MCDexX's page

My main bit of feedback from running the first two scenarios is that some thought needs to go into the naming conventions around weapon and armour improvements. The existing terminology is confusing and ambiguous - talking my players through upgrading their gear from level 1 to level 5 was some Kafka-esque stuff.

My suggestions off the top of my head:
- Refer to the entire concept of improving weapons as "upgrading" but don't refer to any of the individual actions or items by that name.
- Refer to the quality level of a weapon or piece of armour (e.g. commercial, tactical, etc.) as its "grade". This translates neatly to compound terms like "commercial grade" and "advanced grade".
- Refer to slottable upgrade items such as sniper scopes, radiation buffers, etc. as "modules" or "upgrade modules".

If these terms are already reserved for other game concepts, I'm sure there are others that would work just as well.

Reading the playtest PDF, I noticed that the Operative's Overwhelming Strike ability (p89) can cause three different debuffs. Two of them are standard conditions but the third is "The target can’t Take Cover or benefit from cover." What would people think of replacing it with a new standard condition, perhaps called Exposed, which either steps down the target's level of cover or just negates it entirely. This then frees it up to be caused by other effects, such as sniping from elevation or damaging cover with a heavy weapon.

By default, I would suggest you get rid of Exposed by using the Take Cover action again or moving into a different piece of cover, though of course Overwhelming Strike would prevent you from getting rid of the condition until the end of the operative's next turn. Generally, this would be one of those conditions that applies to specific enemies, like how flanking makes you off-guard only to the folks flanking you. That way they can keep their current cover benefits against everyone except the one who made them Exposed.

Flavour-wise, I would describe it as something like "The cover you are relying on is ineffective at protecting you from incoming attacks. You gain no benefits from cover until you either use the Take Cover action again or move into a different piece of cover."

What do folks think? I should add that I have only been reading the PDF and haven't had a chance to play yet.

My first ever Paizo forum post! Yay!

Anyway, I'm reading the playtest rulebook and I think there's a repated copied-and-pasted error in several alchemist feats.

Smoke Bomb has it right: it says it is a reaction triggered when you make an alchemical bomb. Several others seem to have the same incorrect text pasted in repeatedly: Debilitating Bomb and Sticky Bomb both say they are triggered by creating an elixir rather than a bomb. The exploitative Bomb goes back to being triggered by the creation of an alchemical bomb. :)

The wording seems to have been copied and pasted from the triggering condition for Combine Elixirs.

Anyway, another couple of things for the inevitable errata. :D