Randall Rapp's page

Greatsword

4 Martials, 1 Healer, and no Arcane. Sounds pretty optimal for this edition.

Byron Zibeck wrote:

While I really like a lot of the new components of the game and the general direction things are headed and am overall optimistic that the final product will be great, I am very concerned about the amount of testing that will be done on the final version of the game. It sounds like there are significant changes being done to the system, right down to the core math of the game. As an engineer, I cannot fathom making this amount of changes without doing another large-scale test on the final product. I know that you will be doing internal testing, but that is a significantly more limited scope that an open playtest. I really want Paizo and Pathfinder 2E to succeed.

This isn't a car or some physical thing that will crash and harm people though. If they use the massive amounts of data and make a few changes towards what seems to be popular then that should be enough no?

You'd think that this new system has already been tested far more than the original Pathfinder was, and we still love that system despite its warts - none of them ended up stopping us from playing it, and it seems like the new system has already fixed quite a few of those niggling issues from the past.

No it won't kill any people (probably), but if this (their primary product) Crashes and harms or kills the Company, I think we'll all regret it.

the new design I think is excellent.. the problem with P1 is that it was very easy to create characters of the same class and level with vastly different power levels, and it was also very difficult for a GM to maintain the power levels of the game because there was a bit too much player agency. by transferring damage from classes, feats, etc to magic weapons, it makes it easier to write adventures that work for all characters at the appropriate regardless of the choices made by the players. it also allows GM's the ability to more easily control the power level of the game they want to run, since the vast majority of the power is coming from magic items, which the GM can easily asses and control.

+1 level bonus is really more about world building in my opinion. for example if the game were +0 you would have a shadowrun/wheel of time world, where being high level isn't much of an accomplishment, and every fight even versus low level opponents can be very dangerous. +1 really just means that characters can feel heroic. since a high level character will enjoy a significant advantage over a low level one. it's more about the tone of the world than the actual math in my opinion.

And now I can randomly roll what feats to take and end up with just as powerful a character as someone who spent a week going through selecting them. "regardless of the choices made by the players." is another way of saying player choices don't matter.

dnoisette wrote:

Someone mentioned in this thread that casters being no more valuable than martial characters will increase the desirability of said martials.

That was me.

Quote:

That's not how it is right now: non-multiclassed spellcasters are less valuable than anything else and, as a result, my playest group now consists of 4 martial characters (Fighter, Paladin, Rogue, Monk) and one multiclassed Cleric/Fighter.

Nobody wants to try a pure spellcaster again until they (hopefully) are fixed, after having played one themselves. :/

And Paizo has to know that this perspective is skewed because the playtest consist of people who are mostly familiar with casters from PF1. Of course those people are going to find casters unplayable. Go look at the shapechanging Druids. It's the same thing. They were used to being able to shape change for hours. Now, it's been reduced to a battle at time and they hate it. Duh.

There's no way for Paizo to bring casters down to earth and have those same players remain happy. It isn't going to happen. If I'm Paizo, I'm doing it because I believe that in the long run, it will make for a much better and fairer game.

That assumes that they'll have a long run after driving away anybody who likes to play casters or skilled characters and go broke.

Gorbacz wrote:

A lot of things look "fun" on paper but aren't that "fun" in practice.

Take the classic 3.5/PF situation, where I have +15 to a skill with my Slayer, which makes me feel that the math is fun because double digits and I hit high numbers and I got rewarded for being specialised. And I'm better than the Cleric, because with her crap skill point count and ACP and whatanot she's at +5 to that skill.

BUT

it also means that the GM has a very hard time making a challenge for a group when one person is at +15 and the other are at +5. Such challenge is either impossible for them or trivial for me. If it's trivial, well, where's the challenge, if it's impossible - woe be to the party if I don't turn up for the game, or if my PC gets kidnapped by the bad guys, or if for any other reason my super-specialised ability is unavilable. Bummer.

I think this is an aspect that gets overlooked or at least not talked about enough: The math also needs to be fun for the GM. The PF1 math-discrepancy has led to quite a lot of frustration on my end as a GM and has made the game not fun on my end, especially since quite a few unexperienced players have joined our group over the years. I know quite a few GMs who had similar problems and it made designing encounters quite difficult and tedious, which led to no one running any Pathfinder games anymore in my area, even though the hobby has grown quite a bit over the last couple of years.

Gorbacz wrote:

With PF2 math, most common challenges (eg. sneaking among sleepy orcs, climbing a cliff, swimming upstream) can be attempted by the entire party, not just by one or two super-specialised PCs. Does that take away some fun out of hyperspecialisation? Sure it does. But on the other hand, it allows more challenges where the entire party can succeed, leaving them less dependant on hyper-specialist, discourages gamey character advancement ("OK we need everybody to max Perception and now we need to split Knowledges, Sense Motive, Stealth,

...

But if the easy to make and run adventures bore everyone that they don't want to play, isn't good either. And there are always going to be more players than GMs. I know plenty of players who never GM, their just not interested in running, regardless of the system.

Gorbacz wrote:

A lot of things look "fun" on paper but aren't that "fun" in practice.

Take the classic 3.5/PF situation, where I have +15 to a skill with my Slayer, which makes me feel that the math is fun because double digits and I hit high numbers and I got rewarded for being specialised. And I'm better than the Cleric, because with her crap skill point count and ACP and whatanot she's at +5 to that skill.

BUT

it also means that the GM has a very hard time making a challenge for a group when one person is at +15 and the other are at +5. Such challenge is either impossible for them or trivial for me. If it's trivial, well, where's the challenge, if it's impossible - woe be to the party if I don't turn up for the game, or if my PC gets kidnapped by the bad guys, or if for any other reason my super-specialised ability is unavilable.

I don't have a problem with having autosuccess/autofail challenges for that kind of situation. If you've invested in that thing, you are rewarded. If you haven't, you have to cope.

It's just a question of designing adventures so either situation is a fun time.

If you can read the ancient language, you learn how to open the door without fighting the guardian. If you can't, you fight the guardian.

If you can climb the difficult tree, you can see into the enemy camp and know what you're going to be facing. If you can't climb the tree, you have to go into the enemy camp with no prior knowledge.

If you can make the diplomacy check, the guy will tell you what you need to know. If you can't, you have to bribe him or beat the information out of him.

If you can disarm the trap, you are rewarded by taking no damage. If you can't, you have to try to work out how to disarm it with minimal loss of resources.

If you pass the perception check, you spot the hidden treasure. If you can't, you never even realise there was a treasure.

If you can cast a healing spell, you are able to save the dying peasant and find out who attacked him. If not, you can use...

Reminds me of campaign where I was the only Lawful (monk) character where every one else was various chaotic, but the town the adventure was based around was run by Hellknights. Starting a 2nd lvl on I had maxed out Profession (Lawyer) which combined with my high Wisdom probably saved more PC lives than our cleric.

A lot of things look "fun" on paper but aren't that "fun" in practice.

Take the classic 3.5/PF situation, where I have +15 to a skill with my Slayer, which makes me feel that the math is fun because double digits and I hit high numbers and I got rewarded for being specialised. And I'm better than the Cleric, because with her crap skill point count and ACP and whatanot she's at +5 to that skill.

BUT

it also means that the GM has a very hard time making a challenge for a group when one person is at +15 and the other are at +5. Such challenge is either impossible for them or trivial for me. If it's trivial, well, where's the challenge, if it's impossible - woe be to the party if I don't turn up for the game, or if my PC gets kidnapped by the bad guys, or if for any other reason my super-specialised ability is unavilable. Bummer.

With PF2 math, most common challenges (eg. sneaking among sleepy orcs, climbing a cliff, swimming upstream) can be attempted by the entire party, not just by one or two super-specialised PCs. Does that take away some fun out of hyperspecialisation? Sure it does. But on the other hand, it allows more challenges where the entire party can succeed, leaving them less dependant on hyper-specialist, discourages gamey character advancement ("OK we need everybody to max Perception and now we need to split Knowledges, Sense Motive, Stealth, Diplomacy etc. among us so that we have everything maxed out) and leads to fewer situations where the party is split because only the specialist stands a chance, while others are a dead weight or worse, a liability.

And woe be to a PF1 party that has turbo-optimizers mixed with people who don't powergame at all. The discrepancies in math between those quickly reach the levels where frustration arises as the former feel dragged down by the latter while the latter feel pressurised to keep up with the former.

Lowering the floor does take some empowerment out of the game, but it does that for the sake of being more a collective experience and less...

Actually with the current DCs its more likely the entire party (including the specialist) will fail to sneak past sleeping orcs.

I agree with ikarinokami.

I will also add that I feel the playtest has a strong system, but is severely lacking in options.

That IMO is a great problem to have right now, because the number of options will only ever increase but the system isn't going to change once released.

The problem is the strong system is BECAUSE of the lack of options (at least that make any difference). If choices make a difference of course your going to have variance in power levels.

I don't think it needs to be put in a sticky thread or anything. As I mentioned in answer to another thread, the design goal for PF2 is right in the introduction to the playtest book, page 4:

"Our aim is to make the game easier to learn and simpler to play, while maintaining the depth of character and adventure options that has always defined Pathfinder."

The GameInformer interview is going at more length to say basically the same thing. Anyway, if all you want is a mission statement (that's what I understand is the OP's question), then this simple sentence is enough said.

Well then if that was their objective, then as far as I can tell they are FAILING at their aim, Most players seem to feel extremely constricted by the characters and rules as they are now. The need to be mechanically optimized to produce viable characters and imbalance between classes mean that new players will understand the rules as the die over and over because they don't have the experience to pick the few viable choices from the lists.

What about giant Bumble bee? If you want to see what's available, the PFSRD lets you sort by creature type, so just search all vermin.

buy 3 pair

Optimize your monsters. Many book monsters don't have the best feat selections for combat. Also take their treasure allotment as magic they can use.

If I preorder now can I use the RAINY day 10% discount, even though I won't be charged until it ships?

Have your PCs find some evidence or even just rumors that Eladrin used to be a mighty champion of good until he found this sword wich slowly corrupted him. another fun thing would be to say that the sword causes the player carrying it to detect as chaotic evil or even as a demon to magic.

pressure damage to things are caused by a pressure differential. A solid object with no compressable air in it will be fine. Its when you have say a sub or person with air in their lungs at a lower pressure, that the imbalance causes damage as the structure tries to support the pressure trying to equalize. The same is true in space, except in the opposite direction (high pressure inside, low pressure outside).

I'll probably be GMing, but I'll definitely have A. doppelgänger mafia and B. Contemlatives of Ashok being featured more they currently are.

Got a great Contemplative build for that. 6th lvl Summoner (synthesis) who basically uses his eidolon as magical power armor.

Just wondering if your planning to use the current Technology guide rules (batteries & charges, production labs, cyber implantation values, etc.) with some extra gear, a modified version of those rules, or a completely new set up. If you are using the Tech guide rules, are you taking submissions for new gear (Ion gel anyone?)?

I want space hobgoblins and space whales.

Actually they already have space whales. Lookup the OMA in Bestiary 4.

Gunstar - Last Starfighter
Milienium Falcon
Red Dwarf

Thanks.

I'm thinking of doing an all (well mostly) underwater campaign, and I'm looking for potential aquatic races for players to run. I've seen Aquatic Elves mentioned in a few places, but no stats or significant background. Any info would be appreciated, preferably with the book and page#.

An all Improved Familiars campaign. Their Masters are all trapped in a magic curse, and the familiars must quest for the a solution.

There is an old saying "necessity is the mother of invention". Why do these wizards need to do any of these things, when there are magical alternatives available?

Sorry, but as written there is no avoiding sending your poor animal companion to his death, but you really don't have to get a new one.

I say that, because you will only be able to access the animal focus of your dead animal companion if it is dead.

The pregen has a slightly different language, and I am unhappy that it didn't make it into the second edition of the ACG, but that is current raw.

I don't like it, but sending your trusty companion charinging into battle..without mage armor or barding... will result in the same.

I really don't like it, but I do have a hunter intending to "use" this special feature, and this will just have to wait until the GM kills my animal companion.

Did I mention that I don't like it?

Why do you not want an companion? The benefits (especially at higher levels) is much better than the alternative. Its like saying you'd rather have a moderate permanent buff instead of an extra expendable fighter in the group.

So when is the next book in this setting coming out?

partly the question should include "where is it stored". weapons are easily drawn because the are in easy to locate and remove scabbards/quivers. If its in a backpack, not so much.

How about Combat Maneuver Vulnerability? Take a -2 x mythic tier penalty to all rolls involving that combat maneuver (Offensive & Defensive)?

Historically, there is quite a bit of difference between pellets (also know as shot, which is where shotgun comes from)and grapeshot. Typical shotgun buckshot is about 7-8mm or .25-.3 in. diameter, while grapeshot ranged from .75 to 1.25 in. diameter. The larger size meant they remained lethal at much greater ranges.

I'm a big fan of the Dragonmech & X-Crawl settings of Goodman Games and I think it would be really cool if Pathfinder could do an Adventure Path set in one of these worlds. I'm pretty sure Goodman Games would be willing release the copyrights for a minimal amount, since they would benefit a great deal from the increase in awareness of their products, and Paizo would get access to settings with already developed backgrounds and a pre-existing fan base. What do you think & are there any settings you would like to see?