Palinurus's page

I like where Bards have ended up. They are definitely in the top three for overall power (depending on your definition). I think it is reasonable to use them as benchmark for upper limits of what a class should be able to do. I think they are a good example of how party composition is more important to optimization in 2e than it was in 1e. Champion and cleric have a similar ability to transform how a party functions (though they are a little harder to build optimally than a Bard who acts as a force multiplier from level 1).

Other than the Electric Arc issue, these are all easily fixed by houserules -

Ignore Incapacitation.

I'm personally OK with incapacitation, but if I had to change it I'd remove the one step improvement in saves and have it only turn a critical fail into a fail.

This looks amazing. I will try them in action as soon as I get time to transfer my existing characters. So far my main disappointment with Pathfinder 2e is the lack of a great character sheet. We got spoiled using your 3.5 and 1e character sheets. I made a small donation as a thank you.

Excellent guide. Just a couple of points. First drain bonded item doesn't allow you to cast any spell in your spell book (it must be one prepared and already cast). Second, personally I'd rate Fear top tier in actual play because of how useful the effect on a successful save is (and if they fail the save Frightened 2 is amazing).

Dire Ursus wrote:

You have to wonder. All of the GMs I've seen on this forum that claim full TPKs on every chapter are also ones that if you look at their post history were overly unhappy and negative of the system as soon as it was announced. It really can't be a coincidence.

Yeah, confirmation bias, I am seeing some of it on both sides (those initially overly excited and shilling PF2, now claiming it runs perfectly and they have 0 problems with any encounters, etc). Some on both sides have probably not even played, it's just the way of things.

Indeed. I have had mostly very good playtest experiences so far but still recognise problems in the system. I think play and GM style matter greatly in TPKs. I generally get few player deaths in PF1 (or 3.5 etc.) but have played in groups (or watched play in groups) which seem to have lots of deaths - and style seems to be a big factor. A simple example: if I GM and a player declares an action that (in game) their character would 100% know is stupid or risky I will warn them (especially for a new player - less so for an experienced player). I've seen games where the GM doesn't do that.

Personally, I'd like to see more spells that have effect on a successful save and cantrips get a small bump in damage to make them strictly better than using a magic crossbow (currently, they track very closely to that).

However, the real issues I've seen with casters haven't had much to do with their damaging spells. Heck, damaging spells have worked better than the non-damaging ones.

I largely agree. We're still play testing but our experience is that spells are not far off where they need to be. I'd like to see a small boost to damaging spells including cantrips, more interesting partial effects on saves and a bit of un-nerfing of utility spells (depending on the spell in question). The sorcerer also probably needs a bit of a boost (maybe just for the Divine spell list).

Some of this could be done tweaking spell lists - but also maybe some of this could be done by improving class or other feat options..

bwee wrote:

I have no idea why your party is consistently dying, the fights are difficult but not "always a TPK"

The thing is, then every fight is a 'near TPK' it doesn't take much to push it into a total TPK'. A low healing roll, a missed swing, a monster crit, low initiative, ect. We had combat start, monsters went first, resulting in multiple people on the ground all before a single player action. There is a razor thin margin for survival in a non-cleric party from what I've seen. Things turn south quickly and it's quite tough to turn it around without using all your resources or a cleric.

I find this surprising. I've had no deaths or TPKs and run a non-cleric party for Lone Star and a non-optimised cleric for Pale Mountain. There have been tough encounters but not close to TPK.

I was a little dismayed that one of my favorite classes, the Oracle was removed from the new Pathfinder.

To be fair - it wasn't really removed. They added one of the base classes to core rules and I believe they nearly chose Oracle (two if you include Cavalier). I took from that they intend to add the base classes back in in some way (though some might be added as archetypes like Cavalier).

N N 959 wrote:

Double Slice is a two-action Strike. You can only do it once per turn. That also means you can't use it in any round that you have to move and Command Animal.

Yep. I found it almost totally useless. Quick Draw is essential to even try. I had an animal companion and rarely used it because I needed to move and attack. Over the entire Pale Mountain adventure I only got my alpha strike of Working Together with animal companion and Double Slice attack twice.

To get that over a fighter, the ranger gets worse armour, no shield option, and -1 to hit.
I never used Hunt Target.
Two weapon fighting is very hard with the action economy. It doesn't have any good options.
The clerics and druids have better initiative, survival and nature skills.
I do like that Rangers don't have spells, but having tried one, they really do suck in this playtest.

We have a switch hitter for Pale Mountain that seems to work well. Usually starts as quick draw Longbow with hunt target and then quick draw shortsword and main gauche if switching to melee. He has been a bit unlucky (the first half of our initial encounter no D20 roll over 10). He has the best hit points and AC in the party (23 if he parries). I think a fighter would be mechanically stronger in combat but the skills have been really useful.

I've run all of the first chapter of DD and we're 3 encounters into Pale Mountain and have had one PC death and only 2 PCs go to zero. We were robbed of the difficulty of the last fight in Lost Star do to poor PC tactics which split the party.

However skill wis and general power-wise all of these PCs feel weaker than their first Ed counterparts. So saying they succeed in everything is far from the truth at lower levels.

My experience is similar - at least four characters dropped (plus the animal companion and a familiar) in Lost star and Pale mountain so far. No deaths but some close calls and a fight that nearly ended in a TPK (though the bad rolling and sudden reversal would have probably led to a similar outcome in PF1).

Cleric absolutely needs a nerf to channel (they are otherwise fine). Making everyone as good as the current cleric would make the game a cakewalk.

I disagree - but my dwarf cleric only has three heals a day (but the battle cleric feat is really helping). My playtest experience so far suggests improving other healers would be better. I think with an optimised healer cleric you can get by with only one source of healing but it feels as though you need a couple to get by without one at the moment.

Vivisectionist alchemist archetype?

But the Leave campaign flirted pretty close to demonising foreigners, which is not exactly very nice. Remember that immigration was their big argument, despite the fact that all the stuff about immigrants clogging up the NHS and welfare was basically untrue (actually, it's the old age pensioners, who mostly voted to leave, doing that). The Remain camp pretty much just told us we'd all be f~*@ed if we left. And that may yet come to pass.

The remain campaign exaggerated a few points, but I saw no evidence of outright lies. The leave campaign had lies and misinformation from day one that they refused to correct during the campaign. Here is Farage admitting that their central claim was false and there will be no £350M per day windfall for the NHS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8UjkoFfG2Y

Other big lies: NHS is at breaking point because of immigrants. Immigrants are young and pay more in taxes than they take out of the NHS. Our elderly are cared for in the NHS by immigrant doctors and nurses - because we don't train enough doctors and nurses. (This will get worse under the Conservative government who are removing bursaries for training student nurses).

There were many other big and little lies. One I spotted was that they blamed the EU for the European Court of Human Rights' ruling to award prisoners the vote. The ECHR is not an EU institution and its role is via law enacted by Westminster.

The heart of this discussion is, I think, I really interesting topic and (although I think I mostly disagree with the original poster) I'm glad they set out their position. Ultimately the correct answer depends on how you want to run your game.

When I run games set in fantasy worlds like Golarion I draw on my understanding of real world (European) history as an inspiration. Although I'm not a historian my reading is that religious and secular authorities had a complex and intriguing relationship. Members of the clergy had authority that derived from temporal, political, moral and in many case legal power. Canon law is the most obvious example, but even without a separate legal system being invoked there is no reason to think that an established church could not have huge latitude in how it conducted its affairs and how it interacted with the rest of the world.

So in my games a cleric or paladin could most definitely have legal authority in some situations - certainly when dealing with church matters (provided that the church in question was recognised or respected in that region). Several churches (Abadar, Sarenrae etc.) in Golarion would - in my view - have powers in relation to civil or criminal law within their remit - especially outside major cities. Exercising that authority is a little different from real history because there will often be more than one 'church' and because of the risk of divine intervention if a paladin or cleric doesn't behave appropriately.

Real history is a lot weirder in this regard than you might think. The poet Ben Jonson once killed someone in a duel, was charged with manslaughter, having sufficient scholarship to recite a bible verse managed to get tried under a form of canon law and escaped serious punishment (well, he was branded, but only on the thumb).

There are/were plenty of real world bestiarys, it's safe to assume there would be many such works written in a fantasy setting. Of course, they may or may not be all that accurate.

The accuracy issue is important and suggests that the bonus to skill model is most sensible. Many ancient bestiaries and encyclopaedias were pretty inaccurate so it would take some skill to sort the misinformation from the useful stuff. A modern analogy is wikipedia - if you have enough knowledge to disregard the inaccurate information it can be very helpful. Just assuming it is correct leads to major problems ...

A character can lift double his max load over his head, if he's not doing anything else..

My rules say they can just about lift double max load. That seems reasonably plausible if they can get a good grip and the shape isn't awkward.