My best bets for this group would be Reign of Winter or Mummy's Mask. Reign of Winter is very eclectic in the challenges you encounter, which might work well for such an eclectic group. You could simply skip the first book and have the hut pick each of them up from their starting location, avoiding the lowest levels of play or adding a low-level adventure inside the hut itself where the PCs meet and have to become a team in order to survive. The premise for Mummy's Mask would work really well - they have all heard of this amazing opportunity in Osirion, attracting people from all over the world. And it is a very good AP, especially the first four parts. Lots of different situations, not at all as single-track as Serpent's Crown. Shattered Star could work, using the Pathfinder Society as the plot device that brings the PCs together. Personally, I think the overall plot here is kind of weak, but that's me. If you add the Pathfinder Society to another AP, this plot device could work in almost any of them - I used it in Mummy's Mask. Serpent's Crown has an adventure hook that would work, but it requires more buy-in than most APs. It is very single-track, you have to sell the idea of jungle exploration to the players. Strange Aeons also has a hook that would work perfectly, but again requires a buy-in from the players. Not everyone is up for mind-warping cosmic horror. If they are up for it, I think it could work beautifully.
Agreeing with others here that say you make players fear character death by NOT killing PCs. In a game where death happens often, a healthy distance between player and character is needed to avoid getting hurt if your character should die. On the other hand, if players are pretty darn sure their character will not die, its worth investing more into the character. When threats loom, even if they chance of actual character death is almost nil, the drama of having a character you are invested in taking risks gets the players involved.
MaxAstro wrote: as someone who does a lot of adventure design, I lament the loss of how incredibly useful it was for answering certain basic adventure design questions. Paizo probably has a table like that hidden away. It may come in a book on adventure design. As an opponent of Table 10-2, I'm a bit touched by nostalgia for it. About the new table, I'm not sure giving it just one column prevents misuse. They can still base bard abilities's DC off this new table, making it just as bad. So it is a bit of a hollow victory.
Captain Morgan wrote: 1) I'm relatively sure we will get a Rogue specific archetype that trades out sneak attack. As you said, it was a late edition, and it is absurd to think we won't get class specific archetypes at some point. This would require a new set of archetype rules. Current archetypes only swap out feats, not class features. I would actually like archetypes like that, but I'm far from sure it will happen.
My table rule is this: Anything that can be done in encounter mode is automatically successful in exploration mode. This can also apply to exploration/downtime mode, but that never came up. This is a variant of Take 20 and saves a LOT of die rolling. Want to open that lock? You can either roll 200+ die rolls, or you can spend 10 minutes in encounter mode to just succeed. And yes, encounter mode is played in "turns" of 10 minutes - I like that is what a "turn" was in 1E AD&D as well.
I'm off on a tangent, as I often am. In my Rise of the Runlelords game, set in the Greyhawk setting, the runelords were draconic in origin. And I decided that draconic (the language) is less precise than human languages on matters of ethics. Thus the same word covered each side of each sin/virtue, possibly by adding a word to specify the value (good/evil) when that was important - which it by dragon logic seldom was. Thus one word would mean both generosity and greed, with the exact meaning given by the context - and often open to interpretation.
thaX wrote: instead of having two forms of the Mage. (Wizard and Sorcerer) Other than mechanics, nothing was different between the two classes. I find those two concepts quite different. Tactically, there are similarities, but conceptually the sorcerer is a half-monster using something related to monster powers, while the wizard is a magical engineer. Not the same at all in my mind. [This isn't directly about Vancian casting, its about sorcerer and wizard as concepts.]
Draco18s wrote: two options, one of which is rated 7 out of 10 by everybody is inferior to another where half the reasons are 1 and half are 10s. I believe this is incorrect. The TV series that a lot of people rate high enough to actually watch will beat the TV series a few people love and others hate every time. Something that a few people love might become classic and stay in the circuit for years, but it will never be the #1.
Bobson wrote:
Quoted for truth. Paizo has built customer relations experience with this playtest and now has a blog with actual readers and a Twitch stream with actual subscribers. Continue in this vein. Exploit these resources. Paizo should have somebody who has decent insight into the continuing design process report back to us potential customers what is happening in the design process. If nothing else, this is a way to keep excitement up. To stay in focus among your customers. To hype the coming product.
Edge93 wrote: Rogues being shackled to Sneak Attack In Late PF1, this was a non-issue, because if you did not want sneak attack, there were hosts of other classes that could fill the rest of the rogues' niche. In the playtest, this actually IS a problem, as the rogue is the only skill class. In the playtest, you cannot dodge having Sneak Attack if you want to play a skilled character. [Yes, i do see that this was originally a strawman argument, but it does carry the point above.]
Not sure how I feel about this change, DrStyx makes a good argument. Some points, which only halfway convince even myself: You can change what spells you have prepared rather quickly. I think the reason for the change is that it requires less game mastery; no longer do you need to know all the spells in your spellbook by heart, you only need to keep the spells you actually prepared on your fingertips.
Melodious Spell, the bard concealing a spell as a part of a performance, is a level 8 feat. Conceal Spell, the wizard equivalent is level 4. Sorcerers also do this at level 4. To me, concealed spellcasting is something bards and maybe divine casters should be good at, arcane casters should get this later.
Matthew Downie wrote:
I ws trying to get around scry-and-fry and teleport assassinations, yes. Basically, I want teleport that help the story, not ruin it.
Helmic wrote: I had a similar writeup for flying races[/url], where a Strix or similar race by default can't fly, but meet the prerequisite for the Flyer archetype that's available at level 1 for any race that has wings. You could be a flightless member of the race if you choose, but you can spend class feats, stat boosts, whatever to get higher level things earlier. It at least lays a possible way to grant powerful effects for particular concepts without needing to adjust the vanilla options available to most characters. I see this as a case for less siloing. With less siloing, heritage feats might be able to do this.
graystone wrote: 6 - There will be more guidelines in the GM part about when asking for a check is unnecessary and about checks in which failure doesn't mean complete failure, just taking longer or having some kind of complication... The playtest document seem to think a GM is empowered by a rules being replaced by recommendations. A lot of "the GM sets the difficulty" and things like this where the GM can say no roll required. In my not so humble opinion this all belongs in the "play the game" chapter, as strong recommendations. As a GM, I feel alot more empowered by having a distinct rule that i can then choose to ignore, than by having to muddle trough a "recommendation" that means nothing to me as a GM, but means the world to the player. The bardic cantrips that need Perform checks are prime examples.
ryric wrote: For those lamenting things like "group Stealth is now impossible!" well, it never was very possible even with the +level added untrained... In the Manticore encounter in In Pale Mountain's Shadow, there was a line that said this: In Pail Mountain's Shadow Encounter B4 wrote: Two-thirds of the way up the mountainside to area B5, the manticore notices the PCs unless the entire party is stealthy in their exploration. I'm not sure if this was intentional, but I read this to say that if the entire party was in Stealth encounter mode, the manticore would not see them, no check required. This is a sort of take-20 situation; over the distances typical of outdoor encounter mode play, a team that moves at half pace in order to remain hidden is more or less automatically hidden. I like this ruling so much that I generalized it into a table rule: Anything that can possibly succeed in encounter mode is automatically successful in exploration mode, and anything that is possible to do in exploration mode is automatically successful in downtime mode. I would require that someone in the group is trained, or I'd consider the task impossible.
What annoys me about playtest paladins is not so much WHY they do things, its WHAT they do. Playtest paladins do very different things than PF1 paladins did, but that's for another thread. On the difference between law and chaos, I feel chaos is a lot about conformism and fitting in, while chaos is is about showcasing yourself. Law "takes one for the team" while chaotics are "first among equals". Either side can like or dislike laws. Some examples. China is a very lawful society, but having a written code of law is alien to their history. Instead they have conformity and the teachings of the ancient masters. Having a written code of law could be used by individuals to claim rights against society. Laws are not allowed to distort the power of conformity required by a very lawful society. When Sweden exited the viking age, one of the things that was done was to codify laws. Earlier, laws had been something memorized by "gode", wise men and law-speakers. Naturally, these people held a lot of power. By codifying laws, everyone got access to the law. I'd say this was a reduction in the chaotic alignment of the vikings' descendants. Someone fighting for the rights of minorities is breaking conformity and acting against the collective will of the majority, but do so using the laws of society. The law becomes the guarantee of the right of the few against the many. This can be seen as a chaotic using laws against the lawful.
On the teleport balance issue, what teleport needs in not a long casting time - it is a long arrival time. Star Trek and its transporter often have this issue - people are starting to flicker into existence, but it takes a while for them to stabilize. This need not be a huge amount of time, say 1 minute, and the teleportees all spend their first turn after arriving orienting themselves to the exclusion of all other action. If you add the teleportation arrival making noise and smelling ozone, this would stop scry-and fry and make teleport more useful for escape than for attack.
Captain Morgan wrote:
We have to agree to disagree here. To me, a complete change in how an important part of the heroes of Golarion look, fight, and feel is a major change to the canon. RPGs are about the characters. It doesn't matter if its is in a game or from fiction, a PF1 paladin and a PF2 paladin embody two different concepts. A PF1 paladin from fiction, if it in any way emulates the paladin from the game, cannot be represented by a playtest paladin. Paladins are called just that, and this makes the change even more important. If they had changed the fighter in a similar way, I would have minded less, as "fighter" isn't really an in game concept. The world has men-at-arms, soldiers, gladiators, mercenaries, weapon specialists, a host of warrior concepts best played as the fighter class as long as they work mechanically - but none of which need to conceptually be of the fighter class or that would be called fighters in world. Only in meta-talk would someone say "hey, fighter" except perhaps in a sporting context. When used in its most general way, "fighter" would include anyone who fights, which of course includes paladins, rangers, barbarians, many rogues, etc, etc. Because Fighter is a class, I tend to use warrior as my inclusive term for anyone who fights, but fighter is the normal word for anyone who engages in physical combat. But paladin IS an in-world concept, clearly marked and differentiated. You might actually call someone "sir paladin" in the game world, since paladins are rare and very distinct. That is why they have all these special behavior rules. Not every 'fighter' qualifies to be a paladin. Thus a change to what the word "paladin" refers to is a change to the world. A lot of people who called paladins in world before the change will no longer be of the paladin class. That is why I would have preferred if the playtest paladin changed the name, so that "paladin" became just another in-game word that does not point to a specific class, like man-at-arms.
Currently, proficiency has a range of -4 to +3. Item bonuses have a range of -2 to +5. I'd suggest swapping these ranges. Give proficiency a range of -2 to +5 (possibly -4 to +5) and item bonuses a range of -2 to +3. This would move emphasis from a character's equipment and to the character themselves. Heroes should be central to their own stories. Items are just props. This would keep the numbers of the restricted math, and allow proficiency and item bonuses to have the same range across all proficiencies; weapons, spells, armor, and magic. Having a separate proficiency and/or item bonus range between skills and other proficencies is a bad idea that does not fit the PF2 model. This suggestion does fit the current math, keeping the range of total bonuses the same. We'd need more proficiency rank names, something like Untrained (lvl 0)
GM observations. I had a primal sorceress in Lost Star and In Pale Mountain's Shadow that felt pretty useless. She did manage to make a hyena laugh hideously and trip a gnoll with grease in Pale Mountain, but that is about the sum of her achievements. The worst moment was in Lost Star. The PCs were facing off against the centipedes. They had the drop on the monsters and made a plan centered on having the sorc start the fight with some area spell. But there are no surprise rounds in PF2, the sorc had poor initiative and a mediocre roll and ended up going last. She got bitten by a single centipede and spent the fight healing herself from the continuous poison damage she was taking. She even needed help from the other characters to survive the one attack.
Yolande d'Bar wrote: Second, everyone must attempt to Aid Another at their normal skill bonus. Every failure incurs a -2 on the point character's check, but a success gives no bonus at all. Very nice! Been using something very similar, with larger penalties (success gives -2, failure gives -4) but everyone can roll and we use the best result. For two competent sneakers, the odds are better than for one. But taking the entire party along is HARD.
Interesting observation. I kind of agree, but my players love glass-jaw characters with high defenses and low hp. I worry a bit about that. But the observation about self-heals on the monk is very interesting and might be a way out of the conundrum. Healing in the playtest is VERY different from healing in PF1, and even more so with Treat Wounds. Combat healing is much more important and between-combat healing relegated to a separate resource (time and not rolling 1s) from combat healing. Con was actually not a very important stat for a warrior class until Treat Wounds came along; now it is.
I feel the problem with the playtest cleric is a MMO/Pathfinder Society problem. The situation is this. You are assembling a party for a session of MMO/Pathfinder society. You need a healer. A lot of classes can heal, but there is no guarantee you get a healer with any particular class - except with the cleric (less so after 1.6, but still so). This forces all clerics to be healers - or to be subpar, as healing is the one thing a cleric can do well (now with a Cha tax). I felt this was SO transparent from the first moment I saw the playtest cleric. Playtest numbers required healing - you can no longer be hit proof thru AC. That healing comes in the form of the cleric class. With the new resting rules, healing became an in-combat thing, so now cleric healing could be scaled down. This happened in 1.6. But this left the cleric basically unable to fulfill ANY role without the Cha tax. Clerics were both overpowered and underpurposed with the initial playtest release. Now they are just underpurposed. Hopefully a general spell upgrade will make them viable again. But that requires much more weight laid on domains, to allow different clerics to actually play different once their very few power points are spent.
Despite my deep hatred of Table 10-2, I will not further derail this thread by discussing it. My continuity problem is different. Paladins. PF1 paladins work. Playtest paladins work. But they do NOT work the same. A lance-charging PF1 paladin and a reach-weapon-point-defence PF2 paladin simply cannot be reconciled. They do not exemplify the same concept or the same design aesthetic. What was a paladin in PF1 does not best translate to a paladin in PF2; more likely a PF1 paladin would convert to some cleric/fighter mulitclass. This is not just the loss of a concept, it also makes the arsenal of martial combat choices more limited. The paladin and cavalier shared a very similar mechanic, that was distinctly different from the barbarian, fighter, and ranger. Like a barbarian, they could use any weapon but had a time limit, but the implementation was very different and interesting in its own way. There is no playtest equivalent. I guess the designers could not figure an interesting implementation of smite/challenge in PF2, which makes me a sad puppy. I think the playtest paladin is an interesting class mechanically. But it is not a paladin. Rename it champion or bodyguard or somesuch and give us a true-to-role paladin reboot in a later book. Or publish a cavalier reboot, and make Paladin an archetype you can apply to fighter, bodyguard, or cavalier. Anything that allows us to re-create a PF1 paladin.
Another problem with having rules for rituals that have a monetary cost, is that this money needs to exist in the game world. A recurring plot hole in PF1 is the reanimator that has a flock of undead minions, but is otherwise broke. Each Hit Dice of undead created costs 50 gp; apparently the reanimator just spent his last dime animating his last undead. What of the PCs arrived 2 days early, would the reanimator have fewer undead and a whole bunch of precious onyx? Demon summoning is even worse since it has a limited duration. Imagine the PCs scouting the lair of an evil cult and realizing they have a bunch of summoned demons. Well, summon demon costs money, and lasts only a few days. The PCs can wait the cult out until the demons simply disappear. This puts pressure on the GM; the cult must do something proactive to force the player's hand. This is cool, but outside the scope of almost every adventure ever written. Better to handwave it; the evil ritual climaxes just as the PCs invade and the staged fight happens as written. So, to avoid all this, we remove the money cost on rituals. Suddenly, the PCs can use these rituals to get free cannon fodder. I just can't see a balanced situation here. The solution in the playtest is to put an ancestry restriction on summon rituals, but this makes them NPC only - but why bother to have rules for NPC only activities that do not take place in an encounter? Again, handwave it.
Neutral Lich, I wonder if your problem is that you are confined to a gaming group that are too narrow minded to allow you to explore your favorite fantasy. I can imagine religious players that can't leave their beliefs outside the game or some such. If this is true, you could remind those players that this is a GAME, and encourage them to go outside their comfort zone for this particular activity. Reciprocity would demand that you do the same for them at some point. This is my opinion on animating the dead being an evil act
But all of this should be brought up during session zero. This when all the players (including the GM) gather to discuss what the game will be all about, what themes to explore, and what character concepts fits the story. Springing a reanimator on the other players (or worse, the GM) unknowingly would be horrible table manners and I imagine this would get you expelled from most gaming groups. It certainly would get you expelled from mine.
* Doomsday Dawn Spoilers * I'm back on the "Rituals are for NPCs" think I put in early in this thread. My example would be the two major rituals we actually have in Doomsday Dawn: the villain plan in Mirrored Moon and all of When Stars Go Dark. Both these seem typical of how rituals are intended in PF2 - time consuming, expensive, and incredibly dangerous and hard to pull off. In Mirrored Moon, the entire plot is about preventing a ritual that takes a colossal 2 months to pull of. It is *intended* to fail, the consequences of success would be horrifying. Failure works as a reward; once the PCs have foiled the ritual, they can find out what the mcguffin was. In When Stars Go Dark, the ritual centers around the PCs. It HAS to succeed, or there is no adventure. In fact, the ritual IS the adventure. Neither of these can ever be covered by any set of rules. They are too idiosyncratic, too tailored to a specific situation. And this, I feel, is the best way rituals can work. The long ritual that works exactly as the scenario needs it to. No more no less. No rules needed. If the PCs want to make such a ritual, consult with the GM, and the GM may make an adventure for you to enjoy. The other kind of ritual is when the alternative would be a spell tax. If the adventure is set underwater, its unfair to demand that a spellcaster give up one spell slot per character just to make the adventure possible to play. Not to mention preparing these would take a full day for a prepared caster, and likely be impossible for a spontaneous caster. But having rituals take entire days to complete in this circumstance would break most plots, as would demanding the PCs have the right proficiencies. A GM would generally introduce some helpful item or NPC to take this load. Rituals do work inn this situation, but only as one of many storytelling tools.If this is solved with a ritual, it should be measured in minutes, not days. The ritual as it exists now is neither of these two. It is a strange mix of mcguffin and utility. Consider Raise Dead and Atonement. Both fix characters that have suffered misfortune. But having these be elements IN the game, means game time at the table need to be spent on them, game time where the character cannot participate (raise dead) or is severely handicapped (atonement). And how are these situations improved by having a mini-game involving cost, feats, and lots of die rolls? These are situations that should be resolved through a quick montage (the church arranges a ritual/an angel intervenes) and a cost (accept this quest/pay this fine) and problem is solved. I understand there are groups who might enjoy this kind of game, but I don't, and I don't think it would ever happen in Pathfinder Society. These are tasks that are character driven and thus cannot be written in advance. I would not mind these rules being in the game, but I do not want them in the core book. These pages can be spent much better on other things.
GM here, these are player moments. ** Spoilers ** Lost Star, the dwarf brought Drakus below half in the initial charge. On the negative side, we felt 1st level PF2 was a bit of a rocket tag - this got better later on. This was also true in PF1. In Pale Mountains Shadow, avoiding all the elementals was super easy, but my players felt rewarded. The cleric vs undead adventure was a little too easy to really allow any awesome, but the simple device of having an all-darkvision party and scouting out the windows ruled pretty hard. Mirrored Moon had a very slow start, but the PCs finally got a lucky roll and realized the fairy presence. They transformed their party into amini-carnival and charged the fairies. In the giant + dragon fight, they spent a day observing the nest and struck as the dragon was out foraging. They then proceeded to Charm the giant (I rollev very low on its save), and when the dragon promptly returned (it had its suspicions), it was soundly beaten. Fire Giants are VERY good at fighting red dragons. Red Flags had some awesome GM moments because of the high pace we maintained. It felt very James Bond, in a good way. 2 heroes entered the kraken cave, with 2 remaining to be made invisible to cross the mirror room. So the 2 in the kraken cave had to evade the kraken and get the treasure, which they did courtesy of rogue skills, celestial armor, and Hallucination spells. This is as far as our playtest got.
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