Leyren's page

Ranger appears to me as the weakest class so far.
Spells are removed, Favored enemy is more flexible but weaker and there's not much in return.
Also, the other classes read more interesting.

I'll wait for the Playtest document to decide how I like it.

I don't like the scenario with the healing potion on a dying character. What if the dying person is out of resonance? Is the potion wanted and the dying continues?

Allow using resolve instead in these cases, or allow activate them at the beginning of a day for 24 hours at least.

I hope there's something (at least two things) for every class in the archetypes that are not specialized for a specific class.

As a pirate-wizard, I won't want the boarding action feat. I would like my area effects to match the ship's movements instead of remaining at their position, or something like that.

Pathfinder: The Silver Age

In 3.5 critting against undead didn't normally work. In Pathfinder this was changed and you became able to do so, but some people never noticed.

For the record, in PF1, undead and constructs are both susceptible to crits. Pretty much only elementals and oozes are not (well, and incorporeal stuff if you lack ghost touch).

EDIT: Ninja'd. Ah, well.

I was just thinking... there could be critical resistance now instead of or in addition to critical immunity.

Arachnofiend wrote:

Interesting tidbit for players in this blog: knocking someone prone makes them flat-footed and therefore eligible for sneak attacks. Trip Rogues incoming?

Or better yet: Trip Fighter and Rogue tag teams incoming.

Every option enabling sneak attacks helps.

OK, even if +/- 5 damage can generate that reaction, 'Surprise, the game is different now' only works for so long. Sustainable interest/difference over the long term seems far more important.

Knowing most players, 'Ooh neat' is going to be replaced by grumbling about getting their backup weapon out of the golf bag by the next session.

In Pathfinder 1, knowledge checks to get information about creatures you're facing almost always gave you a hint about what you shouldn't do because there were rarely any weaknesses to exploit.

It's not a big change, but it feels better to find out about things that do more against a creature instead of finding out about the lowest resistance (but resistance reducing the expected effect nevertheless).

dragonhunterq wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

I will miss the usually deep flavor of traits and the creative challenge of weaving them in your PC's backstory

I guess they were a part where balance and variety just cannot coexist

I think the background step should be more of a GM-approved player's choices thing rather than the packages we are given here. Though I understand how the latter are easier to reference in APs and in PFS

Maybe the Background step should be 2 GM-approved floating stat boosts, then GM-approved Skill feat, then being trained in a GM-approved Lore skill, with pre-made packages being a help for people who do not wish to go in that level of customization (including APs and maybe PFS)

GM approved stat boosts and skills? You might need to explain this a bit more - because my first thought was "hell no! not on my watch!" GMs can ban options, but otherwise should only get involved in character creation if invited to - it's my character, my sole interface with the game I should get to decide what it looks like. The GM has the rest of the world to play with.

Thank you for warning me of this legitimate concern. I had not thought about this

I was thinking something along the lines of the GM (or maybe the whole gaming group) agrees that the choices make sense with the PC's backstory

I'm okay with a list of 19 examples for possible backgrounds.

I'd like to suggest implementing a minor background into the game.
That could be done quite simple by reusing the backgrounds as defined here, but without the bonuses and feats except the lore gained.

That way you could build a character who was born a farmer's child (minor farmhand background) but was sent to the city when he or she was 8 years old to become a priest (or wizard or whatever), never got there and had to do what was necessary to survive (full criminal background)

Of course you can imagine your background however you wanted, but this way, it would reflect a bit better that you know what was going on there.

Leyren wrote:

I wouldn't want to have every character with a criminal background to have skills in pickpocketing.

Oh, that one's easy:

Jenny was a blacksmith's apprentice who lost her job—and so, her livelihood—when the blacksmith caught her embezzling funds for the fifth time. She's now a bit desperate and setting out on an adventuring career as a way to make ends meet. Class: Fighter.

Criminal background, no pickpocketing.

Nice. But what I meant specifically was to offer a selection of skill feats that fit the criminal theme, maybe for escape artist, stealth or disable device instead of only pickpocket.

While I like this definition of backgrounds, they appear a bit inflexible to me to start with just 19 of them.

The solution is probably simple - keep the names a bit more generic and provide a list of skill feats to choose from instead of only one.

I wouldn't want to have every character with a criminal background to have skills in pickpocketing.

I think it would be great if the quality of armor and weapons at a certain level included the possibility to add a positive trait or remove a negative one.

For example, when the legendary weapon smith creates a new spear, he can add deadly as a weapon trait or the legendary armorer can remove the noisy trait from the chain shirt.

Of course it shouldn't be possible to add any trait to any weapon, so that's a bit harder to define since a list is needed about what can be added to a specific weapon(group/category). Reach daggers don't make sense after all.

Also, when armor gets damaged it could gain negative traits like noisy until it is repaired. Similar for weapons, but I haven't seen any negative traits there. But the loss of a trait would be a possibility, as a reach weapon could probably lose its reach when the handle breaks...

Again, the post says you "find or craft magic armor," not that you can buy it.

Well, maybe you can find magic armor in a shop.

The AC bonus of the armor looks promising, I think.

it seems that light armor adds +2 (+quality?) +magic, no matter what kind of armor.

So medium probably has a +4 base, while heavy has +6 ac bonus?
Or is it even flatter like +2/+3/+4?

Boy do I not like heavier armor improving your TAC.

Well, considering that

something has to add to touch ac to rebalance it.

This doesn't mean that I think this is the best or only solution.
Maybe we can come up with a better one?

Yep, this is to cover circumstances under which your DM might have you use Con instead of the standard score for a skill check.

Will this be a rule? If you swim for a short time, you add the Str modifier, but if you swim for a long time, you'll add the Con modifier, for example?

I'd love to know more about armor traits. We read that there's one called noisy, but I'm curious if there are some that are more interesting, something positive that makes you choose a specific type of armor.

Your character has proficiency in shields just like she does with armor, and when using a shield, you use the lower proficiency rank of your armor or shield to calculate your Armor Class.

So I can reduce my AC by using a shield?

I like this a lot. But what would should be written into the rules to encourage roleplay? Something like "The GM may add a +2 bonus to a skill checks if the attempt is wrapped in roleplay of a quality that meets her expectations"? Reward good roleplay with resonance or spell points?

There probably has to be found some middle ground between rewarding roleplay ins some form and not rewarding it at all. Some people are shy, not as experienced as others or don't really bother while others do a lot better, even inside a group. You wouldn't want players to feel punished if they don't want or can't roleplay as well as others within a group and get rewarded less.

Hardwiring ability scores to the classes is one of the big issues, with a dislike of getting rid of weapon sizes affecting damage coming up as a distant second.

Well it is one bonus of +2 to one ability score per class. That's relatively insignificant and, in most cases, deals with the requirement of an ability score of at least 11 to use your spells.

A +2 bonus to something shouldn't matter as much as you're thinking and shouldn't be a problem at all.

Heroic Recovery, an 8th-level feat, adds a powerful buff to heal spells: you can target one creature at range using 3 actions (the 2-action version of heal, plus another action to activate the metamagic) to heal them for a solid number of hit points and also give them a bonus to attack and damage rolls and a 5-foot increase to its speed for 1 round.

I don't know how high the bonus to attack and damage is, but at a duration of one round it doesn't look that powerful to me (for 8th level).

Sure, the iconic Bard is a Halfling, ...

The iconic druid is a gnome and those don't have a bonus to wisdom. So I'd say that the Iconics doesn't necessarily have to represent an optimal combination race/ancestry and class.

The possibility of not knowing what a magic item does for a while is a good thing to me. So spending resonance and auto-succeed in identifying the item's properties isn't the right thing for me.

I think it wouldn't be so bad if the identification dc were right there in the magic item description. Which we would have to look up anyway by the way, because magic items do more special things than in PF1.

Why would anyone use ivory tiles which are 100 times as expensive as bat guano, and worse they provoke a danger of violent retribution from Garundi Druidic Order of the Tusk?

They're probably a focus and therefore aren't consumed in the spellcasting process.

I'm completely fine with rules telling us what happens if we use a rule element and leaving the description to the player.

I'd like spells to state how much actions it takes to cast them but not, what kind of components are used. Let the player choose a priority which kind of component comes first, second, third,... (except expensive materials). Apply those in order depending on the number of actions.

Let the rogue or monk or lightly armored fighter be acrobatic, jumping and rolling around while moving and attacking to make things appear more dynamic an interesting.

Edit: typos

I'd like to see how mutliclassing works first. Then we can talk about if a sort of compensation for sticking with only one class is still necessary.

Maybe spell lists are completely new collections of spells into different categories, like spell schools before, even with subcategories.

Classes could be able to learn spells from one or more of those categories or only subcategories from those.

Some example would be "clerics can learn spells from the conjuration school except from the teleport subschool".
But with a broader separation into the announced 4 categories (and maybe subcategories), of course.

Maybe it's just not one list for one class any more but a combination of lists for one class.

I'm fine with either not having half-ancestries at all (because, why should that even be possible) and having all possible combinations of half-humanoids (why does it work for humans and orcs or elves, but not dwarfs and goblins?).

It would be really interesting what happened if the ancestry is halved and combined with anything else. Can there be rules for that?

Level 5 is a bit far down the road to start mutagens, I think.
Is it possible to shift it to level 3 at least?

Tangent101 wrote:

Goblins? 99.9% of Goblins (and I may be being optimistic on that 0.1% there) are destructive and evil in nature. They may be somewhat inept but that doesn't lessen the fact that by and large they are evil and capricious humanoids. If given a chance to lord it over a weaker human they will... up until they kill the human. If a strong human is in a position of forcing them to obey human laws? Then they will obey those laws but break the smaller laws that they can get away with. Usually concerning food theft.

0.1% does not make for a good foundation for a Core Ancestry.

Is there some percent that does? Is it 1%? 5%? 10%? How many more examples of not-murderous goblins are required?

Not many considering the fact that the core races are meant for the creation of a player character who is supposed to be an adventurer.

How many humans are becoming adventurers? Most of them do not. Same with goblins. That's the whole point.

It just came to my mind that the ancestry-entries in the core rulebook will take a bit more space because ancestry feats have to be included.

Unfortunately, this might lead to playable ancestries not being part of the monster manual because those options take too much space for a regular monster entry, right?

Will we have to wait for an Advanced Ancestries Guide or something like that to get playable Aasimars, Tieflings, Skinwalkers, Ratfolk and the like?

Playtest Excerpt wrote:

Despite breaking from their destructive past, goblin adventurers often subtly perpetuate some of the qualities that have been characteristics of the creatures for millennia.

Grammatically, "their" refers the reader to "goblin adventurers." But the "destructive past" referred to here must belong to goblins generally rather than the goblin adventurers specifically.

It's in their past. For normal goblins, its not only in the past but also in the present.

Really digging the flexible ability boost!

I guess every ancestry has this?

So 4th edition it is. Too bad.

Please explain like I don't know 4e.

How about, if a 20 on the die would still be a critical failure, than it's a simple failure. Same with a 1 still being a simple success if it would otherwise be a critical success. This keeps cavemen from creating rocket ships 5% of the time or jumping to the moon and such. Extreme situations are still out of reach.

I like that.

I don't like the "elite" concept of MMOs. There's no reason why a, say, human boss opponent should have a hundred times the hit points my character has just to provide some challenge.

I'd prefer when they're well-prepared, well-equiped and have the terrain on their sides than simply applying some template to them and that's it.

It is a bit different for monsters, of course. They might be able to do unusal things like additional actions and reactions, just as damage reduction and energy resistances they get as their species' usual abilites. But here, too, applying a "boss monster" feat or template because they need to be tough isn't my thing.

The new feat system seems flexible enough to just allow certain classes to select many of the prestige class special abilites as class feats, as long as the requirements are met.

I can't foresee spending 1/10th of any resource on something that will only do anything if an enemy critically hits me. That's just way too narrow.

It's in your hands. You just have to keep your armor class low enough and it will happen all the time!

This article is very light on specifics. It more or less describes how any edition of D&D plays out at the table. There's not much here explaining what makes PF2's "modes" different or cool, and what little there is is somewhat vague and not well articulated. Hopefully as they reveal more information it will all start to make sense.

I don't think it is different from the 1st edition or how 3rd Ed. D&D has been played at all. But it has never been defined as explicitly as this before.

Material components are a completely different balancing issue now.
Even the cheap ones now have the effect of increasing the casting time by an action. So probably or hopefully they'll become a bit more rare.

Also, there's the strange effect that eschew materials, still spell and silent spell should have the effect of speeding up the casting time. If they still exist, they're really useful now.

This all sounds great, but I was sort of hoping for at least a paragraph or so on what a Fighter gets that's useful outside of combat. I'd hate for it to be a class that just doesn't bring anything non-combat to the table, which has been a problem in the past (i.e. 2 skill points per level in a class that wants to dump INT).

I guess that kind of usefulness comes from the chosen skill proficiencies, skill feats and ancestry feats.

2 Questions so far:

Is the -2 on AOO really required? It would be easier if you would just leave it at the regular attack modifier.

How do magic weapons and power attack add up, taking into account that both add more damage dice?

I'm against further restrictions.
While I think that encouraging to focus on a single class is a good thing, multiclassing is an option to diversify characters and I like options like that very much.

Overall, I think games should focus on rewarding things instead of applying penalties. If multiclassing is rewarding in itself, reward focusing on only one class in some way, too.

6) If I am playing a fire kineticist and I light my dice on fire, then do I get a circumstance bonus on my rolls?

You get Burn.

A few hit points more will help surviving one or two hits more, I think that's okay. It'll help the characters to explore a bit longer each day.

Dαedαlus wrote:

And what kind of monster wears socks that don't match?
*hides feet from view*

Gnomes are the answer to both these questions.

We need a "randomize socks" spell just in case.

Let's go through the playtest document and color code every option as in the usual class guides.

That way the developers can see what we think are viable options and what needs some work and improvement.

I'm on board with everything except the 1000 XP for every level. The three advancement tracks were great for choosing how fast a GM wanted their group to level up, and I'm sad to see that go. The system could be altered without abandoning it entirely, and I fear this new system could be restrictive for homebrew games that don't have a premade dosage of encounters pre-balanced to have PCs level up after a set number of challenges. It sounds like the Starfinder Society's "1 xp per adventure, 3 xp gives you a level up", but not all gamers like that.

The 1000xp rule is so good because your issues can be resolved with one sentence, e.g. "if you want your players to level faster, they gain a level at 800 xp. if you want them to level slower, they gain a level at 1,250xp instead of 1,000xp."

Paladin should be a Vigilante archetype. That way, he could overlook things or handle things differently in his other identity.

You're creatively failing to read the part where you must use the craft feat to CREATE the item you intend to enchant. That is where the limiting of applicable skills comes into play.

What is meant by "create the item" in this sentence is "creating the magic item" by which the designers wanted to say "enchant the item".

See the following sentence:

The DC to create the item still increases for any necessary spell requirements

You wouldn't need to take spell requirements into account for creating the mundane item beforehand.