Tursic's page

Do both. Build your character to work with other players. I like to make my characters fast, and able to target multiple defenses. I normally play a half-elf fighter with feats spent to increase speed. Fleet, nimble elf, and Elf Step, with Archetype Wizard.

With Assurance in Athletics for trip and grab, You can attack and de-buff enemies for your teammates, or switch to hit and run if that is what the rest of the party wants to do.

Build a strong character and be willing to work with your teammates also.

You can use crafting skill to take items apart. You get half the value of item in componets. I think there is a 10% cost to doing so. So you do not need to find a buyer for a high cost item.

Mystic Sword Master
Half-elf, Martial Disciple, Fighter
Str 18, Con 12, Dex 14, Int 14, Wis 10, Cha 10
Trained Skills: Acrobatics, Athletics, Arcana, Crafting, Medicine, Stealth, Survival
1. Cat Fall, Nimble Elf, Attack of Opportunity, Shield Block, Double Slice
2. Monk Dedication, Quick Repair
3. Expert Athletics, Fleet, Bravery
4. Dancing Leaf, Powerful Leap
5. Reactive Shield, Master Swords, Expert Crafting
Str 19, Con 14, Dex 16, Int 16, Wis 10, Cha 10
6. Lunge, Magical Crafting
7. Master Athletics, Battlefield Surveyor, Weapon Specialization, Breath Control
8. Wholeness of Body, Quick Swim
9. Expert Acrobatics, Juggernaut, Combat Flexibility, Wizard Dedication
10. Basic Spellcasting, Quick Jump
Str 20, Con 16, Dex 16, Int 18, Wis 12, Cha 10
11. Master Crafting, Armor Expertise, Fighter Expertise, Feather Step
12. Expert Spellcasting, Quick Climb
13. Legendary Athletics, Sword Legend, Elf Step
14. Arcane Breadth, Inventor
15. Legendary Crafting, Evasion, Greater Weapon Specialization, Improved Flexibility, Cloud Jump
Str 21, Con 18, Dex 16, Int 19, Wis 14, Cha 10
16. Craft Anything, Two-Weapon Flurry
17. Master Acrobatics, Other Worldly Magic, Armor Mastery
18. Master Spellcasting, Kip up
19. Legendary Acrobatics, Versatile Legend, Toughness
20. Weapon Supremacy, Wall Jump
Str 22, Con 18, Dex 18, Int 20, Wis 16, Cha 10

The Build is fully on line at level 10.
Gear: Medium armor, buckler with shield spike, and Bastard Sword.
A Double multi-class build.

I am GM about half of the time. I see the positives of the system. Not having the full guide lines from the start does cause some problems, even if it is understandable.

The thing about uncommon options, is that by their very nature they are not always an option. I plan on not buying books that have a lot of uncommon stuff unless I plan to run a game around what is in it.

It is not fun to finally find a game, just to find out that you have to redo a character build you had been looking forward running because the DM does not let options in the game from books pass the Advance Players Guide. Made me feel like I wasted money on buying the other Pathfinder books, when you cannot use what is in them.

The main problem I have with the rarity system is how it is packaged. The uncommon options should be in books for GMs, not general player books. I do not want to buy a book targeted at me as a player just to find out that I may not be able to use it. It feels like I have been cheated. I hope they keep the uncommon stuff to GM targeted books.

There are some class feats that do this. Sneak Savant: treat a failure as a success. The problem is that they made it a class feat, when it should have been a skill feat. It is on page 124.

If they changed the feat chains into scaling feats, that would help a lot for the martial classes.

I like the “Tome of Battle”. I used it with Pathfinder and had it as a source book for all of my home games. None of my players used it. A Pathfinder fighter comes in at a little stronger than the warblade with the fighter be being less complex.

You can do a lot of the things from ToB in PF2. Make an attack targeting touch AC, the monk can do this at level 8. Move across water. Both the monk and the rogue can do this. Run up walls. The rogue can do this. Move and still hit hard. Everyone can do this with how magic weapons work. Move two times in a round and still attack. Everyone one can do this now with the three actions a turn. Move and get two attack rolls.
Can do this with Double Slice.

I would guess that you can do at least 20% of the things listed in ToB in PF2, and more is likely coming in the future. Given this I do think they did hit the casters with the nurf bat a few too many times. I was one of the ones that thought the casters needed a bit of nurfing, and the martials could use a boost.

The things I think should be given back to the casters.

1. Quality of Life spells. They did not hurt game balance.

2. The duration of many spells needs to be increased. This could be done by being able to heighten spells to increase duration like is done with the jump spell.1 Minute-> 5 minute-> 30 minute-> 1 hour-> 8 hour->1 day. Each boost in duration only increasing the duration. Each step up takes another level higher spell. I do not think it would be over powered to use a 6th level spell slot to get 1st level spell effect all day.

3. Decrease casting time on some spells. Mending is a good example, it is possible to do repairs much more quickly with the “quick repair” feat. The 1 hour casting time is not reasonable.

4. Decrease the casting time of at least some of the attack cantrips to one action. If the cantrip is doing less damage than a weapon attack and requires an attack roll I do not see what would be unbalanced with letting a caster cast more than one. Just add on the multiple attack penalty and it is unlikely to cause a problem.

Why 65% feels bad.

Most players have went to school for 12 plus years and you are told somethings about what is good, what is average, and what is bad. We know these marks as grades. What the percentage range of each letter changes from school to school, so I am going to with the simplest and the nice I
have come across.

A 90% plus this is great.
B 80% to 89% this is good.
C 70% to 79% this is alright.
D 60% to 69% this is poor.
F 59% and below this is bad.

For my bachelors program you were required to have at the least a B average in your main field of study. And you had to have at least C in all courses for your main field of study. You are considered an expert
in your field when you get your degree.

So when you say the Fighter is the best when it comes to weapons and thus at landing hits with them 65% feels like a ripe off. That first attack is a D, a barley passing grade and if this is your area of expertise not acceptable. I feel the same for fully invested skills. I have had it drilled into my head for years that 65% is a D and a poor showing, it is passing but not acceptable.

If the fighter is the best class when it comes to using a weapon they should at the very least be able hit 80% of time with their best attack. For other martial classes being average 70% a C is fine.

I would be alright if not happy if the max would be 80% on the first attack for the fighter. That would place a non-optimized fighter at 70%-75%. Which is where I think the ranger, monk, and barbarian should be. This would put your first attack at 80%, second attack at 55% and third attack at 30%.

If you need to increase creature HP and/or increase a critical to be 15 over the AC instead of 10 over. Or you could add a class feat like sure strike that could add a +2 circumstance bonus to the attack.

There is a reason that I rarely used power attack in PF1 and it was the minus to attack.

I hope this explanation explains why I and most likely others feel that 65% success is too low for something you are supposed to be the best at.

They said they were mostly doing a way with feat trees.I like the ideal of turning some of the feats chains into scaling feats.

This would work for a lot of the fighter feats:
Combat Grab -> Improved Combat Grab
Sudden Charge -> Sudden Leap
Brutish Shove -> Improved Brutish Shove
Dueling Parry -> Dueling Dance
DP -> Dueling Riposte -> Improved Dueling Riposte
Double Shot -> Triple Shot -> Multishot Paragon
Twin Parry -> Twin Paragon
TP -> Twin Riposte -> Improved Twin Riposte
Incredible Aim -> Incredible Follow-Up
Reflexive Shield -> Improved Reflexive Shield
Double Slice -> Graceful Poise

For doing away with feat trees, that is a lot of feat trees the fighter still has. Both the Dueling Parry and the Twin Parry trees have 4 feats. That is a lot of class feats to do one trick well.

While the Rogue cannot do it the Rangers cat can. At the top of page 286 it list the cat's Advanced Maneuver: Cat Pounce: "CAT POUNCE You Stride and then Strike. If you were unseen, you remain unseen until after the attack." It is a single action ability.

Why did the Rogue not get this ability? The Ranger's cat gets it when the Ranger is level 12.

You have a few options on styles.
1. Sword and Bord
2. Bow
3. Two-weapon
4. Two-handed
5. Mobile
6. One Weapon

1. You can go all out on one style with a few feats left3
2. Do two of them alright.
3. Do one of them and multi-class

So 36 in class builds, plus 5 multi-class builds.

Some of the styles mix better than others. Mobile will work with most other styles. One weapon and Two-hand work with the right weapon. (Bastard Sword) One weapon and two-weapon styles work, just not much of a reason to do so, since they give most of the same kind of abilities.

The one weapon style mixes well with a multi-class caster.

Many of the class feats are repeated. One fix would be to move these to the general feat section and add a tag like they did with skill feats. One tag for combat feats, and one for metamagic feats. Let martial class pick these combat feats as class feats, and let casters pick metamagic feats as class feats. This would free up room to add more options.

For the fighter that would be moving about 15 feat to the general section.
Close to that for the other martial classes as well. Then you would only need to list them once.

The spell selection with all of the spells that are now rare hurts. With these spell now just wasting page count for a lot of players. They should have saved the rare spells for later books, not eat up space in the core. If you are going to include a rare spells in core, there should be a way for a player to unlock it. Maybe a set of general feats that unlock the rare spells by school. You should not need to ask the GM to use stuff in core.

The feat over rides the general rule.

• Wizards do not get as many spell now. They only get 3 spell of each level.
• You do not have to take more than the one feat unless you want another dedication feat.
• You only need to take three feats before moving to the next dedication feat.
• You do need four feats to get up to 8th level spells. That averages out to be two levels of spell per a feat.
• If you want more spells you can go with wizard and multi-class into the other class.

I would say 95% of my characters have been multi-class. The last time I had a character that did not multiclass I was playing 4th edition. PF2 does use the same model of multi-classing as 4th but it is not the same. 4th gave water downed class abilities in very small amounts, where as the PH2 is giving out the same abilities if in smaller amounts, that can be increased at the cost of more feats. I am very glad for that. You can get more out of this new system of multi-classing than most builds in both PF1 and 3.5. And to do that I used excel spread sheets.

The only real drawbacks I see in this system compared to PF1 and 3.5 is the high cost of early entry with the 16 stat requirement, limited number of multi-classes, and needing to plan your character out all the way before starting, in order to know which class is going to be your main class.

From what I have seen so far, I think multi-classing is going to have a much higher floor for the low end of the power scale. As for the high end? It looks to be a bit low not including game braking builds, just the powerful ones. Will not know for sure until I look closely through what is in the play test.

I plan to be testing the Fighter/Wizard and maybe adding a dash of a third class at the higher levels.

Remember not all power gamers are bad, some of us just like to play low risk characters.

My two cents: went Resonance was first introduced, it felt weird, but also that there might be something in there. When I learned more about how you got it and what it was for, I started liking it more.

Now instead of having a shirt that gives you an extra move action 1/day and a cloak that turns you into a crow 3/day, you can wear both and decide with your 4 resonance points if you run 4 times, or turn into a crow 4 times, or any mix in between, and didn't have to track remaining uses for neither, just a global Resonance Pool.

When I learned potions costed resonance, I was also up for it. This encourages you to drink that one big level-apropiate powerful potion instead of drinking 20 crappy ones in a row after a fight, same for wands (wich I asumed would cost resonance to activate and would have no charges neither, so if you have 10 resonance points to use on wands, you want to make those 10 heals be better, so you buy better wands).
Making potions cost a valuable resource (Resonance) was also the perfect excuse to make them more powerful (since you are limited to how many you can use in any given day) so you would track your 3 AWESOME POTIONS instead of 20 crappy situational ones; and things like drinking a Healing Potion in Combat wouldn't be so much of a waste of actions (if it did for once heal more than what ANY enemy in the battle field could damage with half their attacks).

I was so into resonance, that I started homebrewing it in my current campaign, giving players wands and items that all have abilities that cost resonance, so they decide what/how they use them. And I do like having a resource similar to "How many spells do I have left? Do I want to burn one for this?" for all clases.

Then the last 2 Blog Posts happened... What a mess... 3 or 4 new kinds of actions that have never been explained to us and that seem that could be easily replaced with "Somatic, Verbal and Material". If you want to have a "Amazing Opperator" Feat later that removes the Opperation Action from items, you can...

I agree. If you are going to use resonance do not use charges or uses per a day. If you do use charges and used per day toss out resonance. I have not problem with the math, it is the fact that it does not make sense. Telling me a item has charges make me think the item has the magical energy in it to work. Resonance is the item does not have the magical energy to work so I need to supply it. Using both on the same item does not make sense.

I could see using resonance to re-charge a item, but not to use charges. If the effect needs more cost to balance it, please do it some other way. decrease the power of the item, or add an action of needing to charge the item before use. Just please not charges and resonance at the same time.

Form the information they have put out so far, I think I will be able to make the kind of fighter I want, by around level 8 or 10.

Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQtg3t1hYC8

There are high level NPCs in the world. There have been a lot of fallen and lost kingdoms. So a Kingdom that had some high level crafts in the pass, and armed their rank an file foot men with plus +1 weapons, their captains with +2 weapons, high level officers with +3, and generals with +4 weapons. A few small kingdoms like this and that would explain a lot of the magic items in the world. These would be rich kingdoms for their size and latter after the powerful persons who created the items have passed on, the rich kingdom is now target of conquest.

When the kingdom falls, many of the people will flee with the most valuable items they can take with them, others items are taken in the conquest, and other items are lost, to be found later by adventures.

Remember that magic items are tougher than normal items, and are harder to replace and thus more likely to be repaired. Also a lot cheaper to repair as well, with spells like mending, and make whole.

In the end I think the question is not where are all of these magic items coming from, but where have most of the magic items gone?

Upon reflection though, I am starting to feel a little more concerned about the two handed grip change action. One of my least favorite things to ask a player who wants to pull out an item is "what about the stuff you are already holding?" I don't love the idea of this becoming the case for two handed weapons across the board. Hopefully it's at least a free action to release your grip with one hand just like dropping an item is. Or maybe it will only require a grip change if you are switching your damage dice on something like the bastard sword.

One of the developers chimed in that is only an action to add a hand to the weapon, and not one to take a hand off. This still means it take one action to re-grip the weapon. Still better than it taking three actions open a door for a two-handed fight.

Is there going to be support for using multiple items at the same time. Example: I have 5 flask of acid that do only 1d6 damage each. By level 6 that is not much damage per an action. Take some string and tie them to gather, and throw them as one item. Or I could take these 8 one pint flask pour them into this one gallon clay jug that only cost one copper and will break when thrown. My strong fighter can throw this jug with no problem, but does this jug do 8d6 damage, or do damage over a larger area?

Doing the above is not a problem for the most part in a home game, but in PFS play it can be. It would be nice if there were some guide lines on how to handle things like this, if alchemy is going to be a big part of the game. Saying you cannot do that, when I know I could in real life is not much fun.

Everyone I know at PFS scene or my player group prefers bulk <_< Nobody likes tracking 1.5 lb from minor items

This is what spread sheets are for. It can be fun to see how much non-magical gear you can take.

"I'm not honestly sure exactly why (I have a theory I'll mention after this sentence is finished), but a bit of A/B testing has shown that people are finding Bulk easier/less burdensome to use and actually using it, whereas they were more likely to gloss over weight. Given that Strength has very little unique to it, anything that strengthens people's likelihood to keep track of one of the things Strength does is a good thing. My theory is that it's because of the magnitude of the numbers. In several situations, people are more easily able to keep track of smaller integers up to a certain point than larger ones (especially single digits and maybe the teens), and they seem less intimidating and more accessible on a subconscious level. So it could be that?"

I have checked the math in Starfinder on Bulk. 1 bulk is equal to 5lb to 10lb So a light load for Str 18 is 9 bulk or 45lb to 90lb. In PF1 a light load for Str 18 is 100lb. Bulk is an about system. It gets the job done and cuts back on non-whole number math. You also do not need a chart to translate Str to how much can I carry.

I use spread sheets to do my inventory and have since I started playing pen and paper RPGs back at the start of 3.5 D&D. I am very good at math and like tracking and making use of my well tracked inventory. I will not have a problem learning the bulk system, it just will be cutting back on the amount of non-magical gear I will be able to have on my character. I can see how the change will help those who math is not a fun part of the game.

I would like to state that I liked the PF1 method more.

Making the assumption that most of the base rules are not changing a lot. Things like the hardness of materials are going to be the same. Then an Adamantine shield will be very useful. Add in the impervious enchantment with a plus 5 on the shield, will have a hardness of 40. In the current system my sword adamantine sword gets the impervious enchant right after the plus one.

I thought they would have went with a 6 point action system. One point for each second in a round. The system would have be easy to make things backward compatible. 3 points for a standard action, 2 points for a move action, one point for a swift action, 5 points for full-round actions, 1 point from the next round for immediate action, and 0 points for free actions.

That being said, three actions will be simpler for a lot of players to keep up with. I think it is likely that we will see more feats like quick draw that reduce the cost of actions. With the new action system a lot of the feats that were not worth taking will be. Vital Strike is one example. You got the base weapon dice as bonus damage. A nice boost, but not worth giving up a full attack. Now you are looking at giving up two attacks or getting in three vital attacks. Even if it is the former, giving up two attacks is not the same as giving up 3 to 5 attacks.

Feats like lunge will have a lot more power with the three action system and a 5ft step now being a guarded step that takes an action. Think move up and use lunge to make two attacks. The enemy now needs to use one of their three actions to close instead of getting three attacks. It is even better with a reach weapon. They will need to move and possible have to eat an AOO or use two actions to take two guarded steps.

As for classes like the Magus that use a lot of swift actions, which is one of the classes I like to play the most. I would give it a week two tops before some players have figured out how to convert the class to PF2. If there is a very good model of some of the non-core classes are worked out during the play test, they may add them to the core book. I think this is possible but unlikely.

The more that is possible with the core the better. I have found that it can be hard to find a gaming group that uses a lot outside of core. Most of them use the core rule book and two or three others. One of the main reasons for this is the cost of the books. While I am will to buy a book to get a class I want to play, a lot of GM do not want to let in class to their games that they do not have the books for. GMs I have found are more willing to let in a feat, spell, or item from a book they do not have than a class.

More level 12 and higher adventures.

I would like to see some adventures that can scale based on group size. I have played in and DM for groups as small as 3 and as large as 7. The standard adventures do not work well in ether case, and the encounters are hard to scale when there is just one enemy per a encounter.

Something like x number of enemy y per a player character. Do not know how hard it would be to add that to an adventure?

One way to add other effects is to follow the magic item crafting rules. They let you add another effect to an item at 1.5 times the cost. Since most plus to stats are costing 1.5 time normal cost any ways, let players just add the stats to other items. So a +2 str base cost 1000*2^2=4000 times 1.5 is 6000 to add to a magi item. There are to down sides to this method. The first is it takes doing some math. The second is the DM needs to check all of the items to make sure the math is right and the item is balanced. You should not have any problems with stat boost it is other effect you need to watch out for.

There are a lot of fun items to use, the problem is that most of them cost a lot of gold. Most magic items cost thousands of gold. As a player you do not have the gold to spare until level 12 to 16. Most games do not get to those levels, or at least are not in that range for long before the game is over.

Take the ring gates for example. They can be a very run and useful item. The Problem Is They Cost 40,000 gold. That is half of the wealth of an 11th level character. And 1/6 of a 15th level character. Now the item itself has a 100 lb. limit per a day. With out the limit the item would see use at level 15 maybe level 11 for a large party. The use would be transport of treasure back to base.

It is possible to work around the limits of ring gates with an improved familiar, and a Type 3 bag of holding to transport about 2,000 lb. a day through the rings. This fun item is not likely to see play until around level 15. This is true for a lot of items, they cost so much for what they do, it is not logical to not sell them until you have your basics of attack and defense covered.

Yes. You can do cool things when put resources into it.

I like to start at level 4, as both a DM and a player.

Sunder is part of the game. So is the impervious enchantment for both armor and weapons. I have this added to my main weapon before I go for +2 enchantment as well as getting Rune of Durability cast on my main weapon, and to my armor before +4 enchantment. I also shell out the extra 3,000gp before enchantment for a adamantine main weapon. One or two backup weapons is a must.

The Rune of Durability is a must. It only cost 150gp to have it cast on your weapon.

Sundering only works some of the time. It cost a feat to not cause an AoO. To use it to good effect you need an adamantine weapon which cost 3,000gp. Not all spells need components. Do not forget That it mirror image is you have to hit the right pouch.

As to the point of NPC not having a good gear list. That is not a problem with space, that is a problem with the writers not adding them. If you look at items that NPC have more than one of like arrows it is written arrows (20). So to add extra spell component pouches just add (5) after the name of the item.

Sundering is not a common build so why would a caster have multiple spell component pouches. If I have a clear shot at a spell caster why would I break their gear when I could kill them. After all casters are weak (not a lot of HP). Yes, I know this does not hold true, I am looking at it from the NPC point of view.

No negative levels for a character raised from the dead. The cost is high already.

Str 15, Con 14, Dex 14, Int 10, Wis 15, Cha 7 That is a 20 point buy
Str 15, Con 14, Dex 14, Int 14, Wis 15, Cha 7 That is a 25 point buy
That is before race modifiers. Boost str at level 4 and wis at level 8.

Starting AC 14 low, Attack +5 med. Not that bad. Take crane style and by level four AC 19, High, Attack +7 Med. The monk was not that bad, a bit limited in build but not bad.

I like what I am hearing about the new monk. It sounds like a great first four levels to take before I go magus.

When I hear low magic I think low power. One of the reasons I am thinking of running a low magic game, is I do not yet have the skill to run a high magic game.

I have a hard time taking into account many of the spells over 5th level spells.

I would say an acrobatics check vs. the dragon's CMD. At least that is how I run it as a GM.

Using the information from the Game Master Guide we can get an ideal of the level of spell casters and the number as well. Table 7-36 gives the level of spells you can pay to be cast based off of settlement type. The table on page 203 of the GMG gives a population range for the settlement types. Using a per 100,000 format you get an ideal of the level of spells and the number of casters that can cast each level of spell.

I am going to go with an army of 1,000. You would have at least 50 spell casters. 16 of them could cast 2nd level spells, and 5 of them could cast 3rd level spells.

Using the information on the table in the GMG we can figure out the level makeup of the population. The highest level of you are likely to find out of a 1000 people is level 12. Which is very close to the level given for a general which is level 11(GMG pg.287).

To get above 3rd level spells you need to be looking at a very large army. You would only have about one spell caster that could cast a 5th level spell in an army of 5,000. For 6th level spells you are looking at an army of 10,000.

So unless you are dealing with armies of over 1,000 you are not likely to be seeing higher than 3rd level spells.

A knight needs to be at least 4th level in order to have the money to buy the full-plate, if you are using NPC wealth and not PC wealth guide lines.

Have casters take non-lethal damage equal to the spell slot used squared. As level goes up lower level spells are not as costly to use. One of the things I hear about casters being over powered is them tossing out two or more high level spells in a round out. With the above house rule it can be costly to the caster to do that. So a quickened Fireball would cause 49 point of non-lethal damage to the caster.

Add a few magic items like the healing belt that was in 3.5.

I have found that you can for the most part run a single well built 20 point buy character though an adventure for a party four levels lower, without to many problems.

If you look at the 12-2 table in the core rule book the share for a single character in a 4 person party is the same as the hole amount for a party 4 levels lower.

Volume=3.14x(1x2.54)^2 x 8x12x2.54
So the volume of the iron bar would be 4939.7 cubic centimeters.

Iron has a density of 7.86 grams per cubic centimeter.

So 4939.7x7.86=38826 grams or 38.826 kilograms

1kg=2.2046lb so 38.826x2.2046=85.6 lb

That is one iron bar at 85.6 lb

See there are uses for math out side of work and school!