RunnerAndJumper's page

What I like:
1. Action Economy
2. Proficincy-System and Unlocking Skill Features
3. Customization (Multiclasses and Archetypes)

What I don't like:
1. Proficiency bonus for master/legendary
2. Dying-System
3. Not enough spells for casters

Houserules:
1. Making master and legendary more meaningful, not just for skills, but also items (potency-runes only increase damage, not hit-chance, for example) and making master a +3 and legendary a +6 bonus (for skills and items).
2. More possibilities for non-magical healing
3. Every character has some way to access every feat (everyone can get DEX to damage, for example)

- Spell failure does not exist anymore

- Casting, in generall, does not cause a reaction, unless an action involved in casting has the manipulate trait.

- Items don't have HP anymore

- If you pick a class, you keep that class untill level 20. Multiclassing is done by picking feats.

- Skill ranks don't exist anymore

- You can't use magic items as much as you want anymore (-> resonance)

- Shields have to be raised (an action) to provide AC

- Combat maneuvers are now part of the Athletics-skill and are rolled against the targets reflex or fortitude DC

- Weapon damage does not depend on size anymore

- Two-handed weapons only add the strength modifier to damage (not 1.5 times STR anymore)

- Two-weapon fighting is very different now

- Initiative is now rolled by picking the most appropriate skill (usually perception, sometimes stealth, but can be any skill)

That depends. Are Level 1 and 12 PCs playing simultaneously? If so then probably not, because of the "+level to everything" rule: Either Level 1 characters are going to be useless, or level 12 are going to steamroll everything. I think it would only work when the PCs are no more than 2 levels apart.

Shields take a dent once it takes its hardness in damage. Items also specifically say they reduce damage done to them by their hardness, as does the Shield Block option, it reduces the damage done to you by its hardness. So therefore a Wooden Shield would need to take 6 or more damage to get a dent and 9 or more damage to break, which is the example the book gives. Steel Shields have hardness 5 which would mean they would need to take 10 or more damage to get a dent and 15 or more damage to break.

To me this makes shields amazing. If you're up against a group of low level monsters that are constantly doing less than 6 damage with wooden, or 10 with steel, you basically get free DR every turn. Once you get to the big boss it's probably better to not shield block unless you're really low on health and it could save your life.

At higher lvls item quality improves hardness and materials improve hardness.

Edit: I actually don't think a shield being magic improves its hardness. I don't see anything to indicate that it does.

Edit #2: Found it, it's called sturdy shield. It's really good. It raises its hardness considerably and let's it take an additional dent before being broken. Pretty awesome.

The problem is, that RAW, a shield would never get a dent when you use it to block:

You snap your shield into place to deflect a blow. Your shield

prevents you from taking an amount of damage up to its Hardness—
the shield takes this damage instead, possibly becoming dented or
broken. See page 175 for rules on dented and broken items.

Some people also have interpreted, that this damage would bypass the hardness, so it gets a dent if the damage is high enough, which would make shields pretty bad, IMO.

So, our group is 4~5 sessions away from wrapping up a campaign, and we are pouring over the playtest book. No one has any idea what they want to play and no one seems to exactly hate any class.

My idea was that your class had to be random (roll a d10), but another one put forth that some part needs to be random. (Roll for race, class, or background). That eventually lead to "since it is easy to get whatever stats you want, make all three random", which not everyone liked.

I was wondering if anyone else had fun ideas for creating characters using the new PF2 methods and not rolling for stats.

You could "roll for stats" without actually rolling for stats:

So for example you roll: 3, 8, 1, 19, 12, 8

Which results in :

STR 3
DEX 8
CON 1
INT 19
WIS 12
CHA 8

That would mean INT has to be your highest stat, followed by WIS, then you pick either CHA or DEX and so on... That way you still have some control with the new "point buy" system, while your stats are still somewhat random.

Another option would be to make ancestry and class semi-random:
Flip a coin (roll a D2): heads: you are small , tails: you are medium.
Again for class: heads: martial, tails: caster.
Or any other categories you can up with =)

(Sidenote: I would actually prefer just rolling for a random class to either, or even better Long John's suggested method, which I will be using once the playtest is finished. It's just another suggestion.)

No, not in the book as we're not going to need it years down the road, and that page space could be better used elsewhere.

However, a PDF detailing just this would be a nice idea, and mention of it in the book's Forward would take no more than about 1-inch of column space.

For example: "Returning Players: For an overview of what's new since 1st edition, please check paizo.com/2ndedition. There you'll find a list of changes, as well as a conversion guide for existing games and legacy material."

True, a separate PDF is much better idea... This could also be expanded on further with new content being released.

Hello everyone,

it just occurred to me, that people who come from 1st edition might spend quite a bit of time looking for stuff that was essential to 1st edition but does not exist anymore. Some examples include:

- spell failure

- two weapon fighting (does not really exist as a general rule anymore, rather as specific feat)

- two-handed fighting (just in the sense, that this now only adds your strength bonus, not 1.5 times your bonus)

- multiclassing (in the classical sense)

And similar stuff. This might just be 2-4 pages, but help players transition to the new edition quicker without reading the new rulebook back to back or looking for rules that are not there anymore. Like me, looking for arcane spell failure for an hour O:-)

What do you think?

I've used the Index quite a bit, can't recall all the things I've looked up thus far. Things I have looked up that I remember were...

initiative
magic items-activation

Two Weapon fighting (did not find it)
XP (sent to a reference)
leveling up

I can't recall all the things I looked up, but I do remember one BIG thing I looked up that related to skills and their usages which led me to page 337.

Unfortunately I cannot recall the exact things I looked up as that was early on when I first had the playtest (it was actually one the very first things I looked up in the index).

Pretty much the same for me. Things I remember looking up:

- Shield Block (found it)

- Hardness, and its dependence on material (found both)

- Some specific feats (found them)

- Class DC (technically found it, but the rulebook didn't help. But I was just looking for confirmation that it should be calculated like all the other DCs. Fortunatly, the character sheet confirmed this.)

- Archetypes (found it, but the index could use an entry for "multiclassing")

- dying (found it)

- conditions, in general (found it)

- Two-weapon fighting (didn't find it, but does not exist in that sense anymore)

- arcane spell failure/penalty for casting in armor (didn't find it, but does not exist anymore)

- unarmored proficiency (much like class DC, I found it but not what I was looking for, namely the default rank. But that is clear by now)

Overall, I used it mostly to find the page of things I already knew existed. I think I found everything that I was looking for that was actually in the book. I don't know if it's necessary that every feat is listed in the index, that might result in a lot of bloat in the final version.

Thanks for posting this! Very helpful.

Overall, I like the new version.

Does it need some adjusting to get things balanced correctly?

Oh my yes. That doesn't mean it is BAD, it just means that the open beta version we are reading needs some work and input from us.

That's also true. A lot of people act like Paizo came and said "Hey, is it cool if we ship this next week?" and they are going "OH GOD NO, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?"

I actually feel like it got a lot better since monday. Probably all the people who didn't like it vented and are gone or have calmed down. There seem to be a lot more constructive posts recently.
I also like the new system very much. I think the problem that a lot of people have with it is, that it is much more "gamey" and that's why they compare it to 4E, for example. That's actually one of the things I like about it (the gamey part, not the 4E part). You can include roleplaying in every game (even boardgames), but roleplaying in a system with cumbersome or plain un-fun rules does not work. "The dark eye" and shadowrun come to mind...

Maybe raise the amounts of the TEML to 0, +1, +3 and +5 respectively so that the differences between each level of acquired proficiency feel more different from each other and are more relevant numerically. A +3 that is legandary between numbers as +15 of base proficiency feels little.

I thought so too, but multiple posts on this topic had me convinced, that +3 in this system is actually a huge difference (because of critical successes), even though it does not look like it. I still think that legendary should feel more legendary, though. But this can be done via skill feats and I hope there will be more in the final rulebook. "Scare to death" (p.170) is actually a great example of what a legendary skill feat should be, in my opinion.

don't (in golarion) they straight up fly into a rage whenever written works are around? they are militantly ignorant.

though im sure their recent tragedies and refugee status has brought out more than a few oddballs (even among goblins) who might take interest in such previously reviled fields.

There are people who are smart and ignorant, as well as smart and superstitious. Both can be a somewhat dangerous (or at least VERY annoying) combination. I agree, that +2 Int is not perfect for goblins, but I believe it fits better than Cha.

From what I can tell Doomsday Dawn does not contain spoilers for any other adventure path. Every chapter gives a brief introduction where it fits in the timeline and which adventure path is happening "in the background", but it does not say anything about the story of that adventure path.
But yes, the Dominion of the Black is very important for Doomsday Dawn's story.

I would be okay if Goblins received a +2 bonus to Intelligence instead of Charisma, but I will not be upset if it is Charisma.

Same for me. I see goblins more as cunning (even though crazy) as charismatic. My suspicion is, that they feared this would favor the goblin-alchemist too much, with Dex and Int being alchemists primary stats.

Also, I think it will never be Dex and Con because of gameplay/balance reasons (as PossibleCabbage mentioned earlier).

I think you can make a very nice monk/rogue combination, that focuses on crippling enemies:

Monk features:
Stunning strike
guarded movement
Tangled Forest stance
sleeper hold
disrupt ki
tangled forest rake

rogue features:
bludgeoner
nimble dodge
reactive persuit
skirmish strike

This would result in a very mobile "tank"ish character with a lot of potential for battlefield control. At least I hope so ;)

I also think, that level/2 might be a better solution. The Star Wars D20-system did it that way and it worked very well.

- The maths is a bit more complex, lots of dividing by 2 to get your proficiency.

With the new class/level system you could just indicate proficiency increases in the table. Maybe make it a new column:

Level|Class features|proficiency

That way, you could even (if you wanted to) differentiate skill advancement for different classes. Rogues could advance a bit faster for example.

Rogue dedication (p.282) talks about "the rogue's surprise attack class talent" while everything in the class section is referred to as feats or features. Calling the features you can not choose "talents" would also help in clarifying what you can and can not choose when you pick the "advanced [blank]" multiclassing-feats.

RunnerAndJumper wrote:

Spell repertoire (bard)
This might be a typo, but the bard only starts with one Level-1-spell (and four cantrips) while the sorcerer starts with two Level-1-spells, effectively always keeping repertoire and spells per day equal (which is really nice and easy to remember, by the way).
The progression appears to be the same, though, which would mean, that the bard only knows two Level-1-spells and three of every other level in the end.

The Bard, at 1st level, get one 1st level spell of her choice and one for her muse. True Strike/Soothe/Summon Monster

Thanks! I somehow forgot that... Original post was edited

Hello everyone,

after skimming through the rules, there are some small things that caught my attention and I thought I'd list them here. These is not intended as suggested errata or the like. Most of this is to make certain elements more thematic or balanced (from my point of view). So here it goes:

Tumble Trough
In my opinion this misses a critical failure in the vein of "you fall prone" or "you become flat footed until the beginning of you next turn". Just to give it a bit more of a risk.

Falling damage
This should be non-deterministic. The simple ruling of "damage= half distance fallen" is nice, but this way a PC would know for certain "oh, I'll definitely survive this fall". Falling damage should involve dice in some way. The old system (1d6 for 5 feet, if I recall correctly) should work fine here.

Natural medicine & powerful leap
Why does this cap out at master? Both should get better when you are legendary in the corresponding skill.

Critical hits with bows
The DC 10 check is almost pointless, especially since you don't get critical specialization effects until level 5 (I think). This should either be without a check, or use the class DC of the character who shot the bow.

Reverse engineering
This is too expensive. Writing down the formula should be much cheaper or even free, since you have to pay to reassemble the item anyway.

Heighten spells
This is particularly annoying for the sorcerer and bard, but also true for the other classes: heightened spells should not require a separate formula.

Spell repertoire (bard)
This might be a typo, but the bard only starts with one Level-1-spell (and four cantrips) while the sorcerer starts with two Level-1-spells, effectively always keeping repertoire and spells per day equal (which is really nice and easy to remember, by the way).
The progression appears to be the same, though, which would mean, that the bard only knows two Level-1-spells and three of every other level in the end.

Immunity, weakness, and resistance
The order in which you should apply these should be weakness, resistance, immunity. If go start with immunity and follow with weakness people might think that a creature with "immunity slashing" and "weakness slashing 5" still receives 5 damage. The text clearly states that it isn't so, but this would make it more consistent.

Recovery
The recovery systems seems a bit complicated/fiddly. A flat check against DC 10 + "severity of your dying condition" would be much easier to remember and handle.

Assist action
There seems to be no good reason to use this in an aggressive way. I could rather just strike myself and deal damage, since both strike and assist are compared to the same value. I get the same multiple attack penalty for assisting, since it has the attack trait. I might increase the chance of my ally to crit, but in this case it would still only be worth it if s/he has a better weapon than me. Even it consists for all of his attacks, this hardly seems worth it. Some suggestions to improve this:
- Give it the manipulate trait, instead of the attack trait. That would also give the interesting tactical option of "bating" a reaction from your enemy. Also, this would give low-level characters already in melee a viable option for their third action. Or
- Make the attack against a lower DC (maybe 10+level of opponent) or maybe TAC. Or
- Make the results more meaningful.

Ancestry feats
This has been talked about "a bit" already. In my opinion it would more thematic if you could pick a set of "feats" (maybe call it something different) in the beginning, which then increase as you level up or improve your proficiency ranks. Two examples:
- Weapon familiarity would work like it does now, but in addition you gain critical specialization effects if your proficiency rank with the appropriate weapons becomes master.
- Ancients blood circumstance bonus to saves and reduction in resonance increases as you level up (+1/-0 at level 1, +2/-1 at level 7, or something like that)

This might sound like a lot of complaining, but these are pretty much ALL the little things that I thought could be improved while reading the rulebook. Overall I REALLY like this new edition and if the current ruleset (not format ;) but this has been mentioned to death before...) would be released I would be perfectly fine with it.
Thank you for reading! I hope I didn't make to many mistakes... English is not my first language.

Page 89:
The fighter-feat "combat grab" gives the same effect for the enhancement and the failure. Not sure, if this is intended.

Page 172:
"Survey Wildlife" has an action icon, but the description says it takes 10 minutes to do.

I think there is no explicit mention on how your "class DC" is calculated (10+level+ability), except for the character sheet. At least I could not find it.