Pandora's's page

Yep this is what an over concern with balance has done to the system.

Everyone is now the same. The stats are not really important any more. But stats were never a big part of D&D. May as well symplify things again and just get rid of them all together.

This is an interesting take. Ability scores matter way more than they used to, because you can't stack items and feats to a 100% chance of success anymore. Every point of ability score between you and someone else is a 5 percentage point difference in chance of success that usually can't be made up for another way. The person with the best bonus in a skill is very often the person with the highest relevant ability modifier, so long as it's trained. None of that is true in 1e. This is all true because of the "over concern with balance" you speak of.

To me, the answer is that in this world of fantastic heroes, the power differential between individuals dwarfs the power differential between ancestries. When you see the difference in capability between a level 1 human and that same human at level 20, it makes a whole lot more sense why the difference between a level 1 human and level 1 halfing is a rounding error.

If they have a workable algorithm and there is no reason they can't use it, why not just go ahead and tell them they succeed without the song and dance? The important part of the Detect Magic changes is that such an algorithm takes much more time so it's not viable in combat/under time pressure the way it was and that illusions aren't automatically seen through. Just saying "you take the next couple minutes to determine these two items are magical" seems like it should work great.

It is, because most of the encumbrance issues are around the stuff you have in your backpack rather than "can I fight effectively while I'm holding onto an inconvenient beach ball"...

I get that people don't like the minutae of tracking the weight of everything, what I don't get is why they think a system that clearly doesn't do what it's supposed to is an improvement over what they had before, just because the maths involved in a system that doesn't work is easier.

That's not even remotely true. In this same thread, there's been discussion about characters who hit their light encumbrance limit with just their worn armor and weapons strapped around their body. There's also been discussion of carrying loads in your arms.

Even if that were true, you've still got a crazy unrealistic abstraction for your backpack capacity because volume is completely ignored. Items don't have listed volume, so you literally cannot track it. Because bulk can represent something light but large and unwieldy, it at least acknowledges this other axis.

You need to face the fact that your favored abstraction is also riddled with holes because it is a terribly simplistic abstraction. Just because you don't like the new abstraction as much doesn't mean it doesn't do what it's supposed to do and doesn't have areas it outperforms your favored abstraction.

I don't get the argument that weight is more accurate for tracking carrying capacity. Tracking solely weight is just as much of an abstraction. It is much easier to carry X weight as a long rod than X weight as a long flat box. It takes vastly more strength to swing around a 15 lb greatsword than it does to carry a 100 lb backpack. The same object is usually vastly easier to carry with lifting straps than unassisted. Which muscle groups are having to take the weight and how long any lever arms involved are matter just as much as weight. Bulk is clearly an attempt to represent how much easier it is to carry a 100 lb backpack than a 100 lb beach ball. The fact that it's simpler and uses smaller, more easily managed numbers is just gravy.

And that's all assuming GMs can somewhat accurately guess weight for objects where it isn't predefined, which they can't. People are famously bad at estimating this.

I think there actually is a problem if all skill feats scaled with proficiency. Since you can only advance a small handful of skills past trained, you'd feel like you were missing out on most of the effects of your feats if you if you didn't put all your skill feats into skills you advanced. If I get 5 effects from an Acrobatics skill feat because I'm legendary but only one effect from a Diplomacy skill feat, I'm less likely to consider the Diplomacy feat than I would without everything scaling.

There's also the problem that when a feat scales, it has to be split across the proficiency tiers. A feat that might have given benefit X that was reasonable as a Master-level feat may now have that effect as the Legendary effect because it was the best effect the designers came up with. You lose some design agility when there are several tiers that must be filled.

I fully support feats scaling when it feels like a natural progression and the end result is not so powerful that it pushes you to only invest in feats for skills you're advancing. I think Cat Fall does this well. I could see having a character with Legendary Acrobatics and not taking Cat Fall.

People who didn't like it dropped out very quickly and many of them didn't even bother to complete the surveys. A great majority of them walked away.

Emphasis mine. Unless you are a multimillionaire who spent copious resources to do your own polling, you have literally no way to know this. You make claims that you have no ability to support, which makes your arguments not credible and shows your bias. You need to either argue solely from a stance of your opinion or you need to back up your claims.

One quick houserule makes the Unchained action system work vastly better for PF1: the first ex-swift action used per turn is a free action instead of 1 action. This prevents the many feats/classes that rely on being able to do a swift action in addition to everything else from being screwed. Examples include Maguses, Inquisitors, Arcane Armor Training, Arcane Strike, etc.

I think it's important for Pathfinder as a game to not have prepared casting, Arcanist-style or otherwise. It's the biggest contributor to the caster/martial disparity and causes other narrative and encounter design problems.

It turns out that when some characters can effectively switch out their entire ability set on a daily basis and other characters can't, those with the vast diversity can take over the game a bit. It's hard enough to make non-magical abilities feel valuable alongside magical ones without the magical options also being switched out daily to best suit the current situation. Abilities like Quick Preparation make this effect even worse: any problem that can wait 10 minutes can usually be solved with magic. Non-casters need not even pick up their character sheets.

The enormous nerfs to magic in the playtest were related to prepared casting, I think. Powerful magic abilities will often be disruptive in terms of adventure design. Flight spells mean that most movement-impairing hazards are obsolete. Teleportation renders travel time moot. Death Ward trivializes many forms of undead. These are effectively silver bullets. That isn't all bad; it makes player playing the spellcaster feel awesome and allows the party to easily solve certain types of problems they might not like dealing with. Picking spells like this allows you to choose which types of problems you will be best at solving. As long as there are other kind of problems, the spellcaster gets to have their time in the limelight and there are still other interesting obstacles for the party to be challenged by. The spellcaster can apply spells in creative ways to create partial solutions to some of these other challenges.

The problem with trading out abilities is that you can have disruptively powerful solutions to most types of problems, at which point little else can challenge the party and the spellcaster is doing far more than anyone else because they're hitting nearly every problem with silver bullets. Why go through hours of real-time effort when you can instead say "let the wizard prepare new spells and cast X" and solve the problem in 5 real-time minutes? The typical answer to that is time-pressure in the adventure, but that doesn't always hold up in practice and unnecessarily limits the kinds of stories that can be told, which is really suboptimal in a story-telling game. If you allow abilities like Quick Preparation, even time pressure won't work.

The power level of spells in the playtest is what happens when you try to make spells not so disruptive. All that versatility isn't a problem if the solutions aren't all that effective at solving problems. Turns out that feels really dissatisfying and they're rolling those changes back. If they end up with silver bullet spells again without removing prepared casting, we'll end up with all the same magic-related problems that PF1 had. Remove prepared spellcasting and you can get away with vastly more powerful magic and have a much more functional cooperative game, which is an enormous win-win in my book.

Among other things, I hope the Quiet Allies feat lets nearby allies act as trained in Stealth.

I hope it also allows you to spend an action to let an ally you can see roll a Stealth check with your proficiency modifier. The party rogue can then peak down the hallway, motioning for allies to cross when it's safest. I think the group checks problem is mostly a Stealth problem, and surely that can be solved more directly.

I'm interested in this subject. I recently tried to make my own game system based on the idea that all characters should feel awesome, and I found it hard to decide what should be restricted to higher levels. If flight is going to be a thing the GM has to deal with, why not have it available from level 1 for someone who wants to specialise in that? If teleportation doesn't break high-level play, then it doesn't (necessarily) break low level play.

This is a huge part of why I like Spheres of Power so well. It removes most level gates. The reason it can do that is that you are not able to change your abilities from day to day (with a couple of very limited exceptions). You get abilities from level 1 that are capable of trivializing a specific kind of challenge, like surviving in the wilderness without water. Since you can't change your abilities, though, that's a fairly permanent part of your character. You can't decide to only trivialize need for water when you're in a desert. That means two things. One, one character can't trivialize most challenges. Two, a GM can reliably make a character have an opportunity to shine by providing a problem they are well-equipped for and can reliably challenge a character/party by ensuring there are problems for which the group does not have a silver bullet.

If you allow a character to have access to all abilities (even if not all on a given day), then you have to make sure no ability is overly disruptive. You have to pick between access to all abilities but none are powerful enough to be truly disruptive or access to only some abilities but they can be disruptive. High level Vancian magic is such a narrative problem because it gives complete access to an enormous list of highly disruptive abilities.

In case my conclusion isn't clear by this point, dynamically swappable abilities is the problem. Martial Flexibility, prepared Vancian spellcasters, etc are what need to go.

But failure can certainly create difficulty.

A lower success rate on any d20 roll doesn't make succeeding on the check more difficult, it just makes success less likely. The distinction is that the player doesn't have any agency as part of the roll. Whether they are likely to succeed or unlikely to succeed, all they can do is make their roll and see what happens.

However, failing a roll does create difficulty in two ways. One source of difficulty is dealing with the consequences of a failed roll. A failed roll often results in a new problem (I slipped and am now at the bottom of the pit, I failed my save and now I can't hear what my allies are saying, etc) that requires a new solution. Having more problems to solve makes the game more difficult. The player/character has agency and shows skill by solving these new problems. The less likely a roll is to fail, the less likely it is to create difficulty. No chance of failure then means no chance of difficulty.

The other way failed rolls create difficulty is in the form of decisions and methods of achieving goals. A given problem often can be solved by many different methods that vary in how likely they are to succeed. A better plan should have a higher chance to succeed than a worse one (In PF1, for example, a plan that only required a minor request required a much lower Diplomacy DC than one that required a major request). Coming up with plans that are more likely to succeed is a form of difficulty, and deciding whether a given method of solving a problem is worth the risk is also a form of difficulty. A player/character has agency and shows skill by finding and choosing better methods that are more likely to succeed or have lower risk. If even a bad plan has no risk or chance of failure, then the quality of the method used to solve a problem doesn't matter and no difficulty is created.

As a character levels up, there are only three possibilities for their success rate relative to level-appropriate challenges: their success rate increases, decreases, or stays the same. A decreasing success rate relative to appropriate challenges feels pretty disheartening, so I think most agree that isn't a good idea. The two other possibilities imply different ways challenge can grow as a character levels.

If success rate stays the same, the number of challenges created by failure remains the same. It is likely that increasing difficulty will take the form of harder problems as consequences of a failure or increasing difficulty in finding low-risk solutions to problems.

If success rate grows higher, the number of challenges created by failures decreases. This usually means that an opponent's success rate has also increased, so the majority of challenges will be created by the opposition succeeding. When everyone has powerful abilities they usually succeed in using, rocket tag can result. However, I don't think it has to. What caused rocket tag in PF1 was that high level abilities didn't usually create new problems; they created endings. Dropping someone to -100 HP from full HP in a round isn't a problem that can usually be solved in combat. Failing a save against Phantasmal Killer, or worse, being hit with Power Word Death, wasn't solvable either. Baleful Polymorph having a permanent duration rendered it unsolvable. However, being polymorphed for a duration or being mind controlled were solvable problems (though possibly not solvable enough).

If success rate is going to increase with level, then counterplay must exist and be suitably accessible, both in and out of combat. Higher level foes would have more abilities and more challenging abilities to counter, and higher level players would have more tools at their disposal to solve problems and create problems for the opponent. This creates a feeling of advancement and increasing difficulty even with gradually increasing rates of success. One caveat, though, is that skill rolls are much less frequently opposed and so increasing success rates can potentially make combat the only real source of challenge.

Neither of these two possibilities for rate of success and their accompanying methods of increasing difficulty are inherently better, nor are they entirely mutually exclusive. It just a matter of what kind of game the designers want to create. I would prefer either of these possibilities, though, to a game where increasing difficulty is supposed to come from the numbers.

My ultimate point of this very long post is that when discussing difficulty, the numbers are largely beside the point as long as there is a chance of failure. As playtesters, we should focus on making sure the tools needed to create and solve difficult situations are a part of this ruleset because the numbers cannot give difficulty or depth on their own. If success rates are to increase, we also need to make sure adequate counterplay exists so that high level play isn't plagued by rocket tag like in the previous edition.

This topic is only slightly adjacent to the existing +1/level discussions, so please keep discussion along those lines in those threads.

The problem with alignment, IMO, is that people tend to find a way to attribute their values to the alignment they like most. When I see someone say that all of the values in the three Paladin codes are all LG, the law-chaos axis has lost its meaning. I'd prefer a more modular Paladin that builds a code from ideals directly. That would be more clear compared to a code derived from alignment, with it's endless arguments and ambiguity on what each alignment means.

I think there are four design flaws with feats that can cause a player to feel they don't have a meaningful choice.

1. I have to take a feat I don't want as a prerequisite for one I do want (feat tax).
2. I have to continually spend feats to keep an ability relevant.
3. A certain feat is so much more powerful than the other options that it eclipses them and I have to either take it or fall far under performance expectations for my class.
4. No feats available to fill a slot are at all interesting and so I try to pick the least bad one.

The playtest is pretty good at avoiding type 1, and I haven't noticed too many of type 3. (To clarify, there are feats that are better than others, but few that are so much better that they cause an inordinate amount of performance difference compared to all other options. Some examples of overbearing feats in PF1 are Leadership, Craft Wondrous Items, pre-nerf Divine Protection, and Spell Perfection.) I've seen many people complain of the type 4 issue when picking general and skill feats.

I think some classes do have serious problems with type 2 flaws. Animal companions have been mentioned in this thread. Anything that is so powerful that the devs feel it should require continued expenditure of feats to keep relevant should either be removed or made into a core class or class path ability that scales automatically. It feels bad psychologically to have "choice slots" picked for you, so it's better for such abilities to not interact with "choice slots."

Archery fighters also have a type 2 flaw with Doubleshot, Triple Shot, and Multishot Paragon. The bonuses keep getting better but that's largely to keep their much smaller ranged weapon dice relevant compared to other weapons. Other types of fighter can spend their feats on new capabilities instead of just keeping existing ones relevant. I'm not sure if this is just due to power like animal companions or a "felt thematically right and made the damage numbers work," but it ends of feeling the same way at the end of the day.

I like the new Paladin aesthetic. People wanted a Good-restricted alignment-focused class, and that's what they got. It's fitting that the Goodest Guy emphasizes defending allies and support, with murder ability a distant second. The implication that the Goodest Guy can be a wrathful violence-obsessed murder machine is pretty uncomfortable to me. I'm glad that's gone.

Also, let's not pretend that there isn't widespread precedent for a fantasy "Paladin" having a defense or support focus, and not just in those darned newfangled MMOs.

Magic items having mostly irrelevant DCs is a problem that needs solved somehow. So many items in PF1 were cool in theory but just never worth using for that reason alone. The other obvious solution is the item's DC somehow depends on the character using it, but that feels pretty gamey to me.

One glaring example of traditionalists being respected is Vancian spellcasting sticking around. I'll bet nearly anything that if the devs were making a game that didn't have a legacy of Vancian spellcasting, there's no chance they'd use it. Too complex, fiddly, and doesn't match broad fantasy tropes well. There's plenty being left in primarily to keep traditionalists being kept happy, they're just getting less attention because they're not being removed.

The suffering of those who lament the loss of the LG-specific Paladin is real. Belittling it and, even worse, implying that those people are some kind of tyrants is far from graceful on the part of those who feel like they have "won" here

I don't think it's reasonable to hold a position of "everyone must do things my way and only my way" and then expect sympathy when you don't get your way. That position inherently devalues the opinions of others, and it's far from surprising that some people aren't thrilled by it. Not everyone who liked that particular Paladin aesthetic held that position, but some very vocal people on this board did.

And it's about dang time. Classes with narrow flavor don't belong in the core rulebook of a roleplaying game meant to work for multiple settings. The Paladin, as it has existed, belonged in some setting-specific splatbook. Hopefully this mistake won't be repeated and we'll get only generic, broad fantasy tropes for the hardcover line.

The people saying that there should be only one divinely-powered full martial class and it should be restricted to a single alignment boggle my mind. Your aesthetic preferences are not gospel, and other people should be allowed to play and enjoy things outside your personal preferences. It is because of this mentality that I am so pleased to see the LG restriction going away. I hate to see that mentality concerning a cooperative, shared experience.

I also appreciate how the Paladin specializations all emphasize different ways of doing good deeds. I've always found it weird that so much of the Paladin flavor was doing violence to evil. The Goodest Guy should focus on helping people first and killing people when necessary, not the other way around.

I like the class specializations too. Gives the core book more character diversity and scratches a little bit of that class archetype itch. Also front loads abilities a little more so that players have more to do at level 1.

Generally lackluster abilities
Feats, class features, and spells tend to be minor improvements or rarely useful. I love the amount of customization in the playtest, but I have to care about what those abilities do for it to be worth the effort. I need to have a hard time deciding which one I like best, not picking out which one seems least bad. This issue determines whether I play PF2 or not.

Success rates and specialization
While attack rolls might be able to use a small bump, this applies mostly to skills. Items shouldn't be required to be competent in a skill. You should be able to be competent, numerically, in a skill without having the highest possible proficiency and without having an maxed out ability modifier. Being Trained in many skills feels lackluster because failure is so high for all but your absolute best.

There are innumerable environment factors, but I don't see that as a reason to not comprehensively handle the two locating senses that PCs are guaranteed to have and then handle exceptions from there. Something like
"It is often not possible to Sense a creature who is both invisible and silent, but environmental factors like footprints, displaced water, or being covered in flour may allow the creature to still be Sensed."

The problem with the rules as they are is that they mandate that a creature who takes any action other than Hide or Sneak will always be Sensed, even when no environmental factors provide a reason for that. You can end up stuck between following the rules and the game world being consistent and intuitive. If you assume that invisible, silent creature cannot be Sensed unless an appropriate environmental factor is present, environmental factors still work like they should but you don't end up in that situation with rules with no in-world explanation.

This approach would not require covering each possible interaction. What I wrote above is probably close to sufficient. However, some common cases like incorporeal creatures should probably be covered so that we know what the dev's intent was when building those creatures. The poltergeist from the playtest is what caused me to make this thread.

Anyway, I'm done with this thread. It has become clear to me that my biggest problem is the interaction of the Stealth rules, invisibility, and silence effects and I've opened a different thread here to discuss that. I think the poltergeist, based on its abilities, suffers from these issues enough to try to get some dev attention for it, which was the purpose of this thread. With how this thread has devolved, there's little chance a dev will read it and I'm bored of being told how I'm not bending over backwards far enough to make nonsense rules make sense.

The Sneak action says that invisible creatures become Sensed when they perform any action that isn't Hide or Sneak. That makes enough sense assuming they are still making an appreciable amount of sound. However, the silence spell causes you to create no sound. If a creature is invisible and silent while taking an action to pull something out of a pack, what is giving them away to make them Sensed? This is assuming the opposing creature has no special senses, like blindsense, tremorsense, or scent. If this interaction between invisibility and silence is too powerful, that's fine, make it somehow incompatible. The current interaction doesn't make sense.

Also, with the changes to the Sneak action, Sneak is pretty clearly about moving without being heard. If you stay out of cover/concealment for long enough (past the end of a Sneak action, normally) you are spotted, but you always must make a Stealth roll, even when cover/concealment haven't yet come into the equation. Why is it, then, that invisibility gives a natural 20 on Stealth checks (which once again allows a low level spell to mostly replace a skill; it'd be better for it to be removed entirely if there's no better alternative) and Silence gives no explicit benefit to Sneak? I think it'd be better if invisibility gave a bonus/automatic result on Hide and removed the need for cover/concealment from Sneak, and Silence gave the bonus/automatic result on Sneak.

Many undead currently have a quality called negative healing that is not defined in the playtest rulebook, as has been pointed out elsewhere. More problematically, most but not all undead have the ability. Mummies, ghasts, and wights all have it, so I figured that the accidentally-omitted ability must be what makes undead heal from negative damage and be damaged by positive. When I got to the poltergeist in the playtest, I thus thought that it must not take damage from channel energy, because every other undead so far had that quality. This ended up badly derailing my playtest session. It turns out that that healing information is actually in the undead trait, when most of the traits are purely descriptive flavor text. If the negative healing quality is meant to be a reminder about the interaction with positive and negative energy, please make sure it is on every undead for clarity. Currently at least the poltergeist, shadows, and ghouls are missing it (despite ghasts having it, somehow).

The Sneak action says that invisible creatures become Sensed when they perform any action that isn't Hide or Sneak. That makes sense in most cases for corporeal creatures. However for an incorporeal creature that cannot physically interact with most objects, it makes little sense. Makes even less for a poltergeist. It attacks with telekinetic projectiles that are presumably taken from the environment. What part of telekinetically picking up an object at range while invisible gives away the location of your square? Is there some sound effect that plays from the creature's space?

Either I play the creature in a bogglingly nonsensical way or I slaughter the PCs with an unbeatable god-assassin that can't be found unless they happen to be packing See Invisibility that day. I think that for this reason, it may be a bad idea to make naturally invisible incorporeal creatures.

Speaking directly to the topic of this thread, I think this playtest is actually far worse for expected items than 1st edition because of item bonuses to skills. In PF1, it was very possible to have adequately large skill bonuses, even to the point of a powerful specialization, without having a skill bonus from an item. In fact, items were often overkill unless used for a skill that wasn't a class skill or that your ability modifier was very poor for. In PF2, you're expected to have an item bonus to skills or you fall behind. The "big 6" is now "big 3 + the number of skills I want to be competent in." Poor Rogue doesn't stand a chance.

Item bonuses to skills being so important has also impacted the magic item list immensely. Being a playtest, the list is sparse anyway, but how many non-consumable items don't provide an item bonus? They're almost all item bonuses. You also can't get the whole spread of +1 to +5 in almost any skill. You currently have to wait until level 11ish to get a generic Athletics bonus. That may be fixed by more items, but I don't want an item for each bonus between 1 and 5 for each of the 17 skills. Ideally, item bonuses to skills would be smaller (+2 max?) but not assumed by the base math so they boost your actual success chance relative to tasks of your level. Failing that, each skill booster item needs to run the full 1-5 progression so we don't end up with nothing but skill booster items and we can leave these awkward dead levels for some skills behind.

The enhancement bonuses are built to counteract the factor that creatures at higher levels have much more HP and a multitude of defensive capabilities.

Both the monster DCs and table 10-2 with the skill DCs strongly disagree with you. The item bonuses are transparently designed to counteract DCs increases at an approximately 1:1 ratio. This is what people keep telling you. The game assumes that all characters who interact with those DCs will need these items, period. Later in your post you talk about meaningful choice being a core design principle of this edition, somehow missing the fact that upgrading weapons is literally not intended to be a decision. A meaningful choice is one with both pros and cons. Keeping up with weapon bonuses is designed to be always the right choice.

Charlie Brooks wrote:

This means that somebody who is untrained at something but has an 18 in the relevant ability score is still worse roll-wise than a character who is trained at something with an average ability modifier. That shifts things back toward a 1st edition skill paradigm, where training was more important than raw talent.

10 ATR, trained, level 1 :: 0 + 0 +1 = +1

18 ATR, untrained, level 1 :: 4 - 4 +1 = +1

10 ability score is not average for a PC in the playtest. In fact, outside of racial flaw, it's the floor. Max stat untrained is the same bonus as trained with the lowest possible ability score? That seems reasonable to me.

Well for one, I don't min max. I try to be effective in combat, traveling, social, etc. But I don't go out of my way to push the number as far as it can go. So if you look at my character sheets you'll probably see a bad pick or a trap option when it comes to feats, skills, or even items. I mean heck, I picked up Craft Construct as a feat on my current character in PF1, but the community seems to consider that a trap, not worth it, what are you doing, unless you're using it to make a crafting army you are doing it wrong. Don't care, I have a little junk golem that follows me around and helps out.

As a GM though, and I admit this isn't in the rules, or for new GMs I guess, I'll give you the same as when I explained Appraise to someone else; To me there's no Trap option. There are harder options yes, but I try to make sure players are able to use the skills, feats, and items they pick up. It might require a bit more work, but I like sitting down with a player and trying to help them build what they want and then make it work. I might have to bend the rules or even ignore them at times, but I play for story and character, not the math. And if it is truly, truly trapish or Taxish... well I just remove those.

I don't either min max either, not that that playstyle is inherently wrong for the groups that enjoy it. My desire is that every option should be good enough at what it does that it makes a noticeable difference and fulfills the fantasy. If my Rogue fancies himself an unseeable assassin but fails Stealth on an 18 and sneak attacks for an extra 1d2 damage, then being an assassin is just as much a fantasy for my character as it is for me. I want my fantasy to be the character's reality, and that means they need to be able to mechanically achieve what their flavor suggests. If your rust golem was a useful helper during your adventures, then I think that's a fine feat. The feat told you "you can make golems," you made one, and it did useful things for you.

So to be clear, when I say trap option, I don't mean "not-perfectly-optimal option". I mean "doesn't fulfill fantasy by feeling effective." A Wizard with a bow will usually fit that category. If I were to go to the devs and say "Is it reasonable to expect that my Wizard will be good with a bow?" and they said "No, the Wizard really has a different focus.", then my followup question shouldn't be "Then why do I have all these bow options?" At that point, Wizards with bows is a designed trap; the devs know I shouldn't do it. Design-wise, there's a big difference between a feat that isn't meant to be useful to you and a feat that may be hard to get much value out of but wasn't designed that way (such as Craft Golem.)

GM filtering is nice. I do that for my players. I help them optimize enough to feel effective. That doesn't help new GMs, and would be unnecessary if the system didn't have unmarked but intentional traps.

They should matter and play differently. I don't think class X should have a monopoly on a play-style though. Or at the very least, Combat Style. I want to make a TWF guy that uses knives..., well I would just make him Rogue(Gasp) or maybe Ranger, maybe a few other classes. NOW I have to make him Ranger or Fighter.

PF1 might have been bad. I went out of my way to do different things. However I'm looking at PF2, and with people already making the true build paths, I ask; How is PF2 going to be any different? The math is going to get figured out, the guides are going to go up and you'll see the same character again and again. There might be more paths in PF2, but how sure are we that the community isn't just going to go down the same one like before?

I don't think we're seeing classes have monopolies on combat styles. The devs have openly admitted some classes were missing some styles that are an expected part of that class's fantasy and they're working on those. Wizards being great at TWF isn't really a reasonable or common fantasy IMO, so I'm fine if they need to multiclass into fighter (which doesn't wreck their character now!) to get that fantasy.

As I implied above, I don't care if people are finding the One True Optimal build path. I care that characters have options that are Effective Enough for Fantasy (TM) and that those options have meaningful variety (in role or function, as I explained in another post). If the devs create different ways each class functions with, say, archery, then I absolutely think we're at least getting something that is a step up from PF1, even if it isn't perfect.

1) I haven't addressed it because it's an argument I haven't made and so is completely offtopic. Furthermore the fact you are making it in this way suggests a lack of understanding of 4th ed and the criticisms against it and feels like you think you have found a "gotcha" argument that your going to spring on me rather than try to engage in a good faith discussion of the issue.

Given you won't let it go I will address it at the end of this post.

Seriously? So sameness wasn't the reason you had an issue with 4e. It is relevant because over and over and over in this thread, rather than actually explaining why a mechanic is bad or not to your tastes, you say that it's like 4e and that's how we know it is bad. That's nonsense. If you have a problem, articulate it. Edition warring shows an aversion to change with an absence of reason.

2) My problem with unique feats for the classes is it means only those classes can get those elements of the game. It means Paizo gives us some prepackaged boxes and very few pieces we can fill in with those boxes.

Do you have a problem with only Rogues getting Rogue Talents or only Barbarians getting Rage Powers? If not, how is this different? Is it just combat styles that you care about so much with how they're siloed?

You complain about few pieces to put in those boxes, and then later caution against how many class powers 4e ended up with for each class. Which is the problem?

Whereas in Pf1e by not restricting such feats to class only you have a much wider array of characters that can be built. A cleric can take step up if they so desire instead of only fighters getting that feat.

Much wider array of characters in name only. PF1 martial characters are defined by their weapon combat style. You end up with each of the, what, 30-odd? martial classes all taking the same feats to fight the same way, with each class adding slightly different numerical bonuses on top. The difference between a Raging Barbarian's hit and damage bonus and a Fighter's hit and damage bonus is riveting, really. In my book, not every class having access to Step Up is a worthwhile trade for having more than 6ish effective build paths across dozens of classes.

We have far different ways of playing then.

I'm curious why you say that. What do trap options add to your game? The only reason I know of to like trap options is because one likes to be better than players who don't know to avoid them. I'm sure you have a better reason than that, so I'd like to know what it is.

I do agree though. Remove classes. I shouldn't have to be a Fighter to be an archer. I shouldn't have to be one or ranger for two weapon fighting. Or Barbarian for 2hander.

Remove the classes, let players do what they want. I dislike this half done system they have in place. It's half classless(Build what you want with what you want) and half class(OH but only these classes are good at X good job trying to make it work without X).

I agree that completely classless could make a good game but I think we both know it won't happen here. If you're going to have classes, they should matter and play differently. If feats define your combat options and everyone takes the same feats, classes don't mean much in terms of combat. There's no variety. Classless systems overcome this problem by offering vastly more options for your build path. PF1 was the worst of both worlds in this regard: build paths were too similar with too few build paths.

Also. Arcane Archer. Was it good to play nothing but Wizard classes? I don't know, probably not. I still had fun.

To be fair, the Arcane Archer gives a bunch of abilities that make using bows less of a trap for a Wizard. I'm not opposed to a Wizard with a bow. I'm opposed to Wizards who are intended to be bad with a bow being offered a bow as an option without flashing warning signs.

I'm glad you had fun, but it's possible to have fun with a useless character and with a wet turd of a game system. In a playtest, we're trying to help create the best game possible to maximize the potential for fun. Having fun isn't good enough, when more fun could instead be had.

The approach you and the devs are advocating is EXACTLY how 4th ed worked. The approach that PF1e had is one you are directly abandoning as "boring". If my group found it boring and preferred the approach you are advocating, we would play 4th ed. We don't and so we dont. By abandoning the PF1e approach and embracing the 4th ed approach you lose my group.

Okay, but you ignored my point regarding sameness. I'll pose it as a direct question. PF2's approach is to have less sameness in how classes fight than PF1. 4e is constantly accused of too much sameness, especially in class powers, as a major weakness. How do you reconcile those? Do you think 4e is less samey than PF1? Do you and your group prefer classes to be more samey in how they play? If so, why?

I don't want unique "exciting" class specific feats at the expense of the class agnostic feats. That's what 4th ed did. Give me class talents that complement my fighting style, but also open up some of the feats for a fighting style to all classes.

What, precisely, is your problem with unique class specific feats instead of generic feats? What is lost in that approach that you find valuable? Being different from 4e isn't a valid answer. If you have an actual reason for disliking 4e, then you'll be able to give me the same reason for disliking it in PF2.

Sure. But you've missed the point. My TWFing Rogue? He gets absolutely nothing for TWFing because he doesn't have access to any any TWFing feats because they've all been gated behind classes.

I think you missed mine, because I wasn't talking about that. I was speaking to the complaint "Double Slice used to be a general feat and now it's a class feat for only classes X and Y, so class feats are bad." That was my entire initial premise.

I've gone on at length how I like the idea of class feats siloing abilities that were once held in class talents/archetypes.

But notably not things that used to be general feats, hence, you don't like the new approach to siloing.

I'm not saying they're magically different. I'm saying that by removing so much from general feats and reclassifying so much as class talents we've lost the versatility of PF1e and entered the territory thoroughly trod in D&D 4th ed.

If it is the removal of generic combat options that makes things too much like 4e, then say that. Saying that class feats are somehow like 4e class powers and unlike PF1 "class talents" doesn't make sense, and the class feats aren't actually the problem you're having. You may realize they're not magically different, but the general discussion in all these class feat threads doesn't acknowledge that. That's been my whole issue: people are complaining about class feats like they're something new. They aren't. This lack of specificity in what actually bothers people has led to unnecessary histrionics and edition warring regarding 4e and distracted from discussing what is actually bothering people.

Here's an easier example for you: Vital Strike. Anyone can take it in PF1e, only the fighter can take it in PF2e (it's been renamed, I'm sure you'll work it out though).

You've also completely ignored this: In PF2e if I want my Rogue to invest in TWFing I have to wait for class specific feats to be published. This was not the case in PF1e and is the very complaint you're doing your darndest to ignore.

Alright, now I'll actually discuss what you seem to care most about, which is a lack of generic combat feats outside of class feats. What I don't want to see is what we had in PF1: TWF paladins, rangers, rogues, and fighters all took the same 5+ feats. The only difference was how quickly they acquired them, due to bonus feats. That was really boring, and made classes very samey in their offensive actions in combat. In a classless system, this makes sense: the archery tree gives X archery abilities. If you're going to bother with classes, they should approach combat with different options.

The developers' goal is to do exactly that: give each class unique approaches to combat, including unique twists on combat styles. I don't think the problem is that generic TWF, archery, etc options don't exist. I think the problem is that some classes didn't get all the combat styles that their traditional fantasies expect, like archer paladins and TWF rogues. Due to the sheer volume of complaints on those two, you'll see those in the final book, I guarantee it. I think time will prove the devs right on this one, as this will result in much less sameness in how classes play. That's why the comparisons to 4e, which supposedly made all the classes play the same with different flavor, confuse me.

That approach does mean that some classes may not have every option at the very beginning, without multiclassing. That's no different than PF1, of course. Many options required to realize certain concepts didn't appear for many years. That's a fundamental reality of the business, and I don't think we should settle for samey combat to alleviate it slightly.

Some classes, like spellcasters, are unlikely to have support for many weapon combat styles. Good! Martial combat options being available to everyone but spellcaster combat options being available to only spellcasters was yet another reason why casters outclassed martials in PF1. The more unique abilities martial classes have, the harder it is for casters to effectively replace them.

I think Paizo's biggest error was naming class feats after prior general feats. That's it, the name itself. Power Attack doesn't do the same thing, Double Slice doesn't do the same thing, Point-Blank Shot doesn't do the same thing, etc. Nobody seemed to mind all the classes with "class talents" in PF1, so a la carte class features can't be the problem. If they'd just called Class Feats "Class Talents" instead (though calling all things that act like feats by one name IS better design, whining aside) and reused no names, I don't think most of you would even think to complain about this. I don't get how it makes a lick of sense to complain that you can't have an ability with a familiar name with unfamiliar effects, but somehow, that's what's been happening.

Also of note: class feats are no more 4e-like than all those a la carte class features in PF1 were, because they're the same danged thing. For anyone who disagrees with that, please explain, in detail, how they are functionally different.

Assuming you are correct and those feats are required to maintain relevance, that is feat tax, after a fashion. As you pointed out, they do come with other benefits. I'd rather feat taxes not exist in any form, but let's at least recognize that for all its faults, the playtest has vastly fewer taxes than PF1.

That's back to the topic of what should be baseline for a skill vs. a skill feat. Considering you had to invest in a skill that was rarely useful otherwise (Handle Animal) to train before, that doesn't seem any more onerous than a single skill feat to me. The specifics of training, however, doesn't matter much to me. My main point is that just because someone might wish a skill feat's effects were included in a skill, that does not make such a skill feat a tax.

But they didn't get rid of combat feat taxes. There's a lot of class feats that I really don't want, but are necessary for the really good abilities. Ranger/druid have to take 4 feats just to keep their animal companion relevant. If skill feats were more like the skill unlocks in Pathfinder Unchained, I would maybe find their inclusion commensurate, but too many feats are just feat gating things people should be able to with regular skill use.

Like, how is train animal a feat, almost anyone is capable of doing this to some extent. You many not be great with animals but almost anybody can get a dog to relieve themselves outside. Sure they may still chew the furniture when you're gone too long, or bark at every car that passes by, but that doesn't mean you weren't able to do some training. Now shouldn't that same sort of thing be reflected with various difficulty to perform the task, instead of denying anyone without the feat even the attempt.

A feat tax is a feat that usually does nothing for you or removes a penalty that prevents you from being viable. PF1 Combat Expertise and Precise Shot are good examples of tax feats. I've seen far fewer feats that fit those categories in the playtest. I agree with you in that I prefer there to be few/no feet trees, because those can easily become tax situations.

Animal Companions scale with level automatically, so I see those upgrades as purely optional but nice benefits, which is not a tax to me. What should be a basic skill use vs. a skill feat will always be purely taste, so I'm not going to touch that. I probably disagree with both you and the developers on that. I don't think it's fair to call anything I personally would build into the skill itself a tax, however.

I also strongly disagree with your assertion that anyone could train an animal to be reliably combat capable or that potty training is at all similar to what that feat allows.

Lotsa people are ignoring the huge number of feats required to be minimally viable in most combat styles in PF1. I don't care that the fighter doesn't get a combat feat every level, because they no longer need 6 feats just to use a bow effectively. Many people said Fighters, and most martials, didn't have enough they could do out of combat, and now we have 10 skill feats. Some people just won't be happy unless every single character resource can be poured into combat ability. Replacing combat feat taxes with skill feats looks like a win from where I'm standing.

Paladins, at least the ones I've seen so far in the playtest, are indeed pretty awesome. I still want to tweak a few things, but then again that's always true, I think. If you don't have reach, in close quarters like Lost Star you can still do quite well if you "flank" your frontline ally with a wall. In that spot (W A Y, where W = wall, A = ally, and Y = you), assuming the wall extends, enemies would need reach or ranged attacks to get to your ally without a Retributive Strike. They can try to get around you depending on the setup, but there are several tricks to make that burdensome or dangerous.

Would you consider adding a Step to Retributive Strike so that a wall wasn't necessary for non-reach weapons? It's nice when that wall setup works out, but it requires your ally to pin themselves against a wall and stay there. I think it'd be better thematically and more fun to play if the Paladin always threatened Retribution for any ally they're adjacent to, and that lets your allies act normally.

One thing people are overlooking is that there are some abilities in the playtest that greatly modify your success rate without saying "+4" on the can. The Rogue's Sneak Savant feat is a good example. It doesn't give you a static modifier, because it isn't meant to increase your critical success rate. Instead, it says you only fail on a critical failure. If you had, for example, a 30% chance to succeed at a Sneak action before, that feat gives you an 80% chance instead. That's a whopping effective +10 bonus. It's possible that abilities like this are underutilized, but nothing about tighter math means that abilities can't dramatically affect success rates.

This thread is horrifying. The response to "I had these issues in PF1, but the PF2 changes are great for my needs!" is "You only had problems because you're doing things wrong, give us more information so we can fix you." Even if those issues are perfectly fixable, which some of them are emphatically not, inexperienced players having such trouble with them that they consider quitting is an issue with the game. If you can't live without a system that lets you optimize until the game groans under the weight of it, that's your taste, but disrespecting the opinions of people who don't want to deal with the issues that brings is not acceptable.

So Mark said that Signature Skills were the original reason for the current number of trained skills each class gets. I hope that now they're no longer anything but a suggestion, those totals can be seriously reconsidered. There's a great thread (though the title is a bit combative) concerning it here:
Link

(A better version of) Assurance should be baked into higher skill proficiencies.

I've been actively planning for this as my house rule if they don't attach something inherent to skill proficiency. Assurance isn't currently a very attractive feat, but its effects represent higher proficiency really well.

The proficiency modifier should be +2 per step, not +1 per step. Players are struggling just to get basic success at checks and the vaunted crits simply aren't happening, not in my observation, and all of the players have expressed that a +1 feels trivial and doesn't make them feel like they actually got better at all. It's okay if PCs actually get a little better at stuff over time, it really is. Just fix the paradigm of when fighters vs other martials actually get to improve in weapon groups.

I don't think this is the way to handle it. Increasing the numerical bonuses of proficiency just makes whoever can't get to legendary way behind everyone else. It'd work for skills, I think, but not for saves/attacks/AC. The difference between trained and legendary saves would be that same awkward 6 point gap between good and bad saves in PF1. Even being a single proficiency level behind on attacks would dramatically decrease damage relative to the classes who did get that proficiency.

If successes aren't happening enough, that's because DCs are too high, not because proficiency bonuses are too small.

Yeah, that more comprehensive treatment is exactly what I was getting at.

You reminded me that I forgot to use master/legendary saves as an example. I think those are a great example of what a proficiency upgrade should mean, if possibly more powerful than the average proficiency ability would be. I'm honestly a bit confused why that model wasn't integrated into the system as a whole.

The difficulty of challenges for a given level currently seems to take into consideration a player character's proficiency bonus, ability score, and item bonus. I don't think that your bonus due to level of proficiency (the bonus from trained/expert/master/legendary) should be taken into account when creating those difficulties. It should be ignored so that proficiency increases result in an greater success rate relative to challenges of your level.

There are two reasons I think this important. First, it makes the small numerical increases from proficiency feel more meaningful. If your fighter with Expert proficiency at first level had a 55% chance of succeeding with their first attack, they have a 65% chance of succeeding with their first attack when they become legendary. Those proficiency increases taking up important slots in your list of class features actually made you better at facing level appropriate challenges rather than simply moving you along the treadmill.

Second, it feels way better for the classes that don't get as many proficiency increases. If a class that gets many proficiency upgrades, like Fighter, is only keeping up with level appropriate challenges, that means everyone else is falling behind. Especially for martial classes like Barbarian and Rogue, that can feel really bad, where you're missing 10 percentage points more often than you were at first level or getting hit way more often. Becoming less effective at level appropriate challenges as you level up does not create a satisfying feel of becoming more powerful, even if you are more powerful relative to challenges from earlier levels.

If my understanding of the current math is incorrect and proficiency already increases your success rate relative to your level, then I apologize for the confusion. From various math threads, that was not my impression.

This has been mentioned, but I wanted a thread to discuss it specifically and maybe get some developer insight if they have the time.

The developers have shown how, mathematically, a +1 bonus from proficiency is not trivial in this new system. The problem is that while it may be very good, it can be hard to get excited by incremental numerical increases, especially when that upgrade is meant to represent mastery or legendary status.

My suggestion would be to pair simple numerical bonuses from proficiencies with some kind of non-numerical upgrade: either a restriction removed or, preferably, something new you can do. These wouldn't need to be especially powerful, since their purpose is a more satisfying feel rather than raw power. An example idea would be to have Expert spellcasting for Wizards give benefits similar to the Spell Mastery feat from 1st edition; it's a handy ability that represents expertise well but wasn't very attractive to many people as a standalone feat.

This suggestion is particularly important for martial characters. In 1st edition, your saves and base attack bonus were part of the numbers section of your class table. They didn't take up spaces in your special abilities column. In the playtest, they effectively do, since proficiencies have replaced those numerical columns. Many martial classes have many levels where a proficiency increase, a +1 bonus, is their class feature for the level. Receiving only a numerical bonus that feels small, regardless of how effective it actually is, when a party member is pouring over their exciting new spells doesn't feel very good.

I like the proficiency system a lot, I just think it's a bit underused right now and could be tweaked to feel more exciting without throwing off the math.

The current format for dedication feats interacts oddly with class proficiencies in a way I don't think is very intuitive. I'm going to use multiclassing archetypes for my example, but the issue applies equally to all dedication feats that give proficiencies or signature skills.

If a Paladin multiclasses into Fighter, they receive no benefit from the dedication feat; they already have all of those proficiencies. The dedication is a pure feat tax for that class. However, this multiclass choice is one that you'd expect to synergize well, both in flavor and mechanics.

A Wizard who multiclasses into Fighter, looking to be Magus-like, gets immense benefit out of the dedication feat. While I want this combination to be a viable, fun character, it feels weird that a Wizard gains so much more from a Fighter multiclass than a more martial character does.

My suggestion is to replace proficiencies and signature skills in dedication feats with effects that are unique to that archetype (or class), ensuring that every character who takes an archetype fully benefits from the one mandatory feat. For multiclass dedication feats, this unique effect could be either the iconic first level ability (Attack of Opportunity, Lay on Hands, etc) or a level 1 class feat. Another optional feat would contain the related proficiencies and signature skills, so characters who have use for them still have them available.

In addition to making sure that no feats in archetypes are ever purely or mostly a feat tax, this also makes archetype choices more intuitive. The more similar your class is to an archetype, the easier it is to realize that archetype. If your class is very different from an archetype, such as a Wizard multiclassing fighter, another feat or two may be required.

I really like the new archetype and multiclassing system; I just think this change would make it that much better.

Anti-alignment people want to simply "do what they want."

That's condescending. What anti-alignment people want is to roleplay their characters without other players feeling entitled to playing roleplay police. If I want to make an idealistic character that lives by a code, I'm perfectly capable of playing that character faithfully to that code to the extent that I mean to. If another player thinks something doesn't add up, they're welcome to respectfully tell me their perspective, but if I don't agree, I'm ultimately free to play my character the way I believe is proper. Alignment makes some GMs, mostly but not exclusively bad ones, feel entitled to screw with your with how you roleplay your character and impose their own personal morality on you. Some of us decide that that bickering is far from worth it, and find that without alignment players are pushed to more nuanced ideologies and personalities for their characters.

And things just don't work that way.

It absolutely can work that way. Everything stopping it is purely arbitrary and easily removed.

OP, as you're seeing from this discussion, the actual reason we're still using alignment is that it's a sacred cow. It's tradition, and no tabletop RPG is steeped in so much tradition as D&D. For the same reason, you won't see Vancian magic or the six ability scores disappear, even if developers thought they could replace them with something better. When you play D&D, you either deal with it as it is or you house rule it. Expecting official changes to the sacred cows will result in disappointment.

Personally, I'd guess that if alignment hadn't existed previously and was introduced in PF2, there would so much salt and screaming that it would be legendary. I think it's an acquired taste that many can't imagine not having now. And that's the problem with tradition: the longer it's been around, the more acquired tastes there are and the less likely change is.

Weapon proficiency granting bonus dice is not a good idea. A Cleric, for example, who gets no proficiency upgrades after first level would never have their dice change. Barbarians and Rogues would fall far behind the other martial classes with more proficiency upgrades. Weapon dice are the majority of damage dealt with weapons in PF2, so making that vary across classes just picks winners and losers.

I agree it'd be nice if the +1 increases from proficiency were paired with some non-numerical ability to make them feel more fun and rewarding. These abilities really wouldn't need to be terribly strong; fun and flavorful or nice utility would do the trick.

"Martials are consistent and casters can nova" is a design that is almost impossible to keep playable. If you make the nova too good, casters overshadow the party and get all the flashiest moments and you encourage a 15 minute adventuring day, because even the consistent martial doesn't want to risk his life by going into a tough fight without the nova ready. If the nova is too weak, martials consistently dominate the game and casters don't feel rewarding to play. The relationship is unstable, and as more elements are added to the game over time, would probably break down even if initially such a balance could be achieved. A model where both themes of characters had some resources to manage and something to consistently offer would be far more balanced and could reduce the linear fighter/quadratic wizard problem. I have my doubts that such a thing is possible when using Vancian casting though.

Spellcasters do probably need to have fewer skills than martial characters, so I'm fine with that. Wherever spellcasters land for skill ranks, all spellcasters should land there. Wizards shouldn't be lower than other casters. Shroud is right that it doesn't feel good to see Cleric/Druid/Sorcerer/Bard getting the full benefits out of their primary ability score while Wizards don't. If focusing int is too good, change what int does; don't punish the class that uses it.

Alchemists aren't spellcasters in this edition. They don't have anywhere near the utility and flexibility of a spellcaster. They should be up with all the martials at 5-6 base ranks, again regardless that they use int as their primary ability score.