In our party Kyra identified the minotaur symbols as belonging to the demon lord Baphomet. After that since she has an anathema to fail to strike down evil, the minotaur negotiations went like this:
Minotaur High Priestess of Baphomet, "Stop fighting, I can't lose any more of my warriors."
Kyra. "Will you renounce your evil god?"
High Priestess of Baphomet, "No."
Kyra, " OK, well I can't not strike down a bunch of chaotic-evil, demon worshiping minotaurs who are attacking friendly caravans."
End of negotiation.
I'm not really sure how there is supposed to be any other outcome here.
Dexterity now becomes the most important defensive stat for all characters due to the importance of AC in an enviroment where attack bonuses and AC are more bounded together, and the lowered importance of constitution. Melee characters need at least 14Dex to make the most of Half-Plate armor.
I think dexterity is less important for AC, because it really just determines what type of armor you are going to wear. In fact, armor now becomes an outward symbol of what your dexterity is.
See someone in full plate.... they have a dexterity bonus of 1 or maybe 0
half-plate, their dexterity is 14.
breast plate: they have a 16 dexterity.
No other stat allows you to normalize its benefits by wearing equipment as much as dexterity does.
Every one of my characters maximizes their AC not by dexterity, but by armor.
I see what you are saying, although I will counter by saying that giving names to swords is a tradition that exists even in the real world, where as far we know such swords are not magical. :P
A [Real World] legend tells of a test where Muramasa challenged his master, Masamune, to see who could make a finer sword. They both worked tirelessly and eventually, when both swords were finished, they decided to test the results. The contest was for each to suspend the blades in a small creek with the cutting edge facing against the current. Muramasa's sword, the Juuchi Yosamu (十千夜寒, "10,000 Cold Nights") cut everything that passed its way; fish, leaves floating down the river, the very air which blew on it. Highly impressed with his pupil's work, Masamune lowered his sword, the Yawarakai-Te (柔らかい手, "Tender Hands"), into the current and waited patiently. Only leaves were cut. However, the fish swam right up to it, and the air hissed as it gently blew by the blade. After a while, Muramasa began to scoff at his master for his apparent lack of skill in the making of his sword. Smiling to himself, Masamune pulled up his sword, dried it, and sheathed it. All the while, Muramasa was heckling him for his sword's inability to cut anything. A monk, who had been watching the whole ordeal, walked over and bowed low to the two sword masters. He then began to explain what he had seen.
"The first of the swords was by all accounts a fine sword, however it is a blood thirsty, evil blade, as it does not discriminate as to who or what it will cut. It may just as well be cutting down butterflies as severing heads. The second was by far the finer of the two, as it does not needlessly cut that which is innocent and undeserving."
The real world is filled with magic like this.
MaxAstro wrote:
I'm of two minds here. I really like PCs being able to transfer magic properties from one weapon to another as a gameplay conceit, but I do like named weapons as well from a flavor perspective.
My usual stance is that "flavor should bend knee to gameplay", but I acknowledge the importance of both.
Not sure what solution I would like to see, but I definitely don't want to see property runes go away. Maybe make it so that you can only remove the property runes from a weapon by destroying the weapon? That makes it a meaningful choice, at least.
When you run runes like this it takes the magic out of magic weapons; They just become another statistic to optimize for the sake of murder hobo convenience. Take their runes, put them on the best weapons. Why ever have a magic dagger? Take the runes off and put it on a better weapon.
I think there's room for both. The rules don't explicitly say that you can't have inherently magical weapons, they just don't provide any.
Besides which, Excalibur is certainly an artifact, which is it's own entire rule set.
Ok let me give an example from the playtest part 1:
Final Rest: +1 ghosttouched dagger Here we have a named weapon, but the runes on it are clearly harvestable. It just feels wrong to have a named item just turned into runes.
I don't really have a horse in the ABP race, since it does some things I conceptually like and others I'm more hesitant on, but I will say that 2e already effectively solved the latter issue, due to runes, and their transferability between items. So the GM doesn't need to drop a +2 Gnome Flickmace in a scenario where it wouldn't make sense, the PC just needs to transfer that +2 to their existing item.
Cyouni wrote:
Well, if you somehow disable Excalibur, King Arthur should be less dangerous, yes. I just don't want him to go all the way down to nonmagic.
One of the things I don't like about runes is it eliminates the myth of the special weapon. Weapons are no longer special, runes are.
Here is what we have now:
DM: "The Lady of the lake grants you Excalibur"
Player: "I take the runes off and put them on my glaive"
Sure its convenient to be able to shuffle runes around from one weapon to another, but the loss of story telling around legendary weapons make me sad.
I think I would favor a solution where everyone gets damage die bonuses based on weapon proficiency. TEML Weapon proficiency gets rebalanced so that martials are closer in ability (ie there shouldn't be a a 12 level difference between fighters and barbarians getting expert in weapon proficiency).
Have the rune system go away. The flexibility that it offers is narrative killing. Have weapons give bonus to hit based on quality, have weapon properties be the magical effect and make them a bit stronger and rarer:
elemental damage could be 2 or 3 extra dice instead of 1.
truestrike seems like it was made to combine with a weapon, I would love to see a truestrike longsword as a high level rare magic weapon.
If both sides are trying to sneak, how do they know where to sneak to?
Take two scouting parties from rival armies. They're both in the same woods, where some objective sits. They also both expect opposition. They are both being stealthy and looking for others who are stealthy. How do you resolve initiative?
It depends on how many research points they have...
spoiler part 4:
the PC party may lose up to an hour on their precast buffs.
I prefer a simpler approach. Ditch circumstance and conditional. You can have up to 2 bonuses from sources other than items and no more. Nobody has to look up which bonuses are which. If you have more than two take the highest two.
Some good suggestions not sure about magic missile since no attack roll is involved (in PF1 I ruled differently based on a few factors, but I would not mind a counter to that damn spell). Also be careful with the current counteract rules, a scroll at base spell level might be next to worthless against some negative effects.
Other than that pretty good list ^^
So interestingly enough this actually came up in the game I ran last night.
DM (me): The cloaked figure casts a spell and you see 4 images of him, they seem to shuffle back and forth and you can't tell which is the real creature
Player: I shoot magic missile at 3rd level. I'll target one missile at each of the 4 images.
DM(me): hmmm... I just had this conversation on the forums. Let me look at the spell description. Oh.. you can only target a creature.
Player: I can't target an image? So my magic missile spell detects illusions?
DM(me): Scrambling now because I want magic missile to be able to do exactly what the player is also thinking magic missile will do. If I disallow it then its going to be a problem down the line. Magic missile now doesn't work if cast at an illusion. I settle on a compromise. You target the first missile, I'll roll a d4 to see what it hits. 4 missiles later there are no more mirror images.
Does this satisfy the language of mirror image working against "attacks", NO. But in my mind its the best solution because otherwise I get into a mess, and also because I hate literal magic. How the spell is written using specific artificial definitions is way less important to me than having the rules follow a certain spirit. I have no idea what is actually intended here for the interaction between magic missile and mirror image, but my players and I are both satisfied with how it worked in the game.
See, none of that logic remotely explains how a 200 lb dead weight flopping around is Bulk 8. Indeed, most of that logic directly argues it should be more than that by quite a bit.
Hence my confusion.
Well, I did mention it was arbitrary.
So carrying one unconscious person is about as hard to carry as carrying TWO complete sets of half-plate armor or 8 crossbows or 8 battle axes or 80 shortswords.
While I don't think all of those would be, in real life, exactly as difficult to carry, I do think it's a reasonable approximation that satisfies both my sense of "Well, OK, I can believe that it's close to realistic" and my sense of "It's easy to use at the gaming table".
Remember, it's not just the weight. It's also how easy it is to actually hold and carry the weight. 8 battle axes weigh less than 200 pounds, of course, but carrying them might be a chore. Arguably, if you tie them all into a snug bundle and prop them onto your shoulder, they are probably no harder to carry than the heavier 200 pound unconscious guy but are considerably lighter so they would deserve less bulk. But just carrying 8 loose battle axes without dropping them would occupy a significant amount of energy and coordination, more so than carrying one unconscious body. Factoring that in, I can see the bulk as a reasonable approximation.
How about an unconscious body being the same bulk as 4 longbows? does that make sense?
Some good suggestions not sure about magic missile since no attack roll is involved (in PF1 I ruled differently based on a few factors, but I would not mind a counter to that damn spell). Also be careful with the current counteract rules, a scroll at base spell level might be next to worthless against some negative effects.
Other than that pretty good list ^^
Good point about magic missile, it is however a spell that does full damage to a mirror imaged target.
Spell scrolls don't really have base level in PF2 like PF1, see table 11-5.
In general, most of the negative effect removing spells are best cast using Channeled Succor (level 8 cleric feat) in order to be able to cast them in 1 action instead of 10 minutes.
I think we left "18 is the maximum attribute an ordinary human can have in anything" behind after 3rd edition.
Speak for yourself, I think it's stupid and obnoxious: scores over 18 (20, I guess, for racial/ancestry deals).
I'm not a fan of Ability Score Increases on level ups at all. I'd rather have all Ability Score Increases be given at 1st level depending on what kind of campaign is being run. That way all the different types of gameplay can be supported right from level 1. The people who want to play realistic heroes, the people who want super heroes and the people you want anime characters can all play with optional rules set that supports their fantasy.
Either I play the creature in a bogglingly nonsensical way or I slaughter the PCs with an unbeatable god-assassin that can't be found unless they happen to be packing See Invisibility that day. I think that for this reason, it may be a bad idea to make naturally invisible incorporeal creatures.
As adventurer's start to get higher in level not preparing for certain eventualities is foolish. While there are a few ways to deal with invisibility in mundane ways (spend actions to seek, forming a picketline and sweeping the room, throwing flour on the floor), coming to a mid-level adventure without additional anti-invisibility options is the real "bad idea". There are plenty of options here, so its not like the adventurers have anything to complain about: see invisibility, faerie fire, glitter dust, Revealing Stab. My short list and common counters to ALWAYS be prepared for is:
Let's talk about Exploration Mode: What do you want from it? How it can be improved?
I want exploration mode to be able to handle my players creative solutions. Searching the in the wilderness they have a tiny flying familiar scouting ahead of them, or intermittently they fly up to scout or use prying eyes spell to scout a certain encampment. Perhaps they use survey wildlife, tracking and speak with animals to discover the lay of the land or the location of monsters. Complex interactions of spells and skill feats should interact seamlessly with exploration mode.
I want riding to not stumble on fatigue rules. And what if my paladin riding his war horse also carries the halfling rogue who is searching? The halfling isn't technically using any of his move speed, or doing any other activity other than searching for hazards, he's not Handling an Animal or Controlling the mount. Can the halfling search while the paladin rides at full riding speed? What if the halfling has trapfinder feat?
I want to know how choices in exploration mode influence the transition to encounter mode. Can the party influence encounter distance in any way? or is it always a pop-up fight? What if the party doesn't want to fight? How is it possible to transition to social mode from exploration mode?
I want an exploration mode that answers all these questions and solves all these problems.
I am strongly of the opinion that high level characters should be able to wade through armies of low-level mooks untouched, and villains who are that tactically lazy/dumb deserve to go out the window (and down fifty metres into the lava moat). Cutting a swathe through an army of low-level mooks is what gives high-level that legendary, Hercules or Cuchulainn feel.
On the other hand, imagine the amazing battle in the Mines of Moria if, upon hearing of the multitudes of approaching goblins, Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas, Boromir and Gandalf had just shrugged, stood their ground and cut down the approaching forces.
I don't know if Legolas and Gimli would be level 10 or level 20 or somewhere in between, but in the battle of Helms Deep they they kill 83 orcs between them. This seems like a feat that I would want my character to be able to do somewhere between level 10 and level 20, maybe sooner...
I mean, there's only 3 items that are in a non-obvious place? (Gnomes, Dryad, Cylops), the rest are all at river ends or in the lake. With those, you're given clues that they're north-of, in, or south-of the middle forest. My group guessed every area to within one hex on their first attempt, so 'that can be 3-4 hexes away' definitely never applied.
My group found all the important hexes like yours did. They searched a total of 3 empty hexes in the process of finding everything on the map just by using educated and lucky guessing. Of course they wanted to improve their chances of finding stuff by flying for aerial recon, talking to animals for clues about where certain creatures are and using assortments of divination spells, but we just played it by the book and I told them nothing helps, just roll.
I actually just came to the forums to suggest changing Goblin stats to Kobold. It's really nice to see that quite a few people already agree with me.
Goblins aren't charismatic, they're crafty. Thus, Goblins should be +Int.
Kobolds are Sorcerers, so they should be +Cha.
Just because a ancestry does something doesn't mean they have to be good at it. And they certainly don't have to be as good as the best possible suited ancestry for a class.
Maybe its necessary for the game and the times we live in, but I just see these as more reasons to not have these ancestries be player characters.
The thing is that a Mu Spore still needs cover to stealth, just like everything else.
And if a Mu Spore is hiding behind something big enough to give it cover relative to you, I imagine it's relatively possible not to notice it.
That said, there definitely is still some weirdness there (like the hill giant vs bobcat example you give).
I don't think getting rid of the +1/level is the answer, though.
This is a dimly lit and very large bar (big enough to fit a gargantuan creature)... everything has concealment, the Mu Spore has no problem sneaking through.
Essentially, the devs have created a VERY party-centric ruleset. If you look at almost any of the rules without putting the party into the middle of it, it looks very weird.
One of the recent surveys had a question that said something to the effect of : Are you aware that DCs are based on the obstacle or monster and NOT on the party?
Because of this close relationship between party level and the obstacles, it seems like they are entangled in an uncomfortable way.
The way you have to read the relative hill giant and bobcat stats is, "Is the hill giant better at X vs. an appropriate-level party than a bobcat is vs. its appropriate-level party?'
No, I've read it as a hill giant and a bobcat are sneaking up on the same party of any level. The hill giant is better at it than the bobcat, and it seems weird.
Lately I've been wrestling with perception and stealth and hiding and +1/ LVL skill increases.
It seems broken to me that creatures like a Mu Spore have a +28 hide and sneak. How could you not notice a Mu spore?
Or that a hill giant (+7 sneak) is quieter than a Bobcat (+5 sneak).
The additional problem is since these skills (perception and stealth) are the most commonly used for initiative, and the transition from exploration mode to encounter mode is so rapid, low level creatures and characters have very little chance of avoiding the notice of or escaping from higher level creatures. I think this has the potential to be a huge narrative problem.
I'm not sure how to fix it.
Reflexively I want to say no more +1/lvl for any skills, just use TEML proficiency. To be fair, I think +1/lvl works great for attacks. I love how boss encounters feel tough and I'd like to keep it that way. The problem comes where skills and combat overlap like grappling. Anyone have a grand solution?
As for people thinking it 'doesn't make sense', Int (to me) has always been about mental agility/dexterity. (I have a very strong Str -> Cha, Dex -> Int, Con -> Wis physical-to-mental mapping.)
I don't know about this...I've met a number of very smart people with the mental agility of a turtle. They are so focused on thinking and immersed in their mental world that they are oblivious to what goes on around them.
I would rather see all Recall Knowledge checks be intelligence based and eliminate Lore. We had a Kyra, a pregenerated cleric, with Lore: Serenrae = +5 and Religion = +9. I know its not true, but it felt like she was less knowledgeable about her own god than everyone else's, in any case Lore was definitely unnecessary here.
Another area where intelligence could be improved is languages. The characters do not know many languages. I wouldn't mind seeing +1 language per intelligence modifier and you wouldn't necessarily have to pick them all at 1st level, you could wait and see how the campaign evolves and fill out languages (with appropriate training) later on.
So, as I look over the barbarian, I feel kinda... unimpressed.
I dunno what the fix is here but I think that a raging barbarian should feel more imposing than it looks now.
I agree with you. I wanted my first character to be a barbarian, but after 3 hours of character generation I made him a fighter instead. I couldn't justify the lower AC and lower attack (Giant totem barbarians are -2 to hit compared to fighters). What put me over the edge was double penalizing Rage( penalty to AC during and fatigued after. I hope they go through and remove ALL double penalties (Rage and resonance come to mind). I think there is hope, they removed double penalty from infused items.
I'm in the middle of the survey questions about update 1.3. I haven't been following this thread so maybe this has been already brought up, but this question #5 doesn't seem to be true. I'm looking at the two 10-2 tables and DCs were lowered at the lowest levels of the game. Am I missing something? Am I even posting this in the right thread?
Rules Survey wrote:
5. Update 1.3 also changed the table used to generate DCs of skill checks against opposing forces of various levels. Generally speaking, this raised the DCs a bit at the lowest levels of the game and lowered the DCs at the high levels of the game by a greater amount. How appropriate was this change at different parts of the game?
Am I reading this right? If you have the ride feat, you still need to make a handle animal check to mount the animal. If you are not trained in nature this might be somewhat difficult and awkward.
Have you ever tried riding a horse without any training?
I can assure you, your soar arse and your acking back and belly muscles will force you to stop riding in about 10minutes.
With training and actually knowing how to properly 'sit' on a moving horse and you can manage it for hours.
For those who dont want to spend a skill / feat on riding wagons and charts have been invented.
Yes for several hours and I was sore the next day, but I'm sure that it wouldn't take too much time to get used to it. I suppose for people who sit in chairs all day long it could be more difficult.
Unlike other spells that target objects that specifically call out "unattended object" like disintegrate, dispel magic, grease, levitate, light, mage hand, magic weapon, and telekinetic projectile,
Telekinetic Haul doesn't have this stipulation. I assume this means that it can be used to "move the enemy's sword 20' up in the air". The person now has a choice to hold onto the sword and be levitated or let go.
Also the way this spell is worded it seems like a 500lb boat filled with 4 people can be telekinetic hauled. Only the targeted object's weight is considered.
Are these interpretations intended? I hope so because I'd like magic to be a little cooler.
I do think it is an effective deterrent to Paladins moving into flanking positions on their foes. They usually need to stay next to their allies instead of across from them.
I don't see how this is true. The Paladin can RS on anyone who attacks an ally. The ally need not be next to the Paladin, the Paladin just needs to be next to the attacking creature.
Yeah, I must have been really tired when I wrote that last night. I've played two paladins and we've played it the way you describe, not the way I was writing about it. I don't know what I was thinking there
Days 1-8: Go to G. Get quest from Dryad to deal with Cyclopses I.
Days 9-12: Go to I. Get quest from Cyclopses to deal with Dragon at L.
Days 13-20: Go to L. Fight dragon. 1 ally point.
Days 21-22: Return to I to report dead dragon. 2 ally points.
Day 23: Return to G to report deal with cyclopses. 2 ally points.
Days 24-25: Return to E to give the message to Keleri.
Days 25-30: The order move upriver.
I'm not sure why it take you 8 days to go from E to G and only 2 days to return. No searching is necessary for the dryad. She confronts them when they move through her hex.
Same with I to L: the party know what hex to search this should just be a 3 day trip plus 1-2 day search for the dragon. I can see some DMs making that search optional too.
In arguably every combat I've had in PFS, the GM will invariably try to position the NPCs so that they can't be flanked. The sentient PCs always move to avoid being flanked. That movement ends when they position themselves in a corner so that they cannot be flanked. I'm acutely aware of this as I play weapon & shield Ranger with a companion.
Well, guess what happens now? Said NPC backs themselves into a corner and every time they attack someone who is not the Paladin, they get whacked. GM wants to move them? Great, you're going to have to come out of that corner or move away from the wall and you run the risk that you get surrounded. Checkmate.
We've had a few combats that have ended up like you describe, but I wouldn't call it the most common. As I think back most of the situations where the fights would have ended up like this we handled diplomatically instead. Lately we have been fighting large and bigger monsters with reach and very high mobility. Their most effective tactics have been move, attack from reach avoiding AoO or RS, and then move away to safety by flying, swimming, etc. It is a very difficult tactic to deal with and very different from the NPC who has pretty much already lost the fight and has backed himself into a corner to try to make the best of a bad situation.
N N 959 wrote:
Again, you act as if RS not working 100% of the time means it's broken. Who says it has to be triggered every fight? That's right, sometimes it won't work. But I can tell you that it worked a helluva lot in the playtest we ran. And the longer the fight lasts, the more chances you get to use it.
I'm not saying that RS can't be effective for helping do damage. I do think it is an effective deterrent to Paladins moving into flanking positions on their foes. They usually need to stay next to their allies instead of across from them. This causes paladins to avoid gaining flanking positions (or "dishonorable backstab positions"). I don't think that is a bad thing. All I'm saying is that it doesn't necessarily incentivize opponents to attack paladins rather than their allies.
OK, let's imagine an encounter where the paladin and his allies is fighting a bad guy....
Sure, we can come up with an infinite number of scenarios where RS does not help. And? It's a signature ability that is granted at 1st level. It's not intended to be 100% useful 100% of the time.
N N 959 wrote:
But the nature of this game and the pejorative concept of meta-gaming, introduce a lot of problems when it comes to determine what any individual/NPC understands/believes to be true. The game doesn't make it clear that PCs/NPCs know about feats
This isn't an infinite number of scenarios, this is the likely outcome for the scenario you were proposing (I think).
N N 959 wrote:
You want to make the NPCs run around just to avoid RS? Great, as player, I can manipulate the NPC's movements and put them in more compromising situations, like flanking. I'd much rather keep my spot and take a RS than move around so that I can be flanked.
This is an interesting take on combat. My experience is that moving allows you to get out of being flanked and also to move into a flanking position. Not moving means that you are often flanked and you will be unlikely to achieve a flanking position.
N N 959 wrote:
There's nothing that stops your ally from moving to a position that precludes the NPC from attacking without fear of retribution.
While this may occasionally be true. It seems unlikely to be consistent unless the paladin has a reach weapon.
Snickersnax wrote:
I'm not sure how this doesn't fall into the category of "successfully hit my friends, so I can hit you back."
N N 959 wrote:
Because you're statement isn't in good faith. Anyone sentient creature that stands there and gets hit by a RS, is going to modify their behavior, barring some narrative reason to the contrary. RS affects the combatants and provides a measure of battle field control. As soon as the GM starts modifying the NPCs behavior, you're making the NPC less efficient.
You basically placed your low AC animal companion next to the paladin to maximize the paladin's RS chance of successfully hitting. Even if your opponent realized the threat of the paladin's RS, there is nothing that would cause your opponent to attack the paladin rather than reposition away from the paladin and attack someone else. I don't believe this is the advantage you think it is. Moving and attacking twice is often a better tactic than attacking 3 times because:
1) It can move you out a situation in which you are being flanked.
2) It can move you into a position in which you are flanking
3) It forces some of your opponents to move just to stay in melee range.
Except retributive strike isn't "take me instead", its "successfully hit my friends, so I can hit you back.".
I've seen this genre of comment a lot. I believe it to be inaccurate.
If every time I hit you, I realized that it allowed one of your specific allies to attacked me, but if I attack your ally, you don't attack me, there's no way I'm going to keep attacking you. I'm going to attack your ally. The problem is that RS doesn't make it clear what the NPC believes to be true about the RS. Plus, GMs meta-game (both for and against players). So it's easy to imagine a GM meta-gaming NPCs to avoid RS but not attacking the Paladin. Finally, in cases where an NPC might legitimately be willing to ignore the implication of being counter-attacked, the player might not agree or be able to know such an action is in good faith.
OK, let's imagine an encounter where the paladin and his allies is fighting a bad guy, and the bad guy doesn't know he's facing a paladin and he also doesn't know anything about paladin features.
The paladin is going to try to train this bad guy, using negative reinforcement from his retributive strike, not to hit his friends.
Now Retributive Strike doesn't trigger every time the bad guy attacks the paladin's ally, only when the bad guy has a successful attack. The paladin only gets a RS when he hasn't already used a reaction and only once per round, and the retributive strike is -2 to hit, so its likely that the RS is only hitting 40-50% of the time. Given all these conditions, the bad guy gets punished for attacking the paladin's ally 10-30% of the time. Most likely the fight is going to be over way before the bad guy ever figures out that it isn't a good idea to attack the paladin's friends. If by some luck he does figure it out, the most likely outcome is that the bad guy moves away from the paladin to avoid getting hit and continues to attack the ally.
N N 959 wrote:
I'm not going to say whether RS is something anyone should enjoy or that it is the right choice for the Paladin's signature ability, but having played next to a Paladin in some test scenarios, I loved it. As a Ranger, plant your crit-bag Animal Companion right next to the Paladin and get some measure of protection.
I'm not sure how this doesn't fall into the category of "successfully hit my friends, so I can hit you back."
While I am not positive I am a fan of the shorter duration buff spells, I do think it should be considered that they be 1 action or possibly even reaction spells and if they are not already, they should be 60 foot range.
I really like this idea. They could move more buff spells to the same action mechanic as heal.
This would open up the opportunity to cast these spells as 1 action readied actions.
Not everything has to follow this plan, but having more than heal, magic missile, jump, message, shield, hypercognition, walking nightmare, powerword (kill and stun) and true strike be single action spells would be really nice.
I like -4 for untrained. The most common situation is were someone is just trained. Having trained be the zero keeps the math simplest. Adjusting everything up by 4 (ACs, DCs, attacks, skills, saves seems unnecessary).
-4 also seems like you are learning the skill from scratch. When you first are learning a skill most people really suck at it.
You could eliminate the Assurance feat and use a modified version of it for the TEML proficiency system. You roll the dice and
Expert: your minimum roll is 5
Master: your minimum roll is 10
Legendary: your minimum roll is 15
and then unlike the current Assurance feat, you can add your bonuses to the roll.
This might work well with Porridge's idea of
Quote:
Option 3. Merging Proficiency and Skill Feats
which I really like
The main potential complaint one might raise is just that this treats skills in a different way from attacks and saves. But how big a cost that is is something I can see a lot of reasonable disagreement about.
I was initially concerned about the different treatment between skills and attacks too, but skills and attacks are still being treated the same as the current PF2 rules, its just that skills get to have this new modified Assurance feat. Assurance is currently only available to skills and in this new iteration Assurance would still only apply to skills. If your option 3 was included, all skills would get access to Assurance, and it would not apply to attacks or saves.
I'd rather just see the water elemental get tweaked to lose the Slowed I or have it only kick in after a minute of being removed from water (which would be the duration of the summon, anyway).
Agreed, they already have their movement speed reduced on land (vs swimming), and that is a sufficient penalty. If they want another penalty for water elementals they could give it slowed by cold spells so you could potentially freeze a water elemental. That would be cool :)
On the other hand, if it doesn't trigger when people attack you rather than your allies, then it's a deterrent, and that does work for paladins. And there's a long tradition of passive-aggressive "I'm going to wait until you do something naughty and then I'll punish you SO HARD" paladinhood.
I think we are in agreement about a lot of aspects of retributive strike, But I think "its naughty if you hit my friends, but its not naughty if you hit me" is silly. And I understand that there could be a complicated potential deterrent the way its currently worded. "Let's get the paladin, he doesn't fight back (as hard) if you hit him. He only goes ham if you hit his friends"
I'd rather see retributive strike modelling the honorable ideals of: the other guy swung first, the other guy drew first (western paladins), so its OK to lay the smack down and then have that extend to allies as well.
Retributive Strike could be awesome and fits perfectly with an anathema that says you never swing first against any foe.
I don't think Retributive Strike should allow you to punish people for focusing on you instead of your allies; that would remove the whole "take me instead" incentive.
But I do think it needs to be more useful for non-Reach paladins. What about if it allowed you to take a Step or Stride in the direction of the triggering enemy so you can get at them? That would also make the paladin feel a bit more aggressive, because they're constantly moving towards enemies.
Except retributive strike isn't "take me instead", its "successfully hit my friends, so I can hit you back."
In fact retributive strike would work better as an anti-paladin feature because he could stand behind a wall of peasants with a pole arm and get extra strikes for attacking his "allies"
Perhaps retributive strike should be renamed peasant shield.
The problem with your proposal to lower the cost of higher level healing potions is: who is making all these higher level healing potions?
The answer is probably higher level NPCs, and ethically they deserve to be paid for their services. If they don't get paid substantially more for making higher level potions than a lower level person would get paid for making a lower level potion, why would they do it?
They could be engaged in other professional tasks where this level of enforced market isn't present.
Eventually the availability of high level healing potions would become very rare and their price would go up.
You could eliminate the Assurance feat and use a modified version of it for the TEML proficiency system. You roll the dice and
Expert: your minimum roll is 5
Master: your minimum roll is 10
Legendary: your minimum roll is 15
and then unlike the current Assurance feat, you can add your bonuses to the roll.
Do you mean that that is the minimum value on the die (then add other things)?
Yes I mean if you are an expert and you roll the dice and you roll a 1-4 then it becomes a 5.
Let me point out I am suggesting this for skills only not for attack rolls, although that could be looked at.
The idea is that when you are learning and getting better at something you do that by failing and learning what not to do. The expert has learned not to make some mistakes, the master has learned not to make even more mistakes.
Draco18s wrote:
Pretty sure Paizo doesn't want their skill system to work like that.
Why not? its very similar to
your critical failures become failures instead,
your failures becomes successes instead
Ah, I see. I guess my main concern would be that this might oddly constrain one's spell choices at higher levels. At first glance, it seems like there will be a number of cases where you'd like to know a higher level version of a spell, but you wouldn't be allowed to do so on this approach. This seems like it could lead to people being forced to add in "filler" spells they don't really want at various levels in order to not waste them, and to try to get an opportunity to use their higher level spell slots.
But that's all armchair talk. Whether these are real worries or not would have be tried out at the table.
I feel like it frees up your higher level spell repertoire and spell slots because you can actually take and cast spells that of that level instead of using up your higher level slots for upgraded versions of low level spells
Porridge wrote:
being forced to add in "filler" spells they don't really want at various levels in order to not waste them
I agree with you that many spells are so bad right now that this could be a problem but this is a separate issue of many spells needing a rework.
