Murph.'s page

JiCi wrote:

I wonder if the setting's infosphere is advanced enough for restaurants to offer online versions of their menus :P

I could see a disclaimer saying "if you're a Shirren, use the online form please" XD

Or signs near check-out stands saying "All shirren please make your choices before getting in line."

Coffee shops have a separate line for Shirren, be a use they are (a) obviously caffeine fans, and (b) their coffee orders take five minutes each to recite.

Kasathe are in hot demand as baristas and mixologists at places frequented by shirren, for their ability to mix multiple drinks at once.

I'm running RoW now, in book 3, and I've noted in another thread that at least one of my players is vocally unhappy about working in support of Baba Yaga. I've tried to use NPCs to affirm "yes, Baba Yaga *is* awful, but the devil you know...." Book 2 has the resistance group in Whitethrone, who feel like the Queen's coup throws all the progress they've made into doubt. Book 3 has the centaurs, who fear Baba Yaga's domination, but they'd rather help the party find Baba Yaga and hope to parlay her favor than hinder the search and risk her vengeance. Haven't thought that much about future books yet.

I've also tried to play up the emerging factional struggles in the power vacuum: for example, in Book 2, there are fey trying to pull the Hut into the First World, so I decided to play up the fey as opportunistically vying for power in Baba Yaga's absence. Like, there's a fey bard appears in Book 1 who is presented as supporting Nazhena, but -- nah, she's just there to spy on the PCs and take intel back to her folk, so she flees combat at first opportunity. I'm hoping I can keep accumulating competitors in the race to acquire Baba Yaga's power this way as the AP proceeds.

There are definitely places where the enemies get repetitive, and I've tried to change those a bit as I do my mods to 2e. So, in the market square in Whitethrone, having 3 separate encounters with a single Dawn Piper each seemed dull, so I replaced them with earth-, water-, and plant-themed fey in the three locations.

Getting better, thank you. I appreciate hearing that some of the past complaints have since been acted upon, and others are in the process of being addressed.

If even half the negatives of the past week were true, it was far too many for me to be supporting with my "for fun" dollars and attention, especially with so many games out there begging for a chance. But I chose to hold off on canceling my sub in hopes that you would be able to live up to my and others' expectations. I see progress here, and I appreciate that.

I'm sorry to everyone involved that this reckoning had to happen so publicly. As many folks have noted, hurts like those alleged happen at many companies -- not that this makes them okay or tolerable. Some companies are able to acknowledge and address the problems before they become news, and that's painful enough for the humans involved. Doing it on stage is that much harder, and makes it that much more important that Paizo continue dedicating the time and resources needed to do right by its people.

Thanks all for the replies and good suggestions -- this was helpful in figuring out how to offer my players the right messages.

I will note that my title was a little off, and this comment really gets at the heart of my players' reluctance:

More than that - your quest is to save the world from an aggressive war of conquest by a Jadwiga despot, and at the same time explicitly not to save Irrisen, but to restore and safeguard the power structure which keeps it oppressed.

They feel like they're being asked to save the world from Stalin...by reinstating the Tsarist monarchy. (Just to pick a totally random and not related at all real-world analogy.) They're cool with removing the new-bad and saving the world, but they chafe at being asked to do that by re-shackling Irrisen with the old bad.

They've definitely picked up reasons to care about the locals -- which actually has in some cases reinforced "we've got to find some way to fix Elvanna without putting these people back under Baba Yaga's awful system!"

In the end, I was able to pull some of your suggestions into the party's discussions with the Heralds of Summer's Return: the Heralds were able to say, "Look, we've been working against the system for a long time, but Elvanna has just made everything exponentially worse, and there's no return if we let her continue. Oh, and, now that we've got some backchannel relationships with the remnants of the Iron Guard, we think we've got ways to talk reforms once Elvanna is out of the way."

Once it was the local freedom fighters asking for the old-bad back -- and not just that black rider guy who's part of the old-bad -- they were more willing to jump on that option. (I also upped pressure by having the Winter Guard raid the Heralds' safehouse while the PCs were meeting with them: clearly they can't hold out much longer, go!)

We're partway into the Shackled Hut, and my players spend some part of every session wondering why they're even here. Elvanna's a terrible tyrant, sure, but as far as they can tell so has every other Jadwiga dynasty been -- and Baba Yaga is also clearly awful if she keeps installing awful queens every century. Why should they intervene in the succession of power in this crummy kingdom if all the options are awful?

"Because gaes lol" is not a style of GMing I'm fond of.

The part of the discussion where they say, "To save the rest of the world from winter," always raises the possibility that maybe they can just travel around to all the various baronies, picking off the local Jadwiga and closing off portals one by one rather than escalating to the capital.

"You broke it you bought it," has been what keeps them on track so far: they attacked Nazhena's tower, and Waldsby gave them shelter, so tracking her down is the only way they save the villagers from retribution. But...the villagers' lives will still be terrible under the next queen, so they're still not really motivated to find Baba Yaha per se.

I'm expecting that once they find Nazhena, and with her the hut, curiosity will take over and they'll be off to the races, but keeping them interested in that track has been a trick.

Are there things Nadya or Uncle Ringierr can say to keep motivation up? Help the players feel like this transition of power is something that actually matters to them?

I made this problem a lot easier by just not knowing the canon! We were a few sessions into Irrisen before I noticed a reference to conditions of eternal winter; I had described it as a harsh alpine climate with only a couple months above freezing each year. The Waldsby locals agreed that winter was lingering on notably this year (a product of the same rituals that were spreading it to other parts of the world) but weren't so "winter all year every year ugh" bleak as the canon.

It was a good mistake, because a couple of my players would have gotten completely derailed by investigating the food webs of the region if I'd said it had been frozen for 1400 years.

(One of my players reads the rulebooks and wiki and may or may not know the canon, but he's good with "the GM's version of canon overrides published material", and none of the others really read setting stuff.)

I played her as somewhat aloof from the affairs of the land. What she cares about are her ravens, the majesty of the winter weather -- and that creep Radosek leaving her tf alone.

She's got an agreement with Nazhena to surveil the county and report on goings-on: defending the pale tower is somebody else's problem, and she's not going to get in the PCs way, *especially* when that someone else is Radosek.

As a result, my players' PCs ended up controlling the tower with Jairess and her ravens still hanging out in the Eyrie. They've had multiple conversations with her when they need information. She doesn't really volunteer anything -- she's mostly too busy tending to her ravens and meditating on the cosmos to know or care what they might want to know -- but she doesn't really hold back info when asked either. Good for filling in plot gaps, and also learning what my players are paranoid about. ;)

I'm a big fan of "Hollow"! How did your players like it? My players just finished "Snows of Summer" and I was toying with the idea of up-leveling Hollow (and also converting to 2e, eek?) to have it happen on the road to Whitethrone.

Sounds like you're more familiar with Margrave than I am, are there other adventures you think might fit well/better as interludes before Shackled Hut?

A lot of wargames have at least two action rotations per "round" -- usually that's "everybody moves, in worst-initiative first order, then everybody shoots, in best-initiative first order" - that way the best initiative has the benefit of reacting after they see where the others are headed. (Been a while since I read Starfinder's ship combat rules, but I think they include this?)

Could replicate that in a 3-action system, though a little more awkward when the action rotations don't pre-determine what actions are allowed in each.

Off the cuff, maybe everyone gets two actions in initiative order, so the high-init characters can still get off their spells or charge, then last action happens in reverse initiative order, so that the high-init chars also have the chance to adjust their last action in response to whatever has happened.

Easier to track resetting conditions or counters on this down/up method than remembering to put a separate phase in every 3 times round the table. Probably plenty of complications I'm not dealing with here though. :)

It's probably best to either assume prior PCs go into retirement, head off into the Great Beyond for off-world adventures, or maybe just "reset" the world after each Adventure Path so that the prior AP you ran never took place—in this way, you would have numerous side-by-side stories with their own continuities, in much the same way you can have multiple stories like "Pet Semetary" and "Crimson Tide" and "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Jurassic Park" and "Catch 22" and "Insert Novel Here" all take place on Earth but not have to interact with each other.

Yes, my campaigns tend to the parallel realities approach, with overlap only in exceptional cases -- and I'm also prone to borrowing/remixing individual AP volumes or subplots into homebrew campaigns -- so I'm less interested in "continuity" info that assumes a prior group of PCs have succeeded or failed an AP.

Perhaps this section could be more of a butterfly effect of spinoff adventure hooks -- not just "what happens after this AP if the PCs fail," but "what happens if the PCs let the underboss from Book 2 go, or never encountered them? what happens if this NPC wasn't rescued / helped in Book 3? what if that macguffin was actually significant in its own right?"

I don't envision this as side quests written for a group that is playing through the whole adventure, so much as a collection of single-paragraph ideas supporting other ways of using the AP content: if Council of Thieves isn't your group's cup of tea, but the Sixfold Trial is, what else could have happened as a result of that module?

I've run extended PF1 campaigns in the Forgotten Realms with virtually no conversion beyond re-skinning deities, and wouldn't expect much more work than that for 2e.

I find the two campaign settings to be pretty interchangeable kitchen sink fantasy Earths, so there's not as much to be added or removed rules-wise when applying Pathfinder to the Realms as there would be when doing Dark Sun or Dragonlance. More a matter of picking which lore you like best and then saying, "oh yeah, that thing comes from this place instead of that place."

(And now that I've mortally offended two large fandoms, I'll see myself out...)

I know this is the one you already have, but by the time I figured that out, I'd already looked it up, so may as well save the next person some time:

Just to confirm, looks like starting at Level 4? What to do about hit points after 1st level?

There are lots of spells with common names between PF1 and D&D5 (or other versions of D&D), but you will only confuse yourself trying to use spellbook cards from one version for the other, because of the different mechanics.

I'd suggest something specific to PF, like Perram's spellbook.

Thanks, GM - enjoy the game, ya'll!

Can anybody who played the game comment in spoilers what happens in the prologue & the what the "Season of Bloom" roughly is about?

Thanks.

I'll be curious to see how modular the new CRPG subplots and companion quests will be in the expanded AP.

One of the appeals of the original version was the very sandboxy nature with lots of optional side plots (a fact I know paizo is aware of, and don't have any expectation they'll radically depart from). I'm glad to have more quest options to plug in -- but I expect I'll also want to quietly omit certain parts.

Confirming Half-elf Rogue (Arcane Trickster), will have alias up tonight.

rogue hp: 8 + 4d8 ⇒ 8 + (1, 3, 8, 7) = 27 -> or average (round up = 5?) -> 8 + (5, 5, 8, 7) -> 33

4d6: 4d6 ⇒ (4, 1, 5, 6) = 16 -> 15
4d6: 4d6 ⇒ (6, 4, 6, 2) = 18 -> 16
4d6: 4d6 ⇒ (2, 4, 1, 5) = 12 -> 11
4d6: 4d6 ⇒ (5, 3, 1, 6) = 15 -> 14
4d6: 4d6 ⇒ (6, 3, 6, 3) = 18 -> 15
4d6: 4d6 ⇒ (3, 4, 6, 6) = 19 -> 16

Uh, I think I'll take it! Noodling on either a half-elf rogue or a half-orc big-(not-so-)dumb-fighter type?

Oooh, undermountain! Dotting for likely character submission.

This might be something where the Microscope RPG could be used as part of a Session 0 -
http://www.lamemage.com/microscope/ - with you providing some baseline info and some nudging or vetoing. It's a collaborative world/history building game that could be used to fill in those years, get your players to name cities and NPCs, etc.

Would still take some work to wrap kingdom mechanics around, but would at least give you something to work with, as well as give the players some emotional connection to this place their characters grew up in.

Tartuccio as a rival adventuring party leader.

The on-screen political engagement with Brevoy of the prologue, coronation, and advisor.

1-2 sentence descriptions of random kingdom events rather than 1-2 words. (Perhaps a handful of fleshed out examples under each 1-2 word event category)

Notes on which flipmats or map packs work well for random encounters in different areas (or for individual mini-quests, though too much designing quest areas around existing maps could get repetitive?)

I've played Kingmaker, like it a lot, and have been saving the books to play it again. But I'm also planning to switch to Pathfinder 2E or D&D 5E after my current campaign wraps up -- so I'm happy for the just-announced 2E Kingmaker book.

That makes my existing Kingmaker books superfluous, and I see a lot of people really wishing they had a set. I'll make mine available -- all six AP books plus the map folio -- for cover price ($135 total) plus actual shipping cost, if somebody wants them.

First come, and we can work out details in private message.

Council of Thieves is originally PF1 already, isn't it?

Yaaaaaaaaaay!

Kingmaker is my favorite AP, though I've never played it all the way through - happy to see the updated version will not just be a retread of the version I already own, especially since my crew is probably done with PF1 and will likely head over to either PF2 or D&D5e.

And, getting my hands on the new version will allow me to sell the 1e Kingmaker soft covers I already own, so that'll free up at least one copy for those of you who haven'tbeen able to get it. ;)

I'll add my two cents as an occasional/light gamer who hasn't played many other games of this style (with caveat that so far I've only played the first third of Kingmaker, twice):

You can get plenty of value (in terms of hours of entertainment per dollar) from the basic game; you shouldn't "need" to add expansions for a good long time.

When you're coming in new, I'd suggest you treat your first start as a test to figure out what's going on -- learn the controls, familiarize yourself with this newfangled way of Pathfindering, etc, with the intent of restarting after a couple of hours and getting emotionally invested in that second character.

After that, save your game *often* so that you can see how things work through trial and error when necessary, without losing a bunch of time and momentum if it goes awry. Or so that if you get a ways into a complex encounter area or multi-step puzzle and decide you need to back off and tackle it fresh, you can do that.

Look for the setting that has combat pause after every turn, to make things fairly turn-based (rather than just a continuous flow of OMG-stuff-happening!)

When walking around buildings or encounter areas, hit the "Tab" key pretty much all the time: that'll highlight anything you can interact with (a door, a bookshelf, a trap you've spotted, a creature). This helps distinguish interesting stuff from background art, and also makes sure you're not missing something just because of camera perspective.

Question about using Automatic Bonus Progression:

When you use it do you adjust the treasure listed in the AP? Or simply make all weapons and armor masterwork instead of magical, take out the cloaks of resistance (and whatever other items would be affected) and leave everything else as is?

The latter -- just leave out the magical stuff that gives bonuses (but leave the NPCs' stats unchanged; assume they're using ABP too!).

If the magical gear is a weapon or armor that has a mundane function, it just becomes the mundane equivalent.

If it has a special power other than the stat / AC / save / attack bonus, it remains a magical item with that other power, but no plus. I'm a little looser with this than the RAW, where the special ability soaks up points of your weapon/armor attunement -- I figure the limit of "that icy burst dagger is just a plain dagger unless you've attuned it for the day, so you kinda have to choose just one special weapon to use today" is enough of a limit.

No replacement treasure for the stuff that gets left out, for the most part, though I will swap some things out or throw in a few extra consumables or minor wondrous items if the loot is getting too sparse.

@Attero:

Next there's OVERSEER. Overseer is a lean agile guy in studded leather armor. His blonde hair is tied in two braids. He carries a whip and a club.

Bump - working on build today!

Ha, sorry to have left you hanging there. I didn't dot in when I first saw your posts because I figured a submission would be fast enough that I wouldn't lose track of the thread. :)

My current game (as GM) is midway through the last level of the Emerald Spire. For this game, we did,

Headcount: I like 5 players, because we're all busy, mostly parents, so can almost never ever get the entire group for a session. 5 players lets us have 1 absence and still enough players to run the party (with one fo the more experienced players running the "spare" PC).

Abilities: 4d6 drop lowest, *in order* -- unless you don't like what you get, then rearrange. (I don't think anybody chose to rearrange.)

Hit points: Max at 1st level, then you can either choose (before you roll) half+1 or roll, depending on how dangerous you're feeling.

Races / Classes: no hard restrictions, but generally folks stick to CRB / APG, because that's what we have handy. (The fighter died a few levels back and was reincarnated via download into an Android because it was plot-appropriate, but that's the only deviation from core we have.)

Alignment: Don't be unable to work with the rest of the party. The story we're playing at the table is the one where you all find a reason to work together; the parallel universe where you didn't figure that out is annoying and unfun, and we're not playing that one.

Traits: 2, including 1 campaign trait.

Automatic Bonus Progression from Unchained, because nobody at the table particularly likes shopping trips. (This has the side effect of allowing much more protracted dungeon crawls, since there's a lot less need to trade in loot.)

I'll bite!

Callinda Swan is a human Slayer -- possibly a Cleaner by archetype, but definitely by profession. While she prefers missions that allow her to escape undetected, her flashing swords will make quick work of anyone unlucky enough to interrupt. (skill monkey / trap finder / TWF-sneak attack)

Backstory: Callinda's early life was spent as a Garundi street urchin in the gangs of Almas' back ways, a cat burglar and -- only the once -- a killer. After her gang left her to be caught by the Revolutionary Guard for the murder, she took a deal to work for the Andoran government in exchange for amnesty for her past crimes. While her work is by nature secretive, she can't help but take pride in a job well done and brag a bit in "cleared" company.

Personal: Hey, I have kids and a job and my favorite color is (often) blue too! I recently had two long-running PbPs lose steam around level 6, so happy to pick something up at that level. ;)

In the settings there are two options you can enable in Pause options.

The first is "Pause at the end of each turn."
The second is "Pause after all allies actions."

Between these and the other available Pause options you can select everyone's actions, hit the space bar to unpause the game, watch what everyone does and then the game will pause to allow you to change characters actions.

Oh yay, thanks for this note! I broke my arm recently, and while I like a lot about the real-time combat mode, it's...not conducive to tactical play with one usable hand. These settings should help a lot.

My understanding is that the Level attached to class feat is a *minimum*, not an absolute.

Best citation I can find quickly is,

When a certain level is required before the element can be accessed, that level is indicated to the right of the name.

So, for example, to select a "Bard 1" feat, you must have achieved Bard 1 "before" you can select the feat, not "at the exact time". (This example is also illustrative because Bards are one of the classes that don't get class feats at first level, so any Bard 1 feat would be locked out forever if they couldn't take those later.)

Gorbacz wrote:

Adventure/AP/setting support. I was, and still am, willing to put up with the clunky, unbalanced, unwieldy and newbie-hostile platform of 3.5 so that I can run Paizo's excellent adventures in their stellar setting without having to convert stuff.

Paizo creativity is what brought me here, their staff involvement/communication with the customers is what got me to stay.

I have played a lot of systems, and none of them are perfect, but Pathfinder has a good chunk of what my group enjoys and needs.

Similar to these. I like the adventures, and I like/respect/trust the people behind them.

Now, I don't play them as-written, necessarily -- I've been playing various forms of D&D since the late '80s, so I've weathered a few major game changes over time and learned to pick and choose what I like. On the rules side, PF was an improvement on 3.x, but more crunchy/complex than much of my gaming group generally likes; on the setting side, Golarion has never really grabbed me.

So I've done things like playing Pathfinder modules with 5e rules in the (AD&D2e version of) Forgotten Realms.

Thanks, I'll work something up and throw it into the "part kingmaker knowledge" selection tier. :)

Had been thinking wizard or druid, but those are seeming popular already so perhaps a ranger instead. Or a bard - everybody loves bards!

Oh man. I do like Kingmaker, and I do like Core. But I've played the first book and GMed the first almost 2, so not quite your target audience. Enjoy!

(A note: you've got your "mechanics" spoiler nested inside your "character creation", so it's not showing up.)

Ok with the inclusion of saw tooth sabre, and double slice apparently there is intent to include two weapon fighting style in the new Rule System. But what is not made clear is the mechanics that Two Weapon Fighting entails.

Since I can find no exact mechanic spelled out I am left to speculate that each weapon uses an action and that mechanically two weapon fighting is no different then attacking twice with a single handed or 2 handed weapon twice.

Is this supposition correct or is there some rule I am clearly missing?

I think you had the basics spot on in your first post: holding one weapon in each hand and making one attack with each is the same as making two attacks with a single weapon: first attack at your bonus, second attack -5.

Everything beyond that is a special case, the Double Slice class feat being the biggest -- and I think a place where the name similarity to a PF1 feat is more confusing than helpful. Ignore PF1 two-weapon fighting entirely and it makes more sense.

Edit to add: One interesting implication -- since there's no "off-hand" penalty, you can hold two weapons, and make iterative attacks with weapon 1/weapon 1/weapon 1, weapon 2/weapon 2/weapon 2, or mix them up in whatever order you like. (I'm not sure how this does you much good, of course, unless you find yourself fighting zombies and skeletons simultaneously and want to mix up your damage types?

Caveating, only one session under my group's belt so far, but --

Awesome -

1. Action economy! Newb friendly, but opens up new options for experienced players.

2. Ancestry feats! Dwarves can all be dwarfy without all being samey.

3. Parallelism in class presentation! No more "barbarians have a rage subsystem and a powers subsystem; rogues have a tricks subsystem which is sort of like the rage powers, but not quite; rangers have a wholly different combat style thing; etc" -- having the class abilities lumped in just a few systems (feats, powers/spell points, spells) makes it easy to focus on what the abilities *do*, and how different combos can be built, rather than obscuring the meat behind the class infrastructure.

4. Critical success / failure on +10/-10.

5. Equipment lists are limited but have significant choices. (Honestly, #1 reason I haven't played Starfinder yet is the equipment lists. Shopping is the least fun part of the game for me.)

6. Monster stat blocks are really easy and show me exactly what I need to run them without lots of unnecessary detail.

Maybe less awesome - but mostly rough edges on the awesome stuff:

1. Ancestry feats make me want 2 at first level.

2. Classes still have lots of hard-coded first level abilities, some of which seem they could be part of hte feat system. (Why are all fighters heavy armor / exotic weapon proficient, rather than throwing those on the fighter feat list and giving an extra 1st level fighter feat pick, eg? Why are all rogues finesse rogues?)

3. Shield system will take some getting used to.

4. Skills - having so many specific actions gated behind feats seems unnecessarily restrictive. Also, would like crit-failure conditions to be more vague/open-ended in a lot of cases -- or for the ones provided to be more explicitly "examples".

I noted a somewhat similar effect in my first session -- I somehow had assembled a mix of players with experience in D&D 2e, 3.5, 5e, and PF1, as well as one player who'd never done a tabletop RPG before.

And...the total newb seemed to have the easiest time picking up the action system and running with it; the experienced players were the ones explicitly commenting on the mechanics they were invoking.

Partly this was analytical -- digging into comparisons between systems -- but partly also having to catch/correct habits that don't apply here. I'm hoping both of those are learning curve or "new toy!" issues, rather than things inherent to the system?

And then there's the mechanics itself. In P1 a player would tell me something like, "I'll run here and tumble past the ogre to get at its back." and from the simulations I got mostly "First action I'll Stride here, second action I Strike this guy and third action I'll Stride away from him again". Which feels somewhat less organic, like programming a machine, rather than...

Sincere question: is this an issue of having internalized the old mechanics vs explicitly working through new/unfamiliar ones?

It seems you could phrase the first example, from PF1, as "I use my Move Action to make an Acrobatics Check to move through the orge's threatened squares, then make a Standard Action Attack"

And the second, using the new mechanics, as, "I spring at the orc, slashing at him with my longsword before ducking back behind the cover of the column."

Do you think practice and familiarity with the new mechanics will allow them to fade into the background, or is there something about them that you expect will keep them in the forefront?

Personally, I think (or at least hope!) the new action system will make it *easier* to background the mechanics, since I won't have to remind my players that they can't 5-foot-step because they already moved, or that both those things they want to do are standard actions.

Lack of universal AoO is something that pleasantly surprised me in my group's first playtest session -- both sides were a lot more mobile when not having to fear getting whacked for it. (Especially the monsters with few enough hp that a successful AoO = likely insta-death.)

I ran the first part of Lost Star last night, and was generally pretty happy with the experience.

Players:

I've been playing various PF/D&D-family games for close to 30 years, mostly in the GM seat. My crew last night was fairly diverse in experience: one has played in multiple PF1 campaigns, but is a pretty casual/social player -- just wants to sit down at the table and roll dice; no homework, has never read any more of the rules than necessary for their characters. Another is currently playing D&D5e with past 3.5 experience; the third played lots of AD&D2e and a few sessions of 3 and 4. The 4th was an absolute newbie to tabletop RPGs, but assured, "I know the general tropes, I am a nerd."

Prep:

I took a skim of the rulebook to get a feel for things, then read the first part of the adventure and made a couple of characters to get a handle on character creation, reading rules more deeply as-needed. Overall, I like some of the paradigm changes made, like standardizing the format of class abilities into "feats" with a common presentation, making domain / bloodline powers a special spell type, etc -- but it requires a lot of flipping around the book; I'm glad I sprang for dead-tree!

Nobody else prepped anything (one downloaded the rulebook ahead of time).

Character gen:

I made a couple characters ahead of time to get the hang of it, then started the session by walking the table through making the remaining characters needed as a group, as a way to give everyone some familiarity with the character sheet, math, and book layout. This seemed to work well?

The characters I made ahead of time took about 1.5 hours each, because I was reading rules as I went; at the table, we were able to do it in 45 minutes. The roster:

* Half-elf ranger (two-weapon / double slice)
* Gnome sorcerer (aberrant)
* Dwarf cleric (Torag / shield tank)
* Goblin rogue

Play!

We RPed the quest-giving part a bit before going in and made it through the first 5 rooms of Lost Star in about 2.5 hours total play time.

[spoilers=lost star spoiler]
The sorceror waltzed carefree across the entry and was attacked by the ooze! Fortunately, the cleric tank was close behind, rolled amazing on initiative, and drew the ooze's attention; good party rolls and bad ooze rolls meant they cruised through.

The old-school player with the goblin rogue made good use of stealth and darkvision to scope out the troupe of goblins in the main room, then approached them with his "captive" gnome, telling the goblins that he was a new recruit, this gnome was his lunch, but there were more for everybody back towards the entrance (where cleric and ranger lay in wait in the tunnel).

The goblins took the bait, but I called for initiative as they approached the trap, using Deception for the rogue and gnome, Stealth for the would-be ambushers, and Perception for the gobs. Cleric and Ranger totally flubbed Stealth checks, so the goblins weren't immediately massacred, and had a good running battle among the columns.

The rogue sneak attack sapped one of the gobs to interrogate later, and got enough good intel to avoid the fungus hazard -- but also enough fear-driven hyperbole that they're even more confused about Drakus than before. (Their tongue-in-cheek theory is that he's actually a *giant* vampire, so big that only one fang will fit in any given goblin, so he has to eat two at once.)

They investigated the centipede room for completeness, touching off a fight notable for some of the vermin using their climb speed to go up and over the dwarf who was trying to tank the doorway, dropping into the rest of the party behind her.
[/spoiler]

We ended the session there. Three characters were down to half hit points after three battles; cleric used a channel to heal some of that, but otherwise no expendable resources used beyond arrows. (The cleric mostly hit stuff with her hammer, to great effect, and the sorcerer made heavy use of cantrips.)

Scattered Thoughts

Character gen is definitely easier once you've done it three or four times!

Players found the options they had flavorful enough to quickly inspire personality, both in the pre-gens I provided and in the ones made at the table. While I do feel that 1 initial ancestry feat may be too few, being forced to pick just one gave the goblin rogue's character something to immediately build it (it was "eat anything").

However, the number of different sets of options they had to make choices about was a little confusing -- again, the rogue being the main example due to having so many skills, and both a skill feat and a rogue feat at first level as well as three fixed class features that are...not class feats despite seeming like they could easily be?

The character sheet seems very full / crowded despite lacking defined spaces for some important things (lowlight / darkviz, e.g.) -- but I like that all the math is made very visible by the layout.

3 Action Economy seemed easier to grasp the less experience people had with past games! The total newbie had no problems getting it, while the 3.5/5e player kept trying to take free 5-foot steps (to avoid non-existent AoOs) and treating 2-action spells as single actions (b/c they're 1 standard action in 3.5, and 1 action in 5e).

That said, once the experienced PF1 player realized her cleric could do things like Stride / Strike / Stride in one turn, she was rolling out tactical movement that she never has in past PF1 games.

That combat in the large room especially was more mobile than our combats typically are, with the adversaries also able to move around more nimbly without near-guaranteed death-by-AoOs. The exception was the sorceror, since he was trying to maintain concentration on dancing lights while slinging attack cantrips -- he was stuck in place while the dwarven tank pinballed around the room.

Damage output seems potentially very fast, with second attacks often effective enough to be worth it and critical hits coming with some frequency. If my dice had been hotter, I could see the PCs getting in trouble *fast*; it'll be interesting to see how a boss fight plays out.

It hasn't come up much yet, but I expect resource depletion paralysis to come up as an issue -- with the sorc having three daily pools (spells, power, resonance), and the cleric four (same + channel), each with a smallish number of points in it, the temptation to hoard may strike hard.

Shields are an interesting wrinkle in a few ways. The cleric only used hers when surrounded by enemies, as part of Strike/Strike/Shield, because mobility was otherwise too compelling -- while the sorcerer's dancing lights concentration meant he only used Shield when he was moving -- Concentrate/Stride/Shield -- and couldn't cast two-action spells. I appreciate that this active-shield mechanic adds / forces these tactical choices, though I'm not sold yet on it necessarily improving fun. (Also, Shield Block was an action neither sorc or cleric used, once they realized it could cost them their shield even for a while -- this may end up an "only to avoid death" tactic for those players.)

The organization of the rulebook is...not great? At least in terms of at the table reference, I was again super glad I'd gone for the paper book, and my compliments to whomever created the index: maybe best I've used in an rpg book, and I used it...a lot.

I frequently had to handwave, "let's call that a -2" or "let's assume that's 1 action" on the spot, then look up the right rule when I had a minute, to keep momentum going -- but my PF1 reflexes were nearly always right when I made these calls.

Obviously 4 characters in 5 encounters only gave me a small taste of the system -- we didn't get into resonance, leveling up, multiclassing, dying/healing/resting, or even using most of the spells characters had prepared. But we had a good time, and everybody seemed enthused to keep going, so hopefully I'll have more to say on those soon!

1. Do you currently like pathfinder 1e? (I know it sounds loaded, but please bare with me.)

2. Did you once like pathfinder 1e but now find it troublesome? (feel free to give details.)

3. Do you like 4th or 5th edition D&D? (Also sounds loaded but again no judgments)

4. Which are you looking for class balance, smoother high level play, more options, or even all of those things? (Small edit: these weren't meant to be mutually excursive, I just want the gist of what you're looking for, feel free to add additional thoughts/desires as well.)

5. How do you feel about making the game more accessible in general?

6. Are you willing to give up on accessibility if you can still gain all of the benefits listed in question 4?

7. Would you be willing to play an alternative rules system then what we have been presented? (A different version of pathfinder 2nd edition if you will).

8. And if you said yes to the above question what would you like to see in that theoretical game? (Most of you will see what I'm doing here, I'm finding common ground)

I can't necessarily say I like or dislike PF2E yet, because I haven't had a chance to play it -- but from readthrough of the book and the blogs, and the Know Direction / Glass Cannon coverage, I'm really excited to give it a whirl, so I'll count myself a "like" for this purpose!

1. Yes, mostly

2. The "mostly" above -- much of my group doesn't do homework. We want to put the kids to bed, sit down at the table, and pick up where we left off last time. Nobody but me owns anythign but a CRB, and only about half the group even thinks about the game between sessions. We'd be looking for a new system soon one way or another.

3. I liked parts of 4, but haven't played it in years. I remember it having good tools for encounter building, and really liked that monsters intended to last 3 rounds weren't artificially forced to the same rules as PCs intended to grow and gain depth over 3 years of play. I like parts of 5 - it's what I recommend (over PF) to the fantasy RPG curious, but could do with a few more fiddly bits than it has. (I also like Dungeon World, FWIW.)

4. All those things are fine; perhaps "smoother high-level play" is most key, since as mentioned my group doesn't really do homework; past level 7 or 8 people start forgetting half their abilities.

5. 100% most important.

6. Not really, no. But nor do I think accessibility is at odds with rich and engaging systems.

7. As mentioned, I play a number of different fantasy RPG rulesets from time to time.

8. I want that theoretical game to be easy for newcomers and casual gamers to understand and enjoy, and I want Paizo-quality APs that tie into it. (To that last, I'd be fairly okay with Paizo producing content for non-PF systems!)

The perils of cascading changes acknowledged, something along the lines of "five boosts, not more than 2 to any single attribute" could address that.

It makes sense within the character building paradigm, but having the rule repeated ten times within the backgrounds seems....surprisingly inelegant, considering the work done overall to make options clear and modular.

...And I'm very much biased by coming from a group which has never really taken a liking to point buy, so it's a repeated rule that I'll have to remind my players not to apply it.

I agree with the tone of this thread, thank you! I haven't even finished a full readthrough yet, let alone played anything, (so am avoiding all the forum topics that broadcast their confirmation bias in the titles) but so far I'd color myself excited and interested in diving in!

I'm hoping to be able to playtest both with my regular group and with some total-rpg-newbs, but tentatively:

1. I love the Ancestry Feat system! (Maybe more than 1 at 1st level, tho?)

2. The Action System seems Good -- "3 action points (plus reaction)" vs "((standard + move) or full-attack) + swift + free + 5-ft-step if no other movement" or whatever.

3. The Class system seems to be a re-framing of how very familiar concepts from PF1 are presented, more than a wholly "new" system. None of the classes I've read through seem bad-wrong. (Also, having played some (not a ton!) of D&D5e, I have difficulty understanding the comparison some are making -- PF2 seems to offer an order of magnitude more options for character development within each class crunch.)

4. I'm not sure I love Skills / Skill Feats - this is the place so far where I feel there might be too much limiting structure built in, vs "can I use x skill to do y thing?" Maybe getting a skill feat every 2 levels is plenty to overcome that.

5. I do like the concept of Critical Success/Failure on skills - though maybe too much detail is provided on what a critical success / failure is? I feel like Dungeon World's "succeed, but with consequences" and Cypher System's "rolling a 1 means a new challenge emerges via a GM Intrusion" systems address a similar niche with a whole lot less verbage needed on what exactly the consequences are.

6. Some of the changes just seem brilliant, and really show the power of the system re-think: heal / channel energy as one power that can do several things that used to be disjointed is the initial standout here.

I did note the use of campaign backgrounds as required, rather than new options, as not to my taste -- but ultimately that's a super easy fix by GM Fiat Magic Wand if I'm in the minority for taste.

I do like the overall system of gaining Ancestry feats over time, and think it makes total sense.

As folks have said, there's a difference between "I grew up around this and am familiar with it," and "I have intentionally practiced this and am currently skilled in it."

An IRL example, my mother and grandmother were musicians, and I took piano lessons as a kid and played cello in school. I haven't played either of these to speak of in 20 years, and I assure you, I do not presently count as "trained" in musical performance!

However, I can read musical staff and find notes and chords (slowly) on a piano, and can muddle through fingerings on a mandolin or banjo or bass guitar. If I dedicated some time to any of these instruments, I'd be able to pick up proficiency pretty quickly, tapping into that familiarity and initial training from my Ancestry.

Seriously, it has happened several times during my adult life that I think I've "discovered" some new hobby, or my professional life has gone in a new direction "randomly"...and my parents will quietly produce some artifact from my childhood demonstrating that this activity actually has precedent from 30 years ago that I'd totally forgotten about.

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(That said, it might be nice to allow two picks at 1st level? Just 1 feels super limiting even if I agree with the overall design. I wouldn't go all the way to "you get all the Heritage feats at first level", though -- there's a difference between "let dwarves be more dwarfy!" and "every dwarf is super-dwarfy in pretty much the same way!")

I note that all Backgrounds published so far include a "free" / unspecified ability boost. Unless the intent is to save space for future Backgrounds that might specify both boosts and have none free, this seems unnecessarily repetitive.

Would it make sense to instead just add a fifth free ability boost during the "four free ability boosts" step of character creation and save space in the Backgrounds?

(I note that the optional "rolling ability scores" rule on page 21 specifies that you omit the free boost from your background -- which suggests future backgrounds couldn't have two specified boosts without breaking this, and seems another point in favor of moving the free boost out of the background so that it doesn't have to be negated here?)