RangerWickett's page

Great story.

But ew, 'gutwasps' is a wildly unpleasant turn of phrase.

The thing that always struck me as odd in this legend is Gorum's involvement in making the cage. I would imagine he'd have been fighting, not forging. Unless the metaphorical nature of the cage is much more combative than just some impenetrable bars holding Rovagug in place.

I'd find it off if that archer was then able to shoot an arrow with Retributive Strike as a reaction.

Why is multi-classing only available via archetypes in PF2?

Why didn't PF2 keep PF1-Style multi-classing?

Honestly mate, if you want more PF1-style multiclassing, it's easy to house rule.

Let people spend general feats *or* class feats on multiclass devotion. And then once you have at least one devotion feat, you count as being that class too, using your full character level, for the purpose of taking future feats.

If you start as a fighter, take the Wizard multiclass devotion, and reach 10th level? Well, now you can take a 10th level wizard feat. Easy peasy.

I imagine it upsets some balance a little, maybe, but nothing too serious, I'm sure.

I'm playing a 5E game where we're all lizard men.

Weird races are fun sometimes.

I also played in 4E, where because of builds we'd have parties consisting of genasi, githzerai, drow, and vrylokai, and we just ran with it.

Honestly, I kinda wish the Ancestry chapter said, "Pick a race, whose only mechanical effect is to determine your size. Then pick two stat mods, and pick four abilities from this list. Or pick a 'standard package.'"

They'd have samples of what a typical Elf or Goblin has, but if you want to be a small adventurer with a penchant for fire, you don't have to be a Goblin. Don't link mechanical options to flavor choices.

I did always want to try building a party of 20th level characters and running through an adventure path from start to finish.

Iron Gods
Oh, the Torch has gone out and a local VIP went missing trying to fix it. Let's cast some divinations. Ah, he's being tortured by some sort of machine. Scry, buff, teleport. Cast greater restoration on the guy, get the full story. Oh, someone turned off the Torch. Scry on her. Buff, teleport in. Take her nonlethally, dominate her, get all her information.

Okay, she's working for a 'god' named Hellion out of Scrapwall. Scry on him? Weird, it didn't work. Well, let's stretch our legs. Windwalk to Scrapwall. Man, these people have it rough. Let's cast miracle to make the land fertile here and provide enough fruits for everyone to at least avoid scurvy. Oh, that pissed off some locals. Subdue them handily, charm person, learn about all the stuff that's going on here. Chain lightning takes out the entirety of the first mob of bad guys. Speak with dead to get the route to Hellion. Waltz in, fight some guys, go underground, sigh. Fools think they can hurt us. Oh, this technology stuff is nifty.

Ah, finally, Hellion. He's in a robot body, so chain lightning again and . . . oh, sh**, he exploded and killed Jim. Breath of life, good to go.

Well, we have a lead to why he was doing this. Something about being pissed off at some people in Starfall. Let's go there.

(Skips adventures 3 and 4, since the hook to go after them is easily missed.)

Oh, there are a lot of bad guys here. This might actually take a while. Let's really quickly scrysassinate the high-level leadership, then come back tomorrow after buying some shocking adamantine weapons to deal with their robots.

Okay then. Five adventures done in a day and a half. Tomorrow we'll mop up the villains here in Starfall, and then we'll take a look at that big crashed spaceship over there.

In hindsight, I feel like if Paizo had been 'woke' (by 2019 standards) back in 2008, they could have just upended the whole cliche.

Starfall happened, and some elves fled through gates to another world to be safe. The ones who stayed behind wanted to protect the world, and they fled underground. As naturally happens with elves, they go on vacation and change skin tones dramatically, so they went gray, the better to hide. But they weren't evil.

They saw the impact was awakening ancient forces from deep underground so they worked to hold them back to give the surface time to recover. Over time, great warriors sealed away some of these ancient evils, but drow societies still fear that some among them have been tempted by the powers of Rovagug.

Then you could have mostly neutral drow with a tradition of saving the damned world from a couple Spawn of Rovagug or something, but with a city or scattered regions in the darklands with bad ones. Just make sure the first interaction most gamers have with drow are with neutral people.

The drow would still mostly avoid the surface because the light is uncomforatble, but when an army of elves from Castrovel invade, the drow would come to help the surface folk fight back their long-forgotten brothers.

My personal preference is that a dark gray skin tone looks cooler than a blue one, but whatever man. Paizo drow have been a desaturated purple-blue since the Second Darkness adventure path.

https://www.camelotgamestore.com/nopc/content/images/thumbs/0001135_pathfin der-adventure-path-second-darkness_550.jpeg

I mean, if you want dark grey drow in your game for aesthetic reasons, go for it. Unless you plan to publish or film something set on Golarion and need Paizo's endorsement, their canonical appearance isn't that critical.

I think the newer pale blue drow look less cool than desaturated purple. https://i.imgur.com/z7DpU0M.png

But I'll deal.

---

Heck, if you really want to remain canonical but also have gray drow, just say that y'know, there are different ethnicities of drow. The ones in Zirnakaynin are blue. The ones in Delvingulf get more, like, radiation off the Dying Sea, and so their skin is darker to protect them. Boom. Done.

I've always preferred to think of HP as just being stamina. Being at 0 HP just means you're unable to keep fighting. You have been knicked and cut and bruised, but nothing is going to kill you.

I wish the rules actually, y'know, supported that. If they did, it'd make a lot more sense for it to be easy to regain HP.

Corvo Spiritwind wrote:

I got ninja'd about Athletics to kick down a door or break in through the window and saying "OH YEAH!"

Oh my god my fighter is obsessed with trying to make his character play like the kool-aid man and I have to watch, horrified.

In 2nd edition AD&D, a friend of mine played a water elementalist wizard. The group encountered an ogre magi, which was a bit beyond their abilities. Nobody wanted to get into melee with the guy, so for a while they stalled and talked, but then the wizard cast change self to make himself look like The Kool-Aid Man.

The ogre didn't see this as an offensive gesture, so he just laughed and kept threatening the PCs.

Then the wizard cast insatiable thirst, which made the ogre feel compelled to drink anything he saw. And the wizard ran away.

The ogre chased after him as the wizard ran in circles, and the party gradually wore the ogre down with ranged attacks.

Yeah, let's go for:

Enhance Ability
Spell 2
Transmutation
Traditions Arcane, Divine, Occult, Primal
Cast 2 actions (somatic, verbal)
Range touch Targets 1 creature
Duration 1 minute
Choose an ability score. Once during the spell's duration, the target may add +10 a skill check or saving throw that uses that ability score. They may decide when to use this after rolling. Even if the target is affected by another casting of this spell, they cannot add that bonus again until at least ten minutes have passed.

Additionally, the target gains a benefit based on the chosen ability score for the spell's duration.

• Strength - The target can carry 3 more bulk without becoming encumbered, and increases their maximum encumbrance by 6 bulk.

  The target can choose to count as one size larger for the purpose of combat maneuvers such as grab and trip. The target can wield weapons one size larger than they normally could. Attacks with such weapons deal 2 extra damage. (The target deals no extra damage with weapons of a size they're already capable of wielding.)
  

• Dexterity - The target ignores damage from the first 100 feet of falls, and can land on their feet even if they do take damage.

  The target's movement does not provoke attack of opportunity reactions. Balancing does not cause the target to become flat-footed.
  

• Constitution - The target can hold their breath four times as long as usual.

  Whenever an attack or effect would deal physical damage, poison damage, bleed damage, or acid, cold, electricity, fire, or sonic damage to the target, reduce that damage by 1.

• Intelligence - The target can make one Recall Knowledge check as a free action on each of its turns.

  For up to one day after the spell ends, the target can perfectly remember anything they sense during the spell's duration.

• Wisdom - The target only needs to succeed a flat check of DC 5 to target a hidden creature, and needs no check to target a concealed creature. A creature that is hidden from the target does not make the target flat-footed against its attacks.

• Charisma - The target is just, like, super cool. They can fix damaged jukeboxes just by fistbumping them.

Heightened (+3): The spell targets up to 6 creatures. For each target choose any one ability score to enhance.
Heightened (+4): The duration increases to 8 hours, and the target can add the +10 bonus to a skill check or saving throw once every 10 minutes.

Bull's Strength - level 2 spell. Has an ant-haul effect to increase your carrying capacity. Lets you use oversized weapons like a titan barbarian. Provides no bonus to attack, and even your damage is only increased if you happen to have an oversized weapon.

One time during the spell you can upgrade a Strength check by one step (crit fail > fail > success > crit success).

Cat's Grace - level 2 spell. Negates falling damage and lets you land on your feet. One time during the spell you can upgrade a Reflex save or Dex check by one step.

Bear's Endurance - level 2 spell. Quadruples how long you can hold your breath. One time during the spell you can upgrade a Fortitude save (or Con check? do those still exist?) by one step.

I'll figure out the mental ones later.

I ran an all paladin campaign in PF1, and they likewise were daunting in a different way. By about 8th level, thanks to Selective Channeling and one PC with Channel Ray, plus everyone having the ability to lay hands on themselves as a swift action, trying to deal damage was a Sisyphean task.

I got used to it. But when the group capped out at 18th level, I recall an encounter where the aasimar paladin with angel wings got caught by surprise by a pit fiend who full attacked him. Before said PC got to his turn, he was healed back to full by the rest of the party, and then the PC activated his boots of haste, smote, and made I think 7 attacks. It died that turn.

I don't play SFS, but this seems like a pretty cool community event.

I mean, in my home game the party headed to the Darklands to Delvingulf, which had basically nothing written about it except it was on the shore of the Dying Sea, so I turned it into the drow equivalent of New Orleans, where the public water system dispersed soporific drugs made by the Alchemists Guild to keep the population happy instead of rebelling against the ruler.

For published cities, Osirion's capital Sothis has the giant shell of a defeated Spawn of Rovagug as a canopy over the palace, which is pretty nifty. Plus (maybe?) a crashed once-flying pyramid.

A 'merchant kings' campaign. There's a succession crisis in some Vudran kingdom, with three heirs hoping to earn their father's favor. He asks for a precious artifact from the exotic far west. Each heir sends a caravan to try to acquire it.

Two adventures heading west, trying to get your caravan of precious goods and travelers from Vudra to Nex, the journey filled with rivalries against other merchants and a few detours to find great treasures.

One adventure when you reach Nex and have to corner a market and outcompete the other merchant groups to get some ludicrous sum of money and purchase the artifact.

Two adventures heading back east with the artifact. All the areas you passed through have changed in the months since you were there previously, and you probably friends or enemies you cross paths with again.

During the trip, the heir who backed your caravan does some evil deeds, kills his father, and seizes power. You return to Vudra and either can try to take him down, or have to defend him from the other merchant caravans.

Ideally, the enemy stats would be a little modular, so based on what deals you cut along the way, your foes have access to different resources. Whatever you don't have, they do.

I agree with the Squiggit post quoted above. If anything, I wish they'd given all the classes more stuff to bring fighters and rogues up on par with rangers, champions, druids, and monks.

I like characters having a quirky mix of active combat options and handy defensive/utility/exploration options. In 5E most of that stuff is hand-waved. In PF1 that stuff was baked in. In PF2, it competes with combat feats.

I don't think just giving extra feats at every odd level fixes the issue, because people would probably just want more combat feats.

I've been an perpetual game mechanic tinkerer since 2000, so I'm pondering how things could have gone. Maybe such abilities could have been a Fourth Pillar of character creation:

Unless I'm missing something, no, it doesn't provide extra focus points. It adds it as a devotion spell, so you can choose between that and lay hands.

The rough thing from a business standpoint is that your players will want to use the published game options, which are mostly for Avistan. So if you set an adventure path in Vudra, either you need a party of "fish out of water" or you need a big book of character options from all over Casmaron.

It's early in the life cycle of the new game, and I imagine they're wary of taking a risk on a product that might not hold a lot of appeal.

Personally I'd love some Bollywood-style fantasy. Check these examples out, courtesy of www.reddit.com/r/bollywoodrealism:

https://gfycat.com/pepperyclumsyhoneybadger

https://gfycat.com/fickleickyblackbuck-rajini-funny-action-scenes-superstar -rajinikanth

https://external-preview.redd.it/zDeGy9oUxSp_PjqLLlYutFkAExr4KE8QdXiPTIrLXb 0.gif?width=435&format=mp4&s=ee80a7181153a79ef25b49eae204444ab34ee9 fc

https://gfycat.com/AdvancedElderlyBass

I think we should probably all settle on a guideline of

"If you're going to do a thing that is cool but hinders another foe, they make a save.

Some of y'all seem like you've been watching too much Goblin Slayer.

but seriously, someone please kill all the gnomes....

Can I interest you in our lord and destructor Rovagug? Sure, you'll die too, but isn't that worth it to get rid of gnomes?

(I love gnomes. Never seen a single one as a PC since 2003, so maybe that's why I love 'em.)

Weirdly, though, I want high-powered high level characters doing awesome stuff. I don't mind a level 10 fighter taking on 20 foot soldiers and coming through with just a few scratches. But I want him to do that through interesting character abilities, not just higher numbers.

It's hard, though, to model that in a game without slowing down play.

It can work in something like Dark Souls, where exceptional player skill lets even a non-leveled character dodge and parry every attack. But in a dice-based game that model isn't really feasible. You can't, y'know, roll your dice just right to represent how good your high-level swordsman is at parrying.

I have some ideas for how it could work, but not in the PF2 framework. You'd have to build a wholly different game.

What would be FANTASTIC is if Paizo were to issue a Bestiary PDF where level has already been taken out of all the numbers! :-)

I figure the game will play fine as-is, but yeah, aesthetically I would have preferred the game without adding level to everything. I consider myself pretty good at mental math, but it's just easier to roll d20+8 and compare it to DC 22 than d20+23 and compare it to DC 37.

It's hardly a deal-breaker, though.

I doubt Paizo itself would want to fracture their player base (or have to do double layout work) by doing all the stats twice, but maybe some intrepid fans could set up a variant SRD for groups who want flatter leveling.

Weirdest one for me in PF1 was the ability to play a CG cleric of Yog-Sothoth. I mean if you wanted to be a cleric of an eldritch abomination who is not unfriendly, Desna is right there and is much friendlier.

If any sort of entity is uncaring about its followers and merely cares about whether you are pursuing its goals, it'd be elder gods. I'd see a CG cleric of Yog-Sothoth as, y'know, crazy, thinking that he must prepare the world for a great transition that will make it better. He isn't doing it out of a desire for his own power, or to harm anyone.

Day to day, he would want to help alleviate suffering, but he believes that in the long run, the best way to alleviate suffering is to let Yog-Sothoth transmute us all, so that when the Great Old Ones awaken we will be squamous and non-Euclidean, better able to survive the cruelty of those evil gods. So he would seek out quests to open portals and to understand the infinity of time.

I mean, it's not much different than someone claiming everyone should become vegan, and working to end the meat industry.

https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Aaren_Gaulder

https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Eldia_Vesan

Also, non-spellcaster, but: https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Keyron_Saiville

So nobody who was in an adventure path or anything.

But, well, I figure if Nocticula can go from CE to CN, then why not allow some wiggle room in morality for mortal who worship gods? And it makes it hard for, like, a follower of Desna to be tempted to serve Lamashtu, since they can't overlap as CN. Or for Sarenrae to draw a follower of Norgorber out of the shadows.

Just say, "In PFS games, you cannot worship an evil god or play an evil character." Boom, easy.

Most Gorum worshipers would still be CN.

Anyway, I guess both sides are set in their ways. I'll do it my way in my home games.

RangerWickett wrote:

You (and the PF2 designers) seem to see it as, "Hi, I'm Gorum. I only give power to people who are super devout."

That's how gods work in Pathfinder, in both editions.

I suppose word of god says it is, but that never showed up in the rulebooks I read or the games I played or ran. Left with a need to fill in the gap of what, say, a CN worshiper of Lamashtu or a true neutral worshiper of Shelyn might look like, groups came up with interesting characters who adhered to the tenets of their faith, as we understood it.

That's why a lot of us are pushing back against this change. It's like we're being told that we were doing it wrong.

Violence for the sake of violence is not good.

And that's not how we saw Gorum. He just wanted you to test yourself, to train, and to deal with your foes through fighting not peacemaking.

Peace isn't necessarily good if the peace is both through suffering.

And if someone isn't your foe, you don't have to fight them, go look for other foes.

Is it a misconception if a large chunk of the fanbase thought it was canon?

In 1e Gorum had CG followers due to the 1step rule, but there was never anything good in his portfolio. He's not a god of violence for the right reasons or a last resort, he's a god of violence for the sake of violence. That's not good, and not something an actual good person would follow.

It's definitely not something a good person who would be divinely empowered be being devout would follow, or rather, they wouldn't stay Good for long.

Maybe it's all coming down to a difference of how we see characters who use divine magic.

You (and the PF2 designers) seem to see it as, "Hi, I'm Gorum. I only give power to people who are super devout."

I've always seen it more as, "Hi, I'm Joe. I know how to use divine magic, and I rather like the militant aspects of Gorum. I promise to uphold your virtues and avoid doing things that displease you. Grant me power so that I might defeat my enemies. You, Gorum, don't care who those enemies are, only that I battle them. Like all the gods, you're too busy and indifferent to pay attention to most of your worshipers. All you care is that we fight."

I always played my gods as saying, "Oh, are you going to do stuff that serves me, and doesn't mess with my plans. Sure, have some power. I don't mind if you adhere perfectly to my ideals. You're pretty close, so that's good for me."

I mean, say you're playing Wrath of the Righteous, and you're constantly fighting demons. Gorum would love that s~+*, even if you're CG.

Now, if you're in Hell's Rebels, and you're sneaking around ambushing Chelaxian folks? Gorum wouldn't approve of that, even if you're CN or CE.

If you're running through Iron Gods, fighting robots, getting cool power armor, pitting yourself against a bunch of namby pamby techno-wizards? Hell yeah, that's awesome. Gorum would applaud you for that fight, and he wouldn't care if you're doing it to try to liberate the people of Numeria from the yoke of the Technic League.

I really don't see how kicking ass for the sake of helping others makes Gorum not want you as a follower. If you want him to hate helping others, make him evil.

Prior to 2nd Edition, a Goblin walking openly into most any town or village was asking to be killed rather quickly unless there we’re extreme extenuating circumstances and it could somehow convince people to pause long enough to even think before releasing the hounds. Now Goblins have become the party ‘s comic relief...

What’s the in-world explanation?

It would have been nice if they had written, like, a troop of goblin adventurers in as side characters during The Tyrant's Grasp adventure path, and had them play pivotal roles in the background defeating the minions of Tar-Bapheon while you deal with the big bad. That way word of them could spread, other goblins could be inspired to be heroic, and civilized people would be willing to be a bit more forgiving since four of the green bastards helped save the world.

Even better if they were themed after the four Goblin Hero Gods, representing a rejection of the evil barghests and an intentional choice to reject their evil ways.

I dunno. I think a CG champion could fit into his ethos. "Don't use negotiation to prevent a conflict" just means you shouldn't be the one negotiating. You can push for a fight, and you can even intimidate people into a surrender, but if the rest of your group manage to use negotiation, you're still fine.

You're basically the SWAT team, nominally the good guys who get sent in to kick ass. You're not the hostage negotiator.

Now, you're probably more likely than champions of, say, Desna or Cayden Cailean to go too far and start hurting people for unrighteous reasons. But I say, in your home game, go for it.

I disagree. The one kineticist I had in my game was that Charisma variant who *couldn't* take burn. She still did cool elementalist stuff.

ikarinokami wrote:

no solars, no tarraque, ugh. since second edition AD&D the tarasque has been my favorite monster.

The Tarrasque is cool, but how often has it actually been used?

The one time a friend of mine used the Tarrasque, it was in 4E, and he tweaked the monster so it had a constant, like, asteroid field of debris flying around it, representing the destruction and cataclysm that happened simply by it existing.

The tactical effect of this was that you couldn't fly 200 feet out of its reach and shoot arrows at it, because the rocks would deflect those attacks if you were outside its reach.

The narrative effect was that if it got pissed at you, it could telekinetically hurl asteroids.

I'm trying to withhold judgment until I get to play the final version of the rules, but I'm going to have to avoid champions for a while. I just came off a PF1 campaign with four paladin PCs, and so when I see that you need to use all your class feats up to level 8 just to get the stuff that PF1 paladins got automatically by level 2, it soured me to character creation a bit.

I would have preferred if they took paladin, monk, or druid, figured out all the abilities those classes got in the first couple levels, and made that the baseline that everyone else should match.

Go Taldor!

Erk Ander wrote:

Ok, some Paladin/champion questions. ...

Your comment suggests you were unhappy with how it worked in the playtest. What would you have liked it to have done?

Not the OP, but my general answer is that I would have figured out which class had the most features (probably paladin, monk, or druid) and made that amount of stuff the baseline, then upgunned the other classes to match.

I want a paladin who starts by being able to detect evil, is resistant to fear, is protected by divine power, and whose attacks are somehow empowered by divine magic when fighting evil things. Maybe not simply 'extra damage,' but perhaps some special boon depending on what god you worship.

Maybe that means fighters start off with some choice of fighting style that no one else gets. It could just be some extra feat (so you can do cool axe throwing *and* have fun trick shots with whips *and* are great at climbing onto large monsters), or maybe some new thing (choose one of three: you're good at using the environment as a weapon, or you're good at figuring out the fighting styles of foes and giving allies a boost, or you have a squire who works sorta like an animal companion).

I like the deities, and how their new tenets and anathema can encourage fun cultural nuances. My last campaign had a whole adventure based around the role in daily life of Shelyn's temple.

I like that the new Lost Omens setting might actually increase the importance of Garund, particularly areas that once just bundled together as 'the Mwangi Expanse.'

Thanks!

Speaking of Desnan champions, can only LG paladins get the 'smite evil' feat? Or is there some comparable offensive option for NG or CG champions to deal with evil creatures?

I tend to think of PF1 paladins as being defined by having smite evil, lay hands, and detect evil. I believe in the playtest Smite Evil is a level 8 feat. Is there any 'good at hurting evil things' power/feat/spell that champions can get at low level in PF2?

How do deity choices line up with the different champion alignment options? Can you have a 'paladin' of a NG god, like Shelyn; or a redeemer of a CG god like Desna?

I hear there is a Hellknight armiger background. What's it like? How can wizard hellknights wear that lovely infernal armor?

Since Cheliax came up, I remembered another thing that always sorta bugged me.

In general, Cheliax/Devils/LE outsiders do a really poor job feeling actually lawful. Sure, they're organized and regimented, but they lie, cheat, steal, betray and usurp almost as much as demons do which all kind of fly in the face of loyalty, honesty, commitment, tradition and duty that are supposed to form the backbone of the L side of alignment.

I feel like they'd be much more interesting characters and organizations if they held to the tenants of their alignments a bit better instead of just being... generic badguys with the trappings of organization.

To a lesser extent you could do the same with Outsiders of every alignment better, I think, but devils always stood out to me as the most egregious.

A lawful person will gladly lie to you. He'll just do it as part of an organization that all works together.

Aroden's holy symbol was a winged eye.

How do you get a supernatural manifestation of an eye in the sky? You make a giant hurricane.

No one is guessing a Worm That Walks?

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/legendology_dnd_article12_pic Main_en.jpg

What are the mechanics for chopping off hydra heads, and can you do something similar to tear off troll limbs, or remove anyone else's specific bits? I think I've been watching too much Monster Hunter.

May I suggest a small, and hopefully elegant, compromise?

Disclaimer: I like characters with funky fighting styles, like switching weapons for different situations, or having a lot of thrown items, or using a whip for reach and rapier for fencing. So I want mechanics that make those styles not be crap. However, my main goal is to capture the flavor of fantasy movies and literature, and only be complicated if it adds joy to the gaming experience.

* Magic weapons add 1d6 of damage, flat.
* 'Masterwork' weapons add +1 to attack rolls.
* Level grants extra damage dice at 6th, 11th, and 16th.
* Legendary adds an extra damage die.

Magic Weapons Add 1d6 of Damage, Flat
This damage will normally be 'force' damage, which just lets the weapon hurt ghosts and other incorporeal creatures more easily. That's fairly classical in fantasy fiction - the magic sword being the only way to hurt the spectral foe.

However, you could create flaming, frost, shocking, nonlethal(?), etc. weapons by just switching this damage type.

'Masterwork' Weapons Still Add to Attack Roll
We already have expert, master, and legendary proficiency. There's no need to double-up with items also having those modifiers. Just have 'masterwork' which adds +1 to your attack roll.

If you have your ancestral family blade passed down for generations, you're likely to keep it for longer, because no other weapon will have a higher attack bonus.

Level Grants Extra Damage Dice at 6th, 11th, and 16th
At the same rate martials got extra attacks in PF1, now they get extra damage dice. This extra damage dice will also apply to alchemicals, so at high level an alchemist fire is just as good as a thrown dagger.

Legendary Proficiency Grants a Final Extra Damage Die
PCs tend to get magic weapons by 3rd level, and fighters get legendary proficiency at 13th, so damage with a longsword would look like:

1st level - 1d8
3rd - 1d8+1d6
6th - 2d8+1d6
11th - 3d8+1d6
13th - 4d8+1d6
16th - 5d8+1d6

How's that?

But all the centipedes, without anything else to do, were taking 3 attack actions each. Almost one of these would hit, so then roll the fortitude check, then roll the poison damage... over and over again.

My opinion coming out of this battle was... wow, that was just a TON of dice rolling. Way too much. It got monotonous really really fast. Level 1 encounters in PF1 would never require this much math and rolls.

I had the same experience. Three actions meant that if the monster survived round one (or if the PCs won initiative and closed distance), I'd roll a lot of attacks that would have a low chance to hit.

...

I dunno. Maybe a better design would be, "When an attack hits, later attacks get -5," or give monsters 'Open' and 'Press' style attacks. Or some more 2-action attacks.

The centipede lunges, and then it scurries across you making it hard to hit back without hitting yourself. Something like that?

As is, the three-action economy leads to a lot of monotony.

I agree.

I also like that now elves mature physically at the same rate as humans, but other elves don't *think* they're mature until they're in their 60s at least. I never liked 20-year old toddler elves.

Is it really a problem? For many, the appeal of PF is the high fantasy magic. There are low magic systems out there that will do the job better and easier.

Yes, it's really a problem.

If I make a spellcaster, I feel like my high-level character's powers come from my character. I want to feel the same way with a non-caster.

I'd say let people's weapon damage increase by their level, since we're adding level to everything else. Or maybe have it go up by a die at 6th, 13th, and 20th, and add a die for legendary proficiency, and add a die if the weapon is magical at all. (But get rid of the now-useless '+1 vs +5' weapon scale.)

The OGL is magic. To step away from it would be to undercut one of the great attractions of the game -- encouraging Third-Party Support.

As for all the changes, the sense I get is that they had some great ideas on how to make the game play in a more dynamic way, with the three-action system, and bardic performances being really modular, and some clarification of conditions. And they tried to balance a few things that were broken, or put limits on stacking stuff in ways that led to imbalance.

All good.

And then they said, "While we're changing that, let's change a ton of stuff no one ever complained about."

Which is why most people can't charge, or wield two weapons in any useful fashion, or take feats to be good at maneuver X, Y, or Z. Or multiclass. Or have a divine grace to protect them from evil, or a holy smite that makes them terrifying against evil-doers.

I really don't understand what problem Resonance is trying to solve.

And finally they thought that strict accounting-style lexicography was superior to natural language, because they wanted to reduce disagreements among gamers and because it would let them fit more content into the same page count, so they stripped out a lot of the charm you'd get from 'normal' writing and instead described stuff in legalese. Lots of tags and traits and such, which works great for the back end code of a video game, but not for the public facing gameplay.

I don't get that second half of the changes.

In the Talislanta roleplaying game from the 80s, magic loved the number seven. You could never have more than seven active magical effects on you at once. Once you added the eighth, everything stopped working.

If a wizard was wearing seven magic items, and you cast a spell on him to cause him to glow, all the magic on him would stop working. If you built a huge metal platform that flew and built a city on it, you'd want one spell for flight, and maybe three for counterspells so someone couldn't crash your city by casting more magic on it.

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What is the goal of Resonance? Is it to stop people from loading up with tons of magic items, or from having a thousand fiddly one-use items? Do they not want people healing between encounters unless the party has the right type of caster?

It's frustrating that actions once viable in PF1 are now physically impossible, such as moving and drawing a weapon at the same time, or readying your average spell.

I am saying I do not like this change. Readying should be a 1-for-1, unless someone can explain to me why not from a narrative or balance perspective.

And certain actions should be able to be combined with movement. There's no reason you can't Recall Knowledge while walking.