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So I think in general for most combats a player should be compared to a level - 2 since that is what most fights will consist of. For what it's worth... I spoke with Jason Bulmahn at GenCon when the 2nd edition was released, and asked him how to make monsters of various levels until Gamemastery Guide would come out later with proper rules for making them. He recommended the game masters would do one of two things: reskin an existing monster or make a monster as a character. In the latter case, the level of the character would roughly make it equivalent to the same level monster. What does that mean? Do what you will with this info. I can tell you that it doesn't mean that pitting 1 PC against an NPC of the same level would make a balanced or fun encounter in every class/ancestry/dedication combination. This is a party game, and you are greater than the sum of the parts. It's balanced for a party of 4-6 humans working together to foil the plans of various villains run by an absent-minded fellow human being with limited attention span. :)
As a player: 1. Three-action economy is excellent. Gone are confusing swift actions, move actions, etc.2. Crits and fumbles are better. They work the same in skill checks, saves and attacks, if you beat the DC by 10 or more you crit, if you miss by 10 or less you fumble. Nat 20s and Nat 1s still matter, because they can turn a failure into a success or a crit failure into a regular failure. 3. Multiclassing is gone, if you pick fighter at first level, you are a fighter. However, you can take dedication feats to get features of a different class to mix your own combination of spells and abilities, so all "fighters" are different and yours is special. 4. Leveling requres 1000 xp per level. Simpler math. 5. Not all classes are released yet, some are still being playtested. But there are a bunch of new playable species, or ancestries as PF2 calls them. 6. Use pathbuilder2e app on android to make characters. It makes it SO much easier than going through the book. It's the best. As a gamemaster:
2. Encounter budgets are important. You can't wing them when making your own content for the game, you have to count the beans. If you throw a horde of low levels at players they might get overwhelmed by sheer numbers. If you throw more than one "boss" enemy at a time at them, that could also be problematic (bosses crit more often, shrug off spells more often, etc). A good encounter should be within 120-200 XP. Higher than that would be a slog or a brick wall of a TPK, anything lower might be over too soon or too easy. Thankfully this math is simple, just read the fine print carefully. Don't do what I did on your first game and pit your players against a group of 5 monsters who are all 2 levels above them. When the encounter difficulty table says your budget is "severe", believe it. 3. Making encounters is easy. There's a ton of bestiary entries, plus you can use pathbuilder2e app to make a monster the same way one would make a character. Level 3 character = CR 3 monster. Easy! Just count the encounter budget as I mentioned above. 4. Adventures aren't backward compatible with 1st ed. You'd have to restat all the monsters. 5. There's a handy table of how much stuff your players should earn per level. Reference it every level when building your stuff to make sure they're not too poor or too rich. Math is tight, and if you deviate too much from the guidelines you can be in a situation where the fights start being too challenging or not challenging enough. 6. Virtual tabletops, such as Roll20, Fantasy Grounds, Astral or (my favorite) Talespire can help your group meet and play while isolated in quarantine. You mentioned coming back to the hobby, so be aware that it is a changing landscape and a lot of it has gone digital in a variety of ways.
Having played and run games for decades, I have a lot of experience at the table and in the industry. It boggles me that folks are being disrespectful, but the misanthrope in me says that's what humans do. Even in a regular pick up game at a convention (paying for a con ticket is fine, but paying a gamemaster is not? what? how?) exposes one to a roll of the dice, by mere fact that you are signing up to play with strangers. Roll a d20: 1. The "strange uncle" has a torture fetish.
So as a paid game master, you get blamed for antics of other players because the expectation is that you are also a baby sitter, because they paid you money to have a good game. I don't like the expectation, but I don't have a solution.
wait does that mean a character with that feat could kill entire armies of low level characters without even fighting wow A young man went up the mountain to train in the art of the sword with a sensei. But the sensei refused to train him, for he saw the man's heart was bent on vengeance. "How can I prove my worth to you as a student?" the young man asked. "See this rock?" the sensei nodded at a boulder. "Yes?" "Break it with your sword." "That's not possible! This thing is huge, the best I could do is dull the blade!" "The best warrior is like this rock. He doesn't need to draw his sword to win the fight. Be like this rock, and you won't need what I teach."
For what it's worth, in real life, instant death is a blessing. Few people get to die "instantly". That wizard who died in the middle of a spell cast, would consider themselves lucky they didn't get to finish it. So it depends on the GM and how "gritty" the game is. Does your GM describe people getting gutted like a fish, convulsing on the floor for minutes? Then you could make the case the spell gets cast anyway with the wizard's dying breath. Do the monsters you defeat have X's over their eyes and poof into shiny XP particles, leaving no corpses behind? Then the spell doesn't go off, interrupted at the exact time the hp hits 0. Looks like it's up to the GM since the rules aren't clear.
Also can't wait for the Magus and Secrets of Magic. One of the characters I played in Pathfinder: Kingmaker CRPG was a sword saint, and it was funny to get to AC 70 by level 17-ish. Doubt I'll be able to make a Magus this tanky in 2nd edition, but I'll give it a good shot. :)
I came here from 5e, and I dig how tightly balanced the encounter system is. If your party is level 2, any monster of level 5 is a boss for you. IF your party is level 8, that same monster is a trash mob. It helps with encounter design, there's less math to do for the game master. So I'm running a Pathfinder campaign in TaleSpire with my friends who are remote and it's wonderful. I am also playing a war priest in a friend's game and I really enjoy it so far - can't wait for Channel Smite at level 4 to start wasting spell slots. :) Can you find me in this character line up? https://twitter.com/LaggingDice/status/1330548082824646664?s=20
1. Striking Spell to work similar to Channel Smite, one hit for both spell and strike damage. It shouldn't take more two actions to use, so you can move or do something different every turn. 2. Charisma or Wisdom casting options similar to Sorcerer? Primal Magus, Divine Magus? 3. More Synthesessesisess..es. Tanky magus? Two-weapon magus? Unarmed magus to be its own synthesis? Maybe make them the tank spec? (Shtick: no manipulate/concentrate traits when casting a spell through your body, being able to apply weapon runes to your FACE; headbutts!)
The only class kit to contain clothing is Witch. Swashbuckler has some clothing in "optional" section. Everyone else is buck naked. What's up with that? The class kit for magus or summoner wasn't included in the playtest document. But when we finally see it, we'll find out for sure whether Magus is Golarion's butt or not.
You are correct, I was doing my ancestry boosts wrong all along. Shame on me! Also, the rules for what is valid and not valid for these boosts and and how the interactions between different sources of boosts (ancestry, class, background) conflict with each other seem a bit... over-complicated. Reasonably balanced, mind, but over-complicated. It took me several rereads to figure out where Pathbuilder2e was doing them right and I was doing them wrong, until I got it. Would not even dream of making a character from scratch without an app double checking my math, what does that tell ya? :/
So I don't mean to be confrontational but I disagree with most of what you said. 1. Str/Dex is not only the primary stat, it is the only stat you care about as a warpriest. Okay, fine, Con matters a little bit. And if you have extra points you don't know where to put you can put them into Cha for more spell slots, but you're already swimming in them, so whatevs. Wisdom is your literal dump stat as a warpriest because you only cast heals and buffs. Meanwhile, as a magus, you want both Str and Int to be as high as possible (if you go with a finesse weapon you can substitute Str for Dex at the cost of lower damage dice). If you look closely that spells out "GLASS CANNON", because you have to dump other things to reach peak efficiency and start out with two 18's. 2. Pick the right deity (GORUM!) and your weapon is your choice. 3. While expert weapon proficiency lags behind for the warpriest, you instead have a lot more spell slots to slot true strike and harm into. And these true strikes help you not miss. Oh and you can fit both true strike and channel smite into the same turn, isn't that nice? 4. Meanwhile magus has to max out both Str and Int and still suffers from double jeopardy, where the attack hits, but the spell has a high chance of missing. It's like crit confirmations all over again, remember those? Hey, so this boss has a high AC and on the first turn after Striking Spell you missed the attack roll and kept your spell. On the second turn you can try again, right? That's a non-zero chance of another miss. What happens then? You're looking at multiple attack penalty for the next attack, which you have to use or lose the spell. If this third attempt hits (or the fourth, as you fish for 20s), the same multiple attack penalty applies to the spell attack riding on it. At which point you may consider looking at an agile weapon just so you can hit slightly more often. Say goodbye to that sweet d12 damage die. It's like a long con to make you choose a light weapon instead of a two-hander and get synergy for Dex, Reflex save and AC. Ah but the solution is clearly to use spells that use saves instead of attack rolls so they don't suffer from multiple attack penalty, right? Oops, there goes your flexibility. On a side note, spells and save DCs don't benefit from various to hit bonuses you get from status effects like Bless or Inspire Courage, or from weapon runes. So the idea of "not losing a spell" is a red herring, meant to distract you from the critical problem of "I can't land these spells" and "I don't have spell slots to waste". This line of thinking reduces a flexible glass cannon magus into a predictable risk averse cantrip spammer. Guess who doesn't need to worry about landing a spell? That dudebro chad over there with Channel Smite. Heave ho! One track mind: max one stat, get the best weapon and hack away. 5. Is channel smite limited? Yes. It doesn't apply all the debuffs you get from fancier spells, when you can land them. But you don't need to dance in and out of melee range to use it, and you have the rest of your turn to stay on top of a moving enemy or punish them for standing still with true strike. Channel Smite is a lot more steady and reliable source of damage overall. So yeah, these are different feats for different classes: one of them bellows "GORUM WITNESS MEEE!" and the other one wishes they could do the same. :) Insult to injury: warpriest can heal, and her healing isn't affected by dumped Wisdom in any way. How does that make you feel?
Channel Smite is always 2 actions, which gives you an extra action to move or cast Shield or whatever, regardless of the Harm's level. Channel Smite doesn't have a manipulate or concentrate trait, provoking no attacks of opportunity, at all, ever. Channel Smite is way better, even though the only thing it delivers is damage, not any debuffs or other effects.
A lot of builds rely on true strike spam one can get from a shifting staff of divination to make this class work. Such a specific item dependency is problematic. Maybe the magus should have a feat or other mechanic that lets them turn high level spell slots into true strikes, rather than rely on gamemasters knowing which item fixes the class?
Furthermore, Disruptive Stance on a fighter can screw you up when you cast Striking Spell, since it has 'concentrate' trait, which gives (admittedly high-level) fighter an AoO. I didn't even think that Strike to unload Striking Spell also provokes AoO. That makes me sad. Compare Magus Striking Spell to Warpriest's Channel Smite. That's how you do it. No manipulate trait, no concentrate trait, no problem. Bam!
Since you can't raise a tome and have a free hand if you have a weapon, you either need to have prehensile tail, a second set of arms or be a magumonk. An idea for a build came to mind. Take Magus with sliding synthesis, and punch people in the face for non-lethal damage at first level, while raising your special book in defense. At second level get Weapon Improviser Dedication. And from there on out, your spell book is all the weapon you need. Maybe add a monk dedication down the road. If you find a useful staff, slap shifting rune on it and turn it into a book. Silly, yes, functional? Does it matter? The important part is having fun. What could be more fun than playing a brainless religious zealot? Can't think of anything so there you go.
Let me introduce you to my friend Gorum and my other friend, two-handed sword. :) Have you considered a career in smiting and glory hounding? I feel you, I played the hell out of a sword saint, and this magus archetype isn't cutting it (hehe), but a warpriest just might. Might. Get it?
Any spell or cantrip that forces a target to save instead of rolling to hit with a spell attack is more reliable because of MAP. If you miss on the last action after Striking Spell, you can try three more times on the next turn. First chance at +0 MAP, second chance at -5 MAP, last chance at -10 MAP. MAP doesn't affect saves, only strikes and spell attacks. So Acid Splash is hard to land with -10 to hit, but Daze still requires the same basic save at -10 MAP as it does at +0 MAP. Its damage is not as good, but hey, stunned 1 can still happen.
So, a cleric of Gorum and a magus walk into a bar... and nobody's surprised when they bring swords to a bar fight. If both of them use two-handed weapons, it begs the comparison on how they function. Cleric of Gorum pre-Channel Smite: pretty much like a fighter, i.e. Strike, Strike again, maybe Demoralize. Might also do 'cast True Strike', then Strike, then maybe 'Cast Shield'. But at level 4, they get Channel Smite. Which lets them burn a heal or harm to do extra damage on a Strike for the low cost of 2 actions. No extra to-hit or resist rolls, no chance for extra crit, just burn a spell slot and get more damage dice, and you have one action left for movement or other useful things like healing or demoralizing. What does a magus get?
Cleric:
Magus:
Who would win? My money is on the cleric. With certain feats the two-handed weapon magus can be very tanky, and might even defeat an equal level cleric in a duel if they get overconfident with heals and get spiked down by a crit, but against a mobile enemy the magus may have a hard time, especially if that mobile enemy has ranged attacks. The cleric has a lot more resources to throw at a problem and can get strong heals on demand, along with better, more flexible action economy. I feel like the cleric would be more enjoyable to play if not outright better in some ways.
Raise a tome is problematic, because of the hand economy the magus has. If you're wielding a one-handed weapon, you need a free hand for fun feats and electric-sliding around. If you're wielding a two-handed weapon, you need a prehensile tail. So you can only really raise a tome if you're an unarmed magumonk.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems the whole point of having this feat is to give a break to people using two-handers, so they don't have to do the "free hand" - "interact" shuffle to cast a three-action spell with a material component and eat attacks of opportunity doing so while wasting precious actions. Instead it specifically requires a free hand. Who would use this? The baby got thrown out with the water. To add insult to injury, raise a tome feat requires you to hold a book. Do any of the published ancestries have access to prehensile tails? Or is this only something an unarmed magumonk would use?
Comparing to Warpriest's Channel Smite, it's a bit of a wash. Channel Smite costs 2 actions and expends a heal or harm spell to deal straight up damage if you hit with a melee attack. In comparison, Magus' Striking Spell:
I prefer Channel Smite mechanics overall, because there is less uncertainty and fewer dice rolls. YMMV. EDIT: concentrate trait is a landmine! Channel Smite doesn't have a concentrate trait, meaning that a fighter in a disruptive stance wouldn't be able to shut it down with an attack of opportunity.
I agree, the wording on the Striking Spell (pages 5-6) is confusing. At first glance, it seems that this free action means that you then spend two actions Casting a Spell and then one more action to Strike, but at a second glance, the wording is ambiguous. It could be interpreted or argued that you make a Strike for free as part of the Casting a Spell activity, but it does not get called out specifically and I doubt this is the case.
I will add 8: make player decisions matter. Players love derailing adventures with curve balls. Let them. It does not mean you need to be a pushover. It only means that when an encounter ends not the way you expected, you can figure out what happens next, improvising if you have to. Say they throw a clutch spell or crit on a skill check and pull a cow corpse out of a bag of holding and the owlbear is friendly now, what then? It is a magical moment and it needs to be savored. Let these magical moments create waterfall effects through your adventure. They should have a profound effect, not just "ok lets get back on the rails".
I like the Witch, because it's the only class in the game whose recommended adventuring class kit includes clothes. Swashbuckler's kit has an "optional" set of fine clothes, but you know, it's clearly listed as clothing optional. :) All the other class kits in the game have no clothes at all. I don't think it's an error or a coincidence. People of Golarion are brave in many ways, the Witch is the only sensible and modest one.
Yes. Also, curiously enough, I read an article written by someone who works in life insurance about a human average lifespan, if we didn't die of old age and related illnesses. In other words, accidental deaths only. An average (median?) human would live about 9000 years. I imagine this number would be significantly lower on Golarion because of all the crazy magical monsters and cults and worldwounds spontaneously opening up. :) So, you can make your own conclusions how long a gnome on Golarion can survive, particularly if they are an adrenaline junkie.
My google fu has failed me. Is there a mailing list or something similar to participate in this? The information I see doesn't seem official, is it all just rumors at this point? Sorry if I'm missing something obvious, but I am. Bonus giggles: anyone notice how class kits in the core rulebook don't include any clothes? Who let bards and barbarians set the fashion expectations in 2e? :)
From my humble experience as a GM, I find the idea of "nobody in the second room in the dungeon heard the fight in the first room" more mind-boggling than the concept of HP. Did your party of all rogues pull off a perfectly synchronized assassination with not a single enemy able to yelp out a warning for help? No? Then you better clear out the whole dungeon in one go, or the rest of its denizens will: a) fortify the hell out of it
From that perspective, my dungeons are usually 1-2 rooms. If you're sneaky or clever you might be able to bypass the first or do shenanigans to split up your enemies. But the kobolds/goblins/wolves/elves/whatever will not sit around wondering when you'll come over to murderize them once they start hearing disturbing noises from the room down the hall. Unless the game has really high stakes: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/inattentive-guards
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