MelodicCodes's page

I thought this was the Waffle Iron thread?

Bah, everyone's just getting derailed talking about corporate economics and rule systems.

Paizo needs to introduce a +5 Waffle Iron of Time Stop (2,500rnds/day) for 2sp. It needs to be a piercing weapon that deals 20d12 damage and 2d6 fire.

I disagree, I like being able to actually have the party sneak around, instead of the old "Fighter is is full plate and no stealth ranks" keeping it from being able to happen. It also helps people not be completely irrelevant (just mostly irrelevant now) in things they aren't good at, while the uses being gated behind proficiency level also keeps it from going overboard.

The big issue with the old system was what the disparity could be between two characters who were both good at something, and that it could be a difference of +30 or more. There's a bunch of stuff in the forums about this, I'll let you go find it.

I've addressed a possible solution to your last paragraph in a prior post(though it's not the only solution), but why should the clunky fighter in loud full plate who's never snuck around before suddenly be able to sneak almost as good as the Rogue?

A simulationist mindset isn't always good(that's how you get stuff like +1 to intimidate while in dark lighting and speaking to somebody in bright lighting), but when it's not introducing unnecessary complexity, it's perfectly reasonable to consider mechanics from a simulation point of view and toss out ideas that don't make any sense in-universe.

You mean unlike PF1 where they could freely heighten their invisibility to gain the effects of greater invisibility without knowing greater invisibility, or just by knowing summon monster 1, they could freely use summon monster 2-9. Oh wait, that wasn't how it worked, they had to know those spells in those slots in PF1 just like they do in PF2.

Yes, the removal of caster level as a statistic for everything hurts.

I never claimed that PF1e's implementation of all spells was perfect, but PF2e seems to have mostly made it worse. Part of my main gripe here is that Wizards, who have a functionally infinite spell list, can heighten all they want, while Sorcerers have to waste valuable slots in their repertoire learning the same spell over and over again to remain competitive with it. (despite being able to heighten a free two spells each day. This feels like a bandaid fix that doesn't really address the heart of the issue or give Sorcs any real versatility. Bards can do 4 for some reason despite being less focused on casting. Class feat oversight?)

Caster level was abused as a variable in a lot of PF1e/d20 spells. Range and duration probably don't need to be keyed to caster level, as that just meant more stuff for the players/DM to keep track of, but scaling damage die were fine. Their removal isn't entirely out of place as they replaced it with the heighten system, but said heighten system just revokes a lot of what the Sorc could do with spells and gives it to the Wizard. Why does the Wizard need more power again?

MelodicCodes wrote:

2. Resonance solves a problem that never had to exist.

In a couple of the games I've played, I've seen this be a bit of a problem. Not so much the wearable items, but the extremely versatile wand of cure light wounds. It was too easy to suddenly always have everyone at full HP at the beginning of every fight. I'm not sure yet if resonance was the proper way to go about it, but I can see the issue it is attempting to rectify.

The issue is so - if you don't want your players to abuse CLW wands, then don't make them available. It's not that difficult for the GM to say that there doesn't happen to be a CLW wand in ye olde magic item shoppe.

Paizo has introduced an entire rule in order to stop one magic item. It's a rule that's cumbersome, and now effects every magic item the players interact with. A simple warning for GMs in the text and a footnote in PFS would've more than sufficed.

Lorewise, there are many reasons CLW wands may not be available to random rich adventuring party #69. Maybe there's a war going on, and the wands are all being actively used to heal the sick and wounded? Maybe because of the scarcity of such magic items, there are legal ramifications for carrying them because the government is in such desperate need?

CLW wands are not a problem inherent to the system's core mechanics, so using the system's core mechanics to solve said problem seems like a clunky idea at best.

I'm gonna argue the point about magic items. Magic items have always been a broken system, as long as any 3.X system has existed. The entire game is balanced with the expectation that players are loaded down with boring magic items to shore up Attack Bonus, Saves and AC in order to remain remotely competitive with the basic threats of the game. So at higher levels, it's tantamount to suicide to go anywhere without two rings, a necklace, magic boots, magic armour, magic belt, magic cape, magic underwear, a few magic weapons, a circlet and so on.

If that's the case, you're not going to like how they changed enhancement bonuses on magic weapons. Good luck having your martial keep up damage-wise without using a boring +5 sword.

They introduced an entire mechanic to nerf magic items, but it seems like, at least for martials, they're more essential now than ever.

Attribute generation is pretty decent, though personally I think it's spread out over too many sources? They should probably find a way to consolidate all the attribute generation stuff in one "block" if at all possible. They're trying to make a series of different +2 bonuses approximate point buy, and while the effort is good and the result is solid, the execution could be a bit cleaner.

Sorc bloodlines having different spell lists is pretty cool. I wish the spells were formatted better in the book, but the base concept works out pretty well. Losing the flavor of the Oracle curse makes me sad, but it's a good change on the whole that means we wont need 5 different Cha based full casting classes.

The new action economy is literally perfect. Although spells should probably be formatted as taking "X amount of actions to cast" as opposed to clumsily explaining you need a different action for every spell component, it's only a small footnote on what is one of my favorite changes in the whole system.

It seems like everything I can say that's positive about the system has to be amended with a "yes, but..." That doesn't bode well for my enjoyment of PF2e unless there are some major changes, but let it be known that PF2 does have some good things going for it - ESPECIALLY the action economy, damn.

This seems to be something where "we want a solution that works for Pathfinder Society," is impacting the general design. With an organized play system, you can't assume that something can be fixed, (or determined to not be a problem), by the GM because you need the problem fixed even for people who have never been at a table before and never will again.

It's also a manifestation of the high priority given to power balance, (which is in many ways itself "solving things for PFS").

If the stem of the problem here is PFS, then it seems like the best option would be to give PFS its own sidebook/document with variant rules. I get that they don't like house/variant rules in PFS, but Resonance is a mechanic which complicates the game for everyone else just so PFS can have a nicer playground. You can't always have the exact same gamerules for two very different modes of play(casual table play and PFS).

This is from the received wisdom that "falling off the RNG is evil and must be avoided as much as possible." It's part of the same thing that freaks out over the brawny warrior completely ignoring the poison that the frail mage has to worry about.

This is a more interesting problem, but one potential solution using a variation on the older system would just be to lower the amount of maximum skill points a character can invest in a given skill, maybe set it to character level/2 (minimum 1, maximum 5), and they get less skill points across the board? This would make attributes stronger in terms of how they impact skills, but it would make it so that the highest modifier someone could have, assuming a +5 attribute, is +13. That's not too bad for DCs, and is actually somewhat in line with save bonuses. It encourages PCs to branch out across their class skills more.

I haven't exactly run the numbers on how this would work, but it'd make more sense from a roleplaying standpoint than proficiency and be easier to explain to new players while still keeping people from falling off the RNG except maybe at very high levels.

Meanwhile Saves can be static modifiers attached to your class, like before.

I know I've been a broken record about this, but combined with spontaneous heighten, I'm pretty sure this works out to a net buff over PF1. Many spells that get value from heightening used to be a line of spells or have lesser/greater versions (e.g. Invis, Summon). Using spontaneous heighten, you can effectively get nine levels of summon X for the low price of one spell known in the best case, and two or three spells known for the price of one in others.

Spontaneous heighten's two picks are also generally enough to support your main sorc gameplan (e.g. summonbot, fireball bot), negating the restriction on the spells you need most.

I can sort of see this, but the main thing that makes the Wizard so much more powerful than the sorcerer is their incredible versatility. Spontaneous Heighten encourages Sorcerers to be less versatile than they were in 1st with Metamagic on stuff. Meanwhile, a Wizard can heighten as many spells as they want when preparing now rather than just 2, meaning their options for heightened spells are far more versatile than the Sorcerer's.

As we get more spells in our lists with supplemental materials, the Sorcerer is going to need more and more heightened spells in order to keep up with the natural buff having more spells in the game as a whole gives to the Wizard.

A lot of people, myself included, have major complaints with regards to the current playtest release of PF2e right out of the gate. I am among them. Now would be a great time to "break down" these major design issues so they can be quickly corrected/iterated on and we can focus on more specific minutia.

1. Feats should be "unchained" from classes.
A lot of people have mentioned that, without any form of multiclassing, you cannot have a TWF Rogue(at least one that's meaningfully better than a 1 weapon Rogue). This is silly, and an example of a seeming design oversight but it highlights a bigger issue.
By bundling feats and classes together, options during character building and leveling are hugely restricted. The game's writers have to consider each likely "build" for every class. It either leads to character concepts that can't be done properly, or to individual feats being reprinted multiple times, which is a waste of space and time. Moreover, oversights like this are very liable to be repeated in the future.
Feats should return to being selected from a categorically-seperated pool in their own section with specific prerequisites, rather than being bundled up with classes. If the writers see fit, they could list a specific class as a prerequisite to take a feat, but this should probably be done sparingly.
Race feats are less of a problem, but could probably be renamed to avoid confusion with the rest of the feat system.
Bundling feats into classes does not solve any meaningful problems, from what I can tell.

2. Resonance solves a problem that never had to exist.
From what I can gather, the Resonance system was created to prevent magic item spam/abuse. I take great issue with this reasoning, as it has always been ultimately up to the GM to decide what and how many magic items the players get. In other words, it's solving a problem that a clever GM could easily sidestep, while simultaneously putting hard limits on what PCs are able to do, especially high level martials.
You're putting new rules into the game in order to keep the GM from making a decision that the designers think is bad. I don't think it's wrong to put warnings for GMs before historically problem magic items, but this is limiting on both players and GMs. It doesn't add anything to the game on its own, only takes away from the possibility space.

3. Proficiencies in skills & saves are silly.
Thog the Barbarian has trained his whole life to hit stuff. He is a level 10 Barbarian, who smash really good. Suddenly, he's put in a situation where he has to sing, despite literally having never done so in his life. He at least is getting a +8 modifier to that check from proficiency. What?
I don't see what was wrong with static base save progressions and skill points. They were actually somewhat easier to explain/more self-evident than proficiencies, and required you to actually put in training to be good at something, rather than just becoming passively good at everything(and having to update every. single. skill. every time you level up).

4. Sorcerers must keep learning the same spell at higher levels.
Why does a Sorcerer need to keep relearning Fireball at every level up in order to be able to consistently blast with good damage? Sorcerers already have limited spells known, all this change does is make Wizards more unholy powerful by comparison by effectively making Sorcerers less able to efficiently utilize said spells known.
Metamagic in the past did a fine job of making higher level spell slots more powerful. This just makes wizards stand out as powerhouses more than they already were.

My last major issue, and probably my biggest gripe is...

5. You can't do traditional multiclassing at all, ever.
There are many mechanical and storyline reasons why a PC might want to change class partway through their adventuring career. It's very arbitrary to keep people from multiclassing, as people in real life do this sort of thing all the time. Med students discover a passion for the arts, circumstances force somebody to change careers, etc.
The Rogue, seeking to redeem his past actions becomes a Paladin, using his dextrious moves and precision in place of brute strength. Maybe a Swashbuckler ship captain retires from his adventures on the high seas, telling tales of his travels and barking orders to his allies as a Bard or Skald, while still being a daring warrior with the blade. A Human Fighter becomes a Vampire Hunting Inquisitor after his spouse and comrade is murdered by a vampire. These are all examples of the storytelling potential of multiclassing using 1e as a framework.
As more suppliments are added and concepts from 1e are "ported", storytelling potential from multiclassing will simply evaporate. Instead of changing lifestyles when multiclassing, the new system feels a lot more like "oh your Rogue decided to dabble in some magic for a bit", rather than "Your Rogue has made the decision to become a Wizard from now on".

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It seems like Paizo really wants to reinvent the wheel with this playtest, and while things like the new action economy work fine, I would advise them against making too many sweeping core mechanics changes from 1st - the game is still supposed to be Pathfinder at its core, after all. Player freedom is an aspect that PF1e excelled at, this edition so far is rather lacking. While it's tempting to say that's because there's less content overall, the new core changes don't facilitate much in the way of major choices.

Paizo mentioned that they were going to do a lot of the big changes that they weren't sure about during the early stages of the playtest. I hope the issues mentioned above all fall into that category and can be ironed out before the next playtest release, so we can focus more on the specifics of classes, balance, spell lists and feats next phase. I have other gripes, but they're better saved for a time when more glaring complaints are ironed out.