Tony Larkin's page

Made a printer-friendly skills adapted to update 1.4.
It's meant to be printed 4 pages per 1 A4 sheet - it makes 1 (or, less usual, 2) skills per sheet, without deviding any skill between sheets.

Also, it is easyly navigated using contents in PDF version. "Not to print" is a good choice for some green-mind folks avoiding unnecessary usage of paper (just like me ^_^).

Going to test it with my players this weekend, expecting more rapid game than ever.

UPLOADED HERE. Click to see or download.

My name is Tony, and I've GMed some PF games in a town near Moscow, Russia.
PF2.0 was met with joy in our local community, and a party of 6 players was built. The ill omen that led me into starting this thread is that 3 of them refused to play after "The lost Star" was completed - so I asked myself "what's wrong with the new system?"

Here I'll try to explain some general troubles I've noticed.

First is the realisation of new complicated system of actions/activities. Nowdays, every player should always know how exactly does he use his skill, feat or other action source, and know exactly what this action/activity achieves in up to 4 results (from crit fail to crit success). It's rather hard for players, and somewhat exhausting for me as GM - I'm focused on building the atmosphere of Golarion and make the game fun.

To solve this problem, I asked my remaining players to make some preparations before "Pale Mountain" - to print separately each action and activity the're going to use. It worked somewhat good, but the amount of rules they needed to study was too much for a short time we had, so our party's rogue didn't prepare "feint" and didn't remember how it works (and ofc I didn't allow to use it - "Your PC just have forgotten how to feint, sorry.").

Now I think the best solution is card-based actions/activities (one action/activity - one card with rules). Today I'll start to make a printable summary of basic universal actions/activities (like untrained skills or smth). Hope it'll work.

In case of our game designers reading this text - I ask you to make each section of rulebook card-based-friendly, so we could just print (or copy from a paper book) actions, activities and conditions, cut with scissors, and group into card decks like "attack actions", "socialise", "knowledge", "spells" or whatever needed. (If someone tries it now - he'll find many of them on two different pages, and positioned by alphabet. That's not very useful.)

Second trouble we met is character sheet. At first we all thought we should just play and get used to it - it's always hard to use a new design anyway, isnt't it? 3 sessions after we started I felt uncomfortable with the sheet, and tried to explain myself what's wrong.
First trouble is: I cannot validate the sheet with ease. From the very begining - I see the basic abilities and have no idea how exactly they were obtained (EVEN ON THE 1 LVL!).
Second trouble is connected to the actions/activities, mostly skill-based. Taking a look on the skill part of 1st page, one needs to see basically what bonus does he have for the roll of his action|activity, but has bonus for the skill instead (and needs to remember what skill grants access to the action/activity).
17 skills, >50 uses - a big amount to remember!
Third trouble - char sheet could use some additional mechanics info, like hardness or dents of items, +1 bulk for carried armor etc., as much as some lovely details that help players imagine their characters - a few words about clothes, skin/eye/hair color, what side the sword is etc.

That all led me to scratchbuild my own char list, which is crude-looking, but has more fields for more info.
get it from googledrive!
It is designed to be printed 2 on 1 on A4, still lacks a proper inventory and spell list, and might be better with a field to draw/print the character, but is more detailed than the one from PFP RB. (If you try it - I'd like some feedback ^_^ )

Some thoughts about entry barrier - might seem insignificant for US part of the community, but in our country potential players that say "OMG too complicated!" and flee in terror from your table are a problem, 'cause there are not many of players around. If a player is not fluent english speaker (which is 95%, me as well) - xe will meet double trouble trying to play the game with the rules hard to understand even in english, and, probably, refuse to play.
I don't exactly know how to solve, but do hope that simplifying the interaction with the rules by action cards or new char list or other ways will matter.

To balance the negatives I described above... I'm excited to be a part of playtest, the new rules' basis is much more beatyful and balanced than PF1 for me, and I greatly thank Paizo for this great oportunity of being creative and having fun with friends.

Used several times in PDF for some mechanics or conditions. It was the very start of playtest, and index never failed.
PDF bookmarks are often faster, so mostly use them now.

Great job! It's compact!

I might be alone in this...

Nope, u're not alone. We all share the pain.

Okay, right now my biggest problem with the Playtest is the Character Sheet, so much that I spent the last 2 days working on a new one for my players.
The character sheet should try to be clearer with its intent and info, but when I look at the one we got, it split important information all over the place, in my opinion, being counter-intuitive (Spell Points on page3, Resonance on page2). I think the most important information should all be on the front page

There's no place to mark down the special senses the player has, no place to mark what lore skills he has, no where to mark the dying status, conditions, etc
The skill list is way too loaded. Not the quantity of skills, but how they're ordered. It's counter-intuitive for me and quite easy to check the wrong one, and as I said before, there's no way for you to write down your lore specialization...
I find the Actions/Reactions part interesting, but, in my opinion, it's too small for you to write things in a way that really helps. In my opinion, this kind of information could be all organized together with the spells, in a way that the player can at least write down a bit of important informations about what he is doing (even if it's only the page of the power)
The inventory is too small in my opinion, and as the sheet is already 3 pages, why not make it 4? So you can have 2 front and back sheets.
Anyway, as I said, I started trying to create a sheet that would be better for my players (even more so that some of them don't speak English, so...) This is what I got For me at least, the information is clearer, it's easier to check and be sure you're seeing the right info.

Looks cute!

Interesting. Thanks!

A threatening, ready for some fightn PC foe is a preffered target for npcs comparing to the dying(1-2-3) pile of meat... (We should notice that this thread has a good idea of "mindless machine habit", which i'd use in the next game.)

Also, for most npcs there's no need to kill a dying enemy if they believe she will die without their "help". Moreover, taking prisoners is a good idea, so a particular evil (but not stupid) npc might stabilise dying PC and, afterwards, make an offer the PC party will have to take (or have some alignment bad news/anathema troubles). This situation might be even more resource-draining than ordinary combat, with less dice-rolling. "Parlu... parlee... parlshhh... YES! PARLAY!" (and socialising is kinda relief in from-combat-to-combat scenarios)

TPK is not a good goal in GM practice - let a dying PC live and give your party some pain accordingly is always better.

(making a monk-fighter just for lawlz) Oh yes! Let's test some heavyarmor-wearing monk!

(Reading update 1.3 archetypes) Not good... Now I get only a light armor.

(Reading paladin multiclass) Oh yes! Let's test some heavyarmor-wearing retrebutive handlaying monk!

P.S. Still need to hurry and play before next update will nerf pal dedication though.

"Monk... Monk never changes."

The-worst-balanced-class in DD3,5 and PF for many years, monk could use more eastern phylosophy while rebuilt in PF2. Some kind of "kungfu is not the way you fight - it's the way you live".

In terms of game mechanics, it might mean MORE wisdom-based features. (Do you remember wisdom-shooting Zen-archer? Or Irory str\dex-to-wis skill trait?). And MORE class feats - more, than any other class could wish to have (Oh yeah, even more than fighter!). Because FEAT is also THE WAY YOU LIVE - that's why.
Monk is a class of miracles, yet it lacks miracles, so it needs MORE miracles (like skills working from WIS, or some weapon-breaking or spell-breaking etc.).

We have 2 monk players in our town playtest party, both are quite unsatisfied with the class. I shall try to make them tell what exactly they'd expect from release version of monk, and we'll hope gamedesigners will hear us.
If worldwide community participate (asking monk players what they want and writing here) - together we might fix DnD-70th-B-grade-movie-kungfufighter to get a fresh new playable one when the platest is over, and ot will be the most valueable miracle.

Monk's flurry makes sense if both attacks have the same bonus (however they don't.)

Fighter is simply a PROPER FIGHTING warrior. No divine mystics, no idealistic law-abiding, and rogue's cunning doesn't usually work where one needs to be tough, strong and straightforward.

Fighters are special, outstanding warriors that make their side win in a clash of other warriors, that are not SO outstanding (be it warrior NPCs or pal/rang/monk/ etc.). They are always the lads and lasses that do the job while some paladin are busy drowning in their divine pathos (barbarians in their rage obsession, rangers in nature bond, etc).