Megistone's page

What if every character can decide to allocate three of their stats, each to a different save? That would contributte to making every PC unique.

For example, a smart Wizard could be used to employ their superior reasoning and logic to anticipate the perils of the battlefield (improving their Reflex saves), or to make sense of what's going on and maintain clarity (applying to Will saves); it may be a little harder to justify applying Int to Fortitude saves, but I think many players can find a good way to describe how it happens for their character.
While a hulking Barbarian may have trained themselves to rely on their muscles as a source of confidence (+Will), as a way to power through debilitating attacks (+Fortitude), or as an unbreakable layer of defense (+Reflex).

This probably leads to higher saves on average, since every character will pick their best three stats to use, but I find it cool.

SuperBidi wrote:

Captain Morgan wrote:

Extending fleeing doesn't generally seem possible because an enemy that flees for one round will likely be more than 15 feet from your familiar. Maybe if you give your familiar fast movement and flier, it could keep up with something with 25 foot speed.

You can extend it before the enemy moves. Fear and if the enemy critically fails their save => Hex to increase Fleeing to 2 rounds.

Oof, that probably works.

But I love the idea of sending a familiar after the fleeing enemy, to keep scaring them!

I'd rule yes for 1 and 4, moving small/medium objects is cool but purely descriptive, no hard mechanics involved.
No for 3, forcing opponents to move without a check involved is too much.
2 is a maybe: I wouldn't let the barbarian break a grapple for free, but if there's space they could get large and still be grappled. It depends.

What happens if a minion has persistent damage going on and you don't spend an action to command it? A literal interpretation of the rule would be that it doesn't take damage this round.

They are both even more amusing as an edict, instead of anathema.

Dracula and co, one must remember, were hellspawn every bit as unholy as demons in the original book, and the Count is said to have learned directly from Satan himself at the dark academy called the Scholomance

The historical Prince Vlad III's nickname Dracula (Draculea) actually meant "son of the devil". That's because his father was Dracul — "the devil", since he was a member of the Order of the Dragon, and that word can mean both things (and besides, people would easily mistake the order's symbols). Impaling a certain number of people helped too.

Good job. Now you really should go and answer back to certain smug and arrogant people there...

I just like the whole "after certain point you have to invest more to get growth" type of mechanical dealio tbh.

Like I wouldn't like the "until this level you can't increase stat to x" because it means instead of investing into stat, you just spread them to lower stats until you can get the higher bonus on your main stats.

(plus the level scaling method allows you to have multiple stats at +6 so its kinda just optimizer's dream more or less)

You could do that, and still require a double investment to go up past +4. The advantage would be not 'wasting' the bonus 5 level earlier.

Bluemagetim wrote:

lol because deep down PCs are evil, tombrobbing, corpselooting, opportunists.

Because one person healed back from dead who drops a high level spell and TPKs the party, teaches you that down doesn't mean out.

Double tap to make sure.

Double tap, then sever the head, then burn everything to ashes - and possibly scatter them, too. Just what my group routinely does with dangerous foes, after... some bad experiences.

It's still not really clear. That text has been added to the section you quoted, but it looks like a reminder to a rule that doesn't exist where it should belong (it did in the playtest, but it was removed in the CRB, and not added back with the remaster).

Addition to Unicore's message / Side Note: Without wanting to judge others' experiences and preferences ...

Unicore wrote:

[...] the people at my table feel like all charm/compulsion magic is inherently evil and icky [...] Like is there really any difference between believing that convincing that youth with diplomacy, or intimidation or deception is any less of a violation of the NPCs free will than doing so with magic? [...]

I'm always fascinated to hear/read from other tables and learn how different people treat situations. That charm aversion particularly amazes me. You already brought it up. I guess, I make this comparison between charm and all other ways, player characters influence their environment, too. Particularly, when one considers how often and in which ways many (D20-like) adventures I've played so far presented martial violence as an alternative(?) option to move stories forward...

Yeah I also can't really grasp the mental processes that lead to considering blowing someone up (or cutting them into pieces, etc. etc.) acceptable, but making them believe you are a friend absolutely not.

I know this has been talked about to death but I'm just so, so happy that all the weird finicky weapon proficiencies got upgraded into just full proficiency at the next tier.

I feel vindicated.

Or they Worry, killing the target, and proceed to attack another one (with MAP).

If you watch some episodes of Hardcore Pawn or similar shows, they generally buy things for less than 50% of the price they intend to sell them for. Sometimes, significantly less.
That's to take account of the cost of running their business (the shop itself, bills, employees' wages, security, etc.), the tax cut, the risk of taking a fake or not functioning item or never finding any buyers for it, and their own profit.

True, now I remember a discussion about it on this boards. Anyway, that's still a skill check with four scaling levels of success; an attack roll does nothing on a simple miss, and it would feel pretty bad to roll a hit and still completely fail. Not to mention decreasing the level of success of both the attack/skill roll and the save.

I'll quote this very recent blog post from Michael Sayre:

Will the exemplar get more ikons and epithets? The exemplar will definitely see new ikons post-playtest, and the chances of new epithets are pretty high, though we’re still sifting through data about the degree to which these mechanics are working for folks. The final form that epithets take based on your feedback might have some influence on how many are published in the final product.

The fact that we have only a lightning epithet means that they wanted to playtest something like that; it doesn't mean that they don't plan to add other similar options, especially if such design is well received.

Wouldn't it also be the only case of incapacitation applying to an attack roll? I can only think of saves having it.

I think it helps to focus on level. PF2e doesn't lie: an enemy that is of your same level is about as strong as you are, and a contest against it can really go both ways.

A PC caster can shut down an enemy, just like a PC martial can hack it into pieces; but this can't happen reliably if such enemy is close to the character's level, or levels as a whole would be a lie. If you want to be able to reliably 'win' encounters with a single spell, you need to add quite a few levels to your character: try fireballing a bunch of level 1 creatures and you will see that it works as intended.

If spells were more likely to trounce on-level opponents, that would mean that casters were playing far above their stated level. Other systems may allow some characters to play like that, while PF2e keeps them (casters included) much closer to the actual power level that is written on their sheet. In short, it doesn't lie.

The Raven Black wrote:

Megistone wrote:

I agree that working with your GM to make your own curriculum of spells is the best way to approach the new state of the Wizard.

TBT it's far better than being stuck with one of the old 8 schools.

Old schools were so vast (and you knew what they had when you selected one), and discussing such little things as singular spells with a GM could be problematic for both parties (PF2 thankfully is not really a game where everyone needs to construct all characters with GMs). So no, not at all.

"I want to make a fire-themed Wizard, so here is a list of spells that have to do with fire and that I would like to have as my curriculum."

Now, it's true that not all spells are equal; 'official' schools may take this into account and be more or less balanced against each other, while a custom school may end up a bit stronger. But we are talking about a single slot per level used to prepare a spell that may be somewhat better than another - a spell that the Wizard could memorize in their other three slots anyway - compared to the current situation where the choice is made over an entire 1/8 of the Arcane spell list. I really don't think that even a completely unthemed, pick-the-best list would cause any balance problems.

I wouldn't call it censorship, but to me it does look like a desire that certain things are excised from the setting. Which I oppose for a series of reasons: first, those things don't really look that bad; second, removing them would make the setting poorer; third, as I said in another comment, making a whole story arc just to assassinate a god that has become unlikable looks too cheap for Paizo.

In general, I'm pretty sure that it won't happen (so no, the 'censorship' will indeed not exist), at least not for that reason. I really don't think that the developers' goal for the whole War of Immortals is making Golarion a better place.

I agree that working with your GM to make your own curriculum of spells is the best way to approach the new state of the Wizard.

Megistone wrote:

Maybe I just didn't sleep enough last night, but why would it be given an AC if it's not meant to be attacked? Am I missing some other possible use for that AC?

It looks to me that it's definitely intended to be choppable, at the very least by physical attacks.

Nobody is saying that, this is a strawman.

What is being said is why a Protector Tree shouldn't just take full damage by nature of being like an object and just dying like normal.

Sorry if it wasn't clear, but I wasn't replying to you. My comment was mostly about breithauptclan's "can't be targeted directly" claim.

You never declare anything up front in PF2, actions are meant to happen one after the other. So you wait for the resolution of the previous action to choose what action and who you target with the next.

Note that this doesn't work for stuff like Magic Missile/Force Barrage, as you have to choose all targets before rolling damage. This is because it's all part of the same action or actions.

Still, there's a catch with Act Together which is that you have to use the action with the various cost first. So you need to use Electric Arc before your Eidolon Strike.

Could you please direct me to where this kind of rule is stated? Because in the Act Together text I read that one does one thing, and (not then) the other does another thing. There's no order implied.

Maybe I just didn't sleep enough last night, but why would it be given an AC if it's not meant to be attacked? Am I missing some other possible use for that AC?
It looks to me that it's definitely intended to be choppable, at the very least by physical attacks.

Noooooo you don't understand, this fictional character said something that, given the worst possible interpretation, is bad, so they must be erased forever!

Regardless, I think Paizo's creativity is way above the level of: "This god is no longer conform, let's have them die to justify their removal!"
I could understand if they feel that they unfortunately have to get rid of Asmodeus, and thus make the thing a part of a larger plot they were already developing; but even assuming that they have a god they simply don't like anymore, making a whole storyline so that they can put them aside looks too cheesy for them.

The tree has got a size, an AC and a number of HP; it's clearly intended to be possible to attack, but no saves are given for it.
I'd definitely have the tree be hit by the fireball, and if I had to roll a save, that would be the caster's one. It doesn't make much sense to roll reflex for a tree, but it's still better than letting a tree simply ignore fire.

I need a good avatar for Harmony, but all the stuff I've found on the web so far is either no good, or somebody's IP I really don't want to steal. I suppose I could commission someone to draw her for me, but I have no idea how much that would cost. Any suggestions?

There is also the option of AI generation, if you like that kind of stuff.

Yeah, parry is a common enough option that should definitely be included.

Ideally, transcends should have an effect that is useful most of the time, so that you don't feel bad using it. When you use one of them, you should have to make a choice about what other good thing you plan to activate on the next round.
Given that your choice of ikons is fixed, having one with a situational effect doesn't feel good. I'd say that giving some of them two possible transcends isn't something to dismiss: one could be some kind of buff that is always nice to have; the other could be a situational, but strong, effect that you have as an option, and feels good to use in the right circumstances.

The Spirit Walk feat turns it into a precise sense while you are searching or detecting magic.

Megistone wrote:

Deriven Firelion wrote:

They basically took an ability a wizard could do as part of the class in PF1 and turned it into a thesis with Spell Substitution. All wizards in PF1 could do Spell Substitution as needed. They turned that into a Spell Thesis and made you have to take it as your only thesis? That's kind of a kick in the teeth if you ask me.

To be honest, no, the wizard couldn't do that; the arcanist could (if they took that ability).

What every prepared caster could do was leaving blank slots to memorize stuff later, but that's a bit different compared to changing an already memorized slot with another.

That was a spell substitution equivalent. Leaving slots open until you needed them. Now you have to spend a thesis to do something similar? It's not cool at all.

It's not something that only affects Wizards though. You could even say that Wizards are especially lucky, being the only class who still has an option to do something like that.

They basically took an ability a wizard could do as part of the class in PF1 and turned it into a thesis with Spell Substitution. All wizards in PF1 could do Spell Substitution as needed. They turned that into a Spell Thesis and made you have to take it as your only thesis? That's kind of a kick in the teeth if you ask me.

To be honest, no, the wizard couldn't do that; the arcanist could (if they took that ability).

Senko wrote:

I haven't, I have a dislike of relying on outside sources for power clerics, druids, warlocks. Its just a personal quirk for reasons relating to real life experiences. So I try not to speak for them as I don't know how they play. Though I have seen posts about someone who tried to play a cleric as a straight caster and was begging other players not to take options that would make them even less able to contribute. But for all my posts take them as from the perspective of someone who plays wizards and arcanists, occasionally sorcerers but not often as I really like versatility in spells.

Oh man I know what you feel like not sure if its for the same reason as you but I also avoid classes where you have a "boss" that can fire you at any moment but I'm somewhat fine with the summoner or the animist where the relationship is more equal.

I'm curious to know if you also consider the Barbarian a class with a "boss" who can fire you.

One thing that I found quite enjoyable is that I actually had to pay significant attention to the combat. I had to make sure that I sustained and danced in the right order to the right places, had to decide where to place Bile, etc. Its just NOT a boring "Strike, strike, raise shield" or "move then throw spell" class. I had options, I had to plan my turn, group position mattered.

This is exactly what I was thinking while reading your description of the combat. It sounds fun, it makes me want to play an Animist, and I hope that we can have a class that is still this engaging when the overpowered stuff gets reigned in.

I do wonder if they could have simplified it by saying it provide a "+1 circumstance bonus or increases an existing circumstance bonus by 1 up to a max of +3" or if that kind of effect would just be unreasonable in pf2e.

As it stands, I'll be trying to use that one a bit more next in the next session to try it out. Might change my weapon though though assuming they won't be fixing that interaction.

I think they wanted to avoid exactly writing that. It would make a bad precedent.

Also, you missed a boost at 15th, to make the 12 a 14.

And one at 10th too.

Anyway, the more I think about the possible rule I talked about in my previous post, the more I like it.
The overall character power doesn't change. It allows you to start with a 16 in your main stat without suffering forever. It allows you to have two 22s (before apex) at level 20, which I think is a good thing especially for certain classes where it makes sense thematically. It doesn't require making investments that bear no value for 5 entire levels. And it's pretty simple to write and understand.

What about making anything over +4 cost two boosts, together with the level limitation? That would only mean that you only have an extra +1 on a secondary stat at levels 5-9 and 15-19.

Anyway, I don't mind too much about keeping the rule as-is. We still don't know to what extent the remaster will change things that force characters to be rebuilt; I still think that giving a blanket increase to ability modifiers would be something out of scope.

I don't think that the main problem with going that direction is having slightly more powerful (or well-rounded) characters. It's that it would mean rebuilding every existing character, when the remastered rules are meant to be compatible with what you are playing right now and with whatever has been published before.

You can, at the considerable cost of one action. With two weapon ikons you can use that action from something productive instead.

The concept of the class, casting wise, is that of a divine caster who can rotate additional spells into their daily repertoire. Making it part prepared and part spontaneous is what they decided to do, and it clearly defines the class (at least for the playtest) from a mechanical point of view; but I don't find it strictly necessary to attain the concept I described - which is more important than its implementation.

If this mechanical implementation gets widely rejected by the players for any reason (too complex, etc.), what should the developers do? Scrap the Animist because its 'defining aspect' doesn't work? No, I'm 100% sure that they would find a different set of mechanics that work better towards the same goal.

Sidenote, I think issue with "mythic" monster math is that if it keeps steadily increasing at same pace according with the formula, like it does even in levels 21-25, pcs might be outclassed even with "mythic profiency. So assuming math continues same, it might imply level 25 characters might need proficiency equivalent of "12 + level" unless there is alternate ways to deal with even higher numbers :'D Like how classes that get legendary save proficiency have ability that crit fails turn to fails and failures still halve damage while success is crit. Assuming there aren't items with even higher bonuses, which I see as kinda unlikely.

I think that getting at least +4 items with mythic is all but guaranteed.

In PF2E Paizo decided to lean into the concept of Failing Forward with success effects on spells and some abilities that have effects on a failure.

This is falling forward, if there are two pits in a row.

"Sorry, you rolled too well!" is very unlikely to happen at my table.

Megistone wrote:

what should I do if the critical fail happens on a specific question?

A specific question like: which save is their lowest?

Is that a difficult question to come up with a wrong answer to?

It depends upon what you want to do.

The GM could say things like:
1) Use electricity or cold.
2) Nothing: they are basically immortal, you can only run away while they are down.
3) You have to cut their nose off and throw them in water.
4) Bathing them in lava is the only way.

Answer 1 is the first I would think about, because it's simply about taking what actually works, and twisting it. Is it the most fun, though? I could find some inspiration and make it better by giving a pseudo-logical reason ("Cold doesn't really stop it, but slows it down enough that you can finish them off"), but that would be easier to do if I had the time to think about it in advance. Which would require knowing that such a question will likely be asked.
Answers 2 and 3 look more interesting narratively. Answer 4 is good, IMO, because, while wrong, it can still prompt the PCs towards the correct way to win the fight.

I would rather have these possible answers written down in my notes than have to come up with them at the last moment. But while I can take the time to think about a few wrong info pieces about each monster I use, I can't do that for every single facet they have.

If you think about what spending a spell slot does, its not really "forgetting" the spell. The spell is still there in your book and you still know what it does. What the spell slot does is preset how much energy you will spend and on what; The spell gets cast and you don't have that energy anymore.

Mana systems don't have those preset and so most people just spend every point into the biggest spell. Which is similar to Spell Blending Wizard.

Fatigue systems are like mana systems, but a chance to fail early (or later depending on set up).

***************

Also the issue with low level spell slots is that you have 3 types of spells: A) No scaling required, B) DC scaling required, and C) Stat scaling required.

PF2 only auto scales DC great for type B (debuffs) but is horrible for type C (damage). Specially when HP scales with level and there is no way to scale low level spell slots. This makes it so yeah you can use debuffs, but now you can't use attack spells. Its also why focus spell attacks and cantrips are seen as necessary, both of those auto scale unlike spell slots.

Just a note that even PF1e didn't fully scale damage up to caster level.

Megistone wrote:

About removing vancian casting, I'm open to it; but so far I have yet to see a replacement that achieves the same goals (a limited number of powerful abilities and a higher, but still limited, amount of utility) while also being more intuitive and/or narratively sound, and not being a bookkeeping nightmare.

Well, I know of two systems that meet your criteria, with the probable exception of "not being a bookkeeping nightmare", which is rather subjective. I suspect for most it goes something like this: "Martials can swing their damn swords or fire off their arrows all day long, casters should be able to do the same thing with their spells." Not sure I agree with that, but also not sure I can provide a competent argument against it.

...

Themetricsystem wrote:

EVERY Power Points and Mana systems that I've ever seen are janky, exploitable, half-broken right from the start and also just as much of a headache (if not moreso) than Spell Slots so, while I'm not a diehard of the kind of thing that is going on now with Spell Slots, when it comes to PP/Mana you can call me a hater.

Hm. What's in a name? I mentioned two systems (without naming them) upthread. One uses "fatigue points" (casting a spell makes the caster a little bit more tired, how much depending on the strength ("level") of the spell. The other uses mana points (sorry). A common feature of both systems is this: you want a spell that does X? Invent one (using rules provided by the system) essentially during downtime. I like this, but I doubt it's of much interest to most players of D&D or Pathfinder, where downtime is the least important/interesting part of the system.

Fatigue/mana points systems do fail to meet one of the criteria because, as others have explained, they encourage the caster to just go nova with their most powerful abilities and ignore the lower tier ones. You could introduce mechanics that discourage that kind of approach, like an increased cost each time you cast a high-level spell; but they would fall into the bookkeeping problem I mentioned.

I have looked for alternatives to vancian, but as I said before, I found none that were straight upgrades. Saying "Just remove vancian lol!" is naive.

If you are going to break the balance anyway, how is it different than just giving a +2 to hit/DC?
I could understand giving stuff like more staying power (recalling cast spells, for example), something that bypasses mythical enemies special defenses, or big narrative power. But once you allow extra strikes, the encounter balance is already out of the window.

That's a good clarification.
The only complication I see is with critical failures. I'm not very good at improvising, and thus I wanted to prepare a list with some wrong info for each creature that I was going to use in my adventures; but what should I do if the critical fail happens on a specific question?

About removing vancian casting, I'm open to it; but so far I have yet to see a replacement that achieves the same goals (a limited number of powerful abilities and a higher, but still limited, amount of utility) while also being more intuitive and/or narratively sound, and not being a bookkeeping nightmare.

I'd say that the rules are strict because they don't want to explicitly allow players to exploit loopholes; everything non-standard has to pass through the GM's approval.

I agree that in this case, and probably a few other specific ones, allowing the player to cast a lower-level version of the spell can't really hurt the game, and also wouldn't require writing additional text (as your example shows).
There is the classic example of Enlarge: the level 4 version doesn't give you an option, your target becomes huge instead of large, and this can be detrimental sometimes. While changing the wording of the spell would solve the issue, changing the core rule itself would prevent a number of cases like this without requiring double-checks everywhere.

On the other hand, things like intentionally missing an attack, or targeting an ally to trigger a critical effect (and still wanting to do minimum damage, or something), can definitely lead to unintended and unbalanced consequences. I wouldn't say something like: "When you hit, you can choose to deal up to this much damage" in the rules, because while it could make some sense narritively, its game-breaking potential is much higher. So, ask your GM.