Shisui's page

Shisui wrote:

A question about cyclops: Which regions, other than the Shackles, is it more common to find ancient ruins?

Was lichdom 'common' between the old cyclops? (As there is Vordakai and Giants Revisited mentions Terokar as another one)

Lichdom was as common among cyclopes as it was among humans, pretty much. There's a cyclopes legacy in Iobaria and another in Iblydos, in addition to the Shackles.

I remember that

A question about cyclops: Which regions, other than the Shackles, is it more common to find ancient ruins?

Was lichdom 'common' between the old cyclops? (As there is Vordakai and Giants Revisited mentions Terokar as another one)

Shisui wrote:

Hey, I'm watching both the Kingmaker stream and Band of Bravos, and I'm very happy to see Shensen around and your Q&As, thanks for doing that!

As a question: Usually when you're trying to create new content (encounters, monsters, lore), is there any 'standard' way you organize your ideas? That seems to be the most difficult part to me!

I usually come up with the basic idea, then do the rules, then write the flavor, because the flavor is the most fun to write and it's like a prize for me once the rules are done.

That makes sense!

Hey, I'm watching both the Kingmaker stream and Band of Bravos, and I'm very happy to see Shensen around and your Q&As, thanks for doing that!

As a question: Usually when you're trying to create new content (encounters, monsters, lore), is there any 'standard' way you organize your ideas? That seems to be the most difficult part to me!

In my opinion, this is a VERY good idea, and I think that the body of it has so much potential, not only in healing, but other types of spells...

I, for one, am not really worried about healing per day or RP, but still, I find this idea flavorful and interesting!

It's elegant, it uses the actual mechanics the Playtest already has, and most important, it forces players making choices, which for me is the most important part of the system.

Should the group continue going without stopping, stop to heal for 1-2 hours or sleep for the day? And all of them create so many options and different possibilities, but at the same time it's not always the best choice (even more so if you think about time restraints)

I hope Paizo see this idea and take some time thinking about it!

But they failed a bit on other, more mundane, and more realistic stuff that you can probably do on the spot.

I feel that some of it ties to faults not with the exploration mode, but with the encounter mode that it draws upon for action economy.

Recall Knowledge as an example.

It seems obvious that a character knows things. He simply does, by virtue of his Intelligence or his experience.
And simultaneously it seems obvious that he should be able to exert himself to remember even more by taking a pause and thinking about it.

Lets say an Undead Hunter, he sees a skeleton and knows that skeletons do things A, B, and C. That should be a Free action.
If he takes a second to think about it more (taking the action) he...

Hey! In general, I agree with your post, but I just wanted to point out something that I found out while I was having the same problem than you (why can't someone just know some things 'for free'?)

I found the Automatic Knowledge which gives you this. As a free action every turn you can Recall Knowledge about something. The problems are the pre-requisites Assurance with the skill you want to Automatic Recall and being an expert on it... I think it's debatable what an 'expert' means and if someone needs to be an expert to do that, but the ability does exist - but it's a skill feat.

shroudb wrote:

sherlock1701 wrote:

shroudb wrote:

master_marshmallow wrote:

Paizo has to please both these guys...

Tbf, that's impossible, because we seek different things from the same game.

Thankfully, GM Fiat exists, and as long as the system works, both can be satisfied.

As an example, my "average" encounter with the old system was at cr+3,and my players still steamrolled those.

Pf2 might see me playing at cr appropriate and sherlock at cr-2 to capture the feeling he wants, or it might revert to old pf and force me to go cr+ and sherlock to cr appropriate.

As long as the system, as a system, works, difficulty level will stay adjustable between tables.

The problems with that are

A) It's dependent on GM fiat, which is not a guarantee
B) More importantly, you're then fighting weaker stuff, which isn't as cool. I want to walk up to a Great Wyrm Red Dragon at 18th-20th level and hit it (almost) guaranteed at least the first couple shots every round. Fighting a Marilith with a 20th-level fighter isn't cool.

I don't want a low difficulty, I want a high degree of success on actions in which I have specialized. I don't mind failing untrained/secondary checks, that's why you have a party.

The problem with that, it's that it stops feeling epic.

If you can always hit that ancient red dragon, then he's just a level appropriate "goblin" with more HP.

Similar to your tastes, I don't want my epic fights to be bland and boring and I don't want the random caves with goblins to be populated by goblin barbarians, cleric, and wizards, just to be challenging.

See?

Both sides have their merits, but, imo mine feels better, more epic, and more challenging. "Standard success" and "always hit" sounds the opposite of epic showdown to me (obviously, in your opinion, yours is better)

Sure, but there are already systems for that. Pathfinder has always allowed for truly epic heroes who can succeed at things reliably. We should...

It's funny because the same logic can be used against your point of view: Actually Pathfinder2 gives more reliability and 'epicity' for the heroes, with the +1 per level, and in Pathfinder 1, if someone focused something that you're weak against, you consistently would fail;

(First off, sorry about my English, not a native speaker)
For now at least, it seems this is the most divisise change made with Pathfinder 2, specially linked with social and knowledge skills - Why someone who never trained how to talk will be such a good diplomat?

I am in favor of the change, sincerely I think it brings a LOT of good stuff. But I do understand the logic behind the problem that some people see on it

But in my opinion, the solution is already on the system:

The book itself repeat a lot about skills gated by proficiency, which can be good and bad at the same time; if you gate too much, it will be way too hard to decide and we will have problems about super specializations back, if you give too much leeway we have the actual situation.

But... how about trying something like 'soft gating': increase the needed proficiency level of more activities, even using the Expert/Master levels...

And after that, give the opportunity of players trying to do something from one tier higher than he has with a penalty! An untrained person could try to do a Trained activity, but he would be worse than a Trained one. A Trained one could try Expert; but with a penalty.

• Example: Someone trained in Perception could find an Expert hazard, but he would get a -5 penalty (just a proposed number, no idea how much would be good)
• Recalling about the powers of a dragon would be something you needed to be trained, but an untrained person may have seen it - it would be harder, but possible.
• Only a Master could solve some of the problems related with a profession, but even though you're an expert, you could at least try.

This way, things that are harder for someone to do could still be viable, but with acceptable penalties connected with it, and not creating the immersion breaking feeling of 'well, yesterday I was trained, but as I am an expert today, everything changed'.

That's just an idea that crossed and sincerely it's not that worked out yet, but I think I can be into something.

I really like the Exploration mode idea - it codifies something that a lot of players usually just want to forget it exists, and in my humble opinion is as important as combat itself.

That said, I am having some problems with players wanting to multitask their way (but in quite credible ones).

Maybe there should have a rule saying that a player trying to do more than one of the tasks at the same time gives a -2 penalty to all checks for each extra tactic? A player who multitasks is not going to be as effective, but if he is good enough, he can do it.

Hello! I've been thinking about Crafting Batches and how the cost reduction works on it.

For example, let's say a Level 1 Alchemist is creating a batch of 4 Healing elixirs. Each costs 3gp (30sp), so a total of 60sp is paid for the crafting.

After 4 days of crafting, he rolls and succeeds, choosing to REDUCE the price, not pay the remaining value. Here is my question:

Usually, this alchemist would reduce 1sp of the price per extra day. But would he reduce it for each item of the batch (so, 4sp/day) or for all the batch once (1sp/day for all 4 elixirs summed up)

If no one is searching, you can still find hazards that don't list any training at all in their Stealth entry; these are concealed in such a way that even someone not on the lookout might notice.

Ooh, that's interesting to know! I've missed that part on the description, and it makes a lot of sense.

Maybe this is one of the hardest 'parts' of reading the rules knowing and playing the 3.x systems for so long: At the same time that they're familiar to us, they are different, so a lot of times you start reading an entry and think 'okay, it's the same' you skip parts that would be very important.

Maybe this is just laziness from my part, but wouldn't it be able to try to format the text giving some kind of highlight for those parts? It's just a random idea that crossed my mind right now, and probably has a lot of problems to do...

If everyone chooses to Wander (or other non-Searching tactics) then no one is paying attention and no one gets a perception check.

Tactics should *always* be asked for when entering Exploration mode.

Note, Rogues cheat when Sneaking.

Thanks! That's exactly what I thought it was, I just wasn't 100% sure about it.

I am quite liking how the rules were set. In my opinion, they have a lot of depth, and the actions of the players and choices seems to matter a lot.

Want to travel fast? Okay, but you're not ready for any kind of trap.

Want to take care? You can, but if you're late for something, it can be hard.

And thanks for the reminder about the rogue sneaking, that's something that I didn't read that much (I still need to give more attention to the classes, as I almost always DM, it wasn't my focus)

I've been rereading the rulebook to get ready for the next adventure and I got a question about Perception to detect hazards.

If the party is travelling (exploration mode) and no one starts the searching activity, do they have any chance on finding a hazard at all?

Okay, right now my biggest problem with the Playtest is the Character Sheet, so much that I spent the last 2 days working on a new one for my players.
The character sheet should try to be clearer with its intent and info, but when I look at the one we got, it split important information all over the place, in my opinion, being counter-intuitive (Spell Points on page3, Resonance on page2). I think the most important information should all be on the front page

• There's no place to mark down the special senses the player has, no place to mark what lore skills he has, no where to mark the dying status, conditions, etc

• The skill list is way too loaded. Not the quantity of skills, but how they're ordered. It's counter-intuitive for me and quite easy to check the wrong one, and as I said before, there's no way for you to write down your lore specialization...

• I find the Actions/Reactions part interesting, but, in my opinion, it's too small for you to write things in a way that really helps. In my opinion, this kind of information could be all organized together with the spells, in a way that the player can at least write down a bit of important informations about what he is doing (even if it's only the page of the power)

• The inventory is too small in my opinion, and as the sheet is already 3 pages, why not make it 4? So you can have 2 front and back sheets.

  Anyway, as I said, I started trying to create a sheet that would be better for my players (even more so that some of them don't speak English, so...) This is what I got For me at least, the information is clearer, it's easier to check and be sure you're seeing the right info.

1.) The weaker enemies have to be weaker. I hit my players far too often even with the mooks.

I think this is a level 1 problem, honestly, but I still need to test more to be sure.

How much weaker would a monster need to be to not be trivial at all? It would be interesting to roll the same adventure with a level 2 party and see how better would they fare imo.

Numerical buff spells are weaker (or numericaly smaller), but spells like Sanctuary are really strong still imo, my player had no problem with balancing healing with buffs (but the quantity of spells at level 1 is low, that's a fact)

Man, I don't get how that short of an adventuring day would be enjoyable at all.

"Well, we just woke up and did our daily prep, but our only healer is a guy with battle medic and he just used it on all of us after that last battle, so it's back to sleep for us."

I quite disagree with you, actually!

In my opinion, short adventure days create a lot of of opportunities and choices for the group, and it seems like they want to adopt a more 'gritty' view of things, which I welcome.

But first, I need to test things to be sure if it's good.

About the topic: I don't feel like those extra healing options are needed. For me, one of the main points of the system now is power management (more so than action management). You need to choose what to use, and what you're going to be without, for me this is REALLY interesting