Landon Winkler's page

There's a lot of little things that I like, but one is that resurrect being a ritual means that there won't need to be random friendly 9th level priests hanging out in every major city. It was one of those points where you could really see the needs of the game intruding on worldbuilding and its nice to keep the heroes center stage rather than making a lot of parties hire out the work.

Well, as a GM, I'm looking forward to the new monster/NPC approach. Monsters in the Playtest were substantially faster and more fun to run than their P1 equivalents.

As a player, being able to really freely trade out features I don't want. Since basically everything is feats, it's really rare to get stuck with an ancestry or class ability I don't want.

For both, the three action economy means a lot more flexibility, but also a lot less pausing the game to re-explain corner cases like 5 foot steps.

One thing about D&D's roots in war games that doesn't get mentioned as much is that, up until 3rd Edition in '99, it was assumed in the rules that PCs would get involved in kingdom building and politics around 9th level.

Now, that's not necessarily gritty intrigue. They become actual movers and shakers in the setting. But if they've been in the shadows for the first half of their career, being able to move out into the light is a nice progression.

Personal power is another reason for NPCs to actually give start-up adventurers the time of day, divinations and improved skills give access to evidence needed to make informed decisions, and teleportation means you can meet face-to-face with contacts anywhere in the world. In a political game, all that power cuts through a lot of non-political time.

Obviously, this can get boring if no-one else in the world has the same level of power, but I've personally found high-power systems lead very naturally into political games.

We need to figure out what to do with classes for games that we're converting. We've got some vigilantes, an oracle, an investigator, and maybe a magus that'll need various amounts of mechanical support. There also might be a few alchemist extracts that'll need item equivalents.

But the actual rules underpinning? There's nothing I feel the need to tinker with yet. Persistent damage was probably closest in the playtest, but even that very easily might be better in the final version.

Lots of classes have 'extra attack.' There just aren't annoying penalties and limits on using them.

You don't have to like penalties (who does?) but I think this one actually does a pretty cool thing, both with PCs and with monsters.

With each attack being progressively less good, you'll eventually hit the point where some other action is better. Three attacks without penalty would mean you end up making three attacks the vast majority of rounds and, like in P1, martial characters want to build to never spend actions doing anything else. That penalty isn't fun, in itself, but it pushes us out of our comfort zones to actually do interesting stuff in combat.

So, instead of an attack at -10, you feint or drop into a stance or shove your opponent away from the casters or move around the battlefield to get an advantageous position. Your first attack is only rarely worth trading out, but that -10? Maybe even the -5? The penalty exposes other options that make combat a lot more dynamic and interesting.

Hi, I noticed there was no mention of taking two ability flaws to gain a boost elsewhere. I heard about this from a podcast/reddit.¨

Is it an oversight that this has not made it into the post or has the idea been scrapped?

I'm pretty sure it's in there, although there's a lot of information so it's easy to miss.

Specifically "Assign any free ability boosts and decide if you are taking any voluntary flaws" in the steps and "I don't see Iakhovas as being particularly unintelligent or uncharismatic, and I said I wanted to try to raise the other four ability scores, so I won't be taking any voluntary flaws" in the example.

Cheers!
Landon

I mean, the Fall of Plaguestone is a module that's intended as an introduction to P2 and should be available on launch day. There should also be several Pathfinder Society scenarios for first level characters and those are intended to be four to five hours.

But, if you specifically want to convert from P1, I'd lean towards The Wounded Wisp. I've always liked it as an intro and it doesn't overstay it's welcome.

My group just started Curse with Fumbus, Hakon, and Quinn. So far it's been going pretty well. I'm enjoying how Quinn stabs enemies with his brain.

That sounds... absolutely delightful. Looking forward to getting our copy, might have to play Quinn.

The weapon traits are definitely something. You also get the whole range of weapons for one feat rather than a feat per stance.

Weapons also don't need to meet any requirements of the stances. In the Playtest, they all required being unarmored, so there might be a build in there. I'm not seeing it right now, maybe champion multiclassing, but I'm sure it'll come up.

Weapons and stances also mix in a way stances can't with each other. Barring crane stance, you can have your reach or ranged or disarm or whatever options literally in hand without dropping out of stance. And if you critically fail a disarm and drop your weapon, it's not like you don't have two more *holds up fists*

So I don't think it's earth-shattering or anything, and they might have been improved in the final version, but I can see cases where it could be worth a feat.

I definitely liked "level to untrained," but I think Follow the Expert enables basically the same gameplay in a more thematic manner. I really love what's ended up happening with the exploration rules.

I mean, even on top of the 99 spoilers*, there's a couple whole threads full of entire sections of the book that have been revealed.

Yeah, I don't think anyone was expecting to have the full multiclassing rules over a month before launch, but here we are.

Now I don't think the rules should have to account for BAD players or GMs, because you really just CAN'T account for those with written rules IMO, and trying usually just makes it harder for the ones who aren't a problem. But it's not just bad players that would have this issue, and I think it's great when the rules aim to work well for newer or slower players, I think that's something that maybe even SHOULD be the case, as long as there's room for easy houseruling for more experienced players (who are the ones that would notice these things and know how to Houserule them) and as long as things aren't being dumbed down or anything to where it's condescending or doesn't work enjoyably for experienced players (which frankly is not the case with Signature Spells).

I think there's an important point you touch on here that's getting skirted in a lot of this conversation. Sorcerer has been the simplest core caster and a great introduction to spellcasting for twenty years now.

I'm sure that everyone on this thread has enough experience and understanding to play something more complicated than a bare-bones sorcerer. But making the simplest caster more complex means less and less players will play spellcasters. Which not only locks them out of several key fantasy archetypes but also means they're not getting the experience they could use to play even more complicated classes.

And that's not even getting in to preferred complexity levels. Even an experienced player, after a campaign with a real brain-burner of a character, might want to play something a little more straight forward. Having a simple spellcaster in the system has a lot of value.

I love the medium class, but the game doesn't just need a bunch of mediums. It needs classes fulfilling various roles across the complexity scale. And, in the core book, where the simplest classes are best placed, the P2 sorcerer carries the weight of being the simplest blaster, simplest healer, and basically every other non-martial concept.

All of which is to say, making wizards (and now clerics, druids, and theoretically psychics) complicated isn't as big a deal because the sorcerer is there to fall back on. But making sorcerers more complicated is a much greater cost.

...NPCs tagging along in starfinder breaks game balance? I know they have to be APL - 3 or 4 to not outshine the PCs, but it shouldn't break anything.

Starfinder's NPC math is different enough from PC math that NPCs (built using the NPC rules) are in some ways much better and in other ways much worse than an equivalent level PC. So dropping them in to a party can be extra challenging.

But, per the PaizoCon panels, they got this ironed out for P2 release. NPCs will sometimes have slightly better numbers if built under the monster rules, but way less options, so they should be balanced with NPCs built as PCs.

But for PF2 the monster design is the thing I'm looking forward to most. Followed shortly by the multiclassing system.

Yessssss. The monsters look so good. I'm super excited.

Cheers!
Landon

You could ready an action to step when an enemy comes next to you. Not a great defence but it could force them to spend one more action moving and one less attacking.

This might be my favorite, actually. It's such a dynamic and appropriate representation of dodging. Little annoying to be on the receiving end of, but enemies tend to live in a target-rich environment.

Take Cover can also be quite good, particularly that it lasts between turns. And the idea of Shoving enemies out of cover just makes me happy.

I don't see either coming up a ton, honestly. But both play into the general theme of combats being a lot more dynamic and the battlefield taking a more active role.

I like how small the creature block is and it looks so easy to run the encounter.

And even that's actually more complicated than the flesh golem right before it. Really looking forward to running combats this edition.

I also like the sidebar about salvaging its components. Crafting and scavenging stuff like that always shows up in my games, because I love them, but it's always nice to see more of that in the actual rules.

Cheers!
Landon

Yeah, it'll be nice to see some of the new stuff for ancestries when that comes out. A lot of cool stuff about them is kind of scattered around, hidden in corners, and it'll be great to see it brought front and center.

As a player, there are about half a dozen characters I'm interested in building. Several classes can now trade out features I wanted to get rid of that I never found a good archetype for. And the new multiclassing is so flexible I'm... actually most excited to not plan multiclassing, just jumping on it if something justifies it in game.

From the other side of the screen, I'm really stoked for the new monsters (and NPCs). The designs got opened up to do a lot more flavorful stuff and, between that and the new action economy, they were just super fun to run during the Playtest.

And, for both, high-level play. Not even the rocket tag thing, we mostly have that under control. I'm actually looking forward to skills staying roughly even over the levels (directly because of proficiency and through Follow the Expert). Because a lot of the fun skill stuff that happens at early levels, even just sneaking the party past an obstacle, really broke down as you get 15+ points of modifier between characters. And those non-combat solutions are some of my favorite parts of the game.

Cheers!
Landon

Speaking from the other side of the screen, I really hope NPCs don't generally have access to spontaneous heightening. Including it multiplies the work in what is already one of my least favorite parts of prep (decoding monster and NPC stat blocks into something usable in game). If the NPC is reliant on big fireballs for damage, it's way better to have that in their top level spell slot than buried in 3rd and assuming GMs will catch the drift.

PCs and NPCs don't need to work the same way, but having a no-spontaneous-heightening baseline for NPCs makes my life a lot easier.

Sleep, as a spell, has been massively undervalued in every version of D&D and in PF1e.

I really hope that PF2e recognizes it for the save-or-die that it is.

And color spray. P2 did a pretty good job reigning in the save-or-dies in general, so I think there's cause for optimism. At the very least, you'll probably have to critically fail the save to nap through the whole combat.

That said, I really wonder how many GMs actually ran sleep with the 1 round casting time and requiring concentration the whole time. It's actually a pretty fun mechanic, but way too easy to miss.

I don't know how to explain this thing to 5E players.

There's another layer to explaining this. It's pointing towards something that 5e doesn't really help people understand about heightening.

You don't want to heighten the vast majority of spells in 5e. The time someone spends at the table considering heightening a spell is probably wasted unless they've already figured out which spells are actually worth heightening.

I don't like assigning players homework, but everything runs a lot smoother after players cut down from the dozens or hundreds of theoretical options to the ones they actually want to focus on. Particularly if you have stuff like P2 metamagic in the mix, adding additional choices at the table. And I do think choosing a list of spells to heighten is a signpost that casters need to put in that work.

As someone playing a caster in 5e every week, that process sounds really familiar to me and I ended up with my couple of spells I consider heightening. But if I didn't understand it, I think learning that I need to do that work in advance would also make me more fun to play with in 5e as well.

None of this is to say there isn't a better way to signpost that or even that this is the main reason signature spells exist. But, as much as we work to teach people these games, aspects of design like this can also teach people as they go.

I'm sort of concerned that now 100% of the spooky stuff in Ustalav is going to have to revolve around their lich neighbor, when there's plenty of unrelated spooky stuff all over (there's vampires in the sewers and werewolves in the forest!) Like something like Strange Aeons should be allowed to happen without intersecting with Tar-Baphon.

I dunno, we got all the way through Strange Aeons without mentioning the Worldwound next door. Things can be pretty compartmentalized if the story calls for it.

One of the things I enjoyed about 1e Pathfinder were the classes and archetypes which really. gave a large number of options for customization. From my understanding, however, this is part of the complaint of 1E and part of the reason why 2e is being released (that and trying to compete with 5E D and D).

If this is the case, then why would developers add all sorts of classes to a new system?

I think you've been misinformed, which is hopefully good news. Particularly in the case of archetypes, the opposite is actually true.

One of the things they did with P2 was build archetypes into the core of the game, rather than having them be this weird APG add-on that doesn't really work for all classes. The classes are structured how they are, in part, so that you can slot in archetype abilities freely. Every archetype can also slot in to basically every class now, increasing options multiplicatively whenever a new archetype or class is produced.

So the core book has rules for archetypes and a multiclass archetype for each class. The new World Guide also has a bunch of Golarian-specific archetypes. That ends up being over 20 archetypes on day 1. So that's over 200 archetype/class combinations, which doesn't even get into the fact that you can combine archetypes much more easily now as well.

They've also said fan-favorite classes are very likely to come back. We only got the alchemist in the core book, but we haven't seen anything to suggest that'll be the end of it. They've specifically said that other favorite classes are likely to come back, it'll just take a while.

So, yeah, I think the future is brighter than you've been lead to believe :)

I realize that many people are concerned that everyone will multiclass, but I'm not sure. Is a handful of fighter feats worth being a less effective cleric? Is ONE 8th level spell per day worth giving up some really powerful late level Barbarian abilities?

I really don't know.

Yeah, I'm curious to see how it actually plays out as well. Each of these options is competing with not only class feats, but also the archetypes in the world guide. And that's just day 1.

One thing I'm almost certain we're going to find is that the idea of "builds" in P2 is going to be much more fluid. Breaking up class features and archetypes into feats means that you can slot in all sorts of little combos and partial "builds" without planning twenty levels of progression.

And I'm excited to see that. It makes session zero planning a bit less relevant, but opens up choices for all the sessions after that.

Not sure if it helps, but I did run across this podcast with some first impressions from the UK Games Expo. Not a lot of new rules reveals or anything, but I thought it was a good listen.

I mean, do we know how essentially the same people got on both Golarion and Akiton? Did someone learn interplanetary teleport? Wander through the wrong Aiudara? Highly improbable parallel evolution? Did a Wizard do it?

I honestly forget if it's canon or headcanon, but I always assumed humans were introduced to Golarion through a Vault in Orv. The Vaultbuilders grabbed species from all over the place to stock them, so humans could have been spread quite a bit during the Vault building process.

There are also a couple of other places humans show up (like the Azlanti Star Empire in Starfinder) that are more explicitly due to human magic. So they've spread out further since then.

I'm really glad we're getting multiple options for dedicated divine casters out of the box. The crusader weapons-and-armor kit that clerics got by default in P1 was at odds with a lot of character concepts (and a few gods), so being able to build those as cloistered clerics or divine sorcerers is a huge upgrade.

We've got a couple ongoing campaigns that will probably get converted (unless they falter or finish by August). Beyond that, we have plans to finish out the Varisia saga with Return of the Runelords in 2e.

I almost exclusively GM, though, so most of my tinkering will be monster-focused. Really looking forward to what sort of bosses we can make this time around.

Point #2 is easily the single most exciting thing about second edition for me. I like second edition monster design more than I like the 3-action economy. I've said this before, but just reading the second edition bestiary literally changed how I think about monster design. Monsters that are easy to run but still do cool stuff is awesome. Not having to decide which of twenty pointless, bolted on spell like abilities to use is awesome. Being able to look at a monster stat block and immediately go "this is what the monster does, this is why it's unique" is awesome. Being able to throw together a Wizard adversary and just go "okay, these are the spells he'll actually cast, who cares about the rest; here's some hit point and stats and here's a couple things that sound like wizard class features" instead of spending hours building the character like a PC is awesome.

Hear hear!

That said, I think the three-action economy is a big part of what makes the new monster design work so damn well. It creates a structure that sweet abilities slot into really easily. But those abilities also are more interesting in the new economy.

For example, a sweet ability that took a standard (or even move) action in P1 has to be really powerful to get used, particularly by intelligent foes. That ability basically has to be worth breaking up a full attack to use, which is a lot of burden. In P2, that same ability at one action has to be worth replacing one attack at -10, which is a much smaller hurdle and lets more fun abilities sneak into the average round.

Create Undead is a Level 2 Ritual

Oooo, get started early and with any class. That's awesome.

Couple random things that might not have been in the recording properly, from memory. Please don't hold the designers responsible for any of this, it's just my recollection.

[Designers] ... [Between the d20 basic and the 3-action system, it’s really easy to teach]

I thought the question here was actually a great one. It was specifically what they learned at PaizoCon weekend that they liked most about the rules.

So, yeah, examples about players who never played P1 (for example, coming from Starfinder) getting on board in ~2 minutes. And combat being faster to the extent that Mark ran a game with 11 combats in a 4 hour time slot with the last combat being at level 14 or 15.

[EM] “Design space”, what’s that?

The answer to this was that design space is the space that they leave in the rules to build cool stuff. The example they used was that archetypes in general had a ton of design space (see 100s of archetypes) but, because of the way archetypes were structured to swap out class abilities, there wasn't much room for cleric archetypes. Monks, on the other hand, could basically swap out their entire class and got a lot of interesting archetypes and builds as a result.

Q: How much of a factor was society play in the design process? A: ...

It was talked about. PFS was a huge source of feedback right from the start of the design process.

There wasn't anything they wanted to do but couldn't because of PFS but, for example, the designers worked with the PFS team to get reasonable crafting numbers that should work for everyone.

Q: Item slots; belts and headbands of physical stats; what’s up? A: ...

Ten worn items. If that means ten rings, great. Weapons, wands, and other used items like bags of holding don't count against that number.

Items that boost attributes are too iconic to not do, but each of them also does something extra. So while there's one of each in the core rulebook, there might be more later that do other cool things.

There was also a fair bit of talk about how little use items like cloak of the bat got in P1 because they conflicted with cloak of resistance. Removing the slots and combining/removing a lot of those assumed items have opened up a lot of item choices.

Q: [Some question kind of about monster customization] A: ...

There was a mention of customizing them to match certain factions fairly early on. Like a Nessian Hellknight Hound.

Also, some monsters have powers you can select. Some skeletons collapse on crits, taking less damage but having to gather themselves together and stand back up. Others can throw their skulls and are blind(?) until they roll back. And so on.

Not sure if it was this question or another question, there was also a bit where they talked about the monster numbers being a bit looser in the final Bestiary than the Playtest, because they needed to make sure the average numbers actually worked in the Playtest.

Cheers!
Landon

I mostly GM, so the main thing I always want are simple classes for roles that don't have them. This might not be as big a concern for P2 as it was for P1, but classes for blasters, healers, and so forth that a new player can understand without searching through the spells' chapter are a huge plus.

For personal use, I really like classes with pools that you interact with during battle. Less focus or even grit/panache as the vanguard from Starfinder or most classes from Iron Heroes back in the day.

Cheers!
Landon

All we really know is that it's more rules-heavy than the first one, with posts like this one.

Cheers!
Landon

I think P2 will be substantially better for streaming, but I don't think it'll take the crown for accessibility from 5e.

There are other factors than accessibility, however. I'd much rather watch an average P2 combat than the equivalent 5e combat, for example, even though it takes a bit more to follow.

It's also possible non-combat activities, often the best part of streams, will be more interesting with skill feats and degrees of success. Those things certainly add some depth and nuance, but I can't say how well that'll be reflected in streams. Dubious Knowledge is comedy gold, though.

If nothing else, I'm curious to see whether plot-heavy improv P2 streams end up doing better or the high production value tactical P2 streams. I think there's probably a niche for both, although the latter has a higher barrier to entry for streamers.

But leaves the one about targeting giant dragons and stuff out. Should be almost impossible to miss some moves against them, like firing at a brick wall.

On the bright side, if we need to judge pure dodging ability, Reflex saves (or Reflex DC) are still a thing.

I almost exclusively GM, so monsters. Lots and lots of monsters. I'm going to be so happy building monsters it'll be embarrassing.

As far as playing, alchemist if I happened on a GM that loves crafting as much as I do. Otherwise druid, because I've always loved the concept but can finally tune the complexity to where I want it with feat choices instead of kludging archetypes to trade out two of summoning, wildshape, and companion.

Not terribly popular? Really?! The NPC codex is probably my single-most-referenced GM supplement except for the Bestiaries.

Yeah, the Codexes (Codecies?) are amazing.

To make that an unpopular opinion, you'd probably have to go all the way to "I'd rather have a Codex than a Bestiary at launch."

Been thinking a fair bit about Arcanist, Magus, and Vigilante because I have those in groups I'm likely to convert to P2.

In theory, the arcanist is substantially different from a sorcerer. Honestly, it hasn't played out that way at our table. We could probably make that swap seamlessly, but a few extra sorcerer feats would definitely help ease that for other groups.

Magus needs some way to handle spellstrike. The exact math for that is going to be tricky, but beyond that a fighter/wizard handles the class well. And depending where you get spellstrike, it could open up some really cool builds for other casters.

Vigilante I'm not quite sure even needs to be an archetype. Most of the social identity stuff is basically skill feats. And the other stuff is just whatever class they chose for their vigilante identity, which would probably be better just farmed out to those classes.

Outside of my immediate needs, the one I'm probably looking forward to the most is kineticist. I really just want a class I can hand players that want to blast things but not delve into the spell system.

Cheers!
Landon

I really like the layout for both sides of this map. In both cases you can navigate and make some interesting decisions (rather than a straight line of rooms or endless deadends).

When something adds as much complexity as spontaneous heightening, I really want it to be optional, so players who've already hit their complexity ceiling can choose something else rather than slowing the game down for everyone.

It being optional also means its just a better feat for bloodlines with more heightenable spells rather than making the bloodlines with more heightenable spells always better. It leaves a lot more flexibility and design space open for bloodlines.

None of which is to say the sorcerer couldn't use some love, but I don't think this is the way to give it to them.

Cheers!
Landon

My opinion is very slanted based on my experience that barbarians in our group are often newer players that think "oh, guy who smashes, that should be simple." Doing a lot of book-keeping seems antithetical to that assumption and the flavor of the class.

Quick rundown would be: Theoretical #2 > #1 > Playtest Rulebook > 1.6 > #3 > Unchained > P1 Core

1. A rage that lasted the whole fight but was not as powerful.

This would be fine. It'd need some explicit discussion on whether you can use it outside of combat and what happens, but that's not the end of the world.

2. A rage that lasted a variable or shorter amount of time but was more powerful.

I'm not a fan of the moving DCs and extra die roll, but a situational ending like "if you don't use an attack action this turn" could be fine.

The 3 round limit worked fine in our playtests, with almost every fight ending before round 4 anyway. Which I'm glad for, because tracking the shifting fatigue penalty wasn't very new-player friendly.

I'd also cheerfully take a version that does a lot but only for one round, maybe with a few ways to jump in as a reaction.

3. A rage that lasted as long as you wanted it, but was mostly all about dealing more damage and a bigger cost to accuracy or defense.

This is probably my least favorite, especially if the cost ends up being to accuracy.

Cheers!
Landon

I actually had a player working on their character for the final Doomsday Dawn chapter, who had hated the limited heightening, specifically mention that they'd changed their mind. Their spell list had expanded to a four page document already and would have been paralyzingly long without that limitation.

So I think there's a place for that limitation, particularly to maintain one casting class that doesn't have a ton of overhead.

If the sorcerer needs to get more powerful, I hope the devs can find a way to do that without exponentially increasing the decision points in play.

Cheers!
Landon

To answer the title, the PF1 book was rather challenging. Despite having a number of copies I, like you, mostly just grab the relevant information online.

One of the largest problems we've had in our playtest group is actually players expecting not to find things. Since they couldn't find it in PF1 and had to have it explained, they're expecting to not find it this time and the same explanation to still hold.

I think some of the faults of the PF1 book are already fixed. Leveling being split between two tables was a consistent headache, for example, along with choosing a feat at first level from a massive heap.

Other stuff has carried over. There are a few places there's guidance, suggesting certain spells for specialty wizards, for example. But, in places like weapons and other equipment, large lists of options are still thrown at people without any real explanation or guidance.

In the middle, about half of our players were able to build a character solely by following the directions. That's not where we'd want it to be, but it's substantially better than our experience with PF1.

As far as the actual rules engine, I mostly picked those up through the blog posts and stuff leading up to the Playtest's release. I did like the exploration mode rules presentation, though. Short, to the point, clear, and answered a lot of questions that just came up in PF1.

As a GM, I've only really had to reference spells, items, and conditions to piece together monster/NPC abilities. Finding those has been fairly simple. I've found spells generally easier to parse, conditions a little harder, and items a mixed bag.

I'm glad to have this table up front rather than assumed in the background because this approach has been used in practice since... well, since we started having DCs for things. 1999?

Higher level adventures have consistently had higher DCs across the board. Occasionally, you'd get a throw away line about how a lock is particularly good or a noble particularly intractable to excuse it. But, for the most part, DCs in the 20s and 30s just creep in as the adventure's level gets higher. Even things that, in theory, have defined DCs are buoyed by the same tide.

I think the biggest advice is just to be sure to give PCs awesome new stuff to do as they go up in levels. If they're doing the same stuff at level 6 that they were at level 1, you might misuse a DC chart like this. But that's, at best, a symptom of a larger disconnect.

I really like the rarity system myself.

Personally, one big thing I'm looking forward to with it is being able to filter by it on PRD sites and, if it's applied correctly, not get all of the racial, region-specific, and AP-only feats and spells that clog up the lists.

And it provides a nice short-hand for stuff like bazaars. Sure, you can probably find any common item of a given level, but the uncommon and rare stuff shouldn't be assumed to be there.

Regardless of why material might not be appropriate for all games, I'm glad things are being tagged as such to properly set expectations.

Cheers!
Landon

I actually really like exploration mode. It's been a really clean way to divide up party duties (so people are working like a team rather than everyone trying to do everything) and answers lots of little questions like "what does being prepared for a fight cost?" and "how long can you do it?"

Page-for-page, it's probably my favorite section in the book. Helped by, you know, being all of a page.

I could see the basic suggestion here working well. I think skill feats are the groundwork for a great design, but the content isn't quite there yet. And both the name of general feats and their interaction with skill feats is a bit confusing.

One of the biggest benefits we've found with the Playtest's approach to character creation is people not having to dive right into a huge list of feats. So adding a general feat (or skill feat) at first level would be a step back.

3. The general feats are the most boring and are simply math pluses to numbers in most cases. They don't make the game better in my opinion, and they feel like a waste of space.

I will counter this a bit, though. Little nudges to math aren't necessarily the most interesting, but they are less complex and don't generally require special tracking.

This serves a really vital role in letting players choose their own level of complexity. It sounds weird, but forcing people to choose interesting feats isn't ultimately good for the game. Sometimes, they just need to choose a thing, adjust some stuff on their sheet and forget about it.

Cheers!
Landon

So the majority of these "memorable moments" are when your party ended combats in single rounds which is actually in my opinion the biggest problem with PF1e. The whole system is built around making characters that can end combat as soon as possible. I'm sorry but you cheesing the vampire monk recurring villain for instant disintigration is not my definition of a fun or memorable villain. Sure it's funny in the moment but now that villain is just thought of as lame instead of powerful. Not to mention how did the rest of your party feel about not even getting to contribute to the boss fight?

There's another issue with this from the other side of the GM screen. When players start doing stuff like that reliably, enemies end up doing it too.

They basically have to, at least in my experience, both to challenge the PCs and because having enemies not learn the same tricks makes them seem like 2d "boss monster" cutouts rather than characters.

Some people might enjoy combats being two sides throwing one round instant defeat haymakers at each other until one lands, but it's certainly not a playstyle for everyone.

We've had some barbarians in our playtest. The players enjoyed the hell out of them. They were very happy with their damage and felt appropriately like barbarians. Other sessions they've said "man, that would have been easier if we had a barbarian instead of <class X or Y>."

I'm sure other people have had vastly different experiences because... well, that's part of the magic of these games.

1. There's still some work to do here, but I've found it somewhat easier to teach and play. And that's even with the weirdness of Doomsday Dawn hopping levels and classes every two weeks.

From behind the GM screen, monsters are substantially easier and even the things giving me problems are improved compared to PF1.

2. No problem here.

3. There's a lot that could fit in here. But I'd include archetypes being both core and substantially more flexible, retraining/downtime being core, class feats in place of unwieldy lists and locked-in abilities, and rarity codifying something GMs were sort of expected to do but had no guidance on.

4. This isn't some theoretical balance where everyone is the exact same, that's for sure. But we've seen characters built towards various roles and only a few didn't work.

Batting average is surprisingly good compared to new folks with PF1, but could do better. And one we had problems with (ranger 1.0) is already doing substantially better, so I'm not super worried.

5. This has worked out. Our rules-wonkiest players are happy and our brand new player is happy. If anything, the only ones having problems are the players who sort of know PF1.

Cheers!
Landon

I prefer hexes and use them with my homegame for PF1 (when we're not running gridless altogether). I wouldn't be surprised if we were back at it once the playtest is over.

But I don't think that warrants switching the entire system over. Squares tend to be a little cleaner for adjudication at the table, so I think they're a better default.

If there's a way to word it sort of like the death saves, based on the worst enemy attack of the bunch, I think that would make it feel better.

But, at the end of the day, that's going to be super close to the number the current way gives with a ton of extra tracking. I'd probably end up using the current system as a short hand most of the time anyway, so putting it in the book rather than making it a "weird GM trick" is probably for the best.

I've been pretty down on the ranger, so it's nice to see a different point of view on that. Thanks!

I GM almost exclusively and don't really care how much stuff my players are carrying (unless they start hauling off statues or using each other as mounts). And hadn't seen anyone even really try to use it from 2nd Edition AD&D through PFRPG.

But I've seen new and old players alike figure out and apply bulk unprompted in Starfinder and the playtest. Which is kind of funny because I still don't really care, but it's clearly works far better for their subset of players.

And I can see that. I don't weigh things in my daily life, so pounds are no more a meaningful physical amount than bulk is. And I couldn't guess how many pounds I could comfortably carry, but I can tell you how many bulk a Strength 10 character could carry without being encumbered.