Nightwhisper's page

One of the things that bothers me about the Battle Harbinger is that it doesn't change how Font spells are handled. Meaning you need to actually prepare the slots with bless or bane instead of getting the flexibility of choosing when you cast. So even if you only cast one Font aura per combat, you might not have the one you want in each encounter.

Considering how PF2e likes conditions, I'm surprised this isn't presented as a custom condition:

"After a creature uses a Breath Weapon, it gains the Recharging condition with a value of 1d4+1. While it has this condition, the creature can't use its Breath Weapon. The value of its Recharging condition decreases by 1 at the end of its turn."

Seems like they wanted these things to be done over subsequent turns. Something like:

Turn 1) 1 action spell > 1 action arcane cascade > 1 action conflux to move to target + strike (presumably w/o provoking enemy reaction)
Turn 2) 2 action spellstrike > reaction to move away (again w/o provoking enemy reaction) > last action for whatever

Using a Conflux spell recharges your Spellstrike. So the optimal use is when you're already within Striking distance of a target, having expended your Spellstrike either on the previous turn or the same turn.

For the 4th-level feat, I'm guessing the point is that using Spellstrike already triggers the most common reaction, Reactive Strike, so the movement from the feat not triggering is going to come into play very rarely.

Based on an AoN search, PF2e has 21 melee weapons that are Agile but are not Finesse. So not too many, but not unheard of either.

To bring another fun rule oddity to the table, you can shoot a bow at somone on the other side of an obscuring mist without issue. The mist only conceals when the attacker, defender, or both are in the mist.

Personally, I think the alchemist would benefit from a design that was more like Focus points for Quick Alchemy, with Advanced Alchemy being a separate resource. This would also make room to have unique actions usable with Quick Alchemy instead of only replicating existing items.

But such a design would need someone much smarter than me to create and balance.

I'm going off fuzzy memories, but I believe they've confirmed we are going to get a new book covering the deities, so that is going to be cover some of the same ground as Gods & Magic. But it's not going to be just a "apply Remaster changes and done" kind of deal.

How is a Magus' spell DC relevant? Enemies will always succeed or critically succeed due to your lagging attribute bonus and your reduced proficiency, even when you target their weak save, that's the price they pay for full martial progression. Having played a Magus up to 5th level, only a handful of enemies have actually failed my saving throws, whereas the majority of them have saved or critically saved. Not to mention that a Magus' Spellstrike mechanic literally incentivizes them to utilize Spell Attack Roll spells, due that you are benefitting from the martial progression/item bonuses for them, whereas spell DCs are purposefully detrimented because that's what a pure spellcaster is for.

I'm going to note here that you don't actually lag in proficiency at levels 1 to 4, and at levels 5 and 6 you could've actually caught up to a full caster's DC due to how the ability boost system works. So complaining that the majority of enemies succeeded or critically succeeded seems like it'd apply to all spellcasting, not just magus.

Don't have much of a horse in the race, but I'll add that even the first 2e Bestiary includes two creatures that are not deities (in the sense that the word is generally used in Pathfinder) but that can grant clerical spellcasting to their worshippers: Gogunta and Treerazer.

Why extra hit points at 1st level: to increase 1st-level survivability.

Why vary these extra HP based on ancestry: flavour.

Also, the hit points aren't going to become irrelevant in just a level or two unless you are a high Con barbarian. If you have, for example, a Con 14 human cleric, your racial HP is slightly less than 10% of your total HP even at level 8. Level 8 is also the cut-off point where +2 Con gives you the same HP for a human.

If you mean that the difference between the ancestry hit points (a spread of 4 points) becomes irrelevant, that is pretty much true for all ancestry-related parts of a character: the different visions don't matter if you can get a magic item that replicates them, magical flight becomes available so your speed doesn't really matter (even less so if you're a monk since your bonus to speed eclipses the base speed, much less the differences between the ancestries), and you get way more ability boosts from level than you get from ancestry.

Not a typo, but in need of clarification:

The rules for damage starting from page 450 do not specify how to handle damage rolls with penalties that would reduce the damage to 0 or less.

Resistance is mentioned to having a minimum of 0, but a penalty to damage rolls is not the same as resistance.

Jürgen Hubert wrote:

....is it just me, or are the naiad and dryad queens missing some text in their action descriptions?

It does appear like key action information is missing. If this is true, let's hope this is not the final copy (in the book) we are seeing.

The action descriptions are in the general section for the queens.

because as far as we can tell the monster creation rules are 'just make something up within these arbitrary level gated bounds' which shatters consistency and verisimilitude into a million pieces while gleefully defecating on the heritage of DnD either PCs and NPCs follow the same rules... Or why have rules at all?

Defecating on the heritage of DnD the same way that the 2nd edition human bandits, knights, berserker, etc. did?

Didn't they release specific pregens for the resonance test? I would think altering those characters would be distorting the resonance test.

*narrows eyes*

*writes Barby 1 on character sheet*

Go for Barbie instead. It gets around the spelling blocker.

*nods sagely*

MaxAstro wrote:

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

NielsenE wrote:

The duration of a rage should be roughly 75% of the length of an average encounter. Otherwise it doesn't matter and you should just always assume rage stats. 3+ Con rounds is way too long in most fights. The fixed 3 felt fairly reasonable in terms of how it fit into battles.

The problem is that most battles I've come across in the playtest have taken anywhere from 6 to 12 rounds between outliers and the difficulty ramp, so having it be "3 rounds" is unrealistic by my experience, and if the bad guys have healing, flying, or Mirror Image shenanigans, it's even longer. Final fight in Part 4 took 20+ rounds due to stupid Mirror Image and heal shenanigans, would have been even longer and more difficult if the final fight wasn't nerfed due to scenario conditions.

True, but it is unarguably true that the original way rage worked resulted in you raging more or less 75% of any given battle. :)

Yes, but combat was much shorter then. We didn't have combats lasting 20 rounds back then except in extreme circumstances. Here, I've seen combat lasting 6 rounds in a minor fight and 12+ rounds in a more difficult fight, and boss fights being 20+ rounds, within 4 rounds of play tests. The combat duration only gets longer in the higher levels, and 6-10 round durations means that Barbarians need to know when the right time to Rage is. Because if they rage too soon, they're out to dry, and if they rage too late, they might have lost significantly more resources for it. The strategy has both been changed and is now more player reliant, which is really where it all falls on.

The length of combat doesn't really affect it based on the playtest release Rage, though. There is no limit to only raging once per combat, so your character should pretty much be raging 75% of the combat: three rounds raging, one round fatigued, repeat until combat is over.

thejeff wrote:

Remembering he was arguing earlier that 4E daily powers were Vancian.

Vancianesque, very, every 1st-level 4th Ed character (pre-Essentials) has 1 daily power/spell, that they fire-and-forget.

I appreciate the attempts at gang culture, through.

I guess we have different internal definitions for Vancian. Do you consider the 3.5 Barbarian's Rage Vancian? The Paladin's Smite Evil?

To me, for something to count as Vancian, it needs to deal with slots that you interact with and discreet effects you can put in them. Preparing specific spells in slots or expending them spontaneously is Vancian. Even the Tome of Battle classes are Vancian, to me.

But having a daily ability is not Vancian, even if that ability is a spell. Casting spells using spell points, even if they are a daily resource, is not.

The 4e Wizard is Vancian since it gets to choose between two spells for some of its powers each day. The other classes have daily abilities.

The biggest problem with table 10-2 is that it comes before tables 10-3, 10-4, etc.

Also, the example tasks need to have more high level examples, and guidance on when something increases the difficulty, and when it increases the level (based on the swim example, being in a storm increases level instead of the difficulty category).

That would help. It would be even better if 10-3 et al. were in the skills chapter with the appropriate skills to help set expectations for the players.

Nightwhisper wrote:

That sounds pretty superheroic to me.

Not to me. Exceeding current records in the field of physical activity by 10-20% is not really what I'd call a superheroic feat.

But it's not 10%, that 20th-level character is breaking the world record by more than 50% every time he or she jumps unless someone is trying to kill him or her. And still beats it by more than 30% when someone does go for the kill.

All the more because it is quite obvious to me that this was not, in fact, by design, but simply because many of the rules were simply eyeballed and don't serve all that well as a simulation of reality. I mean, even a starting character can beat the world record if he tries a few times because of how swingy d20 rolls are.

I'm pretty sure it is by design. Can't be completely sure since I'm not friends with any of the 3rd edition designers, but this analysis is a pretty good indication that 5th level is supposed to be the peak human value.

Levelling was ridiculous enough as it was and did indeed veer outside of the heroic fantasy genre at higher levels in earlier editions. But to say that basically every level 5+ character is a superhuman is such a more drastic blow to any pretense of simulating a high fantasy world that I do not see how the game's stated goal of being able to tell the same stories as before can be achieved.

In PF1e, a character of 5th level that has focused on jumping (Dex 18, max ranks, class skill, Skill Focus, Acrobatic, Run) has a +21, routinely beating the world record for long jump (Mike Powell 8.95 m (29 ft 4​1⁄4 in), 1991) without any magic.

At 10th level, the same character has a +31 bonus, still without magic. His or her every jump beats the world record, without fail and with a wide margin.

At 20th level, the bonus has increased to +41 if the character never raised their Dexterity. The character has no trouble clearing a semi-trailer's length. The character can also jump more than 10ft straight up from.

That sounds pretty superheroic to me.

Plugging in 9d12 into anydice.com, it seems you have less than 1% chance to get a total lower than 35.
You have less than 0,5% chance to get a total less than 26.

You are more likely to roll a natural 20 than you are to get a result less than 41. You are more likely to get a total of at least 86 than you are to roll two natural 20s in a row.

I wouldn't worry about having a full night of underwhelming rolls. One underwhelming roll maybe, but if you get a full night of crap for damage on a 9d12, you might want to check your dice.

Which brings me exactly to my point. I don't like this system because it's artificial number inflation: the game. AC automatically goes up, but so does to-hit. Skill automatically go up, but there's literally a chart with linear DCs per level. Your +1 per level doesn't mean anything when the DC goes up by 1 as well.

DCs per level of the challenge. The text next to the DCs specifically calls out not just scaling check difficulty because the PCs gained a level, and if you decided that something was a given level, it stays that level unless something happens.

Is this a typo

** spoiler omitted **
Because the penalty is already there for a 2nd attack and it gets worse for not being an agile weapon.
Worst case is
1st Action +X,-7
2nd Action -12,-19
3rd Action -24,-31

That's not how either of those penalties work. There is no indication that the -2 sticks around, and the multiple attack penalty does not increase past your third attack. So the actual modifiers would be

For me, I'd almost like to see training go from -2/+1 per step thereafter to something like -2/+1/+3/+5/+10 and reduce the level system to +1 per 2 levels, rounding up.

The problem with that, though, is it requires math and knowing the progression and I am sure the flat +1/level and +1 per training point was done so to make the system easily played. Granted, I don't see a real problem with that small level of math involved (dividing and rounding up) or remembering Master is +5 instead of +3, but I am sure there are arguements against any integration of divisors or non-linear progression.

The biggest problem with this comes when you're against someone more than one proficiency level above you.

A fighter is only trained in Will saves. So with this scheme, at 20th level he could expect to have a Will save of around +20 (10 level, 1 proficiency, 4 for Wisdom 18, +5 item from armor). His Fortitude save fares better at either +23 (expert, Con 20) or +25 (also chose Unyielding Fortitude, p. 94).

A legendary intimidator is going to have around +32 (10 level, 10 proficiency, 7 for Charisma 24, +5 item).

The intimidator uses Scare to Death (p. 171) on the fighter, rolling against a Will DC of 30. The intimidator cannot critically fail this check, and only fails on a 1. He critically succeeds on an 8, forcing the Fighter to succeed in a Fortitude save DC 42 or die. The fighter that has spent a class feat on improving Fortitude succeeds on a 17, giving not-so-great odds at 20%. So the intimidator has a 52% chance to just kill the fighter in a single action. Thank god you become bolstered against Scare to Death after an attemp, or the fighter would most assuredly be dead in a round after three attempts.

If the intimidator had Assurance (automatic result of 30 at Legendary proficiency), he could alternatively use that to automatically Demoralize the fighter twice to give them -2 to saves, and then Scare them to Death for even better odds.

Shaheer-El-Khatib wrote:

I know a lot of players that have a problem with this aspect of PF1.

You either hyper specialize or become as usefull as a rock.
It's more often on social skill or knowledge.

"Well, we have the guy with Charisma so I guess the others can dump it to the ground ?"

"The Bard has like +16285465 in all knowledge, why bother putting even 1 point in it ?"

"Climbing ? We will fly."

"The sneaky ninja over there can go in the queen room, have sex with her while the king is reading a book in the same bed, and either never be caught because too skilled at sneaking or he will bluff his way out with no problem. I guess we can let him assasinate the whole Vampire towns all by himself while we are eating in the tavern."

I (obviously) exagerated things but the fact that someone in the groupe vastly overshadow the others could somewhat make people a bit salty.

The reciproque problem is that if you put anything that have even a remote chance to beat the specialize character, the others are as good as dead weight.

This system doesn’t fix the sneaky ninja problem. It just means the wizard with a decent Dex can do the same thing three levels later.

Plus... isn't being good at your role THE POINT. You have a role.

What this system is doing is making the same mistakes as Star Wars Saga edition and 4th Edition D&D — two systems that predate Pathfinder 1 — and increasing all the numbers just to increase the numbers. Everyone gets better at sneaking or training animals, but the DCs always increase as well so you have an “appropriate challenge” so you don’t actually get better,

At 20th level in PF2e as it stands, the maximum constant difference between two characters making a check is 18 (8 from stat 8 to 24, 5 from untrained to legend, 5 from no item to best item).

That is almost the entire variance of the d20. Yes, a more likely difference is somewhere around 10 (3 from stat 16 to 22, 3 from trained to legendary, 4 from +1 item to +5 item), but even that is a far cry from "three levels later."

Breaking down doors and climbing walls actually has more detailed material in the playtest bestiary. On mobile, so no further details at hand, though.

I mean all the locks on my house I could pick. Do I feel the need to upgrade them? No because I know most would be intruders aren't as capable as me at lock picking and if I lose my keys/lock myself out I want to be able to regain access to my property without calling a locksmith.

I just can't get over this. I don't know anyone IRL who could pick any of the locks in their house, much less all of them.

That's not really been a thing, IME, still fight lower level enemies, pits do not all suddenly get deeper around the world, not everything is conveniently within a few levels of the party.

But you're probably suddenly encountering greater numbers of those lower level enemies compared to when they were higher level than you. The pits all around the world don't get deeper, but somehow wherever you go, they are deeper on average than the pits in the places you visited five levels ago.

The only problem is that seems so contrived, oh, suddenly every lock your Rogue needs to pick is made by the God of Locks, because you are epic level. The Page 42 improv DC/damage table is also really...

The party's opposition is supposedly epic by that point as well. Why would an epic creature of any appreciable intelligence acquire a lock it could itself pick open easily?

Yes, it often gives the feeling of the world conveniently levelling with you, the justification seems to be that things like doors are suddenly all made of adamantine or what-have-you once you encounter them past a certain level. Removing the +1/2 level from everything vastly improved my 4th Ed experience.

I don't see how door quality improving is any worse than enemies conveniently leveling with you, the pit traps getting deeper, chasms getting wider, or a whole number of other things that have always happened in DnD and derivatives.

Now, I will agree that 4e had some problems, but I just don't see that particular one as one of them.

On the flat-footed front, I think the main reason for having the condition give -2 AC is to have the condition only have modifiers on the one with the condition.

I guess my main issue with all of this right now -- and I'm sure someone has said this already -- is that Skill modifiers scale with your level. I thought part of this updated system was a "number crunch" of sorts (one of the few things I like about 5E), but it seems like in Playtest we will still be getting huge bonuses to rolls -- particularly Skill rolls -- that seem to get bigger for the sake of differentiating between your character's current and previous levels.

They have stated previously that they want to ensure that situations along the lines of "swordmaster surrounded by ruffians" will always favour the higher level character. That means experience has to be the dominant component.

Plus, if they had used half level instead of level, people would be making even more unfavorable comparisons to 4e than they already do.

Other unbelievable things not effected by an AMF include:

[...]

And that's just from skimming some Classes and the Universal Monster Abilities section.

Barbarian Rage powers are also fun for a source of supposedly natural, non-magical things:

- Rip out someone's vital organ with your bare hand, even from someone clad in full-plate armor, an elephant, or a dragon. Bonus points, that someone does not bleed to death in mere moments despite you wrenching out one of their vital organs. (Bloody Fist)
- Using a halfling as an improvised weapon. But only if they're alive. A dead body is no good as an improvised weapon. (Body Bludgeon)
- Heal (or recover from fatigue, replenish luck, what have you) by biting people. (Feasting Bite)
- Punch concrete to make it crack in a 15ft-radius. (Greater Ground Breaker)

PF2 character - I can survive a fall from ANY height without being the offspring of a god, being a spellcaster, or possessing a magic item that provides that ability. "I'm just that skilled/good that gravity causes me to fall like any other object but momentum doesn't exist when I land." Again, WTF?

You mean they can survive a fall from any distance like PF1 characters that have more than 120hp? Or a monk within an arm's reach of a wall?

At 1st level, a single magic missile hits as hard as a dagger wielded by someone with Str 12 or 13, but it has a range of 120ft cannot miss. If you "full attack" with magic missile, you don't suffer the iterative attack penalties, and instead keep automatically hitting.

Cast from a 9th-level slot, the magic missiles you get from a single casting action are equivalent to a +4 dagger wielded by someone with Str 20 or 21, but still cannot miss, even if you "full attack" with it.

why do you insist on claiming complete blocks and no damage? You yourself admitted that we do not know they have Master Reflexes, which makes complete blocks..not achievable. Not something that can be done. In fact a straw-man.

We do know for a fact that at least fireball will have anyone taking no damage on a critical success (beating the DC by 10, or rolling a nat20) on the save. Thus having +2 on the save makes it more likely that you'll get that critical success.

We have also been told that Evasion is not worded "you take no damage on a successful Reflex save", rather it is along the lines of "when you succeed in a Reflex save, you treat it as a critical success".

Wouldn't it be awesome - if the GM didn't have the power to make the cleric suck even if he's a jerk, using the built in rules?

You know - like if you were playing a rogue, or a wizard, or a fighter?

You mean like taking away the weapons and armor of a fighter (or even making everything take place in cramped space for an archer), making traps impossible to actually deal with for the rogue (because it makes sense that this place has traps this difficult), or taking away a wizard's spellbook?

Which is an evasive way of not answering the question at all.

High level play need not involve jumping 100 feet in the air and splitting mountains with your sword.

Why is jumping a 100 feet so bad when characters are already able to call down meteors, create tsunamis in the desert, take a dip in lava, conjure a storm of acid, lightning and hail, and drink arsenic with little fear.