why buy Full Plate as written? It costs more than Half Plate and is worse in all respects. You could have just imported the 1E armor, and added TAC to the armor.

Weapons: Going from one handed to two handed should just increase 1 dice, a D6 to D8, D8 to D10, etc. this should be changed in order to distinguish from 2 handed designed weapons. And give Short, Long, Bastard, and Great Swords versatile P/S.

Now to the worst section. Gear. This section is so bad there are no words to describe it. Personally I would just cut and paste the gear from the Core Rule book with the removal of the Alchemical section.

To show how bad this is, an 8 Str Halfling can carry 19 backpacks (each backpack is 1L). Each Backpack holds 49 backpacks (4 Bulk or 49L and 9-), with each backpack holding 499 pints of oil (1 – per pint, 10 – per L) in them, or about 24,460 pounds per backpack. Or at full load 464,740 pounds, or ~ 58,000 gallons, or about 6 tanker trailers of liquid. This does not include what can be done with belt pouches. But I read that the GMs will check it and enforce it. Yeah uh huh, pull the other one it has bells on. Some GMs will, but a lot will not even look at the sheet.

I can understand trying to change armor and weapons to work within a new system, but most of this is the current Pathfinder system. Paizo should have just put in the old values and added TAC and the minor changes to the weapons. As written the changes to gear are so bad that you need to go back to the old system.

Bad Paizo editing strikes again.

Sample Spell Book on page 136 states "You can choose whichever spells you like, but this list covers a good selection of starter spells for a 1st-level wizard."

Spellbook
You start with a spellbook worth 10 sp or less (as detailed
on page 187), which you receive for free. The spellbook
contains your choice of 10 arcane cantrips and eight 1stlevel
arcane spells. You choose these from the common
spells on the arcane spell list from this book (see page 199)
or from other arcane spells you gain access to.

Each time you gain a level, you automatically add two
more arcane spells to your spellbook. These can be of any
level of spell you can cast. You can also use the Arcana skill
to add other spells that you find, as described on page 146.

If you’re creating a higher-level character, it’s usually
easiest to assume you always picked new spells of the
highest level possible. At an odd-numbered level, this
means that in addition to your total of 10 cantrips, your
spellbook holds two spells of your highest level and four
spells of all lower levels. At an even-numbered level, it
means you’d have 10 cantrips and four spells of every level.

So as you see the paragraphs conflict with each other, so I would state that the initial spells must be common spells, but your additional spells would be what you want.

First: who says fighters can’t debuff? Level 2 feats of Brutish Shove or Intimidating Strike, with the Level 4 and 6 feats of Improved Brutish Shove, Reveling Strike (see invisible) or Shatter Defenses. With the Intimidating Strike and Shatter Defenses you end up with a target that for the entire round is, Frightened 1, flatfooted and Sluggish 1. (-3 AC/TAC, -2 to hit, -1 Fort and Will Saves, and -2 Reflex saves). So if you use an Agile weapon that works out to be 0, -2, -5 to hit.

Second, please re-read uncommon and rare spells, the actual wording is “you can’t choose an uncommon or rare spell unless your class OR the GM gives you access to it.” That is an OR not an AND, so if I want an Uncommon or a Rare spell I pick those spells for my free spells.

Third: I want to thank magnuskn for his work on this issue. Applause.

Forth: Everyone is forgetting one big thing about single target attacks and that is TO HIT TAC. After level 7 you have less than a 50% chance to hit unless you use True Strike on each attack. Also if you have to roll to hit a target then that target gets a save you increase the total fail rate of that spell to the Miss chance + ½ x critical save rate. So this can give you up to a 70% fail rate on a spell, which is crap.

Okay here is the problem that everyone is forgetting about, HITTING the target. At 8th level casters only have +12 to hit TAC. Average 8th level monster has a TAC of 24. The TAC AC stays fairly consistently ahead after that. The fighter has a 16 to hit for the monster AC of 25 on average. So the wizard hits on a 12 or better, with the fighter hitting on a 9 or better. The fighter has a 10% chance to crit to the wizard 5%. So in order to hit even with the fighter you need Heroism cast at 5th level (+2 to hit), and then cast true strike (1 action) for 2 rolls and take the higher.

First thing casters should have is a change to Expert and Master Caster levels to level 6 and level 12. This will bring the average to hit to an 11 and damage to +5 and +7.

Second, the feat Quicken Casting needs to give multiple attacks every round. Quickened Casting should allow multiple 0 level castings with 1 higher level spell per day to keep up with the fighters. This will give the cantrips similar damage as a weapon.

Third, if the spell is direct physical damage, change the spell description from 2D per spell level to 1D per spell level and remove the saves. Currently there is a constant 60% to 70% chance of spell failure due to miss chance and critical saves.

I can understand wanting to make an easy system for gear, but when looking at the rules Paizo is putting the pressure on the GM to make sure things are ok. This is very bad idea because you can get different GMs to make different rulings. One GM could totally redo the list and state this is what you are using, while another GM would only look at weapons and armor. For future PFS you are going to have to have hard written rules on bulk.

According to the current rules I can carry 19 backpacks with a 4 strength and be in light load, with each backpack carrying 50 gallons of oil. This is not the only issue that is there, but is one of the worst. Other problems are things such as arrows taking 1L, they may be light in weight, but they take up a lot of space. Arrows and a Quiver should be looking at 2-3L each.

Personally I would rather go back to PF1 rules for bulk because weight is a huge consideration not just space taken up.

Thanks

Agreed this I liked as a feature because it helps keep the curb stomping to a minimum, and if you are playing higher you may die faster.

Instead, I foresee that players in P2 will use their skill feats for "action" skills only, and as soon as there is a Lore-based skill check everyone in the party will roll, with about the same chance of success as if they would have had spent skill feats.

I agree totally, we ran a play test, no one put any ranks into lore other than the one they got as a background.

I think if you don't have a rank in the skill, the Maximum you should be able to get is a 10-15. I do not care how well traveled you are but you should not know more than an expert, master or a legend.

Let me give an example who can tell me where you can find how Tom Bombadil met his wife? Without looking online!

The Tolkien Reader, the poem is named the Adventures of Tom Bomdadil

Looking at the Alchemist bombs they have the Descriptor Splash, but in the traits section of Acid Splash you have Acid, Cantrip and Evocation. Only when you look at the spell description do you have splash. So does Acid Splash get the 5' radius splash damage? Please put Splash in the traits section. We are getting into an argument over weather it applies or not.