Trastone's page

We are part of the group Eric mentioned. We have four of us arriving in the afternoon on Thursday.

We are driving up and should arrive around 3/4 pm. I’ll dm you with my contact info if anyone would like to meet up at all.

Just wanted to see if there is anyone else coming from the Boise area. There are two of us going together to PaizoCon.

How are those of us that are looking to play certain scenarios at certain times or wanting to play with friends supposed to get into our games. How many people weren't able to get games? Is it really that many that you have to leave out 2 seats PER TABLE for them? I was planning to play the 10-11 soldier tier for the special with a friend but now I can't even sign up cause it's capped at 24 slots (6 tables I assume). Seems like you're alienating a good portion of your ticket base by capping the tables at 4. My buddy happened to get in and sign up as soon as it went live and I can't join him at ANY of the games he's in because they are all capped at 4 and there was only one table at the time slot. Why punish those of us who already bought tickets and want to plan ahead? This doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

This goes against every PFS coordination that I've ever seen. Anywhere I have played there is always some sort of system in place that you have to sign up for games. If you don't sign up you're not guaranteed a spot, period. Everyone should know this by now and if you don't then you don't play PFS very often. Why are people who essentially aren't signing up for games being given a pass or being coddled to at the expense of those of us who are trying to sign up? You aren't going to please everyone but you could at least please the majority that know they have to sign up to guarantee a spot. Especially since this is how it was always done at every Paizocon I have been to and I've never heard of an exorbitant amount of people not being able to get into something as a walkin. I'm sorry, but you shouldn't be able to pick and choose to the extent that you are making it if you fail to sign up and just walk in to play.

Somehow I managed to easily have my buddy in every event we wanted to do.. I applaud them for holding spots. It would completely ruin the convention to never get in with a friend. (Which means if your friend didn’t get into a game with you, show up early if there is a low player count at the table and get them assigned).

Yay!!! Loved doing this a couple years ago. Missed out on PaizoCon last year, but will be there this year!

I love that AoO's are gone. Makes it feel like a real combat situation and dynamic. I hated that once you entered in PF1 you were "stuck." You don't enter combat and stay there in real life. I understand wanting there to be consequences when trying to drink something, but I prefer the capability of moving. I like how combat flows now.

1. There are a lot more choices for each character and I have no idea what you are talking about. Many more small choices resulting in characters being different.
2. I have no idea what you are talking about on homogenization. 1st ed had balance issues and they have balanced that out which is great because people will only play what they percieve as OVER POWERED. I’m not saying it is correct yet, but at least they are trying.
2a. THANKYOU FOR REMOVING AOO. It makes the game feel so much more dynamic!!!!!!!!!! I will never play with AOO for every character. It makes the game feel boring.
3. There is much less reliance on magical gear. You can’t wear as much and it depends on your resonance.
4. How does my fighter cause all the status effects that a caster does?
5. Casters were known to be game breaking in 1st ed related to the spells. Something had to change for more balance.
6. Thank you for making a bold change.
7. Combat does seem to take too long. I love the action economy though!!!! The 3 actions is great!!!! Best change in the game.

Only people with that level of proficiency can roll. Everyone else auto fails.

I am also wondering - can't you just walk out? The very first Thing the quicksand does, it pulls you waist deep. Then it's your turn, you move 5 feet and are out of the quicksand. Is there something I am missing? Do you start more than 5 feet inside the quicksand? I know it's fifteen feet across, but surely you start sinking as soon as you enter it?

It only does something if it beats you in initiative. While I admit that is a very good Chance with +11, if after the initial reactoin you can act, there is no danger there at all.

You do have to succeed on a DC 18 athletics check to move the 5 feet.

Seems like you would like to go play the Cypher System, Numenera, Vurt, or The Strange....

That is a the player rolls everything game.

Most characters are going to be similar levels so having the dc be from the caster isn’t a huge deal in my mind. I don’t personally like the recovery save where it is based off of whatever took the person down. It would make sense if the dc aligned with this, but I already dislike it as it can be one of a handful of things that i would have to look up.

Here’s my experience with dc’s from the first two sections: The players rolled in the 20s with their modifiers and nothing has any effect on them. For some reason my table never seems to roll less than a 14. I watch them roll and nothing ever effects them. They roll 3s and 4s to hit, but every time it’s a save dc they succeed. Just relating my experience and I realize that the they should fail approximately 50% of the time, but For me they succeed over 90% of the time. It really sucks the fun out of it. I’d love to see failure occasionally. I’m cursed LOL.

I could have a dc of 22 and with the way my players rolled last game and nothing would have effected them at level 4. I think it’s the curse of the table I’m at. If we play online and they use an an online roll they suck and would fail, but their dice seem to roll high, but only on saves, when playing in real life. The survival checks in the first part of the second scenario were always 22 or more. :(

I do feel that the Medicine DC should be based on the target, not the healer.

In my rambling above that is why I was saying for each level of wounded or dying it should increase the DC of the check. Maybe a +2 to the DC. If you have wounded 3 you should not be easy to heal. I realize people want to get back to the action, but it feels silly like there are no consequences to be able to fully heal. Has anyone had there characters get to wounded 3. I personally really liked the slow and would actually like both effects to exist. If they don’t put it in the game I absolutely will as a house rule. It makes no sense to jump straight back into combat. That is a complaint in 5e that I have seen people state frequently(although slightly different but similar with no loss of actions).

CLW was stated as a problem, and now they implement this.....

I can definitely see spells dwindling and maybe some potions/wands etc.. What resources would be dwindling for martial characters? They seem like they could go all day. I do not like requiring healers to burn up their healing spells that could be used for combat or in combat healing.

Why does nonmagical healing remove the wounded condition and magical doesn’t? I like the concept of the wounded condition, but it seems like it is extremely easy to remove and would only matter if you were really battering your players with something extremely large and a ton of rounds. Should be interesting to see how it plays out.

-edit of a not that was in the wrong place that made it the opposite of what I meant

Trastone wrote:

Why not remove the level increases to skills and then have a table that has the DCs based on Easy to near impossible.

If you removed it from skills, you would need to also remove it from Attack Bonus, AC and all the other things using the proficiency system.

The system is meant to allow you to use skill vs. attack bonus, armor class or saving throw.

Maybe remove it from all since everything is basically increased by that anyway just adding a layer of complexity for being complex. You get a +1 to attack and they get a +1 to ac because they leveled. Seems unnecessarily complex. You went up 1 level so you get an additional 1 on all your skills, so we are going to increase all the DCs by 1 to make them harder to reach.

There is not any 1 right solution. I don’t think its terrible as is, but I’m not a big fan of having to track all the time with healing back up. Now all my encounters have to have time elements/effects built in to be viable toward increasing difficulty or outcomes. Before I could have a time element, but I do not feel like I had to have it. It at least cost something before whereas now its just free.

Someone somewhere said: “Great now my fights have to be:”
“Boss Fight”
1 hour downtime
“Boss Fight”
1 hour downtime
“Boss Fight”
1 hour downtime
“Boss Fight”

I definitely get this feeling too as you can’t really have a: the party is tired and running out of resources because they are at full strength. Maybe they are running low on spells, but thats about the only limiting factor now. In the first scenario the group had to run back to town to heal up and take an entire night to partially heal up. That felt good to me as a GM. They are still battered and bruised unless they went and got some magical healing. It took a lot of time that was easy to track. 1 day... You want me to track minutes....ughhh. I like the idea of nonmagical healing, but why does magical healing have a huge cost and nonmagical is free. There should be some sort of resource drain that is easy to track. I’m fine with time, but how about hours or 4 hours blocks instead of 10 minutes. Make the time something significant.

Making a choice of 4 hours seems like the PC’s might have to think about it. 10 minutes is like okay...oh, 10 more minutes okay....oh, 10 more minutes okay....

Okay...just going to be quiet now..

Why not remove the level increases to skills and then have a table that has the DCs based on Easy to near impossible. Then you could still have your -4, 0, 1, 2, 3 or if they want it to scale more then you could do -4, 0, 2, 4, 6. DC could be based on amount of damage taken/trying to be healed. It is much harder to heal someone near death. Dying/Wounds 2/3 could have a higher DC to heal or just apply a -2 modifier per level of wound/or dying level. The higher level you get the easier it would be to accomplish many of those heals. It would definitely be more lethal at low levels, but you are also not the hero you are at higher level. I do think that the wounded should only be removed or healed via magic or time and not based on the medicine check.

I feel they could do that with all the DC’s with some of the higher DC’s only applying to higher level play and only meant for a truly skilled Master or Legendary skill capable of accomplishing. They could solidify the math very easily vs scaling and falling behind. I feel they have made this part unnecessarily complicated.

It would also mean that the easy lock is always the same DC regardless of the level. If you are in a higher level dungeon, you just never have that easy lock in it. It will be a master level lock and would require at least a master to accomplish. I do like that they require the certain trained proficiencies to even succeed on some of them. That makes it simple and clear. Even if its a DC 16 master requirement, then someone of expert level cannot succeed. I have no problem with that. It is an easy thing for a master or greater to accomplish.

Just remove the level scaling in the DC tables and add a few more levels. It is unnecessarily complex.

Table 10-2

Easy - 7 Anyone could accomplish
Medium - 15 Most people can accomplish even as commoners but somewhat inconsistent
Hard - 18 Average person might be able to accomplish, but likely not
Very Hard- 24 Average person will not be able to succeed
Extremely Hard - 28 Skilled person will succeed around 25% of the time
Nigh Impossilbe - 32. Only the most skilled has a chance and even then rarely and requires some sort of gear to accomplish. (If sticking with the -4 to +3 then a 30 is probably the max unless there is gear that could boost to this level).

I put in random values, and math should be used to calculate them verses my randomness. You could also apply the requires the different trained/experts/master/legendary modifiers to any level as a differentiator to increase difficulty as the gm deems pertinent. That way something might be a near autosucceed for a legendary person and still have a easy DC of 7, but only a legendary person would succeed.

I realize I kinda skewed toward all skills, but I do think that all of the skills should work similar. Also applying condition effects of +2 or -2 depending on factors could still apply.

PF2's design goal: be the game the designers would like to create/play.

It's that simple. These are rules that Jason and his team thought of that they like. They fit the style game that the dev team as a collective want to write for.

I honestly feel for Jason in particular. Spending nearly a decade and a half writing for someone else's system has got to be frustrating. I imagine he's really eager to spread his wings and create an edition that is his.

And that's all fine. And cool. And I deeply respect that.

I don't think there's much point in looking for something deeper here. Sometimes a game is just a game.

Statement without any support..... I would love to see the statement supported, but you through something and and are trying to see if it sticks...

NO

So, not able to make it to PaizoCon this year. Loved the puzzle hunt last year. Any way I can get my hands on it after Paizo Con finishes? Can’t wait to go to Paizo Con next year.

So Power Attack works somewhat similarly to Vital Strike in P1e? If Vital Strike is still a feat in P2e I'm interested to see how it'll work with this change

You say this in context of current weapons and weapon scaling. We do not know how weapon scaling works yet....

Looks great to me!! Can’t wait to see the details as it is obvious we can’t fully understand it without what the actual skill feats are!! Love the little teaser!

Can’t wait!!! We tend to play fantasy grounds with Pathfinder, but have done 1 game of starfinder on it. It will be nice to have the full rules!!

I’m ready for a 2.0. I love 1st edition, but from the stuff I heard in the podcast it seems so much more immersive and I can only imagine where things can go. Unlocking actions seems brilliant. So much more flexibility on your turn to make decisions.

I will continue to play 1st edition and then I will hold them up side by side and see which one is the victor when the time comes. Plenty of 1.0 stuff to play for the rest of my life, but I will most likely subscribe to collect all of second edition.

I'm excited at reviewing the material.

BUT BASED ON THE SHORT DESCRIPTION OF HOW MAGIC MISSILE WILL WORK SOUNDS ALOT LIKE PAIZO IS TRYING TO SHADOW WHAT WIZARD OF THE COAST HAS DONE WITH 5TH EDITION.

Paizo Magic missile, for example, can be cast using from one to three actions, giving you an additional missile for each action you spend on casting it!

WOC You create three glowing darts of magical force. Each dart hits a creature of your choice that you can see within range. A dart deals 1d4+1 force damage to its target. The darts all strike simultaneously and you can direct them to hit one creature or several.

The next thing Paizo is liable to say is that we will be able to cast low level spells with higher spell slots.

I like that you have taken 1 small description and made a conclusion from it about the entirety of the rule set..

Maybe wait til you’ve seen more rules before jumping to extreme conclusions. I see action economy getting easier to teach, but more complex in capability of choices.

I see more crunch being introduced as Vic said above who said anything about ranks going away. So, another example of combining some skillls with other things(combat maneuvers) and increasing the complexity by adding additional skill levels(good, master, expert) to the skill system to determine quality while making stuff.

I see more crunch, so far, but making unwieldy rules easier to understand while increasing options.

You are also giving up a huge amount of damage per hit, if damage works like PF1. A two handed build currently outpaces 1 handed by extraordinary margins. So you give up an attack, massive damage, and get +2 to AC, which is not a significant amount in comparison to the losses.

With a -10 to your last attack(the third), a shield may be well worth it!!!

Redelia wrote:

Hythlodeus wrote:

MendedWall12 wrote:

Glad you brought this up. Reading the blog description of initiative system already sounded wonky and weird. That you've listened to actual gamers trying it, and that it was slow, boring, and also pointed to doing something narratively ridiculous just to get the most sure bet to act high in initiative, fleshes out some of the amorphous concerns I had about how weird it sounded. Maybe this will be one of the things that the playtest squashes?

It MIGHT be one of those 'more extreme' rule versions that were mentioned upthread by Paizo stuff, that's only included in the Playtest to get removed anyway and replaced with the rule versions they always intended to include but had to show the worse version first so that the final version doesn't look so bad.

(I mean, I'm glad they admitted that, but that doesn't make the move look better)

That's a rather unfair paraphrase of what they said.

What they have said they are doing is in places they have chosen the more unusual of the options they are considering, because they want to see what we think.

If they are including the "more unusual" option as a way to more fully decipher what doesn't work, I find that a pretty strange way to play test. If, however, the "more unusual" version of a rule has characteristics that are similar to what the developers believe will be the new baseline, and they are just including this version so as not to reveal too much, I can understand that.

Still, based off of what I'm reading I'd say this more unusual initiative system already shows a number of flaws. If the rogue has to spend every moment in exploration mode "stealthing" just to avoid being flat-footed, you've now created an initiative system that also creeps into ruining exploration mode, because munchkin players will be making exploration decisions based off of the possibility that they may at some point be surprised with combat.

GM issue - They should not let the players stealth everywhere. Metagaming is not ok. If it makes sense for them to be sneaking around then fine. I think it is very flavorfuly and makes so much more sense.

Edited wrong quote out. - In response to the comment of slow Initiative and people always being in stealth or looking for tracks.

To me the gm should be looking at situational awareness. If you are on general travel a gm should ask why would you do this? But, if they are in a dungeon or have recently been attacked absolutely makes sense. Otherwise it is meta gaming. I think the mechanic is quite clever and gives more complexity and variation and choices to the game.

Also, the immediate action -> reaction change is probably a good one. reactions, however, are specific to classes it seems. So a fighter can use their reaction to make an attack of opportunity, but a wizard cannot - but a wizard may have a completely different reaction that it can take.

It has not been stated, as far as I am aware, that other classes will not be able to get an attack of opportunity. It was stated there are class specific reactions. Maybe attack of opportunity is a reaction everyone can do. I also did not go back and read that line.

I see a lot of wild speculation of what people expect and has not been stated. Did we not learn from Utilmate Wilderness that our expectations mean nothing. I realize that book was also not playtested and a large misstep. If we are speculating we should at least speculate positively. I know some people aren’t happy with any change, but do you not still have all the rules to pathfinder and they will still be sold as PDFs.

I’m quite excited to see what they bring to the table. The podcast was great. Many of the changes are quite flavorful and love the concepts presented. What concepts? Having to use a shield actively and it uses an action. Do you want to use it to attack with or to use as a shield. Oh, and you can use it reactively to reduce the damage you just had happen. That seems a raise in complexity in this area. Too many people are jumping to conclusions with almost 0 information.

Also love that CMB/CMD is gone. Now you can use your skills to attack with. So much more flavorful in my mind that your skills are more useful in combat. They used a skill to grapple with!! Perception is the default for use in initiative. HP at level 1 are higher and are a combo of class, race, and hit dice.

I think people thinking streamlined and simplistic are the same thing. Just because some things are streamline, doesn’t mean they have added complexity elsewhere, but hopefully with clear rules that can’t be confused. I can see they have added some things that are more complex(Initiative, Reactions, Shields).

Keep the previews coming. Excited to see where this goes.

I’m intrigued and quite excited to see the full play test!!

First! XD

Also, are these pdfs or hardcovers?

Humble Bundles for Paizo have always been digital....they would lose so much money if it was physical.

I had a great time at PaizoCon this year. Last year we had PFS ACG games in the afternoon, but this year we did not get one in. We had from 1pm to 7 pm open everyday and I had planned on playing the ACG during those times and that is all my group had planned on doing, but there was not any available. That was a HUGE disappointment for us.

We had planned on playing a few games of it each day during that time frame and there was not any PFS ACG available. I'm fine with crunching the hours like you suggested, but it would be great if they would have the PFS ACG available in between those two slots.

Please add some PFS ACG to the afternoon.

Edited FPS to PFS

Coming back for year 2! Can't wait to get there!

How do i get this fixed? I have my sheets and everything. It's just not listed on the online portal.

Thanks

I have a player that wants a cat as a mount in Golarian....I know that the cat needs to be large. Are there any other considerations I need in order to get him to be able to have the mount? Like Feats etc to be able to control an exotic animal or anything. He is a shield champion.

Are there going to be any more of the level 1 level 2 scenarios for pfs. I've been gming for a ROTRL and was really excited to learn the lore of PFS and Golarian a little more. The intro's to PFS filled up almost immediately. There is one available Monday, but waiting to play til Monday when the convention starts Friday seems crazy.

Will there be any open games for people that are new to PFS or am I out of luck???

I'm heading to Paizo Con and I am looking over all of the events and am wondering which events I should go to from the perspective that I have not done anything within pathfinder society at all.

I'm looking at different level 1 and 2 scenarios:

Consortium Compact
Confirmation
Wounded Wisp

There are a bunch of level 1 through 5 scenarios also. Would it be best to try all the level 1 and 2's that are above or what would be the essential list be for pathfinder society?

Some of the others that would support a level one are:

School of Spirits
Twisted Circle
The Sun Orchid Scheme
Alabastrine
Trouble in Tamran

I think that covers them. What are your recommendations. Are there any that would fill lore in better than others that is essential?

Is there a pathfinder tales set in Sandpoint or Varisia? I'm just trying to get more context and set it in my mind better. Or, something that would help me with the culture of the chelexians, varisians, or shoanti? I Am looking for the stories, but any recommendations of source books or rule books are welcome too.

Okay...that is easy...Not sure how I got all screwed up. Must be something to do with PC's and them counting their first hit die as the full points....

Just to make sure I understand the whole process...

For the first hit die you get the full point value. So 12, then you can take the average for the subsequent hit dice which is 6 * the number of hit Dice, which is 18 for the black dragon, so a total of 30. You can also roll the dice for the dragon right.

For the Young Black Dragon then it is 12 + (7*6)or 42 which is 54, and then you multiply the Con modifier(+3) for the con of 17 with the count of hit dice 8 which results in 24. Add that with the 54 and it is 78....I'm still not coming up with the correct hit points. Where have I made the error, I'm assuming it is in the initial calculation..

Which means I probably messed up the black dragon also.

Thank you!!! I knew I was overlooking something. It just wasn't quite spelled out clearly to me.

I understand adding the extra hit dice to calculate the hp, but I cannot seem to figure out the extra + after the hit dice....

example:

Base statistics:
Black Dragon: 4d12

Aged Dragon
Young Black Dragon: HP: 76 (8d12+24)

So, according to the chart you get base hit dice + 4, which in the case of the Young Black Dragon is 4d12+ 4D12 which is the 8d12, but where did the +24 come from...I cannot find it anywhere and I can't seem to find anyone else asking the question.