Zamfield's page

I understand the part about reducing the time to learn, what I don't get is the part about using downtime to learn a spell.

1. What task level do I use for learning the spell via downtime? Spell level?
2. Do I still have to make the "Learn a Spell" check?
3. If I do, can I still get it for half price if I critically succeed?
4. Do I still need a teacher or a copy of the spell on scroll or in a book?
5. If not, can I use this to get any spell from my tradition's list?
6. Also, if not, can I get access to uncommon, rare and unique spells this way?
7. How is this any more economic than just working a day job and spending money the traditional way?
8. Is it really going to take a month to learn a 3rd level spell for free?
9. If I do understand how the "Earning an Income" table and this feat work, is there really no difference between expert rank downtime checks and legendary rank downtime checks? (except for 10th with you earn an extra gold per day on success.)

Thanks.

The thing is in Pathfinder/D&D there are levels of play. Most typical fantasy tropes, such as LOTR, Harry Potter or even Game of Thrones are in the 1 through 7 range. There are only a few things in those works of fiction that cannot be created by lvl 7 or so. So after that you have to start getting into beyond that fantasy. Like Eragon (toward the end anyway), Beowulf, or most superhero characters. After Lvl 13+ the characters are essentially demigods. The stories of Hercules, Achilles or Superman are those types of stories. One just simply can't expect someone who is level 15 to behave the same as someone who is lvl 4.

Just played chapter six and my level 14 character felt nothing like a demigod. Didn’t even feel like year seven Harry Potter.

In PF1, there are so many core, base, and hybrid classes to start with, and each of them have interesting archetypes that are compelling from 1st to 20th that I never really felt the need to multiclass or dip. I would rather see that approach continue in PF2 than the current system. I feel like it only seems great because the core classes are so rigid and underwhelming, not because the dedication feats are good. I also think career change characters need to be supported. One of the most fun campaigns I played had all of us start as fighters and after 5 levels we found our path. Usually it was finding treasure that we wanted to use or a mentor willing to train us. Combat tactics that we favored in those early levels became the springboard for a more advanced class. It wasn’t a low magic campaign or anything, but it was super fun and memorable and impossible to do in PF2.

Bolstered seems like a reasonable way to rein in the abuse

I totally agree that from an action economy standpoint, a spell that succeeds can often greatly out perform a pair of melee/ranged strikes.

The problem is it makes mages extremely boring when they don't succeed or you want to concentrate the next round and cast a new spell.

More spells should have flexibility, like a single action minor base result with the option to add one action for improved effect/target/focus. Without this, the spell caster is practically immobilized in combat where battlefield control is mostly gone and all the interesting parts come from combining actions and movement in new ways. Lots of single action spells could be circumstantially useful, but only after a meta magic effect was applied, which would bring the number of actions back up to 2, but also allow for moving out of harms way as well.

With so many 2-3 action spells, you can't do neat things like combining action and movement into an activity the way the martial classes can. And really that is about the only saving grace of the the 3 action economy.

Interesting abilities like

"Flashy spell": activity (2 actions), cast a single action spell and then make a sneak check. Your magical casting emanations are bright enough to temporarily blind any creature looking at them, you have cover and may roll to sneak away at half your movement.

"Drive by Slapping": activity (3 actions), cast a single action spell of range touch, you gain a +1 circumstance bonus on your melee touch attack roll and stride up to your movement speed. Regardless of whether the attack succeeds, you can them make another stride immediately after.

just don't can't participate in the action economy because spell casting is always an activity that sucks up most of your round.

Restriction breeds creativity

Another way to describe this is meaningless choices. There's a lot of rules out there that come to the same answer and the effect that gives the player is that everyone is a clone

There are 671 feats in the book, of those only 92 grant your character an entirely new ability not covered by skill uses and basic actions. Most of these new abilities are in the form of powers that cost points and resemble spells. 52 feats merely grant a proficiency increase, most of which don’t t stack. 8 provide a companion, and 13 are a static increase in things like hit points or bonus damage to dice.

The remaining feats modify core difficulty checks of things everyone gets. They grant a bonus, remove a penalty, modify action or time cost, increase duration, altar the targets, or remove prohibitions on the base activity.

I would say that only 30 feats listed actually qualify as a true feat, the rest could just as easily be a handful of tables for ability score, class level, proficiency rank, and penalties, because they are just numbers applied to dice rolls with little description and no role-playing flavor at all.

The powers could be a collection of spell lists since only the fighter, ranger, and rogue are non-spell casters. Even the barbarian has special totem rage powers, although they are the least spell-like and closest thing to a true feat in the entire rulebook.

I’ll probably bring up a new thread since a detailed discussion is somewhat off topic here.

I also suspect PFS had something to do with the popularity of 6th level hybrid casters. Not only did you get to bring something to the table that could fill two or more party roles, but everyone finished playing at 12th level anyway so 7th-9th level first edition spells need not apply.

I don't really like the playtest archetypes at all. They are too rigid, and can never come close to a 50/50 blend, and even the 70/30 blend is pretty mediocre since you can't even get 100% single classed with the core classes. The best you can get within your own class is about 40-50% since there are about two or three paths through you primary class and you never get enough feats to be good at more than one of them.

I don’t think it’s been mentioned here, but after playing part of the lvl 12 playtest I think the numbers have finally gotten so big that doing the math at the table is no longer very fun. Instead it requires scratch paper and a calculator. I have no idea from level to level if my hit bonus is any good or my AC or spell DC either.

I feel like this edition wasn’t designed for pen and paper, but for a digital tactical RPG where everything outside of combat is basically a cut scene showing a far more mundane magic less world. I feel like the balancing has focused too much on encounter mode at the expense of every other part of the game.

I understand that people want to make skill and proficiency have a place at the table instead of everything handled by scrolls, wands, and godlike casters. But I do have to agree that forcing a low magic campaign on everyone has not been pleasant.

Our party's cleric got pined by the spikes, but the druid cast obscuring mist which concealed us and caused the manticore to have to hover closer. The 5 flat DC miss chance saved us a lot of damage and we eventually used the gnolls short bows and a spiritual weapon to knock it out of the sky.

+1 to fixing the way armor proficiency is acquired. Nobody wants to invest in proficiency for a category of armor they don't intend to wear.

I don't know that granting each of these categories a Reaction is the correct path, but I could see them gaining either an Action, Free Action, or Reaction as applicable.

I think of it as more along the lines of how Motorcycle GP riders have hardcore knee pads, and so they can practically lean over until their knee pad touches and be safe. Some more fantasy related ideas could be:

I’d rather they just stick with PF1 style archetypes and treat weapon and armor like skills are treated, with free increases and a separate pool of skill feats that vary based on class. The PF1 archetype system is just easier to approach and can be developed as whole without all the exponential combinations that the new archetype system has. Yes I know that some combinations might not be thought of but Paizo has surveys now to seek out missing ones and get them designed, developed from 1 to 20 and published pretty regularly.

Yeah my elf archer is boggled that a lightweight weapon like a longbow is the same bulk as hide armor. The playtest ideas of encumbrance seem way out of wack from reality. And they certainly don’t enable any of the cool armored characters from fantasy stories I’ve ever read or watched.

I would be happier if the natural critically went away and it was just +/- 10. It seems less punishing to specialists, and makes the critical a results seem more realistic.
The action/free action/reaction system is okay, but man does it need a lot of player planning. And it does slow down combat a bit because now everyone needs to do their max of 3 things in order to get value out of there turn.

I actually like the idea of class providing a sequence of proficiency increase and feat choices as each class levels up, but the current progressions are not ideal.

I would like to see classes gain proficiency increases much differently. It would be nice if they could get a certain number of proficiency increases to apply to certain groups and for those groups to get matching feat choices.

e.g. These are related groups that have proficiency ranks and could benefit from having corresponding feats.

One thing I notice is that the 4 degrees of success has LOTs of room for tweaking how a certain skill check feels and resolves.

All for #3 lite, each proficiency unlocks more skill uses. I think that solves the PFS problem of not having anyone capable of making the check.

I think getting a free feat with each skill increase is very flavorful as demonstrating increased mastery in that skill by training towards a feat matches up with a lot of good stories.

I still would provide some general skill feats to allow for choosing those below your proficiency. Perhaps you can only spend those on feats that require proficiency level below the current skill level.

I don’t think the multi-class option presented in pf2 is really on par with 6-level casters. I don’t think using 4 class feats to cast 2 cantrips and 2/2/2/2/1/1 and spells per day is anywhere close to 3/4 casting. At best it is 2/5 casting and severely limited in resources by comparison. And trading 4 class feats and having to wait until level 4 to get spells is a steep price to pay.

It seems that those classes in PF1 had lots of flexibility too, which IMO points to good design. Something all classes should strive for.

Seems like some tactics are just “walking and chewing gum” combos, so why not allow you to do just that and use the higher skill bonus to make the one roll. E.g Carousing and Looking Out would make one check using whichever is higher, diplomacy or perception, and the failure result in fumbling the off skill, like oops you knockever a drink as something caught you eye, but you see nothing out of place, maybe try again after you deal with the mess in front of you.

I think kits would be a nice improvement. They don’t need to take up much space or even be mandatory, just list the traits that make sense for that subrace

I agree with the OP and have said as much in other threads.

I almost like the whole skill proficiency and skill feat pool aspect of characters enough to say why not do this in a more generalized fashion?

I'm considering the Paladin class for chapter 5 and I was kinda floored that "Sense Evil" is an 8th level feat. I mean, WTF? how is a paladin ever expected to make it that far without some ability to tell evil creatures and people from good ones? It just feels wrong. It should be a 1st level class feature and follow the Detect Magic model for Illusions vs your level.

Retributive Strike is melee only. As an Elf demon hunter worshiping Erastil and using a Longbow, this class feature is completely unusable. For such a key pillar of the class, this just seems wrong. I say go back to the drawing board and make this feature into an optional feat.

Blade Ally: Again melee only unless you invest in the 6th or 10th level feats, the 16th and 20th level feats again are melee only.

I don't think the current paladin fits the roll of 'Destroyer of Evil', and instead feels more like a 'Holy Speed Bump'

If the game needs a Guardian class, then just make it and leave the Paladin be..

I’m for option 3, although I did like the option 2/3 alternative.

I think the attack rolls versus skill checks have already wildly diverged. Mostly because attack rolls get to factor legendary twice, once for proficiency and once for weapon bonus.

I would like to see a different implementation of the assurance feat, especially if it can become an aspect of proficiency rank. But if not, then it was might be nice to throw a bone to the triple step checks in the form of adding your proficiency rank to any subsequent checks if you succeeded on the first one.

E.g. if you pass the first pick lock attempt as a master, you would add +2 to any further checks on that lock, because in theory you nailed step one and if you need to start all over you should have the knack of it and can focus on the 2nd and 3rd steps.

I feel like that at every level up on the rogue, cleric, and druid that I’ve played so far. I am feeling like that as I make a bard for the 5th chapter.

Biggest causes:

I don’t think we can all agree that the new class agnostic archetypes are strictly an improvement.

I too would love to avoid dependency on the potency of your big 3 items to make the game math work.

I dislike that disarming the guards to escape the prison means that you loose half or more of your combat effectiveness, because they only have mundane gear.

I like flavor more than efficiency, so I don’t care for a choice that is devoid of flavor and only provides a mandatory stat bump. I would rather the efficiency come from character level, item quality, and special materials. I think being a magical weapon should go back to be about overcoming monstrous and magical defenses and cool properties.

I there was an example of how this would just shift the big 3/6 to Grants X, but I those can be balanced easily with drawbacks and duration, so I don’t mind so much. I still think people will sometimes choose the blade of frost weapon because that feels more in character for them. My hope is that making that choice for flavorful reasons comes with less punishment because the optimal solution is no longer baked into the wbl math throughout the game.

Yeah the trope of a wizard only wielding a staff, dagger, or crossbow seems a little tired these days. Lots of cool characters have been imagined that are wizards that use very non standard weapons. Seems like it wouldn’t be too hard to allow armor and weapon proficiency selection regardless of class. I totally agree that what gear you fight with is a poor reason for choosing a class. How you fight should be the most important.

I also whole-heartedly agree with this assessment. As a player in four chapters of the playtest so far, my picks have been like, "magic armor, magic weapon, okay now what looks interesting and cool".

The weapon and armor proficiency thing seems like it would work, but not without some general method of achieving expert, master or legendary in them outside of the class feature. The way armor and weapon proficiency work now is really a waste if all I want to do is use a certain weapon/weapon group or specific armor and get better at it.

Yes, happened in the playtest by honest mistake, people saw heighten +1 and thought plus one character level for cantrips not spell level. It was quickly corrected by the person themselves, but to say it doesn’t happen is disingenuous.

Great idea. It has always bothered me that you can follow a proficiency chain to get to “Trained” in all weapons and armor no matter what class, but for my sorcerer I just wanted better in unarmored, my rogue better in light and my cleric better in medium and the current structure doesn’t let me do that.

I think if you want to throw daggers at all the victims of your stinking cloud for 20 levels as a wizard you should get better at doing that. It isnt really a trade off, it is just part of that wizard’s routine, and after researching for the day why can’t that character practice throwing daggers at nearby tree knots while the fighter cooks dinner around the campfire?

The only ones that will need strict balancing are saves and perception, but seeing at how weak the proficiency bonus is compared to ability bonus, level, and item bonuses , even perception might not be problematic.

In answering the original post, I would say it is wrong to play monsters in a way more optimal than their mental stats would indicate. It would be wrong to play monsters of a chaotic alignment with optimal teamwork. It would be wrong to play evil monsters by having them knowingly passing up a chance to be evil.

That said, there is not enough detail on monster behavior, motivations, or tactics given in most of the monster descriptions that I’ve seen. But I wouldn’t characterize every creature as automatically vicious either.

As for the other thread that lead to the question of this thread, I was constantly surprised that whenever the rules were indecipherable by the GM, they were discarded or ignored to the detriment of the PC party, but not the NPCs. I wouldn’t consider flat out ignoring inconvenient rules or ruling them against the PC by default as cause for redevelopement of core systems.

But by no means is that feedback invalid! Clarity or lack of it needs to be documented. Playing without assuming knowledge beyond the written page is providing valuable information because this next edition of the game is hoping to attract people that do not have any prior experience.

What about changing the check dice based on proficiency?

Playtest version 1.3

Likes:
1. The four degrees of success/failure
It is nice to get even a minor effect out of limited spells per day when your target rolls to save against them. I'd like to see more of that in skills and feats, which sometimes skip on or more categories of success/failure.
2. Using actions to alter spell casting
I look at Heal as the poster child for this, and I think almost ever targeted spell should follow its lead. So many other spells have room to improve on this idea, like add a action to get resistance to two energy types, or add an action change the area of effect, or add an action to increase the range. I HATE meta magic feat taxes, just build this stuff into the spells instead. Would save so much room and make the limited number of useable spells per level easier to swallow.
3. Property Runes, Crafting, and Item Quality
If weapons and armor could only have property runes, I'd be much happier with the entire system. I really like that you can apply these as you progress in gear or techniques. I like the overhaul to crafting that allows you to work with these runes along with having use outside of downtime. I really like item quality and would prefer that over potency runes and inflated monster HP.

Dislikes:
1. Classes and Archetypes
The classes are video gamey, disorganized messes. Most of the flexible ones railroad you into a "path" because if one person wants to just be wild order druid and ignore the rest, then everyone has to make the same trade off or it isn't balanced. Archetypes are half of the things I want from multi classing and half of the things I don't want, and in both respects are a total let down. Without class feats, all of the classes fail to stand up on their own as interesting or viable, in order to get customization options, you are forced to use them just to have a competent version of your class.
2. The action system
Apparently it is a true feat to walk and draw a sword at the same time over 6 seconds; far beyond mere mortals. Basically the action system is a good premise that is used to beat all the fun out of doing anything too interesting in your turn. I understand that it streamlines a bunch of OP class abilities by enforcing reasonable time limits to doing stuff in your turn, but too many free action tasks have been made into an action. Then X levels later, sanity returns and you can convert those actions to reactions/free actions at the cost of a feat.
3. Economy
It seems like consumables are way to expensive and so are special materials. I would expect to have a lot of tools at my disposal at 9th level, and I still struggle to hold things, afford expert level non-magical equipment, and have a couple of life saving consumables on hand. Equipment has an outsized effect on damage and success instead of class ability and training. It really should be the other way around.

Class Feats
Something that occurred to me about locking combat style behind classes/class feats is that sometimes I approach character generation knowing how I want to fight, then pick the class that lets me fight that way while getting to handle everything outside of combat in a different way. Because of all the archetypes and options in PF1, this is usually easy to do.

For instance these are some fighting styles I might consider:

Hand to Hand
Weapon and Shield
Two weapons
Weapon and Magic
Ranged with Ammunition
Ranged by throwing
Wrestling / Grappling
Dirty Fighting / Tripping
Mounted Combat
Finesse Fighting / Disarming
Deadly Fighting / Precision Damage
Attrition Fighting / Debilitations
Kung Fu Fighting
Swashbuckling / Feinting

As long as I could pick a class or class path that allowed me to optimize that style, then I think the game works well. If I have to take a bunch of baggage class features that I don't want, or can't trade out for a multi class features, then I feel like the game is working against my character concept too much.

Right now the class feats and paths aren't giving me that fighting style chassis to build onto. Instead I get a lot of intertwined things that are part initial path, built-in class features, and class feats.

For class paths, unless they print less "path" relevant feats than you have feat choices, people will feel obligated to take them all at the expense of flavorful choices. If they print more "path" relevant feats than choices, people won't feel like they can ever be optimized on a path. It might be that the best middle road is to provide a solid "path" as a built-in feature with about a half and half mix of path complimenting feats and multi-pathing feats. If that was the case, then I would also want archetypes to be more about one path of a class rather than just one middling "bag of class features" like they are now.

For example, what if the base Fighter had melee and ranged paths, with the emphasis on wielding weapons and using armor. At level one you would pick your primary path. You would get progression on that path as a class feature, no need to invest feat picks to be "good" (i. e. better than average, but less than the extreme specialist). You could use your class feats to round out your character by getting average competence in one or more of the other paths, tactical / strategic options for your primary path, or power optimization of your primary path. You should be able to get a little bit of each of those three options, and you should be able to trade some of them out to pick up a path from a different class altogether. You should get some synergy options for two paths as another possible customization.

Skill Feats
I'm worried about these. On one hand it is great we get a pool of them to use that don't compete with other feats. But I can imagine that with new source material there will be too many to choose from and many may end up as pure filler that no one wants. It might be better to just remove the need to choose them, and instead have expert rank in a skill provide access to any feat of rank expert or lower. It seems to me that legendary diplomacy is all about doing more and better diplomacy than the untrained mook. Part of the legendary reputation is being about to apply talent and experience to pull off feats in many different situations, which is the opposite of what is in the rules now.

Like athletics for example, which has climbing, swimming, and jumping. Someone legendary in athletics just can't be a triathelete in this system, there isn't enough skill feat picks, and if you try that, you have to give up investing in feats for any other skills too.

Ancestry Feats
I don't know that these really are needed. The alternate racial traits system wasn't that bad and the Inner Sea isn't really so mono-cultured that you would go to your homeland to gain access to ancestral qualities later in life. Perhaps there should be a fixed number of heritage feats for all ancestries given at first level, which you pick out of a pool of options like the alternate racial traits. Then the rest of the feats are moved to a section that is cultural and you get a handful of these later in life depending on the culture you pick to belong to. So an elf that sets out to make their fortune in the southern jungles or crown of the world will pick up aspects of that culture organically through picking feats that make sense to learn later in life and are relevant to the culture they learn them from.

General Feats
I almost feel like the small number of "pure" general feats need to be handled in a different way altogether. The ones with strict prerequisites should just happen automatically. I can't really see someone with a 14 constitution not ever wanting Fast Recovery, so just give it to them if they qualify. The rest are just power gamey cheese and should probably go away or get folded into existing class paths where they make sense.

Then the general feats could be convertible for anything you needed at a slight level discount depending on where they went. They could be used at level for cultural feats, -2 levels for class feats, -4 levels for archetype feats, or 1 for 1 as a skill increase. So a general feat gained at 7th level could be used on a 3rd or lower archetype feat, 5th or lower class feat, 7th or lower cultural feat, or increasing a skill rank to master or lower.

Summary
Thanks for reading, I doubt any of this will ever be implemented but it was fun thinking about it.

There are two aspects to the arcanist, the exploits and the daily repertoire adjustment. I would totally get behind making those things into archetypes, but I’d be more psyched to see them rolled into these two classes.

For example:

Sorcerers getting exploits because they don’t just know magic they are magic. They can have a few spells but can exploit them to gain versatility since they lost their quantity per day advantage

Wizards getting a daily customizable repertoire and slots because bad spell selection is a huge opportunity cost already. Turning a useless memorization into another casting of a useful spell seems so much better when you get fewer spells that do less in this edition.

So far so I’ve been super underwhelmed from both classes in pf1 and doubly so in the playtest. I just can’t get excited about 4 spells per level that require manual heightening to stay relevant.

I’ve always considered a legendary thief as someone who is both smart enough in book knowledge and physically capable to pull off insane heists. I think the mission impossible agent is someone who isn’t necessarily a soilder, or researcher, or support specialist. Instead they are physically and mentally tuned to accomplish complex feats in impossible situations that require using smarts and muscles in ways that ordinary folks do not.

Being “skilled” to me implies training, physical prowess, and knowledgeability of the art and science of a thing.

So how does that play out in table top role playing?

- Smart strikes, hitting someone hard where it hurts the most
- environmental awareness, mastery of physical terrain
- optimizing for paths of least resistance
- outsmarting inanimate devices and automatons
- able foil the plans of those who consider themselves smarter, richer, more noble or famous.

I think pf2e gets some of this pretty close, and other parts of it seem way off. But then the alleyway mugger isn’t going to match the stereotype I want to play and until 1.3 wasn’t fully supported either.

My hope is that they don’t silo the rogue techniques so you can only go down one path because that seems to prevent styling your character like XXX or hardcore Henry or other smart but thuggish or “face” from the A-team who can fight smartly enough to hold his own against the much stronger and stupider opponents.

My memory isn’t so great but weren’t the BECMI/1st/2nd editions full of look up tables to deal with the flat probability of the d20? I remember the 3.0 pitch as being a full rewrite by wizards of the coast to eliminate comparing die rolls to tables, and had linear bonuses that were easy to remember. I thought the numbers looked big back then, but I was too enamored by the feat system to properly understand.

I stopped playing before 3.5 and wasn’t really aware of all the math research available online, so it has only recently occurred to me in the past year that this all started when the system around the d20 was revamped to its current form.

I totally agree that the d20 is too fundamental to the game for me to want to change the dice. That said, it seems like the system should embrace that and change around it to support bell curve results by using a lookup table if need be. It would be better than what we have now, where you are adding and subtracting 3 to 8 numbers to get your result and then rolling a jillion dice for damage and doubling this and that. I like math, but not tedious math. I like skill choices to matter but this tight math makes it seem like nothing really improves.

The complication for new players for both pf1, and probably more for pf2 is the fear of going down the wrong path on early choices and winding up with a character you can't actually play later on. For some people that means reviewing every ancestry, every class, every archetype, and every spell list to see if your character is going to be viable.

Compared to other systems with fewer options, I expect creation time and possibly play time will take longer until people build up enough internal familiarity. One of the only ways I can think to alleviate this would be to reduce the "either or" nature of class specialization so that you could be good at more than one aspect of the class, and be more generous with changing those picks later on in a players career.

Wow, that was a long thread to catch up on. It seems to have touched on a lot of things and I had thoughts on all of them, so I'll just make a couple of quick points.

Seems like people would like:
* A player should be able to be good at everything that the "vanilla" class can do without needed to spend their customization picks to get there.
* Players like have choices that let them specialize or focus their class, like being better at archery than the average fighter, or better at wild shape than the average druid, or better at two weapon fighting than the average ranger. i.e. no two wizards should be exactly alike.
* There should be some amount of room for players to do secondary things without making themselves into a worse version of the average class. e.g. A bard that gets into fencing duels for fun and profit instead of playing cover tunes at the local inn.

Instead
* The play-test classes seem set up to only allow you to focus one aspect of your class at the expense of all the other features.
* There is little room for flavorful class feature choices in the existing lists because core features require following a feat train to stay relevant as you gain levels. Scaling features or feats would be an improvement that frees up extra picks.
* Dabbling in another class's territory requires you give up core competency. e.g. a barbarian that taps into their rage in a way that lets them cast a flavorful cantrip ala bloodrager style must necessarily become a severely hampered barbarian.

There was a bunch of pf1/pf2p/4e/5e comparisons that I didn't fully understand, but seem to boil down to rigid classes versus flexible class choices. I don't agree with all of these points, but these are what I think people have said.

Rigid:
* Class features should be unique, and if you want them, then play that class, don't poach with multi-classing shenanigans.
* We should have more full progression classes/archetypes rather than letting people mix and match.
* Players should not be good at anything other than their own class. If they want to have ability in anything not granted by their class, they should suffer.

Flexible:
* Class features should be flavorful to that class, i.e. bards do their thing their way, and rogues do it differently.
* It should be possible to pick up any ability for a price or trade-off.
* Fighting styles should be divorced from class features or feats. e.g. we don't have an archer class, so archery should be available to any class.

I think this really stems from two motivations for playing a TTRPG. The tabletop crowd, that likes miniatures, maps and tactics seem to want solid roles that are balanced and prevent people from excelling at too many roles. The other crowd are RP gamers that want to tell stories with characters that are unique, multifaceted, and reasonably effective both in and out of combat.

I like to think I'm both, but honestly I probably tend towards the RP gamer, in that I would rather read posts about pop-culture character builds than min-max optimization boards.

I also think that people should remember that this play-test is supposed to push the boundaries of what is playable. So yeah, you should dislike some things, and it isn't unreasonable to dislike most of the play-test. Instead you should play it, objectively, and give feedback of both positive aspects and the negative aspects explaining exactly what you want to do, and how you could or could not do it.

Here is the story of what worked and didn't work for my chapter 3 build:

I wanted to make a druid that was good at more than just wild shape, but I couldn't since wild shape class feats didn't scale, and choosing an order locked me out of other core druid class features. Those class feat choices weren't meaningful or exciting, it was just pick everything that had the wild order trait and be like *every* other druid that chose wild order. This completely precluded dabbling in anything non-druid at all.

The other feat buckets (skill, general, heritage, and ancestry) seemed small and the choices did not always seem like they expanded your character so much as brought your character back to par from past edition experience. But I did like them being separate and not haven't to compete with each other since a skill feat and a class feat were leagues apart in power level and flexibility.

Using archetype feats for multi classing looks like a really clean way of handling class variation, but having to use precious class feats for them is really punishing in a way that pf1 base/hybrid and archetypes were not. If my druid were to take fighter in order to be a better polymorph brawler for example, not only would the fighter dedication not really help unarmed attacking, but then my overly specialized wild order build would suffer as well.

That said, the druid I created felt mechanically fun to play, and I liked that I could use spell selection to add some variety. I also had some fun roleplaying him because he was a dwarf that liked being above ground in the woods. But overall the character lacked depth and I felt like I had too few options to make him stand apart from any other druid that was rolled up.

Perhaps that is the point of the play-test. To funnel people into very narrow builds to find out the limits of what is playable, powerful, flexible, or fun by reducing the number of variables in the experiment. If so, then it makes sense that there were people unhappy with both the rigidness parts and the flexibility parts.

The biggest complaint I'm seeing, is that the quantity of class feats gained vary dramatically between classes, so that biases certain types of multi-classing using archetype feats. I would rather see an equal amount of class feats allotted to every class.

I would also like it to be easy to build a "generalized" version of each class, where you can do all the various <insert class here> things, just not as specialized in them. In order for that work out, the feats, even low level ones need better scaling to last a full 20 levels. A lot of the class feats feel like they are mandatory to be good at that basic class feature, rather than exceptional.

I don't think the proficiency bonus (untrained, trained, expert, master, legendary) has to be a gating factor in every situation. I think it is meant to provide a structure that is easy to grasp and utilize.

For example, many of the skills with untrained actions are things you could easily attempt just by watching someone else demonstrate it, but you'd probably be terrible against a level appropriate DC if you aren't proficient. But as you age and gain experience, you could trip a low level goblin that runs past you, but would fail rather spectacularly if that was a red mantis of your level running by.

For those skills with little untrained uses, it seems represent that this action is "harder than it looks" and you are lacking some key piece of knowledge and training to make the attempt.

In addition, having these ranks defined and applied to all skills gives the GM a little bit of flexibility such that a character with proper equipment/tools/environment and also getting coached by someone with the correct proficiency level might have a slim chance at success so you add a penalty to the check and relax the gatekeeping.

As for the constant growth per level, I think we want to see experience matter, even in broad skills, because much like real life, people pick up lots of skills in life just by living and dealing with problems. I'm not much of a mechanic, but I've had help and done enough repairs that I have a slight chance of success provided I have the tools despite not being formally trained in auto repair.

There really isn't a lot of options for representing that general organic growth without constantly revising DC's down as PCs level up, or constantly increasing checks. Maybe less than one per level seems more palatable, but I like the math being simple with whole numbers.

JoelF847 wrote:

runestone - what exactly does this do? Just act like a piece of paper you can put a rune on? Why would you do that ever? Just to carry in your pocket and smile? How does this help you in any way?

I could see some use in this for keeping extra property runes around for when they're needed like one for each element change then out as needed. Also keep in mind its a 3gp slate you can slap any rune on instead of needing the proper, and very expensive eventually, master and legendary quality items for potency runes.

As for basically everything else yeah i generally agree items need to wither be invested or cost per activation never both. Also alchemical items should never have cost resonance.

Great write up, totally agree with almost everything

I saw the runestone as useful for removing runes from items or as a raw material for crafters, especially if you don’t want to carry a bunch of bulky magic armor out of the dungeon.

It seems like since the polymorph spells say "your constant abilities of your gear still function" and "these special statistics (AC, attack bonus, damage bonus)" then the damage from the Handwraps should still apply (because they affect the number of damage dice, a constant ability not mentioned in those special statistics).

I think you are correct about property runes, because page 371 states:

"While most properties are constant abilities, some have special abilities that must be activated. These follow the rules for activating magic items on page 376." Attacking with a Ghost Touch weapon is not an Activate Item action so it would be a constant ability.

The part about extra damage dice is unclear, mostly because it is called out in the weapon potency rune stat block as two distinct combat benefits. And only refers to the attack roll bonus as an item bonus, but does not make that same distinction about the increased damage dice.

But the shape change spells say you gain

"One or more unarmed melee attacks, which are the only types of attacks you can use. You're trained with them. Your attack modifier is +10 and your damage bonus is +5. These are Strength based (for the purpose of enfeebled, for example)."

Then it states

"These special statistics can be adjusted only by penalties, circumstance bonuses, and conditional bonuses."

But as far as I can tell, extra damage dice is not actually a bonus or penalty. While you might roll different dice based on attack type or weapon, a bonus or penalty is always just a single fixed number.

Glossary:

"Bonus: Bonuses are positive numbers that are added to a score or a roll, they come in three types: item, conditional, and circumstance. If you gain multiple bonuses of a given type, you apply on only the highest bonus, and ignore the others. See page 291 for more. See "modifier" and "penalty" for the other numbers that affect your rolls"

"Modifier: Modifiers can be either negative or positive and adjust a roll. Most d20 rolls add an ability modifier based on your level of training. See page 290 for more, and see "bonus" and "penalty" for the other numbers that affect your rolls"

"Penalty: Penalties are negative values that reduce a roll or a score. They come in three types: Conditional, circumstance, and (rarely) item. If you have multiple penalties of a given type, you apply only the worst penalty and ignore the others. Some penalties that you gain due to inherent drawbacks in your choices, such as the multiple attack penalty, are untyped, in which case they are cumulative and all apply. See page 291 for more, and see "modifier" and "bonus" for the other numbers that affect your rolls.

Those pages (290-291) all discuss checks which are dice rolls + modifiers. I would read that to indicate that additional damage dice from magic weapons are not considered "modifiers" and not prohibited by the clause in the various polymorph spells that limit adjustments to penalties, conditional and circumstance bonuses.

Currently, I'm of the opinion that you would get the constant abilities from handwraps that add additional damage dice and property runes to your unarmed attacks. These are invested items that do not just make your hands into magic weapons, but rather grant a constant ability that all your unarmed attacks work like magic weapons.

I think the specific rules for Handwraps of Mighty Fists are more specific than the shape spells, but also not disallowed by those spells either. In part because of the section on constant abilities on page 376.

"Constant Abilities: Some magic items have abilities that always function, even without the expenditure of Resonance Points. An everburning torch always sheds light, and a flaming weapon causes fire damage every time it deals damage. Such an item has neither an activation entry nor the invested trait."

Page 377 has

"Investing Magic Items: Most magic items that are worn, as well as some held items, must be invested with Resonance Points during the Invest Item activity in order to gain their benefits. These items have the invested train. Investing an item costs 1 Resonance Point, which you spend when you complete the Invest Item activity.

Many invested items have constant abilities that function all the time or that always trigger when you use the item. These fail to function if the item is not invested by you."

So it seems clear that even though the handwraps are invested, they still provide constant abilities. And while shapeshifted you get those constant abilities, but you are not allowed to apply the item bonus to attack rolls. The extra dice and most property runes provided by the handwraps will still be allowed because they are constant abilities and thus not prevented by the spells themselves.

I think the difficulties are supposed to gate certain checks based on TEML, so even though the DC is low, untrained characters wouldn't be able to make the check at all.

My beef with the ancestry feats as races for them is simple.

1) It limits the above. They lose their unique flavor if they are just another feat chain.

2) FSBNNN. If I have to spend a feat to play the character, then it is, by default, a feat tax.

3) Half Orcs get screwed, and are exceptionally dumb to read. You have to spend a feat, and another to get Darkvision, which has been a staple of the race? Thanks, now I'm two feats behind a goblin, for frak's sake. Oh, look, other races can burn a feat at first level to get weapon familiarity. My half orc has to either choose to a) get dark vision, or weapons and b) not until FIFTH level. So now I'm behind the Goblins and Dwarves.

Pathfinder went so far to not make the Half Orcs the bastard children of the game. PF2 puts them back in the box.

I agree that the system we were provided in the playtest has a lot of feel bad to it. But I think the idea to use a heritage option to alter an ancestry is a good one. The feel bad for mixed ancestry comes in both varieties; being unable to get as many choices for flavor reasons, and being able to get equivalent features for mechanical reasons.

Flavor wise you give up your level one heritage feat choice that sets you apart from “the average bear” just to indicate what ancestry your parents had. That part of ancestry should just be a free roll, no barriers, no taxes, just the ability to tell the story you want to tell about who gave birth to you and who raised you.

Mechanically the current system also feels bad because you need to take the half blooded heritage feat twice to get all four things, when nearly every other ancestry would get them all for one feat. And it also results in no feats left over to invest in the non-heritage feats that make your character concept function well.

Picking your parents and having that be flexible and meaningful is exactly what we want. But what we get is that if you pick mixed parents, you have to give up flexibility and you have to accept less meaningful game impact at first level.

Separating heritage from ancestry, giving every one a heritage feat for each parent would put all ancestries back on the same level. The half-orc and half-elf heritage feats seem like a good model with four things that come from blood. Each parent would provide two things and you could mix parents however you choose. Everyone would wind up with four things and access to a list of ancestry feats.

Since the ancestry feats already use the trait system, it would be easy to mark the ancestry feats with one or more ancestries. You could label some with only half-orc, some with only orc, and others with both orc and half-orc. This would allow for reasonable overlap of feats that are applicable to single blooded only, mixed blooded only, or both. Then the heritage feats should be four things that make you a half-orc or four things that make you a dwarf and you pick two of them per parent. It wouldn’t be a big change, since most races only have one heritage feat choice anyway.

I would get rid of the adopted ancestry general feat and just add an “adopted” trait to the ancestry feats that a foundling could gain. Players could choose an adopted heritage for one or both parents, still get the same four things based on actual parents, but their remaining feats could include any adopted trait that matched the race of their adopted parent.

Imagine being able to show up the the first session with a back story of being a half-elf, but raised by a kindly dwarf and her gnome husband. with a couple of elf and human biology features and still getting to have an ancestry feat to add depth to just what sort of impact that heritage and ancestry meant to your character and your concept.