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"Nethys found some new magic and tried it out" is as good an explanation as any lol. It's certainly something he would do. Hey guys look what I can-
I don't really think PF2 is OSR-compatible at all. At the risk of seeming like a big grouch, I'm not sure this thread really fits here - it seems much more like a blog post, IMO! Would you like to go into more detail? I'd love to discuss it!
Ryuutama has definitely come up a lot in my research! There are quite a few cozy games these days. One I thought I'd mention is Iron Valley if only for how adorable it is.
That last point reminds me of a conversation between 2 incarnations of Moorcock's Eternal Champion, where one asks why they always have to save the world instead of dealing with mundane everyday challenges. And the other answers that maybe mundane everyday challenges are actually more difficult. There can definitely be mundane, everyday challenges that are incredibly difficult (figuring out what to say to someone who's lost a family member, for instance). Saving the world can also be a straightforward, black-and-white affair that represents someone's escape from day to day stress. That's why I think it's important to point out that Difficulty and Coziness are not opposite ends of a spectrum. I've yet to define what cozy means in the context of gaming, but that's partly because it's a bit different for everyone. Some people say cozy games should emphasize nonviolence, but I'm not convinced that kicking skeleton butts can't be cozy. To me, Cozy gaming is all about going at your own pace, making your own goals, self-expression, and being able to fail or make mistakes without it costing you too much. That last part is why, in general, I see "High Stakes" being opposed to Cozy, which is why I'll often use Low Stakes Fantasy as a name for it. I think, technically, a saving the world campaign could feel low stakes if you had unlimited tries at it, or the conclusion was foregone and you were more worried about personal priorities, but I think that structure is very rare.
In Stardew Valley, you have a bunch of reasons to go into the mines, from advancement, to quality of life, to finding gifts for NPCs. In a cozy game, it's easy to find reasons to go into a dungeon, since the rewards don't have to be balanced against your life. I've mentioned "metroidvania-ing", which involves going back and forth obtaining useful tools in one area to make progress in another. I think this can be a powerful element for encouraging delving beyond loot, and creating a satisfying mechanical feedback loop. As for death penalty, you can really make it as punishing or inconsequential as you like. In my game, it triggers a significant monetary penalty and the loss of a chunk of time. Since managing your farm output on a schedule is pretty important, unplanned setbacks in time can have severe ripple effects. You could also go in a more "realistic" direction by stopping everything else to perform a ritual, and going fully into the consequences of crossing back and forth to the Boneyard. This decision will definitely have a big impact on how cozy it feels, however. Haven't had any deaths yet, so we'll see what happens!
Only for characters that are the same level. Attributes kinda work to establish difference between characters in a party and almost nowhere else in the game or world.One mechanical issue I have with trying to represent abilities mathematically in a system where level is so much more relevant is that ability scores only actually matter in a very specific level rangeThat's just flatly untrue. A +1 vs +3 cha person using intimidate is a significant difference all the way throughout levels 1 to 20. Two players of the same level with equal degrees of training, you mean. PF2 decided training matters a lot. Untrained adds nothing, and raw ability matters a lot to everyone in the world from levels 1-20. Training allows you to overcome the difference in natural ability, but it still matters to those at the tops of their fields throughout. This works out perfectly fine narratively, but even more in actual play where the vast majority of checks you deeply care about aren't static.
One mechanical issue I have with trying to represent abilities mathematically in a system where level is so much more relevant is that ability scores only actually matter in a very specific level range That's just flatly untrue. A +1 vs +3 cha person using intimidate is a significant difference all the way throughout levels 1 to 20.
Like I said earlier, if you decouple accuracy from stats but leave them in for most other purposes, you've already done most of the job people seem to think removing stats achieves.Genuine question: if attributes were to no longer affect checks, what would their purpose be? Would they just exist to satisfy feat prerequisites, increase the Bulk you can carry, give you extra trained skills, and so on? I mean they no longer affect the accuracy of attacks and spells. They can still affect damage, skill checks, and everything else they do. A low strength fighter would lose a few points of damage rather than 20%+ of their damage. I think people are just way too focused on the accuracy part of a class's main schtick (to an illogical degree honestly) that removing it from the equation may be enough.
Like I said earlier, if you decouple accuracy from stats but leave them in for most other purposes, you've already done most of the job people seem to think removing stats achieves.
Hi everyone! I'm in the middle of writing and playing a cozy campaign with my group based on Stardew Valley. In developing this campaign and its subsystems I've encountered quite a few game design thoughts that I think would be fun to discuss. Here's one: Dungeons Are Extremely Compatible with a Cozy Campaign This is a big topic, so my apologies for rambling! For those that don't know, in Stardew Valley, a farming sim, there exist several caves/dungeons which you can fight your way through and explore to obtain resources that help you in the rest of the game. These dungeons are fun and can be genuinely challenging. In my experience, true dungeons have been slowly going extinct in D&D and Pathfinder. I see all the time people online admitting that they hardly use dungeons anymore, or that dungeons are reserved for OSR play where torches, prying gems out of sockets, and traps still matter. In many modern groups, a dungeon is on narratively shaky ground from the outset, and proper dungeon exploration clashes with story-and-adventure-driven clocks. The big issues with dungeons, from what I can tell, are: 1. Narrative. A dungeon filled with danger and treasure, waiting for the party to delve its depths. Unless there's some village/town/city/country/world ending threat requiring the party to delve, the player characters have to be suicidally greedy to throw themselves at it just for treasure or fame. Not everyone wants to play such a character. Having a story setup that requires you to explore such a dangerous place lends itself to ticking clocks, outside pressure, and a Main Story that makes taking your time feel strange. It's a tough fit. 2. Megadungeons. Let's say you're narratively incentivized to delve a dungeon (this incentive often encourages exclusive focus on the dungeon). It's pretty hard to come up with similar narrative structures that make you delve multiple dungeons, so you end up pushed to a mega-dungeon. Megadungeons have a lot of weight on their shoulders. They have to have all the experience and loot required for the full level range, and they tend to have big sections with vastly different ecologies and structure in order to keep things fresh while supporting the whole campaign, and even get loaded up with NPCs you'd rather not include just for the completeness of the TTRPG experience. They usually must have a continuous difficulty, without jumps in threat that require returning later. In short, they can end up a thematic disaster, or otherwise prevent you from having a tight, lean, fun dungeon. 3. Traps. We all know about the issues with traps. Too strong, they delete characters. Too weak, they don't matter. Keeping an eye out for traps feels mechanically orphaned from the rest of the game in PF2. In OSR, you're not supposed to be attached to your character, so instant death is allowed to be on the table, but in games where you are encouraged to keep your character around the price of traps is in-game time, which, as discussed previously, is often meaningless. Without traps, dungeons can feel too much like sequential rooms filled with monsters, and traversing a dungeon will have little mechanical distinction from waltzing through the woods. I do think traps are a useful tool if they could be implemented properly. So, what happens when death is off the table, the party has lots of things they want to do in a day, and there is a robust "town/farm" experience that provides incentives for exploration? Since the players know they won't permanently lose their characters, it's no longer about risking your life for treasure, it's risking some time and whatever penalty replaces death. You can have much more reasonable minded characters who would agree to delve. The narrative of exploration is much more palatable, and the decision isn't forced by some outside force or doomsday clock. This, in turn, means exploring multiple dungeons is a lot easier to fit in the narrative, so each dungeon can be more distinct, doesn't have to be bloated with all the treasure and experience you need for a level range, and can even have discontinuous challenges that encourage the party to metroidvania around the campaign. You can also bring "death" back as a trap consequence, though in this case it's a non-permanent penalty, it can still hold a lot more weight than PF2's "okay we heal up the damage and continue" penalty. However, as discussed previously, time as a resource in this type of campaign means stopping to treat wounds and conditions that traps might impose actually matters, since it might prevent you from completing a villager's request by the due date. Additionally, traps designed exclusively to waste time (no damage, no conditions) are suddenly a thing. Going back to the OSR compatibility of this style of campaign, the players are responsible for earning their own money to either meet or exceed the wealth by level table, so they can bring back old school shenanigans like stealing the furniture, searching for every last secret compartment, disassembling and selling traps, etc. Since they're in the same region, they can also take over and convert dungeons (unless you opt for random/regenerating kinds). The players can come up with unusual solutions if they can make the time budget make sense, like tunneling, or flooding. I've been excited to imagine being able to mix and match pre-written dungeons from other sources and using them as drop in content for these style of campaigns, and I've been enjoying flexing my long neglected dungeon building skills. TL;DR: Nonlethal, cozy games can use dungeons effectively as a welcome change of pace from more peaceful activities, without requiring PCs be willing to risk life and limb for a bit of treasure. Dungeon design is easier, and less constrained than in other types of campaigns, and the old tropes of dungeon exploration can be given new life. Have you experienced issues with getting dungeons to fit in your modern campaigns? Do you even like dungeons?
I like attributes. Same with Vancian casting. I'd rather they decouple accuracy from attributes instead of getting rid of them altogether, if something has to be done to change them. I love being able to mechanically express my characters the way I currently can using them, and all the attribute replacement suggestions I've seen sound like hot garbage to me.
In my campaign I have Lol! My consequence is basically "that Cozy label on the campaign? it's starting to peel off at the corner"
I've come across "there's consequences for dawdling but we won't decide what those are or when" when I was playing the Kingmaker CRPG and it was implied that taking too long would be seriously inadvisable... so I ended up save scumming to the max to make as little time pass as possible. I guess I imagined that the consequences would be dire and I would have to restart the whole game. I wonder if I would imagine such a sword of damocles in Mutant YZ as well. If I had a GM who knew to reassure me in Kingmaker or Mutant, maybe that would have made the difference. In my campaign I have a gradual early warning system that something is going wrong if they try to game the system with years doing one repetitive thing with the intention of breaking something else. I haven't mentioned it, and I have no idea if it'd come up.
Hi everyone! I'm in the middle of writing and playing a cozy campaign with my group based on Stardew Valley. In developing this campaign and its subsystems I've encountered quite a few game design thoughts that I think would be fun to discuss. Here's one: Wait, Is This Cozy Game Actually Old School Revival Aligned? Now, admittedly, I'm not an OSR aficionado so I might not be the most up to date with definitions in the space, but as I understand it OSR is all about player agency, fewer prescribed methods for engaging with the game world, allowing players to encounter challenges they're not expected to defeat, emergent storytelling, and increased lethality. In my limited experience, I associate it with a rag-tag group that's banded together to increase their chances of surviving a megadungeon with the goal of extracting loot to increase their own power and pay for extravagances back in town. I think of carousing in town, hiring NPCs, dumping money into local politics, gaining fame, buying castles, or building a wizard school as background goals that the PCs may be actively or nominally doing all this adventuring for. I decidedly don't think of OSR as about saving the world, or even saving the town. In a lot of my early memories it was all about going out and finding adventure from a relatively peaceful starting point. Setting aside lethality (in my opinion, permanent death should be difficult to achieve in a Cozy game), I was surprised to find out that a lot of the subsystems, goals, and game design I was pulling together fit in well with the OSR mentality. I'm able to put dungeons together with foes and challenges they cannot yet face, and may have to metroidvania their way back to. If they do try to throw themselves at these threats, they'll probably lose, costing them some penalty but not game over. They could spend time mining through the walls to get where they want to go, but again time is valuable so that would be a meaningful choice. Since they have all the time in the world to gather resources or earn money, I'm not bothering to hand out loot to make sure they're on the right wealth by level chart. They can do that themselves. They're free to try to invest time in building up wealth so they can stomp lower level encounters, but alternatively they can go in guns blazing and try to get the items they need from those encounters to speed run their long term goals. This also means it's worthwhile to scrap and carry all the loot you can, instead of just handwaving piles of weapons and armor as trash. This in turn makes carrying capacity matter (too many trips back and forth and you don't have time to plant crops!). Having a bag to carry stuff matters. Building up relationships with the NPCs is critical because it gets them access to a lot of different bonuses and incentives (in addition to just having romance goals), as a natural part of their advancement. As an example, special seeds, buildings, or equipment are locked behind NPC trust. It's almost like how fighters automatically got Keeps and retainers in old school D&D; these NPC relationships are just more organically developed. Focusing on one region allows the players to decide to meaningfully advance it if they so wish, and be rewarded for doing so. If they wanted to, they could found a wizard school on the land and have the students help them with magical farming, or build out a farming guild to help with collecting a stockpile of food or paying taxes. I'm of course glossing over the subsystems that I'm working on that encourage these things, like the punishment for subsisting off of rations, the magical farming rules, the bonuses for eating good food, the regional hidden stories and dungeon design, but I thought it was interesting how much overlap there is between OSR and Cozy. TL;DR: Aside from lethality, a lot of the elements of a cozy, low-stakes campaign align surprisingly well with what I understand to be OSR goals. What is OSR to you? Can PF2 even be bent toward what you would consider OSR gameplay? What is Cozy Fantasy / Low Stakes Fantasy / Cozy Gaming to you? Have you ever gotten tired of being tasked with saving the world all the time in your TTRPGs?
I did the same, yet it worked in my campaign. I wondered about the difference, so I asked my wife, the most sandboxy of the players, though two other players out of seven come close. She says that the GM cannot create a sandbox alone. The players have to actively contribute to pushing the narrative and expanding beyond the plot. I think in my case a big contributing factor was my feeling that each addition I made to the game should have a good mix of magical-school content, player background engagement, and exciting encounters. I ended up wedging apart the AP content and getting limited by what sort of rewards I could offer. I didn't want to out-level or out-gear the AP stuff with too much of my custom content. With my experience now with cozy content, I could have devised alternative reward schemes that engage the players' need for mechanical incentives beyond *just* having fun roleplaying. While we do like some good roleplaying opportunities, we also like game structure (which is why we like PF2, now that I think about it), and building relationship points and earning a grade in class would make a big difference. I actually took a look at Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs to see if I could make mechanical hooks to each layer for the players to latch onto and strive towards. Our current mood is a bit more towards main story, which is also because we tend to have one session per month. Everyone is busy having kids and such. So I focus a lot on having every session being a pretty complete standalone thing, that has a good tension curve and completes something by the end of the session. That has been my situation for many prior years. It has taken a toll, in my opinion, on the feel of the game, because watching the real world clock and making sure they make progress in today's story to reach a satisfying conclusion absolutely burns through swathes of opportunities to stop and smell the roses in-game. It's almost unavoidable, though. We had lots of fun, but now I'm hoping to get a more frequent, more bite-sized game going where they run through maybe 7 in-game days in a session, note how they're meeting their targets, and get ready for next time. When you're trying to be as productive with your time as possible, that to me is the opposite of cozy, and taken to an extreme you get stuff like speedrunning, which even in Stardew Valley isn't at all relaxing. Yeah 100%, there are plenty of conversations online about whether Stardew Valley actually counts as a cozy game when so often you'll find yourself fighting your way out of the caves as the clock turns red and your heart rate goes through the roof. I think a key is that it's not happening *all* the time. It occurs in spikes, and even when the clock runs out the consequences aren't life and death so it's more of a "Eustress" situation than it could be. I think you're also right that having positive outcomes they work toward is key. I have a few of those, but I might want to beef up my festival rewards based purely on your suggestion. It sounds like a great idea.
Making sure everyone has something outside of combat that they're interested in is definitely a requirement! I had to spend a lot of time developing content that's both mechanically and narratively interesting enough to make sure people who voted to play a Stardew Valley game *actually* followed through with engaging with noncombat stuff. I *think* there are ways to make such things viable in more traditional adventure games, as long as it's a sandbox. But once you have a main plot line I do suspect that will suck the air out of the room for the rest of the optional content. Stardew Valley is a farming game, right? That's all I know about it, so WatersLethe's analogy went right over my head. Stardew Valley is a popular farming game with cave exploration, combat, mining, and loot in addition to the farming, villager interactions, and holiday events. It gives you a glut of options for what to do each day, and the day's clock ticks by fast, so you can never do all you want to, and it also provides a bunch of different short and long-term goals that give you something to strive for. I highly recommend looking into it if only as reference for its craftsmanship and gameplay design (and music!). Strength of Thousands barely mentions time I know! This Stardew Valley themed game I'm running is coming right off the back of finishing Strength of Thousands. Our group didn't get any of the cozy vibes we were hoping to experience in a magical school game. I had pulled together a calendar and side content and all that jazz, but I came to realize the "main plot" was a huge reason why it just couldn't do what we wanted it to do. We wanted more sandbox, and NPCs to interact with, and options, and down-to-earth gameplay, but everything I came up with to add in that department had to fit into the pacing of the linear adventure. I could very much see us going back to a school with a day-by-day approach like I'm using now, with studying and classwork being some of the optional daily activities.
Hi everyone! I'm in the middle of writing and playing a cozy campaign with my group based on Stardew Valley. In developing this campaign and its subsystems I've encountered quite a few game design thoughts that I think would be fun to discuss. Here's one: Time as a Resource, But, Like, In a Stardew Valley Way We all know by now that using time as a resource is a great tool in a GM's toolkit, allowing you to put pressure on your group, encourage them to use other resources when otherwise they would be conservative, and make efficient performance in combat (even trivial ones) matter. It's gotten to a point where I regularly recommend GMs keep track of the world's tick rate in 10 minute intervals, because even in a dungeon with no big bad planning a doomsday clock, you can generate time pressure by having each tick of the world have a chance for some new threat to arise, or otherwise change the game state. One of the problems with a ticking clock, however, is that now you've got players worried about two high stakes: threats to their characters' lives and limbs, as well as a constant dread of time running out. It's not very relaxing, even if it's more compelling moment to moment. Something interesting happens when you shift the consequences away from the dire; when failure in combat doesn't mean permanent death, and running out the clock is mostly just a matter of losing out on something you would have done in that time. Players start to think of time as a currency that they can afford to spend on things they want, rather than as either an infinite resource that the GM better handwave or they'll riot, or as a nail biting countdown to the Bad End. Resting for ten minutes between encounters starts to stack up and they wonder if they'll have enough time left in the day to get back home, or if they'll have to camp out. Coming out of a combat unscathed means they can move onto the next without taking a break, and maybe fit in a visit to a friend's house in the evening. Going back and forth to the cave to fight slimes means spending travel time that could be used to plant more crops, so it's a great idea to go as far as you can on each trip. Downtime activities like crafting can be mixed into day-to-day adventuring, making Downtime a regular thing rather than a "between story arcs if the GM remembers" type of thing. Time passing feels more realistic, when each hour of each day matters tracking days passing, and keeping the calendar is easy and natural. We're still only a few sessions in, but running Time like Stardew Valley does, as a limit to just how many things you can achieve each day for you to either strategize and optimize or as an outside means of forcing you to make in-world priority choices, has felt quite refreshing! Obviously, a lot of this goes into other elements of the Stardew Valley campaign and its homebrew elements, but I'll save talk about those for another post. TL;DR: When players have many optional things they want to do in a day and a limited amount of time to do them, spending time feels meaningful but not overly dire. How have you experimented with different approaches to handling time expenditure, especially in a sandbox game? What's the finest time increment you find yourself regularly paying close attention to outside of combat?
Happy new year Paizo Staff! Thanks for all your hard work, and keep on being real cool folks!
The reason they're combined is so that they're not utterly boned by resistances. You're already not guaranteed to hit both attacks, so trying to overcome resistance is already punishing as heck. Finally landing both strikes only for the full damage to be eaten to no effect would have people flipping the table. Also, a lot of dual wielders and monks invest heavily in dexterity for various reasons, meaning their strength might not be maxed out, further reducing their peak damage numbers. Even with the combined damage, I'd still take a big accurate single attack over two combined smaller attacks 10 times out of 10 for overcoming resistance.
Seeing as Paizo doesn't have a headquarters anymore one would need to master chronomancy to even attempt it. HEAD quarters. We're sneaking into the chambers of their MINDS!
Cozy Campaign Guide: How to play low stakes fantasy in Pathfinder. Also has detailed and engaging downtime systems like Farming, as well as fleshed out goods and services costs.
Within the context of PF2, I really can't think of an Archmage, at its core, being anything other than a high level arcane spellcaster, and potentially specifically a wizard, and also potentially with some uncommonly powerful narratively-acquired bag of tricks. So essentially, any wizard PC could be an archmage after finishing their high level campaign and getting their end-game rewards. It's a powerful arcane spellcaster + prestige, reknown, and/or wealth (connections, artifacts, political power, underlings, students, a seat of power, etc)
I did plan on lifting the restriction of property runes, forgot to mention that. I'd love for the staff to be a great way for "i'm a pure caster" type players to engage with the rune system. Air repeater also has reload, and can't also be used for melee attacks one and two handed, as well as being a source of extra spell slots. I would say it's probably closer to balanced as-is than granting legendary proficiency with it to most full casters would be.
I think I've come down on it definitely needing to scale off standard weapon attack proficiency. The goal is to compete with having an air repeater, not to make a wizard as good at using an air repeater as a fighter, better than most martials. Conceptually, it's launching an energy attack without building in spellwork to make it accurate. It's not supposed to be anyone's main plan of attack, and making it scale with spell attack is just too no-brainer. You'd never see casters opting to pick up different backup ranged weapons if they liked, since that legendary accuracy is too juicy. If someone were to try to go all-in to optimize it with goodies that power up attacks, I would want a martial to be the one to be able to do that. So a multiclass fighter with a staff that they're really good at going pew pew with, better than a wizard, sits with me just fine. It might even help them feel more like a multiclassed character since they get more from being able to use staves. And yeah, I think a level 1 staff is probably called for in this fantasy. I could see making it only available to spellcasting classes at the start, too.
Actually, from what I remember, they are always using their wands to cast what are considered full on spells in that setting. The Gandalf/Saruman slugfest with staves from the movies might be a closer example from media. In WoW classic some classes would auto-attack with a wand doing chip damage when they were out of mana, which is probably the closest flavor to what I'm proposing.
I actually kind of like the mechanic of getting tougher the more feats of a tough class you take. It is true, however, that it's really hard to get value out of, and I very rarely take it. I would note that Toughness and Resiliency aren't competing with each other, and if you really want to get more HP you're going to get both, and General Feats are, for some reason, the designated boring but effective math increase pool. When you look at the math, it seems like they hit on 3 HP per feat because it leaves you just under the base HP of the next higher HP die after 10 feats of investment. 4 HP per feat makes you match. The problem is that 10 feats of investment is ENORMOUS. Already, I strongly believe you could bump it to 4, and it would easily be fair for that level of dedication. Twice level HP, as Teridax suggests, would be a one feat investment to go up a die size in HP. That might be on the too strong side, and I would see going out of your way for it on any class below d12 hit die. Though, it does have the benefit of being simple. I could see a flat +1 hp per level, plus 2 for every dedication feat. You get a little weaker toughness off the bat, but it stacks with toughness and other options, so lots of HP optimizers would still love it. Then the 2 hp per feat leaves you off at a total +40 if you go 10 feats deep, which means you'd be equal to a die size increase.
I just want to chime in to say Resonance was a good mechanic for *one* of the many things it was trying to do, but making you unable to drink a critical potion because you wore a specific pair of pants that morning was why it failed. Resonance as a consumable power source is well worth re-investigating. Just make sure you don't make it do too much.
Maybe you just do spell attack value, and there is no item bonus to be gained. So eventually it lags behind martial attacks. And maybe for a damage upgrade (psuedo-striking rune) you need a higher level staff. Ooh, I've often complained that high level staves don't have all that much to offer if you're mostly after a bunch of casts of a low level spell. While that was more true pre-true-strike-nerf, having another feature that makes high level staves juicy sounds pretty good to me.
I was picturing using Dex, because it's filling the role of an Air Repeater without the thematic clash. I'd be a bit worried about it being too no-brainer if it used their spellcasting attack. For damage type, I was thinking it would be a best-fit to the staff theme, with maybe fire as a default fallback. Well...I guess because it's a single action activity that is thematically better than using a crossbow. That's the whole reason. I recently watched a video where someone opined that the system assumes low level casters fill third actions with simple weapon attacks, and that clashes with some people's fantasies about casters. The staff thread in general also made me think about how much I like incentivizing casters to care about having a staff in hand.
How would you feel about a high-magic homebrew rule that lets people make a ranged weapon strike with a staff that's 1d4 and a fixed energy type with a ~30ft range, maybe in the sling weapon group like foxfire? Kinda like the idea of doing some old school WoW style wand spam, and making it a bit cooler to have a staff handy.
Yeah I allow property runes on Staves except Shifting, mostly for the *aesthetic*
My players don't tend to pick out a bunch of backup weapons, so whatever their "main" weapon is made from is what they've got. Since they're usually just upgrading their favorite weapon from level 1, it's pretty rare that they even have special materials. Thinking back, I've thrown a number of enemies with Holy weakness and Cold Iron weakness that they never even found out about, and enemies with resistances the martials didn't have a way around that they just switch to support against with athletics, or try to crit through. Our group is probably not a good one to draw conclusions from, though, because they get really into the story and spend gold on non-combat stuff rather than getting excited about new items.
I really wish they had removed the different grades of materials and also the rune-gating, and made precious materials a lot cooler. At least if the effects were awesome the wildly out to lunch prices could be justified. I ignore rune-gating at my tables so no one has to bother with special materials if they don't want to. As-is, precious materials are essentially another monetary loot drop that is hard to slot in anywhere it'd actually be exciting without unbalancing party wealth.
Part of the problem with the Exemplar is that it sought to be able to embody the stories of heroes from mythology, which in large part the entire D&D/Pathfinder paradigm already tries to do with every character. High level PCs are supposed to have legendary items, a big history of heroic acts, fame far and wide, and a shot at challenging the gods or rising to divinity. That's a really common way of playing high level characters since forever. The Exemplar, narratively and mechanically, is sort of a redundant subsystem layered on top of some foundational heroic fantasy adventurer TTRPG assumptions. They mix and match abilities that ordinarily would be spread throughout a party because their inspirations were often solo-acts, they draw class power from items that would ordinarily show up later in the game because mythological figures normally start high level and they had to square that circle, and they go about their party roles in nonstandard ways to differentiate themselves from the classes that would otherwise represent their mythological inspirations. It's not a bad class, I appreciate its variety, utility, and flexibility. I think it's unfair to compare them at face value and say another class does their schtick better. In total, I think they're pretty well balanced. I do find it a shame that they're so item/ikon focused, and are more of a mythological hero, main character-lite class than a Godling class. It would have been nice if many items being kinda boring had been solved so that everyone could have cool items, instead of making a class that kind of hoards the cool item concept.
This is like when the chipotle guy loads you up with double scoops without charging extra
I think it would depend on how you're preparing to aid. is this a skill feat, General feat, Class feat, or Ancestry feat? Context is important. It's a Shirren ancestry feat at 5th level! Each action is tied to a specific form of prep for a specific ally. You’re either aiding two different things on one ally, requiring two different approaches to prep, or two different preps towards different allies. I used it to spit distracting acid to aid my group's operative's ranged attacks against a single enemy. They shot twice, I aided twice, then I thought "That was very good..."
Eager Assistant: At the start of your turn, you gain one additional reaction, which you can use only to Aid. Aid Trigger: An ally is about to use an action that requires a skill check or attack roll. Aid Requirement: The ally is willing to accept your aid, and you have prepared to help (see below). See Below: To use this reaction, you must first prepare to help, usually by using an action during your turn. You must explain to the GM exactly how you're trying to help, and they determine whether you can Aid your ally. I don't see whether this requires you to use two Prepare to Aid actions on your turn in order to Aid an ally twice with your two reactions. Thoughts?
Looks like we are back. Looks that way, but can we ever really be sure? Oh, wait, yeah, I guess we can be sure in this instance.
Thanks for all the insight folks! I was building an NPC animist for funsies and I thought it sounded too good to be true. Glad to see it's just a cool feature that might come in handy once in a while.
How are you doing? How's the weather?
Is there a reason you couldn't burn two focus points to cast Earth's Bile twice, then each round thereafter sustain both? Also, there are focus spells that let you stride or leap when you sustain them. Does that mean you could: 1a: Earth's Bile
1a: Elf Step
Elf step lets you step twice for one action. Liturgist gives you: "Dancing Invocation (9th) The movement of your body grants power to your magic. When you Leap, Step, or Tumble Through, you also Sustain an apparition spell or vessel spell." Would this allow you to sustain two apparition spells or vessel spells for one action as long as you use Elf Step?
See you, space cowboy!
Oh no! Where are all the crypto spammers going to hang out while the site is down? Did anyone think of the crypto spammers?!
I'm going to be here, doing a long salute, as the server goes dark.
Just do what I do and use 12345, I haven't forgotten it yet!
That looks really sharp! I'm looking forward to the new digital content manager because it was so hard to sort out what I have or have not downloaded and backed up! I want to take this opportunity to ask about new puzzles when??
Bigger = better is dumb. If we're talking about having more mass, you can already make normal sized weapons nigh-unwieldable by adjusting the balance and materials. If more mass = more better, weapon design would already account for it. Essentially, you want to have a usable balance between mass and speed to convert your muscle power into damaging strikes that have a hope of hitting their target. If we're talking about size, as long as a face, edge, or point is sufficient for lethality, extra size is only a detriment. Spreading your force over a larger area or introducing more surface area for friction during a cut is just not helpful. Bigger creatures deal more damage because they're stronger, and can handle swinging around more mass at an effective speed. The increased size of their weapons is about durability and comfort. So a regular sized human, who is supernaturally strong enough to effectively wield a giant's sword, would be better off using that strength on a weapon sized for themselves, with a mass distribution that maximizes their muscle effectiveness. I get that some people are still going to be like "but my cool too big sword!" and want a mechanical benefit for using one. If giant instinct barbarian isn't enough, slap on a house rule +1 bludgeoning damage per die to go along with the clumsy condition.
You can make all of your "boss" fights puzzles instead. Your party has a lot of problem solving capability, so complicated situations, complex hazards, alternate win conditions, and large exploitable weaknesses could make these challenging but fun, and stand out from your regular battles.
One of PF2's strengths was the siloing of many options to reduce the cognitive load of making selections. The different feat buckets is the main example. However, item selection is not siloed, and the reduction of slot based itemization from PF1 means you don't generally shop from a selection of rings, then a selection of boots, then a selection of cloaks, etc. It's easy to get lost looking into what you should buy. If things were categorized better, and with a more clear reference to the ABP chart that tells you what you're supposed to have when, it could make the itemization much more approachable.
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