I moved the fight into the church so the PCs could kill it by collapsing the building on it. If I was going to bring it back in to the story after it got away, I'd have it show up early in book 5, and have it attack Sandpoint as the PCs are leaving the shrine, having been drawn there by the Runewell/Lamashtu.
"Default no spells, with add an option to get spells like monk" option won by a landslide (and that'll guarantee we add that option at the soonest possible juncture we can fit it in), I mean, I picked this option because I assumed that what I was saying is, "It's very important to me that Rangers have the option to cast spells, but it doesn't have to be mandatory for all Rangers." I didn't pick it because I wanted spell-less Rangers in core and to just get some spell options tacked on in some future splat book.
"Focus Spells"? Just ... why? People, as least as far as I've noticed in the playtest, just do not want to call things spells unless they're actual spells being cast using the normal spell casting mechanics. It's just a confusing overuse of a particular term for no benefit that I can see. Powers was a fine enough name, what threw people was calling the resource used to activate them "Spell Points" and them all being lumped in to the spells chapters. Now they have Focus Points, but are calling the abilities they activate "Focus Spells?" What's with the desire to call everything slightly mystical a "Spell" in one way or another?
Half the character creation time was spent figuring out what mundane gear to buy or not and how the bulk all added up. It really bogs down character creation IMO. Just give us a few set of options with thematically appropriate mundane items grouped together along with their bulk (both individually and as a total) and the price so people who want to just get started adventuring can have an easy option to copy quickly to their character sheet.
Five months and was there not a single question on whether we should keep or remove Vancian style prepared casting?
To me it’s not a huge difference to give everyone the +1/level to everything or to give them more skill choices and letting them buy a small proficiency in most of them over time. It does change the incentives when building a PC - it’ll be a higher price if you don’t give any attention to some of those “group skills”.This is true, but that only actually means anything if classes get enough Trained skills to tag all of the skills that one mght expect to be used in group checks without sacrificing the stuff they want to be specializing in. This brings us a little too close to "skill taxes" for my liking.And then we come back to the days that nobody can sneak, since we can have a gap of 28 points. The difference is that if you give players choices then they will choose other things that better fit their character concept. With a skill like Stealth is that there's no point in investing in it if you're not maxing it out, especially if you already have low DEX and/or armor penalties. You'll be mediocre at best at it with a 'minimal' investment. You're better off investing in the skills that either make you better at fighting/exploring or social skills that have broader applications. Why would I invest in Stealth when I could make myself an expert at Intimidation ASAP? In the old system your Paladin who would otherwise never invest in stealth is at least capable enough to be willing to give it a try and had a non-zero chance of success when the Rogue comes up with a plan that requires sneaking around. Now the Pally will just laugh at the idea that he could hope to accomplish this and draw his sword.
But expecting the devs to take out all the possibilities of anything bad happening to your character in case you ever have to sit out is unreasonable to me.Good thing that I'm not suggesting that or anything at all close to it, but keep fighting that straw golem. Are you intentionally trying to misrepresent what I'm saying or did you just not read what you're quoting? Saying a save or die effect should be removed from the game is nowhere near the same as "expecting the devs to take out all the possibilities of anything bad happening to your character in case you ever have to sit out". There is a world of difference between a game where you nothing bad can happen to you and a game where it takes more than 1 bad saving throw roll for your character to be completely removed. Trying to characterize my position as if I'm saying that nothing bad should ever happen to characters is ridiculous.
In Monopoly, every player but the winner has to eventually sit out while everyone else continues to play. And, as we all remember, if you roll a natural 1 in Monopoly you are automatically bankrupt and out of the game, no matter how much money or property you have left at the time! But expecting the devs to take out all the possibilities of anything bad happening to your character in case you ever have to sit out is unreasonable to me. Good thing that I'm not suggesting that or anything at all close to it, but keep fighting that straw golem.
... The moment you accept that character death is permissible, then anything less is permissible. Argue for removal of character death and we can revisit this then. Okay. Characters should not go from 100% health/statuses to dead on a single Critical success or failure. A character dying because their health was depleted over several rounds or several combats is fine. A character being paralyzed because they failed a series of saves over a round, rounds, or combats is acceptable. A character being paralyzed forever because they rolled low on a single save is not. If weapons with the Deadly property instantly killed on a Natural 20, I'd argue that the Deadly property was bad design even if cheap Phoenix Downs were part of the game.
So basically it's there to punish newbie players and/or veterans who don't metagame and make the game less fun for them? There are forms of consequence that do not force players to do nothing for hours or more in the real world because of one bad die roll that they can do absolutely nothing to mitigate or defend against because all Natural 1s are critical fails regardless of how much you invest in raising your defenses, to the point that they might as well not even bother to be at the game. "Fifteen to twenty minutes" What game do you think we're talking about? A single round of combat can easily take that long or longer to resolve. If you get paralyzed in round 1 of a combat due to a single bad roll on a save you're sitting there for an hour or more while the rest of the party chips away against high ACs and the mountains of HP the monsters have. Crits do double damage. Most crit fails do double damage or advance negative conditions an extra step. These things make sense and hold to a pattern. Then you get situations where a crit fail does, literally, infinitely more of a negative effect than a normal fail. It makes no sense. It's horrible, illogical design that does nothing to enhance the game.
Which is also awful and should have been removed from the game, but at the very least has to actually reduce your HP to zero to take you out.
So basically it's there to punish newbie players and/or veterans who don't metagame and make the game less fun for them?
Watching a game on Youtube. Level 12 Barbarian rolls a natural 1 on a Fort save against a Lich, is permanently paralyzed and the player is then left to sit there doing nothing with no chance to shake the negative ability off and nothing their teammates can do to help them, even after the fight is over. Who is this good for? How does this make the game more fun for anybody? Why isn't there a new save each round? The normal failed save is just 1 round, why is the crit fail INFINITELY more than that?
I am personally not a huge fan of all the dice, as I have seen players taking excessive amounts of time to calculate the final result.If gentle pressure to "count faster" doesn't suffice for your group, may I suggest an app? What if using an app to roll your dice for you is not fun?
Nothing is more fun than being reminded how weak your character is!
You can't make +X bonuses mandatory under the math, especially in a system where the math is so tight, and then leave the distribution of them at the discretion of the GM or a purchasing option with no indication that a +X is more important than any other particular magic item. It creates traps for both GMs and players to fall into.
"Are you Thor, the god of hammers?" The problem is that no weapon will feel legendary for long when the standards of the game are built around the assumption that you have such a weapon at a certain point. If my Fighter has a +3 Weapon, and so does the Rogue, and so does the Cleric, and even the Elven Wizard is firing off a shot from her +3 bow every round , and every enemy I fight is hitting like they have a +3 weapon, then my +3 weapon is nothing special or remarkable. A +3 weapon simply becomes the baseline tool that is required to do your job correctly. It's as legendary as a plumber's trusty toilet auger. The things that will make your weapon stand out are the less generic abilities that can be put on it. Thor's hammer is legendary because it gives him the ability to fly and always returns to his hand and no one can lift it except for the worthy.
As long as the difference between a +1 and +2 weapon remains as big as it is it will accomplish very little, especially as long as they're balancing the math of the game around assuming that you have a +X Weapon at Y level, reducing the Maximum value of X slightly changes very little. The most frustrating thing is, as was said upthread, they won't even ask the questions about the proficiency runes/bonuses clearly and directly.
What? Asking if weapons "need to go to +5" is so tangential the actual issue that I don't even know what the point of it even is or how it's relevant.
Is that what they're saying? I don't get that at all from what you're quoting. Jason (in chat): Magic weapons aren't going anywhere though. Players like having magic items be important. Looks pretty emphatic that they are not considering any changes to magic weapons.
I'm fairly certain that one of the larger surveys covered the idea of tying damage to level instead of items. If you want that change (or want to make your voice heard in the other direction), I highly suggest taking that survey of you haven't already. Which Survey, and which question? The closest I could find was this "I would prefer no potency on weapons and armor at all. Attack roll bonuses and AC bonuses would come from item quality, damage would come from my character's inherent martial ability, and any necessary saving throw bonuses could come from elsewhere." Which is the closest option they present to what I would want, but still isn't particularly accurate to what I want. I think that damage bonuses should come from level, is that "martial ability"? I don't know. I also see no reason for saving throw bonuses to be coming from "elsewhere" and I'm rather meh on the idea of attack and AC bonuses coming from item quality. By lumping all of those statements in together it makes it very unlikely that I'd pick Extremely True or even Very True on it. But, apparently, it's what they're looking at to determine if they should keep runes or not.
What if we took a radical approach and DIDN'T slap penalties and conditional checks on the class for simply wanting to use their primary class feature? You know, the same way that a Bard can Inspire Courage over and over without worrying about their throat getting dry and the Wizard can cast spells all day long and never suffer for it?
How much weaker could you possibly make Rage? A very minor bonus to damage and temp HP in exchange for taking a -1 AC? The bonus HP probably isn't even enough to cover a single hit or crit that you're more likely to take as a result of the AC penalty. The bonus damage is so small in the face of Monster HP and ACs that it's nearly irrelevant. When I was playtesting the Barbarian I completely forgot to apply the Fatigue penalties during the off round for one whole session and I STILL felt weaker than the Fighter and Melee focused Cleric in the group.
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I said it in another thread, but I'd like to at least try out Arcanist style casting for the Bard, Cleric, Druid, and Wizard and giving Sorcerers unlimited Spontaneous Heightening.
IF you write a rule that says roll X dice for damage, then you have to assume that people who are playing the game might actually sit there and roll X dice, and evaluate how that plays at tables. This is a playtest and how the game actually functions in the real world should be a huge consideration.
Teach people to use apps. I know there's a great tactile feel to rolling dice, but when the pool size gets large enough you are doing everyone a favor by using an app to roll. If a 3rd party app is essentially required for the game to remain functional at high levels then that's a design problem.
IMO they would be better served adding static damage to the equation than calling for more dice. Convert, say, half the dice to average damage. This will both speed up gameplay and make your limited use spell less likely to feel like a failure (even on a success).
While I very much feel that damage spells need a serious boost and I know that people love rolling dice, but I feel like there's a limit on how many dice I actually want to roll and count every time I cast a spell and these numbers are pushing past it. Combine this with the chance of rolling all 1/2s on top of the chance of the target saving against it. Personally I think it would be better to replace, say, half of the dice on each spell with average damage instead of rolling and counting. You'd trade high end potential for more consistency and things resolving quicker at the table.
Wizards start with a free spellbook that they get to upgrade for free as they level, enough to maintain a basic level of competence in their role in the party, even if the GM doesn't give them access to a wise sage they can learn new spells from or whatever. If all martials started with a free weapon and armor that they got to add magical bonuses to as they leveled then there wouldn't be nearly as much of an issue.
Well...what exactly does viable mean in this context? Can a high level Fighter (or Barbarian or Ranger or whatever) contribute to the party at a level expected (or close to it) of a character of that level if she doesn't have a high level magic sword and/or armor?
"I FOCUSED on the potion before I drank it and remembered that I should shake it up first to get the best results."
Ask yourself a supplemental question: did, in practice, actual game play, not a "let's set up a hypothetical scenario" of PF1 a level 15 Fighter ever fight with anything less than a +3 weapon barring corner cases of being disarmed despite weapon cords/having her weapon stolen/sundered/antimagic field? Yes, I've played numerous 3.5/PF1 games with GMs who think that magic items should be "special" and having anything more than, maybe, a +1 Flaming longsword at that level is "unrealistic" and that if you complain you're just being entitled.
Say you take a level 15 Fighter and swap out his normal weapon and armor with +1 versions, does this character have a hope of meaningfully contributing, do they become a liability to the party?
You might as well removed Dwarves from the game at this point. A Charisma penalty is just absolutely brutal with these rules on top of the recent changes to the ancestries already knocking them down quite a bit.
The classes that have magic are still more powerful than the classes that don't.
I don't know about that. Seems overpowered to have infinite resonance, whereas the bag of holding is balanced by requiring resonance to both be usable for the day, and every time it's used. Bag of Holding doesn't require investment. I'm just saying that if they're going to put items in the game that cost 80 gold and let the 8 STR Wizard carry 24 extra bulk, there should be an 80 gold item that lets my CHA 8 Dwarf Fighter bling out or chug an extra 2 dozen potions a day. Fair is fair.
Make everyone else arcanist style casters, but give the sorcerer spontaneous heightening on all spells known?
It's simple- because they do gobs of damage with weapons that don't have per day uses. Everyone* in the game can do gobs of damage over and over using weapons. Casters even have limitless use spells that they can cast all day. *Excpet monks, they aren't actually proficient with any weapons. Oh, or Animal totem Barbarians since using weapons are anathema to them.
Clerics and Sorcerers get 5 Skills! 5! Alchemists and Wizards are limited to 2, but as INT based characters they'll almost always be adding +4. Bards are now Full casters but still get 7 skills! How does this make sense? Why are Fighters, Barbs, and Monks getting such a pitiful number of skills? Why are they so much worse at skills than every caster in the game (other than the Druid, who has been bumped down to 3 after initially being at 4)?
If we wanted to use a...Yeah, longsword is doing fine overall with what it has. We don't want to unbalance it compared to the other one-handed weapons. The answer has to come from the bastard sword itself.I guess lowering the Two-handed damage to d10 could be an option, as well? And perhaps add another trait to the Longsword to make it an attractive choice to avoid picking the Bastard Sword over it, all the time. Agile, maybe? Though, I guess Agile wouldn't make very much sense on a Longsword, hmm...It's supposed to have only one damage type (though seems to me probably would be slashing, would need to check notes further) to prevent it from being slightly but strictly superior to the longsword and greatsword. We could also give it versatile and make it exotic; being a bit more versatile than a martial weapon with its traits but not more damaging is kind of exactly exotic's wheelhouse.So is the Bastard Sword just straight up better than the Greasword then, since you can one-hand the Bastard Sword, as well?The 5th level Barbarian pregen indicates Bastard Swords are actually Slashing, with Versatile P and Two-Hand d12. If we're trying to be realistic then a bastard sword should probably be slightly worse when wielded in one hand than an arming sword (aka a PF/fantasy novel longsword). I don't know if the system has enough options that make use of one vs 2 hands to model it well, but the big advantage of a bastard sword is indeed the versatility of switching back and forth between the different grips.
If the issue is leaving a niche for the great sword, why not just give Bastard Swords versatile but drop the damage die for 2 hands to 1d10?
If that's what the intent of the rule is then they have spectacularly failed to convey it in the text.
I assume there's a reason the industry does it this way. I think it's to make it exciting, "Here's what you can be" as opposed to drowning you in rules right when you start. For me getting frustrated because you're trying to build a character and the various class features/feats keep referencing types of actions and key words that you have no idea what they mean and have to jump to the back of the book/pdf to figure out is a bigger barrier to entry for a new player.
Shouldn't they be before character creation? I know that building a character is the exciting thing, but don't you have to know what the various actions and they like are to have a decent understanding of what many of the various feats and class features are actually doing for you. This is what I found when reading through the rules, I was having a rough time wrapping my head around the avalanche of information, particularly the walls upon walls of different feat options for each class/skill. Actually stopping and reading the Rules of Playing the Game section made it much easier to read the rest of it.
I mean, they make sure that the Fighter gets the Barbarian's Sudden Charge feat, I'm at a loss for how and why they decided that only Fighters should be good archers or TWF types.
You disagree that someone could write a story where a fictional wizard who has reached legendary status and been through many battles and all manner of adventure could beat up 10 untested rookies in a bar fight? So the problem is that The high level wizard in question doesn't fit your concept of what a high level wizard should be, not gamist vs simulationist concerns?
I'm not talking about some complex hybrid class using bits from 10 different books. I'm talking a basic Rogue who dual wields short swords OR a Ranger focused on using a longbow. Almost all of the feats that boost these styles are Fighter only. Why?
Neither of these is any more or less realistic or simulationist than the other.Yes, they are and I explained as such why that is. I'll grant you that it is indeed less 'simulationist' if you're trying to simulate a real life 10 on 1 fight (though in that case a level 16 Fighter should not fare much better against 10 level 1s than the theoretical wizard). What I should have said is that neither is more 'gamist' than the other.
You disagree that someone could write a story where a fictional wizard who has reached legendary status and been through many battles and all manner of adventure could beat up 10 untested rookies in a bar fight?
Indeed. If that lvl 16 goblin, instead of "a goblin" is Globerg The Dragonkiller, Son of Grafgh, heir of Magluybyet, the Widowmaker, Blood of Fiends, then slaughtering 20 low level guards isn't surprising. He is the goblin equivalent of Achilles. That is why he is lvl 16, a legendary level. Neither of these is any more or less realistic or simulationist than the other. An incredibly experienced legendary Wizard who has been in 10 times more life or death fights than every level 1 Fighter in the bar combined beats the crap out of a dozen inexperienced rookies with his bare hands is not any more 'gameism' than the other way of doing things. I could easily imagine such a scene playing out in a novel, film, or tv show. You're just bring a different expectation of what being a high level wizard/adventurer entails than what is provided by the rules. |
