WhiteMagus2000's page

I played in beta, but haven't gotten a book yet, I've just been reading from the SRD to feel out the fully released system, so there is probably a lot of changes I've missed.
First I looked up a ranger (one of my favorites) and saw that they get 10 class feats (same as everyone else as far as I've seen). I was trying to design a typical 3.5 bow ranger, where I would have spent half my feats on bows, 1 on animal companion, and happily accepted the utility spells I got; still leaving some wiggle room for defensive feats or flavor feat or two.
So now if I want to get all the bow feats it'll use 10/10, if I want a decent companion it'll use 3-5/10, and having about the same spellcasting as PF1 would take 4/10. Obviously I can only take half of these. (Did anyone else notice that fighters get better Perception than rangers until level 15?)
Theoretical builds for druids were the same and alchemists even worse. Wizards and Fighters look like they might have a bit more wiggle room, but wizards sure look bland compared to a fighter that can inflict debuffs every round and never run out of swings per day.
Anyway....seems like multiclassing or even dual specing would really gimp the core class most of the time. Is this right? Did miss something?

I can sometime be a fairly pessimistic person, but I wanted to thank the Paizo team for all the fixes in 1.3

This update solves at least a third of my groups issues with PF2. There is still a lot I'd like to see changed but this is a great step forward.

My favorite changes include:
1) The -4 to untrained skills, but a generally reduction in target DCs.
2) Treat Wounds w' Medicine. I would even be on board with healer's kits having 10 charges. With repairs time and reduced identification time, a 20 minute power nap should keep players in the game without having to retreat and rest for the day.
3) Basic fixes to Alchemist and Ranger. Now they look playable and I can probably get my players to play them.
4) Multiclass options for all the classes

Things I'm hoping to see in the future:
1) Bonus damage dice be a quality of the character and not tied to weapon +.
2) Some kind of "at will" ability for alchemists
3) A big buff to ranger snares. The idea for a martial class with battlefield control is awesome, but it has to be much faster, much cheaper, and effect a larger area. Also, did you intend rangers to lose 1 skill? Seems weird.
4) Maybe have ancestry start you with 2 or 3 feats, but move the stronger ones (like +5 move speed for elves) to level 5.
5) More general feats.
6) More user friendly book. Adding one line descriptions to feats and spells. Adding an appendix for conditions. Stating how things normally work for feats that alter normal rules (Furious Focus, I'm looking at you).

Thanks again. I look forward to trying out the new rules this week with my group.

My group (consisting of 2 very experienced players and 2 moderately experienced casual players) just finished our first 2 sessions of the playtest and here are our thoughts so far.

General Character Creation:
* I like the race, background, and class all contributing to your attributes and skills. The current method makes sure that all character's will have good attributes, nothing OP, nothing awful. Also feels like it gives backgrounds a bit of weight and depth.
* Some of the races feels really underwhelming compared to others (I'm looking at your dwarves). Elfs can get the best speed and an at-will cantrip or weapon proficiencies in some of the best weapons in the game. Dwarves can get a +1 against derro and durgar. Most campaigns I never see a single one of those things!
* While the races include the optional feats right there, the backgrounds don't even give a page number. This made finding an ideal background take much longer, as they had to check what each bonus feat did, then go back to the backgrounds, then look up the next mysterious feat. The backgrounds added about 1/2 an hour for the first two players. The third and fourth just picked ones and took whatever it happened to come with.
* All the looking up of definitions, skills, feats, and rules made character creation take about 2 hours per character. Even then, every player had at least one misunderstood rule. Again, none of them are noobs. The current character creation don't come off as "user friendly". If paizo wants to appeal to new players, this is going to have to be addressed. I think just adding one line of definition for the feats, spells, and conditions (when they are mentioned in the character creation), instead of making them look it up elsewhere would fix most of that problem.

Classes:
Alchemist: Our support player, not really wanting to just run a heal-bot cleric, rolled up an alchemist. After three fights we could see the writing on the wall and he re-rolled a cleric.
* Damage and accuracy was consistently lower than the barbarian. Looking at the progression of bombs vs the progression of weapons, it looks like this will always be the case.
* It takes resonance for anyone else to use elixirs already created with resonance. Beyond first level, this is going to make alchemist healing, just not viable.
* Poisons and mutagens look bad, but we didn't have a chance to try them.
*At the very least I would make poison DC (created with resonance) = class DC. Make the first unmodified bomb per round, created with quick alchemy, cost no resonance. Make consuming alchemical buffs and heals not cost additional resonance and increase the dice healed to d8s. Make mutagens have no onset time.

Cleric: Feels like the only viable healer.

Ranger: Feels lackluster. With no spells and most nature related class features being the weak option, they just feel like a pen and paper version of a WoW hunter.
* Two early crossbow only feats, despite the fact that crossbows are still not very good and one longbow only feat at level 18. Looks like it's dual wielding hunters only, or play something else (my players opted for a rogue and barbarian after reading over rangers).
* Pets need some better autonomy. At the very least, keep attempting basic strikes against the target you assigned them to attack 6 seconds ago! Also they should at least defend themselves and you if you can't take actions (like when you are knocked out or asleep). Seriously, the thought of your guard wolf sitting idly by as it's master gets beaten to death seems like more of a joke than a serious ruling. (Timmy falls in a greased pit and yells for lassie to go for help. Lassie takes two move actions away from the pit then stops and stares blankly at the wall for the next 12 hours).
* Snares are awful. One player, while reading the rangers said, "They cost GOLD, and take ten minutes each, and only cover a five foot square? I'd have to lay a whole mine field to guard the camp for the night!" They need, at the very least, to have a trigger area of a 5x5 square, a 10x10 square, or up to a 20 foot line, even if they only effect the first creature to trigger them. And the price for the simple snares should be close to zero. A very basic snare to entangle or make a loud noise should just cost some fishing line and anything that's loud when dropped.

Skills:
*Lore. WTF is this thing? My players have no idea what kind of lore they should take and I have no idea what I should suggest. I understand that Profession seems to be rolled into lore, but what kind of goofball lores are we expected to take and under what situations are they going to be relevant? This was why I didn't like profession in PF1. It was usually useless expect in say Skull and Shackles where everyone needed profession: sailor. I would really like a list or guidelines for this thing. Is evil outsider lore legit? Does it have to be demons only? Does it have to be quasits only? Who knows?
*Medicine. Does medicine work for anything other than bleeding, poison, and disease? How about any kind of continuous damage? In first aid I was taught how to treat acid burns, regular burns, and frostbite. Surely we aren't assuming that a trained combat medic is less educated than your average 14 year old boy scout. Also, did anyone else notice that at first level your chance of critically failing a DC20 heal check is about the same chance of being successful? This contributed to the alchemist re-rolling as a cleric that can actually heal as advertised.

Feats:
*More general feats please.
*PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE add a one line description of what the feat does one the feat index, like in PF1. Without that help it makes finding good feats for your character much harder. I even had a hard time after I read a feat that looked good, but had a hard time re-finding it for a player who might want it, because it had a name that was similar to several other feats. Selecting feats currently feels like a chore, when it used to be to most fun part of building your character.

Equipment:
* Longbows: -2 to hit under 50ft range. Really? Can rangers at least get some kind of exemption from this, seeing as how it's there most iconic weapon in lore. Robin hood? Not using a crossbow. Legolas? No crossbows. Aragorn? Nope, no crossbow. Drizzt? Still no crossbows.
*Clumsy seems to be REALLY bad, unless we aren't reading it right. A breastplate gives the save AC as chain mail, but also includes a -4 to all Reflex saves. Seriously? Well, I guess breastplates and full plate are going to be a thing of legend now.

Spells:
* I like it improvement of cantrips from mostly worthless to at least initially being decent. Helps make up for the loss of spells per day and other overall weakening of most spells. I would like to see cantrips damage increased to be closer to an actual weapons, past level 4. A Ray of Frost doing 4d8+int sounds good, until you realize that a fighter will be doing 6d12+str at the same level and will be hitting more often and usually with secondary effects.
*PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE add a one line description of what the spells do to the alphabetical spell list. By the time we got here in character creation my two caster's were so tired of looking stuff up, that they just grabbed the same spells they would have grabbed in PF1 and hoped for the best.

Magic Items:
* I really don't mind resonance. I sometimes bugs me when players will use a bunch of disposable magic items to over-buff before what should be a tough fight or cure light wounds wand to take away any tension from being injured.
* I really like the merging of armor and resistance cloaks. Feels like the streamlining that I really want to see from PF2.
* I really hate magic weapons. Not only does it feel non-heroic when you notice that most of your melee damage is from your magic sword and not from you, it has some negative mechanical effects too. First, due to limits of resonance and gold, you aren't likely to have backup weapons. In PF1 (any all other RPGs) I always have a backup weapon or two in case you get swallowed or disarmed or have to fight something that is resistant to your favorite weapon. Not only this, but the players are going to quickly notice that NPCs don't abide by this rule. A gnoll captain gets 2d8 from his scimitar, but when defeated, it drops down to only 1d8 in your hands. I recall in AD&D how an NPC elf's damage was 1d10 or by weapon, while an elf PC could only punch for 1d3 damage. Players notice when the game is rigged against them and generally don't enjoy it. The solution seems extremely simple; everyone adds +1 dice every 4 levels (When you are scheduled to get the next tier of weapon anyway). I'd also apply this to cantrips (instead of their normal progression), because a 6d12+str damage sword swing that takes one action is still better than a 6d8 Ray of Frost that takes 2 actions and doesn't get any bonus to hit. Magic would still apply bonuses to hit and secondary effects (such as holy and flaming), so they would still be desirable over non-magic, but wouldn't be the foundation of the martial character's damage.

Other:
* Hero Points: None of us are really fans of hero points, but a get out of death card is certainly handy these days.
* RNG. While it might just be 1st level blues, I get the impression its not. With skills, attacks, and spells appearing to work about 50% of the time, at all levels, bad luck looks like it can be pretty dangerous. In a couple of fights where the monsters rolled poorly, the players just demolished them. Then in the next fight, against CR 0 centipedes, they got unlucky and someone ended up losing their full HP in damage from a single poison bite. Not a huge deal, but I recall reading back in college that the most addictive % of success (to keep gamblers gambling or gamers gaming) was 70%.

Doomsday Dawn:
* Seems like the enemies have lots of poison and high hit rates. Skeletons +6 to hit, goblin +6, centipede +6, quasit +7. The best to hit bonus in my player's party is +5. From the ooze, centipedes, and quasits they had to make saves about 10 times, each with about a 50% chance of success. They got lucky and only got poisoned twice (inflicted 15/17 HP to the cleric and 12/15 HP to the wizard).
* I thought we were going to NOT have magic items by the bucket full anymore? Still a couple minor magic items, 4 scrolls/potions, a wand that I can't really see anyone using, and a +1 ghost touch dagger. Of course, since runes are basically just magic stickers that can be pealed off and pasted on other things, the barbarian now has an axe that does 2d12+7 damage (w' rage), while the rogue is still doing 1d6+4.

I want to like PF2, but in it's current state, we'll probably just stay with PF1. Some issues with bland customization, but I'm less worried about that as additional books always add lots of options. I'll cut this up and put each topic on it's own page, but since issues touch on more than one topic at a time, I wanted it all together.

Just finished reading through rangers and I'm not sure if I missed something, or are the traps highly impractical, at best. In fact, other than having a companion pet, rangers now just look like crippled fighters. Did I miss a feat or option or something that lets them be deployed as a single action that costs no money and does real damage?

We all know there are taboo subjects that we can't discuss on the forums. I'm fine with that and it makes sense to me. These subjects are ones that are unpleasant, at best, and positively sickening, at worst. But please, don't make these subjects part of the APs if we can't talk about them.
For instance all players starting the skull and shackles AP start in this state and are expected to inflict this state upon others. If there are certain subjects too horrible to talk about, don't make them a significant part of the game! If we can't talk about torture, don't list the statistical benefits of torturing prisoners and then forbid people to talk about it.
It's too late to do anything about this now, but in designing 2e APs, you should probably keep in mind what subjects pathfinder should include and not include.
I'm honestly not trying to start a fight with the devs (although I don't really care if I get banned), I just want the rules of what subjects that are part of the game to be clear. Thanks for your time. I'm hoping for good things with 2e.

A question on the subject:

Slashing Grace
Prerequisite(s): Dex 13, Weapon Finesse, Weapon Focus with chosen weapon.
Benefit: Choose one kind of light or one-handed slashing weapon (such as the longsword). When wielding your chosen weapon one-handed, you can treat it as a one-handed piercing melee weapon for all feats and class abilities that require such a weapon (such as a swashbuckler’s or a duelist’s precise strike) and you can add your Dexterity modifier instead of your Strength modifier to that weapon’s damage. The weapon must be one appropriate for your size.

Weapon Finesse
Benefit: With a light weapon, elven curve blade, rapier, whip, or spiked chain made for a creature of your size category, you may use your Dexterity modifier instead of your Strength modifier on attack rolls. If you carry a shield, its armor check penalty applies to your attack rolls.

So slashing grace specifically says that long sword works with this combination, while weapon finesse doesn't list long sword as a legal finesse weapon. Which one is right and which is heresy? This actually is an issue in my game right now, and my players are super autistic (they use hero lab and cannot use anything other than a literal interpretation of any rules. I hate hero lab).

"Prestidigitation lacks the power to duplicate any other spell effects." With that in mind, what are some things it used to be able to do, but can do longer do, since it duplicates another spell or what did you use it for before finding out it's technically illegal?

I'll go first;
You used to be able to use it for distractions, and still can, so long as you don't use it to rustle bushes. You could lift and drop a pebble on the bush or just make it "clean" a 1ft square below the bush, making a rustling with the expelled leaves and twigs. But....

Underbrush Decoy (druid 1, ranger 1, shaman 1)
You cause a plant to rustle noisily, distracting nearby creatures.

I also nominate this spell as a "worst spell in the world" candidate, since it does the same thing as ghost sound, but way worse.

Also had a bard with Improved Dirty Trick that would magic up a pocket full of sand for blinding enemies. It might be legal to throw in enemies eyes, as long as they aren't spellcasters.

So in Unchained we saw some much needed love for some old classes that needed work. I'm generally happy with what they did.

Recently paizo has drawn the nerf bat and done some serious whomping. Some things, we all know deep down, needed it (using a black powder musket like an assault rifle, really?), other things, not so much....

My hope for the future: Take a second look at the older feats and archetypes. I'm not talking about the OP stuff, or even the stuff that anyone could ever argue was OP in any way. I'm talking about the crap, the filler, and the noob traps. Especially in the core book. You know, those 25% of feats you'll never see on an optimized player.

As a GM, there is little I like less than looking over the character sheet of a new player at level 1 or 3 and having to say, "Dude, that feat sucks. You don't want to be Athletic, you want to know how to Power Attack or Deadly Aim". They generally don't like it any better.
I, as a veteran player, would also like to look over those old feats and maybe have a good way to use them.

I would love to see many of those skill bonus feats, run, any of the ones that let you cast a cantrip a couple times per day, endurance, etc. get a secondary benefit to help them out. Nothing huge, I'm thinking trait sized bonuses. Something like:

Athletic: +2 Climb, +2 Swim, +1 on Fort saves
Deft Hands: +2 Disable Device, +2 Slight of Hand, +2 on Dirty Trick attempts.
Acrobatics: +1 damage on flanking attack rolls.
etc., etc., etc.

Your thoughts?

Does anyone know if its legal to get both the Infiltrator and Wild Hunter
on the same (ranger) character?

While neither replace the same class features, infiltrator's adaptation is based off your favored enemy selection, which you wouldn't have. Does this just not work, or does the common sense solution apply, like with camouflage and hide in plain sight.

Seems like you should just pick a favored enemy when you get adaptation, for the purpose of this class feature only, but I'm not sure if thats technically legal. Anyone know? Thanks.

Also does anyone know the action that is used to activate adaptation? It doesn't say (or I just missed it).

After thinking about the too narrow focus of fighters and talking with some other GMs I came up with this. What do you guys think?

Skill Ranks per Level: 4 + Int modifier

Diverse it Gets (1 to 5): You are educated, and in studying you have learned that man is mortal. While you don't laugh in the face of certain doom, you might know how to avoid or escape the situation. Select one of the following each time you get a rank in this:
* Pick 2 non-class skills. They are now class skills, and you can retrain any number of ranks into them, at no cost.
* Gain Skill Focus in a class skill in which you have at least 1 rank.
* Gain Signature Skill with a skill that you already have Skill Focus with.
This replaces Bravery 1-5

Additionally, we tried modifying a crappy feat tree to make them worth taking;
Vital Strike: Usable with Charge actions
Improved Vital Strike: Also add specialization and weapon training damage (+6 at level 11)
Greater Vital Strike: Add double specialization and weapon training damage (+14 at level 16)

We've been using the modified vital strike in our last campaign, up to level 12 now, at it seems to help the fighter do decent damage the first round, about like 1.5 to 2 normal hits. The fighter doesn't need any help doing tons of damage on a full attack.
With the extra skills and "free" focus's, the fighter can be decent at some non-combat stuff, even if they don't really have ideal attributes for it.

In pathfinder we, as experienced players and GMs, often get so caught up in numbers, and stats, and rules that we forget the RP and thematic elements of the game, so let me paint you a word picture:

The scene: An alchemist (with no ranks in diplomacy and using charisma as a dump stat) is introducing his new tumor familiar to the rest of his party.
The familiar: Uses the stats of a compsognathus, with the Valet archetype, Extra Item Slot feat, and poisoner's gloves.

Alchemist "Ok, there have been rumors that I've acquired some kind of horrible, otherworldly, parasite, and I want to clear the air.
(The familiar emerges from a hole in the alchemist's belly where his navel used to be. It looks like a Queen chestburster. Go Google it, I'll wait.)
"First; its an alchemical symbiote, not a parasite. And yes, it will climb around on you and inject you with its stinger, and I admit it is venomous. But I've ordered it to only inject you with various performance enhancing solutions, nothing dangerous. And even if it did inject you with its toxins, and it totally, probably, wont do that, it can't do any long term damage, just cause temporary muscle paralysis. And its completely sterile, so there's absolutely no way it could lay eggs in your throat while your unconscious.
So in short, while its presence and injections mid-combat may be mildly uncomfortable at first, I'm sure, with time, you'll grow it enjoy it and see that its all for the best."

Using the Advanced Race Guide I've remade Shifters into the following for use in Pathfinder.
Shifter
+2 Dex, -2 Cha, (+2 Str, Con, or Wis*, chosen at creation) 1 Point
Lesser Change Shape (werewolf) 3 Points
Skilled 4 Points
Fast (+10)* 1 Point
Low Light Vision* 1 Point
Bite 1d3* 1 Point
Point Total: 11
*: Only active while in werewolf form

Yes, they are obviously inspired by Worgen as well, so you don't have to point that out. Although their point total is a bit higher than most core races, their human form is essentially just decorative, so that 3 point power really provides no benefit beyond flavor. The choice between several attributes is from the old 3.5 shifters, so I put the cost at 1 point for the most expensive possible combination.

Just what to hear what you guys think. Thanks.