MaxAstro's page

ALL CAPS IN POSTS TENDS TO MAKE YOU LOOK EXTREMELY SMART

Bah, kids these days.

In my day, caplock was cruise control for cool.

Of course, some people would forget that even with cruise control you still need to steer.

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Why yes I am only posting in this thread because I am a barely contained ball of excitement and this helps keep me sane, why do you ask? :P

This is amazing, thank you. :D

Deadmanwalking wrote:

The rules are very clear how to get most Uncommon options without GM permission, with really only spells and some items needing a GM's input at all...and are even more clear in the GMing advice section that Uncommon items a PC wants you should arrange a way for them to get.

@Deadmanwalking: Can you cite the advice that suggests a GM should give out uncommon items players want? I honestly didn't see it in my reading. Believe you, but would be good to know where that's written.

Sidebar on page 488. The relevant text is "By default, a character who tries hard enough might eventually find an uncommon option, whereas a rare option is always a special reward."

That can read a couple ways, I'll admit, and I might prefer it to be more strongly worded, but certainly the impression I get from that quote is that GMs should let characters who really want uncommon items find them.

Formatting feedback: for Table 2-11, please move the category names (Extreme, High, Moderate) to the left a bit so that they are in the middle of "DC" and "Spell Attack" for each category.

If you are glancing quickly at the table, it is very hard to tell if the fourth column is the High DC or Extreme DC.

Can I just say I love the "improvising a creature" sidebar? I've run encounters like that before (don't tell my players :P ) and it's great to see the technique get official recognition.

Well I don't bother with vision blocking layers in map tools anyway, so that's kind of a non-issue for me. I already manually reveal stuff.

So I take it you bought a pack for Age of Ashes with the encounters prebuilt? That sounds cool if I was running a PF2 AP, but I'm currently only running converted PF1 APs. I assume that's not a thing yet. So I'll maybe look into it if I ever run Age of Ashes myself.

Definitely having the AP prebuilt is a huge huge selling point of FG for me.

I'm not sure if I'd use it or Maptool for a more homebrew campaign... Honestly, for 2e, I might use FG anyway. Having it track things like bulk and treasure distribution for me (and for my players) is incredibly handy, as is being able to rules-reference without having to tab over to AoN. And the party sheet, again, is just huge. Being able to see the whole party's character sheets and how they stack up against each other is really nice.

EDIT to add: Fantasy Grounds does have prebuilt packs for most of the 1e APs. They would be in 1e, of course, and I'm not sure how much work it would be to convert, but they do exist. In theory you could load the pack in combination with the 2e core rules module.

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Had my second session yesterday and it went a LOT better. Handing Initiative back to the party and being more comfortable with Fantasy Grounds made a huge difference.

Happily, my players are starting to find parts of the system that they particularly love. The party's fighter, who only originally picked up a shield because why not, is now a huge fan of PF2 shields after it saved her from ~18 damage in one fight. And the bard's Inspire Courage was a huge hit with the party also, especially after one memorable turn from the fighter where it turned a hit into a crit AND a miss into a hit, resulting in taking out 3/4s of a fairly dangerous enemy's health in one go.

And much as I sung the praises of the monster design in theory, it's even better to see in practice. Different fights are actually feeling very different. I particularly enjoyed a fight involving creatures that have a shield block-like mechanic where they hide in their shell; the party was struggling to do any real damage until the rogue had the brilliant idea of readying attacks for when they came out of their shell to attack. Great example of creature design actually forcing the party to change up their tactics.

Speaking of readied actions, the monk player was ecstatic when she realized that, being a single action, you can ready flurry of blows.

All in all, a great session, and everyone is really positive on 2e so far.

Yeah, I guess I have been a bit slow on the forums lately. Just hasn't been as much to talk about since I've been prepping game but not running it. :)

As far as Fantasy Grounds, I'll be honest: The number one reason is that I am lazy. Prepping with Maptool takes a long time. I have to import the map, build the encounters, find artwork for the encounters, and only then do I get start making adjustments for my party.

Fantasy Grounds does all of the importing and encounter building for me and lets me get straight to the tweaking.

Plus, it is effectively a built-in SRD. I barely touched a rulebook all session because almost any rule I needed to look up could be referenced from Fantasy Grounds. Creatures have full stat blocks, you can click on traits to get descriptions of them, each skill lists the full rules for actions associated with that skill, etc.

Another thing I am a huge fan of is the party sheet. In one place I can see the entire party's skill bonuses, attributes, saves, etc. If I need to secretly roll a saving throw for the whole party, I type in the DC and click one button and it gives me a full list of who succeeded, failed, crit, etc.

The combat automation for monsters is awesome, too. Set which player the monster is targeting, choose an attack, and the program does all the math for you and says whether the monster hit, missed, etc. Roll damage and the player's HP is automatically adjusted.

The built-in condition tracking is also convenient, although it must be said kinda clunky. Great for quickly looking up what a condition does and decent for tracking duration, but struggles with "odd" conditions like diseases.

FG is also a godsend for tracking Bulk, in that it handles it completely automatically.

Fantasy Grounds has three major drawbacks compared to Maptool in my eyes, though.

Most obvious is that it isn't free. All of that prep work it does for you comes with a price tag - although if you are already buying products through Paizo, the prices are quite reasonable; usually about $10/book.

Second is vision. Fantasy Grounds only uses a basic masking layer for blocking player vision; there's no vision blocking layer and no line of sight calculations. You have to manually reveal areas of the map as players explore.

Third is the drawing tools. Not to put too fine a point on it, the FG tools for drawing on the map are so bad they might as well not exist. You can pencil in thin black lines and that's it; plus the drawing tool is laggy and at least for me didn't update reliably on client machines. I also missed the ruler function from MapTool; having to count distances square by square felt like a step backwards.

In the end I think the choice between MapTool and FG largely comes down to how much any of those is a deal breaker for you.

My first session of Age of Ashes was last Sunday. And it was...

A frustrating mess.

But! That was because I decided to switch to Fantasy Grounds instead of MapTool. A decision that I do not at all regret. I did, however, severely underestimate how unfamiliar with the new interface I was, which resulted in a lot of session time spent trying to figure out how to do something I thought I knew how to do but sadly didn't.

I also made the huge, huge mistake of letting Fantasy Grounds roll initiative for the party; this was again not a problem with Fantasy Grounds. Rather, it was a decision that reduced my player's feelings of agency in an unacceptable way, especially combined with secret rolls. My players like secret rolls and are fully supportive of the concept, but having dice taken away from them also on initiative proved a bridge too far.

So I definitely messed some things up.

Despite that, it was actually fantastic! Initiative aside, my players are greatly enjoying the new system and the AP. Everyone got a chance to shine; the party sorcerer really enjoyed being able to just destroy a creature that was vulnerable to cold with Ray of Frost, and the half-orc cleric quite liked using Orc Ferocity to walk through a raging fire and survive damage in excess of his max hit points.

Unlike some reports I have heard here on the forums, having to choose one exploration tactic didn't ruffle any feathers; instead the party leapt on the chance to decide who was best suited to handle what roles.

Due to aforementioned technical issues we didn't get as far into the AP as I might have liked, but I'm definitely looking forward to diving back in next week.

thejeff wrote:

With that line though, you've nailed it down so that you can never find anything but the highest level magic. :)

Without that line, you can't find anything at all ever, as with restricted mobility options (a room that's only 15 feet by 15 feet and a single corridor leading to it; an arrangement of chasms/immovable 'furniture'; etc) and items placed in certain ways means you can never pin any of them down.

Emphasis mine; hyperbole much?

You seem to be either not getting or ignoring the idea that this is an intentional design decision to make players rely more on mundane ways of finding treasure, rather than solving the problem with a single spell.

My players are not new to Golarion; they are all experience 1e players and have encountered charau-ka before. I imagine they will be excited to see the bastards again. So this isn't an issue for me.

But I can definitely see how it could be for groups that are new to the setting.

itaitai wrote:

Also, while we are on the skeleton subject, if i give my skeletons the explosive death, what is the DC for the basic reflex save? it isn't written anywhere.

It would be nice if the abilities indicated what stat they were based on like in pf1, and they might be somewhere that I can't find, but here's my guess based on comparing math on the dragons' breath weapons and what they say about proficiency in the bestiary:

a Creature's proficiency bonus is based on it's level, just like a PC, so a skeletal champion's proficiency modifier would be +4 for trained or +6 for expert, though I don't think you could be an expert in save DC's this early. A save against the explosion would be 14 or 16 + whatever ability modifier. I think constitution makes the most sense, but you could probably make the case for strength.

After all that, assuming Trained proficiency, The DC is PROBABLY 15 for a skeletal champion (17 for the adjusted stats of the skeletal hell knight) and 11 for a Skeletal Guard.

I would guess this is going about it backwards; instead, you should probably use the standard DC for the creature's level - adjusted up or down based on how nasty the creature is.

"Do a bunch of math to figure out what the bonus would be if the monster was a PC" is explicitly not how it works anymore.

But does PF2 have the same distribution as PF1?

Given that high level characters are less powerful than in PF1 an argument could be made that the numbers have shifted substantially. To pick numbers out of my posterior, a PF2 L20 is arguably about as powerful as a PF1 L12 or so. So maybe there are now as many L20s as there were L12's

I realize that "less powerful" argument primarily applies to spellcasters. But even non spell casters are relatively less powerful than the twinked out monstrosities that were possible in late PF1 with enough system mastery.

Note - Hopefully this won't move into an argument as to how much less powerful PF2 are than late optimized PF1. My point (which I think most would agree with) is that they ARE less powerful. The amount doesn't really matter all that much.

The problem with this argument is that power is relative. While a level 20 PF2 character may be weaker than a level 20 PF1 character, it's about the same strength as a level 20 PF2 monster.

The entire power scale changed, so the relative power of everything stayed about the same.

Heh... This reminds me of a thread I stumbled across in the dark ages of the internet where people spent multiple pages arguing about whether or not female protoss should be depicted with breasts... Now that was one of the dumbest arguments I think I've ever seen. At least with iruxi you could, as Possible Cabbage suggests, come up with an outlandish reason it might make sense.

Not so much for the protoss... (for those unfamiliar with Starcraft, protoss are an alien race that is entirely psychic; as such, they lack mouths)

@Skoll Drachen - You posted your request in the 2.0 homebrew forum so I assumed that was what you were looking for. Sorry to hear it isn't! You can find the Pathfinder 1.0 homebrew forum here: Homebrew and House Rules Perhaps someone there can help you?

@Excaliburproxy - I'm not sure what you mean. One of the effects of Brutal Rend is to make creatures flat-footed against your attacks if you have used your Bulwark against them recently and they are bleeding. All of the Drives at that level give you an ability that is more powerful against enemies that have recently triggered your Bulwark.

Regarding the DR of Bulwark... I think the biggest issue is that it needs to be a bit lower at low levels. If you compare it directly to shield block, it is better than shield block before level 10 and worse than shield block after level 10. It has a similar comparison to the champion's reaction - before level 7 it is stronger, and then after level 7 it is weaker.

I want to keep it being influenced by your armor, though. Perhaps instead of adding your armor's item bonus to AC, it should be a flat 2 for medium armor and 3 for heavy armor? That would bring it below shield block at all levels and below champion's reaction past level 4. It has the problem, though, that bulwark + shield block then blocks less damage than a straight shield block, which is very non-ideal.

Yet another thread reminding me that no two people can agree on what meta-gaming is...

My fungal leshy is going to be shaped like a gnoll. He will be a Fungnoll.

Trying to figure out how to pronounce this aloud is giving me a headache, I hope you are happy. :P

Hey... I'm pleasantly surprised to see the people saying we wouldn't get any Int flaw ancestries for optics reasons were wrong.

And if I'm not mistaken that's the first PF2 Strength-boost ancestry - something that was rare on the ground in 1e, also.

Overall very happy with everything revealed for the iruxi so far. :D

Fitting spellcasting into an archetype takes a lot of wordcount, and Paizo only had one page.

Personally I'm glad they got the spellcasting and spell-likes in there, because other "assassin" abilities you can get from multiclassing rogue or ranger. Things like Mantis Form and Crimson Shroud, not so much.

Arachnofiend wrote:

sherlock1701 wrote:

I think a great houserule is adding "per level" to the duration of most spells with an hour or less duration. Shoulda been that way RAW, but here we are.

It's a great houserule if the intent is to make it so that spells that are written to last a single encounter instead last many encounters as you get further up in levels.

By which I mean it's a terrible houserule.

I mean it's bad if you hate magic. If you like spells with durations being actually relevant it's good.

I love magic, and I find your suggested house rule bad.

John, I disagree here. Considering the average fight lasts less than a minute, a party moving at pace should easily be able to fit three or four fights into a single cast of a ten minute spell.

I don't think the devs would overlook something like that, and in fact there was discussion by the devs, back in the playtest when almost everything was one minute, about wanting there to be "until you rest" buffs.

The one minute buffs are more the "one fight, maybe two" buffs.

Edit to add: Personally, the way I am handling rests and buffs is basically a gentleman's agreement with my players:

Typically, ten minute buffs last until you stop to rest, stop to thoroughly search a room (including looting bodies), or start wasting time (in or out of character).

Meanwhile, you will typically always have ten minutes to rest after an encounter as long as you haven't done something stupid or reckless. I do not, however, promise you will have twenty minutes*.

That's how I read Paizo's intent for things to work, so I just formalized it a bit so everyone is on the same page.

*I use tension dice, for anyone familiar with that system, and the rule I use is that taking a ten minute rest adds a die without rolling - but taking another one in a row adds a die and rolls the pool.

I'm not sure one class path needing errata extrapolates to "Paizo dropped the ball on this entire class".

I don't see any reason it wouldn't. Ring of doubling just specifies a "melee weapon" and shield boss/spikes are listed under "melee weapons".

I agree that accuracy is important, but it's also important that a Rogue racket isn't straight better than multiclassing Wizard.

Best solution is probably, like I suggested, giving progression only in attack rolls and not in save DCs.

Even then, I'd be tempted to set them back a couple levels just so that they aren't getting increases at the same time as a wizard - it's not like they lose their normal proficiency, after all.

Colette Brunel wrote:

I do not think that the Aldori Duelist Dedication is all that good.

I see people talking about it under the context of rogues. A rogue has to spend two feats and a 2nd-level class feat just to enter Aldori Duelist Dedication. They have a 1d8 finesse weapon, it is not even agile or trip, and it does not benefit from the critical specializations at 5th.

I agree, and will add most dedications that give better weapon stuff are meh. Every character idea I have for Fighter MC would much prefer skipping the dedication. That said, the Dueling Sword is 1-handed while the spiked chain and elven curved blade are both 2, so you do get the benefits of having a free hand with the sword.

Lore-wise, I believe the Swordlords are implied to mostly use a free-hand style, so that makes sense to me.

Rogue should definitely not get expert/master at the same level as wizard.

Even 9 and 17 might be fast, since straight up multiclassing wizard gets you 12 and 18.

One thing that comes to mind, since this racket probably mostly wants to sneak attack, is that you could give it progression in spell attack rolls but not save DCs; they are technically separate.

Legendary weapons is basically a fighter class features in 2e; I will be very surprised if other classes get it outside of very narrow edge cases (and I don't mean "just one weapon", because for most characters legendary in one weapon is just as good as every weapon).

However, I have to admit, a monk archetype that is legendary in unarmed and master in defense is the first idea I've heard that I think could happen.

Such a character would be pretty glass cannon, though, especially if they don't go the Dex route...

Resilient Bulwark went through a couple different iterations. It's balanced more against the Champion's Reaction than it is against shields, and the bit about using a shield was added so that a class that obviously wants a shield isn't competing between two different reactions.

I think it is a problem that it's as good or better than a shield at low levels. However, at higher levels (10+) it's typically worse than a shield appropriate for the level unless you combine it with a shield. Unfortunately, I haven't found a good way to make the math line up at all levels without it being even more complicated.

It has a problem if it's strictly worse than a shield, because you don't want to put the player in the situation of "I have these special abilities that trigger on the bulwark but it doesn't block nearly as much damage as my shield so I never use it". For example, if it was only proficiency, when you hit Legendary it would be blocking 8 compared to a 17-20 for a shield.

Eventually I decided that it's probably okay if a class whose main feature is tanking damage is better at it than other classes - it's sort of this class's version of the "fighter +2".

I like the idea of splitting out the "enhanced by a shield" bit to a level 1 feat, actually; should help people not feel pidgeonholed into using a shield just because the bonus is there.

As far as how this interacts with armor specialization: I didn't put any words to that because there's no need; the base PF2e rules apply. Resistance never stacks, so you get the armor specialization resistance against all qualifying attacks, unless you use Bulwark, and then you get that instead. This is the same way it works for Champion's Reactions, who also don't have any dedicated words to that effect as far as I am aware.

Thank you for your feedback!

EDIT: I moved Phalanx Stance (which I already thought was too strong) to level 4, and split the shield synergy for Bulwark off into a level 1 feat.

Yup; the red mantis assassin has always been a spellcasting class, but still... glad we made players very happy! :-)

Okay, I feel like I'm living in an alternate world...

I specifically remember (granted this was ~8 years ago) running Kingmaker, my player being a Red Mantis, and updated Red Mantis rules coming out that didn't have spellcasting, and having a whole discussion about it...

Wasn't the Red Mantis PrC originally released as 3.5 material and then later updated to PF?

Now that I look at it, it definitely has casting, but then why do I remember having an issue with it before?

Bah, apparently my memory is going... >.>

EDIT: Did some digging, found the original 3.5 version, still confused. Maybe the discussion was about their spellcasting being pretty heavily nerfed? IDK. Serves me right for trusting decade-old memories. :P

I don't know - suppressing Invisibility or Mirror Image is pretty good, especially for the rest of your party. And at least in 1e Mirror Image was on the spell list of every caster ever.

I can definitely see it being a feat that you train into or out of based on if you expect to need it, but I think it's not bad for what it does. And more to the point, I think it's very thematic for someone who wants to make "I oppose deception and illusion" their character concept.

From what I understand, isn't the 2e release schedule so far very similar to the 1e initial release schedule? We are even getting the APG at the exact same point in the schedule.

@Angel Hunter D: I don't know if this is your intent, but taken together your posts seem to imply that if Paizo had spent longer on 2e, it would have resulted in a game that is closer to what you personally want.

I do not believe that to be true.

I agree with SteelGuts. For example, as I said in another thread, I expect Pathfinder Agent will be very attractive to skill monkey characters - getting a skill of your choice at expert is quite good.

Especially since Pathfinder as a background makes a lot of sense in a lot of campaigns. If you want expert Stealth, it's going to be much easier to convince most GMs to let you be a Pathfinder than a Red Mantis Assassin.

I think that relying on Uncommon stuff probably is wrong, but equally, so is saying something is just bad if it's only bad if you can't get Uncommon stuff (which is basically what Xenocrat did).

Or to put it another way, I don't think either the assumption that you will get Uncommon stuff or the assumption you won't is correct. If something winds up very different under the two circumstances, you should always note how it is in terms of both options unless you're talking about a specific game where you know which is true.

I agree with this, on further thought.

Basically, instead of "this is bad because the good options are uncommon", I think it's more useful to say "this is good if you can get the uncommon options, but be aware that it's not as good if you can't."

I wonder if the dueling sword is a typo and was supposed to be 2gp?

I also think you are being a little harsh on uncommon items. Rare is another thing, but the way the CRB talks about uncommon heavily pushes the idea that any player who wants an uncommon option should be able to get it with some work.

On a positive note, I love that Red Mantis have gone back to bring spellcasters.

I do hope we eventually get more feats for some of these archetypes, though.

One of my players was a Red Mantis Assassin in Kingmaker, and was very disappointed when the prestige class was retconned to no longer be a spellcaster.

The fact that PF2e Red Mantis Assassins are spellcasters has made both me and my player incredibly happy. :D

Not canonically. The Bestiary says -only- Lavender. The art that will be used for the direction going forward is -only- Baby Blue.

I'm still not sure why you seem to be aggressively ignoring JJ literally saying the opposite of that.

You also ignored Rysky saying that lavender comes in a variety of shades.

It's almost like you are ignoring any post that contradicts your outrage.

Good point about humans and bards, although honestly I could still see humans taking this to save themselves an ancestry feat - humans have some of the best, after all. Plus it does have some slight advantages over the human version - it comes online 3 levels earlier and gives you the level 7 benefits right away.

At the cost of a level 2 dedication feat, you get potentially two skills at expert and the effects of a level 7 General Feat.

If you like skills and aren't getting any other dedications, that's incredibly good value even if you never take another Pathfinder Agent feat; it's the only way I'm aware of for non-Rogues to get expert at second level, and it increases the number of master skills you can have from three to four. I forsee a lot of skill monkeys being Pathfinders. Which is as it should be, I suppose. :)

Rysky wrote:

** spoiler omitted **

** spoiler omitted **

MaxAstro wrote:

In the gnoll thread, JJ confirmed that drow skin tone is not universal; the artwork in the Bestiary is simply the most common/iconic skin tone.

"With each new drow we illustrate, I absolutely DO expect the shades to vary. But with one illustration, or even two (as you get in this book), when they're intended to serve as baselines and references four our artists as well as the first impression for tens of thousands if not more newcomers to the game... we only get that one chance."

So the baby blue elves are going to be the Drow baseline going forward.

Are we disagreeing? That seems like we are saying the same thing.

In the gnoll thread, JJ confirmed that drow skin tone is not universal; the artwork in the Bestiary is simply the most common/iconic skin tone.

"Some monsters are always evil and some are always good."

Until that concept gets thrown in the trash, it will always require tweaking down the line. But given how many people are up in arms about Drows changing colors or Goblins being included in Core, that's probably a long way off.

I have good news for you - Paizo does in fact appear to be throwing that concept in the trash, outsiders aside. Ironically, if you check out the gnoll thread, you'll find a few people complaining about always-evil monsters not being a thing anymore.

And to repeat the minor Age of Ashes spoiler I posted in that thread:

Maybe there are more details to it that I haven't seen yet. I haven't read the Lost Omens World Guide yet, so maybe there's something that makes this less of a boneheaded move by the PCs than it seems.

Alternatively, Paizo has been talking to my players, for whom such an action would not even register on the scale of most boneheaded things they have done. :P

And who says it's some random scientist? Paladins would have a vested interest in that knowledge. The have orders dedicated to training more paladins. You think they are doing that by not knowing things about Paladins? And why would Paladins be so opposed to working with scholors, of expanding knowledge, of creating more and better paladins?

Anyone found an example of a Paladin's number of lay on hands changing on a daily basis?

I'm not really engaging this argument because as I said before, it fundamentally makes no sense to me. The idea that game mechanics actually exist in the game world completely breaks verisimilitude for me. Otherwise you end up with a world like the Tippyverse or Harry Potter and the Natural 20. And while those are fun to read, they are comical and nonsensical settings.

No one in the game world has a level or a class or ability scores - Michael said basically as much earlier in this thread. People just have things they can do and a general sense of how competent they are relative to other people.

Sorta like the real world.

The game mechanics are an imperfect abstraction of that reality, just like they are an imperfect abstraction of the real world.

I'll give you the same challenge, though - find me an example of someone in the fiction knowing exactly how many spells they can cast per day, or exactly how many times they can lay on hands. The counter-example you are asking for doesn't exist because the thing you are positing in the first place doesn't exist either.

This is a problem that had not escaped my notice, being the math nerd that I am (although I imagine we'll be seeing Mathmuse in this thread shortly, leaving me quite outclassed :P ).

I suspect that the ease of counting is going to have more of a positive effect on play than the slight inaccuracy of the math will have a negative effect, though.

graystone wrote:

Castilliano wrote:

It'd be nice if an answer were added to the OP's question:

What still belongs in General Discussion?

The example is "Here are my thoughts on 2E as a whole" belongs in General." So general is for anything mainly about "2E as a whole". Seems super niche but there it is.

Though it leaves the question "Where does "Here are my thoughts on the alchemist" go?"

From the sounds of it, Advice.

Sure there is, do they have the same weapon and armor training, skills, etc? Hell, do they follow a Paladin code? Experts can tell things apart from minute details. Certainly seems they'd be able to tell the difference between an entire class chassis and a couple of abilities being slapped on.

Real world experts still don't know things as basic as why humans need to sleep or why ice is slippery, and that's in a world with a scientific ethos vastly beyond what is available in Golarion, and no literal magic.

"Obviously experts would know this" is a very weak argument. Who is paying these experts? Why do they care? How are they convincing paladins to stand around and be subjected to scientifically rigorous testing?

MaxAstro wrote:

The part that confuses me is the need for game mechanics to exist in-universe instead of being an abstraction of a universe.

Like DMW says, there's not really any evidence that in-universe paladins know how many times per day they can Lay on Hands... or that the game mechanics answer to that even is the same as the in-universe answer.

I think this is especially true in 2e where, it is important to remember, for the most part ONLY PCs have classes, while anyone who is not a PC is represented as an abstract bundle of game mechanics instead of a class.

There is in fact plenty of evidence, The books and comics certainly all suggest that. Nothing I can find in the lore suggests paladins wouldn't know how many times they can cast Lay on Hands a day, nor that paladins of the same level would have different casting amounts, nor that it would change on a daily basis as DMW suggests. If such an example exists, could you please provide it?

And from Dev posting using PC classes for NPCs is fine and expected.

If a dev posting earlier in this thread to say that people in-universe don't typically know what class they are isn't a good example, I don't know what I can provide.

Devs have said that using PC classes for NPCs is fine; it is not, however, the only assumption. For example, Hellnight Hill has both NPCs built with PC classes and NPCs not built that way.

So for example, in-universe, there isn't any way someone could tell the difference between "this person is a Paladin, the class" and "this person is an NPC who has Retributive Strike and Lay on Hands as part of their NPC ability bundle".

The part that confuses me is the need for game mechanics to exist in-universe instead of being an abstraction of a universe.

Like DMW says, there's not really any evidence that in-universe paladins know how many times per day they can Lay on Hands... or that the game mechanics answer to that even is the same as the in-universe answer.

I think this is especially true in 2e where, it is important to remember, for the most part ONLY PCs have classes, while anyone who is not a PC is represented as an abstract bundle of game mechanics instead of a class.

To be fair, John, I suspect that JJ's statement actually remains true, it's just that the start of PF2e is a necessary exception.

I would be very surprised if they tried to do any "setting hardcoding" over the lifespan of PF2e; I imagine it will be much like 1e where other than the rare "sequel" AP, no book assumes any outcome for any AP.