Snickersnax's page

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.

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.

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.

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.

Struggling with playtest burnout myself. Our 20 round, 4 and 1/2 hour final battle in part 4 didn't help.

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.

Deadmanwalking wrote:

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?

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:

getting hurt/losing hp: heal, sooth, lay on hands
Invisibility: see invisibility, faerie fire, glitter dust, Revealing Stab
Flying: earthgrab, paralyze, felling strike/shot
Incorporeal: ghosttouch
Falling: featherfall, catfall, flying
Suffocating: airbubble
conditions: restoration
poison: neutralize poison
disease: remove disease
curse: remove curse
mirror image: magic missile

In my mind this is Standard Adventuring 101: how not to suck and die.

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.

the nerve-eater of Zur-en-Aarh wrote:

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.

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.

For example the DC for exploring hexes in Part 4.

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.

I imagine these gargantuan creatures shake the ground when they walk; I'm not sure how they move around like church mice.

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.

Snickersnax wrote:

Aldarc wrote:

Anyone proposing anything other than a +2 X, +2 Y, -2 Z spread or +2 X and +2 Y spread for a core PHB race are being delusional.

+1 for goblins not being a core race

And that is a separate argument entirely.

I was just pointing out how your opinion linked very well to my argument.

Anyone proposing anything other than a +2 X, +2 Y, -2 Z spread or +2 X and +2 Y spread for a core PHB race are being delusional.

+1 for goblins not being a core race

Snickersnax wrote:

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

"Encourage characters to play to their strengths, while working with others to bolster their place in the group."

Reeling from the realization that my definition of bolster has been changed and will never be the same. :)

Snickersnax wrote:

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.

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.

1 action touch, 2 actions ranged, 3 actions AoE with diminished effect.

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.

Snickersnax wrote:

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 :)

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.

Snickersnax wrote:

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.

Pretty sure Paizo doesn't want their skill system to work like that.

Why not? its very similar to

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

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.

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

Option 3. Merging Proficiency and Skill Feats

which I really like

Since I'm unfamiliar with Starfinder and there has been plenty of other stuff on this forum to read, I am late to the stamina conversation. Now that our group has played a session with Treat Wounds, I can say that I don't care for the Treat Wounds mechanic. It seems jarringly unrealistic and extraordinarily powerful for a mundane healing ability.

Our group never had ANY problems with the way things were prior to Treat Wounds. Now that Treat Wounds is here none of us like it, but especially the DMs. That said I understand that many other players don't feel the same way and feel a need to have a non-resource dependent hitpoint recovery system between fights.

I started musing about alternative solutions to the current healing problems and starting skimming the stamina threads.

Wow, stamina looks good! I wouldn't want it to be as strong as Starfinder, but it seems like it could be integrated into Pathfinder so easily.

Some people don't like stamina because it involves two types of hit points, but Pathfinder already has 2 types of hit points: regular hit points and temporary hit points. So we could just make stamina into temporary hit points.

My proposal is that regular hitpoints for all classes would be 6 points per level.

Temporary hit points could be your constitution modifier per level plus hit points per level that each class has currently over 6. So,

Barbarians: temp hp = (6+con) per level
Fighters, monks, rangers, paladins: temp hp = (4+con) per level
Alchemists, bards, clerics, druids,and rogues: temp hp = (2+con) per level.
Wizards and Sorcerers: temp hp = con per level

Obviously some adjustments to temporary hit points as they are currently used needs to be made so that barbarian rage hp, false life, etc are still additive. And interactions with healing need to be worked out. I prefer healing temp hp first and then actual damage.

Some short time (1min, 10 mins) of non-fatigued rest gives full recovery of temporary hit points.

One of the things that I really like about this mechanic that I haven't seen mentioned before is that it strongly supports the first blood duel as a narrative. Two fighters challenge each other to a duel to first blood. Now instead of rocket tag, there can be an actual fight with an agreed upon ending of the first combatant to actually sustain an injury.

Finally this would be another mechanic that could be used to balance martial classes with casters and could help wizards and sorcerers regain some of their spell casting prowess without unbalancing the game.

During a recent epic fight our Dwarf Alchemist was swallowed by a gargantuan creature. He was both frightened and excited that this happened. Frightened for the obvious reasons and excited because he thought he would be able to make an awesome ingested poison. After reading through the descriptions of the options he had available he was disappointed to learn that they all had long onset times and did very little damage.

Then he noticed that he could make Quicksilver Mutagen, which does 20 hit points of damage in order to get the buffs. Neither of us noticed the onset time of one minute, I think because we had been looking at ingested poisons that have the onsets listed in a slightly different place and because it never occurred to us that it wouldn't be right away. Turns out mutagens typically have a one minute onset :(

So we played that the mutagen acted right away effecting the monster and it was one of the most fun fights I've ever run as a DM.

Player: "Don't worry this monster doesn't have a ranged attack..."

DM: "...Turns out he does :)"

Given the alchemist seems so underwhelming and also given that the transition to encounter mode from exploration mode would typically preclude Mutagens from ever being useful. I can't think of a reason to have their onset be anything longer than 1 round.

That's an interesting proposal. And I agree that it has a lot of nice features. A couple drawbacks of this approach, if I'm understanding it correctly:

This would seem to lead to very limited heightening. I.e., if your max spell level is 5, and you have 2 5th level spell slots, then you can only heighten twice a day. (And only in one particular way: raising a spell to max level.)

There are some interesting ideas here. Pertaining to Snickersnax idea, I like the way it would differenciate sorcerers and wizards, and I think it would be interesting. However, in some situations, I think it could become very difficult in some cases, sometimes rendering some spell slots entirely useless or meaning that certain situations requiring a spell would make you use up all your max-level and minimum level spell slots, then not being able to help.

I guess I wasn't very clear about my proposal. Here is an example to demonstrate what I was trying to say.

Say a 7th level sorcerer wants to cast a heightened Mage Armor spell. He has Mage Armor as a Level 1 Spell in his repertoire. He casts the spell using a Level 1 spell slot and as a free action spends a spell point to spontaneously heighten the spell to 4th level (his maximum level). This does NOT use a 4th level spell slot.

Thus the concerns of the above posts about using higher level spell slots up are not present.

As an update we also have an alchemist in our group and our goblin bard has just discovered the synergy with Lesser Cognitive Mutagen and Dubious Knowledge.

I am considering a change in secret rolls so that I don't do them as the DM any more. Instead I will let the players roll and then also make a second roll that I am calling the Certitude Roll. This roll is for how confident the Player is about his characters Recalled Knowledge, and helps inform the player how he should Role Play his character.

I trust my players to be able to manage what their character knows and how certain they are that the information is correct. I'm really excited to see how it works because it will take the burden of secret rolls and place it back on the players as a role playing opportunity.

Here's an alternative that, I think, satisfies all four desiderata.

Allow Sorcerers to have the same number of spells known and spell slots as they currently do.
Replace the Spontaneous Hightening ability with the following: a Sorcerer can use 1 spell point to spontaneously heighten or decrease the spell level effect of any spell they know.

So your Desideratum 3 isn't satisfied here at all.

As I am beginning to understand the problem. Its the sorcerers turn and now he has to decide do I use a level 1, 2,3,4, or 5th level spell slot.

The best way to fix this might be to have sorcerers have spells on their list only at their lowest level and then allow spontaneous heightening to only their maximum level.

So the sorcerer casts heal using a level 1 spell slot and uses a spell point to spontaneously heighten it to max level.

The spontaneous heighten class feature gets replaced with: Use spell points to spontaneously heighten a spell you cast to your maximum level for 1 spell point and the feature gives you an extra 2 spell points.

This:

1) meets all your desiderata
2) eliminates the funk of sorcerers having Heal1, heal2, heal3, fireball4, etc
3) adds a cool side effect of sorcerers sometimes using more power than is necessary to solve a problem. They only have base level spell and max level spell.
4) Spell point use keeps the power balance in check, but gives the sorcerer a much needed boost.
5) Bloodline powers are still slightly favored because they don't use any spell slots

The wizard is a screwdriver, the sorcerer is a hammer

The balancing issue is the fact that the vancian system is being used. If the Arcanist system was being used, a Sorcerer heightening an unlimited number of spells would be balanced. The Vancian system currently being used does cause analysis paralysis when initially picking sorcerer and bard spells, but day to day for other classes.

I prefer wizards and clerics to use the Vancian system. We're not talking about a sorcerer heightening an unlimited number of spells.

The OP is talking about heightening based on Spell Points which are quite limited, and I was talking about heightening using spell slots which are also limited.

I think we agree on powers.

On the Bloodline Powers point maybe if they were worth a spell point more often than not? come on, a bite attack? Natural weapons are cool but putting them on a class not meant for the front lines seems wrong. Certainly wasn't easy to use in PF1...

In PF2 a lot of people have been playing what would have been considered a squishy from previous editions on the "front lines".

Mostly because:

1) Everybody is squishy because monsters OP
2) There is no front line because few AoO and 3-action economy allows for easy mobility to the "back lines"
3) Up until 1.3 there has been easy access to armor, so casters can have ACs equal to martials. There has been a slight but IMO insignificant dial back on this for 1.3.
4) Low entry access to magic weapon spell, true strike, magic weapons in general, and magical striker feat make melee casters a thing.
5) Martial skills have been enormously buffed and spells have been nerfed. Wizards and Sorcerers now make better martials.

All the being said I agree that most bloodline powers and many powers are very weak.

Yeah, in the old play test thread, Mark noted that this was the original way he designed the Sorcerer to work. But internal play tests convinced the developers that it didn’t satisfy desiderata 3 and 4. That is, there was a lot of decision paralysis, and balance concerns.

Like you (and Mark!) I find this surprising. But granting that the original propoposal does, indeed, fail to satisfy desiderata 3 and 4, then that option is off the table. :(

So the question becomes: how else might things be set up that avoids these problems?

Wow! I play with a group that has decision paralysis on almost every aspect of the game. It typically takes us 2-3 x as long as the average to play a game or do character creation. Every decision gets evaluated and optimized.

There are probably hundreds of places in the game where there are opportunities to remove decision paralysis and simplify. We've never had a problem with sorcerers being played the way I'm suggesting in past rule sets, and the current system (spontaneously heighten 2 spells of your choice / day) has created more choice difficulty with our team than spontaneously heightening by spell slot ever would.

As far as balance goes. I'm not sure how this is a problem at all. Instead of casting a level 4 spell, the sorcerer casts a level 1 spell at 4th level. Both use the same spell slot. How could there possibly be a balance issue?

Maybe folks are confused about how the spontaneous heightening idea works, because the language is a bit misleading. IF they thought that ALL spells automatically get heightened to your maximum spell level, I guess I could see how that might be a balance issue. But that's not the solution I or most people have been suggesting.

If balance is somehow still a problem, I wouldn't mind a slight decrease in spell repertoire to get this change. Right now the spell selection is so weak I'm often just trying to pick the least bad option rather than the next good one when I'm filling out the spell repertoire.

Just allow sorcerers to use spell slots to cast whatever spells they have in their spell repertoire spontaneously heightening any spells that get cast using a higher spell slot than normal.

Its simple, its not OP, it satisfies your 4 desired criteria.

Snickersnax wrote:

Heroes are one of the leading causes of death of monsters. You might expect even marginally intelligent monsters to be aware of heroic traits.
.

They really aren't. PCs are rare, and they are the only ones who get hero points. Adventurers are common, but not all adventurer are PCs. NPCs are just NPCs. They don't get hero points.

Even disregarding PCs and hero points. Any NPC group of adventurers with a healer (which is nearly all of them) have the capacity to bring their friends back from the brink of death. It's a common thing, something most monsters should expect when they encounter adventurers. And something that most player characters should expect the monsters to know.

Monster sees a character get up from what would have been a killing blow..." OH crap, we got a hero here" I'm not sure why monsters wouldn't know about heroes...

Heroes are one of the leading causes of death of monsters. You might expect even marginally intelligent monsters to be aware of heroic traits.

Legends about heroes from the Monsters point of view:

You gotta kill them more than once. Make sure they dead so they don't come back.

Seems like a pretty basic Monster Recall Knowledge check Lore: Heroes. I'd give it a static DC of 13... level 1 heroes have this ability.

Okay when I first looked at the new DC table I was like okay whatever as they were relatively the same. But then I started looking at the new skill checks for Mirrored Moon and I was like dude c'mon.

Every Hex has a DC 30 Perception or DC 27 Survival base?? Why??

Only 3 classes have master perception at that level and none of them (Fighter, Ranger, and Rogue) have any reason to have more then +2 MAYBE +3 Wis. So even with a +2 Item bonus that means they would generally have a +15 or so Perception. That's only a 25% chance to find anything after 2 DAYS of searching?? Now Granted the Survival check is a little more doable but 27? Why are these checks so high?

There's not a single important check that's lower than 25. That's just not okay.

I mean yeah someone could roll a 20 but these just seem way to high for no reason. Was this intended?

To be fair a Success means they find what's in the hex in 1 day, if they fail they find what's in the hex in 2 days. So they always have 100% chance to find what's in the hex with 2 days of searching.

On top of all this they have the gall to have rules for a critical success on these rolls? Even with the original DCs critical successes would have been impossible, they simply can't hit 10 over those DCs. It's impossible even with a character specialized towards perception.

SO natural 20's and a high perception (+11 or higher) will still grant a critical success vs a DC31, they don't have to be 10 over. But you're right no one is ever going to critically succeed with a roll of 19.

After our party stomped DD part 2, mostly because we avoided every encounter that we could, and since we finished 5 days early the DM asked if we wanted to fight the night heralds just to see how it would go.

It was a very tough fight, and as our side began to win our party immediately began to think about giving downed opponents an extra hit or two to make sure they stayed down, even in the face of immediate and very large threats. It becomes a calculated risk, and even in a situation where we didn't see any clear evidence that healing on the other team's side was possible, an extra action to create assurance that someone isn't going to be popping back up weighed heavily in our calculations.

If you take down the main damage dealer or healer and aren't so worried about some of the lesser threats, you want to make sure he's not coming back, especially since a good healer can take a knocked character to full health in a single round.

So I guess that the TPK problem is mostly due to monstere being too strong, rather than to the dying rules.

Collette mentioned that "she likes the PCs to be pulling out all the stops to succeed..."

As a player that likes to have layers and layers of stops. I think the TPK problem may also be pointing to a system problem where many of the stops that players may be accustomed to just aren't there.

This is partly true because the monsters are strong (which I enjoy). But the other side is the characters have access to fewer stops:

The ability of the players to be able to control the transition from exploration to combat to social mode is extremely awkward and forces fights to start or continue with few outs.

Spells with get out of jail free cards have been heavily nerfed. Except for clerical healing.

Super-optimizing can lead to better results due to the tight math. Some classes seem to offer more options for super optimization than others.

I feel like I've entered the twilight zone on this thread. I don't understand anything anyone is saying.

Divine Grace should be constant yes and so it doesnt become to overpowered have it gotten at lvl 2 and do half paladin's class level ( min 1) to saves..

Agreed, except there is need to shift it to Level 2 IMHO, given changes to multi-classing

Divine Grace is already level 2. Level 1 and level 2 feats are equally accessible from the 4th level paladin archetype feat Basic Benediction. I'm not sure how the change to multi-classing has any effect here.

@Steelfiredragon Are you suggesting that level 20 Paladins get +10 to saves from this feat???

So what happens after 1 minute if I put the shrunk creature in a locked box or the tiny creature crawls in a mouse hole in a stone building?. Does the spell continue like shrink item? Is the box destroyed? Is the creature damaged or killed?

I really wanted to use this as a quality of life spell for dealing with my warhorse in impassable terrain. But 1 minute was useless

Reactions equal to charisma!!!

Vengeful oath through a weapon.

Done.

I'd rather see: Divine grace is constant (not a reaction)

All Level 2 oaths gain LoH "smite" through the weapon by type: dragonslayer smite dragons, fiendsbane smites fiends, shiningoath smites undead, vengeful smites everything evil

And Retributive strike usable on attack against the paladin or any ally.

Done.

So you really roll death saving throws and keep track of dying conditions on your minions? Come on man. That just slows the game down and is ridiculous to try and implement while also trying to actually run a combat as a GM.

The way I manage it is: I just keep track of rounds and IF it becomes an issue (which it often doesn't). I just RetCon the rolls. This doesn't actually change anything.

Serum wrote:

Colette, how are your NPCs determining whether someone is dead compared to just unconscious? This isn't something that one can tell at a glance. What happens if the NPCs assume that a downed PC is out of the fight until shown otherwise? That is, give the PCs one free fight re-entry before the NPCs wise up and make sure they stay dead?

If we continue to get radio silence on this question, I'm going to assume meta gaming was the method.

It has been brought up a few times and it seems to keep getting dodged.

How pray tell did you monsters have with certain knowledge that the PC was still alive? When the PC was killed out right (or already dead) did you at any point spend additional actions attacking the already dead PC?

It isn't that hard to figure out. Anyone with an intelligence of 10 should have a pretty good guess without checking.

The creature/character went down. Was it a normal hit? dying 1 or was it a crit? dying 2.
Same attacker continues attack sequence on the downed opponent or second attacker hits before downed creature acts. Normal hit? = +1, crit = +2. Does the total add to 4? Creature is dead. Given how easy it it to critically hit a downed creature, it probably takes two hits after they go down. If you started with a critical hit then it might take only one.