Linkmastr001's page

Thirded, though at least you don't have to go far to find it. It's on the same page as Table 6-19, in the general description for Expert, Master, and Legendary Items.

Because I know that some of you like precision, here is the list of occult spell applicable for some of these feats...

Dang, that is disappointing. Thanks for going through that hassle, at least.

It also just occurred to me. With how long it takes to identifying items, selling is going to take longer.

No storekeep worth their salt is going to buy an item at a customer's word, they're going to identify them first. So, when you come in with your stack of magic items, the storekeep will then have to "process" and identify them. It'll take hours, maybe days, depending on how much help/backlog they have to identify items. Before, it was so quick, it was never an issue, even logically. Now? It feels like it'll take time to actually get your money.

Mathmuse wrote:

After the playtest I may invent labeled potions to make identification much faster.

ROGUE: I found a minor healing potion.
WIZARD: How do you know? You can't cast Read Magic.
ROGUE: The label says, "Rodrick's Alchemy Shoppe, Potion for Restoring Most Excellent Health, 3 gold pieces."

As a GM, I found that unidentified items are a pain. When the party finally had time to sort the treasue, they asked me about the details, but their notes are terrible. What is the sword with an ornate hilt? Let me see your treasure list. Okay, the sword is listed between the gold idol and the seven blue potions, so let me page through the module until I spot the idol. The sword must be the +1 elven orc-bane longsword from the next room, B12.

There are APs where loot includes healing potions labeled as poison and poison labeled as healing potions.

Along that note, could you imagine the above? Let's say you found some poison marked as healing and tried to sell it. Stuff gets processed, then the storekeep tries to get you arrested for trying to trick him into selling poison as a healng potion.

In regards to the feats, I imagine it's because Crossbows are slower then bows, needing one interact action in a turn to reload. In addition, Composite Longbows/Shortbows already add half your Str bonus (from the Propulsive trait) to damage.

Linkmastr001 wrote:

On the subject, can I ask a question? How do you make Formulas? I found the feat Inventor, but that seems 100% pointless. You can only make common Formulas, which you could just buy in the form of the Basic Crafter's Book, and get them all easily.

The Basic Crafter's Book only covers the non-magical gear in the equipment section. If you want to craft magical or alchemical items you need to purchase the formulae. (Both the alchemical crafting feat and the magical crafting feat gives you four common low level formulae for free.)

Inventor allows you to create a formula for common magical or alchemical equipment without needing to purchase the formula, which may not be available. It also allows you to create non-magical equipment not listed.

I assume there will eventually a feat that lets you create uncommon and possibly rare formula.

Appreciate the clarification. I missed some of those details.

Though there is one thing that really bothers me about the Inventor feat, you can't invent anything with it. It says you can make any common formula. How can you invent something new, and have it still be common? It would be unique or rare if you're the only one who knows how to make it.

Linkmastr001 wrote:

Dragonborn3 wrote:

What does the sorcerer have that's even remotely similar to being able to pick and heighten two extra spells each day?

What would you consider to be "similar"? Simply curious. I think I can find stuff, but what I think of as "similar" can easily differ from your version of "similar". For example, I think Occult Evolution (A level 4 Sorcerer feat) is a bit similar, since you can pick any Mental Occult spell to add to your list each day, and some flexibility for a spontaneous caster is nice. I'm looking at Feats to compare, since it's a level 8 Bard feat for Bards to get those two spells.

Similar would mean augment the number of spontaneous heightening available.

I consider Occult Evolution and Esoteric Scholar (2nd level for the bard) to be similar.

Occult evolution let's you have 1 spell for a day while the Additional Heightening gives you 2 extra spontaneous heightening which is equal to ((max spell slot) - 1) * 2 spells for a day, which is significantly better.

Doesn't seem to be too many feats that give either class extra spells, either known or per day.

Both get Cantrip Expansion (Brd/Sor 4) which gives you 2 more cantrips to your Spell Repertoire.

Sorcerer gets the aforementioned Occult Evolution (Level 4, pick a Mental Occult spell to add to your Spell Repertoire each day). In addition, while I don't really count them since they're capstones, they get Archmage's Might (Level 20, Gain 1 10th level spell slot and 2 10th level spells in your repertoire) and Wellspring Spell (Level 20, Metamagic, 1/min you cast an unmodified two-action 5th level or lower spell without expending a spell slot).

Bards just get the two aforementioned feats, Esoteric Scholar (Level 2, Get a spellbook you maintain (these don't add to your Spell Repertoire). 1/day, pick a spell. You can treat it as if you picked it for Spell Heightening (if it's already in your repertoire), or treat it as if was in your repertoire (if not in your repertoire).) and Additional Heightening (Level 8, Pick 2 extra spells for use with Spontaneous Heightening).

So yes, if looking at solely those types of feats, the Bard may have an advantage (since you rarely ever get to play with capstones). That said, Sorcerers seem to have more damage and spell oriented feats (Dangerous Sorcery (1), Widen Spell (1), Magical Striker (4), Conceal Spell (4), Overwhelming Spell (8), etc.) than Bards (Melodious Spell (8, this is Conceal Spell), Unusual Composition (10), and Fatal Aria (20)). Most Bard feats are Composition oriented, usually giving them more. Most of those are support oriented. Make of that what you will.

At the very least, I'm sure we can both agree that Spell Heightening just needs to be ditched and Spontaneous Casters should just be able to heighten without issue.

On the subject, can I ask a question? How do you make Formulas? I found the feat Inventor, but that seems 100% pointless. You can only make common Formulas, which you could just buy in the form of the Basic Crafter's Book, and get them all easily.

Anyone can be an "arcane archer" by 4th level. All it takes is spellstrike ammunition (which can be made by anyone with expert proficiency in Crating and the Magical Crafter feat) and spell use (which can be gained, up to 3rd-level spells, by non-casters with either Cleric Dedication/Basic Cleric Spellcasting or Wizard Dedication/Basic Wizard Spellcasting).

Along that line of thought, there's the Magical Striker level 4 Wizard/Sorcerer feat (someone else also referenced this in this thread). So, you could wield a bow (1+ hand weapon) enchant the ammo mid fight, imbue your bow to become +1 for free (or 1 higher), and deliver your spell with bonus damage!

I will say I like the idea of each language having it's own sign language. Weather having it be all or nothing in character creation I'm not sure about. Especially, since it seems to be that it thinks you can't hear since you get Read Lips as a bonus feat.

I had missed the thing about scrolls. I will say up front I do like the idea. I had always assumed Draconic before, but I suppose that doesn't make sense from a Divine spell perspective. Now that they have 4 spell types, maybe they wanted to diversify the "spell language"? Dunno.

That said, there are two things I really want to see:

• I want each ancestry to get a Regional bonus language, which the player chooses at character creation: Now that Paizo seems to be doubling down on Golarion being the default setting for Pathfinder (which I'm 100% okay with), why is this not a thing? Why is a level 1 Elf, who has grown up in Varisia, unable to learn Varisian? Why can't a Dwarf in Alkenstar also know Osiriani? Before, when we got languages through skill ranks, it was easy to do. Now, it's not. Especially with people having to use a feat to get language, I don't think many characters, other then Human, will likely know a regional tongue. It will also help alongside the other systems to think more about your characters history and how they interact with the world. In a simplified manner, different aspects of character creation currently get you thinking about aspects of your character:

  Ancestry makes you think about what you are in the world.

  Background makes you think about how you were raised, and what you learned.

  Classes make you think about how you interact with the world.

  Skills help flesh out what you've done and what experiences you've had.

  Having a bonus Regional language will make you think about where you've come from.
  

• Allow us to use Downtime to learn Languages, even sign languages: We have this neat Downtime system. Why can't we use it to learn languages or their sign variants? We could drop the feats i we have to for this, but it feels like a nice organic way to learn something new. It feels like it would be better then going out, fighting some things, then suddenly learning a set of languages. Heck, if someone wants to be rather multilingual, getting someone to teach them an uncommon language could server as a nice reward.

Linkmastr001 wrote:

Strachan Fireblade wrote:

The difference between untrained and legendary is 6. If I was level 10 and was untrained and had no other bonuses or penalties my total would be 8. If I was legendary it would 13 (this is just an example to illustrate some math). With other mods I could have 9, or ,10, or 11, or 12. That is 6 possible different numbers.

The other thing that is vital to skills is the 4 degrees of success that is used. Being 6 better than someone else makes it supremely better to achieve critical successes or vice versa with critical failures.

These two things combined need to be considered to fully understand how proficiency's work.

Then add in that the dev's are using a universal mechanic instead of making a new subsystem to support proficency's. Then add in the goal of making things balanced at all levels and making the system work for characters great at something and characters that suck at something and you get to what PF2 is proposing.

I mention all of this so that contributors to this thread can consider there proposals from all angles.

Two fact checks on what you said:

* Untrained is "level-2" and trained is just "level". There is no way to get "9" in your scenario.
* 13 - 8 = 5. This is why you're 5 better if you have Legendary proficiency.

That said, I certainly appreciate you pointing out the 4 degrees of success, which isn't something I considered until you and Unicore pointed that out.

And I also appreciate you reiterating that there is a subsystem, so it's more complicated then just "hey look, numbers!".

Consider this:

Two untrained characters using my example above. One has no modifier bonus from his appropriate stat. The other one has a +1 bonus from his stat. This provides the former an 8 while the latter is 9. While you are technically correct that proficiency alone cannot give you a nine, the pluses from your attribute absolutely makes it possible.

Oh, I interpreted your comment on "other mods" as applying to the bonuses from the levels of Proficiency (-2,0,1,2,3) since you referred to the extremes of Untrained to Legendary, hence my response. Yes, a 9 is possible if someone had a +1 ability bonus, was level 10, and untrained in your scenario. I thought you referring to the same individual with no modifier with varying degrees of proficiency.

Extrapolating further, someone with a 20 stat and legendary proficiency is signifcantly higher than someone with no stat bonus and is untrained.

Well, yes, more specifically the difference in a +8 (+5 stat + 3 Legendary) versus a -2 (+0 stat - 2 Untrained). That's no different then having a high stat with skill ranks in PF1. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't understand the point of this particular comment?

Despite my efforts to read section intro stuff first for general ideas, I realized I missed the Skill section intro in my haste to make a character. So, I went back and looked at the intro. I discovered there is an interesting bit in it that handles some of our silly "untrained skill check scenarios".

From Skills Uses on page 142:
"Sometimes using a skill in a specific situation might require you to have a higher proficiency rank then what is listed on the table. For instance, even though a high-level barbarian untrained in Arcana could reliably use Arcana to Recall Knowledge regarding the breath weapons of the various colors of dragons, the GM might decide that Recalling Knowledge about the deeper theories behind the magical energy of a dragon's breath weapon might be something beyond the scope of the barbarian's largely utilitarian and anecdotal knowledge about how to fight dragons. The GM decides whether oa task requires a particular proficiency rank, from trained all the way up to legendary."

Thought I might post some food for thought. This does indicate to me that if it doesn't make logical sense for someone to do something untrained, then they probably shouldn't be able to.

EDIT: Hit Post too soon. Added the rest of my post and some clarity.

The difference between untrained and legendary is 6. If I was level 10 and was untrained and had no other bonuses or penalties my total would be 8. If I was legendary it would 13 (this is just an example to illustrate some math). With other mods I could have 9, or ,10, or 11, or 12. That is 6 possible different numbers.

The other thing that is vital to skills is the 4 degrees of success that is used. Being 6 better than someone else makes it supremely better to achieve critical successes or vice versa with critical failures.

These two things combined need to be considered to fully understand how proficiency's work.

Then add in that the dev's are using a universal mechanic instead of making a new subsystem to support proficency's. Then add in the goal of making things balanced at all levels and making the system work for characters great at something and characters that suck at something and you get to what PF2 is proposing.

I mention all of this so that contributors to this thread can consider there proposals from all angles.

Two fact checks on what you said:

That said, I certainly appreciate you pointing out the 4 degrees of success, which isn't something I considered until you and Unicore pointed that out.

And I also appreciate you reiterating that there is a subsystem, so it's more complicated then just "hey look, numbers!".

Paizo has indicated that they're "100% changing" the colour tags.

Whether that entails doing away with the concept entirely or just choosing colours a bit friendlier to individuals who're colour-blind than: black, red, and orange, remains to be seen.

Where was this said? I have no objections, this was one piece of feedback I wanted to give as well. I figured it would be an issue for people who were colorblind.

Here's some of my thoughts on proficiencies.
* In regards to proficiency modifiers, I don't see what's so confusing about -2, 0, 1, 2, 3 being what we use for untrained, trained, expert, master, legendary bonuses. This compared to your proposed 0, 2, 3, 4, 5. I may not get what's confusing about it, but I certainly don't care either way. The math is still the same.
* I do get the complaint about untrained's total being "Level - 2". It does feel excessive. I do think some of the scenarios brought up as sily examples show how silly it is. I think having some scaling may be nice, regardless, but maybe not something as good as "Level - 2". Perhaps untrained's total should be something like "(Level/2)(Min 0) - 2". So at level 1 in an untrained skill, you get a -2 total proficiency mod, and level 20 it's +8.

Now, a bit more thought about the bonuses between Trained, Expert, Master, and Legendary. The reason I feel these are "tiny" is because, unlike PF1, these aren't there just for modifiers, they also serve as gates in the system. For example, many skill feats gives you access to things only you can do, as someone who is an expert, master, or legendary in such a skill. That's cool to me. Before, all you had to do was get some number to a threshold to do a thing. Now, you need to know how to do that thing.

Look at a class that gets better then expert at a save, for instance, the Barbarian. When they become a master at fort saves, they aren't just getting a +1, they also treat all successes as critical successes. When they're legendary? They treat all critical failures as failures, and always take half damage from Fortitude effects that deal damage when they fail. That's cool to me!

It's more complicated then hitting a level and dumping all your skill ranks into Diplomacy to suddenly talk as good as your group Bard in this system. I mention that previous scenario to point out that just because this system has some weird nuances, doesn't mean the old one didn't either.

What does the sorcerer have that's even remotely similar to being able to pick and heighten two extra spells each day?

What would you consider to be "similar"? Simply curious. I think I can find stuff, but what I think of as "similar" can easily differ from your version of "similar". For example, I think Occult Evolution (A level 4 Sorcerer feat) is a bit similar, since you can pick any Mental Occult spell to add to your list each day, and some flexibility for a spontaneous caster is nice. I'm looking at Feats to compare, since it's a level 8 Bard feat for Bards to get those two spells.

Linkmastr001 wrote:

Spells: It's easy to miss (way too easy), but Sorcerers have a cap of 4 spell slots each level (See "Granted Spells" in "Reading a Bloodline Entry" (p. 129))

I do refer to it in the conclusion and that's what I'm talking about when I say that sorcerer has a better "endurance" when it comes to spells. It seems like it was dropped from one of my editing session and I will add it back in the Spell part.

I do have to say that with the heightened cantrips, it feels like the number of spell slots doesn't really bother me, especially with all of the bard-exclusive cantrips.

Oh, when you said more spells earlier, I thought you were referring to the known spells your bloodline grants. Not simply more spell slots.

Linkmastr001 wrote:

Spontaneous Heightening is the same for both classes (2 at 3rd level). It appears only Bards can upgrade it to 4 instead of 2, via a class feat (not sure where your 5 came from). While it is nice, it's not like the Sorcerer doesn't have something similar.

The sorcerer doesn't have something similiar. It was stated that the number of spontaneous heightened spell was limited because of the complexity it brings to the table, that's why I'm quite disappointed that the sorcerer gets only 2, but it doesn't seem to be an issue for the bard.

The 5th Spontaneous Heightened spell can come from Esoteric Scholar, which gives you spontaneous Heightening with the selected spell if you already know the spell you choose for the day. I even mention it in the current text.

Missed that, thanks!

Linkmastr001 wrote:

I will be playing a Bard in the Playtest for a session, maybe two, so I'll come back later with my thoughts on that. I can post more thoughts

Please do! I'd be especially interested if you also try an occult sorcerer as well in order to compare how playing both feels. But it sure feels like the bard is in a good state currently.

Gotta say, I enjoyed the Bard while playing it. The DM had made a custom adventure, so it wasn't done with Doomsday Dawn. While I didn't do too much directly, but what I did by helping others felt sufficient and cool. I had taken Magic Weapon and buffed our fighter with it, along with using Inspire Courage most rounds. Inspire Courage definitely helped us get a few critical hits, too. Along with the Magic Weapon lead to the Fighter doing a lot of damage. Crazy enough, this was to the point where the Fighter felt like he was only doing good since I was buffing him. So weirdly, I felt great, but I made him feel kinda bad.

The main thing I did directly was some Counter Performance use. I really enjoy it. When our second encounter started, the enemy started to do some screaming thing at us, so I immediately countered. With a natural 20, for a total of 25, no one needed to deal with it. I had the opportunity to use it some more that evening, and while not every time did I do near that good, I'm pretty sure I was able to prevent someone from critically failing at one point, with just a normal failure. While I haven't played games with bards often, I've never seen the old version get used very much. This one was rather nice.

Just a few things I noticed offhand on what you said:

Bloodline Signature Skills: Sorcerers are Trained in those, so they have more skills then a Bard ("Bloodline Signature Skills: You are trained in the listed skills, and add them to your signature skills." (p 129)). I don't think that changes your opinion on the first part, though.

Spells: It's easy to miss (way too easy), but Sorcerers have a cap of 4 spell slots each level (See "Granted Spells" in "Reading a Bloodline Entry" (p. 129))

Spontaneous Heightening is the same for both classes (2 at 3rd level). It appears only Bards can upgrade it to 4 instead of 2, via a class feat (not sure where your 5 came from). While it is nice, it's not like the Sorcerer doesn't have something similar.

I will be playing a Bard in the Playtest for a session, maybe two, so I'll come back later with my thoughts on that. I can post more thoughts later.

EDIT: Slight clarity and typo fixing.

If you look at it in the book, you'll notice before the Operate Action is the "2 action" icon. Basically, the description is describing how you're throwing the fireball with the Activate Item Activity. So, I believe how it works is that when you activate it, you throw it immediately.

So here's an example of how I could, as a player, justify foraging on the negative energy plane with planar survival.

So the negative energy plane gradually dissolves everything in it, but there are still structures and places to stand, right? Also, undead happen when the positive energy that animates a living thing is replaced by negative energy, and normally undead are not very delicious since they are often made of decaying people. But you know what else takes to rot and decay like nothing else? Mushrooms. So, friends, we're on the lookout for undead mushrooms, possibly lichens, or slime molds- these are not delicious, but they won't make you sick because, frankly a mushroom doesn't have much opportunity to go bad, but don't pick the red ones

I must say, I rather like this example.

Visanideth wrote:

Lucid Blue wrote:

The food isn't there. By fiat. But I can MAKE it be there, simply by searching.

Well yes. But that's a different thing than your example.

The problem with your example isn't that there's no food, it's that it's impossible to look for food (so the check doesn't happen and the ability can't trigger).

In a less doctored situation you have plenty of solutions. The guy knows how to track shadow giants and steal some of their captured creatures to use as food. On Carceri, they know where to look for shallow prisons that may contain edible creatures.
On the elemental plane of Fire, they spot a trade route to the City of Brass and trade with Djinn for food or steal from their secret caches.

It's exactly my example. The feat doesn't say "I can spot settlements and steal their food." It doesn't say "I know how to find local prisons that contain edible foods."

It says I can FORAGE. Not steal. Not barter. Not buy.

I can FORAGE for food, EVEN IN PLACES THAT HAVE NO FOOD.

It doesn't say "even in places that have no food." It reads, and I quote, "You can attempt to Survive in the Wild on different planes, even those without the resources or natural phenomena you normally need. For instance, you can forage for food even if the plane lacks food that could normally sustain you, ..." (emphasis mine).

Basically, you manage to figure out some way of sustaining yourself when you would normally be unable to, through clever tricks you've picked up with your experience. I think of it as akin to surviving in a desert.

I know someone else pointed that out to you in an earlier response.

You can totally sing or dance. There's no instrument for it, but you can. In the brief blurb on Performance, it gave examples of types of performances, and examples of how attribute penalties (such as having a Dex penalty when attempting to dance).

As a bard, singing and dancing is an option, but since you aren't "using an instrument", you would still need a free hand for your Material Casting and Somatic Casting actions. Were you playing an instrument instead, you could use that for those actions, in addition to replacing the Verbal Casting action.

Heck, if you want you can specialize a bit in Performance. While the skill itself doesn't have specializations, there is the Virtuosic Performer Skill Feat, which gives you a +2.

I tried looking once I noticed this yesterday, but I couldn't find it anywhere that everyone is trained in unarmored. I suspect its simply missing, but things do change in development.

Hunterofthedusk wrote:

Lucid Blue wrote:

I mean really... Why would anyone field an army without a team of a couple dozen first level medics who could all but make their army immortal?

Because they would only have, what, +5 or +6 and need to hit a DC 20? So most of them would fail and then not be able to try again on that person? And feeding that many useless morons would be prohibitive? And it while 5 medics swarmed around a wounded soldier and mostly failed their rolls, the enemy could just attack a couple more times and now that soldier is dead?

How are they useless morons? Fielding 10,000 men is okay. But the 20 who stand in the back and make them all immortal aren't worth the extra food?

Put them in the back. Form a soup line. Each wounded soldier walks down the line. Even with +5 or +6, by the end of the soup line, statistically each soldier is now in perfect health and back to the front. Meanwhile the poor clerics mope around and tell the soldiers "sorry, I'm out of heal spells for the day. Head back to the soup line. They'll fix you up."

It's okay if you are on board with the dissociated math blocks. But the whole point is that they're dissociated. There's no in-fiction explanation for why it would or wouldn't work.

I would like to point out one bit about the feat that you're forgetting, the critical failure (these occur when you get DC - 10 (10 in this case), not just if you roll a nat 1 and would still fail). With a +5 to +6 you have a 25% - 20% chance to damage the person for 1d10 (instead of healing 1d10 + Wis mod) This means that while some may be at full health, others will effectively be untouched, and others dead from attempts to heal them.

That said, I am in the boat that Hit Points aren't literal wounds, but more of a figurative concept. If you see them as literal wounds always, then I can see why you may find this an issue.

I know I would love to see this closed as well, here is my argument for gaining the feats via the wording of the text:

Blood of Dragons: A dragon disciple adds his level to his sorcerer levels when determining the powers gained from his bloodline. If the dragon disciple does not have levels of sorcerer, he instead gains bloodline powers of the draconic bloodline, using his dragon disciple level as his sorcerer level to determine the bonuses gained. He must choose a dragon type upon gaining his first level in this class and that type must be the same as his sorcerer type.

If the above was all there was, I would argue DDs get just the bloodline powers, however the last sentence is what confuses me and makes me believe you get the feats:

Blood of Dragons(cont.): This ability does not grant bonus spells to a sorcerer unless he possesses spell slots of an appropriate level. Such bonus spells are automatically granted if the sorcerer gains spell slots of the spell’s level.

Because of that last sentence's wording, it implies that you gain more then just powers. The statement doesn't say you get spells in addition to powers, it says you don't get spells unless a certain condition is met, implying to me that when they refer to bloodline powers, it is referring to the spells as well, meaning that they don't literally mean the things listed as Bloodline Powers This caused me to look at the Bloodline entry of the Sorcerer (since it is the only entry on anything related to bloodlines), the last paragraph of which is below.

Bloodline(3rd Paragraph): At 7th level, and every six levels thereafter, a sorcerer receives one bonus feat, chosen from a list specific to each bloodline. The sorcerer must meet the prerequisites for these bonus feats.

That statement to me says that the feats are one of the powers you get from the Bloodline. I feel that the grouping of the categories in the bloodline details (such as Bonus Spells Known and Bonus Feats) is more for easy readability. Let me ask you this as well, if only the items categorized as Bloodline Powers are granted, then a Bard/DD wouldn't gain the Bloodline Aracane power from a Draconic Bloodline, which seems a bit silly to me.

Any other thoughts?