William Werminster's page

Knowledge. One of my players wanted to solo a lvl 15 challenge, he has a lvl 14 fighter. I gave him full info on the monster so he could prepare in advance. Four rounds latter and two lucky critical hits he destroyed the hell out of the enemy.

Lesson learned on my part to never again pull my punches.

Want to share my two cents. A spellbook that contain spells can and should count as part of treasure and follow the same selling rules as any other valuable. Even if no mage would buy you the whole book nothing (afaik) dictates that you can't sell a few spell pages here and there.

In my table we tend to use the same reasoning with gold/silver coins. Unless is something like a Dragon's hoard made of mostly gold or something similar every time the party wins the day and collects their well earned reward in loot of, say, 1.000 gps, that number is the numerical amalgamation of actual gold coins, valuables, art pieces, rare components and whatever your imagination can fill in.

It eases the game pace, alleviates the bookkeeping, and helps to maintain the suspension of disbelief.

YMMV.

That's why I always do a session 0 as a GM, works wonders and saves a lot of future problems. A few questions to OP, if you please.

Are you playing by PF Society rules? Because if I were the GM I'd houserule a class feat to make your class perks work against your most common foe even at the cost of unbalancing it a bit if favor of the party.

And I apologize if I sound intruding but, are you reluctant to switch to another character because you really feel like playing it? Can't count how many times I've personally fallen to the sunken cost fallacy with my own characters. There is nothing wrong in putting back a character in the drawer for a future and more fitting campain. One thing is your character struggling to achieve its goals and other is YOU struggling to have... well, fun in playing the game.

IMO lots of people are "touchy" about this issue not because you're saving yourself the pain of going to your local art webpage to browse for hours and download any picture for private non profitable leisure but for other reasons stated above.

I think sir Ravingdork negative experiences derive for the main problem that has been a hot toppic for months now, in this case might be sympathizers of original art creators.

Some folks, specially art creators of any kind, now live in true fear because of programs made by other people with no ill intention at all. But as you all know, responsibility lies not on the tool but the hand that holds it.

It's not the first time that we've seen bad people hurting others with tools made by good folks.

If I may join, I think sir Deriven is being a tad misunderstood. He is talking about how you need sound and solid rules for combat mainly because combat is a life threatening situation first, and about player/character contribution second.

One can fail forward a social encounter for the sake of the plot or be more lenient with the outcome. But you can't do it with combat when the bad result ends in being mauled by your local monster.

LOVE the change. The celestial big baddie behind everything is a theme I put in one of my homebrewed campaigns and I was going to do it anyway, BUT now I can do it without the fear of my dear everloving friends releasing the crows of judgement upon me.

With the passing of the years I've came to appreciate the richness of the roleplay oportunities the vast lands of grey morality has to offer.

I only wish for the monk to be renamed as "martial artist" and then start to work from that point. Would be cool then to gain extra flavour options based on their martial school and (why not) dream even further, a future book full of fluff and crunch, just the way I like my ice cream.

Your typical shaolin monk good with weapons, a karateka good with parries and counters, a cappoeira dancer that is inmune to prone condition and can even fight better if prone, a more "mystical" focused that can go full nova spending those ki points into a awesome hadouken... just to name a few.

I play in a house table and we all agreed to allow the last attribute increase end rounded up to avoid unnecesary worriness. I mean, the PCs are at their carrer pinacle at lvl 20 so a little reward is well deserved.

Right now the only reason odd values exist is because the rules "slow down" the attribute increase at a certain point.

In regards to Verdyn's question, the reason is mainly a bit of realism: Most of the typically-advanced weapons from other cultures have a tendency to be false friends. They have enough similarity to weapons you're familiar with to make you think you know what you're doing, but are just different enough to throw you off when using them. The differences in sword weighting and balance would have a noticeable effect on your swing, for example, if you were to go from an arming sword to a wakizashi (or vice versa), and you'd be liable to forget that the wakizashi isn't double-edged like the arming sword.

So, for example, if a Spaniard was trained with the espada ropera, but then decided to try a katana because it's just a sword, it'll just birth a situation that leaves him embarazada. And nobody wants that, so advanced/exotic classifications exist to cover false friends like that (along with weapons that actually are unusually difficult to use well).

Spaniard here, the word you were probably looking for was "embarazoso" (embarrassed), which is a word used as an adjective for a determined situation the subject is in. When I was taught english I was told that when translating from one language to another context usually matters a lot when choosing certain words over anothers, specially the ones that are opened to ambigüity.

If that was an intentional pun then sorry for barging in and ignore my post entirely my good sir.

A little tweak we made at our table was to add all the rolled results to a 'common pool' and then decide what numbers to pick.

This allows a sense of uniqueness in our characters while softening the possible unfairness of random results.

I don't know about D&D 5E but in my time lurking these forums there is a word that haven't been mentioned... yet: Munchkin.

And I can imagine a big comfy room with the head of Pun-Pun hanging on a wall and the Paizo staff having a toast to a job well done.

- Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition for that good old memories flavour.

- Pathfinder 1E and D&D 3.X because we have invested in SO many books I'd be a shame not to use all that content.

- Tried to make a Starfinder PC once but I had to pass because for some unknown reason it wasn't my cup of tea (and I love space themed games).

- In Pathfinder 2E we made only a few tests that can't even count as full sessions (thanks COVID), but we are really looking for what is to come in the future.

- D&D 5th felt... bland, to our liking.

There are other games out there but I left them out. Special mention to the pc games Baldurs Gate 1 & 2 because I'd never, EVER, get tired of them.

Living as I am in an island, Water Breathing for sure.

Any creature in the path of the aqueous orb takes 2d6 points of nonlethal damage.

A swarm rendered unconscious by means of nonlethal damage becomes disorganized and dispersed, and does not reform until its hit points exceed its nonlethal damage.

Make it work as intended, swarms are pretty annoying to begin with and the party should have at least one good 'weapon' against those encounters.

Check Archives of Nethys on Aqueous Orb and Swarms to seek more info about how those two interact with each other.

Scrying + Limited Wish (-7 next save) + Wish (kidnap)

If the kidnapping is done for plot reasons then 'anything' that goes along is just fine, as long as it doesn't screw with the party.

"A dark book that contains a forbidden ritual that involves doing damnable stuff and it's too dangerous to let it exists blah blah blah, even keeping it turns you into an evil guy etc etc etc..."

Switch the Squid for a Giant Octopus and you are good to go my good Cthul... I mean, sir.

Rulewise, you did it well.

In fairness, you should let your players know the whole ruling involved in using Dirty Tricks

You can attempt to hinder a foe in melee as a standard action. This maneuver covers any sort of situational attack that imposes a penalty on a foe for a short period of time. Examples include kicking sand into an opponent’s face to blind him for 1 round, pulling down an enemy’s pants to halve his speed, or hitting a foe in a sensitive spot to make him sickened for a round. The GM is the arbiter of what can be accomplished with this maneuver, but it cannot be used to impose a permanent penalty, and the results can be undone if the target spends a move action. If you do not have the Improved Dirty Trick feat or a similar ability, attempting a dirty trick provokes an attack of opportunity from the target of your maneuver.

If your attack is successful, the target takes a penalty. The penalty is limited to one of the following conditions: blinded, dazzled, deafened, entangled, shaken, or sickened. This condition lasts for 1 round. For every 5 by which your attack exceeds your opponent’s CMD, the penalty lasts 1 additional round. This penalty can usually be removed if the target spends a move action. If you possess the Greater Dirty Trick feat, the penalty lasts for 1d4 rounds, plus 1 round for every 5 by which your attack exceeds your opponent’s CMD. In addition, removing the condition requires the target to spend a standard action.

Bolded for emphasis.

Additionally, invisible undetected characters can also give flanking bonus, so I don't see the reason why they shouln't block summons as well.

Ask Kratos, trust me he is a nice guy.

Greetings! Might be a late response but here goes anyway.

You got it all correct, just remember a few things.

RAW. The Will DC 15 for avoiding effects applies for both injuries and full moon nights.

Once the PC becomes aware, the transformation is a willing action BUT, the Werewolf entry here says:

When a PC becomes a lycanthrope, you as the GM have a choice to make. In most cases, you should take control of the PC’s actions whenever he is in hybrid or animal form—lycanthropy shouldn’t be a method to increase a PC’s power, after all, and what an afflicted lycanthrope does while in animal or hybrid form is often at odds with what the character would actually want.

Also remember that an aware PC also remembers what did last time she transformed, so Alignment must be in consideration.

Wolfsbane is a poison so the Fort 15 save is for both cure the curse and survive the ingestion.

It gives a sense of incompletion. But given how the math works in this edition I think this is a good measure. Besides, it leaves the door open for future character options, like feats/ancestries that have size requirements.

Brace yourselves, the new Class Tier List 2.0 is coming.

Initially I found the idea compelling, but on a second thought I'd prefer the INT stat to remain untouched as it is. Mainly because I'd love to see future archetypes/prestige classes that can benefit from it, like the 'old' Duelist from PF1.

1. Yes
2. N/A, every time that I read the question my mind flips a coin. I like it but at the same time I don't, but how to make it more desireable?

OP// I see the concern, but I don't share it. Usually lvl 1 is the quickest to be left behind.

How about this idea. The lvl requirement stays as it is, but let some backgrounds reduce it to lvl 1. That will kind of show commitment from both character and player side to the archetype.

I am more concerned about how Wulfgar the barbarian survived going NUDE and barehanded underwater in a frozen lake and punched to death a white dragon.

Then again, novels and game rules never combined very well.

Elminster the Mary Sue ended up fist fighting against a GOD because both ran out of spells.

Volkard Abendroth wrote:

gustavo iglesias wrote:

What is gone forever is the option to keep the status quo. Revolution is coming, be it one way or another, I feel.

That revolution may be a repeat of the one that took place with 4e.

A substantial percentage of the player base leaving for another company.

Yes, it could be. It could also happen what happened with Iron Gods, that instead of the sky falling because Paizo dared to put chocolate in their vainilla icecream, it was well received because the quality was good, so it leaded to some other similar products like distant worlds, and then it became starfinder, the fastest selling Paizo book of all time and the current biggest sale force in the company.

Other revolutionary products are 3e, and 5e, which were both massive successes.

I suspect the quality of the product itself has more in common with success than the fact it is revolutionary or not.

And regardless of that, the revolution is coming anyways. It might be a success, or the end of the world, but it is coming

/becomes himself a multiclassed paladin of milani AND Groetus

Looking forward to see your ultimate form.

bugleyman wrote:

Personally, I also believe that martial characters need a way to scale damage that comes much closer to the way spell-casters do (which right now is multiple dice). I just don't like the way they've chosen to tie it to the weapon in 2E. If feels like an artifact. Just scale it base on character level (and to a lesser extent, class). Besides, is it really that "unrealistic" for a high level fighter to do more damage with a weapon? I honestly don't find that to be much of a stretch...at least not as it pertains to living creatures. Could get a little wonky with objects, but again, only if you are trying to simulate "reality."

The enormous reliance on a good magic weapon to deal relevant damage in a high level game makes me shudder at the thought of being disarmed, or some other terrible thing happening to your weapon.

I do prefer the scaling damage to arise from skill. I don't like the idea at all that my legendary hero is only a hero because he carries that one sword that's worth more than a castle.

That kind of dependence has always been present since D&Ds origins. In 3.5/PF1 if a GM steals/sunder/dispel your main weapon you are basically screwed, not to mention the nightmarish times in AdD&D. If I remember correctly, in PF2 what makes magic weapons truly powerful are the runes/gems attached to them, and the quality of the weapon/armor in question affects the maximum level of power you can attach.

6. Intelligence is the Ultimate Dump Stat
In 5E unless you are a wizard and maybe one of the 1/3rd casters intelligence is semi useless. There are very few intelligence saves in the game and you do not get more skills or languages or anything off it. There are a few intelligence based skills but most of them you can live without or make do by being proficient in them with a 10 or 12 intelligence score (or buf using the cleric guidance spell).

I am really confident in the ability of the Paizo dev. team to come up for some cool character options involving INT to attack/damage/AC/Saves

As far as I can remember, in PF1 the only 'rogue' who uses INT to AC is the rogue-duelist. "One can fight brutish, others can fight quick and nimble, but I prefer to fight clever".

A monk and a fighter in full plate have the same AC eventually (Fighter in full plate +6, +3 Proficiency, the Monk +6 Dex, +3 Proficiency), but how do Monks keep up with armour potency runes?

Good question. Magical tatoos could be a good option to consider.

Hah! The greatest lie ever told.

Bad jokes aside. It also matters for gaining tactical cover with large creatures and bulk (page 190 pdf version).

Gorbacz wrote:

thflame wrote:

This is mostly due to overly strong and trap options. This could have been fixed by buffing weak feats/class abilities and nerfing or removing powerful ones. This would not require a brand new system.

Power Attack is a no-brainer for a 2h Fighter.

It's a trap option for Wizard.

A new player will not notice that and will shoot himself or herself in the foot by picking Power Attack.

How does "buffing weak abilities" or "removing powerful ones" fix that?

There is a certain point where you have to assume that your players are competent enough to read an ability, understand what it does, and realize that it is a bad option for what they want out of their character.

What is the alternative? You prevent the wizard from taking Power Attack, even if he really wants to eventually play a greatsword wielding eldritch knight? That's worse than letting a dumb player grab a feat not meant for his build, in my opinion.

The former limits character options and potentially prevents a player from making the character they want, the latter can be fixed by retconning the choice and letting the new player pick a new ability in its place.

Both systems have the retraining option, which is nice.

I'd love to be corrected if I'm wrong, but I think that thanks to the actual system of multiclassing/archetypes/prestige class in PF2 this kind of combination is doable without the feeling of being underwhelmed in comparison to the overall power level of the game.

1. Do you currently like pathfinder 1e?

Yes but not as much as 5~10 years ago.

2. Did you once like pathfinder 1e but now find it troublesome?

Troublesome is not the word I'd use, nowadays it feels unpolished. I was in the train among other folks thinking the 1st ed was in need of an overhaul.

3. Do you like 4th or 5th edition D&D?

5th Edition, but bear in mind that I've only played a few runs using those rules. And never played 4th Ed.

4. Which are you looking for class balance, smoother high level play, more options, or even all of those things?

All of those. Practically asking for the impossible. I want every aspect of the game, from rules to flavor text, to have its own little place.

5. How do you feel about making the game more accessible in general?

Overall, it's a good decision. But as I learned while testing 5th Ed, with accesibility comes easiness that may lead to boredom to more 'experienced' players.

6. Are you willing to give up on accessibility if you can still gain all of the benefits listed in question 4?

Yes.

7. Would you be willing to play an alternative rules system than what we have been presented? (A different version of pathfinder 2nd edition if you will).

If by alternative you mean variant rules, then yes.

8. And if you said yes to the above question what would you like to see in that theoretical game?

a) AC divided into Blunt AC - Slashing AC - Piercing AC - Touch AC

b) More consequences for being wounded in combat. Both aesthetically and mechanically.

c) Saving throws more organical, using the 6 attributes.

d) Combat rules for fighting gigantic enemies, Shadow of the Colossus style.

e) 'Cheating' actions for big bosses like the legendary actions in 5th Ed.

f) I am pretty sure I can come up with more but my lazy mind stopped working.

A risen hand in favor of those greenskins!

Let's just have hope in the archetypes for rogue. Or at least a prestige class to fit the role.

For clarity, adding only 1/2 level to everything instead of level works great. Heck, you can choose to not add level at all, and that still works fine, too.

Both work perfectly well with the game's math and just rebalance how much of a threat creatures of much lower level are to those of level X, though that's their only major game impact other than the purely aesthetic.

Interesting. You know my good undead sir, that simple post sparked a home rule idea about 'difficulty settings' for my homebrew campaigns. Some kind of Heroic - Standard - Gritty.

Blog wrote:

First and foremost, the ranger is a hunter

I hope Paizo is still reading because I think the problem starts here. The Ranger was/is first and foremost a tracker, not a hunter. Tracking is what Gygax got from Tolkien's Legolas and Aragorn. The ability to read tracks and identify how many, what type, are central concepts in D&D lore.

I've noticed that after years of playing PFS that tracking is essentially/almost worthless. Scenarios don't contemplate it, even in the most obvious situations e.g. 4-05 Sanos Abduction. I would really like to see Paizo look beyond the numbers and address this. Ranger's should be the best at tracking, and it should count for something.

Give Rangers the ability to fully ID creatures from tracks, just as if one rolls a Knowledge skill check. As others have suggested, allow a successfully identified track to trigger Hunt Target. Explicitly state that identifiable tracks can be found outside of entrances/exits or within X yards of the target and make that X yards grow with each level.

Bullseye, good post here.

In the LotR movies there're two subtle yet cool scenes in... the second movie I guess, where the hobbits were taken to Isengard. One of them is how Aragorn is able to know the direction, numbers and other stuff about the enemy just listening the earth, and how the tracking party was faster than the fleeing one. The second is probably unrelated, but I love the scene where Legolas says "A red sun rises. Blood has been spilled this night".

The traditional definition of a creature since D&D 3.0 has been anything that has wisdom and charisma scores. I would be very surprised if that definition changes in PF2.

I think Unicore refers to more complicated scenarios, like what happens to a creature's body when it dies. I remember a thread in the rules forum a couple months ago, nobody agreed if a dead body was still a creature, an object, or a creature with the dead condition.

Nobody likes barbarians!

*starts running like there's no tomorrow*

In the game Icewind Dale there is a strong conflict between Law vs Chaos presented. The chaotic barbarian tribes are very angry with the constant invasion of the 'civilized' people.

In Planescape setting, AL is the key factor. Armies of fiends and demons at war because one side is Chaos and the other is Law. Entire cities in the planes can switch one plane to another if the people living in it have a strong belief towards that new AL.

What I am trying to say with my amazing communication skills is that there can be a value if the setting the PCs play at is adequate for it.

Might be because I am as blind as a mole, but I found no mention of spells at all, only litanies. Does this mean they don't have spellcasting anymore?

Well 1st and 2nd edition animate dead spells didn't have the evil tag - it was listed that good clerics need to be very careful using the spell - I'd assume for reasons of intent and consent more than 'the spell is EVIL' - 3rd went down the aligned spells path - Pathfinder went further with it.

I get why it's evil in Pathfinder - James Jacobs wants it so. Ok sure but the point here was because there is no real good reason behind that intent - (note here - there doesn't have to be - however...) people invent their own reason for it.

This last part is the kicker - it's why alignment becomes subjective - because without hard 'this is why' reasons for everything in game - people have to fill in the blanks... how do they do that? With what they consider right and wrong from the real world. Take that to the spell animate dead and you get some people who state it's evil purely because you defile a corpse by removing it from it's resting place.

It's a bit circular but it goes to prove:

Not everything needs (or will get) a solid explanation for why it's evil in game

Without a black and white - people will answer a 'is it evil' question with their own experiences - and that's subjective

That's the point.

For what is worth it. In 1st and 2nd edition those spells were also used to make 'inmortal guardians' whose duty and devotion was bound beyond the grave. The elven Baelnorn lich is a good example. And if I recall correctly there was even the class kit White Necromancer.

In 3rd edition the negative energy that sustains any undead form is considered 'evil' because one way or another it lead to unavoidable damnation even for the most pious ones, the book Libris Mortis tries to explain the meaning behind. This new concept for negative is evil and positive is good brought new oddities to the game, and so the Book of Exalted Deeds tried to implement the 'undead life made from positive energy', the Inmortal template.

I don't have any knowledge how they deal in 4th or 5th Ed to compare.

My intention of this post is not to argue, just sharing some history.

Catharsis wrote:

No more Nature? Is it conflated with Survival? Are oozes covered by Occultism now...?

S%#~. No, there's totally Nature. I left it out by mistake here (it's on the full list if you follow the link).

I have no idea what Oozes might fall under, though.

On unaware adventurers?

Alright alright I know where the door is...

A cheer and a day full of joy if I ever see natural armor gone from the game.

Natural armor and armor are somewhat equivalent; a wolf have its fur, and the PC the same fur made into an armor.

If the paladin is really going to be the armored focused class I think they will first release a blog about weapons and armor.

Nice presentation OP, I really liked it. Consider me signed. Like Tulius Caesar once said:

"Veni, Vidi, Favoritti"

I don't think the case to be true since what it seems to me it's that they are trying to make almost every magic item relevant/useful. And honestly, some folks have the ability to go and look their chosen 'image avatar' for their PC and ignore the fact that he is now overloaded with magical trinkets and stuff, I am not one of them. That's why I willingly paid overpriced items with combined effects.

thorin001 wrote:

Someone obviously never faced a critter that needed a +2 or +3 weapon to be hurt at all.

Ha, yeah, that is a thing, as I experienced in a 2nd Ed session I DMed, the monk was useless against the Nabassu.

Ah yes, good old times. When literally nothing could be done when the fiendish neighbours started to succesfully gate to the infinity and beyond more companions to the battle.

Please tell me they gain the ability to craft a roflcopter at 14th level, rideable or not, I don't mind!

For some unknown reason, I had a flashback of good old times in Warcraft 2, when I upgraded my first knight into a paladin.

My only issue with goblins is the +2 CHA, I am really looking forward to see what can they bring to the table, mechanical or lore wise.

Biztak wrote:

People seem to be mystifying the concept of "Core", the Core Rules are nothing but the rules that we get from the get go, rules that are not in an expansion that is all. They are not special or take priority over future expansions they are just things we get in the first rulebook.

Unfortunately, for those of us who play a lot of organized Society play, goblins in the core rules means they are very likely to be a legal race option in organized play. That's what I am against. Goblins as PCs in home campaigns are just fine with me.

"In PFS every PC can only be created under explicit consent of the GM"

Problem solved.