Rholand's page

The Goblin Warrior has a +8 bonus to attack with it's weapons. That seems unreasonably high for the level -1 monster (Kobold has +3, Skeleton Guard +6). It seems as if the monsters are supposed to use their proficiencies, counting their class levels as 0, for attacks. This gives a kobold +3 (2 from trained, 1 from strength) and a Skeleton Guard +6 (+4 for Expert, +2 for strength or +2 from trained and +4 from dex, unclear). Using this math, a Goblin Warrior should have +5 if Trained, a reasonable assumption (Giving it +2 from trained and +3 from dex). Alternatively, if it is an expert (Very weird if it is), then +7.

I do believe that is the intention of the ability and even of Medicine, yes. Pg 272 describes the difference between abilities requiring you to be "Having" vs "Wielding";
"Other abilities might require you to merely carry or have an item. These apply as long as you have the item on your person; you don’t
have to wield it."
Edit: I do believe that is how my group has generally been using Healer's Tools as well, the few times they have used them. I don't remember them ever drawing the Healer's Tools before using the First Aid Action. It has been presumed that drawing them was part of the activity.

I think the three things you expect to use hands for is actually what the free hand is for; You read the formula first, draw the tools as you need them from the bandolier, and finally have the potion in the free hand. It does NOT say that you have to be "Wielding" or "Holding" the Alchemist's Tools, just that you need to have them.
The description of the bandolier implies the opposite of what you are reading; It specifically says that you can draw the tools as part of the action that requires them; In this case, the Quick Alchemy Action.

The Stone Mauler's Rock ability lists "Brutal" as a trait on the weapon attack. I haven't been able to find the Brutal tag in either the bestiary or the CRB. Anyone know what this is or what it was supposed to be?

The Ancient Red Dragon's size is only listed as "Huge" - Both the Playtest and 1E had it listed as gargantuan which, if we are being honest, seems a lot more reasonable. The only gargantuan chromatic dragon is Green and don't tell me that is on purpose!

In the sidebar for the Vampire in the Bestiary, it says that you should make a vampire using "The standard rules for monster creation". What are those? I can't seem to find them anywhere!

Yeah, we move faster in COMBAT, but it seems that when you travel long distances, as per the table on pg 316, humans have gotten significantly slower. Am I wrong or?

Look, this isn't a big thing, but it IS a thing that confused me. In 1E, an average human with 30 ft speed could travel 24 miles in a day, per the Movement and Distance table. In 2E, however, a human's speed has been reduced to 25 feet, but travel time is the same. So now, a human can suddenly only travel 20 miles per day.
Is it intended that when traveling overland, you should be alternating between wandering and hustling, so that you can move 150% of the speed? Then we are suddenly at 30 miles? Or is that just an unfortunate side-effect of the rules and not actually intended?

The ooze is immune to crits.

Rholand wrote:

The alchemist went down from the trap and when the druid arrived a round later, the Commando and a warrior took him down quickly.

The goblin pyro died in no time to the rogue and only the Commando really put up a fight here, getting a few good hits in, but the rogue was hard to hit and the barbarian hit hard.

Looks like the rogue and the barbarian cleaned the encounter by themselves.

You're right, I went and asked him, it was not a crit, just 4 strength, 4 Rage bonus and 11 on a greataxe (So only 19 damage).

In general, the rogue and the barbarian cleaned the encounters by themselves - The druid did a bit of damage, but both the druid and the alchemist were mostly used for healing up the rest of the party.

A solution for the feats may be to make blood lines function like Druid Orders - All sorcerers can get a bite attack, but the Demonic sorcerer gets better one.

Yeah, even optimized, a rogue had a 25% chance of crit failing on that door. Considering you need three successes (at 30% chance)....well, lets just say a lot of rogues likely broke their picks.

Afterwards, the warrior tried to Break Down the door. Critically failed too. They decided to go the other way instead.

We just finished our playthrough of The Lost Star and I am going to try and write this down while it is still fresh in my mind.

Characters:
*Flix, the Halfling Tempest Druid
*Alanya, the elven rogue
*Chungus, the goblin alchemist
*Kromma, the Half-orc barbarian

A quick recap of the encounters:

The party burned down the sewer ooze in a single round. It got to use its filth wave, but that was about it. The barbarian got a crit in and that was more than half the hp. The halfling threw a stone at it and that was that.

The Goblins in the first goblin chamber heard the rogue as she utterly f~~!ed up her stealth, but presented barely any threat. They hit once with an arrow and stabbed the barbarian good once, but got otherwise burned down in no time. The rogue especially got sneak attacks in very easily with the new action and no AoO and the half-orc took one down per round.

The Quasits were the first challenge - They spread the poison around to all of the party, except the rogue, and got a decent chunk of damage off with it.

The goblin commando with pyro and warriors were a rather quick battle. The rogue (Once more) failed to sneak into them and they hid. She was pretty sure that goblins were in there, so she waited in the hall while the barbarian stepped in. The alchemist ran ahead and got the goblins to trigger a trap. (I am a bit worried about how ambushes works, more on that below). The alchemist went down from the trap and when the druid arrived a round later, the Commando and a warrior took him down quickly.
The goblin pyro died in no time to the rogue and only the Commando really put up a fight here, getting a few good hits in, but the rogue was hard to hit and the barbarian hit hard.

After this, they returned to town to rest for one day of downtime. That was the only rest they took. During the rest, the alchemist made healing elixirs to his heart's content and distributed them, as he was back on his feet after a night's rest.

They discovered the statue was a trap because the Druid was using Detect Magic in the hallway and stopped to do investigate, figuring out it was a trap and the group decided to go drink the water to see if that would bless them. It did.

The skeleton fight was relatively straight-forward. The rogue did enough damage with her rapier to basically go through the resistances and same for the barbarian with her axe. The druid used her slingstaff and the alchemist his light mace, for similar great effect.

The last boss attacked the group in the door opening, but the rogue tumbled through his space (Eating a nasty crit as she did), and went down the next round, being the only one to use a hero point to get back up - Critting with a sneak attack as she did, making a bit of an awesome ending to the fight as the faceless stalker was stabbed from hell's heart.

Alright, with that out of the way, here's my thoughts:

* Mostly, the game seems more straightforward and I am positive about this. Character creation was much more pleasant than 1.0.
* The three action system makes for MUCH more freedom and more dynamic battles, as players run around and monsters position themselves to get better worth from their attacks, which brings me to...
* Weapon Traits. I love them. So damn much. As a GM or as a player, it is just much more fun.
* I LOVE the new crit system. Just love it.
* In general, the adventure seemed fairly well balanced, though the resistances on the skeletons seemed rather irrelevant with the damage the barbarian and rogue were putting out when combined with the low hp.
* Exploration mode does not quite jell. "I want to sneak and look for traps" the rogue said and well, what can I say, other than "You can't"? Fortunately, the rogue had the trapfinding class feat, but it felt silly. They also quickly all just did Searching or Stealth, only the druid varying it.
* I like the new version of detect magic.
* I can not for the life of me figure out ambushes. Having to transition to encounter mode as soon as the goblins decide to attack the PCs makes for a peculiar meta-gaming situation where the players roll initiative and then move around in order while the goblins ready actions? This is WAY worse than the old "Roll perception....... You don't see anything" problem.
* Generally, I do not like the un-grip-weapon, regrip-weapon to cast spells. Druids are so thematically linked to using a staff that the idea that they effectively have to spend two actions between spells to do so seems insane. Please just make a "Ready Weapon" action instead and make unreadying not an action or a free action. Having to spend two actions to cast spells makes casters immobile enough without also forcing them to spend actions fingering their staffs.

*Classes:
* The Alchemist is just... Worthless. He could never use his bombs, due to a fear of putting down his allies, and his poisons just never worked out. His only contribution was as a fighter with a shoddy attack bonus and a d4 damage with no bonus. Rubbish, for sure. Maybe better at higher levels, but this was just painful.
* Barbarian seems a lot of fun. Sudden Charge was used liberally and the great axe was just fun fun fun.
* Druid was a bit underwhelming, the tempest did less damage than the slingstaff. Didn't seem worse than casters usually are at level 1, though.
* Rogue seemed perfectly fine. The weapon traits meant that the rogue used a rapier in one hand and either a hand crossbow or short sword in the other, dependent on the situation. Worked really well. She ruined her thieves tools twice on a critical failure, the poor thing.

Trinkets are basically scrolls for the martial classes - Low level ones probably won't upend the world, like a Magic Missile scroll wouldn't.

That said, I wouldn't say it is only useful for a fighter at all. At first level, sure, when they are the only experts at using their weapons, but fighters actually do get access to the critical effect of their weapons and the trinket would then be useless for them. That means that at higher levels, a rogue might have more fun with it.

That's what we are doing too - I GM all the main character stuff, the players take turns at the side-characters. That way we all get to play :D

So, to make schedules match up and to give me some time to read the rules, we won't be playing part 1 of the Playtest till Sunday. In the meantime, however, my players got eager and started making decisions about their characters - Not outright making them, but doing things such as picking Druid Order or Barbarian totem.
Normally that is fine, but how the heck do I report the time to create characters in the survey? Yesterday we spent an hour making the characters entirely, but we also chatted, ate food and had a bit of a talking about our current Pathfinder 1.0 campaign. Is this useful information or does it just skew the survey?

Under the Kraken, they specifically state that monsters takes multiple attack penalty. That also has the effect of changing how the Kraken works substantially.

If you are untrained even in unarmored, wouldn't it then always be preferable to wear a leather or hide armor, and most of the time be more than worth it to wear at LEAST a chain shirt even if you are untrained? For no armor, (Level + 0 -2 ) can never compete with (Level +2 -2).
That can't be intended? Am I missing some problem with wearing armor that makes it not worth it?

Is there any good reason for, say, a sorcerer to not just strut around in half-plate right out of the gate?

One peculiarity I noticed; You can't cast Wall spells diagonally. My guess is it is to avoid having to count the diagonal squares and people trying to cheat themselves to an extra 2.5 foot of wall?

When I made my latest campaign, in an Eastern setting, this would assuredly have been useful. It was hard for the players to give up the stable of shields and falchions, full plates and breastplate. Rarity would have been a very nice tool indeed, seeing as some foreigners did indeed start trading with the islands during the game. Could have made their armors and guns uncommon, the weapons they were unwilling to trade Rare. Love it!

I liked most of the Starfinder changes, but archetypes made me sad- having them be a spin on specific classes was great,but the need in Starfinder to make them universal also made them shockingly underwhelming. Are archetypes going to work this way in 2ed?

Hello Paizo

Please cancel my subscriptions, my gaming group moved away for now