MER-c's page

Hobgoblins, looks fun.

I like the change because it feels a lot more believable than the innkeeper rolling about with several hundred gold on them, or a bladesmith making a pittance for what are honestly fairly intensive and involved products to make.

Yes, wizards got the Nerf greataxe, they seriously earned it and I'm glad that I don't have to worry about the party wizard replacing the rest of the party.

I got my books yesterday. I was up way too late just screaming in triumph as all that playtesting finally paid off. I feel like a lot of our suggested improvements went into the book. I'm certainly going to have a ball building characters and converting my favorite Playtest character Hama over. Also anyone else feel like a little of them is in this book? Or is that just Playtest fatigue?

All I can say is. LET THE PATHFINDING BEGIN ANEW!! FORWARD ADVENTURERS TO GOLD AND GLORY!!!

A perfectly normal high medieval village complete with NPC's, a blacksmith, and farmers.

My group has tried Kingmaker for 1E, we pretty much dropped it due to lack of interest in 1E's rules and because our Ranger kept killing everything he intended to spare to interrogate (really unlucky damage rolls). So having 2e adaptations and expansions for Kingmaker is fantastic for us because all of us are excited for 2e.

Anguish wrote:

My take-home was "you still don't need to bother expecting information until April." Which produces the opposite of excited in my grey matter. So... right... keep paying attention to everything else, roger roger.

I mean, April 4th is 35 days away, which isn't that far away.

Hopefully that 5 weeks will be enough for me to figure out what twitch is and how to use it (you need Amazon Prime, right?).

No, you don’t even need to log in really,

PF2 actually brings a lot of its features over from Starfinder, so while you probably don’t need to convert everything to the soft capped math of PF2, it’s not a big leap between the two systems. Certainly the action system can be ported over just fine. Which accounts for a good chunk of what makes PF2 unique.

I suggest you look at Starfinder for that anyway, it has rules to convert classes over and your party can exist and even heal without magic. Starfinder is much kinder to low fantasy than Pathfinder of either edition.

I’d like to see a stealth power, as a callback to the 2e Ranger’s ability to use a set of rogue skills to hide in shadows.
Maybe something that gives them the ability to blend in almost anywhere.

Heads up to chrome, safari and edge users. Paizo’s SSL cert seems to have expired and those browsers will try to direct you away from sites without a valid cert.

It’s a reactive setup in which events are triggered solely by player actions rather than predetermined by the developers. It’s cleanest implantation would be the proposed “Node” system designed for EverQuest Next and now being developed by intrepid studios for Ashes of Creation. The Node system breaks the geography into cells or nodes that collect experience along with the players and develop as the players interact with it. Eventually growing in size and triggering hidden events. In theory it’s 100% player responsive and requires little or no NPCs to exist.

I feel like the four essences didn't have as much of an impact partly because the Arcane spell list demands to dip its toes into so many arenas. Does anyone remember if anything was said about curtailing that, making Arcane its own identity and allowing the other essences to outright take spells more thematic to them, even if previous editions had those spells as Wizard spells?

Not sure, but I recall that Arcane was referred to as a greedy tradition becasue they kept adding spells to it due to it's ambiguous flavor. Which I agree it needs to be defined more clearly like the other three are.

I think the witchwarper would make a great Dr. Who. They both have a pseudo-science explanation for everything.

As long as said Doctor does all his witchwarping from inside a telephone booth then I don't see why not, though we might have a hard time explaining Regeneration.

Here I thought that there would be people rallying to change weapon inconsistencies that existed throughout editions, like Falchions and Kriegsmessers.

Only the most serious of petitions today it seems:p

Just waiting for the gigasword and the terasword.

Wrong forum friend, these are the salt minres known as the Playtest forum. On that note that character design would be a wizard multiclassed with Fighter and as a human taking the ancestry feat to multiclass without meeting the prerequisites for selecting a second dedication feat.

Carry on.

I wish I had more marshmallows, I could make s’mores off the impending flame war/ hate fest about yo happen. Anyway, I like the system and will be looking forward to August.

Carry on.

gwynfrid wrote:

John Lynch 106 wrote:

gwynfrid wrote:

A well-run game doesn't need to break immersion, as PF2 gives the GM all the tools to prevent it.

Whether Paizo wanted it or not, the playtest provided a sample as to how PF2 could work if implemented with the rules that were present in the playtest.

Doomsday Dawn was a test, as Edge93 reminded us. Using this as a predictor of how PF2 adventures will be designed requires assuming that Paizo will ignore their own stated intent. I think we can safely dismiss that hypothesis.

If Doomsday Dawn was a test, one thing it objectively failed at was demonstrating that AP writers could readily come up with justifications as to why a certain skill usage required a particular level-appropriate DC.

It wasn’t trying to, nor should we use it as such. It was for mechanics testing above all else, story was secondary to the testing process.

MER-c wrote:

I disagree, a lot of human learning is simply observing, training involves both observing and then attempting, to the point where you become competent. Since any critically thinking human can glean useful information from observing and experiencing then I see no reason why any PC is not able to at least imitate trained people after years of observing trained people. Thus I prefer adding levels to untrained checks because experience counts for something granted I do it at -4 or if that’s still not a large enough gap -5.

My point was not to say that you can't learn from observation. The point isn't a matter of observation; it's a matter of a person putting in an effort to not only learn something but retain what they have learned.

It doesn't matter if someone gives me thorough instructions how to do something if for the next five years I never use that training and forget about it. With the automatically scaling abilities regardless of what your character does or the effort they put into something they will be getting better at it.

I would rather provide the player a choice of what they're progressing in than just doing it for them automatically because "reasons". A tabletop system is never going to accurately represent real world situations, but that doesn't excuse a mechanic that comes off as not only counterintuitive but serves to diminish the investments of other players.

This is besides the point that I believe +/level is wholly unnecessary to begin with, still I'd rather be terrible at things with a choice to not be than be seemingly adequate at things until I realize that number is really just fake (because even with my +20 relative to my level I may as well hope for a natural 20 anyways).

Well said, however I disagree on a few grounds. First, simplicity, it’s much easier to tell a player you always add your level and a bonus or penalty based on how proficient you are at the subject than it is to explain to them you have a list of 20 some odd skills. You don’t get a bonus outside of a stat unless you invest a point that you get every level but you only get a small amount, unless you’re a rogue, and you can never invest more points in one skill than your level. Second, playability, it’s just plain faster to calculate PF2’s skills. They have less variables to work with and show all of them. With PF1 you have to take extra time to lookup and check your math because there is no consistency to begin with. Heaven forbid you have a player with an outdated sheet as well due to loss, I’ve had that happen both in PF1 and 2, we had a much easier time getting a PF2 character back from an outdated backup sheet.

Now obviously your miles will vary, as wha people enjoy is subjective, and in our case it looks as though we fundamentally disagree as to what is enjoyable, you preferring(based on only what I can gather from your posts mind you) a complex and difficult system that uses numbers to enforce narrative (PF1), and I preferring a simple uniform system that enforces narrative with non numerical elements and numerical elements working in conjunction) PF2 and to an extent Starfinder) in this split I see little chance of compromise from our end so I bid you good day and wish you the best of luck and the most fun possible at your table.

MER-c wrote:

I disagree, a lot of human learning is simply observing, training involves both observing and then attempting, to the point where you become competent. Since any critically thinking human can glean useful information from observing and experiencing then I see no reason why any PC is not able to at least imitate trained people after years of observing trained people. Thus I prefer adding levels to untrained checks because experience counts for something granted I do it at -4 or if that’s still not a large enough gap -5.

Can you provide ONE example of a real person who got better at being stealthy simply by watching someone else be stealthy?

Can you provide ONE example of someone who got better at climbing simply by watching others climb?

And they have to be seriously meaningfully better.

I'd note the irony of how you try to make -4 (or even minus 5!!!!!) sound like this serious give, when you casually embrace +20 over 20 levels as no big deal. But the core statement is so divorced from reality (and you are the one claiming to invoke how things really work) that this really doesn't matter.

Well considering I’m not talking to you, no. Also because you wouldn’t be willing to furnish a valid, non contrived example to support your position so why should I be held to a standard you don’t even hold yourself to? Good day hun.

This has probably been said, but I figure I'll toss it in there. Much of the issues with training can be resolved by providing training feats towards things beyond just skills, such as "armor training" and "weapon training" with level gates that allow you to spend class/general/skill feats (whichever makes the most sense) to improve those despite your class not giving them to you automatically.

This way if you want to have a gishy wizard you can beyond multiclassing (at the cost of class features or some other benefit). This would also increase customization options.

I really don't see a problem that a 20th level monk who's never worn armor and has trained his whole life without it would have issue with putting something on as restricting as armor. Armor will limit your mobility in ways that someone not used to it would need to adapt to and thus justifies the +level being dropped entirely.

I also see the same as true for any kind of weapon beyond simple weapons. Martial and by extension Exotic/Rare weapons should always require devoted training to be competent with. It takes years of training to be good with swords, specialized polearms, bows and even axes. So yeah, a Wizard watching the Fighter hit things for 20 levels shouldn't magically make him better at swords any more than me watching HEMA duels would make me better at using a sword in an actual fight.

I disagree, a lot of human learning is simply observing, training involves both observing and then attempting, to the point where you become competent. Since any critically thinking human can glean useful information from observing and experiencing then I see no reason why any PC is not able to at least imitate trained people after years of observing trained people. Thus I prefer adding levels to untrained checks because experience counts for something granted I do it at -4 or if that’s still not a large enough gap -5.

I suspect Paizo will use the Starfinder release schedule for PF2, right now SF has about five major books, two of which amount to bestiaries, in the other three we have a maximum of eight classes, with three more being added later this year, each new core book has given extra class options or in the case of the one setting book a bunch of archetypes which any class can take. Armory added loads of new items which admittedly is very SF specific since it’s more gear centric.

kaisc006 wrote:

Actually PF2 encourages min max even more. Sure the spread will be smaller but there is more value to every +1 due to the +10/-10 crit system and penalty for extra attacks. Practically any option that gives a +x bonus will be superior to others.

Also, with critical misses activating monster effects you can bet people will be upset if you show up at the table with an unoptimized character. Before you’re character was just
mechanically bad but now you could hurt the party.

I don't agree with this at all. First of all show me the flat +x bonuses you can get in the playtest. Items and proficiency are basically the only way. They are moving away from feats that just give flat bonuses for good reason. Second of all there's a very small percentage of monsters in the bestiary that actually have effects that activate on a crit fail. Finally I guarantee you that the difference in optimization will not equal a +-10 unless it's a wizard attacking with a great sword that they are not trained with vs an optimized fighter.

Optimization will not be game breaking like it is in PF1. Everything points to the exact opposite.

Note that PF2 optimizations won’t actually be skewed towards character creation, rather towards your in game action economy,. Someone with system mastery will understand how to best use their limited actions to get an advantage while a more casual approach will either be neutral to slightly disadvantaged.

Time to re-live every game I ever played against Nids with my guardsmen. Can't wait to hunt some bugs. :)

D@rK-SePHiRoTH- wrote:

The fun lies in researching ways to make your own idea work.

Aww hell nah. I don't have the time to spend going through every book anymore. I do enough research for work, I don't want my hobby to be more of it. Just give me options I can choose with minimal consideration so I can play the dang game rather than paperwork.

Engineering mentality says, I want to be think less so let the system be simple and easy to use. To hell with dumpster diving through ten years worth of trap options and splat books.

I have been working on rebuilding my first SFS character as a Biohacker because of the ability to be a full combat medic. Since she was also a soldier in the Swarm Wars I imagine her scanner would be a handheld tool that attaches to an actual medkit, or integrated into the bracers of light armor.

For a moment I was going to argue whether massacring a hundred oni qualifies as changing government by a traditional means built into the Minkaian culture.

Then I thought about it for a moment and decided, yep, that checks out. :P

It also works for Orc government and a good deal of Brevway as well.

Outside of a few snide comments with playtesting over with I've moved toward setting the playtest rules up for more sustained use until the core material arrives. In the meantime that includes a personal fix for Sorcerer to make them totally unique.

MER-c wrote:

Going to a slower release doesn't mean they downsize. it just means products get more time to develop. Paizo will still need all of it's dev teams they will just have them developing their product for longer.

Unless they're selling a lot more of each release, that's likely not a viable business model. Cutting back on production almost certainly means downsizing.

I think you misread that pretty hard, I'm not saying they are cutting back production, as that is simply the number of books printed, which yes would lead to problems, I'm saying they might adopt the Starfinder release schedule which has fewer CORE releases per year with more small releases like Adventure Paths and SFS modules, which by far sell more than core books.

Going to a slower release doesn't mean they downsize. it just means products get more time to develop. Paizo will still need all of it's dev teams they will just have them developing their product for longer.

pjrogers wrote:

In a few years, PF2e with its likely large additional number of splatbooks, etc. will require a "M.A. in system mastery," similar to the current PF1e.

By your logic, 5E should have a metric ton of splatbooks, because 3E and 4E did so.

It doesn't. It has a grand total of 1,5 player-side splatbook after 4 years in print. It's so because companies are actually capable of changing their business models and revenue streams. The fact that Paizo has sold PF1 under the "zillion splatbooks" model does not preclude them from altering the model.

We'll see. My money is on Paizo drastically altering their PF2 publishing model into a pace that's faster than 5E but far slower than PF1.

I suspect we'll get the Starfinder model, we get tons of Adventure Paths, but core books are slow, only a few per year between alien Archives and a major core release like the recent Armory release and the upcoming Character Operations release next year.

It's sort of like the whole thing with cyber security. We still call the collection of skills we have Hacking, more or less, but the occupation is often Penetration Testing. The skills are no different than those used by attackers, just the application.

Rysky wrote:

Deadmanwalking wrote:

This is factually incorrect in PF2. Upholding the law is the lowest possible tenet of the Paladin Code. They cannot violate it casually or for fun, but the very second that 'saving an innocent from harm' (and freeing slaves is often precisely that) comes into conflict with 'obey the law' the Paladin is obligated by the Code's priority system to save the innocent, ignoring the law entirely.

Now, you can dislike that if you want (though I personally find the very idea of Paladins valuing Law over Good confusing and abhorrent), but please argue based on the actual rules for things like this.

^ All of this.

How does this actually work in a society of slavery? Is the Paladin obligated to free all the downtrodden slaves they come across, laws be damned? How would they have acted in the pre-Civil War American South? In ancient Egypt? Would they have been obliged to free all the Helots of Sparta? (I realize this is the right thing to do, for sure, but we're talking about breaking the law.)

I realize that this is sounds like it is shooting off on a tangent which is not directly related to the "Thievery" debate, but in truth, the scenario being described is theft of legal property. If the Paladin either directly (or through facilitation such as lockpicking) takes, removes or frees something that is legally recognized as the property of another, they are breaking the law and committing what would commonly be seen as "Thievery." Is it for the greater good? Probably, but that doesn't change the term. Though he redistributed wealth and often took things that had been unlawfully gained themselves, Robin Hood was still a thief.

If doing so is unreasonable or would constitute a significant threat to the Paladin's life or potential then they are not required to act, however they would oppose slavery in other, less direct, methods.

Having run a combat with a spring attacking assassin moving 70ft a round, I can say that static combats are very dependent on the creatures involved. My own halfling vigilante in Hell's Rebels has adopted a similar style, taking 10 for Stealth while spring attacking in and out of the fight so the enemy never sees him while picking them off. It works even better when our bard gets haste on him, much to the GMs chagrin.

Craziest I ever did was an unchained Monk, I got to about 150 Movement with the ability to not provoke AoO's and the ability to move her speed on a successful Reflex save. She managed to do a full circle and kick a mini boss into a cloudkill said miniboss had set up for her and the party.

Totally stealing this, my group is about three sessions into Kingmaker.

For all this discussion about wanting PF1.5 and saying that the 2E can't compete with D&D5e, I want to say that one of my players actually flat out told me that if they had to choose between PF1, 5E, and the current Playtest, they'd pick the Playtest without a doubt.

With all the complaints about things in the Playtest, it has already solved a ton of nagging issues my group had with PF1 and has been received fairly well. And rather than seeing blasts spells dominating, buffs/debuffs, save or suck, and terrain effects have had a great impact on battles so far.

After one, I repeat here, ONE, session I got my entire group of players to convert over to PF2, we’re actually considering putting the extra effort in to convert Kingmaker over to second edition, just based on the playtest so far, I can say that so far the Playtest has brought Pathfinder back to life in my area in a way no 1.5 revision ever could have.

I know I've given out my fair share of snipes over the last six months, but I'm glad we've all pulled through it. Happy Holidays everyone can't wait for next year's releases.

Davido1000 wrote:

Ronnam wrote:

The more I play Starfinder, the more I like the Stamina-Resolve system.

Same, it solves the 5 minute adventure day, makes healers less completely necessary and stops the need for CLW spams, i honestly have no idea why they arent using this in 2e.

Okay, so I've never played Starfinder so I don't actually know much about this system but is there something it does that Treat Wounds doesn't work for?

It acts as an easily accessible no check required method of not going into a fight at three HP, it does however rely on a resource that is scarce early and due to that can limit some concepts. I’ve tried a medic for example, they were a good fighter but had little reason to use their class features because they were low resolve, so mostly I just stuck people with healing stims and shot things. New COM classes might help with that though.

Gut reaction,
A lot of the loudest most toxic people here seem to have gotten what they want and now a great system is just PF1.5 with all of the problems it had before.

Reaction after some caffeine and examination,
The Proficiency change can be dealt with, still sucks.
Reducing the DC table is meh, resonance was an ok idea that didn’t jive with everyone so not surprised, and they didn’t kill +level to proficiency. It’s still PF2, but I’ll need to work on it.
Also flavor, I like flavor.

The issue I take with the "All(most all) concepts should be available at first level" mindset is that it feels like it's a very lazy way to do things, it basically means you don't really want to explore things like "Why did the wizard start using a greataxe?" so much as you just want the wizard with the greataxe. Who knows, maybe he was a normal wizard and he only used the greataxe as a desperate last stand to save his party when all his spells ran out and he never learned a damage cantrip. From there he just liked using the greataxe and got the Fighter or Barbarian to teach him how to use one. Or he used one he scavenged to chop down trees in the wilderness to keep himself warm when he got lost in the high alpine mountains and since that axe saved his life he's going to keep it and learn how to use it.

Stuff like that is what you rip out of the game if you can ship out a ready made concept at level one with all the bells, whistles and trimmings. I think that the idea that level one characters aren't particularly that awesome or are really not that far off from their non adventuring counterparts brings them a bit of a humanity that frankly a lot of PF2 characters I've seen in the past, have utterly lacked.

TL,DR; you do you, I think it's a bit lazy but I don't speak for the world so rock on buddy. :)

Monk wizard.

"I cast... FIST!"

*Proceeds to punch out a dragon with literal magic fists.

Nah, let 'em be negative in the other room.

I just had a new awesome thing happen :)

Level three Redeemer and her Cleric traveling buddy, we'd been in a fight for about three rounds. Our impulsive Gnome monk finally got it in his head that fighting two fire elemental at once was rapidly killing him faster than the two heal capable members could keep him up. He ended up running out of combat at 1 HP and came up with the idea to run out of the cave we were fighting in, into the blizzard outside and started filling a bucket with snow.

Meanwhile the two holy peoples were basically facing the two fire elemental alone while the rest of the party went and got snow and ice to throw at them.
One fire elemental decided it was going to throw a ton of attacks at the Cleric and my Redeemer, At the time I had an AC of 23 due to getting a shield up so it threw three attacks at me, crit failed two of them, then threw two attacks the the Cleric, hit one, I reacted, forced it to fail due to it trying to keep up the attack, resulting in a miss, then getting the Cleric just enough resistance to actually ignore the resulting damage when the last attack hit. So with one reaction, while on critical HP from face tanking a crit earlier for my party I got the HOLD THE LINE, and felt like a total boss for being able to do my job.

We then ended that encounter by throwing water at the fire elemental till they died. Both of them were Level 5 to our level three, so we were at APL + 3 there.

I felt even more awesome later on when I decided to try out some good ole diplomacy on a Young Black dragon, the DM laughed, I invoked the will of the dice gods, and rolled a 20 to convince a dragon of all things to sell us a big gem we needed to get some WIll'o'Wisps to firebomb some evil person who wanted to burn down a vilage. We got it for 200 gold, due to some shenanigans our other gnome had about 149 gold plus some from our last adventure, so every had the mental image of a six foot tall Paladin making a deal with a dragon, then shaking every loose coin out of our greedy as heck Gnome then throwing the backpack of gold into a crack in the wall she was talking through to pay off the dragon.

We then bough a Type 2 bag of holding for a chest of gold we found later on, from the same dragon, which we did after literally backhanding (the cleric and myself again) a ghost with positive damage.

Captain Morgan wrote:

I'm actually into the idea. I've pitched replacing "item bonuses" with "skill bonuses." A cumulative +1 you get every time you take a skill feat for a skill. But I guess there's no reason why proficiency and skill feats need to be separate at that point?

However, it does make skills no longer run on the same engine as most other things, which might not be the best.

I really like this idea, actually. It removes the potential issue of not having the item for your particular skill available and requiring particular skill items, and the idea that you get better at the overall skill as you refine your talents within that skill makes a lot of sense.

The only issue I can see is that not all skills have an equivalent number of feats, which is pretty easily dealt with just by making more of them.

One of the few times moar feats are in fact the answer. :)

Some ancestry feats even grant scaling ranks, Gnome's Obsessive for example gives out and extra Lore skill that goes up over time at the right levels. But yeah level gating skill increases via feats would be needed.

I'm actually into the idea. I've pitched replacing "item bonuses" with "skill bonuses." A cumulative +1 you get every time you take a skill feat for a skill. But I guess there's no reason why proficiency and skill feats need to be separate at that point?

However, it does make skills no longer run on the same engine as most other things, which might not be the best.

They still do it's just that proficiency only goes up with feats rather than with a floating resource that sorta makes sense, but only if you tilt your head and close both eyes.

We already have feats that increase proficiency rank when you take them.
(The three save feats) so why not tie that to skill feats?

When my Strength Monk almost soloed a second level encounter at level one. It was Skeletons that were modified for higher AC.

Turns out it doesn't matter if you have a lot of AC when Weakness 5 meets 1d6+4 resulting in the double one shots turn one then a third one shot on a bigger skeleton.

Flurry of Blows is a troll ability sometimes.

:)

At one point the group I play with, being a bunch of engineers decided to write the formula out for later use (Programming it ;P )
B = S (L+R) + C + I
Moving that out to:
B = S + L + R + C + I
would not change much, makes it simple to read though.