Sanmei's page

Any changes to the pricing of Pathfinder Adventure scenario PDFs? I've been collecting the card game materials and was thinking about picking some of those up in the near future.

Yes, and also you can just take this one combination of racial and class abilities which gives you a burrow speed where you don't even ripple the ground as you traverse it, and the inch of stone prevents any means of detection as you bypass the entirety of every dungeon. Or you can just be a wizard and scry 'n' fry every big bad without even bothering with dungeons!

Yah, like, I'm well aware there are more optimal builds, but not everything's about optimizing for that last possible point of DPS, ya munchkins. =-p

My questions are answered.

Empty Quiver Style, hence the thread.

XD Given that he won the monster tournament at PaizoCon with a build he didn't consider optimized, I'd say he is actually that smart. Besides, I don't disagree with him on this and I like the thematic imagery of a monk who unleashes torrents of arrows at foes from a distance, but switches to a close range flurry using the bow if foes are foolish enough to think closing the distance nullifies him as a threat.

Our GM doesn't allow Point Blank Master since archers are already very powerful without eliminating one of their only weaknesses. (I'm not sure if he allows Snap Shot either, much less its Improved or Greater variants.)

While using this style, you can make melee attacks with the chosen weapon as if it were a heavy mace (or a light mace for melee attack made with a hand crossbow or one-handed firearm), though you don’t automatically threaten the area around you as if you were wielding a melee weapon.

Are you penalized if you don't have proficiency with light/heavy maces, or is proficiency with the bow sufficient? (Probably a DM call...)

Another more complicated question involving Stabbing Shot and a Zen Archer:

When adjacent to an opponent and making a full-attack action with a longbow or shortbow (including composite bows), you may choose to make a melee attack against that opponent with a drawn arrow rather than firing it. ... This melee attack replaces the extra attack from Rapid Shot, and all of your attack rolls for the round (the melee attack and the ranged attacks) take a –2 penalty.

From Zen Archer:

A zen archer cannot use Rapid Shot or Manyshot when making a flurry of blows with his bow.

I would assume then that you cannot use Stabbing Shot as part of a flurry of blows, probably even with Empty Quiver Versatility?

In our PF1 games we have been using what I think is the Arcanist system under discussion (we call it "Diamond Throne" as that's where we picked it up).

I started reading this post and was going to chime in and say it sounds just like the system we use. Gee, I wonder why it sounds so familiar?

It goes without saying that I'm fond of this house rule.

--

Someone mentioned flat checks and now I'm playing with the idea of all casters having one special slot per spell level that can be used to spontaneously cast any spell of that level, but it locks once utilized. By spending actions to focus (flavored by the type of caster - recall the fleeting arcane words, call upon your deity's grace, recapture the harmony of the eternal symphony, ask a stick for a favor), you can make a flat check to unlock one of these slots, the difficulty of which depending on how many actions are taken that round-

One action: DC 20 flat check
Two actions: DC 15 flat check
Three actions: DC 10 flat check

Success unlocks a single spell slot of your choosing, allowing you to use that slot to cast another spell with no limitations on number of times per day (beyond that of material component expenditure, for spells with nontrivial components).

Something like that could be an interesting variant on the system, giving casters a bit more freedom to expend spells in or outside of combat without being able to spam magic endlessly (because chances are the best you can average is a little better than one spell every other turn).

EDIT: And now that I look at it more closely, I misread the proposed system and basically suggested the same thing just in more explicit 2E terms. XD Oops.

I still like the idea of healing items and spells having an out-of-combat utilization which takes several minutes to enact properly, but which adds a significant multiplier to the amount rolled. It's the difference between channeling a burst of positive energy and taking time to concentrate that energy specifically where it's needed, and between gulping a healing potion or using it in combination with bandages and field dressing.

I don't believe it is addressed in the book, but I suspect the intent is that 1 lethal damage be the new minimum based upon Pest Form's damage being 1 piercing, but it'd be nice to know for sure -- there are a couple monsters in the playtest bestiary that deal 1d4-1 damage, so you don't even need conditions to result in a theoretical 0.

Resonance as a "count how many magic items you have equipped" is vastly simpler and easier than "item slots." I sincerely hope that stays.

We still have item slots, though?

However, if a character can wear only one of a given type of item, that item’s form is listed following the word “worn.” For example, if the Method of Use entry for an item is “worn, cloak,” then a character could wear only one cloak.

—Page 345

^ Not just non-magical healing options, but an issue with the efficacy of healing options. Healing 4% of the barbarian's HP for 2.5 gold versus healing 6% of the barbarian's HP for 15 gold or 12% HP for 65 gold -- is it any wonder people will take the first option and not the others?

Forcing them to do so isn't going to improve the game. It'll just make characters poorer, or die more often.

Charlie Brooks: Having played out scenarios where the DM rolled on the random encounter table every time we tried to rest, this usually turned into "okay, we have 2 HP and no resources whatsoever and a nice comfortable place to sleep. We push onward because resting means we'll probably just TPK."

It wasn't fun.

I agree that I'd rather not see bonuses that are liable to be forgotten by the table.

Being able to recuperate Focus Points (if that becomes official errata) could be an idea, or possibly spell slots of less than your highest slot level. I do like being able to sharpen weapons to increase their damage die for a certain length of time, or maybe something like spending time adjusting armor straps and rearranging items in packs to decrease a character's check penalties or even give them a temporary bonus to bulk carrying capacity until the next time you rest...

Sanmei:

I disagree. Your deity's divine grace was channeled into the magical elixer you used your Focus on. As you imbibed it, you were charged with her divine sense of strength and purpose.

It works just fine. Focus means different things thematically for different classes but has similar mechanical functions with regards to items. That's OK.

I'm still seeing classes having to choose between something everybody does and things which make them recognizably what they are, and I dislike that mightily. A monk never had to choose between healing potions and a Ki Pool before; now they do. A cleric wasn't choosing between their domain powers or elixirs before; now they do.

It feels like a push toward homogeneity, a recurring theme throughout second edition.

--

The dwarf Ancient-Blooded heritage also stings that much more by this rule set. Whether it impacts Resonance or Focus Points, either way it's cutting into a resource which is now more heavily limited.

Okay, so in addition to having to gradually become a dwarf over time, now some the things that used to be innately dwarfish are gated away behind your single heritage feat choice and therefore you'll literally never become as much of a dwarf as you were in first edition.

Really not what I was hoping to see happen with ancestries...

(Also, the dwarf feat which causes you to have two fewer points of resonance might sting all the more if the resonance playtest winds up becoming official errata, as both resonance and focus points are more heavily limited.)

The proposed version feels like the same problems I had with Resonance, except now instead of choosing between Neat Equipment and Consumable Items, now I choose between The Things that Make the Class Iconic and Stronger Consumable Items.

IE, your Paladin is made superhuman by the grace of their deity... unless you drank an empowered healing potion; then the deity leaves the Paladin to fend for themselves.

Sanmei wrote:

Isn't this the exact same thing first edition's cure spells do?

No, those just heal X. Period.

Okay, then I'm not understanding what the original poster is suggesting, because healing spells which cap at a certain amount of healing is already what those spells do.

Unless the idea is "a healing spell cannot be used to heal above X HP."

Whereupon I say are you TRYING to enforce the 5 minute adventuring day?

After playing In Pale Mountain's Shadow, the limitations on bonus languages (most of them exclusively from taking the Multilingual general feat) definitely stings. The loss of linguistic PCs causes a lot of trouble, especially since you can't effectually cast Comprehend Languages until level 5, and then it runs into slot competition (does the wizard ready a heightened Comprehend Languages or a heightened Mage Armor? Which do they feel more likely to need on a given adventuring day?)

Adding a number of bonus languages equal to INT modifier bonus would be a great boon. Otherwise, large chunks of the storyline are liable to get lost because no PC happens to speak Upside-Down Elf-Gnollish (Western).

I'm sort of on the fence with regard to spells at this point. I think I could get used to the fewer slots and overall reduced effects if monsters were less prone to making their saves. Since there's no real way to buff up spell DCs beyond spell duelist items (and classes such as Bard and Cleric don't necessarily make it obvious that you really, really want to max out your spellcasting ability score even if it means neglecting other abilities), monsters always have a pretty good chance of making their save and taking reduced effects or half damage.

I think that combined with most of the save-or-suck spells getting nerfed into only really sucking on a critical fail (which is now a minuscule chance even against opponents you can mop up with regular attacks) is too much. There's kind of a quadratic nerf going on there. :p

Isn't this the exact same thing first edition's cure spells do?

I like some of the suggestions here, but what if we combined them?

Default: Squares you threaten are difficult terrain.

General feat: Gain a reaction which allows you to make a Strike at a -2 penalty; success deals no damage, but interrupts the target's action.

General feat with prerequisites: When using Disruption, you also deal your Strike damage on a success.

Fighters and other martial classes could gain the upgrades as bonus feats or have abilities which tie into them.

I kind of want to treat hero points the way resonance is at present, where you get a small pool you can spend and then the ability to overspend by making an increasingly stiff roll. Then I'd expand the number of things it can do, such as restoring spell slots, power points, curing conditions, and accessing special abilities.

Oh wait, I just described mythic points, but added the overspend rule. My bad.

Though I kinda wish it were possible to make something like Breath of Fire V: Dragon Quarter's D-Counter and draconic morph. </obscure>

I feel like this makes disarm an extremely powerful option too.

You will be thrilled to note that they've made Disarm all but impossible to actually pull off. A character who is fully optimized to perform a Disarm maneuver has a magnificent 20% chance against the average same level monster (must roll 17 or higher). In order to disarm the monster, your best bet is to have two fully optimized characters each perform the disarm action as their first attack, assuming both are able to act before the target gets their turn. Then you'll have a 30% chance of success!

Most of the classes don't have many class-specific abilities that function meaningfully outside of combat. Rogues get more skill increases, so they make better jacks-of-all-trades, but you don't see things like "character gets a competence bonus to X skill equal to their class level" like the 1E alchemist had, and most of the things a character can do outside of combat can be replicated by another character with the same stats and general feats.

Heck, at this point you don't even see spellcasters being the crucial difference between hard skill checks or a bit of narrative because most of those "the barrier is no longer relevant" spells are either on the uncommon list or don't function in the same way.

This is both good and bad depending on who you ask. Myself, I'm a little frumpy at the fact that a wizard is far more likely to wind up grabbing the rope and crampons and scaling a vertical wall by hand than they are to cast a spell and fly up the side of the cliff, if only because Fly is now short duration and they're likely to run out of casts before they run out of mountain.

It's funny how I somehow get accused of having a group of hyper-optimizers (which empirically is wrong, anyway), but that is the first time I've ever heard of someone weaponizing the Holy Word series of spells in this way (raising caster level and such). Shows what I know. ^^

I've seen it at my table a couple of times, but it's less common among PCs after the first incident where the cleric, swelling up with righteous caster level boosts (usually from a Bead of Karma), unleashes a mighty word and half the party goes blind and deaf. XD

Camels have a move speed of 35, therefore they travel three and a half miles per hour or 28 miles in an average day. From page 37 of the PF2E Bestiary.

I don't see the definition of "treadmill" as facing increasingly stiff challenges as the game progresses, I see it as the challenge scaling in such a way that you never really make forward progress, i.e. you stay in place as you would upon a treadmill.

Final Fantasy 8 was a case of monsters scaling so as to be roughly the same degree of challenge throughout the entire game.

But in most such games and definitely in 1E, there are usually ways to get ahead in some way -- a combination of feats, a certain item, a tactic with another PC, and various challenges could be rendered easier or even trivial. You could frontload so much advantage on to the character (such as by making a goblin PC specializing in stealth) that even the increased challenge at higher levels would never put them at a significant disadvantage.

2E doesn't have that. In 2E, the best you can ever accomplish is generally "you succeed a little more often than calling heads on a coin toss." It's possible to be worse but not really possible to be better. If you don't do your best to keep up, you will be worse. If the GM is stingy with treasure, you will be worse. If you ever try to do something unique, you will be worse. If you prioritize roleplaying over optimization, you will be worse.

You can never get any further forward, but you can definitely fall off. That's a treadmill.

I just have very little interest in a system which requires system mastery in order to build a character which is viable, if not capable of thriving. "Thriving" seems like an opposition goal, i.e., the developers don't want a character built to do X to ever be good at doing X, only "better than a person with no investment in X."

Couple that with a number of build options offered by the game being traps which aren't viable at all (which reinforces system mastery).

It was certainly possible to build a character who wasn't viable in 1E, but it wasn't <I>as</I> possible as saying, for example, "I think I'd like to try an animal companion" or "I'll put this feat into improving snares so I can set traps!" or "I cast Disintegrate without casting True Strike first."

A lot of classes have level 1 feats which lead into a feat tree, creating a clear path for a build. Ranger's crossbow feat is just kind of there. If they had something which reduced reload, they'd still only get to a point where crossbows compare to shortbows, whereas shortbows just start out better and then get even more so with feats. It feels like a trap option.

Mundane healing should be in no way comparable to magical healing. Level 20 channel rolls 20d6 or something like that. Level 20 treat Wounds has a 30% chance of restoring 240 hp, effectively doubling the best magical healing available.

I feel like that's more an indictment on the inefficient and often insufficient restoration amount of magical healing.

Another item to factor in is high level alchemists with the Perfect Medicine feat. Alchemists are hard to play for a good chunk of the game, but once they get that, I'm pretty sure it makes them the best HP healers in the game.

Of course, alchemists can't raise the dead unless they reach level 20 and take Philosopher's Stone, and then only once each month.

Floppy Toast wrote:

Is there any evidence, or any anecdotes, of casters doing really ridiculous damage?

A big-bad 15th-level fighter swinging a level-appropriate magic weapon (something in the +3 range) throws down damage in doses of 4d12+5 or there-abouts.

His 15th-level wizard companion can hurl 3d10+5 or there-abouts with telekinetic projectile all day long, after he exhausts his attack spells of higher levels.

He can probably only do that Telekinetic Projectile once per round, while the fighter is making multiple attacks. Telekinetic Projectile in particular probably isn't as good as the various ranged touch attacks, which probably hit more often.

On spells with saves, monsters have odds to make their save and take half damage. I haven't done the math across the entire bestiary, but in general whenever I look up monsters, they tend to have a 50% or better chance of making their saves. The three I looked up earlier only needed to roll a 9 to take half damage, so 55% chance of the wizard spending a high level slot to do damage comparable to a regular fighter attack.

There are ways around this using ranged touch attack spells with spell duelist items, but there really shouldn't have to be.

It looks like us complaining about having to go down the gish path to make our spellcasters work somehow made the staff aware that they might not suck as much as they should.

So we're going to nerf that.

The developers, at times, seem to miss the forest for the trees. They didn't like people using a Wand of Cure Light Wounds to heal, so they nerfed wand charges and limited how much a person could use wands each day. The real problem was that healing magic and most items were too inefficient, especially at high levels, so healing between battles either took most of a spellcaster's repertoire or a prolonged rest period.

The other day I looked at three monsters at a given level and each of them only needed to roll a 9 to make their saves against spells. This means that odds are for monsters to take reduced damage and nullify status ailments. With no way to improve spell DCs without going out of one's way in battle to inflict Frighten or other conditions, that takes the oomph out of a lot of spells.

Ranged touch attack spells seem to hold up better with spell duelist items, but I'd like battlefield control to be easier.

Equally pigeonholed as martials taking magic armor.

I'm not fond of this as a comparison because magic armor and bracers occupy different slots, and those slots do not have equal value. A fighter who wears magic armor has their wrist slot open for Bracers of Missile Deflection, while a wizard who wears Bracers of Armor has their armor slot open for... nothing at all.

I really dislike when a slot is effectively occupied by default by a particular item so that certain classes can't really use other items of the same slot (especially because items need to be invested, so it's harder to swap between them on the fly). It seemed like we were getting away from that by having the Cloak of Resistance effect folded into runes of potency and most stat-backing equipment being late-game and possibly optional, but mages still tend to get backed into giving up their bracer slot, and monks, while now benefiting from getting simple weapons and being able to use a feat to get martial weapons, still generally have to give up their glove slot for Handwraps of Mighty Fists.

If it were up to me, I'd prefer to see something like the Automatic Bonus Progression rules and let players use all their slots for whatever neat items they find.

With two frontliners and a Wolf (tripping Quasit) "guarding" the front lines with positioning, the GM specifically said, "time to take out the caster threats" and ran around them (for a successful critical hit.

This is a major part of why I dislike Attack of Opportunity being gated away to fighters and mid-level paladins -- it's that much harder to protect allies. Plus it's another one-way game changer, since Attack of Opportunity shows up pretty frequently on monsters. I feel like it makes players have to be strategic while monsters are allowed to be reckless.

i see no reason for a wizard to NOT start with a 16 dex, which will be 18 at level 9.

Oh, you're right! For some reason I was thinking they wouldn't have their first ability boost yet (probably because it's irrelevant for the class's main stat for the purposes of this discussion - 19 and 18 having the same bonus mod after all).

also, a +1 wand/gloves (both level 8 items), and you're already at +14 to attack vs TAC 23 is exactly the same as the fighter's +17 vs AC 26

Also a good point. I keep forgetting the spell duelist items exist. They're must-haves.

edit:

for the focus fire issue, don't forget, that with "autoheightneing" casters will have 2nd level Improved invisibility as well.

Sure. I was referring to the current state of affairs where access to defensive magics is limited by slot competition (especially where you need heightening to get level-appropriate damage or bonuses, such as with Mage Armor or blasting spells).

Would casters still be able to use higher level slots to cast/prepare lower level spells, though? If you didn't have to use your highest level slots to get the best version of effects, I could see people dedicate lots of mid level slots for things like Invisibility so they could be assured of being invisible in every single battle. I gather the goal of the rules is to limit spellcasting, so I could see restricting spells to their base spell slot (so Burning Hands is always cast using a level 1 slot, for example).

Persistent damage is pretty broken given it's a pretty hard flat check at the best of times, heh. Even on ranged touch attacks, though, the wizard has slight odds to miss:

Wrath demon: 23 TAC
Bone devil: 24 TAC
Young blue dragon: TAC 23

Looks like 23 is standard at that level. Assuming 16 DEX (not sure if this number is likely to be that high, but going to assume it anyway), the wizard's looking at +12 to their ranged touch roll and so needs 11 to connect with a crit on 20.

As for AOE versus single target, that's a fair point. The value of dealing small amounts of damage to a group of enemies is going to depend on your DM, though. Ours would typically then have a monster say "Get the mage!" and suddenly the wizard is swamped in vengeful critters.

Also notable, HP totals at those levels:

Wrath demon: 183 HP
Bone devil: 120 HP
Young blue dragon: 155 HP

With an average of about 153 HP, those critters are sporting trivial flesh wounds even if you're connecting or they're failing saves.

Well, a ninth level fighter would be expected to have at least a +2 magic weapon, with which they can be expected to have master proficiency with. Assuming 18 STR and a non-agile weapon, they make one attack at +17, one at +12, one at +7. Assuming a longsword, they'll deal 3d8+4 per hit.

The heightened burning hands and fireball will both deal 10d6 damage when cast with a fifth level slot with trained proficiency at level 9 (they don't become expert until level 12). The DC of this spell will likely be 23.

Some sample Reflex saves and ACs at level 9:

Wrath demon: Ref +14; AC 26
Bone devil: Ref +15; AC 26
Young blue dragon: Ref +14; AC 26

So it looks like AC 26 and reflex 14 are pretty representative.

This means on a 9 the monster takes half damage against the spells, while the fighter connects on a nine (crit on 19), then a 14 (crit on 20), then a 19 (crit on 20).

So chances are that the mage's spells likely deal 5d6 damage (average 17.5) whereas any blow from the fighter's +2 longsword is dealing 3d8+4 (average 17.5).

The monster has to roll low in order for the mage to deal superior damage to a fighter, whereas the fighter need only roll low to deal damage comparable to a mage.

Mages... aren't good at burst damage anymore, TBH.

Cures (healer’s lvl) * (your con mod) hp.

Hm, if that's based off the recipient's CON modifier, does that mean particularly elves are harmed by human medicine? XD

I assume it'll have a minimum of 1.

Con -> the effect on HP is weak, the effect on Saves is the same as Wis. And Wis has skill associated and Per etc. No characters should dump Con, but no character should pump it either.

Hm, CON also boosts your Fort save odds, and you really don't want to get poisoned or have to roll against the Dying status more than you will by dint of the universal coin toss...

I'm ~okay with the class feats, but I'm uncertain about the items which wound up restricted to specific classes. The main one I'm concerned about is Attack of Opportunity, since it feels like much of the rest of the game has yet to catch up with that (for example, the various ways of getting longer reach, such as Enlarge or Giant's Lunge and Giant's Stature). Having longer reach doesn't mean much if the best it can do for you is prevent an opponent from taking a third attack at a -10 penalty.

As someone noted, it feels like role protection, and I'm uncomfortable with it when it starts to feel as though the game is doing its best to force you to create a party with very specific classes.

There are also Goblin Warriors, which have Deadly on their shortbows:

Ed Reppert wrote:

If the chance of whiffing is high, isn't that an indication that maybe some other solution than fighting might be a good idea (granting that sometimes you don't have a choice)?

The problem is that the monsters are built so that if you whiff in combat, your chances of using skills against them (like sneaking past them) are even worse.

Not to mention sneaking an entire party by any monster is now extremely difficult, due to the way sneaking works. By some readings of the rules, you even wind up having to make three sneak checks per character every round until sufficiently far enough away from the monster.

Tactic Problem #6: As per page 331, only one character can be Searching at a time: the character with the highest Perception.

Ouch! I never noticed that rule, and that's after GMing several groups. This thing makes difference, and I am not sure I like it.

I certainly don't. It means there's no difference between one person and fifty people searching a room. It means there's no such thing as a search party in-universe -- just send the town cleric out to look for the lost child; everyone else is useless baggage.

A character with neither the Ride feat nor an animal companion mounts a horse.

This actually makes some degree of sense to me -- riding a horse for any substantial length of time if you don't have experience and training is going to leave you extremely sore and wanting to collapse into bed for eight hours. The problem is that takes riding a horse for quite awhile, not just ten minutes!

Investigate and Search being separate tactics does make my head hurt.

Stealing is another one. If you fail to steal something in ten minutes, you're fatigued? That would sure make the average heist movie boring...

At home, our house rules include means by which the entire party engages in an activity. If people are searching or keeping lookout, the highest perception rolls with up to two aids whose DCs are based on the total skill of the lead character. If the party is attempting to be stealthy, the high stealth rolls and everyone similarly attempts a DC based on their skill; each character who fails deducts from the total stealth roll by a certain amount plus their armor check penalty.

Well, it's also notable that this can fail, unlike casting a spell or using a wand, so it's not really comparable to other forms of healing being bantered about.

With the way skills are currently set up, I'd be hesitant to even commit to it myself. I can just imagine this being set up to be one of those "always 40% or lower" odds rolls.

... yes, I'm kind of pessimistic about the way 2E's skill system is set up. In general, I feel like the design philosophy is "let all but the most optimized strategy game junkie perish."

It's not paltry.

At 8, starting with just a 14 con, you heal just slightly more than a 4th level heal boosted by a level 7 staff of healing. (38 for the barb, 37.5 for the cleric with the staff)

If one healing spell per hour were all any PC needed, that'd be great! Monsters only hit once per combat, right? -_-

Also I haven't checked what it looks like at higher levels, but a level 5 barbarian would only heal about 20% of their max HP each time and I suspect that'll decrease sharply as maximum HP outpaces their healing, which just means that the higher level the character (and consequently, the more damage monsters are assumed to be able to deal), the less viable they'll be.

And you also have vigor as your 3rd action each round if you're getting a pounding for round by round temp HPs.

I did poke at this a bit and it looks like vigor up until the mid levels should absorb one average attack from a monster of your level, and afterwards gets outpaced by monster damage. It's never a bad use of an action as far as I can tell (especially if it stacks? I'm assuming it doesn't, but didn't actually see anything saying it wouldn't), but it's a stiff race against the kinds of damage monsters deal.

Keep in mind, that with the system as it's set, Superstition Barbs get one of the most broken martial abilities at 14.

Now that 90% of martial damage comes from their magic weapons, sunder enchantment on them is bonkers.

That'll help for monsters which use magic items, for sure (assuming you connect). Looking at the bestiary for level 14 monsters, there are four critters, one of which uses magic weapons (and it has a nasty backup attack). You'd be reducing its damage from 3d8+14 with 2d8 persistent bleed to 1d10+7 with 2d6 fire and 1d8 persistent fire, or just causing it to fly out of reach and use its 4d8+4 damage missile with 2d8 persistent fire.

That persistent damage is liable to be a killer, since you can never get the flat check DC below 15, and that's if you're spending actions to do things like douse the fire or perform Medicine checks (though by that level you should be making the DC 15 check to do so automatically -- hell, the barbarian himself, even with 10 WIS, probably can't fail that check even without a single point in Medicine).

That's a problem of persistent damage, but it's going to hurt even more for the character who only heals as much as a single healing spell every hour. :\

assuming that the storyteller was using appropriate challenges, of course.

Therein lies the rub -- 2E has its own idea of what an appropriate challenge should be.

LuniasM: Huh. The sad thing is, that might actually be the best source of healing available to a PC.

So... you spend a chunk of GP to heal small amounts of health if you can succeed at what is likely to be a fairly stiff DC on everyone's behalf?

I mean, it's gorgeously thematic, but the way 2E is being set up, you might as well just stop and rest for the day.

I'd love to see percentile healing, but calculating it on the fly would bog down games far too much. This could be a decent middle ground -- healing based on the level of the recipient. Works best when options for healing are limited, as they currently are.

The two big things I'd like to see added to healing though:

1) An option for healing which takes an extended length of time, such as a minute per use, which restores a significantly greater amount of HP

2) Such abilities adding the recipient's CON bonus to their healing total as well as relevant stats from the person performing the action. You can heal well and you can be a person who is naturally robust and healthy. Nowhere other than an RPG does having a lot of constitution equate to also being a sponge that devours tons of magical resources before feeling optimal once again.

Sanmei Long wrote:

Superstition got a buff, but it still only looks playable if a 15 minute adventuring day is truly the expected norm. :\ (snip)

Technically they actually only work if you don't have a 15 minute adventuring day.

I meant "still" as in "this doesn't add enough to make it viable outside of a short day, after which you rest and the barbarian periodically yells incoherently at the wall for 18 seconds while regenerating a paltry amount of health."

Man, that's going to make keeping watch and resting "fun!"

To make it viable in a proper adventuring day where encounters occur more often than once every several hours, I think it'd have to have Fast Healing or something equivalent at all times. :\

Hello, the Bard called and wants to have a word.

Performance / Occult + 6 Skills + Int Modifier at character creation with the ability to do the majority of your skill rolls using a single skill?

Not sure what you're referring to? Versatile Performance allows them to do three specific things using Performance (Make an Impression, Demoralize, and Impersonate) and Inspire Competence is only for assisting an ally, not your own rolls...

Even with just the Cleric class, domains and other forms of customization give players a lot of different ways to play a healer. And IME, Druids and Alchemists *can* be the party's solo healer. So there's not just one option.

Ah, so you can choose between a poor healer or a series of worse healers? Everything I've seen and much of what I've heard in playtesting is that a cleric often isn't sufficient, and other classes can only do a fraction of what a cleric can. Of course there are groups which have succeeded without a cleric, but there are also groups where players confidently boast that Drakkus was far too easy and needs a buff in order to be a decent challenge. :P

And if someone wants to play a peasant with no magical or weapon proficiency? Do you let someone play any kind of character they want, no matter how useless it is for the party, because a player's wish to play something trumps any other concerns?

Nice strawman.

"More options" also does not mean "must accommodate every playstyle under the sun no matter how outlandish."

There's a middle-ground.

Of course people would be happier with more healing than less. Players and characters should always seek out getting more for themselves. However, a game shouldn't just give it to them. They should work for it, or pay dearly for it. Otherwise, there's no challenge to the game, and the narrative loses a lot of its uncertainty.

Obtaining the gold to purchase healing is the game just giving it to you? Having to budget wisely in order to afford healing is the price you pay.

Or do you prefer the 15 minute adventuring day? My goal is to avoid it if possible, but if players are consistently expending all their resources in the first one or two fights, it'll be inevitable.

Unless, as some have suggested, the goal is to force players to press on and risk TPKing. Frankly I'm sick to death of sadistic GMs trying to drive the company model.

You want a challenge? Don't give out as many resources, add more monsters, crunch the time constraints more tightly, etc. But I would happily do without Pathfinder becoming Dark Souls in tabletop format when it wasn't that to begin with and arguably never should be.

If parties can get by without healers, then the game must not need healers. In that case, get rid of the class altogether, so that people won't waste their time doing a role that's unnecessary.

"Can get by without" does not equal "there is no point in having this thing at all."

The point is to have more options, not restrict people to only having one.

Why do people have such a huge problem with the idea of player agency to the point that they feel comfortable forcing someone to play a character they don't want to?

Also, I should remind people the wands of CLW are not the problem; they are the solution to the problem of the lack of efficiency and efficacy of most healing options. When your options are between depleting wand charges to keep going or completely emptying out the cleric and still probably needing to rest a day, it's obvious most people would rather use a wand.

There have been reports of parties retreating from the dungeon to have their cleric spend all their healing resources, resting eight hours so the cleric gets their spells back, spending all those spells to finish healing the party, then resting a further 24 hours to get those spells back again before continuing onward. This is ridiculous, but it's going to happen as long as the average healing spell only restores a fraction of the character's HP and characters can be expected to lose a lot of HP in every battle.