LuZeke's page

"The Last Airbender" becomes "The Last Kineticist"

I think changing it to "complication" would cause more confusion than it would resolve. As an abbreviation "comp" is most commonly used to mean "complimentary", and more colloquially "computer". So you're replacing a word that's potentially confusing with a word that is at least equally capable of confusion. In contrast "Fail" is unmistakably a negative result from whatever attack or skill check that was rolled for.

Although, I will grant you that your proposed word could lead to this exchange:

Player: So? Did I hit or miss?
GM: It's... complicated.

Heightening spells is interesting. Scaling cantrips, I dunno. I guess I want to see the full implication of scaling cantrips. After having a kineticist in our game (they are since not allowed in our games), I'm very wary of inexhaustible magical attacks. Especially when they scale with levels.

So is Cure X Wounds gone now? I don't want it to be gone.

Finally, rituals. Obviously the specifics are for the actual playtest, but from this read they sound very 4e to me. I wasn't a fan of rituals there because instead of creating rituals that were new and interesting, it locked old spells behind the ritual mechanic, which seems exactly what's happening here.

But it just seems really odd to have Bard as the only class to get a unique spell list.

Because bards are awesome, that's why. '<'

It's not all that restrictive if there are floating bonuses at all three stages. That lets you get to 16 in a stat that gets no bonus at all from any of Ancestry, Background, and Class.

Really, I think in practice it'll be just as flexible and a lot more intuitive.

But are those bonuses really floating at the other two stages other than race? And are their numbers predetermined? Are there ability flaws? If so, are those numbers predetermined?

Yeah, maybe it lets you get a 16 in whatever score, but what if you wanted to go down to 7 in one score for the benefit of another, or put down a mediocre or worse Charisma score for a sorcerer, but the character generation doesn't let you because it's sub-optimal?

Upping small character's damage dice to the same as medium character's is decent.

So, is the ability boost/flaw mechanic going to replace point buy completely? Because right now it seems very restrictive in comparison. I generally prefer rolling ability scores, but it's better suited for games where everyone play at an actual table, and point buy has been a decent compromise for online games for us.

I'm glad they don't have to begin with a flaw to strength; it's now a player's choice.

Negating a flaw with a boost is not the same as not starting with a flaw.

You know, if I wanted to play a cartoonish farce starring incompetent buffoons...

I can only ascribe such vehemence to either having never used the rules, but dislikes the idea so they're by default the devil, or simply doing it wrong (applying fumbles on every failed roll, forgetting confirmation rolls, etc).

We actually do know how HP are determined, thanks to the leveling up blog. Your class gives you a fixed number of hit points as a base (the example was 8 for the cleric). So the biggest difference this should make will be for your starting HP. After that you should progress pretty similarly to everyone else of a similar class-HP type.

EDIT: beaten to the punch :D

Personally not super stoked about that. Magic number HP per level and three racial ability bonuses and one penalty (as far as we know, "boost" and "flaw" could mean something else, but probably not) seems an effort to try to level the "gaps" between characters. Making everyone closer to each other in terms of raw stats.

When building a character, deciding which stat(s) would have to take a hit was always a more poignant choice than which stats would get buffs. Now, not so much.

Other than that I don't find much to comment on.

Lady Firebird (whether it's deliberate or not) is working pretty hard to make this subforum a very hostile place for anyone who doesn't embrace most of what has been revealed so far.

Truth be told, I get that feeling from the majority of the forum at this point. Especially the heavyhanded moderation on the forums in the name of promoting a "welcoming" space, but is decidedly not welcoming to some, warranted or not.

I've invested what... 10 years into playing Pathfinder, and building my campaign setting over those 10 years. I'm having a serious rethink as to the next 10 years, due to what I'm seeing on the forums here.

I've already decided to stick with the PF2nd playtest pdfs instead of the print copies that I was originally intending to order.

Gorbacz: Maybe they do, but it would be nice with something more... official, and something that doesn't require an internet connection.

Chance Wyvernspur: It would probably require quite the workload, yes. The content from the main line of products could be excluded (CRB, APG, UC, etc) to mitigate that somewhat, even if only a little. Still, it's a product I would gladly pay for.

As for character builders, I'm not a fan. To each their own, but I've found that almost invariably extensive use of character builders cause players not to understand their own creations. Less so for experienced players than beginners. In fact, I discourage the use of builders for new players.

This whole thread is pointless.

By extension, so is the entirety of this sub-forum.

One thing I've been thinking about is: with the move towards PF2nd, will there be some sort of compendia, collecting the various rules tidbits and archetypes and what-have-you that are scattered across a myriad of adventure paths and companion books?

Yes it might diminish the perceived value of those books, but as a send-off to PF1e and those who intend to keep playing it, it would be nice to have all of that disparate content collected in one place (or one place per topic). Especially since not everyone have the ability to purchase every single splatbook.

Hardly anyone is arguing against abstraction itself, but rather that consolidating the skills further than PF1e did is a step too far.

For those who object to "thievery" being a skill, what other name would you suggest? Purloin? Pilfer? Filching? Larceny? None of those are particularly more appropriate than "thievery," since the end result of taking something from someone forcefully, is all the same.

Sleight of Hand and Disable Device were fine already.

people will actually play a rogue now.

If I took every sentiment like that I've seen on the forums at face value, then Pathfinder would be a weird game where no one plays anything.

The notion of "Thievery" tells of further consolidated skills (Disable Device and Sleight of Hand, maybe more, rolled into one). Not happy about this at all. It's another step towards 4e, one that may well be too far for me. The whole point of being a skill monkey is greatly diminished by consolidated skills.

From what they've said, skills are going to be a much more impactful part of the game in P2e than P1e.

If that's the case, then removing the granularity of the skills system will be completely counter to that idea.

I don't understand why people keep hating on wish. Outside of theorycraft, it comes with the biggest self-limiting factor available - the fact that the GM needs to okay it.

In the last ten years, I can count on one hand the number of times it's been cast.

I can only chalk up the fear of Wish to people not instilling fear of it in their players instead.

I've made it perfectly clear to players in my games that wishes are a dangerous game, since I have carte blanche to twist them in any fashion befitting the narrative or situation, and I consider myself quite capable in doing so.

Wording matters, so outside of the safe options as per the spell, the wish must be spoken out loud as intended. "My character wishes for this, this and that" is not applicable, and wishing in character about rule terminology is especially dangerous.

I generally make a distinction between divine wishes and arcane wishes (yes, technically the spell itself is purely arcane, it's a thematic distinction).

Divine wishes, from beings such as djinni or the like, will twist the wish into an undesirable outcome for the amusement of the wish giver.

Player: I wish for a castle.

Now that castle could be anywhere. Like for example, a dilapidated castle sinking into a swamp with a hefty debt of gold that comes with it.

Arcane wishes try to resolve in the most literal, or efficient, way possible, without regard to safety (or anything, really).

Player: I wish for a castle.
GM: You might want to move out of that spot...

Counterspell being a reaction makes sense, and would actually make counterspelling viable.

Counterspelling in 3.5/PF1e is so situational and overly complicated that I've never once seen someone actually do a counterspell.

It’s fictionally unsatisfying, it’s just not part of any fantasy story ever.

So you've never seen a fictional story where one or more characters are knocked around or what have you and have to be continuously healed for a good while? (it happens in anime a whole lot, for one)

I honestly don't see the issue here. It's a ridiculous, but also creative, strategy that's at worst going to be used in borderline cases.

If the players end up using this tactic to deal with an encounter then a) they outmaneuvered you as a GM, reward them, and/or b) the encounter was flawed to begin with.

Adding a truly arbitrary rule to mitigate this seems wholly unnecessary, and could lead to other issues. Say the "only pass an item once" thing is adopted. Imagine the following scenario:

Party is stuck in a room with a lowering ceiling, in one round they'll all be dead (having spent too long trying to get out). One character spots two mechanisms that when broken will stop the ceiling. Party has one crowbar, and the character who has it is too far away. He moves up as far as he can, and another character takes the crowbar and uses it on the first mechanism and breaks it. But now he's too far away from the other mechanism. So a third character moves up to him and takes the crowbar... except he can't, for some reason, since it was already passed once.

It's a ridiculous scenario, sure, but disallowing people from passing items along each other beyond a certain point is just as ridiculous as the pass the dagger strategy. What if the party becomes involved in quelling a house fire? "Pass the bucket!" "Ok! Wait, I can't, I took it from you!"

My ridiculous crowbar example can be solved by designing around it, and so can the pass the dagger strategy.

I don't really buy that "drama" argument. Drama is predicated on highs and lows, and I can think of few things that are as high and low as Natural 1 fumbles and 19-20 Crits.

The progression of thought he talks about already exists in PF1e.

This:

"I got a 27... is that enough?"

Versus this:

Player: "I got a 19 on the die."

GM: "Roll for crit."
Player: "14 on the die... 21. Is that enough?

In my opinion, the latter is a much more effective dramatic vehicle. Especially for those of us who use the crit and fumble decks. The >10< mechanic is going to make crits/fumbles much more commonplace, and in effect less dramatic.

CR is such an unreliable metric that I wouldn't mind it getting an overhaul.

I personally don't quite understand the whole "Charisma is a dump stat" thing that seems to frequent here. Yeah, if you play a class that focuses on one or two particular ability scores, others need to take a hit.

Declaring that any single stat is THE dump stat seems weird to me, as it's the choice of class that dictates which ability score is the dump stat (if you're playing sorc, wizard or bard, then probably strength is going to be your dump stat).

As for resonance, yeah, still not sure about that. I've never had any problems with wands in the game (or 3.5 for that matter). It's almost quite the opposite, with the players not using the wands I place in their path. It seems to aim to fix something that isn't something that needed fixing for me. Some of my questions/concerns can only be answered by more detailed info, so yeah.

I don't think its bad thing to be skeptical, but I think its rather clear that whenever edition changes, you usually can't do identical build between editions. So thats why I find it bizarre to speculate based on 1e, I do think it makes more sense to speculate based on Starfinder since 2e clearly does share some aspects(such as the way of handling non-lethal combat I find annoying because its essentially up to gm whether they want to give pcs chance to interrogate foes :P)

I don't think anyone has disputed that a new edition means less to no compatibility with previous editions (I have seen people ask for it though, which isn't the same thing), granted I have trouble keeping up with the forums.

However, it's no more bizarre to speculate on PF2nd using knowledge from PF1e than it is/was to speculate about D&D 5e based on the previous editions of D&D. The game still carries the same name, the staff has expressed intent to keep the "feel" of the game the same. If people can't use knowledge of the previous edition to speculate on how the changes will play out; what would you have people do?

As for analysing the tidbits that have been released so far, can we not doomsday the changes by plopping them into PF1E, without the context of the rest of the system?

I ask you the same thing, what would you have people do then?

There is also that in Know Direction podcast they said they made alternate way of recovering HP between fights, so apparently its not necessary on low levels to use potions as much anymore?

I really hope I'm wrong but that sounds like 4e healing surges to me. If that's what it is... no thanks.

I must admit to uncertainty about "Resonance". Maybe it's the way the discussion headed but it feels like an entire system introduced solely to limit the use of wands (which could've been achieved by altering the wands themselves alone). How will this affect other items? Like those that are " activated" at the start of a day. If you have a flaming sword, do you have to spend resonance every time you turn the flame on? If so, that's probably not gonna be super attractive. If not, why is it different from effects that are activated on the spot but not at the start of the day? More info is definitively needed.

Sidenote: Is it only me that twinge a bit when they say "Natural" for numbers other than 1 or 20? I've had players that do the same and it just makes for unnecessary confusing language.

Umm, while I do have to admit that I almost never see any players using most of those items, I do have to point out that you do realize that those items might not even exist in 2e so before we know what kind of magic items there are, complaining about resonance based in 1e magic item system might prove really inaccurate?

Singing its virtues without knowing the full extent of the system and its potential pitfalls could be equally inaccurate. Maybe even moreso since at least magic items in PF1e is not a matter of speculation.

I'm not much of a fan of piling on mechanics onto "downtime". Downtime, almost by definition, involves the PCs doing nothing of interest or weight or consequence.

Consequently, my games tend to have little to no downtime. Downtime being relegated to the "time skip" function when there's literally nothing for the PCs to do than loiter around and wait for X amount of time.

But what's the point in allowing heated arguments to happen on the board over topics that, no matter what is said here, will not be changed in PS2.0? It seems like if they're 100% committed to "you have three actions of the same type, instead of one action each of 3 different types" then removing arguments about "bring back Swift actions" is a good idea just to improve the signal-to-noise ratio.

Is #3 an example of a "heated" argument? I wouldn't say so.

Weeding out arguments that are wholly redundant is not the issue here. A comment that is extremely positive but lack any actual contribution to the discussion is just as redundant as a seethingly negative tirade that also contributes nothing.

Do you have an example of this actually happening?

Or are you simply expressing your anxieties about something that could hypothetically happen once playtesting starts next August?

I'm pointing out that few, if any, posts in this thread actually addresses the concern raised in the opening post, and instead are running off blustering about people saying naughty and/or mean things.

I mean, here's the thing. Outside of "I am concerned that this product exists, period" there simply is not a lot of criticism to have at this point, and the former is not constructive. Sure there are concerns about how specifically x, y, and z work but whether stuff like "the new action economy is good" is going to depend a lot on what sorts of actions different things take. Which is information that we should at least wait for the actual book before offering a lot of comment (ideally also "after actually playing with it", since it's a *playtest*.)

But that is again sidestepping where the actual concern seems to lie.

Namely when arguments are blocked or removed simply because they do not conform to the mindset of the Paizo devs or the community managers, no matter the actual construction of the argument in question.

Say the kibosh is put on discussing the negatives of the new action economy. Let's use the arguments from earlier as an example:

1. This game is f*****g broken and literal garbage, whoever decided I can't draw a weapon as part of my move should get his hands cut off so he can never write trash for garbagefinder 2.0

2. Wow, the new action economy seems dumb. Can't even draw a weapon as part of a move. Thanks a lot paizo. Ruined
3. I find that by not being able to draw a weapon as a non action on your turn it really bogs down combat and leads to the party walking with their weapons drawn everywhere as to not "waste" an action. I'm not sure it quite is helpful enough to warrant a feat, ala quickdraw, but perhaps whatever is replacing traits could be used. Even possibly a martial reaction that can be used at the start of combat.

Of course #1 is the least constructive, however all three arguments express concern about negative aspects of the new action economy, thus they are all subject to being blocked or removed because people aren't supposed to talk about that.

This is what I feel the concern actually is, and as such, I think it's a valid concern. Opening up for community feedback is pointless if you're going to punish people for wrongthink. Note that this concern isn't just about right now, but also about the future when the actual playtest starts.

The replies in this thread doesn't seem to address the concern raised.

Reading the opening post, it doesn't really seem like the concern is about blocking people saying naughty words or being mean, but about fostering a cult of yes men.

More situations will also be relegated to DM fiat.

In my mind, when the core rules of a game rely on GM Fiat, things are going in the opposite direction where it's "simplicity for simplicity's sake". I touched on this in my post in the "Please This, Not That" thread.

Of course, overly pedantic rules can be detrimental, but so can overly simplistic rules. If the core rules rely on GM Fiat as a main solution, instead of being an out when there's no good interpretation to be had, what is the point of having a rules set to begin with?

Let's say they simplified things in PF2nd to such an extent that it doesn't really feel like Pathfinder anymore, is that really true to what got people to play Pathfinder to begin with?

Most of the people I play and have played with were drawn to Pathfinder because of its rules. It struck a balance between complexity and interpretation that people liked.

My original question here is specifically aimed at PF2nd and the idea that it's made to be "simpler". As it stands, I'm not convinced that simpler is better for "Pathfinder".

But does "simpler" equate to "better"? That's what I'm wondering.

First off:

This might be kinda controversial, but Don't focus on making all classes and options perfectly balanced against each other. Too much balance makes for a boring RPG. Sometimes an option is a little suboptimal or high-powered, and that's OK. As long as those things don't end up in a "never use" or "always use" category, as tends to happen currently.

I agree with this very much. With risk of harping on 4E, over-zealous balancing will make the game very flat and you could just as well do away with classes completely then. 4E turned everyone into spellcasters. I don't want PF2nd to fall down a similar slope.

Now then.
Please Do:

1. Rework all of the Prestige Classes into full classes. I personally really like the Duelist, but it suffers from being a PrC. In all of the years I've played, outside of myself as GM, no one has ever picked up a Prestige Class.

2. Improve on PF1e with clearer rules descriptions. PF1e had a lot of very vaguely or confusingly worded rules that became immediate Rules-As-Intended vs Rules-As-Written debate fodder. Many were hold-overs from 3.5.

3. Lessen Feat Taxes, as many have already stated. Many feats have very interesting synergy with each other, but the path to actually get to that point is so long and can or will gimp your character, all for that -one- feat, or that -one- feat that will work with that other -one- feat (both of which are at the end of a 4 feat progression branch).

Of course, to be exceptional at one thing, you will have to give up something else. Not arguing against that, but the current state of feat branching is a bit harsh when all I want is wield a blade and pistol in melee without having people punch me in the beak whenever I fire the pistol.

4. Change meta magic, or remove it. Frankly put, meta magic is so rarely used (at least in our games) that it might as well not be in the game at all. The investment of a precious feat (see #3) to be able to alter spells to a degree, but with the drawback of not being able to utilize the spell's full power, fails the cost/benefit equation for most players. So they take another feat.

Please Don't:

1. Sacrifice complexity for simplicity. From what I've seen, when people talk about "complexity", what they're actually talking about is "density". Pathfinder is a complex and a dense game.

Pathfinder is dense, because there is a veritable ton of material for even a single class.

Pathfinder is complex, because you have many courses of action for any given situation without having to resort to free form or GM fiat.

To me there's a difference between making the game easier to learn and play, and making the game simpler. The former is a matter of pedagogy.

It's difficult to be specific on this point, since we don't know what the planned changes to the mechanics are. Maybe I'm wrong on this, but my gut reaction is that the stated "proficiencies" are sacrificing complexity for simplicity.

2. Reduce skills further. I found the skills in PF1ed close to perfect. The combination of some felt justified and needed, plus the obnoxious skill rank math from 3.5 was gone. But if even more skills were to be squished into one, at this stage, I feel it would be a detriment. The way I see it, the fun of the skills system as it is now lies in its granularity. The whole idea of being good at some things and being not-so-good at others. Someone argued for combining Bluff, Diplomacy and Intimidate. That means the barbarian is just as silver tounged as the bard. Might as well ditch skills and go freeform at that point.