I would go so far as to say that wall spells really are not at the heart of this conversation about the power budget of the animist compared to other casters or the thaumaturge, or if they were, the point about them was made many, many posts ago.
I have noticed that, within remastered adventures, not having some kind of easy flag for “hostile” or “friendly” on NPCs (preferably as a bit of a nuanced spectrum), can slow me down a step as a GM, especially if it is an encounter I prepped a while ago and I am mostly just looking back at a stat block and not carefully reading the lead in text again. Alignment used to kinda serve this function, but it wasn’t particularly good at it. I do which NPC stat blocks in adventures had a presumed starting attitude stat for quick reference, since that is something the game is technically supposed to track and the destination between hostile and unfriendly is really helpful to know. I do recognize that one of the complications there is that it is a lever that can change quickly for players, but a “see text, pg. xyz” option would at least flag and remind GMs where to look to figure that out, and really HP being a full number all the time is about as likely as a creature having g a different starting attitude. (I haven’t read some of the newest APs yet, so if this has already been added, awesome!) The biggest problem with alignment in Golarion, especially when it could be considered both core cosmic attribute and Ideology, is that Golarion is way too diverse of a setting to have a unified definition of good. Like Holy slightly overlaps, but that is specifically about a cosmic battle and there are lots of good people who have nothing to do with that battle so there can be lots of conflicting goods (great for story telling) without preventing any stories you want to tell about forces of cosmic goodness. It is nice to have those stories separated from “tales of conflicting nations” where a GM might really not want a spell like detect alignment just providing a bypass to any player decision making.
I really like the Animist from a flavor perspective. It is what I was asking for in a class before the playtest even dropped. It is a character who interacts with the divine spirits of the world around them on a much more immediate basis than any other divine class. The only thing I wanted that it can't exactly do, is that I wanted to be able to encounter things in the day that might have a powerful spirit in them and entreat with it directly...so like some kind of ritual to be able to attune to a new apparition in like 10 minutes or an hour instead of only when making daily preparations, and maybe for the powers to be a little more dependent on being near the source of the spirit, but I understand why that would have been more difficult to implement and that some players would be left wanting to do a specific thing all the time, but unable to if the adventure didn't provide sources for that spirit to be present. The amount of additional stuff you would need to get from apparitions to make just going all in on one of them is so over the top different from the way the class is built, it was not surprising at all to me that the subclass designed to go that way fails to deliver mechanically. It would essentially take an extra apparition spell slot at every rank, which, with such a limited selection if you were stuck with one apparition, would still not be all that great for the vast majority of them. I think for the sake of this kind of assumed polling that people are projecting onto others (myself included) in this thread, I think people responding to the questions: 1. Do you like the current animist class overall?
would be useful because they are all different questions. Like for me it would be: 1. yes, I think it has its rough spots (like its subclasses that it probably didn't need) but over all it is fine.
Two of the new people you are claiming have been a part of this conversation since before it was resurrected and my reading of Old Man Robot’s contributions is that the Animist is a good class that other classes should be built up to. Not that it needs a massive overhaul to come down to other caster classes which have been disappointing to them. People saying the class is strong are not inherently arguing that that is a huge balance problem that requires nerfing. That is why I say that this tread has a much broader range of opinions than can be assembled into a consensus. Also the endurance issues of the class are very real and exacerbated by the feats that burn apparitions. If the class is over powered at lower level, I think PFS is the place that issue would be manifesting and we are not seeing that reported back. We have heard that players struggle to handle all the things they can do with the limit of 3 actions and MAD issues. But not that animists are taking over PFS and stepping on everyone else’s toes.
I haven’t seen any new people coming in to say that the Animist is over powered, only that they like the class and what it can do. Most of them do value the versatility of the class. But I don’t even like playing Druids because their “versatility” ( of the primal list) almost always ends up meaning that I am expected to be the party healer and sink most of my good spell casting slots into that. I even experienced it with the Oracle, as the party gets nervous if I don’t have top rank slots around for heal. The animist really suffers from this in play as well. People expect you to be the healer and that really cuts heavily into your spell slots. It is unlikely I will ever see the OMG too good” Animist in play, because it would take a player unwilling to agree to filling a team role within the party. I think that is going to be true at a ton of tables, especially as the animist does have serious action economics my issues in the low levels and playing highly versatile characters at high level takes a lot of resource management that most players won’t do. I don’t think the class is an issue, but even if I did, I would not expect more than very minor tweaks to one or two class feats or features for the obvious exploits and only after they start showing up a lot.
I don’t want to revisit a lot of what has been said again and again, but what seems clear to me is that people are enjoying playing the animist and feel like it is powerful. There have been one or two tables who have reported here that they feel like the animist is too powerful and is making other players feel bad about their builds. Since then the conversation switched to be more theoretical about whether those feelings are justified or not. There really isn’t much data to work with as far as whether this is an issue that needs to be addressed at a game development level or not. I haven’t heard that animists are taking over PFS, which seems like it would happen quickly if the animists versatility is so over powered, since there is little PFS values more than versatility. Like the endurance factor wouldn’t really matter at all in PFS as you rarely have more than 3 encounters in a session and often have rests between them. The most likely reason for this is that the animist struggles with their action economy at low levels and it takes a long time to get to high level play in PFS. At low levels the animist also hurts for spell slots, particularly if they are being expected to be the only healer in the party. The thing about getting too concerned about the balance of high level casters is that they are all pretty good (except the psychic) and get a lot of versatility from their ability to use spell slots and scrolls. In an actual party, having 2 casters trying to fill the same role is rare and counter productive, so the risk of players feeling like their toes are getting stepped on is pretty slim. I think this is why we are getting so few reported cases of this, and where it is happening, talking to the players, or making a ruling at the table to limit some of the most exploitable combos is pretty easy. This happens all the time with things in the game, like over use of wall of stone, or illusions, depending upon the needs of the table. No matter what, the animist is not going to receive a major overhaul, so the most likely thing the devs would do if they felt there were high level issues with the magus and specific combinations of feats and features is nerf one or two of those offending abilities so they don’t work together any more. It is fine to try to point this out to newer GMs who have a player with an animist character that might be building into something that feels broken to some players, but I also think there are a fair number of players who have been waiting a long time for PF2 to offer a caster this versatile and just preemptively trying to nerf it doesn’t seem necessary to me.
For me, as a player and as GM with familiarity with both systems mythic system, but only a lot of play experience with PF1, the problem with giving players defined, statted out abilities to do things like cut a mountain in half, is that the players will turn every challenge they face into a mountain they can cut in half unless there are very clear limits on when and what mountains they can use their abilities with. At the point players can do stuff like fly into outer space or cut mountains in half, the whole adventure has to center around that, and players really shouldn’t be expecting to cut every mountain they see in half unless they are adventuring across the elemental plane of Earth in a region of endless mountains. In other words, the powers really need to revolve so closely around the adventure the GM is running that the GM needs to be pretty hands on with setting the players up to have mythic powers that fit with the adventure enough not to completely trivialize the entire campaign or create so many artificial restrictions around when the mountain cutter can and cannot cut open the mountain that the player feels like they don’t even have the ability. Having a party choose amazing mythic powers that have nothing to do with each other can really exacerbate the whole angel summoner/BMX Hero dilemma if some powers are getting used all the time and others never do.
These are all great ideas, and I have one to build on them, especially in combination with adding more lower level creatures to encounters: Don't be afraid to let the minions have some personality as well, especially if it allows you to pull punches in the party is struggling with the encounter. If a creature with a good weapon has fallen in the combat already, but the party has had some bad luck and has a character down as well, the encounter can take on some fun new dimensions if one of the goblin warriors decides now is their opportunity to make a move and run over and steal a treasure or pick up a weapon and then flee, or traitor their comrades in the hopes that the PCs will not only spare them, but let them take control of the dungeon when they leave, or try to use a summoning gem or some other treasure ineffectively and have it cause trouble for everyone. It is a lot harder to get the opportunity for those kind of occasional curve balls if there is only one or two creatures in an encounter.
The ability for the GM to handwave any encounter into a single die roll is always a tool in the GM’s tool kit that can be helpful (even for combat encounters!) but it is also something that can hit the players hard, especially when it feels arbitrary and like it is undermining choices the players made to be prepared for those kinds of encounters. It is important players learn what things a GM tends to ignore/handwave/house rule around before committing resources to it. I already talked about how many of the out of combat feats fail because they are not designed around the kind of situations in which players would actually use them, but a huge part of that is that because no skill feats are designed to work around social encounters, chases, races, research, infiltrations or investigations. They are instead designed around specific actions/activities that have turned out not to be the way most GMs (and adventure writers) handle those skills in the kinds of tense moments we break out into encounter mode around. When the game was being developed, those skill activities were imagined to be a bigger part of the game than the adventure writers have ended up using and that is a big part of why out of combat skill feat options keep missing the mark.
I don’t really see much value in telling the players to play different characters. Especially for a homebrew campaign where the GM can really be flexible with the levers. I do think the not wanting any characters to ever drop is a pretty unreasonable general expectation for the party to have though and is worth talking with the table about. Probably, the issue, especially with a party if 5 and only 2 characters getting near the front lines, is that it is the same characters getting dropped over and over again and the party isn’t planning around expecting that to happen and how to mitigate it with tactics. If the party is expecting enemies to spread their attacks out or draw enemies away from focus firing one PC down, they need to have strategies in place to help rotate and replace the front lines. Spells offer many different ways to do this and the players can try out different strategies for it on their own (I don’t find many players enjoy being told exactly what to do, but are more receptive to general strategy ideas when they are actively being frustrated by encounters and trying to figure out how to approach them differently). All that said, another nice thing about bringing in lots of minions to encounters with a couple of on level or lower leaders is that the HP swinginess of encounters gets leased so it is a little easier for players to see where the threat of the encounter will be. Ending a turn next to a boss and 3 minions should look like the kind of behavior that is going to get someone knocked out, whereas getting hit by a single powerful crit can feel like it came out of the blue.
As far as just “roleplaying instead of roll play,” what is fun to role play really changes from table to table, and some players don’t have the training in the skills that their characters would have in handling other types of encounters, just like almost no players have the combat training skills to role play combat, so they mostly rely on dice rolls and descriptions within the rule book to narrate what happens. This very often results in one or two charismatic players handling all of the “roleplay” encounters while other players just sit quietly and watch, or get forced into interacting in ways that end up complicating g everything for the whole party. There is definitely a reason newer APs include a lot more subsystems for out of combat encounters than they used to, and they continue to do it because they get good feedback about it. At the same time, the skill feats system was something pretty new, that didn’t get play tested in nearly the same robust way as the combat system, with the exception of skill feats that play over into combat. I don’t remember the playtest really pushing things like the influence system or the research system, and if it did include any of that, it was pretty one off compared to the number of combat encounters. It makes sense that the development of combat came first, but now, between PF2 and SF2 there is room for a lot of growth in making these non-combat encounters more dynamic and fun, and less worthy of just skipping with a single dice roll.
To add on to Teridax’s point about modularity, these systems already exist in game and many people ignore them because nothing that one would think connects to them does. If your AP has an influence encounter and you have streetwise, can you make society check in place of a diplomacy? Will the GM use the same DC? Will it be easier? Harder? There is no real guidance for how to do this except maybe give a small circumstance bonus to checks where skill feats could be applicable, but that is putting a lot on GMs to arbitrate, and a lot of “useless” skill feats (useless because they do things like make influence checks take less time…in situations where time constraints are almost never relevant), would be much better built around non-combat encounter modes of play and pacing.
Mythic just being flat bonuses over equally leveled characters is just making the characters higher level for that task, nothing else. I am glad that they didn't take a "more numbers" approach to Mythic. PF1 Mythic was the end of my table playing pathfinder until 2nd edition came out. We really, really wanted it to be good and played through the first 3 books of Wrath of the Righteous before it became clear that what mythic did was exacerbate all of the existing problems with 1st edition into a completely unplayable mess. Mythic can't just mean "higher level challenge." PF2 is already really good for simulating that kind of power difference. You just use higher or lower level opponents depending on who is supposed to feel awesomely powerful. Mythic needed to not be "You are awesomely powerful," at least not with raw numbers. It needed to be "you interact differently with the world."
I still have such a bad taste of PF1 mythic in my mouth that I have been hesitant to get too far into the PF2 mythic rules in play, but my table will probably run the Revenge of the Runelords AP eventually, way too late to be of any use in thinking through how well the new mythic rules allowed the creative team to tell a different kind of story than they would have been able to tell otherwise. I think it is really cool and bold of the adventure path team to tackle the most core pathfinder story to test those rules (especially jumping in at high level) around. Like the Rune Lords are supposed to be the kind of wizards who other wizards will never live up to being, but that doesn't specifically mean cast more powerful spells or regular spells more powerfully (ie: just be higher level than possible). I am very interested to see how it turns out.
Is this how the game is already set up? There are some areas of flexibility around what kinds of narrative abilities fit in each tier, but spells like teleportation (and long distance movement) are not really accessible to players before the level 10-20 "epic" tier that you are talking about. I can see the appeal of wanting to make sure each class has a set number of out of combat related abilities that line up better with the various out of combat encounter subsystems that exist but there are some serious issues with trying to do that, even if I agree strongly that the game has a problem where those subsystems were clearly not developed enough at the playtesting phase for things like skill feats to interact cleanly and clearly with them. The issues with over formalizing out of combat abilities: 1. Unlike combat, the same kind of narrative out-of-combat challenge might be played out in 2 or 3 different ways in any given adventure in PF2. A complex environmental challenge like crossing through a lava-filled cavern, might play out in a combat encounter pace, where many of the threats are treated like simple or complex hazards that uses battle maps and 3 action turns to resolve; or it might be a victory point-based skill challenge; or it might end up resolving with almost no checks at all if the party has access to resources or ideas that the GM decides are suitable enough to just bypass, like the party all can teleport or the ability to fly fast enough to just take some minor damage in the crossing. 2. The existing way that the game gives characters out of combat abilities is primarily skills, but there are lots of spells that address these modes of play as well. PF2 is much better than past games at not letting as many types of out-of-combat challenges be completely bypassed by a single spell, but it certainly still happens and that is where the narrative expectations of different levels of play really enters this conversation. It is entirely possible for 20th level characters to have no default ability to fly, for example, but would be bad adventure design to build encounters for 20th level characters that present no challenge to characters who can fly, because, minimally, a level 20th party should be capable of getting the ability for the whole party to fly with less than a percent of their character's material wealth, if not by other means. These two issues combine together to create a pretty big problem with trying to formalize how out-of-combat power can be formalized. Skill feats for example, really only consistently handle the game at combat encounter-mode pace. There are some exceptions, for down-time activities in particular, but the inconsistency of whether challenges will be presented in combat encounter or victory point encounter mode means either every feat/ability would have to have a formal explanation for how to handle both, and that is a pretty Herculean task/overhaul of these systems, especially as there will pretty quickly come a point in the game where the power tier of the game has moved past the skill/skill feats relevance to the types of challenges being faced. For example, high level skill feats for climbing related challenges are a waste of page space, when the items and magic to bypass those challenges are trivially available by mid levels. This is not something that many adventures have necessarily handled well, and is complicated by the reality that challenges in adventures don't always line up to the expected tiers of play at the levels they are happening...but at the same time, it is only a problem for out of combat encounters to become trivialized by characters with the right abilities/items/spells prepared if the tension and excitement of the campaign was riding of these encounters being narrative focal points of the adventure. As much as Mount Doom is built up as the pinnacle location of the Lord of the Rings, and its dangers foreshadowed through out the story, we largely bypass most of the environmental hazards it presents as background narrative by the time the scene set there happens. There was more important parts of the story to focus on by that point, which will often be the case in RPG adventures as well, although RPGs have to also contend with fitting a certain amount of XP into each step of the story so it is not uncommon to have adventures set aside front and center stage time to challenges that would be montaged over in a film or skipped in exposition in a novel. This is kind of the difficulty, but also the artistry of adventure writing and GMing. You have to keep things interesting but you can't move things along so fast, and only focus on the main plot points of the adventure, that players get no time learning the ropes of their characters growing powers, develop a relationship to the game's setting, or the opportunity to gain enough experience with their characters to be at the right level to face the next plot essential event. All of this is true of combat encounters as well, but there generally is more patience for extraneous combat encounters than for extraneous out-of-combat encounters. This might be a product of PF2 game mechanics, but it is definitely also a product of long running game expectations that predate PF2's existence. All of this might just be to say that the game needs a lot of flexibility around how out of combat encounters can be handled because not every cliff face needs to be scaled at a pace of 5 to 10ft of vertical movement per check. It also could be interesting to consider having more ways to streamline down combat encounters into VP subsystems that can more quickly determine resource expenditure and rewards than having to fight out every combat encounter, but that is something that is kind of already happening and also something that might require a new edition before it could be formalized in a manner where almost any combat encounter could be resolved that way.
Backgrounds really are a character's past, and I would not like it if they tied too much into progressing abilities that represent a character's future. I know many players do start with picking one that has a boost in the attribute that they want to focus on, and then think about flavor afterwards. I don't think that is inherently a bad idea. It is good to let your choices during character creation help shape your idea of who the character becomes, rather than having a vision to start with and trying to stick to it no matter how the mechanics of the game work against you. I am also on record as preferring eventually to do away with set attributes that get boosted in very narrow ways and having the benefits you get from every aspect of character creation work more like feats, that give you a set number of bonuses to certain kinds of actions, so that there could be multiple paths towards being accurate with a sword, for example, instead of just "be the strongest." However, since we are not getting that any time soon, I very much appreciate being able to build a very charismatic alchemist who might only have a +2 to INT, or a Barbarian who might want to throw a lot of things and maybe start with a +2 STR and a +3 Dex. I have had many characters start with a +3 KAS and be perfectly fine at what they do and capable of doing things many of that class cannot do because they have the attributes to pick up the archetype feats or be good at the skills. These are the real "Ivory Tower" builds of PF2 because many of them have to wait for very specific feats or spells or items to come out before they are possible, and sometimes, even when the right thing does finally come out to make it possible, it might be so convoluted and unusable as a primary strategy that trying to build fully into that option instead of using it as a secondary backup option becomes the new trap. But I think that is ok, because they are character concepts that tend to really work backwards against the system and require a lot of knowledge to put together in the first place. Newer players trying to build into them are probably be directed to by more experienced players/guides and not the system itself.
Addressing the “very special treasure” question of items like the one ring and even HP’s invisibility cloak, items really intended to stick around…those are absolutely artifacts in PF2. I think a lot of players don’t think much about incorporating artifacts into their characters because you can’t. They represent something that the GM is going to have to design and fit around the campaign narrative and the characters, and thus they are not going to factor into players who have long term build plans in place the same way typical items do. This makes artifacts a little tricky, as characters end up having to be built around them once the character sees what the growth progression of the artifact is, or else the GM has to really sculpt the artifact around the character. And I think that also leads to less artifacts in play and even some disappointment on players parts when they do find one if it doesn’t fit what the characters expected progression path would be. Other than artifacts though, having equipment generally fit into “the very special item that you name and use your whole career” that really falls into stuff that should be class based, of which we only have the inventor and the Exemplar that kind of go that route. Really you see that best done in classless systems generally, where any growth of power is tied to leveling up and comes from the same bucket of resources. PF2 keeps items a separate bucket, which is why making items rely on class DCs doesn’t work currently. Items is too big of a bucket to tie on to a variable class feature. Another GM/adventure writer side issue with scaling item DC, is that storywise, the random person finding a item of immense power works well with static DCs but doesn’t with the item relying of the holders internal power.
Why is finding a level 4 demon mask (worth 85gp) at level 3 worse treasure than finding an art object worth 42 gold and 5 silver? If you wear it for 2 or 3 levels and use its activation a couple of times while the DC is worth it, then sell it, you got more value out of the mask than a lump sum of treasure. Maybe somebody in the party values intimidation enough that they hold on to the mask well past level 6 or 7 where the DC falls off into irrelevancy, because it is just a +1 at that point. If casting fear regularly was this awesome thing for the character, they’ve had 4 levels to find another source for that ability and it will have only gotten worse than a multi class casting archetype in the last couple of levels. I think the general issue is players approaching magic items as character defining game elements and that is very much against the design philosophy of PF2. Those kind of items are a part of a class kit like the exemplar. There are mandatory magic items for keeping up with numbers, but those items enable your class abilities (like weapons, shields, armor, etc). They are not character defining by themselves.
This doesn't have to be the player's responsibility though. With Consumables in particular, put ones in the adventure that are good and useful. Players don't need to try to sort through them unless they really get into that. I think the issue with permanent items and DCs is that they are typically providing a worse version of what a class or ancestry ability of the same level would allow, which I think is the intention, because "this item is my power source" is something that needs to be class defined, not gear defined, or it is a narrative thing that is best accomplished by giving an NPC a wildly over leveled item that they stole or found for a big effect, in which case that character is their special item, but that doesn't hold up for a PC for a campaign. As a GM, I do tend to adjust the consumables up a level over the treasure by level recommendations, as it is an easy way to make sure the party gets fun toys worth playing with, it is especially fun to give lower level enemies a couple of bombs that a higher level boss gives them so they can be pretty inaccurate with them, but a little bit scary, and then the party gets a couple to use against the boss that are a level or 2 higher than anything they brought into the dungeon. EDIT: Also 3 levels of functional play with an item before upgrading it or replacing it is about right in my opinion. Even with weapons you get your potency bonus, then your striking, then your property runes in about that that span, and that all feels like it works pretty well. Item runes that you add to upgrade invested items would be a cool addition to the game and something that feels like it could fit with a book that has the Runesmith in it.
To be clear, I understand why players might not like these changes and why playing pregens can be disappointing. I was just trying to understand the situation, why it is happening the way that it is, and think about whether it is likely that they would just change things. I really think the cutting the level band is about simplifying the writing process and getting more uniform balance in play experience of scenarios. I think that is hard to do with 4 levels instead of 2 and that is why I would be surprised if the went back to 4. I think things like changing the pregens and making them available at every 2 levels is much more likely to happen. I do think it would be a long term benefit if the simplified scenario writing meant that they could start publishing more and more scenarios, even if it means that most of them are going to have to be level 1-2 scenarios so that those levels don't get boring to play. I also think it is much more likely that we get a ton of level 1-2 scenarios for a while and that playing those is going to be the default for conventions for several years as players who like to play a lot of different scenarios will have to have a stable of characters at different levels to make sure they can play available tables.
I agree that the reason for the more narrow level band is too streamline the creation of scenarios and make them easier and faster to write and balance. It is much more of a dev side adjustment, not a player side adjustment, although reading and running scenarios will probably be easier for newer GMs as well, and it is definitely being done for the larger convention as lowering the bar to GMing will mean more tables can be run. I really don’t think making the scenarios more adjustable will help with those elements so it seems like “just play lower level scenarios and make new characters if necessary” is going to be the solution to players not having characters in the same higher level bands. Edit: or of course, just use a pregen” will still be an option and making more levels of pregens is a relatively easy thing to do.
I haven't played PFS for a while now due to life constraints, but it seems like the new meta for players is that you are pretty much going to have to keep a large stable of characters and expect to play a whole lot of low level adventures for a long time, and have new low level characters ready to play anytime people show up without the higher level characters ready to go. I can understand why a lot of players are not going to like that. It means it is going to be exceedingly rare to get to play the higher level scenarios, and it will be harder to play PFS like a campaign where you have a single character learning a lot about each season's meta-narrative. At the same time, I don't think it is going to be detrimental to newer players wanting to get involved unless the lodge is really trying to push forward into the higher level scenarios and the tables are not ready and kind of expecting to play mostly levels 1-2 and 3-4 scenarios most of the time with the occasionally lucky break where the players who show up have the stable of characters to support it. Like as a GM, I would almost never prep something higher level unless people signed up well in advance. I am guessing the plan is for the new style scenarios to stay in the 1-2 and 3-4 level ranges until there are tons to choose from. It is also probably easiest to get new writers to write for those levels so from a production stand point, I can see why they did it this way.
Ancestry balance is certainly more complicated than just raw numbers for statistics like HP and movement speeds/types. For example, the elf in Pathfinder looks pretty weak numerically (terrible HP with a penalty to CON) as an ancestry, but it has some of the best ancestry feats in the game, so people continue to choose to make elven characters despite the set backs. When I look at the Vesk and the Dragonkin for Starfinder, it seems like Vesk feats are equally some of the best in the game, while the Dragonkin feats are pretty run of the mill and in SF2 it seems like being large is a much bigger detriment than it is in PF2: Reach is less important and in environments like spaceships, you could be stuck squeezing a lot. If players can get darkvision and flying with equipment at low levels, those aren't really the same kind of boosts that they are in PF2 as a whole. All of this is to say that I don't see anyway that allowing ancestries across games is going to be anything but a case by case basis for the GM in deciding if it is good for their game. A guide really would have to go ancestry by ancestry in each direction for conversion to relieve a GM from needing to familiarize themselves with both systems and what what the expectations are for those systems, as well as understand what kind of adventure they are trying to run. Which I still see as being a much better community guide than an official Paizo one, since the community will keep it up to date and have pretty much as good a grasp of each game's expectations as any one Paizo developer.
It means if I am a GM, and a player approaches me about wanting to use a flying SF ancestry, and explains why they want this, and how it can fit in the campaign, and I don’t think it’d be appropriate to just use the ancestry as is…then I look for a relatively similar PF2 ancestry and probably choose the ancestry flight abilities(feats, heritage) and speeds that match that other ancestry.Could you point to the bit of the text that says you'd have to choose an ancestry with flight? Would you be applying the feats directly, or would you be creating separate feats? It in the section of text I quoted earlier from page 246 of the GM core: “While some Pathfinder adventures might not mind the low-level access to these speeds, you might want to adjust by instead using the progression of movement speed–related ancestry feats presented to other ancestries in Pathfinder.” It doesn’t really matter if you make up your own feats that are just close but maybe a little different, or use the other ancestry’s feats directly. Either way is fine if gives everyone at the table something that looks fun and fair enough for your table.
We have guidelines though. For example, with movement speeds, we are told (on page 246 of the Starfinder GM core) "You should also be wary of special movement speeds, such as climbing and flight, that become available at a much lower level in Starfinder. While some Pathfinder adventures might not mind the low-level access to these speeds, you might want to adjust by instead using the progression of movement speed–related ancestry feats presented to other ancestries in Pathfinder."Would it be possible to explain, in specific and concrete terms, what this text means to you? In particular, the last sentence. It means if I am a GM, and a player approaches me about wanting to use a flying SF ancestry, and explains why they want this, and how it can fit in the campaign, and I don’t think it’d be appropriate to just use the ancestry as is…then I look for a relatively similar PF2 ancestry and probably choose the ancestry flight abilities(feats, heritage) and speeds that match that other ancestry.
We have guidelines though. For example, with movement speeds, we are told (on page 246 of the Starfinder GM core) "You should also be wary of special movement speeds, such as climbing and flight, that become available at a much lower level in Starfinder. While some Pathfinder adventures might not mind the low-level access to these speeds, you might want to adjust by instead using the progression of movement speed–related ancestry feats presented to other ancestries in Pathfinder." For Society play, it seems like the folks in charge of society play just decided that the answer was "for special one-time character boons for participating in this playtest, it is fine for the characters to just have the low-level access. Otherwise, typically, the answer is that none of these ancestries are available." That is kind of what I mean about how trying to standardize this seems against the point of having it available as content. The most basic "standardization" is probably just to not modify anything and just allow not allow content that challenges adventure expectations that are important to the game you are going to be playing and allow the stuff that doesn't challenge those adventure or narrative tone expectations. GMs that want to hybridize beyond that can just look at other ancestry examples that have similar types of movement, but having all ancestries work exactly the same way at a system level gets really boring fast. It works in a one off context because things aren't all the same if only one of them is actually in use, but if 4 players play 4 different ancestries that fly and they all fly exactly the same way, that does get a little boring. Strix and Awakened animals (flying heritage) for example are very similar, but they do things a little differently, so while the level 1 flying abilities are very similar, Strix are still going to have a Heritage boon while the awakened animal is going to have an additional unarmed strike and the ability to talk to certain kinds of animals. Guidelines are either going to be "look at these and pick something close that feels right for your game" (what we have), or they are going to have to define it for each potential ancestry based upon what else the ancestry gets, and have to deal with the fact that both systems are going to keep getting new ancestries at a pretty quick pace. I think it was very smart to go the first route and just point out some issues and suggest where to look for solving them based upon what your game needs.
Why I don't think a Paizo brand conversion guide is a good idea: 1. Someone has to make it. It would be a release for one of the two systems in a year where I would much rather see something else. Because it crosses over both, it might even require developer labor from both pools. 2. Both Starfinder and Pathfinder grow frequently with new content. The guide goes out of date before it even gets printed and then requires constant up dating. The community has proven itself better at this than Paizo at every possible opportunity. 3. Unless PathStar or StarPath becomes a product that is getting its own APs and adventures regularly enough to need more content than already exists to do the occasional one off combination of games, it is a dead end of development time. Any special considerations that need to be given to a specific AP or adventure can just focus on the content that product will use in the context it is going to be used and not have to cover every possible use case. 4.Or maybe 3.5. This "consider on a case by case basis" is the better way of introducing cross-game content, and is how GMs should do it regardless of what "official" material says. Will an ancestry that gets flying at level 1 really (or always) disrupt a PF2 campaign? No, not always. If the first 5 levels are pretty tight dungeons or spaces where the climb DCs to get anywhere a flier could get are 15 or lower, and the character is a melee character, AND no one else in the party is making PF2 choices that involve spending multiple feats to gain flight, and everyone is fine with it because it creates some narrative that the table likes, then it doesn't really matter, just as the GM could already decide to essentially give level 1 flight away to a PF2 flying ancestry already, and there is guidance in PF2 about how to do that. On a case by case basis, there is no "broken" content to worry about crossing from game to game except for stuff the GM is just not going to support. 5. The best advice about all of this stuff is going to come from tables that use the content in play this way. I doubt that is going to be happening internally at Paizo nearly as often as it will outside of Paizo, so a community built repository of advice is going quickly end up superior to anything Paizo could hope to publish (as well as 2, be kept up to date better). 6. Paizo gave us the big picture stuff/game expectation stuff to consider already, and that is enough to give GMs a very solid start on allowing cross game content. The next best place for official Paizo ideas to be introduced is in specific adventures. Like if there is an AP where a starfinder class could work out well, include that in the player's guide to the AP. Then, if it is not the best advice/doesn't work out as intended, then they can do better next time. If they try to give specific conversion advice out of no where in an official rule book, and it fails to meet player expectation, they might be in a position where there is a lot of errata to do to fix it. That might seem ideal to players who want offical, perfect conversion notes for everything in both games, but it is a lot of needless work and potentially flopping a major rule book, instead of testing some ideas out in content that is given out for free. 7. The conversion guide is something that is pretty much all mechanics with no unique story to tell with (that wouldn't be tied to a specific adventure). Is it just going to reuse all art from PF2 and SF2 sources as well? probably. There is no sellable product here as the content would all be available for free on Archives of Nethys. Summary: A purely mechanical conversion guide between PF2 and SF2 is introducing no actual new content mechanically or narratively into either game space. Everything it would offer is already there for GMs and players to talk over and use for themselves. The community will do this better than Paizo, more quickly and keep it better up to date. Edit: It would be better for paizo to do this piece meal in specific APs and Adventures so they can put their creative spin on to it and give folks new content to play with.
I think the things for which a conversion guide will be useful, moreso than ancestries, is classes. A GM can make a quick call based on any ancestry on nothing more than "this isn't really a story featuring people from other planets." But people are going to want to play something like a Mystic in a Pathfinder game and there's no reason this shouldn't work, so some guidance a la "recharge weapon is nonfunctional in Pathfinder so replace the cantrip granted by the Elemental Connection with something else, and you might want to alter Data Bond so you don't give access to Summon Robot in a pathfinder game" would genuinely help people.Im surprised such a guide is not in the GM Core. Might be a cool book idea to explore in the future. A big old crossover AP with its own player guide and rules on how to convert content for either game. Edit: The one trick is that, for like the Mystic, some of the information would be in different sections, like the spells and feats sections...but the class guide tells you that.
It seems like it would be a really strange case to bring a SF2 Ysoki into PF2 when it is an ancestry that already exists in PF2. I think that highlights why my default for players asking “can I bring X ancestry into PF2?” Is “sell me on why this is necessary for your character concept in a way that fits with the campaign narrative expectations, and isn’t an attempt to just exploit mechanical differences between the systems?” I think players will make the kinds of guides that are being asked for here faster than Paizo would be able to and keep them more up to date.
I think that a lot of people haven’t read the the SF2 GM core and heard PFS let in flying ancestries and just kind of extrapolated and panicked. It will pass as folks get familiar with the system. Personally, I am not likely to let much SF2 content into the campaign I am actively running, which will take us years to finish. It’s a PF1 converted AP nowhere near techy stuff. After that, I’d probably talk to my players in picking “what’s next?” And if “PF/SF hybrid” is what players want, it’d be very easy to do that with a homebrew campaign or if just one player wants one techy option I could look that over and decide on a case by case basis.
Playtest adventures tend to stress test specific mechanics or questions developers have. On page 250 of the SF2 GM core, there is explicit advice about looking at your party’s damage types and thinking through whether specific creatures you want to use will provide extra challenge to your party. There really are multiple pages of thoughtful advice dedicated to making material from one game useable with the other. I have yet to see any concern brought up in this thread that isn’t at least pointed out in the GM core. The advice might not be as explicit as some players want it to be, but I think that kind of detail is going to be much better coming from the community sharing play experience and collected in Guides like happens with class guides, because so much of it is going to be subjective to what GMs and players are trying to do. But all the big picture concerns are at least brought up in the guide.
Society is its own thing. The society folks deciding to reward people who sunk untold hours of unpaid labor into playtesting the new system with something that will prove unique but limited in scope, as it is one character who levels up past the point of these differences mattering, isn’t even something that has to be projected as a mistake. Just like how a GM could decide to allow multicharge energy weapons from SF into a PF game (maybe to do something with a homebrew Iron Gods continuation) and the game itself is nothing like as broken as bringing a RIFTs laser rifle into a Paladium Fantasy RPG (two other compatible RPGs). I feel like several pages in the Starfinder GM core is enough official feedback. It really does cover the issue just fine and I don’t think Paizo as a company needs to be scolded or chastised for letting their society play folks have a special one time reward for really helping the company out.
But there is nothing in the game to suggest that AC, for example is different than temp HP as far as an effect of the spell. So if I am transformed into a Huge, rank 5 Ape, and then I sustain and change into an air elemental, do I not get all of the listed statistics and abilities of the air elemental form? The rank 5 Ape's AC is 18+level for example, do I not get the air elemental's 19+level AC? Do my senses not change, nor the types of attacks I can do? All of that is just statistics and abilities of the form, exactly the same as temporary HP. If the form's temporary HP was supposed to be different from every other effect of a battle form spell, that really needs to be explicitly called out somewhere.
How could “you transform into a form granted by a spell, you gain all the effects of the form you chose from a version of the spell heightened to darkened forest form's rank.” And “Each time you Sustain this Spell, you can choose to change to a different shape from those available via any of the associated spells,” not include HP. If I go from an Air elemental to a Bear, am I stuck with the AC, attack bonus, damage, movement, etc. of the first form I chose? Temp HP is clearly one of the effects. So I guess the argument is if you don’t change shapes then you don’t get new effects. Change form, get new Temp HP, sustain and keep the same form don’t?
The limit that I see with Timber Sentinel, and why it wasn't a problem in either campaign I saw it in, is that it can be overcome tactically with relative ease. It takes damage from AOE.
Those things don't make it useless, and both the party I played with and the party I GM'd for was able to get a lot of damage mitigation from it over the course of a campaign, but smart enemies can get around it without nearly as much trouble as dealing with the gang up + opportune backstab rogue.
It's a must-have for rogues not for everyone. That's my point about power creep.It was a “must have” before the Remaster and now it is better. But it doesn't break the game. My problem with gang up is that it makes Rogues much less interesting once they get it, especially with opportune backstab waiting at level 8. Suddenly there is absolutely a best way to play a rogue, and that is melee, standing next to a tanky ally. Flanking goes out the window, stealth goes out the window, ranged attacks fall to a paltry back up option at best, and it just becomes do the same thing over and over again. That is the kind of overpowered options that I don’t want to see more of in the game (over powered vs any other option you could possibly choose in almost every possible circumstance). It is also an option available from the beginning so it isn’t really power creep. I think flight at level 1 is similarly bad, but it is not something that is generally available, so it is not going to ruin anything, not even PFS. Very few players are going to have any characters with these options and those that do will have 1 that will level up and eventually not be a problem/different anymore.
I've only ever purchased scenarios as pdfs. Unique creatures do get stat blocks, but might be "use x creature with these adjustments." There is a special appendix at the back of pdfs that break the encounters down pretty nicely by tier with the stat blocks, so I get the convenience, but I don't think those are in the printed scenarios anyway. If folks are printing out sections of their pdfs for live sessions anyway, I don't think printing out a supplemental stat block sheet made by another player is very much more of an inconvenience, and would save on production labor, if for nothing else than the extra formatting time, from the company end. Some player is going to end up making a database of these stat blocks by scenario very quickly and then the issue seems like it will largely be forgotten.
Does star finder have rules for letting PCs carry other characters while flying or using special movement speeds? It doesn’t feel like PF should allow this unless maybe the rest of the party is tiny?
The thing that I maybe just don't understand about the statblocks at the end of an adventure thing, is that it feels like GMs are going to pretty quickly make and share these amongst themselves, and as it is all information available freely on line, and as long as no one tries to charge for it, I don't think it will take very long before there are lists of creature stat blocks for each PFS adventure for the folks who want them.
I think there is a much simpler way to look at the problem holistically rather than trying to do a weird super precise RAWR dive. If I am a player thinking about trying this, how likely is my GM to say, "Sure, no problem, you can choose to ready a reaction to move your character has away from an enemy after they have begun an attack action, declared a target, but before the attack roll, wasting the attack action and gaining MAP?" If the answer is "likely," then you don't really have to rules deep dive it anymore. Your GM said yes. If the answer is "unlikely," what makes you think that a pretty obscure rules debate about how and why this should work, with very little clear and obvious evidence, is going to change that answer? The bottom line is that this topic is a conversation of intense GM fiat that is probably something that is going to pop up once or twice ever as a thing worth trying. If you are excited about trying it, talk to your GM in advance if you don't want to get burned. If you are a GM and you are trying to figure out whether to allow it or not, it is much more important you think through what effect it will have on your table and your game than whether it fits squarely within the RAW. Even in PFS, this is not something that your player is going to burn you on if you just make a ruling in the moment based upon your own feelings about how and when readied actions can work. It would be a pretty bad use of Paizo development resources to spend a significant amount of time trying to be any more clear about readied actions than, "fundamentally, talk to your GM explaining what you are trying to accomplish and they will decide what a fair trigger will be and when it will occur." After all, readied actions are very much in the realm of "make something up to do that doesn't really fit cleanly in a turn-based RPG and doesn't have to be computer game or competitive table top game precise to work." As a GM, I find it much cleaner to have readied actions go off between discrete actions as much as possible and don't think it is strange for the targeting of a strike to be something that, in world, is happening before the physical strike action is really taking place...and thus the reaction can and should go off before the strike action occurs at all rather than in the middle of that action, because "turns" themselves are a pretty reality breaking abstraction and actions within a turn even more so. Having to treat PF2 like MtG would be a very quick way to get me to leave PF2.
James has been with the company literally forever, and is really good at interacting with a passionate fanbase that can get very swingy in how they respond to information, especially information they don't like. It is not super fair to expect folks that have not spent more than a decade handling situations like this to be as confident and ready to jump in when there is information that might still be in the air/not ready to share. Like the information put into the blog post probably got multiple sets of eyes upon it and was not the thinking of one person. The folks making decisions about PFS have changed over a couple of times since I have paying attention here, and it is doubtful that any of the current folks are looking to jump out and say a bunch of stuff that could get them in trouble not only with the community but also internally. What was put into this blog could reflect many meetings and previous discussions and was all the information that decision makers felt ready to put out. Now there has been a reaction to that information that may or may not be more intense than anyone thought it would be. It could be that PFS decision makers are wanting to let the information get out amongst PFS players and get talked about for a little bit before they decide that immediate reactions from vocal posters is something they need to jump on. We really don't know, and I get how that makes some folks uncomfortable, but the most they would say is, "we hear you, we are talking about it." That is exactly what James said is happening internally. If someone else jumps into the thread to say exactly that, they are exposing themselves to a lot of potential vitriol for very little reward when the message has already been delivered by as reliable and trust worthy of a messenger as the company has. I think it is fine to keep discussing what people feel about the changes, but I don't see much worth in demanding that someone else step forward to say, "we hear you, we have nothing more to say at this time while we discuss it internally," when we already know that is all that anyone is going to say at this time.
For me, there is no reason to get caught up in trying to carefully parse rules interpretation for deciding if this ability is something I want to allow in my game or not. As far as would I ever allow it? Maybe. One time in a situation where it is a really clever way to tie up a powerful enemy that is probably going to TPK the party if they don't do everything they can to waste its actions this turn, then I would probably not balk at it. But if the party was starting to try to strategize around this one rules ambiguity that has no support with any actions, items, feats, etc. that indicate that this is an activity to character build around (like hiding and sneaking, or create a distraction, or feinting, etc.) , I would stick to, "you can ready an action to move away from an enemy that ends their move action next to you" as close as I would allow for this. The reasons why are multiple: Generally, its not a great strategy. When it is a great strategy though, it is "trade 2 actions and a reaction for essentially wasting a creatures entire turn" or at least 2 actions and giving it MAP. That trade off is way too good to be dice-less, automatic success, especially on higher level solo creatures. Additionally, deciding how to arbitrate it in play is always going to end up pretty gamey and GM dependent. Any time a creature readies an action, how aware of what they are planning is everyone else around them? You do have to spend 2 actions preparing and your character has to be precisely positioned to be able to do their reaction at the right time. Generally, I take that to mean that everyone should be fairly aware of what possible actions the character is preparing to do. There is no deception check here. If a character readies an action to shut a door after the last PC makes it out of a room, I think everyone would be able to see that. If a character is readying an attack for a specific condition to be met, it should at least be pretty obvious that the character is going to make an attack and quite possible when, especially if that is being coordinated with the actions of other characters in the encounter. In PF 1, if a character is fighting defensively, everyone knows it. In PF2, if a character raises a shield or is even parrying, everyone knows it (unless the character has specific class feats that let them raise the shield as a reaction, in which case no one knows when that character will take that action). Spending 2 actions to jump away from someone coming to attack you should be pretty obvious as well. So the player choosing to spend two actions and a reaction on this is pretty dependent upon a GM playing along with the strategy from the beginning and that really feels like a recipe for hurt player feelings if the GM allows the strategy, but then counters it with appropriate NPC play. Minimally, the guidelines around it should be established as "this is not generally going to be a viable strategy, but against particularly mindless enemies, you might be able to get a little bit of milage out of it" if players bring it up as an idea before they try to use it in an encounter. If it come up naturally as a player plan that really doesn't feel like "I looked this idea up on the internet and am trying to force it to happen to show how effectively I can manipulate the rules," and it is against a creature that wouldn't immediately read the situation and just attack someone else, then I probably would allow it the one time and then not again in the combat as the creature sees the consequence, and then have the general guideline talk I mentioned before. But again, the number one reason I wouldn't allow it is because "jumping away from an immediately impending attack" is very much a subset of the general attack roll vs AC game mechanic and not something that should be able to made bypass a die roll by taking advantage of the wonkiness of turn based game play.
The closest I would allow to this strategy is for a player to ready to move away when someone ends a move action adjacent to their character. That feels like a narrative thing that makes sense and is easy to arbitrate without getting too hokey. The readying an action to move away after the character has been targeted with a strike feels too game mechanically driven to me, and like it is trying to replace the whole purpose of what AC is. If character want to spend actions to be harder to hit, that is exactly what raise a shield is there for, and with investment it can even be a way to reduce damage taken (most characters that want to do it get shield block for free but not all of them do). It just doesn't feel like some thing like this should exist in PF2 without being something like a class feat. Edit: It especially feels off because waiting until the strike action is taken would mean the enemy gains MAP as well, so potentially move, wasted attack action, required movement to attack again and MAP is way too much free stuff for 2 actions and a reaction. Not requiring a free hand, not requiring any feats or equipment, not requiring a spell, it just doesn't feel in line with how PF2 works as a system.
I think we can find several skill feats with far less use than Assurance. I agree. I really think the issue with the Assurance feat is the expectation it creates in its name and description to sound like it is universally useful, but that its application ends up being really niche and require a fair bit of system mastery to be able to use. Whereas a feat like Armor Assist is so obviously niche that it is pretty hard to read it and think "this is really going to be useful in regular play situations," if you have any idea of what regular play situations are in the whole genre of fantasy RPGs.
It is clarified in a section of Secrets of Magic (the conjuration section on page 21) that would have to be heavily changed to be remastered. In the player core it just says that summoned creatures are banished instead of killed or destroyed at 0 hp. At the same time, without the Secrets of Magic clarification, summoning is pretty icky and gross, even if it doesn't kill the creatures summoned. It would be pretty disgusting in world as well because there is no will save or anything like that to resist. It also reopens that already fraught Pandora's Box of creature motivations and what it means for a creature that is required to fight for you but might not even be capable of being commanded by you to be on the battle field as your minion. This is already a bit of a mechanical issue in the way that summoning spells and the summon trait work, but it becomes ethically fraught when a spell like summon giant or summon dragon is bringing forth a specific, real, sentient creature from somewhere that would have no inherent metaphysical compulsion to help you.
Note that Summon spells in PF2 create facsimiles, so you aren't desecrating anything or anybody's remains/spirit/etc. w/ Summon Undead (vs. Animate Undead where you were, however contrived it was for such bodies to appear at your location even with low-Rank magic).Wait, summoned undead aren't real?! All the other summon spells would be pretty morally evil (if not unholy in the game world) if the creatures they summoned were real versions of those creatures.
I wonder if people would like the feat better if it was just “automatically succeed any basic DC that is a full proficiency level behind your current proficiency or a level-based DC 2 levels behind your current level,” would go over better with a lot of players, even if there are points where current assurance is better than this. It seems like some players’ frustration stems from not knowing what their likely result really means in terms of when it will help.
I think Assurance would work perfectly if the difficulty modifiers for different kinds of activities applied as circumstance penalties to the check instead of automatic adjustments to the DC. Like if climbing a wall with a rope is typically a DC 15 activity, but becomes a 20 in the rain or a 25 in a huricane, then assurance is useless. But if it stays a DC15 with a -5/-10 circumstance penalty in those conditions then it works fine. I try to run my games that way anyway, but especially try to consider it when I know I have a character who chose assurance because they want to be able to represent themselves as a professional in that area that doesn't make mistakes when doing routine tasks, even under difficult circumstances. Also assurance can also be a good way to check out how difficult something might be if your GM doesn't tell you directly what the DCs for different activities might be and there is a real penalty for critical failure but not for general failure.
I think it is really challenging to convert to PF2 in the middle of a campaign that has hit 18th level. Is there a reason your GM decided to jump now and not finish the campaign and then start a new PF2 campaign at low level? There are just so many things that are different about the games, especially at high level, that if you try to jump right into high level play it is very easy to miss stuff and not realize that certain spells that used to be good for certain things are not, while other types of spells, which used to feel underwhelming, are much better now. This is in addition to the fact that it seems you built a bard character who is dressed up as an summoner, but don't really want to play to support your allies, but rather boost your own summons/eidolons, which is really difficult to do action economy wise (the summons from spells act when you summon it and your songs don't kick in until you do them again, and your archetype eidolon is not a great combat ally, as it seems you have discovered). It is kind of like wanting to play a high level damage-oriented gish in PF1 by putting half your levels into Fighter and half your levels into wizard instead of building a Magus or picking up prestige classes that advance spell casting and BAB.
Having more lower ranked spell slots than some casters (not ones that qualify as top tier blasters) doesn't help with being a great blaster. Spending actions to add rank based damage to spells is not a good force multiplier when your largest pool of blasting spells starts off top rank -2. |
