Wilhelm Alcontara's page

In playing through The Dragon's Demand so far we've found some points of confusion in the storybook. I wanted to bring attention to them so that they can get some clarification and possibly a FAQ entry. I suspect that these will be a thorn for others as well.

In the Dragon's Demand scenario 1C (The Wizard's Estate) the danger says to randomly choose a new Eldritch story bane. However the Eldritch trait does not appear on any story banes. The "during the scenario" text also references Eldritch story banes. For this one I assumed all of the level 1 story banes that had the magic trait or were barriers. Unlike the other two, I wasn't very certain about this one.

Scenario 1C, which does not have a villain, also doesn't list an alternative victory condition. Based on scenario 1A (And lots of prior experience with the PACG) I assumed that the condition was to close all locations.

Similarly, in scenario 2B (A Piece of the Auction) the danger says to randomly choose a new Artifice story bane. The Artifice trait does not appear on any story banes. For this one I assumed that it meant Construct.

So, as it exists in its current playtest form, I find the Lore skill to be rather lacking. A lot of my feelings toward Lore stem from the vagueness of the skill in terms of what you're actually getting, and from the bizarre (in comparison to other skills) way in which it represents a seemingly infinite number of skills in a rather unsatisfying way. Sure, I can have all the Lore skills I could possibly want, but there's little expectation that any given one of them will be useful (barring GM guidance) unless you have a whole lot of downtime.

But I recently had a thought about how the skill could be improved into a more satisfying interaction with the game world without actually changing it a great deal. The crux of the change is that Lore is no longer a potentially infinite series of separate skills, but one single skill that functions in both a general and specific sense. How do I mean? Let me explain by showing specific examples:

Lore (Int) Overview:

Lore represents specialized information about a narrow topic, as well as general information absorbed over a lifetime of experiences. When you become trained in Lore, choose an appropriate subcategory to represent the specialized nature of your knowledge. This category can represent a profession (such as a baker or blacksmith or sailor) or it could represent a field of study (such as a creature type, like vampires or dragons, or a plane of existence other than your native plane, like the Abyss or the Ethereal Plane), or a historical concept (like Ancient Thassilon or the Dominion of the Black). It’s always a good idea to consult with your GM about the subcategory of Lore that you specialize in, as some options may be more or less appropriate for a given campaign or setting.

The Three Main Uses Of Lore:

{A} RECALL KNOWLEDGE
[Concentrate]
You can attempt a lore check to try to remember information related to a subcategory of lore you specialize in. The DC is set by the GM and is determined by the obscurity of the information you try to remember.
Success: You recall a relevant piece of information.
Critical Success: As success but you recall an additional piece of relevant information.
Critical Failure: You recall an incorrect piece of information.

{A} RECALL GENERAL KNOWLEDGE
[Concentrate]
You can attempt a lore check with a -5 penalty to remember information not related to a subcategory of lore you specialize in. The DC is set by the GM an is determined by the obscurity of the information you try to remember.
Success: You recall a relevant piece of information.
Critical Success: As success but you recall an additional piece of relevant information.
Critical Failure: You recall an incorrect piece of information.

PRACTICE A TRADE
This is a very long entry because of the complicated nature of Practice A Trade, but the gist of it is that you can practice a trade in a profession you specialize in, or you can attempt to work in a profession you haven't specialized in at a -5 penalty (subject to GM discretion, etc, because some jobs are unsuitable for those with no experience).

Other Rules Interactions:

I think this change from many skills to one with binary functions (specialized or not) makes many of the interactions with other places in the rules a whole lot cleaner. Because it isn't taking up many different skill slots, it no longer competes as badly with your other skill increases. So something like Additional Lore could just let you choose another Lore subcategory to be a specialty, and for all your specialties you just use the same proficiency rank and bonus in Lore.

And then there are things like Bardic Lore, which could be simplified to the following sentence: "When you use Lore to Recall General Knowledge" you don't take a penalty.

You now have a single handy catch-all skill for what your character could possibly know, like Athletics is a single handy catch-all skill for feats of physical strength. Because of the inherent penalty (which can be tweaked to suit the success rate desired, -5 is just a nice round number), you're still much better off having one or more Lore Specialties, and Recalling Knowledge (even untrained) in the other skills that can Recall Knowledge is still desirable as well.

And, when designing rules elements where it matters whether you've studied in a given area or not, one can reference Recall Knowledge and Recall General Knowledge as separate entities. Option X might apply to Recall Knowledge, while Option Y might apply to Recall Knowledge and Recall General Knowledge. Furthermore, it can also cut down on one area that I've seen can take up table time flipping through rulebooks: if you can't find which skill knowing about something should fall into, just call it a General Knowledge check and move on.

So, what do people think about making Lore just one skill? I think it has potential to fix the most glaring issues I have with the skill, but I'm curious to see whether or not this addresses some of the other problems people have been having.

I think it would be helpful to include a sidebar with a suggestion along the following lines, possibly in the skills section or the running the game section.

If your vision of your character's history would conflict with the applications of the rules in some way (such as an character with a trained or better proficiency rank in athletics that has lived their whole life in the desert and never learned to swim), you can choose to voluntarily reduce your proficiency rank for a subsection of a skill or other rules element below its usual rank. The default assumption for this reduction (as with the example above) is to treat your proficiency as untrained in the area in which your character is deficient. This means that you do not qualify for any feats or options that depend on your proficiency if they would relate to that aspect of the rules. (As with the example above, a character with Legendary proficiency in Athletics that has chosen to be unable to swim would not qualify to take the Legendary Swimmer skill feat.)

It's important to confer with your GM and your play group before taking a voluntary penalty like this, to make sure that doing do will not be disruptive to the group or the story in which your character exists.

If, after taking such a voluntary penalty, the story changes in such a way that causes your character to overcome, or seek to overcome, this weakness, you can use downtime for retraining as though you were retraining a proficiency increase. With each use of downtime in this way, increase your proficiency rank in the area you took the voluntary penalty once, to a maximum of your overall proficiency in the area. Once your proficiency in the area in which you took a voluntary penalty matches your overall proficiency, you no longer need to count its proficiency separately. (As with the example, a character that is a Master of Athletics, but is unable to swim, could use retraining to improve from Untrained proficiency in swimming to Trained proficiency, and could do so again to reach Expert, and then again to reach Master, but could not continue retraining to achieve Legendary proficiency since they lack Legendary proficiency in Athletics.)

I see the argument pop up every so often that the +1/level skills system makes no sense, and sometimes the argument is based on the way that certain areas of competence are lumped in together with the way that PF2 is streamlined. Having something like this codified in the rulebook this allows someone for who this is a conceptual problem to have a well-defined path for assuaging their cognitive dissonance, while also including a helpful reminder that you should make sure you aren't being disruptive.

Also, by not including any mechanical benefits (just psychological ones), and by giving guidance for how long it should take if you later reverse your decision, you don't accidentally provide any incentives for whole swathes of the player base taking, presumably roleplay-based, disadvantages for personal power - but only to fulfill their character concept.

At first I liked the +/- 10 success system. I thought it was cool, and there is a pleasant, natural consequence of beating (or failing) a DC by such a large margin. It feels like something ought to happen for managing that, and I do very much like that it does.

But over time I've come to realize that PF1 did it better. In the places where it matters (because even with the PF2 system not every check has a result for all 4 tiers of success) I think that codifying everything to +/- 10 turns out to actually be unnecessarily limiting at best. Allow me to explain a little more in-depth.

Let's look at survival as a prime example. PF2 survival has the following results: Success: You survive with enough to sustain yourself; Critical Success: you survive with enough to sustain yourself and 1 other, or make your own survival comfortable; Failure: You don't get enough to survive; Critical Failure: Not only did you suck, but you also broke your legs and an owlbear came by an urinated on you (paraphrase).

Now let's look at PF1 survival. It still has a DC you must achieve in order to sustain yourself, but it has the ability to assist in the survival of others for every increment by which you beat the DC. If you are a survivalist, you can reasonably expect to use your skills to help your whole party and (pulling a little from Ironfang Invasion) if you have a party of survivalists, you can reasonably expect to use your combined skills to feed and shelter yourselves plus a gaggle of refugees. But consider that same situation converted into PF2. At best you can provide food and shelter for N*2 creatures, where N is the number of survivalists in the group.

There are several other places where one can make a similar comparison between PF1 degrees of success and PF2 degrees of success, and in many cases the PF2 crit success having only one, and fixed, increment turns out to be more limiting in terms of over-success threshold and what reaching that threshold allows. Sure, the math is easy - adding +/- 10 is trivial for most people, I think.

But what if, instead, we made the system a hybrid of the PF1 degrees of success and the spell heightening mechanics?

Let's take a look at survival again and I can give you an example of what I mean:

Success: You forage for enough food for yourself and your shelter gives you basic protection from the elements, providing a subsistence living.
Success (+X): You also provide basic food and shelter for 1 additional person, or provide comfortable subsistence living for 1 creature for which you are already providing basic food and shelter.
Failure: You are exposed to the elements and don't get enough food, becoming fatigued until you get enough food and shelter. (The skill text can provide the stipulation that if you don't attempt the check yourself, you automatically receive a result of failure unless another creature includes you in their success).

Now let's take a look at some other, less obvious areas where the 4 degrees of success are partially applied and see how this change might interact with them. Let's look at the Nalfeshnee (Boar Demon) and its Greedy Grab reaction ability.

PF2 Current Version:

Trigger: A creature critically fails a weapon Strike against the boar demon.
Effect: The boar demon tries to snatch the weapon used in the triggering Strike by attempting an Athletics check to Disarm the boar demon(?) at a –2 penalty. On a success or critical success, the boar demon takes the weapon into one of its hands instead of the normal success effect.

Revised Version:

Trigger: A creature fails a weapon Strike against the boar demon by X or more.
Effect The boar demon tries to snatch the weapon used in the triggering Strike by attempting an Athletics check to Disarm at a –2 penalty. If successful, the boar demon takes the weapon into one of its hands instead of the normal effect.

Or how about pick a lock?

PF2 Current Version:

Success: You gain 1 success toward opening the lock.
Critical Success: You gain 2 successes toward opening the lock.
(Bonus) Quick Unlock Skill Feat: When you succeed at a check to pick a lock, you gain 2 successes instead of 1. When you critically succeed at such a check, you gain 3 successes instead of 2.

Revised Version:

Success: You gain 1 success toward opening the lock.
Success (+X): You gain 1 additional success toward opening the lock.
(Bonus) Quick Unlock Skill Feat: Add 1 success to any successful result when you pick a lock.

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I could go on, but I'd like to think that this is enough to show that not only is this revision often more concise, but it's more versatile in practice. It gives the freedom to make that "+X" whatever is most appropriate for the situation instead of one blanket number, but it also now opens up the design space for potentially unlimited degrees of success where appropriate. Legendary survivalist leading a whole army through the hidden path in the swamp to encircle the enemy? Check. Master lock-picker getting the vault open in the time it takes for another character to wonder aloud about the combination? Check. With less reliance on specific numbers and specific categories, the whole thing has the room to breathe and be more robust, and there should also less need to so tightly control the size of the numbers that characters are allowed to have.

EDIT: Forgot to include, if you still only want there to be 1 degree of success you can still use the spell heightening convention. So a DC 15 check that has only one additional success result at +10 might look like this:

Success: Text
Success (25): moar text

One topic of discussion I see pop up frequently is the overwhelming tendency for the sorcerer and wizard to multiclass. I believe this is strongly correlated with the overall lackluster class features and abilities that they get. There just isn't a strong incentive to pick your own class options, because others prove to be better with just a little math. I think the best way to approach this problem is not to further deconstruct the other multiclass options, not to place limits on how many feats you can take from outside your primary class, and certainly not to reduce the number of class feats that these classes get to pick from.

Rather, I posit that the best and most effective solution is to make the class options better, so that there's more of an incentive to stay within your class. Ideally, any given multiclass character should be pursuing that path because they wanted those other features, not because they didn't want their own features, as we see so frequently at this stage in the game.

I'm not one to propose a problem and solution without offering up some specifics of how I think this could be accomplished. In this thread I'll be focusing on the Sorcerer specifically. And for the Sorcerer, I think the biggest avenue for improving their class features revolves around their biggest draw: the bloodlines. Currently, each bloodline gives you three bloodline abilities (until 1.3 these were not optional). To go along with giving Sorcerers the same number of class feats as everyone else (a topic I discussed HERE) I would propose expanding the amount of bloodline abilities to 7. In this scenario, each bloodline is providing some sort of class feat option at levels 1, 2, 6, 10, 12, 16, and 18. I will give examples of these expanded bloodline options, as well as make some points about some of the other Sorcerer class feats which could be made into more usable and/or attractive options.

Additional Notes

I tried to balance these options theoretically against other, similar options where they existed, but have not gotten a chance to rigorously test them. Additionally, these suggestions are not exhaustive - there's absolutely still room to make other adjustments to Sorcerer class feats to make them more attractive options. Finally, while I provided some specific options here, they are intended to be examples rather than demands - as in I think the Sorcerer would benefit from changes like these rather than necessarily these specific changes and only these specific changes

I'd love to hear other thoughts on what can be done to improve the bloodlines, and just generally make the Sorcerer a more attractive class in general. I think the design space of a class that alters itself so dramatically based on your choices is so fascinating to explore, and I started thinking about this because I want to explore it more - the playtest version feels like a timid dipping of a toe in these waters, and I'd love for it to do a full-on cannonball instead. This has been a fun exercise to go through, even if nothing ever comes out of it but house rules, and I'd like to thank everyone who stuck with me through the whole thing!

Recently, I've been thinking very long and hard about the organization structure of the feats and the rates of acquisition for the various kinds of feats. I've seen a lot of ideas that I've liked, and have helped me to form my own synthesis of others' ideas and my own. The purposes of these suggestions are to better match my own internal expectations of what should be parceled where, and to most accurately replicate the intangible (and admittedly subjective) "feeling of Pathfinder" - which has been the major driving force of why I've preferred Paizo's iteration of the game to any other that I've tried.

I'll go in alphabetical order.

Ancestry Feats

One common complaint that I've seen, and one which I've come to share after a great deal of thought, is that the ancestries feel like they've been unnaturally stretched out over a character's career. You don't get enough at the beginning to feel satisfied, and then you feel like you get to slowly "buy back" all of the things that these ancestries used to have as a given. Now, I really like that many of those things are optional. I really like it. But the current implementation feels like too little butter for too much bread. There's alse a frustrating inelegance to heritage feats. Nowhere else in the game is there such a stipulation that this feat may only be taken now, and if you pass it up you are S.O.L.

So I would suggest that we stop trying to spread the butter so thinly. Instead of giving 5 acnestry feats over the course of the whole gamut of levels, instead give those 5 ancestry feats right away at level 1. It's not even like many of the ancestry feats have a level greater than 1 anyway. Now make "Adopted Ancestry" a universal ancestry feat, allowing you to take any non-heritage feat (although I would change the name of the trait from "heritage" to "biological," that's what it really means to say). For those ancestry feats that were level 5, each and every one of them was a variant of "if you have your ancestry's weapon familiarity, you now get access to critical specializations for those weapons." Giving that at level 1 is probably too strong, but since they're all basically identical feats, you can wrap all those up together as a level 5 general feat with the prerequisite that you must have your ancestry's weapon familiary feat.

I also suggest that more of these feats could then stand to have benefits that scale with level, so you can continue to get "more dwarfy" in the areas of dwarfiness that you chose as you get higher in level, without the weirdness some have a hard time accepting like Half-Orcs developing darkvision at level 5.

Class Feats

Class feats are presented as your way of customizing your class. I like this concept a lot. It has a lot of benefits, not the least of which is striving to make each class have meaningful choices throughout a character's career, and to notionally prevent cookie-cutter characters. There could stand to be a great deal of balancing for power level of class feats throughout characters, but that's not what I want to talk about here.

The thing I want to talk about is that not all classes get the same number of class feats. Why are some classes inherently less customizable than others? It doesn't make sense to me. I get that invariably the classes with fewer class feats are the ones that cast spells, but it seems to me that making them less customizable is a poor way of achieving balance. The balance should be achieved by scrutinizing the content of the class, not by saying you get less content overall. You don't even necessarily need to add more feats to the classes for this, since you can always take a lower-level feat you passed up. If the feats are hard choices because they're all good (debatable at present, but that's not the point) then getting a chance to pick the one you didn't give the nod can be something worthwhile.

I would like to see every class get a class feat at level 1 and every even level thereafter. That being said, I'm fine with the structure that some classes have which gives you a specific level 1 class feat depending on other choices you make. As long as everyone is getting access to the same quantity of content, I think that's good enough.

General Feats

This is a big one. As discussed in another thread, I think that the basic mechanics of a combat style should be universally accessible, even to those classes which have nothing interesting to add to them. We shouldn't have to have n different feats for two-weapon fighting, etc., where n is the number of classes in existence. And if you don't have n different feats, then you have characters of classes that can't use a fighting style in any reasonable way because the system was not made adequately future-proof. This is a little insane, and flies in the face of the elegance that this edition has been striving to achieve everywhere else.

So I would prefer the building blocks of combat styles, things like Power Attack and Double Slice and others, be made into general feats. Give them the Combat trait, so that you have the design space for some classes (like the Fighter and its martial ilk, for example) to have different interactions with them (like potentially choosing one instead of a class feat). I would then give a general feat at all odd levels, starting with 1. As I discussed earlier, Class Feats are really "class customization options" - general feats are those things that used to be feats in 1st edition once you remove all of the options that should obviously have been made into class feats instead. I don't think we should get less of them in this new edition.

As far as classes that have something interesting to say about a combat style, those classes should have class feats which alter the way those general feats work instead of reproducing the same feat with slight variations. This system is both future-proof and reduces conceptual workload when designing new classes. You don't have to think how class X does each and every combat style, you only have to think how this class would do any given one differently. If the answer is "it wouldn't," then that's not a problem - they can just use the vanilla feats.

I would also make Attack of Opportunity a general feat. During the previews it was suggested that any character so inclined could invest in being able to do this activity. This is why I felt that it would be okay for only the fighter to get it by default. But until update 1.3 that wasn't true, and now it's sort of true but only if you want to multiclass. If you make it a general feat, you can still give it to fighters for free, but anyone else has to pay some opportunity cost to get it. And then you can give the Paladin something else that's more interesting at level 6 which better competes with the other options of that level.

Skill Feats

I'm going to set aside for the moment my feelings toward the quantity and quality of the skill feats. I understand that it's a playtest and the options are therefore narrower in scope than I would hope for, since there was only so much space in the physical book they were going to print.

The thing I want to talk about here is when you get them. Skill feats are a major source of character customization in the arena of what you can do with your skills, but currently every character (except the rogue) is exactly the same in every trained skill at first level. That's... just really unsatisfying.

I would like to see the acquisition of skill feats stay largely the same, with the exception that every character gets a skill feat at level 1 as well. That still gives the rogue 9 extra skill feats over their career compared to everybody else (still a significant increase) but allows for more diversity among early-level characters. I don't think 1 extra skill feat is going to make or break the balance of the game, but it can make or break how different multiple characters of the same ancestry and class can feel at the level that almost every player starts with, and the level that most newbies have as their first experience. I think the more diverse 1st-level characters can be, the better.

Some Considerations

One difference that this change would make is that characters become a bit more front-loaded. If you're getting a lot of choices at level 1, it would have an impact on how long it takes to make a character - something that it seems that this new edition struggles with. Is that a worthwhile trade? I think so, though your mileage may vary.

Another difference it would make is with potential space savings. If you don't have to repeat some version of a two-weapon fighting feat, and a version of an archery feat, and so on, across every relevant class it gives you space to include some more interesting choices for character customization instead. Or more room for more diverse skill feats. Or any conceivable use for that word count that's better than making sure every class has access to the basic fundamentals of combat over and over again.

Overall, I think these changes would make for a more satisfying character creation and advancement experience than is currently offered in some areas, while improving the resiliency of the rules for future expansion in others. Does it dramatically alter the balance? Beyond level 1 I don't really think so, since that's when most of these changes take effect - and my impression of level 1 characters is that they could really use the help, since it seems a lot of the game's math assumes that an on-level enemy is tuned to be a minor boss battle. But there's only level 0 below level 1, and those monsters are designed so that they can still be a credible adversary for characters higher than level 1. I'm not sure to what extent that has changed as of 1.3 (I've only casually followed the math threads on this) but I think that giving those 1st-level characters some additional benefits can help offset the "monster singularity" in a way that can allow for the math of those level 0 monsters to remain relevant later without being over-tuned at level 1.

I've mentioned a few times in a few threads that, when it comes to healing items, the incentives are all wrong. The best healing items in terms of HP/GP are the lowest level items, and once you get away from the really low levels the HP/GP ratio drops of dramatically. It was the same way in PF1, too. This is why the wand of CLW was unbeatable. And because the wand of CLW was unbeatable, we got resonance applying to consumables in PF2 - the wrong solution to the problem.

And I say with confidence that it's the wrong solution because resonance doesn't actually change the incentive to use those lower-level consumables, because even though you don't get to use as many of them in a day (because of resonance), they're still your best deal when it comes to getting your money's worth out of your magic items. People don't like to throw their money away, even fake money that was given to them. Why would they?

So I spent a few hours with excel, trying to work out a scheme by which I could adjust the prices of potions, wands, etc. to make them work out that the higher the level of consumable you bought, the better the HP/GP ratio. This was a nightmare, and while I got something that you could call "results," they would have necessitated changing the prices of literally everything in the game, and that was a headache.

So I scrapped that idea and worked the problem in reverse. I took the existing prices, and figured out how much healing they needed to provide in order to be, at minimum, the exact same deal (in terms of HP/GP) as the cheapest version of itself. This was so much easier, because it doesn't mean changing literally every price in the book. But whoo boy, did the numbers start rocketing up so fast that by the time you were looking at higher-level potions you were starting to need on the order of 128d8. That's just ridiculous! Man, the economic scaling of the Pathfinder universe is bonkers.

But then it hit me... why do we have to tie these healing items to dice? One of the most common house rules I've seen is that you can "take the average" with your consumables (or something functionally like it, either more or less generous). So why not get rid of the dice altogether? It makes the math so much nicer.

So, long-winded speech aside, this is my ethical solution to the healing problem: healing potions, elixirs of life and healing wands* will heal you a fixed amount when you consume the beferage or take the zot. Below is the pricing scheme, and how it works out in HP/GP, and the comparison to what they are in the rules as presented.

Elixirs of Life
Minor Elixir of Life (3gp): was 1d6; now heals 3HP (1 HP/gp)
Lesser Elixir of Life (12gp): was 3d6; now heals 15HP (1.25 HP/gp)
Elixir of Life (60gp): was 7d6; now heals 90HP (1.5 HP/gp)
Greater Elixir of Life (250gp): was 10d6; now heals 400HP (1.6 HP/gp) This is patently rediculous, and I'm not even going to mention the True elixir. Neither of them are necessary
EDIT: I'd really recommend letting an alchemist add their modifier to these when they make it for their party themselves. It becomes negligible at the highest levels, but makes it suck less at the lowest.
They already kinda sucked, though, so ::shrug::

Healing Potions
Minor (3gp): was 1d8; now heals 5 HP (1.7 HP/gp)
Lesser (8gp): was 2d8+3; now heals 15HP (1.9 HP/gp)
Moderate (20gp): was 3d8+8; now heals 40HP (2 HP/gp)
Greater (60gp): was 5d8+12; now heals 140 (2.3 HP/gp)
Much like the elixirs above, the higher two are rediculously unnecessary. I suggest adjusting the naming scheme and leaving them out

Healing Wand* Prices assuming 10 charges, even though my preference would be for charge-less wands in general
Level 1 (27gp): was 1d8+mod; now heals 7 HP/charge (2.6 HP/GP)
Level 2 (72gp): was 3d8+mod; now heals 20 HP/charge (2.8 HP/GP)
Level 3 (180gp): was 5d8+mod; now heals 50 HP/charge (2.8 HP/GP)
Level 4 (405gp): was 7d8+mod; now heals 120 HP/charge (3 HP/GP)

Under this pricing structure, better healing items are worth both your money and, if still necessary, your resonance as well. You do not have to wonder whether or not drinking that potion is worth it right now. You know before you drink it whether or not you're wasting any of it, and how many hit points you'll still be down afterwards. You're not getting screwed by randomness or the hyper price inflation. If you want to reduce the impact of characters going straight for the low-level heals every time, this is how you do it.

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*Careful! Not to be confused with an actual wand of heal! You can still make that if you want... but the pricing structure is going to kick you in the balls like normal. I can't do anything about that, but one might find it worth it if you want the versatility of the actual spell :\

I've been thinking a lot lately about the discussion surrounding the way magic weapons work in 2E, system expectations, and the unchained automatic bonus progression.

At first I loved the idea of magic weapons adding whole dice! It sounds awesome at first, but the concern that others have raised that it really enforces the idea of maxing out your +X weapon to the best it can be, because the system expects you to have so many dice at a given level. In PF1 this meant that so many other enchantments were obsolete. PF2 makes getting and adding other runes a bit more reasonable, but there's still that idea of +X is priority 1 - everything else is a luxury. I think we can do better.

And then I start to think about automatic bonus progression. It was an interesting idea that I never used because I run a lot of published adventures (I dearly love every Paizo adventure path that I've read, run or played in) and, while I'm not averse to changing things to suit my play style or my group composition, going through all of the treasure all of the time was just a bridge too far in the tedium department. But this is a new edition! A solution still has a chance to get in on the ground floor and be part of the system expectations.

And this system already has baked in places where a character just spurts in power level in esoteric ways. Every 5 levels. So what if when you get your ability boosts, you also get an additional damage die? And what if that wasn't a weapon damage die, but a class damage die? Base it on your class HP (what used to be hit dice). So a level 10 wizard with a staff deals 1d4+2d6, while a level 10 cleric of shelyn might deal 3d8. A level 10 fighter with a longbow would deal 1d8+2d10, and that raging barbarian with the greataxe does a whopping 3d12 at the same level.

So now that the dice are accounted for (and in a much more predictable way than item availability, which is a boon for adventure designers), that brings us back to magic weapons. I still think the baseline should be the good ol' magic weapon. But in this new paradigm, all that does is allow the weapon to interact with resistances and weaknesses keyed off magic, and allow it to affect incorporeal creatures. But, now that the damage dice are taken care of, your magic weapon potency budget can go exclusively to runes that do interesting things. You can have that flaming ranseur as soon as you want, because it's not directly hindering your ability to keep up with where the system expects you to be.

And let item quality and proficiency (and possibly some runes like furious or something) be the only things that affect your to-hit rolls. Proficiency is pretty controllable by the system (good for adventure expectations) and quality has a relatively small range (also good for adventure expectations).

I think a change like this would go a long way toward making martial characters feel more personally impactful (rather than the sum of their gear) while also making it easier to tone down the mosters/enemies to more reasonable levels.

So one of the things that makes prepared casters good in first edition is the ability to leave some of your spell slots open and fill them later. This is explicitly called out in the CRB as something that can be done, and there are rules in place governing how long it takes to accomplish and options that can be taken to improve upon that, etc.

I can't find anything like that in the Playtest rule book. The closest thing I can find is the Wizard Class Feat "Quick Preparation," which allows you to empty a filled spell slot and replace the spell with a different one with 10 minutes of activity. This is a great feat! It allows you the versatility of an open spell slot without also leaving you high and dry if you need a spell right bloody now.

But that's the only thing like it that I can find. Am I just missing something? Is the ability to leave spell slots open assumed or removed? I truly hope that it's not been removed from the prepared caster's tool kit. It makes the difference between a wizard or cleric or druid actually being versatile in practice or not. Because you rarely know exactly what you need, and being stuck with preparing once a day with no information can lead to frustration and disaster if you really need something, and have access to it, but can't do anything about it until tomorrow.

We need open spell slots!

Part 1 - The Lost Star

More to come once the characters are ready to go!

Good news, everybody! The playtest documents are live! This thread will be for OOC discussion of the campaign in general, and can be used for discussing character choices as well. I'll be creating the gameplay thread once we're all ready to go. If one of you is making a discord or whatever you can post the means to find it here (or send it by PM once everyone has checked in). We can try to use it when it's convenient, but if Alabama is in Central time like I guess it is, that means we've got a representative from each time zone in the US. Fun!

Anyway, here's a handy list of what you guys will need to get started. First, you'll need to make an account on the boards so you can post. Don't worry about the name, it can be whatever you like. One feature about these boards which you can see if you click on my name is the ability to create aliases. Check out some of my aliases to see how I use them. When it comes time to keep track of character stats and changes, you'll build an alias and use that sub-account to post in the gameplay thread. The Doomsday Dawn playtest adventure will cover many different level ranges, and use many different characters, so you're probably going to end up making a few aliases to go through this campaign.

If you're looking at my profile, you'll also see a tab labeled campaigns. That's a collection of all the play-by-post (PbP) campaigns I've ever participated in. These are all great examples of what these sorts of campaigns look like, especially including the Hell's Vengeance campaign I used to run.

This Guide and This One Too have a lot of great tips for how to PbP like a seasoned pro. They were really helpful to me when I was starting out, and I hope they will be helpful to all of you as well.

Finally, you'll need to grab the playtest materials. Free PDFs of these materials can be found here. As players you'll want to Rulebook, the Character Sheet, and the Tracking Sheet. Those of you who also like to GM will probably want to peruse the Bestiary and Doomsday Dawn as well, though I would ask that you not look at a section in the adventure until after we've played through it. Unless you need to to GM for another group, in which case just do your best to keep IC and OOC knowledge separate. I trust you guys.

So that's about it for now. Once you guys have the materials we can start thinking about characters. The adventure assumes 4 characters for each part, so I'll be making one of my own to round out the group based on what you guys pick. Check in when you can and we'll get this cool show on the road!

Hi, I recently purchased the Mummy's Mask base set from an LGS, and during play discovered that the set was missing the henchman "Paracletus." After noticing that, I looked through the rest of the base set and the attached copy of The Half-Dead City and discovered that I am also missing any copies of the henchman "Voices of the Spire." (I think that I instead have too many copies of "Warrior Dolls", with 6.)

Is this a common/known issue, and would it be possible to receive replacements?

Please cancel my AP subscription. I've received Strange Aeons 6 of 6, and while I wish I could continue to let this roll, I regret that I can't.

Thanks

Hello, I wanted to let you folks know that the physical copy of Pathfinder 111: Dreams of the Yellow King hasn't arrived. I haven't had any problems with other volumes not arriving since I started subscribing and am wondering if something happened in transit. Do you have any way of tracking packages sent? The status in "my orders" says complete, but it definitely isn't here.

It all begins tonight.

The town of Longacre sits just outside the fringes of the Whisperwood. A few lights shine in the streets and windows, and the occasional snippet of conversation or laughter issues from open doors, but here on the outskirts of town, the night is dark and quiet. Sparse clouds scud across the sky, momentarily obscuring the dim light from the moon overhead. Across a scrubby field, barely distinguishable under the starry sky, a darkened, fort-like compound hunches in the distance: the Louslik Tannery.

Cimri Staelish has contacted each of you, putting together a crew for a small heist of the tannery her mysterious employer has set up. The time to meet up for the job isn't for another hour, but you each have the opportunity to do some separate roconnaisance ahead of time. If you learn anything useful, you'll get the chance to discuss it and make amendments to the plan when everyone comes together at the meeting place.

There are a few different skills you can use to scout. You can Climb the 10' tall wooden stockade, or attempt to Stealthily infiltrate to get a view inside. You can use Disable Device to study the gate's opening mechanism. You can use Local Knowledge to figure out who might be present at this time of night. You can use Perception to observe the compound. Alternatively, you can come up with a different idea that might help, with a skill check that would help.

Welcome to the Discussion Thread!

Go ahead and make an alias if you haven't already. Also, now that the group composition has been determined, feel free to make any last-minute tweaks you might want to make with that knowledge in mind. This is also your first opportunity to put forth any aspects of villainous play that would make you feel uncomfortable and would prefer to be either glossed over or left out entirely. This isn't a speak now or forever hold your peace type deal, if something comes up down the road I'd rather know and make changes than make anyone feel like they need to drop out.

I also think it's worth noting that I'm not going to enforce the strict combat turn format I requested in the recruitment thread. I don't always keep to it myself, and it's been pointed out to me that some aspects are a pain to reproduce when posting from some devices that aren't desktop or laptop computers with full keyboards. The parts of it I find most important are having an initiative count at the top and making sure you keep track of your bonuses and penalties in an easy-to-follow manner. The way I've seen combat work best that I'd like to emulate is to have people that act consecutively post in whatever order they can, then use the initiative count to organize events into a coherent, chronological summary.

I've put together the gameplay thread to get things started, though I remind you all that I'll probably be very sporadic this weekend with the trip out of town. I look forward to playing with you all!

Welcome to my recruitment for Hell's Vengeance!

I've been a face-to-face GM for several years at this point. Over the last six months or so I've gotten hooked with play-by-post as a good way to scratch the itch of being a player that I don't get while GMing, and I've enjoyed it so much that I want to spread the fun and run a game now that I'm familiar with how it works. I'm able to post frequently and can support as fast-pased a game as the players are capable of maintaining. I'm not going to put a minimum requirement on posts/day because, as I've seen in the games I play in, posting frequency can be a fluid thing. I do ask, though, that if you know you won't be able to post something for more than a day that you give a heads-up beforehand. I'm looking for a group of five despicable villains interested in working for House Thrune.

Character Creation Guidelines:

The player characters should all be at least tacit supporters of House Thrune’s rule—far better if they harbor ambitions to work for House Thrune or the Chelish government in some way, even if only to increase their own power and prestige. At this point, however, the PCs are little more than amoral mercenaries, common street thugs, conniving con artists, diabolic dabblers, or petty criminals. They should either be residents of Longacre or ne’er-do-wells recently come to town, and have no qualms against doing bad things to good people. In short, they should be more than willing to be villains. In addition, the PCs should all have some reason to know an ambitious local crook named Cimri Staelish, who is eager to prove herself more than just the town troublemaker.

-Characer Level: Level 1, as per normal AP beginnings.

-Ability Scores: 15pt buy. No restrictions on the buy except what's presented in the table (i.e. can't buy lower than 7 or higher than 18). Default age category is adult. If you want something other than default, that could be arranged on a case-by-case basis. Ask me first, though.
-Races Allowed: All core and most "featured" from the ARG, except Aasimar or Drow. The wierder your race, the more compelling backstory you need. No "uncommon" races.
-Alignment: No good. No exceptions. Evil is preferred, but I'm open to characters that start neutral with the expectation that the moral event horizon is inevitable. That being said, characters should be willing to work with others. Just because you're evil doesn't mean you have to be stupid, and I don't want this to degenerate into a PvP-fest.
-Classes Allowed: Everything on the PRD except Ninja/Samurai/Paladin. Summoners must be unchained, all others may choose.
-Hit Points: Maximum for 1st level. Every level after that will use my HP house rule: each point of Con bonus adds extra dice to roll, from which you pick the best result. Example: a bard with 13 Con (+1 bonus) would roll 1 extra die for 2d8, take the better result, then add the +1 con bonus as normal. If said bard rolled a 2 and a 6, the end result would be +7 HP before favored class bonuses.
-Skill Ranks: Normal, but background skills from Unchained are available
-Traits: 2 traits, one of which must be a campaign trait from the Player's Guide. No drawbacks for extra traits, no exceptions.
-Starting Wealth: Average for your class.
-Resources Available: Most anything on the PRD. Emerging guns only, Technology Guide and Mythic Adventures are both out. No third-party stuff since I'm unfamiliar with it. Paizo books not on the official PRD count as third party for this restriction since I'm not familiar with them, with the exception of Inner Sea Gods because I own that one and can look things up in it. Additionally, while it won't come into play for a while, the spell Magic Jar from the CRB is completely replaced by Possession from Occult Adventures for all purposes and the former is considered to not exist.

How To Apply:

I appreciate that alias bloat is a real thing, and as such I do not require an alias for your application. Having one is fine, but doesn't grant any special consideration. That said, to consider an application complete there are a few things that I require:

-Backstory: It doesn't have to be elaborate -- your story is going to be building to the future -- but it needs a solid foundation upon which to stand. It should give a good idea of who your character is and how the character came to know and work with Cimri. I can help with this part, since the Guide doesn't say a whole lot about her. Please put your backstory in spoiler tags if it is more than a single paragraph long. This is the single most important part of the character. The more compelling the character presented, the more likely it will make the cut.

Who is Cimri? A sharp-tongued hellion with a penchant for drinking and long knives, Cimri has lived in Longacre most of her life. Recently, she’s gotten involved with some powerful, if shady, folks willing to spend well to advance their goals.

And a little more about Longacre:

In the better part of a century since House Thrune came to power, Longacre has changed little. Many of those who came to escape now find themselves prisoners of their own memories, entering their twilight years burdened with old scars and regrets. The families of the waning veteran population tend to either linger, knowing nothing but the town’s quiet life, or—in most cases—drift away down the Whisper River. A slow sort of pessimism taints the town, one that its ruler, Archbaron Darellus Fex, either hasn’t noticed or cares nothing about. Many residents seek one last adventure, one last chance to be great. These days, Longacre is coated in the dust of years, making it easy to ignore the powder keg hidden just beneath.

-Stat Block: This is second in importance to the backstory, but still quite important. If you're familiar with the standard Bestiary/NPC format, that is my preferred arrangement. If you get a stat block generated by a program (like Hero Lab or whatever) that's fine as long as it's coherent to read. See any of the character aliases associated with my profile for examples. This should definitely be in spoiler tags for length unless it's in an alias. Provide stat blocks for any animal companions, eidolons, familiars, phantoms, mounts, etc. They'll get their own alias during the game and will act on their own initiatives (except familiars, and unless they're currently being ridden or otherwise unable to act separately).

-Theme Song: Link to at least one song that really fits your character's ethos or personality, or makes good background music for them if instrumental.
-Sample Combat Turn: This can be in a separate post after everything else is done, but I'd like to see it in the format which I would like used during the game. For the purposes of this sample post, assume that your character is currently under the effects of inspire courage +1 or the spell bless. Note that, depending on what your character likes to do, some of this format might not make sense, in which case those parts should not be included. The specifics of what you do and who you're fighting are less important than making sure the format is followed. An example post that closely resembles this format can be found here.

1. Roll initiative (I'll usually do this for everyone during the actual game for speed)
2. Blank Line
3. Round # (1, in this case): Initiative Count # (what you rolled) in bold and bigger.
4. Blank Line
5. Descriptive text for your turn. Be creative, and bear in mind who your character is and what they do. What or who you're fighting is up to you. Make it interesting!
6. Blank Line
7. OOC-text summary of your turn in terms of rules elements. Spells cast should be formatted as a link to the spell on the PRD.
8. Blank Line
9. OOC-text summary of non-intrinsic bonuses/penalties to die rolls (if any)
10. Rolled dice, keeping any separate bonuses from item 9 as separate parts of a long chain, in the same order as listed in item 9.
11. Blank Line
12. Summary of Active Conditions. Use a spoiler to list any active conditions or modifiers you are recieving or providing here, along with a short description or link for an easy reference for everyone. This includes feats such as Combat Reflexes which change how the normal rules of combat function for your character.

Some Final Thoughts:

I'm more interested in recruiting a stable of really interesting villains than I am in recruiting a traditionally balanced party. Two of my home games get on just fine with the only arcane caster being a bard, for example. I want characters who will take the opportunity to work for Cheliax and run with it, using this interesting opportunity to its full extent. That said, there is one degree of villainy that is completely unacceptable for this game: Rape. Characters may not be the sort who perpetrate rape, nor may they be raped as part of their backstory. I have a pretty hefty tolerance for most everything else, but will give the chosen players a chance to offer other areas that would make them uncomfortable if included in the game. This is supposed to be fun, after all!

I'll be checking in as frequently to answer any questions and keep tabs. Recruitment will be open until two weeks from today: Tuesday May 3rd, 5 PM US-Pacific