Manarion's page

2) Whatever proficiency you have in simple weapons is also what you should have in unarmed, including the wizard. (Monk is obviously the exception as they are better in unarmed.)

With this change the Mutagenist Research field (pg 73) gives very little at level one. It currently gives:

1. Two 1st level mutagen formulas

2. Unarmed proficiency equal to simple weapon proficiency

3. Allows one to drink mutagens not brewed specifically for them

But mutagen specificity was removed, and now the unarmed proficiency is redundant. Hopefully something can be added in the errata so it is inline with the other research fields.

Manarion wrote:

Also we keep talking about gold restrictions based on individual character level. With no restrictions you also have to wonder about when the whole party piles their magic items on to one character.

This sounds interesting. Rather than throw a theoretical out there and wonder, how about putting together an example? For a party piling all magic items onto one character, the example I would think would need to show that doing so would give their party (not just an individual) an advantage versus using those items in a distributed manner across the party. I would think the action economy alone would make it a weaker option to put all of the items on one character since they can only use 3 actions worth of items at a time whereas a party of 5 could use 15.

Not every encounter is the whole party in combat vs a balanced group of foes, many times in my campaigns a party member has gone off on their own. Without restrictions I know my players would throw every item on a player who is separating from the group.

An example being, party has a week of downtime in a city to do whatever, craft, put some time into retraining, find leads on some quest. The party rogue wants to try to infiltrate somewhere during this time, my party would definitely put every single magic item on them. Which would undoubtedly make that character stronger than they would be had they not had all of the items on them.

Limiting items worn can also be about creating another layer of strategy, if you can always wear all your resistance items you have less incentive to research the damage type of the monster you are hunting.

At the beginning of the day you have to decide, what do I expect will be the most impactful? I personally enjoy that aspect, alongside choosing spells to prepare.

Also we keep talking about gold restrictions based on individual character level. With no restrictions you also have to wonder about when the whole party piles their magic items on to one character.

Man, I hate to say this but I'm not actually too thrilled about all this.

The no level to Untrained is really a bummer to me and seems like it could ruin the awesome nuanced system of how you are in a skill that skill gating provided. However this will probably be super-easy to houserule out if I don't like it in play so I can't be too upset. Hopefully most classes will at least get some more trained skills so we aren't back to PF1's your-superhuman-still-sucks-at-a-whole-lot-of-things.

I'm not a fan of doubling the proficiency bump either, again I would have much rather seen more non-number perks and abilities gained by advancing skills, that's way more exciting to me than any number hike. This one I expect will be harder to tweak if it doesn't play well to me as the DC tables will likely be balanced around that.

Between that and what sounds like only 1 DC per level of task it sounds like we might end up back a little too close to the PF1 levels of hard to challenge specialists. That said I expect 1 DC per level will be much easier to work with so that's cool.

But that variance between Trained and Legendary, let alone Untrained and Legendary, it just feels like we will be right back to "You can't challenge the specialist without leaving everyone else out". Again, I'd much rather have seen expansion on the more nuanced system we were teased with the Playtest rather than just bigger number difference.

Resonance, I mean I wasn't expecting too much different but I was of the unpopular opinion that Resonance was awesome and just needed a few tweaks to be excellent, certainly a huge improvement on item charges per day. But yeah, after all the complaints people had I figured we would end up with something flung far away. So sorry to hear it but no surprise. I'll look at what Paizo is doing for magic items before I decide if I need to try to work a form of Resonance back .

Edge has pretty much summed up my feelings on this. I don't want to feel penalised for going for legendary in a skill, with this change it seems becoming legendary requires you to pick three other skills you will never get to use.

Quick poll of folks reading this thread...

Which would you prefer...

1. A rage that lasted the whole fight but was not as powerful.
2. A rage that lasted a variable or shorter amount of time but was more powerful.
3. A rage that lasted as long as you wanted it, but was mostly all about dealing more damage and a bigger cost to accuracy or defense

Not scientific... just kinda curious of the pulse of the folks reading this...

I would prefer option 2. I feel a short lived burst suits rage better than a long lasting effect. However a lot of the barbarian abilities are rage based, not having access to then for long periods in combat may be an issue.

An item can be destroyed if it takes damage enough times.
An item reduces any damage dealt to it by its Hardness.
The Hardness of various materials is explained in the
Materials section on page 354. If an item takes damage
equal to or exceeding the item’s Hardness, the item takes
a Dent. -Pg 175.

The second sentence of this paragraph implies that the shield reduces the damage it takes by its hardness. Meaning if a hardness 5 shield takes a hit for 6 damage it reduces it to 1 damage and takes no dents because 1 < 5. Therefore a hardness 5 shield needs to be hit for 10 or more damage to take a dent.

It is confusing because there are two sets of rules at play if you use your reaction to block with a shield. One determines damage to the shield (rules under Item Damage pg 175) and one determines damage to the player (Rules for Shield Block pg 309).