Lord_Franklin's page

Just a thought, but if Perception is used for initiative, they could have integrated that into the system one way or another. Perhaps those with a higher Initiative (Perception) versus the trap are able to act and get out of the way before the trap (it's Spot DC being its initiate order) activates. If you are actively searching / looking to disable a trap, you might even use your Disable Device (or equivalent) to enter Initiative.

Just a wild guess though :)

Bardic Buffs could easily be represented with the Aid Another line of thought, and get some Class Feats that let Aid Another power up for them, allowing them to inspire more from others as levels increase. (If that is how these so called "Class Feats" work?)

Feels an easy way to make them naturally a "Support" class, without relying on magic to do that, nor another mechanic.

I would like to see Prestige Classes condensed into 3 or 5 levels that provide a new high level set of abilities that are worth dipping into for those that meet the relevant requirements. Prestige Classes as presented in the CRB are mostly just bad archetypes (or hybrid classes), and most of the others are NPC bloat. Athaleon's idea of separating high level archetypes with low level ones would effectively be very similar, and I would totally be on board there.

This is a great opportunity for an underused system to be revitalized, a way to strengthen the modular choices that we love from Pathfinder, and make our 10+ level characters feel distinguished from the bottom half.

You guys have figured it out. I will admit: Figuring out a way to handle save or lose effects that was more fun to play with than "Your monster/PC either wastes the turn or instantly wins" is what initially led me to formulate the design doc for the four degrees of success in the first place. That way, you can do something that's still somewhat useful even if they make the save (though not if they critically succeed) and then something powerful but not instawin if they fail and something more extreme on a critical fail. This also has the added benefit of dealing double damage from spells like fireball when the enemies get a critical failure!

Firstly, thank you for all the awesome insight you are spreading across this forum, every answer you give makes me more hopeful for a no brainer decision towards transitioning.

Secondly though, does this mean we are expected to see quite a large disparity between what a player would have as a save, and what a monster would receive? In Pathfinder, if I ever found myself in a position where I was regularly failing a typical encounters DC's by more than 10, I would feel there was a fundamental problem with my character that I needed to address! Or am I just incorrectly assuming that 10 is the boundary here, hence my confusion?

I would like to see a natural 20 stay as critical hit, for combat at least, but would rather get rid of that than see a natural 1 mean failure in skill checks.

I also have some confusion about this, if as Jason Bulmahn said, Lesser minions are very "hitable" with that -10 3rd attack in a round, that means your attack -10 is likely to still hit, therefore incredibly likely to crit succeed on the first attack, and impossible to miss?

I haven't seen the numbers, so I don't want to get too worked up over it, but this system seems to punish players who want to attempt to challenge an unreasonable CR creature with expert tactics, and trivialises low CR fights. Some of my favourite P1 moments are when my party got serious, planned out a way to exploit an opponents weakness and beat an encounter over 7 levels higher than we should have.

This system suggests to me that P2 encounters will be much more hard limited than P1 in terms of what is considered a "challenging" encounter, and reducing options is going to be a hard sell for many.

(Worth mentioning, I am still hella excited to see and play this system, but that doesn't stop me from being anxious as well!)

Nox Aeterna wrote:

It also breaks completely any and all hope to build a character that depends even a little on items, since now you literally may never get certain items you want.

You pretty much roll with the punches now and get whatever your GM decides to toss your way next.

Not to say one cant trust the GM, but now having to go to the GM for each and every item you want for your build and making sure they add them to the game so you can use them would be a pain for both sides in my opinion.

Mind you, this is for every player.

Also you know APs and the rest? Now you literally will have to build for what drops in them, cause you know, you cant actually buy what you need now and then.

Why would you build a character around a magic item to begin with? I have min/maxed myself plenty, but building an entire concept and that being broken if you don't get the magic item you want? You're not building a character, you're building a gimmick.

Magic items used to make a difference in stories, and were part of the story. When Bilbo picked up Sting for the first time, did you think he thought, "man when I get back to town, I'm selling this right away and buying this other thing" He didn't, the weapon became part of the story.

The one thing 3.x system did is nullify the awe of finding that weapon or armor and it making the impact it did. Also one of the downsides of hyper specialization.

Anecdote, but I built a Cipher Investigator that was strong skill wise but only supported in combat. I was trying to see how I could help the most, in an already full party, and ended up building an aid another build needing Bodyguard, Combat Reflexes, Gloves of Arcane Striking, and A Commander's Helm. Those two items were just as important as the two feats, and with them all I built one of the most memorable characters who filled an iconic role in our group.

Not having the ability to shop around would have left that character neutered, and I would have enjoyed playing them much less. I think to remove static bonuses from items is the right way to go, and I think more scaling items, as those introduced in Unchained, could be the way to make magic items last more levels worth of play.

A the fringe idea though, magic item slots could work with something similar to the Mythic Intelligent Items, and you get to choose what abilities they provide?

Angel Hunter D wrote:

ryric wrote:

Angel Hunter D wrote:

the crit fail think is making me nervous, mostly because every crit fail system i've ever seen is just mathematically is worse for the players than the monsters

While I get your fear, tying it to -10 and not to natural one means you can eventually overcome it with sufficient skill. I'm assuming that a nat 1 or a nat 20 isn't a crit unless it also meets the +-10 criterion.

I'll need more details to figure out whether it passes my "guards training against practice dummies" test.

I would think the same thing about sufficient skill, but for 2 things.

1: The levels where you lack the skill are always the most lethal, I'm never more scared of character death than levels 1-2 and that's just because the dice can decide I'm dead and I can't do anything about it.

2: Some of what I'm seeing/hearing makes me think that the bonuses I'm used to seeing might be very rare to non-existant (My main gripe about 5E to boot) so that -10 might be a lot more common than we think. Boss Fights, while smothered by action economy, become even more lethal (and not necessarily in the fun way) if your own roll is about as dangerous to your health as the enemy's.

It was mentioned elsewhere that taking three attacks, at 0/-5/-10, would often be worth doing because that third attack at -10 is viable. If an attack at -10 is viable, it seems unlikely that your initial attack will fail by 10 very often.

But really we're going to have to see what the playtest looks like before we can have a serious discussion of the pros/cons.

I am somewhere between the two of you. I dislike Crit Failure effects (especially on skills), but don't mind the idea of 10+ being a crit. But I worry, being used to P1 numbers, that a level one character would never attempt a DC15 diplomacy out of fear of causing the Guard to murder them. I realise though, if this was the case, the developers would have caught this problem?

So I find myself worrying about the rules, but expecting to be proven wrong. I would say baseless speculation is not worth our times, but really, I know I'm not going to be able to do anything else until spring at this rate!

Back on topic: Critical spells can double the length if they don't do damage maybe? (and most SoD don't). Then a higher level wizard is likely going to daze a peasant for longer on average?

If we are wishing, I want a bit more of a modular nature from the class system, so we don't "need" a magus, or any of the hybrid classes to do what we want, and can actually Multiclass with more flexibility. Rebuilding the class system so Multiclassing (and even Prestige Classes) can be viable outside of dipping a level would be a tremendous boon.

Remove the great big list of "Knowledge" Skills, I was very happy with how Starfinder handled this, so I hope they are already looking to this.

And while I mentioned it, Prestige Classes. Don't get rid of them, but make them 3-5 levels, give them special abilities to reward you that are hard to qualify for, but as good or better than just continuing your main class abilities.

edit: spelling.

I think I agree with the idea of less rules for this. Especially facing. I worry that this would open up a dangerous precedent for combat, as facing in all regards has always been ignored; Characters have 360 degree vision, and face all directions at once.

So keep it simple, No facing in the game. I do think that maybe removing certain checks for magical flying might work though. Limiting movement actions based on fly type doesn't sound like the right answer, as I would think a level 20 character with maximum dexterity and full ranks (however skills work in this) in "Fly" would be able to do a flip, even if their movement was "poor".

1. Give us ways to get more reactions.

I couldn't agree more. I am desperately hoping (but not optimistic) that you still will get multiple reactions a turn. The Starfinder system is:

a) One reaction a turn.
b) Reactions happening AFTER the trigger if not purely defensive.
c) So few reactions to actually take.

This Severely limits the options and enjoyability of combat in Starfinder. We have already seen there are going to be different ways to use reactions (shields being one of the few things revealed) so point c) I am not worried about, but not having any way to take more than one reaction, or disrupt spells, disappoints me immensely.

Keep Combat Reflexes, or something similar. An X number of reactions at each level would be fine as well, feat locked or otherwise.