Skyth's page

Requielle wrote:

Evilgm wrote:

It's not bad that there's now a reason for a Wizard to actually use a sword if they want to be Gandalf

Which is great if you like Gandalf wizards. Not being sarcastic, that's perfect if that is the campaign world you want to create and the stories you want to tell.

I guess that's where it's breaking down for me. I don't mind an occasional Gandalf mucking about. But I don't want a campaign world full of them. I need space for the Raistlins, too.

And as I keep saying, YMMV.

Well, then you run into a problem that either you have a wizard who by default is competent with a sword and you can have Gandalf but not Raistlin; or you have a Wizard who should avoid melee at all costs and you can make Raistlin but not Gandalf. It's one or the other, unless you make classes much less meaningful.

In PF1 terms, Gandalf was an outsider with maybe 3 levels of sorcerer. His prowess with a sword came from the outsider hit dice, not the levels of sorcerer.

The biggest issue is that PF2 is not being marketed as an entirely different game. It's being marketed as a replacement for PF1. Thus it is understandable that people are upset that they can't still do the same thing. It feels like something got taken away from them.

Personally as soon as I started digging through the playtest and crunching numbers for the things that are important to me, I realized that this was a completely different game as opposed to an evolution. That lead me to nope right out.

When we get the first high level module with skill checks, it will give examples what they consider the DC appropriate context.

So we will need to buy more things in order to find out how the system actually works?

I think PF1e definitely punished you for falling behind more than PF2e does, without question. A straight Rogue who decided to have mediocre Str and Dex and focus on being an Int/Cha skill monkey is going to be so far behind a THW Barbarian's combat effectiveness that there often is literally no reason for them to participate in combat.

Even with effectively built Rogues, a creature with a little DR and immunity to sneak attacks is all it takes to make them completely pointless.

I see a lot less of that in PF2e.

I do agree that the treadmill is a little too obvious in some ways. I also think the range of appropriate encounters is a little too narrow.

And Treat Wounds very clearly needs to be based on the level of the target, not the healer.

Lastly, as I mentioned in another thread, I think there is a lot of confusion/poor perception of the system because a lot of people either don't understand Table 10-2 or are spreading misinformation about it.

I've heard a lot of people make comments about how "walls magically get harder to climb as you level up" and the like, and that's not only not true, but Paizo devoted nearly three paragraphs to explicitly saying that it's not true and that doing that is bad GMing.

You act like it won't happen often. What level/difficulty to use for anything is so up in the air that likely it will ended up being the character's level in a lot of cases.

Relying only on the magic items you find is problamatic as long as DC's have the assumption that you always have the best item baked into them.

Skyth wrote:

vestris wrote:

Matthew Downie wrote:

SuperSheep wrote:

To those people who want to hit 90% of the time on their optimized rolls... "Why?"

I like to achieve something at least 70% of the time I attempt to do anything that I'm supposed to be competent at.

Wasted actions are frustrating. Anything less than 70% and I start to feel actively incompetent. Imagine if Legolas sent arrows flying off in all directions...

The problem with iterative attack penalties is that if you're hitting 75% of the time on the first attack, you're missing 75% of the time on your last attack, and that doesn't feel good.

I think I'd rather attack with the same attack bonus for half damage than attack with half the hit chance...

Which is fair in general and no pressure scenarios, however if you compete against equally skilled opponents, as in combat you should not be successful 70% of the time. Or this would imply that defending is just a hell lot harder than attacking, to stay in the combat scenario.

That however would go both ways. This would make the already pretty deadly surprise encounter extremely lethal.

Against equally skilled opponents it is wise to not just swing like a mad man, which the current rules reflect nicely.

The whole point is that even if you're the same level, you are not 'equally skilled' as the specialist.

Why would the opposing fighter not be a specialist? Is that a thing only PC's can be?

It's possible for the fighter to be a generalist instead of a specialist. Plus having someone as optimized as the specialist should be a rare thing to encounter (once or twice a campaign at max), not having every enemy you fight be perfectly optimized.

Matthew Downie wrote:

SuperSheep wrote:

To those people who want to hit 90% of the time on their optimized rolls... "Why?"

I like to achieve something at least 70% of the time I attempt to do anything that I'm supposed to be competent at.

Wasted actions are frustrating. Anything less than 70% and I start to feel actively incompetent. Imagine if Legolas sent arrows flying off in all directions...

The problem with iterative attack penalties is that if you're hitting 75% of the time on the first attack, you're missing 75% of the time on your last attack, and that doesn't feel good.

I think I'd rather attack with the same attack bonus for half damage than attack with half the hit chance...

Which is fair in general and no pressure scenarios, however if you compete against equally skilled opponents, as in combat you should not be successful 70% of the time. Or this would imply that defending is just a hell lot harder than attacking, to stay in the combat scenario.

That however would go both ways. This would make the already pretty deadly surprise encounter extremely lethal.

Against equally skilled opponents it is wise to not just swing like a mad man, which the current rules reflect nicely.

The whole point is that even if you're the same level, you are not 'equally skilled' as the specialist.

I think I've figured out why we have a big disconnect in a lot of discussions. People who specialize in things and expend resources to be better at things do so because they want to punch above their level.

Every time there has been a discussion about specialization/balance/mandatory investment to keep up/etc it's always been thrown back that 'Don't worry, you'll be mostly facing things below your level so you'll get a chance to feel powerful'.

That doesn't work. In order to feel powerful you have to feel like you're punching above your level. This applies to combat and skill checks.

If you aren't better than expected for someone else at your level when you invest in getting better at a skill or get a magic item that boosts you, it doesn't feel special. The current setup with DC's scaling with the expectation of a perfectly optimized character for at-level challenges doesn't work when taking this into account.

It's a psychological thing, but if (Keeping all the other number the same. Same DC's, same number of monsters encountered) but calling them as being 2-3 levels higher than they are now would do wonders for the perception of the game.

As an example. 4th level character specializing in picking locks. An 'on level' challenge would be (Don't have charts available at moment so going off memories) a DC 20 check. Instead of calling it a level 4 challenge, keep the DC 20 but call it a level 7 challenge. Players would feel a lot more powerful if this was true.

Skyth wrote:

The issue is that the specialist who puts everything into being the best at something has maybe a 60% chance of succeeding in 2E. Someone with less investment (Plus penalties due to ACP) has realistically no chance of succeeding currently.

I see nothing in the rulebook that says I can't set a DC for a challenge where the specialist has a 90% chance of succeeding, but the non-specialist has a significant chance of failure.

Like someone really specializing in a skill at level 7 in PF2 will have a modifier of +4 (stat) + 2 (proficiency) + 7 (level) + 2 (item) = +15.

Someone who is not remotely invested in a skill has a modifier between +1 (a full plate wearer untrained in stealth with 10 dex trying to be stealthy) and +9 (untrained in the skill but with 18 in the stat in question).

So if you set a DC 15 challenge the specialist will succeed 100% of the time while the "horrible at this" character has only a 30% chance to succeed while the "untrained but competent" character succeeds 75% of the time. A DC 20 challenge it breaks down to 20% chance of failure, a 90% chance of failure, and a 50% chance of failure for these same folks.

At work, but way to make me feel special by allowing me to auto-succeed at a level 1 DC at level 7. Guess what, If you specialize in something and put your resources to it you should be making equal level DC's on at least a 80% level.

So regarding the "I want to succeed reliably at the thing I specialized in" I think one of the effects of having everybody advance in untrained skills, is that the GM is now able to intersperse regular "not very hard" climbing or stealth sequences and not have to worry about the Warpriest in Full Plate being left behind as they lack skill points to put anything in stealth or climb.

So if you have sequences which are somewhat challenging for non-specialists, this lets you provide opportunities for the specialist to feel "I am good at this" and when you have truly heroic challenges (like the aforementioned frozen waterfall clock) only the specialist has a realistic chance of succeeding so if they do, they feel *awesome*.

The issue is that the specialist who puts everything into being the best at something has maybe a 60% chance of succeeding in 2E. Someone with less investment (Plus penalties due to ACP) has realistically no chance of succeeding currently.

See, a power gamer is only an issue for the holier-than-thou role-players who insist that if you have a competent character, you're doing something wrong.

It's really grown to be a label of people playing the game 'wrong' according to some people, where really wrong depends on group dynamics.

Ideally, everyone in the group should have the same power level or be okay with differing power levels in the group so that everyone can contribute towards the overall goal of the game.

The biggest house rule that I use is with area affect spells. If you are threatening/threatened by something that is hit by an area of effect spell, you take 1/4 damage...Save for 1/8. If it has a non-damaging effect, save at +4 to be unaffected.

I never did like the pinpoint targeting of big blasts and people in combat are not stationary, rather are weaving around.

A lot of those things that would normally give your character a save he denied the save for saying that it was within his character to act close to the way she was directing him to. He was right, really.

That is why you need a group rule that you don't choose to play a character that would want to attack the party. It's something I don't allow in my games.

Saying that 'my character' would do something anti-social to another PC is just a cop-out because they are choosing to play a character that would do that.

Case in point for the "Mega encounters"

Party, at that point 4th level average, encounters a group of rabid wolves (effectively Worgs). The worgs attack, taking out a couple horses. The Worgs stop to eat the horses as the party regroups and heals. I tell them that they can see what the forces of chaos are doing to the area..(ie plot device)...and that it's equally obvious that the wolves are hungry enough to ignore them if they don't engage again. I then point out Out of character that this isn't an encounter that they should engage on, but if they want to take the risk knowing that, I won't hold back and the dice will determine the outcome.

So in other words, you designed an overwhelming encounter that would strip the PC's of items (Their horses and everything on them) with no chance for them to do anything about it? And you wonder why they're not happy with the result. They lose either way through nothing that they did wrong.

Imagine if a DM designed an adventure where to demonstrate that something is wrong with magic, the pc's are randomly hit by a disjunction effect without warning. The Players would be rather unhappy, for the same reason as your worg encounter.

It is obvious that the players don't want to play in a horror or comedy themed game (Where running away is encouraged), but rather a heroic game as an escape from reality.

The same purpose could have been served with one or two worgs (A surmountable challenge rather than a possible TPK). It would have demonstrated what was happening to the wildlife without automatically taking things away from the players.

In our group the rule was that you started at the minimum XP for a character one level lower than your old one. That often meant less treasure and less power than your friends. But since you will earn more XP because of your lower level you will catch up after a certain point.

In pathfinder, XP doesn't work like that. How much you get isn't dependant on what level you are, so you will never catch up.

"Sure, you can re-roll your character. Since it's a different person, however, you'll have to be introduced whenever I have time. You can go play XBox for a while. I'll let you know."

At the end of the session, let the player know that you weren't able to squeeze it in, and next session isn't looking much better.

If a DM did that to me, I'd take it as a sure hint that he's passive-agressively telling me that I'm not wanted in the game any more and it's time to find a new group, and likely new friends...