Lyee's page

Spoiler for what I'm doing here. tl;dr - running part 6 like I would a non-playtest module.

Intro
With the Night Heralds making progress, and the White-Axiom-saving-party out of commission, the Order of the Palatine Eye calls in some of its best covert operatives for a top priority missions. Elite agents, each of which was fundamental in dismantling at least one cult during their service. One by one, these four heroes are teleported to a secret HQ of the Order, on a tropical island from which no other land can be seen. It's exact location a mystery, and its vaults holding many evil treasures of defeated cults. Who teleports in?

Miller. Half-orc. Acquisition Expert. Osirion native. Gained notoriety after infiltrating and dismantling a cult of Dawnflower heretics. He's become a top travelling agent versed in just about every skill set required by the Order. A jack-of-all-trades. And by this point, master-of-many.

Rurtug the Shadowflame. Goblin. Puppetmaster. Varisian native, Rurtug is an ex-pathfinder who turned a cult controlling monstrous races inside-out, unleashing the races against the controlling cult. A love of fire, powers over the mind, and a master of sneaking and shadows.

"Ol' Koot". Goblin. Insane. An alchemist with a love of explosions and good booze. Very elderly. A bit dotty in the head. Koot is a genius in his own way, a mad inventor, and able to plan like no other, as long as someone else supplies the common sense. Retired after defeating a group of blood cultists, but here for one last job.

Beetmul. Goblin. Infiltrator. Necerion's nemesis. Beetmul has spent many years fighting the sorcerer, racing him to old items, assassinating his lackies, and has built up quite the rapport with the evil leader as he is instrumental in keeping the Night Heralds slow.

Yes. Three goblins. My players know I hate goblins and decided to troll me. Thanks guys. At least it's not four.

They meet Kelari on a small hill that overlooks a sandy beach, surrounded by coconut trees, with the bright sun bouncing off perfectly blue waves. She informs them of the mission, reveres their experience, and shows them the intercepted missive. They bandy about questions, get some answers, make some plans, brew up Salamander Elixers because volcano, and teleport to the Smoker.

This was a nice intro. Characters had personality, especially Koot carving notes into the table, because they knew I'd make this long enough to enjoy the characters and really get into them. No rolls needed, but I think there was a decent sense of the power of the PCs and the scale of the event/situation.

Info Gathering
They've just over two days to learn about their mission and explore. They split up. Ol' Koot goes to a gambling den, speaking to the bartender, Miller goes to the shops, asking about in public-facing establishments, and Beetmul asks about the streets. They turn up a lot of information:
* There's three oracles in a cave to the west. They could be a source of information.
* There's a bar to the east, out of town, called Lavatap, which was recently damaged by an explosion from the side of the volcano. It's run by a Fire Giant named Sissidhie.
* There's a ship graveyard to the north of the island, definitely haunted by pirate ghosts
* The gala's been held in honour of the sunken Blackguard's Revenge.
* Someone called Ellysaganor is attending, and definitely important.
* The gala will include most important people being part of processions out of the fort to throw valuables into the sea. Great time to be sneaky buggers.

Miller moves on to question those near the docks, and gets a whole bunch of information!
* Khadabit is happy where he is, and extorting his father.
* There's a devil named Kasabeel under Whark.
* Tarqin Sorrinash, son of Avimar Sorrinash, is the highest ranking pirate attending besides Whark, and a slight rival to her.
* There's a dragon on the island, in the volcano

The others gather some more information, and Ol' Koot goes to a table in the den with a large crowd. A weird fish person, who he learns is called Dagruth, is playing against a pirate captain in a complicated and strategic card game. Koot picks up a large amount in only minutes of watching, being a genius, but annoys Dagruth in the process, especially when he points out a suboptimal play. He will later learn Dagruth is Whark's right-hand man/man-fish. Whoops.

The information gathering here was great fun. The DCs were frequently 15+ points below those recommended, and the game benefited hugely from it. These are top agents, if they look for specific information, they get it, and frequently crit succeed, surpassing expectations in basic tasks like rumour recon. Interestingly, they didn't ask about Necerion, but they certainly ended up with a variety of leads to go on. Miller's feat to gather twice as much information definitely was nice.

The Ship Graveyard
They rested, then woke up with a full free day between them and the gala. They planned for a bit, and with disguises and stealth headed north to the Ship Graveyard as it had piqued their interest. Their scout found signs of supernatural activity, and decided to approach confidently, as a group. The ghosts haunting a shipwreck here tried to scare them! They all passed the DC 14 Will Save, including one person passing on a 2. That felt awesome. They're top agents, and this is just your average pirate ghost. Realising they're not easily scared, the ghost talked to them, laughed, got on, and invited them all in. Ol' Koot used his Inventor Feat and Alchemy Reagents to make Ghost Touch Booze. There's no rules for this... but of course I allowed that? What a cool use of class features. With this, the ghosts were extremely open with information and chatting. They're actually not from here or bound here at all - they're visiting too! They're rare passengers aboard the Kelpie's Wrath, on the island while it circles about, until the Gala is ended and the Kelpie goes elsewhere, and then eventually has enough of them and they find a different ship to haunt. The pirate ghosts in the ship here mention two ghosts that aren't present: Rotten Gokkle, a no-good scoundrel who's trying to steal Whark's loot by floating through the volcano, and his opposite, Sir Reginald, a ghost who believes things like hiding form sunlight, floating, and passing through walls are unseemly, and considers himself a perfect gentleman to the extent he's inviting himself to the Gala - where fancy people belong. After much fun roleplay, the group leaves to find Reginald who they were told is nearby, practising running through patches of sunlight.

Tons of good stuff happened here. The players felt strong, they used class features in interesting ways, the RP was good, and it advanced things. Also, lots of puns and wordplay.

They find Reginald. He's dressed as fancily as can be. Twirly moustache, tricorne, big old naval officer coat covered in medals and ribbons. He speaks in the most absurd attempt at being dignified, and sounds a prat for it. The group sees through the fact he's not a natural noble, but respect he's putting effort into it. They talk to him for... a long time. They get information about Gokkle, and about Reginald's plans for the gala. Eventually, they convince Reginald to go to Whark and get her to stop Gokkle sneaking in and stealing anything. Reginald is mercilessly mocked without ever noticing it, and at one point begins pulling out his poorly written, entirely falsified, and incorporeal memoirs out of hammerspace. These can be interacted with thanks to Mage Hand existing, which I found amusing. After deciding to meet back later, so someone could make a novel of his fantastic life, the group leaves Reginald for the day, and heads towards the oracles.

At this point, just over 4 hours IRL have passed, and we call the session. Reginald was fun to play.

Result?
It's super fun, people are looking forward to the next game rather than dreading having to push through more Doomsday Dawn. People were excited to roll dice because they knew they were playing really competent characters, and could do they thing they wanted to do most of the time, sometimes do it super well with a crit. This is compared to before, where dice felt like they usually served to show how incompetent your expert in ranks and backstory character really was. No combat happened, which felt fine for this section, and I've added at least 5 combats that still might happen. PF2 definitely benefits a lot from leaving playtest land.

Weakness came up a lot in Part 5, and two aspects of it felt very lame, and are a great room for making it feel better.

1) Make weaknesses stack. If you manage to hit something that's weak to Fire, Good, Bludgeoning, and Cold Iron with a Flaming Holy Cold Iron Warhammer, that should feel like a jackpot super-hit. Not just as effective as a Shocking Corrosive Steel Warhammer. Even when knowing Demons are often weak to cold iron, my players decided not to bother with any cold iron weapons 'because the paladin has an aura making us all do good.' Triggering multiple weaknesses is almost universally going to be a good feeling moment for the players, and stops the weird situation of not wanting to exploit a weakness beause you hit another one.

2) Make weakness multiply on crits. We were playing it this way for a while, until we read the crit rules and realized that only certain things are multiplied on a crit. Untyped bonuses are not multiplied, and weaknesses seem to be an untyped increase in damage. Since crits are already often flavoured as hitting a weak point, hitting it with a weakness should be another of those great feeling 'jackpot' scenarios, not a dissapointing, 'Oh, that doesn't work' feeling.

So, the 'Why I don't trust Paizo' thread warped into this, and I've decided to make somewhere for the discussion that lets it be on-topic to the thread.

I will aim to keep this OP fairly impartial, but will probably fail to do so.

The questions this thread seeks to address are:

• How able should a given class be able to utilize a combat style, such as Archery or Dual-Wielding, that it is not typically associated with?
  
• How much investment should this require, and how effective should the result be?
  
• What is the current state of this in Pathfinder 2E? How does this compare to the first group of answers?
  
• How much of this will be fixed with future archtypes and feats? Is it acceptable to wait for that?
  

Some useful things to define:

Combat Styles: Which should be widely supported? What even defines a combat style? My personal list of combat styles anyone should be able to opt into and become competant in, for a CRB, would be Archery, Sword & Shield, Two Handed Weapons, Dual Wielding, and Unarmed Combat.

Effectiveness Floor: The minimum amount you can be useful and still feel okay with your character, like you're contributing, that you're fufilling the basic fantasy that yoru character is competent at the things you designed them to be. A Healing Cleric has a very low effectiveness Floor. Just by using Channel they can be seriously contributing and feeling good at their goal. A high level fighter might have an Effectiveness Floor that they need a level-appropriate Magic Weapon to reach, and where they feel impotent and dead weight without it to increase their damage.

Effectiveness Ceiling: How high can a thing be optimized? Most useful to talk about the distance from it. How far from the Effectiveness Ceiling of Archery should a Druid using a bow be? A Fighter should probably be closer to it, because he lacks all of the other fancy things a Druid can do.

Feat Tax: A Feat required to meet the Effectiveness Floor. In Pathfinder 1E, Archery had Precise Shot and Point Blank Shot as a Feat Tax for Archery, because playing an archer without them frequently felt terrible.

Luxary Feats: Feats that make a combat style more effective, but aren't required to feel competant. In a high-optimization, high-difficulty game, these might start becoming Feat Taxes as everything below optimal is bad.

Are things like Double Slice Feat Taxes, that the style feels bad without, or luxaries, and the style feels reasonable with no feats in 2E? Is access to Trained proficiency in weapons too restricted at level 1, making archer-wizards and unarmed-druids impossible at that level? Is it okay that such builds are only possible after a certain level?

I am a mad woman proposing mad things, because this is a playtest and the best place to talk about them.

I don't know who really likes the idea of heroes that, after fighting two rooms of minions, want to sleep for 8 hours. Rest, catch their breath, really prepare to push on, maybe have to run and hide while they do that, sure. But downright sleep? That should be a big deal that you're retreating so hard.

Paizo did a 10/10 job acknowledging that players don't enjoy risking their characters needlessly. If people had low HP and no healing resources, they usually refused to push on. The other main reason players have their characters run is if the caster's don't have anything to cast.

Letting the caster's go 'full nova' 24/7 is probably a bad idea, but a limited recovery option might solve two issues:

1) Caster adventuring days can be very short
2) There's a general sentiment that caster's don't feel great

Paizo's already got all the framework for this! There's the idea of a 10-minute 'fix up' period for repairs and treating wounds. Here's a proposed Action to implement the change:

Refresh Spells
Duration: 10 Minutes
Select an expended spell slot at least 2 levels lower than the highest spell you can cast. Attempt an appropriate check based on your spellcasting tradition (Arcane for Arcane, Occult for Occult, Nature for Primal, Religion for Divine). The DC is equal to <Paizo please enter DC>.
Success: The spell slot is refreshed and can be used again.
Critical Failure: You cannot use this action again today.

So, recently Jason locked a thread saying the game would fit better in 10 levels, because over 20 the level ups often didn't give enough. Fair to lock, because it was framed that a drastic change should happen that isn't on the table. It was discussing a 'wrong solution'.

But I think the problem can be real, and let's discuss that, then look for any right solutions that fall out.

When, during the playtest, do you level up and feel you don't get enough? When you reach Fighter 7, getting a General Feat, +1 Perception, and +1 in some skill, does that feel like a 'full level'? What about when you reach Wizard 12, getting +1 DCs (that you expect enemy saves to also increase by), and a Skill Feat? If that's your main character advancement for the next... many-sessions maybe before 13 (depends hugely on group pace), does it feel like major progression?

We haven't had people who spent 5 sessions at level 11, hit 12, and can express how they feel knowing that's it for progression for 6 sessions, because the playtest hasn't existed long enough for campaigns to reach that far. A lot of this is theoretical, but that's all we have.

* Are feats overall lacking in impact? Skill feats? General feats? Ancestry feats (I think so and I think they're working on it)? Class feats for a specific class at a specific level range?

* Do skill increases feel meaningful enough?

* Do any classes have especially weak levels?

* Do casters getting their proficiency increase feel cheated of advancement?

Side-discussion:

* How much of your advancement does & should come from magic items? (Currently the case is Weapon users: Almost all of their damage. People who love skills: More than their proficiency. This feels very wrong.)

I've seen maybe 4 semi-popular threads about this this week, and now that out of combat healing is 90% fixed, I think it's going to become my next hill to fight on.

Casters aren't great at damage, and low level spell slots become entirely useless for damage. This feels wrong to some people, so let's talk about it.

Specifically, let's step back a bit and figure out where we want spells and spell slots to be.

This is not a topic about narrative and out of combat power. It might influence where we end up in this discussion, but this discussion itself is about where we want casters combat power to be.

Being abstract, we need a point of reference. We'll have two characters. Eagle Edd, the Archer, and Cabalist Carl, the Caster.

Edd is out baseline. He is a well-built, but not cheesy or munchkin'd archer. Probably a fighter, but we are being nonspecific intentionally, he could be a ranger. He'll be maxing out his dex, using the best weapon, getting potency runes, probably property runes too. He doesn't have a bard glued to him, or that one broken pair of gloves from an obscure splatbook. He definitely has some relevant feats.

Edd, in a round, does 100% of what Edd does. It's consistent. He doesn't need to position much, being an archer, he doesn't have many daily resources that alter his output. Edd does 100%. A melee guy starting in melee might do 120%, or 140%, and closer to 100% if he has to move once. If he can only get one attack off, Edd might do 65%.

This thread asks:

* If Carl uses his highest level spell slot, how much of Edd's 100% should it do?
I think most people agree this should be over 100%, since it's a limited resource, and his best one. Clearly it depends a bit on the situation (Fireballing 5 enemies is going to be a bigger % than fireballing 2). What's a reasonable 'average'? 150%? 300%?

* If Carl uses a Cantrip, how much of Edd's 100% should it do?
Does this change with level? I think most people agree it should be less than 100%. 90%? 50%?

*If Carl and Edd are both high level (15ish) and Carl uses a low level spell slot, how much of Edd's 100% should it do?
This, I believe, is the awkward subject people aren't sure on. That low level spell slot is a limited resource. Carl is definitely putting more of his resources into a turn than Edd. But he has enough of these to last throughout all of a short adventuring day. If he's throwing out impressive 300% high-level spells sometimes, and also outdoing Edd on out of combat utility and every round of short adventuring days, Edd is going to be very sad indeed.

My answers to these are:

* High level spell slots should be 300%, the reason to play the class, super impressive, awesome fun things. They should be a main draw of a caster.

* Cantrips should be 50%ish. Round-to-round at-will combat is a martials place to stand out. Cantrips should definitely be worth using, but not even challenge martials for power.

* Low level spell slots should be worse than the martial on an average round. Maybe 80%. If you get things just right and hit many enemies or a weakness, maybe it spikes to 120% that round. Good job.

Right now I feel that it's:

* High level spells are 180% or so? Enemy saves are very high, many spells have been nerfed. They're decent enough, but not exciting and I think could be better without breaking things.

* Cantrips are about right!

* Low level spells, for damage, fall off so hard that they become 15% or something. This feels really, really broken.

Let's face it. Right now, Int is a garbagey dump stat for anyone that doesn't need it for class features. If you're not using spell DCs, you can even dump it as a Wizard pretty happily. Trained skills are not worth the investment, considering the game is balanced around you maximizing a few to master from 7th. One language at 14 is... a neat bonus, it does not sell an attribute. And the flat bonus to some 'knowledge' checks is better than nothing, due to rituals, but ignored by more than half the PCs I expect to see.

Medicine just got a cool buff with Treat Wounds. It's not quite reasonable that everyone tries to Treat Wounds after the main Medicine Dude crit fails, or if he's out of the scene. Wis is currently loaded quite hard, with Will Saves, Perception, default Initiative (via Perception), and several good skills.

Why is Medicine Wis? My guess is that it's a mix of 'because it was that way in the old system' and 'because Cleric/Druid are wis-based', but that really isn't a good reason. Medicine is a very learned, studied talent. It's solidly Int-based. I'm happy for Cleric/Druid to get 'can use Wis for Medicine' as a class feature, or added to one of their Class Feats, but I don't think it makes sense to be Medicine's default attribute. Moving it to Int balances out the attributes for your average character (a little bit, it's still uneven), while also making sense.

Make Alchemists good doctors!

I got boerd and had fun making this so decided to share. It's an idea of an especially generic chassis of a class that gains a class feat every single level to take dedication feats and act as a build-your-own-class. Not to be taken super seriously.

The Adventurer class

So, I love Treat Wounds. Haven't had a chance to dig into every aspect but it at least starts on addressing my main issue with PF2, the adventuring day. Maybe fixes 90% of it if the math works out.

Any tweaks people think it needs?

I would like to see an option to reduce your level for the purpose of both healing and DC, if you want a more reliable recovery but don't need a huge number. So a level 15 medic could act as level 5 if they only needed to top up 5 hp, rather than try their normal DC they could fail.

Especially important since a secondary medic might never increase their wis, prof category, or item bonus, meaning they fail *more* from level 5 to 15, where their bonus increases by 10 and the DC by 12, under the current system.

So, the Friday stream thread had this come up.

RAW, the same type of monster should all act on the same initiative roll (all goblins, all gnolls, all ghasts, all mummies, etc).

This makes the game significantly more dangerous, as there is a far increased chance of six enemies focusing a target and sending them to 0, causing a minimum of prone+drop items+slow if they're immediately healed. Without this, there is a good chance someone can intervene to save them when they notice they are getting low, before other monsters of that type can act.

I can point to at least two places that I believe my group would have TPK'd with this rule, but narrowly survived and ended up reporting 1, then 0 player deaths.

Personally, I dislike this rule.

Have you been using Grouped Initiative? Would using it have made things more deadly?

Book 4 minor spoiler:

There is one area with 10 cyclops. They can all choose to automatically succeed. All going at once, even at range, that's 20d10+20 (I think their range attack is 2d10+2?) damage, or 130 average damage on round 1 without anyone able to react between them if they want. Far more in melee, which could also hit two targets.

Just got done on part 4 of Doomsday Dawn.

And it was pretty decent!

My group has really, really thrown hate at Doomsday Dawn, 'toiling in the feedback mines so PF2 will be as good as possible'. Part 4, I think we can all say we enjoyed and saw some hope for PF2 ending up really neat.

For the opening plot... the group has mostly disengaged with the adventure's plot, but for a framing device it worked well enough.

Then we went over the mechanics for hex exploration and treasure points. Despite not being offical 2E mechanics, these are now our favourite parts of PF2. Treasure points were a really neat way to handle rewards that didn't involve tracking to the GP and selling 20 different items from a loot pile, while getting rewards the characters were specifically interested in. The 'fail-forward' hex-exploration mechanics were great overall. They gave hints for doing well, and even on a critical failure you found the plot points to move things forwards. The DC for perception/survival seemed very arbitrary and chosen mostly based on the PCs level rather than the action (a reccouring complaint), but that's a minor quibble on a good subsystem.

The PCs heard 'also underwater monster combat' and immediately decided the lake was a 'do not explore' zone.

I also briefly went over Ally Points - solid system, nothing special. And Research Points - which I decided to spoil them on a bit, because the Research Point system felt broken:

* There is one source of Research Points outside of the final area. As they run out in 7 days, and going to the final area almost always involves going back to camp, then 5 days latter attacking the final area, this means there are no Research Points you can actually use before the Final Area.
* The final area has a single source of Research Points: Declaring you scout the camp. This is a DC 28 perception check. It's effectively impossible to crit this at this level without a nat 20 as there aren't many options to invest in Perception. Practically, this means players have, as a grand total at the end, either 0 or 2 Research Points if they do this once.
* Therefore, I decided you could scout once per day. We'll get back to this.

So! The group goes exploring. Find gnome village. Might have made this a long social session if it was a full campaign. As it's shorts from Doomsday Dawn, the village was Terse but fun. They got the Roc quest and went to do it.

First combat, Rocs. I quickly realized that the Roc's tactics would be 90% throwing PCs off a mountain. I needed to know heights of the combat area, and didn't find them. Thankfully, the PCs either took the Rocs out before they got over the edge, or had Fly put on the captured guys. It was a solid, enjoyable fight where the PCs got to use lots of cool things. Even got to use 'enemy falls on you' rules.

Checked the other north river-end. Told them it was the dud Research Point. Sigh and move on.

Return to Gnomes. 2 of 4 required Ally Points, and a Treasure Point. Yay!

They went to investigate the Cyclops story. Found it on their secondhex guess. Good hex guessing would be a reccuring story.

They got hints from the scene about a dragon. Ensues much 'nope, dragons scary, not fighting that'. Talked to Cyclops. I played them as written. Tough DC Diplomacy, or they're standoffish and unhelpful. PCs failed the roll and were annoyed that it felt like such a social brick wall, especially when they didn't want to fight a dragon. PCs: 'It's only Doomsday Dawn, let's try being murderhobos?'. Ensure Cyclops fight.

LOTS of Cylops. And a cat. Fight was... actually fun. Cyclops have two cool abiltiies the PCs commented on, wishing they got more things that cool. Overall challenge felt about right. The cat sadly never landed an attack to use its stuff, but them's the dice. Multiple nat-20s towards the end put two PCs down, but they got healed. Treasure Point, yay!

Go poke north. Find a Dryad in two hexes of exploring. Brief talk. 2 Ally Points. Neat! They had everything they cared about, and went upriver. 1 Exploration later, enemy base. Neat! They sent the fastest (45 base speed) PC back to camp to buy a +3 Greatsword and send in the goons. From them leaving to the goons ariving would be 11 days, from around day 30.

So, the remaining PCs each scouted once per day. I think they had 6 research points by day 4 due to a couple nat-20s, so I told them that was the max that mattered. I rolled the rest anyway, and they ended up with around 16. There was no failure penalty for this check so research was broken: either by points being too sparse, if this was a once-only check, or too plentiful if it could be repeated. Maybe a group that had less spare time would have issue reaching max points this way and find the system works.

Final fight! Allies skip the troll and half the main battle for them. They pre-buff and fight. It's a solidly enjoyable fight. Cultists melee surprised me by being so weak (I'd expected all PF2 things to have level-appropriate damage), but I actually liked that because it showed more variety in enemies and they had a really solid spell selection.

I felt the lack of tactics/morale/etc help text a lot here. 3 casters with bulky lists is a lot to suddenly be running.

PCs won. For a max ally/research point fight, it felt correct: Not trivial, but solidly in their favour. They earned that.

Plot concluded. Players felt it very strange how it wrapped up: No real loot for these reccuring PCs (but PCs that wouldn't be reccuring got loot in part 2), and a bunch of cool research notes but no checks for bonus lore/loot for the nerd-character with the occultism and cultist lore checks.

Oh, then they fought the dragon. We fully healed them and threw it in the Moonmere map, because I felt they overestimated it and we had spare time. It took half its HP in one turn from Phantasmal Killer and Cone of Cold. It was overall a fairly easy fight. The dragon really felt a lack of utility options, just being a damage machine. The real fight with an added giant would have been much harder, but I think the PCs would have handled it. Player's agreed that dragons were tough but not the ultra-death machines they feared.

Overall, we found part 1 to suffer from inflated monster numbers (we know *why*, but it left a bad level 1 experience all the same) and a weak plot. Part 2 gave too much time and was a bit bland due to lack of Night Heralds. Part 3 was way too easy with a 3-cleric lineup. Part 4 finally felt good overall. That gives a lot of hope for Pathfinder.

We felt a big part of this was that being fully refreshed every combat was a far, far better experience than the other sections. We felt the worst situation for PF2 is a dungeon, where you find youself having to rest, going against the narrative. Appropriately-balanced gauntlets where you have no chance to rest can work (part 3 was a bit on the easy side, but that was probably in large part due to 3 clerics having so much healing), and situations where the plot has you naturally rest between each combat are probably the best experiences with PF2 (this segment). Better out of combat healing or other resource-recovery mechanics seem like the way forward to bring that fully refreshed combat into more narrative situations.

Good:
* Treasure points
* Hex Exploration
* Monster abilities
* Explosive combats felt good

Meh:
* Ally points
* The plot

Bad:
* Research points
* The ranger class (he did 'okay', but the class felt utterly uninteresting and slightly weaker than everyone else).

Is a really unhelpful thing to say!

I appreciate that fully developing systems is time consuming and difficult. I appreciate you want some content for the final book to re-draw old eyes. I appreciate that distributing updates in easily digestable ways is a logistical puzzle.

But I get the impression that many things the devs want to change (standout thing: Resonance) might not see change during the actual playtest period.

Like it or not, people are already forming opinions on PF2. If too many changes are pushed back to the release book, I feel a lot of people will have lost interest by then and not checked it out, and those who really loved the playtest and stuck with it will suddenly have the game changed quite a bit, and some of those might also leave.

I think it will be important, logistically, that the playtest updates include enough of the internal changes that the transition to 'release PF2' is smooth, that most changes get the community eye, and that it feels like a natural progression for the community.

Jason has posted a video to youtube, here.

I'll put my comments in another post, and let this one be a pure reference.

Group trashed this module in one session. Here's the super quick recap:

Made it to the hall. Prof said to let him finish his study. They said okay, and set up a campfire outside the hall until he was done. No investigation happened, because the players were not nosy buggers.

The waves happened. The players all stood in the main lobby, made a few barricades. They killed things as they arrived. Nothing was really threatening, because they had three clerics and a druid, and the new death rules.

The shadow fight had one cleric go unconscious three times, as he was flanked by the shadows. Because there's no coup de grace option, and hitting a downed character doesn't increase their dying, so they ping-ponged up every time before making a death save. It was hilarious how ineffective damage is against clerics.

The final boss was a little tougher, due to his AC. His spells all fell flat, but his poison was pretty neat. He just got surrounded and beat up in the end.

The players were extremely dissappointed by the plot. They found it ridiculous that the cure for the professor's problem showed up ten minutes after they arrived. They scoffed at the fact that the few items called out for them to find were garlic and silver weapons. It made no sense how spaced out the waves were if the attackers wanted to actually succeed. They agreed that the professor's reluctance to explain the issues facing him, to members of the Order of the Palatine Eye specifically here to help him, was absurd and playing him as written had him come across as stupid, and two of the students had no real detail to play. They were baffled that characters were basically expected to snoop around a stranger's house, a respected professor. They said it felt like a video game where you loot random villager's rooms.

This is going to be horrible to run as written.

At the moment, hitting 0 HP doesn't mean much. You're very likely to be brought back into the fight, via hero point, saving throw, or healing.

Smart enemies with enough invested in the fight to be willing to kill, which is most enemies, will therefore start attacking unconscious characters to prevent this. I feel that a system that lets people get up so easily is actually going to massively increase lethality against sensibly-played opponents. I like my PCs to survive long enough to have stories build up, and having 0 HP be a death sentence feels bad.

Can we please not have a system that dictates sensible enemies focus on grinding PCs out of existence? Make it slow to get back up naturally, and healing to require a bit more effort to get you also conscious.

I scribbled up a much simpler version of dying that fixes this in my eyes here. They might be oversimple, but I feel more comfortable running these than the actual playtest rules.

I love homebrewing, and figuring out what makes interesting, balanced custom monsters and encounters for 2E is my favourite way to explore the new system, finding things that seem wrong or work really well. I've made around 60 so far, and want to start sharing them to make some discussion on monster design.

Creature of the Day #1: Wubbleshell

The Wubbleshell is my design of a level 0 creature. It's an elemental animal, frequently found in southern Alay, and throughout Maab. Their claws are prized as a culinary delicacy. In combat, they are generally weak, but can effectively steal items and hamper characters, making them potentially potent ads during tougher combats.

I ran 4 of them in the second combat for my home game. It went great. They provided a good chance for characters to show off a range of their basic competencies, without being overly threatening. +4 to-hit was plenty considering they had three attacks a turn and were meant to be the least threatening tier of creature.

One character wanted to focus on Ray of Frost, which had minimal effectiveness and was kind of a bummer for him, but it still did something and that's probably okay.

After running Doomsday Dawn, I feel the level 0 creatures there were overtuned for 'the weakest tier of enemy statted', and perhaps we need a 'level -1' or 'level -2' tier if they want to keep level 0 creatures at that point.

What else would you like to see in stat blocks? Class DC? Ecology notes? How do you feel about 2E's level 0 design?

So, I run 8 games, play in another 2. I'm a huge Pathfinder fan. I mostly homebrew, although my longest campaign is a Kingmaker one with lots of fun Golarion-bits added in. My group is also mostly experienced players. When we come to start the playtest, the atmosphere is hestiant optimism. Most of us have bugbears with one thing or another in the current system, but can also see good things and have fingers crossed that significant updates to the game will make this a system we'll migrate to.

The party was a dual weilding Ranger, a Cleric, some caster (I think a sorcerer?) and... I think another caster? The game was 2 weeks ago today. I think it speaks poorly that the last two characters stood out so little I can't identify their class. I'm pretty sure they were spamming cantrips and occasional sling attacks all session.

I cannot remember anyone's ancestry, as they felt unimpactful and didn't affect the game, except that one was a goblin, which felt discordant and made the game worse.

Opening in the sewers, the slime won initiative. It knocked ProbablyCaster1 down with its wave ability, moved, and crit them, reducing them to 0 HP before anyone could act. The combat dragged on for three rounds. The PCs were annoyed that it had a better attack mod than them, crazy hp, couldn't be crit, and was immune to daze, making the fight feel very slow and grindy. ProbablyCaster1 got healed, and they continued.

The goblin fight was next. This was the only part of the module any player enjoyed. I played the goblins as extremely stupid and not optimal in combat, practically tripping over themselves. I think if I played them smart, abusing darkness and range, I could have TPK'd the party here.

But dumb goblins were fun targets, and we moved on. They examined the side rooms and... centipedes. 18 attacks per round plus all that poison knocked two PCs unconcious, one still in the room. The PCs had to run, and the PC left there (unlucky ProbablyCaster1) was eaten alive. He was immediately replaced by his twin brother as the PCs went to town to rest.

At this point, I felt Drakus would learn the goblins had been attacked, and relocate or reinforce the Ossuary, or at least make sure he fights with the remaining goblins in a future fight. This would obviously TPK or outright end the adventure. I feel that out of combat healing needs to be far, far better, as an adventuring day this short seemed absurd and destroyed any verisimilitude. I opted for running the module as written, which seemed to imply PCs could go back to town and Drakus acted like an idiot, not changing things inside the Ossuary.

So, fountain and quasit fight.

What the actual devils is this quasit statblock.

I realized that my party's damage-in-a-round was on the low end, and they could do very little to stop quasits that used invisibility and healing to their fullest extent. If these had been used at their most optimal and cautious level, I feel the PCs could never slay the quasits, and the adventure would have to stop here. I removed the invisibility for the sake of continuing play. The quasits were still very dangerous, and that's when one was spending an action each turn to concentrate on its shapeshift (this apparently doesn't require actions to maintain). Players wondered why the hell level 1 creatures had flight, poison, infinite self heal, crazy attack mods, and 27 hp. I could not explain this, let alone the at will invisibility.

I have since read about parties preparing to grab them when they come out of invisibility. This would help a lot, and might make them go from near-certain adventure-end when played optimally, to just the most annoying encounter I could design that requires a very specific mechanic to be pulled out. It would be nice if there was text to remind the GM that players could do this, to pass onto players if things seem impossible.

Then there were the doors. Failed perception checks led to the noise trap going off. Then, the group went to check out the 'main goblin room' that was now prepared for them.

Long fight, PCs yo-yoing up and down between 0 and 1 hp using everyone's hero point and a lot of lucky death saves. Felt pretty silly, and made me think I should have enemies mudering unconcious characters if they get up this frequently, which would lead to way more character deaths. This fight wasn't *bad*, so I'll call it a win.

They found the back way up to Drakus, but made enough noise he came to fight them near his bedroom and chests. This was before the rat-errata, so the rat was with him as his pet. Lots of crits from his +10-+12 attack, and this was without using his grab (which I probably should have done). Fight was salvaged by the ranger waking up from 0hp mid-combat and getting a lucky double slice crit from prone. Otherwise would have been a TPK.

Then I wrapped up the section, explaining that they find the book and have to show it to the questgiver to progress Doomsday Dawn. Every player simultainously laughed and derrided the writing for putting the important secret cultist plot item directly next to the unrelated quest objective and then assuming their characters do something specific with it.

That was part 1. Overall impressions:
* 3-Action system is good
* A lot of the other minutia of the system, like combat manuvers, seem pretty good
* Cantrips are quite usable, compared to 1E
* New flanking/prone/grapple/etc all felt solid
* Playing goblins like negative IQ cannon fodder never gets old
* Low level enemy stats are borked, leading to too many crits. 'should be usable as minions at slightly higher levels' is all well and good, but just have a -2 saves/ac, +2 to-hit template rather than make low levels terrible to play?
* Quasits are terrible to exist
* What was the centipede encounter even
* And why the ooze
* Adventuring day length felt terrible
* The writing felt terrible
* Goblin PCs felt terrible
* Yo-yo death system will lead to monsters finishing unconcious players uncomfortably often
* Ancestries in general felt not-there

It was, really, a horribly negative first impression. We're finishing part 2 tonight. It seems... not quite as bad? But without many good points either.

On the other hand, the not-doomsday-dawn 2E homebrew game I'm running is going fantastically. So far the players have gone around a carnival enjoying rides, games, a haunted house, and a local arena, and much more, and are having an absoloute blast with the system and homebrew monsters to fight. It definitely seems more problems stem from Doomsday Dawn and monster design than 2E's core.

I'm using a quite 'drastic' houserule. I would like discussion on how it would fit into official 2E:

'Hit point damage represents fatigue and shallow wounds. By resting for 30 minutes, your hit points restore to their maximum. A character trained in medicine with a healer's kit reduces this to 20 minutes. An expert to 15. A master to 10, and a legendary character to 5.'

The reasoning is: Out of combat healing has never been engaging. Throughout PF1, healing out of combat has been a small gold expenditure, and busywork tracking charges. The problem wasn't characters having full HP every encounter. It was the busywork. The gold expenditure didn't matter for most of the campaign. This rule lets PF2 play like PF1 did (full HP in most combats) without punishing healers by eating all their spell slots, slaughtering verisimilitude by running back to town constantly, or wasting our time with PF1 style wands.

A maximum number of times this can happen via a maximum 'rest time', which would result in higher medicine giving you a greater number of 'fatigue resets' might be appropriate.

For magical healers. It moves their healing ability to shine in combat instead of out, and lets them focus on other aspects of their character. It also means that if a party's only healer dies/leaves, it is not almost required that a new character be a healer, which can be a terrible experience.

I noticed that Air Walk didn't have the Air trait. Post any other Spell Descriptors that you think should be there.

Air Walk: Air
Stoneskin: Earth

That's my initial reaction.

I love the modularity of feats.

I love the rarity system.

I love degrees of success.

I love the idea of legendary prowess with skills, armor, and weapons, breaking what is normally possible.

The systems are fantastic.

But then I read the book. The feats do not excite me. The class features do not excite me. The spells do not excite me. The racial options horrifically dissapoint me. The skill feats baffle me in their mediocrity.

Which overall is... a good start? If it were released, it could be patched up with future classes, feats, content, races, and be an amazing system. Even better, the existing ones can be fixed by release since it's only a playtest.

I'm optimistic. I just hope Paizo is willing to make some sweeping changes to that content to bring it up to 'exciting' rather than feeling things are too late and that they are only willing to make minor changes.

This is something I care about a lot, and I feel the official stance, as I understand it, is terrible.

I homebrew... most things in my games. I houserule several things in every campaign I've ever run. To me, one of the biggest values of a system is how well it adapts to homebrew and houserules. Does a system require my players know about my homebrew items and monsters ahead of time somehow? Then it's not supporting it as well. Do classes get so few features that I'm pressed for space to introduce a new class that is different but not overpowered? Then it's not supporting it as well.

But my understanding of the official stance is "Run everything as written and give feedback on that, otherwise it's not useful." Rubbish. To me, that feels like saying, "Intentionally do not have fun, then tell us you didn't have fun. That's more useful than using the content in the way you usually do, which involves homebrew, and telling us if the content is good/valuable to you in the way it's actually used."

Between races, spells, items, and monsters I've already got over 50 items of 2E homebrew content and am aiming to maintain a 2-items-per-day rate at the minimum. This is what Pathfinder is to me, 1E or 2E, and how the system supports that matters.

Additionally, houserules like 'start with 2 Ancestry Feats' should not be discouraged. If everyone plays with 1 Ancestry Feat and rates their Ancestry-Feat experience a 6-out-of-10, it might seem right to give 2, but if those of us testing with 2 find it overloading and rate it a 4-out-of-10, we can avoid the playtest changing 2E for the worst.

Of course, this all comes with one huge Caveat: All playtest posts need to say what was actually happening. What houserules were in play, what homebrew was in play, what the GM's style was, how closely to the module things were run, if encumbrance was used, were rations tracked, how often players had to roll vs doing things free-form RP for a while, etc. Anything that you're giving feedback on, give context for.

I don't know if I've ever seen someone actually run a d20 system fully as-written, even if they tried to. There's too many rules for that, you miss bits. Asking us to do this isn't asking us to playtest the product, it's asking us to playtest some theoretical product we don't actually care about. And I want to make 2E the best it can be. The actual 2E. Not the theoretical 2E no one actually plays.

Hi, I'm deep into homebrewing 2E and loving it already, but a few times I've realized that it'd help to include other first party things in my homebrew pages. Is 2E going to come with the exact same rehosting/republishing rules as 1E?

Which to my understanding, are that for-profit sites can host content 'with the Golarion stripped out' and not-for-profit can host... most things? But I think not adventures? But can publish the player options and monsters from adventures? I'm really not clear on the details here and would appreciate any detailed breakdown of what's okay.

Thank you!

Relevant parts of the spell:

Effect one invisible, mindless, shapeless servant

An unseen servant is an invisible, mindless, shapeless force that performs simple tasks at your command. It can't perform any task that requires a skill check with a DC higher than 10 or that requires a check using a skill that can't be used untrained. This servant cannot fly, climb, or even swim (though it can walk on water). Its base speed is 15 feet.

The servant's size is never mentioned, only described as shapeless and cannot fly/climb, so:

* Can a servant reach something on a high shelf? (aka, can it act as if reasonably tall?)

* Can a servant reach an item at the top of a straight vertical cliff? (can it act as if extremely tall?)

* Can the servant fit through a cat-door? (can it act as if reasonably small?)

* Can the servant fit through a small water-pipe? (can it act as if extremely small?)

* Can it fit through a door for a tiny-sized creature at shoulder-level for a medium sized creature? (acting as if reasonably small, at a place that requires reasonably height to reach?)

* Can a group of unseen servant's block someone's movement? They seem to be corporeal, and can trigger some pressure plates, so I don't see why a group of them couldn't push back against oncoming adventurers, while being invisible and immune to attacks.

* If someone can see invisibility, can they see the servant at all? It's said to be shapeless.

* If it's truly shapeless/disembodied, what does 'cannot fly' mean? 'can only affect things within X distance of the ground'? what's X?

* They cannot climb. How steep of a slope stops them?

Preface:
I've been preparing a campaign & its setting for the past couple months and am now getting into the houserules that make the mechanics fit the setting. I'm pretty set on characters starting and ending the campaign at level 8: Higher fantasy does not fit the setting, there are many interesting abilities at level 7 & 8 for players to enjoy, and 'leveling up' just doesn't fit the story. It seems there would definitely be less work culling back problem-abilities at level 8 than making ways to access fun level 8 abilities while at level 6.
-

Problem:
While most of what is available at level 7-8 seems fine for the setting, I worry that the following spells might have too powerful out-of-combat implications and should be removed or downgraded in some way:

* Reincarnate
* Scrying
* Dispel Magic

And these to a lesser extent:

* Dimension Door
* Lesser Planar Ally

Questions:
Am I being too harsh on these spells? How would other GMs consider handling them if they are out of line? Are there any other spells or class/archtype abilities that I should be considering for their out-of-combat implications at level 7 & 8?

I'm currently working on a campaign where high level powers are not fitting. I've decided on capping levels and 6/8 seems to be the consensus for a fair stopping point. I've GM'd up until these levels already in a different campaign, but would be interested if anyone can give me some advice on how to make the best experience for my players under this rule variant.

Relevant information:

* The campaign is fairly slow paced (IC) and will have significant downtime, although magic item creation is entirely off-limits (as it is to NPCs with few exceptions).

* 'treadmill items' such as cloaks of resistance, headbands/belts of +stat, and rings/amulets of +armor do not exist. As the vast majority of the opponents faced will be class-level NPCs under the same restrictions, I doubt this will be game-breaking.

* There will be significant political/diplomatic overtones, the campaign is set during a rebellion, so should also have enough combat to prevent combat-centric builds becoming entirely irrelevant.

So, just got done GMing a playtest game.

Character creation rules were:

Level 3, 20 point buy, 3000gp, 2 traits, no drawbacks, 1 hero point, new classes only, core & featured races of 15 RP or less.

Right off the bat, people seems happy with their characters, it's something new. New is nice.

We'll be playing tomorrow at level 4, seems like same characters except the Warpriest who is likely to re-roll.

1) Whirlwind affects "Creatures one or more size categories smaller than the whirlwind" - how is this size determined, by the base creature's size unless otherwise specified? (A small air elemental's whirlwind is 20' high, 5' wide at the base, and 10' high at the top.

2) When a creature transforms into a whirlwind, what actions can they take? Can a creature in a whirlwind make an attack action? Can they cast spells? If they cannot take most standard actions, do they get a single move action each turn? Can they take a full-round action to 'Run' or even a double-move action?

3) "An affected creature must succeed on a Reflex save when it comes into contact with the whirlwind... " what defines this? Does making a natural attack against the whirlwind trigger this Reflex save? If, in 2), you said the creature can make attacks in whirlwind form, do these attacks trigger the Reflex save? If a creature in whirlwind form spends a full round occupying the same space as a creature smaller than it, is this enough contact to trigger a Reflex save? Can a creature with a fly speed of 100ft (as an Air Elemental) opt to make a move action repeatedly moving through a creature's space to force repeated reflex saves?

4) "Creatures trapped in the whirlwind cannot move except to go where the whirlwind carries them or to escape the whirlwind." Are all creatures caught in a whirlwind assumed to stay with it as it moves? Is a creature caught in a whirlwind considered to occupy a particular space? If not, when the whirlwind ends, what decides which possible space each creature ends up in? What factors might affect this?

5) A creature who is caught is now "automatically taking the indicated damage each round." When is this damage applied? Does it cause a concentration check? Can the creature opt to hold this damage until a spell is cast and cause a concentration check?

6) "If the whirlwind's base touches the ground, it creates a swirling cloud of debris." Is this a supernatural property of the whirlwind which happens regardless of what ground it touches (including a magic floor it is not strong enough to drag debris from), or a mundane effect caused by supernatural winds that is subject to environmental factors?

7) After the reflex save to avoid damage of the initial contact, a creature "must also succeed on a second Reflex save or be picked up bodily and held suspended in the powerful winds." Do you only need to make this save if the previous save failed? It seems the intent, but the sentence is not preceded with "if the first reflex save failed."

8) If a spellcaster attempts to cast a spell while caught by a whirlwind which is touching the ground, does it need to succeed at two concentration checks?

9) Can a whirlwind be attacked? Are their any restrictions on this, such as differing rules for ranged, melee, single target spells and area-of-effect spells?

10) Can creatures inside a whirlwind be attacked? If so, what space do they occupy? Are their penalties to attacking them? Can the whirlwind-form creature affect these positions? What type of action would this be, free? If it can, could a creature summon an air elemental, have it transform into a whirlwind, intentionally fail a reflex save, and have the air elemental move it around to avoid most forms of hard?

11) When a whirlwind ends, what space does the creature causing it take, any of the spaces in three-dimensions that the whirlwind was affecting? The base?

12) What penalties, if any, are there for attacking from inside a whirlwind? Can a whirlwind affect this, such as allowing a caught creature to easily fire out, or to move a creature attempting to fire out into a less useful position?

13) Can a whirlwind be flanked if the whirlwind-form creature is not immune to flanking?

14) Does a whirlwind provide cover to creatures behind it? Does a whirlwind provide cover to creatures inside of it? Does a whirlwind provide cover from creatures inside it? Can it affect any of these?

Some of these might be obvious to some people or stated clearly and I did not read the relevant passage correctly, but I am sure at least some of these could do with being addressed and searches have provided a few opinions on one or two of them at best.