Lady Melo's page

I would ask why not make errata?

I would prefer a game that works smoother and closer to the intent over the minor trouble of errata.

At a home game you can ignore it, change anything you want anyway, or make up your own fixes. If 1 player spots some errata while your ignoring them and mentioned it the GM either goes "We are not using that because (Reason here)" or "Oh sounds like a good fix, let's use that"

At convention/society play you already often need to reference a shifting set of additional rules and there strict adherence can make errata fairly important.

I wonder if Warpriest could have worked going to master in simple weapons only. (Although I suppose you lose the whole Martial>Simple once you bump the die size on a simple weapon (such as deity one), and most ancestries give a really easy ways to make certain martial weapons in to simple weapons for proficiency, so in the end there are too many easy work arounds).

Perhaps a +1 bonus they lose if they become Master/Legendary (a sort of half step between Expert and Master).

I would say magic has an actual high skill ceiling now and a high skill floor. For three editions that was the goal, but mostly amounted to people finding the most binary op spells and spamming them until something better came online.

Now tactics matter for magic. At least that’s how I’ve experienced it thus far. On paper, it looks like a nerf, but in reality it’s still strong.

Yeah after hearing how Wizards were trash tier now and fighters rock, I was plenty surprised how not true this was in play (Fighters still rock, but I don't think a party is better with another Fighter>Wizard as was argued). Maybe they need to actually think in combat now, and make use of knowledge skills (depending how much the GM let's them know), but a lot of creatures tend to still have a really bad save. Out of combat I still find them full of world altering utility. Given the GM Guide reveal on how they will be stating up NPCs (A Master Baker/Lawyer/Etc can still have a combat level of 1 but a Challenge Rating of 7+ for a Bake-off/Court challenge, as opposed to Lv. 7 Expert from 1e) Critical Failure and low level manipulation spells become still very valid (Charm/Illusions) as well.

Not gonna lie I was reading this whole thing waiting for the "But..."

read the title as "Count me as unlikely to convert", set the whole tone different then expected.

There is always a certain feel you get from looking at the rules, that doesn't always capture when you dive in. I recall when D&D 4e came out I actually had the opinion a lot of people did summarized roughly by (incoherent screeching noises followed by exclamations of it not being D&D and having no depth or world feel). I now consider it one of my favorites of all time (However it is a different type of game, for different types of play).

Best advice is to not try to judge by the rules, understand them, understand why, and give them a shot with as little bias as humanly possible. They may have defined a new paradigm a new flow your not used to, try to go with that flow not against it just because it's different. After that if you don't like it well then it's not for you, but you can't define something new based on what it is not, only what it is.

I also had my doubts from the playtest, my Group hated the game from what the playtest showed and almost wasn't willing to play the final release, but we gave the final release a real shot and love it.

I have nothing to add or help out, but I just want to say I am in complete awe of the length and continuity displayed here. Despite This being my favorite hobby for over a decade all the way back to high school. I have sadly never played in or ran a game over ~15 sessions long, something no matter how random, always comes up.

orphias wrote:

Something I just noticed -

1 full waterskin is 1 bulk

1 weeks of rations if L (bulk) - my understanding is 10 x L (bulk) = 1 B
so... 1 bulk of rations = 70 days of rations ?

Bulk system just fails here LOL

Go back to imperial, at least that made sense !

If you count calories you burn about 3600 a day as and adventurer. At least.

That is 400 grams of fat. Pure fat. little less than 1 lb.

If you go with 1/3 fat, 1/3 carbs, 1/3 protein and add little Extra for some remaining water/fibers and packaging you get to around 1kg of food per day. Or little more than 2 lb food per day.

So it's 1kg(2 lb) of food per day when on adventuring and 0,5kg(1 lb) of food per day when full resting and doing nothing in town. Or secure camp.

I would say that 3 days of adventuring food is Worth 1 Bulk.

Considering survival rations would be less complete then proper modern rations with a good delivery system I would say you can cut those in half and have the person expected to burn body fat as part of there daily calories, with the intent to binge/feast when they return to civilization or when they find something large and edible (A common eating habit before modern ease). This is kind of supported by them being around 1 lb each for PF1e.

However I'm certain it's a mistake and is supposed to be 1 Bulk each week. Since Starfinder uses the exact same bulk system and there rations are sci-fantasy dense nutrient bars and are 1 B/week.

There are some things I would like to handle in a by-the-book fashion. The wilderness exploration hexcrawl is one of them; I would like to keep accurate track of the passage of days during this hexcrawl, and precisely how long it takes for them to move, particularly when the adventure stipulates that there are four separate patrols each trying to track down the PCs.

The adventure stipulates one thing, and refers the GM to the core rulebook for more detail. However, the adventure's listed travel speeds contradict what the core rulebook would actually allow. Given that, again, the book is referring the GM to the core rulebook's exploration mode rules, I do not know what the adventure book's actual intent for travel speed is.

Again it's fairly obvious the adventure's expectations revolve around the day count directly reference within it's self, and not the rules it got wrong referenced in the core rulebook (for w/e reason) either half all distances, or say it's not thick enough for difficult terrain and be done with it.

The adventure describes the way it was intended most likely in terms of days, with either an error in simple math or minor design mistake or confusion (I herd mention parts of the book was being written while the rulebook wa). So if need be I would just drop the hexes down to 5 mile hexes.

That right there is the issue. It's a poor design philosophy that sucks the fun out of gameplay. Manipulating your chance of success to 90+% for specialties is the most enjoyable way to play. Failing constantly is no fun at all.

Your point kinda fails right there once you tell other people that there way of fun is wrong, it's pretty much the iconic faulty argument of Roleplaying game discussions, See "Bad Wrong Fun". What you might mean to say is that is what is fun for you, which I do as well personally enjoy being able to make a character with notable superiority in an area of expertise at a cost, how much is up for debate.

I feel a good balance on this matter is for someone exceptionally skilled and focused to be rolling the die mostly for chance at critical or basic success to comparable world tasks

However a lot of people seem to be discounting the world as a world. The DCs should not always match your level. When the DC by level chart is used, it means your opposing an obstacle of comparable level, ability, and skill so naturally you should have a challenging time making that check whoever made that obstacle is of comparable skill, if they are not you should be using a lower DC. (In cases when it's a naturally existing obstacle the DC should be what is considering appropriate for the challenge, regardless of what level the PCs or monsters nearby they are stabbing happen to be.)

I plan to look in to Calculating Will saves using charisma, as a source of personal strength, identity, and ego to shrug off some effects, and change some existing will saves to perception saves which seems to now cover insight/sense motive type actions (Currently it's looking like just Illusions will become perception saves, though a few others may as well).

Mellored wrote:

Steve Geddes wrote:

I've always found the whole concept of "I prepare two castings of cure light wounds and one of sanctuary" a weird thing anyhow, so yes. It's pretty deeply ingrained though.

I agree that "I memories the same spells twice, and forget it after I cast" has always seem really odd to me.

But, "I prepare 2 scrolls/potions/wands/runes of healing" works just fine for me. And it keeps the things I like about Vancian. Mainly you need forethought, and you don't spam the same ability repeatedly.

Mana systems tend to end up with 1 or 2 spells being cast repeatedly. Unless you add some kind of cool down or something like that, which can be a lot to keep track of.

That's how I rule Vancian as well. Wizards write temporary scrolls, witches make one-use fetishes, druids asks spirits to imbue power into berries and branches and bits of fur. It's not about casting and forgetting, it's about expending the power held by objects that takes a 10-minute ritual each to charge.

It has never been about memorizing as in the idea of learning and forgetting, that is the lingo (often in setting) that is used wizards to mean casting a spell and storing it's pattern in your mind, and magic in your very essence, to be released later.

Spells are long and complex, they take more then 6 seconds to perform, so you cast these minute long endeavor at the start of the day and store that magic inside of you "Memorizing" all the different spells you have prepared. You don't forget the spell, you expend it. (Which been the in world setting explanation for over 3 years of D&D) I think the original source "Vance" novels literally had the spells ripped form you mind and forgotten making magic a terrible experience, but that is a whole different setting (and they certainly didn't case dozens of spells a day).

It wouldn't work exactly that simply, for example here is the level and DC list for Locks in the CRB, and what happens when you take Level out.

Locks
Name: `Poor` `Simple` `Average` `Good` `Superior`
Level: `0` `1` `3` `9` `17`
Base DC: `15` `20` `25` `30` `40`
Flat DC: `15` `19` `22` `21` `23`

Strill wrote:

Neo2151 wrote:

This is actually starting to point out why class (im)balance made a ton of sense, and "fixing" it doesn't make much sense at all.

Anyone (literally anyone) can become a "Fighter." PC, NPC, doesn't matter. It's an open book for anyone who can pick up a weapon.
But look at how much defense is being given to Mages needing to be extra before they can even start?
Yet, in outcomes, they should be similar?

Not everyone can be a "fighter". A "fighter" is not just any old joe who picks up a sword. A "fighter" is a hero on the path to matching the likes of Achilles, Cu Chulainn, Jason, or Bellerophon. An NPC can train for combat, but that doesn't mean they're going to match a player character, no matter how hard they try.

Eeh, hard disagree.

The Fighter will never match up to those legendary folks because a) the mechanics don't support the kind of feats they are capable of, and/or b) because they became what they were through being much much more than just a Fighter (divine blood, magic, etc.)

Just look what a 10th level or higher fighter (and all PCs) can actually do by the rules (and of course with skill feats, as skills are part of class progression, NPC Warriors even at Lv.10 won't have titan wrestler or cat's fall). A 10th level fighter is literally capable of out wrestling multi-ton dinosaurs, falling 50 feet without a scratch, survive 100 days without food, and slap magic laser beams back at people with there shield.

Ya, man, channel those bandages through your glaive. What nonsense.

Right or no, any table where that crap happens isnt worth playing at. Frankly, Im curious what kinda DM would bend to such rules abuse.

Of course, I see it now, we must treat Battle Medicine as this carefully choreographed, mystical healing technique or some special thing we can somehow throw at folks without our hands. Clearly that is what "You can patch up yourself or an adjacent ally, even in combat" means.

You have read the rules right? this game is a game where every character can do things beyond human skill/speed/physics of our world even "non-magical" ones, as the natural and supernatural are all in one as an extension of skill beyond comprehension. Just cause you can't imagine a situation your willing to accept, or lack the creativity to fill in the gaps that align with the rules and the setting doesn't mean you should push your weird agenda on people legitimately asking how something works. How you want to run it your game is fine, it's your game, but coming here and attempting to mock people who can accept how the game works is pretty low.

I've done a few re-writes myself to get past some of the plot holes discussed earlier here.

{Long list of good ideas}...

People have posted so many variant tweaks to the opening of this game. Mine begins next weekend and I'm feeling inspire by a few of them, I also felt the opening needed just a few tweaks to grease the gears (and as a small side effect of the connections some PCs have made in town based on the PC guide)

While it's true it's unlikely to come up in most games, it could have been squeezed in the "Starvation and Thirst" section on page 500 for completions sake.

In fact i think you could cover it by adding 7 words. Adjust the title to "Starvation, Thirst, and Deprivation" and then in the last sentence after the words "without food" add in "or sleep". Then at the very end "or sleeps as needed".

You could most likely write it better as well, but those couple of words might not even adjust the formatting lol.

Also yes at 200 HP you can go 200 days without food (which still might not kill you as you as written, just leave you in a coma needing to be stabilized forever, but close enough).

A conversion book for Starfinder or Starfinder 2E - I love the new game engine and want to see it adapted to fit Starfinder or have Starfinder fit it. Either way, I want to see Starfinder get rid of its version of archetypes, leveled weapons and use a 2E version of those as well as 2E's style of core game mechanics (critical success, success, failure, critical failure), ancestry, and class structure . I would rather see plasma, laser, ion and other weapon descriptors become weapons traits than have leveled weapons. Power and damage levels could rise with character level instead of weapon level.

I would fully get behind this, I could be wrong on how the designers feel (maybe they think Starfinders current style fits the setting best.) However I find Starfinder in a really wierd spot right now and would love it to move to 2e.

More utility alchemy items.

Adding rival adventuring groups can be a fun way to invoke a sense of competition into the game. We've done this plot a few times before—most recently in Mummy's Mask—but it's a plot that works best when that competition is a significant point of the adventure (or Adventure Path) as a whole.

For Hellknight Hill, which is going to be a LOT of people's first Paizo Adventure Path, we didn't want to overcomplicate the story with forcing the GM to run a bunch of complex recurring adventurer competitors to the plotline, and a competing adventuring group isn't really something that fits in well with the story.

Having the PCs all come together as several different adventures is certainly a great way to have your cake and eat it too—in this case, the multiple adventurers who attend don't end up competing, but end up comprising the latest group to come out of Breachill.

That is a good point I had not considered. Actually the number of people checking out PF2e that I know that never played PF1 or D&D3e is pretty surprising. Lots of people who started on D&D5e who are looking for something with a little more complexity and depth. Our group has been playing since High School 10+ years between D&D3/4/5 and PF1. It didn't even occur to me this is the first book of a new edition, as opposed to just the next adventure path that happens to use a new rule set.

I was mostly going to add a few extras not in competition, but simply because the adventurer element of the town is played up so strongly it felt a little light without a few others showing up. I was considering spending another more experienced group to Guardian's Way about sightings of a spider monster or something along those lines (a team that happens to include a gnome, Which Balka has snacked on).

Are there any other "heroes" at the town meeting? Do they all just run off when the building catches on fire? If the whole town is built around hiring adventurers, there should be some other groups that show up, I imagine.

It could be kind of fun to present a red herring adventure that the players might think is intended for them, but have the council decide on hiring a more experienced group instead. The other adventurers go off to the tavern to celebrate, Warble then presents her case, and the fire happens.

Yeah the adventure just says the PCs are the only ones that show up, but that does seem unlikely/silly. I was going to have others who showed but were less heroic then the main PCs and didn't step up when the fire broke out. (This makes the bold assumption my PCs will brave the fire) I do like the idea of sending other heroes off.

There is no basis for it in reality

It is unrealistic it takes an action to grab my weapon before I leap 30 feet in the air and slash a magical 1 ton spell casting, shape shifting, lightning breathing, talking pseudo lizard.

Joking aside, I think it also does not take 2 seconds no more then a sword swing takes a whole 2 seconds, Actions are not units of time, but units of opportunity in a dynamic landscape of actions. After all even though turns are being taken, they all happening "at the same time" and it's even implied you might be performing other non impactful movements during this time as well.

From everything said the issue with spontaneous has nothing to do with power and everything to do with having so many options slowing down the game, in testing it was at higher levels deemed to simply be too many options. (I don't agree as every player is going to have completely different thresholds on that, but it is what it is.)

Unless you are referring to using a 4th level spell slot to cast a second level spell at no benefit? (It's been argued that might be possible, as the ruling is vague).

However I read under cast as I know Fireball 5th level, I can cast it as Fireball 4th and Fireball 3rd with the correct slot. So you would need to be more clear.

Kyrone wrote:

Imperial Sorcerer laughing because they have at least expert in ALL the skills.

Remember that DC's depends of the task, climbing a tree with low branches will always be DC10, doesn't matter if you are lvl 1 or lvl 20 for that per example.

Not how it will turn out in practice. They said that in the playtest, but all DCs automatically scaled. If you are climbing a tree a 20th level it will be a 20th level tree.

IF it was a 20th level tree (which Would likely be some kind of long thin beyond rubber bending spaghetti limbed splintering sharper then metal razor barked, gushing with super lubricating sap covered hellish monstrosity most humans would consider by all physical laws of nature impossible to climb) as described in both the core rulebook and the playtest. On the other hand if it's a nice normal thick well shaped tree it might be Lv. 1 or 2, regardless of your character level.

I was also confused/not immediately understanding that pool is not infinitely refreshable up to full, but I actually very much like that dynamic... As Xenocrat says, baseline is really 1/encounter BUT extra points allow surging when needed, just not automatic spam everytime. And additional refresh methods allow refreshing to allow further surges. Of course, at higher levels you can refresh more so 2 or 3 focus points/encounter can become norm. It's really a nice system.

Why cap the pool at 3? Because if it was 10, then you could do the same surge 5 encounters/ day.
I mean, Focus spells are often 1 action, yet are often quite good, so you could be casting 3 top tier spells/round.
I can understand why the confusion, when people expect point pool to work like vanilla ammo magazine, but it's deeper dynamic than that.

If the cap was 10, good luck getting there anyway. However if you did your entire investment is a focus pool character. I would honestly like to see actual gameplay comparing if it would even be an issue considering what you lost to get that high.

I was very confused reading this until i found out you can not simply use "regain focus" back to back to reach back up to full. Not sure how I feel about that, though I do feel like the feats that increase how much you gain are less of a massive waste now lol.

Given that limitation, I wonder why even cap the focus pool at 3.

See this link as it's already been answered: https://paizo.com/threads/rzs42nf5?Heroic-Recovery-Question#8

You pointed to someone saying which one they think is a mistake. It's not exactly an answer.

Just a Quick question about Divine Lance. It can deal 1 of 4 alignment type damages, which are only harmful if they have the opposing alignment.

Or is this only harmful to creatures that are supernaturally Evil (as oposed to mundane evil)?

If the first one, while most likely considered pretty rude (and illegal in most regions) you could in theory shoot your good beams at everyone and find evil doers. To be fair I don't think being morally evil is illegal per say (location dependant) and would put you in the wrong for attackign someone, but no doubt it would be used.

However if this only works on supernatural evil, then you might entirely be justtified in many places with frequent good beam check points. Life just got a little harder for all them shape changing fiends.

Realistic to be used this way, hard to say, but I don't think cantrips are that rare. If it did just a minor amount of damage to others it might be a bit better.

(Sorry for the rant the actual question is regular evil or supernatural evil).

Pretty sure the closest you ever got to "We will never do this" is them at one point saying "We are not currently looking in to making a second edition".

As mentioned Rolling is an option as well as being a convienient way to track the step between 18 and 20 for growth. More importantly with over 30 years of gaming assigning mental values to an "18" over a "+4" It could easily do more harm to be ride of then any kind of clean up it provides. There also are some psycological differences in describing your strength as an 8 (which modifies rolls by -1) and describing it as being -1 (causes a perception of having a negitive strength in general).

Wow, seeing them side by side, (image quality aside, looked up the higher quality images to compare), I now see how much I like the originals more. The new ones look weaker, thinner (sickly?), less heroic. They also seem a little less detailed some how (shading? maybe they are not finished?)

[Chiurgeon]perhaps for the lower level antidote and antiplauge they also autotreat very low level poison/disease (for a roleplaying application, for treating things you are much passed), and provide an immediate save attempt vs higher level affliction (if need be the target could then become bolstered from a bonus save attempts until they are rid of the affliction, so that they may not continue to drink it until they pass).

[Poisoner] might need access to unlimited poison that actually cause effects, since you would expect the poisoner to be the debuffer more than bomber. What might also work is allow quick alchemy poison to linger for 10 minutes or an hour and remain in effect. This would allow repeat use of very weak poisons to not eat in to the action economy at all. A pre-battle prep could be poisoning the whole parties weapons (even if it's only for a 50/50 shot at +1d4 damage, if it's "anytime you have a few minutes of downtime", like during treat wounds time, and can cover the whole parties weapons, that's not that bad).

[Mutagens] are not the best, however they do have some uses. Perhaps they should provide both a +x item bonus (to retain the advantage of skipping out on gear) as well as a stacking +1 alchemical{or untyped} bonus. Maybe also give them baseline effects that are not so numerical, but match the "physical change" descriptions. Increased carry capacity, a unique unarmed/natural attack, various move speeds or jump/climb/swim actions, access to special actions or effects {recall knowledge giving specific knowledge or some kind of divination spell-like effect flavored as hyper cognitive awareness, or reactions such as bull headed reacting to charms, and quicksilver giving a combat reaction), a few of them already have crit fail prevention, but additional skill-feat like enhancements might also be nice.

I believe perpetual bombs may not be intended for damage as much as for utility/debuffing.

Debilitating Bomb, or Making a pile of Delayed bombs, as well as many of the base bombs having there own effects, Thunderstone deafens, bottled lightning causes flatfooted, liquid ice hampers 10

Acid can in theory melt object very well, and alchemist fire seems to very good for burning things down (mechanically, I'm not sure own persistent damage works on objects, but roleplaying wise it should be better for burning things down then a torch)

very clever use of unlimited delayed bombs could in theory allow (if you can make use of it) a large number to go off at once, (you can make a bomb as 1 action, set a delay (part of making it), drop it as a free action, producing 3 a turn, next turn you make 3 more with 1 less turn of delay, eventually you will have a very big pile of explosives) this could double in potency at level 9 when you can quick alchemy 2 at once.

Honestly Sorcerer might be kind of cool with a pool of known spells that are all cast at the highest level, starting from like 4 and growing to (10-12) times a day (about the number of top 3 spell levels of wizard). {I would keep this pool separate then spell point / focus)

While damage and healing spells require you to use top 2 slots to remain effective, many other spells of the traditional caster types (Buff, Utility, Debuff) can still get good use out of lower level slots.

When compared to a wizard (especially with quick prep) the classes would feel immensely different, while remaining very simple. The sorcerer could spontaneously cast more powerful spells, but far less total spells, and as usual with less versatility.

So i feel like it would be a proper solid trade off with wizard and cleric (9 spells in top 3 + all them bonus heals).

I could even see a mechanic to burn up, bleed, or gamble for a spell or two more when you run out, it would fit (though I don't personally like the resource pool expanding too much on a luck based nature, so i would prefer not).

Not much to add other than, I also came to this conclusion very quickly and already tested it out, only thing that happened was no body was surprised when there stuff stopped working, because it didn't.

Of course the rest of our time in the playtest will not be using this rule since as a playtest it's RAW > fun, however so far any class feature that has shown up to allow you to adjust this DC it always felt like an unnecessary tax that also shows up way too late. (like really Ranger doesn't get it until level 16? i thought it should have been part of the level 4 feat Snare Savant, which i was going to allow (in addition to spell points to give free snares per day), but as a play test I ultimately decided not to, the end result was the concept was too weak/stale for the large amount of time/effort/money snares already take the player just simply decided it wasn't worth it.)

Not saying it does or doesn't work with the staff (though most likely it would not) with spell duel's gloves/wand being an item that grants an item bonus to attack rolls with spells, and being able to use my staff when casting a spell (as if a free hand and such) i really feel like they should give this bonus, just to consolidate my "magical force amplifier slot" in to one thing.

However the concern that it would effect magic damage is in fact no concern whatsoever. As written if you made a special melee attack whose hit entree said "Deal 10 damage of the type your weapon deals" this attack would also not be affected by +X weapons. "The weapon deals an Additional number of weapon dice" is the wording of potency, for this to apply you would need to be rolling your "weapon die/dice" in the first place.

Take it from a 4e fan girl who would love the edition to "continue" from my side of the fence this doesn't look much like 4e (Which is good I don't want PF2 to be 4e, I want it to be the game we play when we don't want to play 4e, we use more then 1 system cause we go through play style moods). Without Healing surges, encounter powers, "Rally style combat", A lot looser Skill math (you have the flexibility to stack lots of +2's and +3's to get extremely confident in skills) Much large buffs (the math in 4e is not this tight, it gives +3 to +10 in buff/debuff size from powers all the time), and a literal BOAT load of reactions (a seriously defining feature of the game, that PF2 is lite on, everyone got 1 AoO/turn AND 1 interrupt/reaction a round, and these were used heavily by many classes, possibly to the point of straight up robbing control from the monsters between Defenders, Zone controllers, and reactive strikers {the ranger could have more then 1/2 it's power list be reactions}), and possibly more things that are slipping my mind at the moment, I would also argue the way magic items filled all your slots and added tiny little effects and more powers that felt like "you used" as opposed to using the item seemed like it added an additional layer to your character... but that last point would honestly be nit picking, and possibly personal

So far I'm only halfway through my custom Lv. 7 test of PF2 before we continue doing the actual playtest (we wanted to see a few levels deeper sooner), and tracking abilities with multiple uses, spell points, spell slots, makes all the casters feel entirely not 4e, they still have all kinds of utility spells and powers that play around with the world (even if nerf'ed) that you need to Dip in to rituals or really roleplay "stretch" what you can do with a power in 4e to cover. The Martials however... feel like a serious downgrade from if compared to 4e, the Fighter's AoO in 4e much more powerful, (Combat Grab + Improved combat grab) that's just 1 at will in 4e, and it's usable on AoO for them. I could go on, (we have a fighter and barbarian in the playtest) but a playtest VS a "done" edition would of course have extreme content disparity that just isn't fair to compare

I think some abilities operating around taking a short rest is great, I really like the feel of a short rest pacing out an adventure (there are many features in PF2e that seems to fit this in it's "totally not a short rest" 10 minute reuse timer/out of combat actions) it feels natural that a party should get worn out even faster without being able to catch there breath (and possibly tense and exciting when they are not allowed to).

I'm also a fan of DnD 4e, it's a different game though, a little less about deep world involvement(from a mechanical point of view) or classic adventure, more about dramatic scenarios, Heroic fantasy, and high tactics set piece encounters. Even it derives value from dividing half your spells/powers in to encounter and daily usage. I also feel like it's biggest falling out (and the thing Paizo liked least about it) was how they handled magic, this possibly evident by how some elements of PF2 are 4e inspired, but they definitely did not choose to depart from the identity of what magic is (for 4e to do so in setting it had to slay gods and blow up half the world for it to work in setting).

Finally Daily limits on casters and resource management is the thing I like about pathfinder, and your break down left out my favorite type of spells those that affect the world, not necessarily designed around combat (but possibly usable in combat).

I personally never had an issue with 15 minute adventure day, either I have designed a scenario assuming the party had plenty of time and expected battle and rest elements (which the encounters were tuned up for the occasion) or some element of time prevented them doing so. Inhabitants of dungeons do not get half wiped out without responding (or relocating), the enemies don't stop attack a town for the party mage to rest, the 5 days the party have to solve the mystery ticks down a day per rest they use up (so they want to make good use of the time they have).

I'm not talking about good or bad, I'm talking about interesting or fun choices.

Grand majority are overly wordy that give tiny bonuses in very narrow circumstances so when they do come up it won't be "oh hey, that's so cool!" it's "ah, a +1 bonus I forgot about."
Just do away with so many things that give a measly +1 bonus it makes everything feel grindy and hard to keep track of. If a player isn't going to be excited to take it, it shouldn't be an option.

Well... at least you don't actually have to worry about count up all those +1', Cause they don't even stack, so... yay?

But seriously Ancestries could use some serious work, I've seen some pretty neat stuff on a Goblin Paladin (I agreed "Fist" favored weapon means "unarmed" so applied it to teeth, and they took Rough Rider to gain a more exotic Steed)

I have had to continue to remind my players of this, and how there is a bigger then it appears difference between trained and Expert.

However my question is, does this defeat some of the point?

Reason skills are so narrowly separated: To allow everyone in the party to participate in someway to a skill related task. This seems good the rouge might not sweat it as they cross a narrow ledge checking for surprise dangers, afterwords the fighter and wizard brace themselves and with proper precautions make it across.

Reason given Rules were done this way: Skill modifiers could get insanely different in PF1e, to the point that some challenges got divided in to who can even reasonably attempt a skill check.

However... with UTEML, they hard coded a tier system which inherently defines who can and can't attempt a skill check, so while the modifiers are similar, we still possibly end up with the same "can and can't" gap, possibly a larger one (since so few skills will go passed trained)

Is this good or bad? I don't know, it possibly achieves the goal by giving more control over when a character "can or can't" do a thing while still requiring everyone to roll for tasks meant for the whole party. But it strikes me with an odd feel that the High skilled character in there focused area of expertise who can accomplish so much more than other characters still is forced into having a noticeable chance of failure on a task everyone else is rolling on.

Lyee wrote:

Treat Wounds is looking good and feels less video game.

I don't recall many video games with healing surges. Most of the time their innate health recovery systems are more like Starfinder's Stamina, in my experience.

That said - I completely agree. I think the Medicine skill based Treat Wounds is more "Pathfinder." Why add a new mechanic when Skills are right there?

I'm going to have to double agree with the video game part, especially because people use it as an insult attempt to any mechanic they don't like WAY too much now.

Even the DnD 4e video games don't use Healing Surges

But just like I commented on Resonances (disregarding if the mechanic is bad or not is irrelevant). These mechanics which set limits on things are perfectly, with the right description, easily capable of being more in line with verisimilitude then being "video gamey". Why should I be capable of powering an unlimited amount of magic items? Why would magic items be capable of being powered by there original creation for thousands of years? things take energy to create effects, fantasy or not this is the common logic for all limitations to a setting.

Same goes with the body, it is very conceivable there is just a limited amount of times it can be forced to accelerate it's healing. Instead of banking on the small chance you critically fail to treat wounds to be your daily limit (which could Nat 1 on the very first roll, or last all day long) a limit on how much you personally could heal from it would be good, you could even add a healing cantrip that inefficiently draws on this limited usage as well (if more healing is desired) and finally with the changes they mentioned they were going to make to Resonance (only for permanently equipped items) it could serve as a limiter for Healing potions and elixir usage. And of course many spells (such as heal) supply that limited energy on it's own and don't drain this limit.

On the other hand this is PF2, so it is most likely (no matter how well the mechanic works) not a good idea. Some fans have 4e allergies a bit too much to ignore where the mechanic came from. On the Other hand if they have a general idea of how much they want people to heal between fights something like Starfinders stamina system might not be bad. (Or simply much flatter results from Treat wounds, such that it would either be useless to use more than 1 time in a row or a hard limit of once after each combat)

simultaneously, your actual healing DOES become multiplicative better though.

so the increased DC make sense.

when you were healing 3 hp before, in the future you may heal 30. So, it's normal to be harder to heal 30.

I would certainly allow someone to drop their "effctive level" while healing, lowering the DC and the level used in multiplications.

that's the freedom given by "DCs by level" chart.

I do believe in that case there is point at mid to high levels that you can except a chunk lower DC and almost guarantee the triple healing success for a larger result, getting a larger amount of HP in return.

Also in the case when you could have succeed on a lower DC for some healing (possibly being all that was required), but went to high and failed or "Can't repeat the check for 24 hours", what happened here? Where you too ambitious in your healing attempt that you totally fudged up healing one member's most basic wound that you couldn't have conceivably failed to treat? Especially because the entire party would become bolstered against any further attempts.

I know some sorcerer's who would be happy to MC paladin, and grab Healing touch, and Channel Life (to cast heal spell for 1 spell point) leaving the divine sorcerer to cry over why Divine Evolution grants heal 1/day instead of simply gaining +1 SP and the ability to cast Heal as a SP ability.

Although there is possibly some conflict with the reference to "champion powers" it would appear as though the prereq of Champion Power (lay on hands) is met by having lay on hands. However such interpretation would also block a few more feats, leaving very paladin feats you do apply for.

The medium DC goes up by 2 at 4→5, 6→7, 12→13, 15→16, While not much, It would be possible to still lose effectiveness over time, if 1 of your 2 left behind abilities are Wisdom, and you don't advance beyond trained, that might sound extreme... but isn't the whole point of leveling up and increase the number, to get better at a task?

If we are just magically hand waving away all the times the number goes up by auto-scaling the DC's (not encountering new challenges) why are the numbers increasing in the first place? Shouldn't we just not increase +/level? I accepted Pathfinder's feel was to make characters ever increasingly more powerful as they advance, in to the supernatural and demigod range, but it can't just be some of the time.

You could make an argument the wounds are more complex from more complex enemies (a bit of a stretch, but conceivable), except that fails constantly when treating wounds cause by anything other then "Monster/Environment level exactly equals PC level" Treating the damage form a 30 ft fall shouldn't go up over time.

Sorry if this has been answered or is in the book but I can't seem to find the info. I see the guidelines for making various difficulty encounters Party to enemy level ratio Xp cost, with a budget for Trivial, Low, High, Sever, and Extreme tier threats.

What I can't find is any info on how many encounters per day, Or how the tiers of threats would affect this (outside of Extreme being best used as a one off fight against a full rested party). I realise it will most likely vary party to party, but there must be some, balanced party expect guidelines for this.

I do have to say, even 4e's math wasn't this tight, they were not afraid to let you have +2/3/4 to a skill from background, race, feats, items, powers. While it was certainly more controlled than various 3rd edition styles you could still dig deep to be really good at something.

Sure the attack math was tighter, but buff's could easily range from +3 to +10 (scaling on ability modifier) to either attack or defense. Various build tricks could add up to getting a decent permanent bonus to certain attacks of defenses up to 4 to 5 higher than the math standard (but it would often be very costly and at the expense of other features). It honestly was a very nice balance, while there was complaints (even a feat tax fix) that players fell behind at higher levels the truth was they expected you to make that up with ever growing buffs (but people didn't like the feel of it, and it made combat sluggish, the alternative was to up monster/player success rate and just make everything more deadly).

The biggests take away: from my heavy experience with 4e (our groups prefered system for years until more recently), a side effect of 4e's tighter math (looser then PF2), was people often felt like they were "cheating" when clever play or role playing got better results then the expected values (i know that sounds weird at first but after a while of playing it sets in). Worse then that side effect is how constantly unexcited I see myself and other players in PF2 when they look up something they are interested in only to find it's a +1 bonus. Just today the idea that you could barely feel the effects of someone who selected alertness to flavor there character and got +1 perception, or wanted to play up the flavor of certain spells only to be deflated that a +1 would hardly even be felt, even with the full-well knowledge that "it matters more in this edition"

The level 20 gnome with 8 in Strengh can still grapple and pin down an hydra though, no ? (Unless there is a size limitation that I forgot ? But it's still valid for Medium Size but strong low level monsters)

That's ... well ... I find it quite hilarous to be honest but I would not really like it either.

This doesn't seem much different then PF1. Said Gnome could have 7 strength and be a crippled(Lame?) oracle, but by 20th level his BAB is still gonna be +15, with 1 poorly functioning leg, a body weight of 30 pounds, and the strength to struggle lifting a paper weight, this gnome would effortlessly be able to wrestle and tie up a 200 pound boar to the ground like it was nothing.

IT's also possible for a 7 str 7 dex gnome wizard at 20th level, by virtue of his vast intellect to have 20 ranks in climb, swim, and acrobatics being able to out performer your average skilled fighter of 5th level, by having really studied up on proper technique. The only difference here is you could have chosen not to put ranks in those skills.

That is a lot of focus on earth-accurate naming and terminology of historical weapons, but these weapons lists are presented with a mix of also including purely fantasy equipment. Regardless of what historically what earth called the swords, if the names and descriptions are accurate to Golarion, doesn't that make them correct? How a name derived from it's germanic influences seems ill relevant when there is no Germany.

For those saying you have to playtest for your criticisms to have merit: If someone is so turned off by the rules that they're not even willing to rub 1 session of a free game, doesn't that say a lot? If enough people react this way that could be very important data to give Paizo. And because you can't fill in surveys until you run a game that data can only be collected on the forums.

First reactions are very important, but so is encouraging giving it a play anyway. I can tell you my first reaction to DnD 4e was serious disappointment, but after playing it, i saw all the points that sounded interesting in the "hype talks" for it. After some content releases my group was pretty hooked on 4e for quite a few years. Infact full content 4e (actually somewhere halfway through its cycle with hybrid classing and themes) seems to solve a very large number of issues with the game, with some system mastery (okay maybe alot) it's actually my go to system for ease of creating a character the way I envision them before taking content in to account.

However, I suppose my little story of 4e only enforces how important appearance and gut feel for an initial look at the content is.

Lady Melo wrote:

It is weird to me how so many people think Vancian style casting doesn't make sense. I can understand not preferring it, but the system gets to right it's own metaphysical rules on how magic works.

The actual magic is far too complex or consuming to be performed on the go, and instead A wizard when preparing for the day casts these spells and stores the completed spell within their body/soul until they execute a much simpler more basic spell (or the completion of it) to trigger it's release and final casting. People might not like this method but it makes perfect sense. For Spontaneous casters the magic is simply already written in them on a permanent (semi-permanent i guess) or fundamental level, and thus simply needs the final casting and magical energy release. (Why Bards are spontaneous with this explanation... well they were not in DnD2e, but w/e it works)

Basically, until 4e d&d there weren't any rules for a wizard taking the time to cast them slowly if he wanted to.

And sorcerers just waking up one day with new spells in their head is weird. It sort of makes sense in true vancian magic where spells are quasi entities that are basically chained up in the caster' s mind I guess, but I'm not sure that's how it works on Golarion

Golarion uses a "vancian styled" version of their own fluff, not a copy of the Vanian system, simply inspired by.

Technically, you could do a partial preparation with remaining spell slots that were unfilled, "Long casting" is using that rule and then immediately releasing the spell, using some of the energy you possess that was not yet shaped in to a spell (spell slots). This is basically as described on pg.218 of the PF1 core rulebook under prepared spell retention (I supposed they are stored in the mind specifically). Very Similar description is provided in other Dnd core edition books.

The sorcerer doesn't "just wake up" knowing the spell as much as the wizard wakes up with 2 more spells magically in his book, or the next day any class " just has" a class feature. This is the part of the game where you apply some of the roleplaying element in its namesake, and is discussed in the DMG/Game mastery guide of many editions on how to play it out as opposed to have it just happen. However it is true many play a style that ignores all of that and skips right to "you have it"

The sorcerer likely pushed their limits in actual adventure and recieved some kind of inspiration to dig deeper in their bloodline and find new potential or possibilities now that they have expanded the capacity of their magic. (Or w/e fluff you go with)

It is weird to me how so many people think Vancian style casting doesn't make sense. I can understand not preferring it, but the system gets to right it's own metaphysical rules on how magic works.

The actual magic is far too complex or consuming to be performed on the go, and instead A wizard when preparing for the day casts these spells and stores the completed spell within their body/soul until they execute a much simpler more basic spell (or the completion of it) to trigger it's release and final casting. People might not like this method but it makes perfect sense. For Spontaneous casters the magic is simply already written in them on a permanent (semi-permanent i guess) or fundamental level, and thus simply needs the final casting and magical energy release. (Why Bards are spontaneous with this explanation... well they were not in DnD2e, but w/e it works)