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.
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?
Quote:
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.
^ 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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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."
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.
shroudb wrote:
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.
Freagarthach wrote:
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.
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.
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.
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.
Colette Brunel wrote:
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."
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.
Quote:
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.
Quote:
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. :\
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. :\
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...
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.
CLW wands were a terrible, hacky, unintended, uninteresting, and general terrible fit for that role.
People say that, but what is the replacement that's great, appropriate, interesting anda great fit?
More and more, the impression I'm getting from players here and Paizo is "bravely going forward even with few to nil resources and hoping like hell to win anyway! And being totally okay with it even if we TPK! Hell, half the fun is rolling up new characters anyway! I've never had a party last longer than level 5!"
Or alternatively, "to do that and always succeed because, pathetic human, I am vastly superior to you. I play Dark Souls blindfolded for a casual gaming experience. Also I routinely devise new forms of cold fusion for something to engage my brain whilst I slip off to sleep on my pile of Rolls Royces, and did I forget to mention I'm a dragon?"
Heh, yeah, my suspicions were correct -- the average kit, not even including things like a tent, is probably too much bulk for the average adventurer when combined with their armor and weapon and any adventuring necessities. Definitely going to want pack mules when on the trail.
Quite honestly, if a PC had a "good" aligned character of a good deity in my game and they asked to be paid to cast a healing spell on a guy in need, I'd probably have him lose favor in his deity.
Good heavens, why is that cleric even out journeying on some frivolous adventure when they could be saving tens of people with channeling and Create Food and Water spells?!
Why doesn't Batman just use his seemingly infinite wealth to raise standards of living for all of Gotham so that crime becomes pointless to all but the most sociopathic criminals?
I seriously recommend having a long perusal of the spell list, followed by a gander at the saves on the average monster, before attempting to mitigate the awesomeness that is magic any further than it has been already. Wizards no longer throttle the heavens. In fact, on most days they can barely stir up a dust devil with a particularly aggressive fart.
You'd need the person who dropped to be the cleric, and you would continue to need bad luck throughout the coming fight in order to lose. And, just in terms of my "gut feeling" on the odds (which, to be fair, is underdeveloped for PF2) that feels about like the 6% odds that Paizo's data suggests.
Chances are that much of the 6% is based upon the original Dying rules, where the cleric had no way to alleviate the problems experienced by a Dying character, thanks to not regaining consciousness or losing the Dying condition when your HP was brought above 0.
One of the things I loved most about 1E is how flexible it was. You could build nearly anything and chances are could make it function relatively well if you knew what you were doing. Wizards who engaged in melee were possible. Fighters who use magical items to evoke sorcerous effects were possible. An alchemist who turns into a puddle of goo? ... okay y'know what
Now take this framework and look at second edition.
"I was thinking of trying an aasimar fighter and multiclass into a rogue."
"I'm doing another wizard, but this time I thought I'd try a goblin firebug."
"I think I nearly have the ranger build I wanted down. I'm going to add in half-orc for some extra oomph."
"All of these sound awesome. Which of you is playing the cleric instead?"
I am mentally batting around the idea of healing magic being built around a similar mechanic as the new Magic Missile, where the more time and effort you put into any given cast, the more HP it restores, with an out-of-battle application taking one minute per cast and restoring a substantial amount of HP in one shot. If that were the case, I don't think I'd mind wands only having 10 charges, or costing resonance.
I'd also like to see healing receive an additional bonus from the recipient's CON ability bonus, minimum 0. It makes no sense that investing in CON or being a mighty warrior also makes you a sponge who needs vastly more healing than other characters in order to feel restored to full strength. It feels like being punished for having more HP.
From what I've heard, it isn't what people do or don't do that kills them, it's the fact that monsters have a relatively high chance of hitting, critting, and sometimes even killing the PC in one blow
With the current rules and adventures this is impossible. So you must mean knocking someone to 0? people keep calling this killing, or dead it is not.
True, they're knocked to Dying 1 or 2, not Dead. But it often amounts to the same if they can't make the Fort save to recoup before the enemy party annihilates everyone else and then casually sits about poking the twitching bodies until they stop moving.
The new dying rules might even make this worse since now you can bounce between Dying 1 and Dying 2 back and forth several times before finally making enough consecutive saves to get out of Dying, though I still prefer them to the alternative (which was the potential to die while at positive HP values, based on some readings).
From what I've heard, it isn't what people do or don't do that kills them, it's the fact that monsters have a relatively high chance of hitting, critting, and sometimes even killing the PC in one blow -- and that's if they're optimized. Battles are very swingy when optimized (apparently the average chance for a fully optimized character to land a blow or a spell against a same level opponent are never better than 55%) and tend to flatten you if you're not.
That means that there's pretty good odds for that party of level 0 monsters to drop a fighter in the first or second turn, and then while he struggles to roll 14 or better to stabilize, they're busy dropping the rest of the party and not having too difficult a time doing it. The boss has a 10% chance to crit against the fully optimized fighter and as much as a 30% chance against the squishier characters, potentially dealing enough damage to OHKO any single member of the party.
I plan to run the playtest with a party of level 3 characters to see if a few more points of AC and attack bonus help, but from what I'm hearing, they should still be expected to struggle and odds should be far from remote that they TPK against the boss. I find this troubling.
Also, low level monsters are a bit more accurate than they should be.
From what I've heard, the skills are slightly too high, but the attack roll bonuses are where they are intended to be. Monsters are apparently intended to continue posting some degree of thread until they are four levels below the PC's own. This means that levels 1-3 are, again apparently by intent, somewhat underpowered and it is expected that one or two PCs die per adventure at low levels.
I am not interested in playing the Dark Souls of tabletop gaming where PCs are forever at a razor's edge, uncertain whether they want to press on and risk a TPK or fall back and suffer storyline consequences while they consolidate resources.
That's a pretty good description of exactly the style I do want my games to be, provided the difference between the risk and the falling back has a reasonable blend of player and DM agency, and strategic choices aren't unduly easy to mess up with bad dice rolls.
I am particularly hoping to see elegant ways of extending that style into high-level play.
Meanwhile, I'm having the same reaction to it as I did when Breath of the Wild came out: it's not the game I started playing. It's not a game I want to play. If I wanted to play such games, I'd be playing something else altogether -- and now my alternative to that "something else altogether" is becoming the very thing I'd prefer not to play.
Well, there's only one outcome of that sort of change: one less customer.
Tridus took the words out of my mouth. Literally had a post written up in Notepad while I read through the thread and Tridus wound up writing almost everything I'd intended to say.
I think that when it's not uncommon to hear stories of players fighting one or two battles, exhausting their healing resources, then leaving the dungeon and resting a day to recover spells and resonance, spending all those spells and resonance to finish healing, resting again, and then returning to the dungeon after two days, something has gone horribly wrong. That should never be necessary. If monsters are going to be this dangerous, then PCs cannot safely adventure at anything less than full resources.
I am not interested in playing the Dark Souls of tabletop gaming where PCs are forever at a razor's edge, uncertain whether they want to press on and risk a TPK or fall back and suffer storyline consequences while they consolidate resources.
The problem isn't wands of CLW. The problem is that wands of CLW are the best source of healing -- but that's a complaint about healing itself. No one really wants to sit in a circle waving a series of wands for 8 minutes, but compared to casting eight healing spells and then resting for eight hours and then casting eight spells and then resting for 24 hours (because you can't recoup your spells twice in one day)...
And the answer to that is not "Fine, you can only wave your wands around for thirty seconds before we stop you and you have to do something else."
I think the fact that we're hearing terms like "15 minute adventuring day" are a good indication that something is flawed in the system. If this in particular is caused by spellcasters exhausting their slots on the first encounter of the day and the martial characters still having taken enough damage to necessitate a rest, then something has gone horribly wrong. Players should not feel so overshadowed by monsters that even the exhaustion of limited resources barely makes a single fight each day possible without serious risk (and even then).
Everything I'm hearing is that players are typically going all-in on every battle and then retreating, or else continuing on -- and then usually losing someone to the second battle of the day. I see issues with this.
Apologies, I'm late to the thread but would like to respond to things posted earlier.
magnuskn wrote:
Although, as I pointed out, that divine spellcasters get access to their whole spell list but there are uncommon spells on it as well makes me doubt that this was the intent by Paizo.
The angelic bloodline for sorcerer uses divine spells, so they can be gated off from sorcerers in that fashion. I suspect we'll see errata stating that clerics and druids only get access to common rarity spells without learning others through skill use at some point in the future.
shroudb wrote:
Everyone needs magic armor. The same way everyone needs magical weapons (even casters need spell dueling wand/golves)
The same way cloak of prot and circlet were mandatory, now it's armor.
The problem with the cloak and circlet was that they were so mandatory that other items were never given a chance to shine. Other items would languish because there was just no way to make practical use of them.
Several third party writers had taken notice of this, producing rule sets such as the Iron Heroes bonuses, and Paizo themselves produced two alternative rule sets for bonuses in Unchained (one in which bonuses are based off of level, and one in which the bonuses are coupled on to other effects so you have things like Elven Cloaks that give resistance bonuses).
I' d personally prefer to keep to that line of thought -- avoid situations where certain items become mandatory, and certain slots are doomed to always be occupied by a specific type of item. I'd rather have enchanted robes than mages and monks whose slots may as well be filled in by default on the character sheets.
I'm still looking at Mage Armor, though. Since Mage Armor doesn't have a maximum DEX bonus, that seems like it eventually makes it the best armor option in the game -- the only way of breaking the +7 total cap on item and DEX bonus. It's even better on a monk, since they can add up to +3 from proficiency bonus.
John Mechalas wrote:
Passwall was actually a bigger offender in "skip to the end" syndrome.
For Reign of Winter, we played a stealth-heavy party which made absurd use out of an Insistent Door Knocker and Gloves of Reconnaissance, with the occasional round of Spider Climb to get into a good position. There's a bit of good-natured griping about that combo being nerfed, but we definitely understand the necessity! =
Now Passwall doesn't scale as neatly, only having an option to heighten it to 7th for a 20 foot tunnel, but its heightened form disguises the entrance and exit to appear and act like solid walls unless the person trying to use them meets criteria of your choosing. This might be the best "get out of town" option available at short notice to a party in 2E! You cast it, dive into the tunnel, and your criteria for entering it is something like "must be an ally of mine."
shroudb wrote:
also, you can buy wands and staves and fling fireballs every round.
Duly note that wands now possess only 10 charges and staves have charges equal to the highest level spell slots you have accessible (so 10 at maximum) and you may only use one at a time. Both use resonance for each cast and have caps on their spell DC growth; spamming Fireball off a wand won't be very productive if the DC is so low that the monsters critically succeed most of the time. Not to mention the relatively high cost of magic items means you probably can't afford that many of them...
dnoisette wrote:
Although I keep posting here in the hopes that Paizo staff will realize that a good amount of people truly feel let down with their new take on magic, I don't have high hopes that it will change anything.
For what it's worth, I'm in the same boat. I feel the heavy reduction to the reliability and overall oomph of magic is a step in the wrong direction. I played around with the concept of characters whose spells per day were strictly limited, but who could change a situation drastically when their magic was invoked, and I played around with characters who could do a small number of things almost continuously throughout the day. Second edition thus far feels like the worst of both worlds: both a strict limit on how often you can cast as well as an overall lack of efficacy when you do cast.
If magic is going to be limited this much, it also ought to be more powerful. Otherwise, it should be more common. Being both rare and rarely a gamechanger is a bad combination.
On one hand, the way many spells still have a reduced effect on a success save is nice, but it doesn't feel like it makes up for the shortcomings detailed throughout this thread.
Almarane wrote:
Am I the only one here loving Mythic ?
I liked what I played of Mythic, but there were parts of it that desperately needed balancing. From what I gather, PCs not only quickly start to overshadow mooks, they also start overshadowing other mythic creatures as well, until the question goes from "can PCs kill Cthulhu?" to "how quickly can they kill Cthulhu?"
We played a homebrew version of it for Age of Worms (in which the various arbitrary buffs PCs got were replaced by PCs becoming Mythic instead), but I think our GM may have swung too far in the other direction, making generation of mythic power limited to one point per day and scaling up monsters to the point that most encounters were barely survivable, as well as routinely creating situations which felt like the kind of thing a particularly sadistic GM might put together to "gently hint" that the PCs had gone off the rails and needed to get back on track (like a large cavern filled with equipment-destroying acid spewing horrors, shielded by a miles-wide antimagic field). I wound up never feeling like a superhero, more like I was barely keeping apace with the monsters.
But I liked some of the options it gave martial characters. I played a guardian alchemist/master chymist who picked up several abilities to become a massive tank and melee monster, and I liked some of the champion powers (although some of them were clones of existing feats, and others were lackluster). I would rather see martial characters get raised up in such a manner than to see casters brought down as they presently stand.
Incidentally, Perfect Lie had the potential to derail a campaign in hilarious ways. I consider it the most subtly overpowered skill ever: any lie you tell is believed by whoever hears it "in the absence of obvious proof." In a world with magic, that's a laugh. "Guard, I'm actually the king. That imposter on the throne is a Faceless Stalker who has inscribed runes of power on the underside of his malleable flesh to foil your truth-seeking magics."
Communication is key. If a game is likely to contain elements which might be liable to severely impact a player's enjoyment, the GM should discuss it before play begins. If those elements will indeed be problematic, considering finding ways to mitigate them -- ask if a tasteful fade-out on a particularly upsetting scene would suffice, or whether the player would like to step away from the table, or considering leaving the elements out altogether. Try to find a solution which accommodates both the players and the GM. Perhaps include methods of suspending play in a stressful situation -- safe words aren't just for the BDSM community!
Yeah, I was thinking about these issues myself. I feel like alchemists were created at an earlier point of development. They have a feel to them that is significantly different than other classes -- less refined, more patchwork, and consequently a bit clunky.
Almost every class seems to have at least three specializations presenting themselves right off the bat, but alchemists have more of a mixed bag for the first several levels. After that, they seem to sort into different ways to use bombs, powering up poisons, and specializing in various mutagens? It seems to branch out more slowly, and thanks to mutagen differentiation, a bit more widely (in ways that aren't necessarily bad, but also might limit them).
I'm also really, really not fond of the way nearly everything an alchemist does is tied up in resonance. When they run out, or want to conserve points for an emergency, their options in a battle diminish significantly. Every spellcaster can use cantrips, martial characters have their weapons, but an alchemist has their choice of trained proficiency in simple weapons and not a lot else. They don't really have anything they do that doesn't have a cost associated with it.
And if you compare something like Alchemist's Fire to the Acid Splash cantrip, what alchemists get starts to look pretty paltry. They get some nice status effects they can apply with things like Debilitating Bomb, but they only last one round. Meanwhile, Acid Splash's persistent damage is a DC 20 flat check to remove compared to the Alchemist's Fire's Interact command to remove.
(And given spellcasters will get improved proficiency in spellcasting, while the alchemist doesn't receive any proficiency improvements, they're a lot more likely to land those ranged touch attacks...)
... And of course, casting Acid Splash a few times isn't going to make the wizard suddenly realize he might not be able to invest his Belt of Giant Strength.
Honestly if it were me, I'd overhaul Alchemist. They don't have to go back to being spellcasters look-a-likes, but they could easily be made to resemble other classes in 2E a bit more. They could have a generic bomb cantrip power that could be improved, customized on the fly and empowered using a point reservoir (spell points or some other resource); that would at least let them do things without spending RP in the process.
As for their crafting, I actually like the concept in general, but I feel like getting an expanded reservoir at level 9 is too little, too late, and too tightly restricted. No other class expects to spend every single resonance point every single day the way an alchemist does, or has to juggle so many variables the same way. Detaching a form of offense from the resonance cost would help, but more may possibly be needed to make them truly viable.
(Remarkable Resonance is also rather stingy at only +2 to maximum capacity. I'd suggest that it also decrease the DC for overspending, or remove the critical failure result from overspending?)
(Incidentally, the way alchemical items tend to have RP costs, drawbacks, onset times, or otherwise are made a pain in the butt to use feels like creating a problem to which alchemists are the inadequate solution.)
Addendum while I try to wind this up: of what use is a familiar to the alchemist now? Familiars are so much less useful on the field now that finding uses for one outside of an extra cantrip or spellcasting slot feels like hunting for a niche. I guess giving them communication and a method of movement (climbing, burrowing or swimming) could theoretically give them function as a basic scout, but... yeah, niche uses at best. I wouldn't even trust one to Aid in Craft checks (if they're even able to do so) because their bonuses are so low that they're liable to critically fail more often than not.
Yup. Monsters seem to have a significant edge over players in 2E at any level except one with a gross level imbalance. Apparently this is intentional. I gather that monsters are intended to still pose at least a minor threat up to level -4, meaning those level 0 goblins should still be on the radar of a level 4 party and should have good odds of killing one or two characters per combat at lower levels.
I'm, uh, not fond of this conceptually. I feel like it skews the advantage to the monsters in most scenarios, and while there's certainly a niche in the market for games where you beat your head bloody on a wall for two hours before making incremental progress, I don't feel like tabletop is a good medium for that kind of system. I always felt like the days of showing up with a 3 ring binder full of character sheets were a bug, not a feature.
Plus it really doesn't make sense for a lot of campaigns. Reign of Winter for example -- you've been geased into helping Baba Yaga! Except, uh, half the party is destined to die within the next day or two. What happens when new characters show up? Do they, um, inherit the geas? (If you replace every part of the PC party within an AP, is it still the same party by the end?)
I'm confused as to how people are interpreting the RAW to state that a shield can only ever take one dent at a time, when the RAW explicitly states a shield can take two dents with sufficient damage?
Quote:
If the item takes damage equal to or greater than twice its Hardness in one hit, it takes 2 Dents. For instance, a wooden shield (Hardness 3) that takes 10 damage would take 2 Dents.
The Shield Block reaction:
Quote:
You snap your shield in place to ward off a blow. Your shield prevents you from taking an amount of damage up to the shield’s Hardness—the shield takes this damage instead, possibly becoming dented or broken.
How this sounds to me: The incoming damage is reduced by the shield's Hardness. You take the remainder damage and the total damage is examined against the Hardness of the shield.
If your shield has Hardness of 3 and the monster deals 5 damage, you take 2 damage and the shield is dented. If the monster swings for 6 damage, you take 3 damage and the shield receives two dents (and probably breaks).
This combined with Hardness no longer deducting the damage the shield takes from itself means that shields in Breath of the Wild are officially more durable. A legendary heavy adamantine sturdy shield (Hardness 21) can be destroyed by a fairly low level critter wielding a wooden club with a few lucky rolls, and in a single hit on a normal attack by anything of the level of the shield itself.
I'm in the camp that Hardness needs to be revisited. Otherwise there isn't much reason to bother getting anything but the base type of shield as its circumstance bonus is generally the only reason you would want to use it.
Someone did a chart averaging Reflex saves on monsters at every level provided in the bestiary versus what an optimized Athletics character would have and the numbers are all over the place, but some things are definitely clear.
On average, you need a 7 to get a Success on any such check assuming you are built specifically for it (Belt of Giant's Strength and Armbands of Athleticism). The odds of knocking a weapon free on a Disarm check are indeed quite low across the board if you need a critical success -- on average needing a 17.
Compare this to what you need to get a Trip attempt to put a monster flat on their back and there's just no contest. Trip is significantly better than Disarm. It's slightly riskier because of the chance of being knocked prone yourself, but the odds of getting an advantageous result are so much better.
Disarming's success result is just not particularly advantageous in any way. In most cases achieving a critical success with your second roll requires a natural 20 regardless of the -2 penalty on the target, due to your multiple attack penalty effectively adding 3 to the DC (which, as I noted, already averaged 17). And that's for an optimized character!
You know what... every time I look at it it confuses me more... You give up every feature of Shifter with the exception of Track and Trackless Step... You aren't even really you original class. You get none of the minor/major benefits of the aspects that even made this class slightly unique... You get none of the damage scaling in your natural weapons... and the biggest sin of all? The freaking art for the archetype looks AWESOME...
The same writer created the Metamorph archetype for Alchemist. It replaces bombs, extracts and crafting bonuses to alchemy in return for this:
Quote:
Shapechanger (Su): At 1st level, a metamorph gains the ability to transform herself into another form. This ability functions like alter self, except as noted here. The effect lasts for 1 hour per metamorph’s alchemist level, or until she changes back. Changing form (to another form or back) is a standard action that doesn’t provoke attacks of opportunity. The metamorph is fatigued for 1 round each time she changes shape.
A metamorph can use this ability once per day at 1st level, and an additional time per day at 4th level, and every 2 alchemist levels thereafter, for a total of nine times at 18th level. At 20th level, a metamorph can use shapechanger as a free action once per round, either before or after all her other actions, with no daily limit.
This ability can also function as monstrous physique IUM at 5th level, as monstrous physique IIUM at 9th level, as monstrous physique IIIUM at 11th level, as monstrous physique or giant form I at 13th level, and as giant form II at 15th level.
So this writer has a thing for archetypes that render the class totally unrecognizable from its original form. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but in both cases, it gives up effectiveness for uniqueness.
