Zman0's page

Here is the guidance I created for Bound Pathfinder 2nd in the Playtest, it worked well enough for the couple of months I ran it. I also had gone through and changed all the other static DCs that needed help by modifying editing the rulebook pdf. I also had edited the playtest bestiary with all the new and relevant values.

Bestiary Changes
Remove the monter's level from all calculations that include it: Perception, Skills, AC, TAC, Saves, To Hit, and Save DCs.

This also applies to Hazards and Traps.

Table 4- Creature XP and Role
Party's Level XP Suggested Role
Party's Level - 7-8 5 Trivial-threat Minion
Party's Level - 6 10 Minimum-threat Minion
Party's Level - 5 15 Minimum-threat Minion
Party's Level - 4 20 Low-threat minion
Party's Level - 3 25 Minion
Party's Level - 2 30 High-minion
Party's Level - 1 35 Any standard
Party's Level 40 Any standard
Party's Level + 1 50 Low-threat boss
Party's Level + 2 60 Boss
Party's Level + 3 80 High-threat boss
Party's Level + 4 100 Severe-threat solo boss
Party's Level + 5 120 Extreme-threat solo boss
Party's Level + 6 160 Extreme-threat solo boss
Party's Level + 7 240 Beyond Extreme-threat solo boss
Party's Level + 8 320 Beyond Extreme-threat solo boss
*Be cautious using any monster with a CR greater than double the party's level.

Calculating Average Party Level
Calculate the average party level rounded down.
Higher Level Characters
If a character is one level higher than the average party level they recieve half the expected experience. If a character is two levels higher than the average party level they recieve only one quarter the expected experience. If a character is more than two levels higher than the average party level the encounter is considered trivial and they receive no experience.

Lower Level Characters
If a character is one level lower than the average party level they recieve one and a half the expected experience. If a character is two levels lower than the average party level they recieve double the expected experience.

Higher level monsters will still obliterate low level characters etc. What removing +Proficiency does is stretch the viable opposition range from +/- 4 Levels to about +/- 8 Levels. The +/-10 Crit range still works, its just stretched. I played with this variant for months during the playtest and it works well.

There was another long thread on this and my best answer to it is that they expect you to craft the special shields out of different materials. The rules seem to support it RAW and RAI, though it isn't laid out terribly intuitively.

Zman0 wrote:

No one said they were infallible demi-gods. However, your insistence that you know the Correct Decision they should have made despite not having any data at all (not even fallible playtest data) means that you're positioning yourself as an infallible demi-god.

Your whole argument is boiling down to:

1. You don't believe the playtest data, but don't have any contradictory data to support that feeling.

2. The devs are worse at making games than you.

3. Catering to 5e players should have been a highly valued goal.

I never said I am infallible Demigod. But I am saying it is a legitimate argument to make about 5e style casting vs Vancian. Does the argument work the opposite way. Did Wizards drop Vancian because of their playtest data? Which is arguable going to be better than Paizo's. Or did they use all their big data to make 4e the perfect game for the market? Oops, that wasn't quite so good... How about 5e? Much better. Acting like Devs for major systems can't make mistakes and misread the market is ridiculous on its face, especially when we're discussing one particular subsystem of the whole game.

1. I am arguing that the playtest data is is flawed due to selection bias which in this particular case is nearly impossible to correct for.

2. I have never said that. Of the two P2 devs I've had any interactions with, I respect one of them immensely and do not think very highly of the other at all.

3. Only if converting 5e players to P2 is a goal and is contrasted to catering to P2 Playtesters who are arguably already a lock, regardless.

Also, got that link to the Playtest and focus group data analyzing Vancian Casting that utilized statistical modeling to account for their obvious and problematic selection bais?

Everyone keeps going back to the playtest survey and how the devs made decisions based on it. What I think Donovan Du Bois is getting at with his comments is that a survey's results are only as good as they are representative. Surveying only those players who are most likely P1 players already, already experienced with and invested in Vancian, and committed enough to partake in the playtest, is far from representative of all players, and certainly is not representative of potential players. Essentially those results are as limited as the the people they've surveyed and should not be relied upon.

Does anyone else think that Pathfinder second edition should have gone with the D&D 5e method of spell preparation?

For those of you that don't know, prepared spell casters get to prepare a number of spells, and then can spend a spell slot to cast any appropriately leveled spell. So instead of preparing three magic missiles, you just need to have magic missile prepared today to be able to spend spell slots to cast it.

I think this would have helped people who are coming over from 5e, as well as give prepared casters a little utility after the decrease in spell slots. What does everyone else think?

Agreed on all counts. With quite of experience both ways, I'm not sure I'd get the guy who played 5e casters for two years to play a P2 caster without house-ruling it. Literally the first day of the playtest for P2, he said something to the effect, "Ugg, casting is so annoying, why didn't they just use 5e casting, it's better?" We chucked that rule after about six hours of play and house-ruled it. It's kind of funny, when I met the guy he was a P1 guy, then swung completely to 5e. P2 is yet to be determined, but requires house-rules such as casting.

Let them just prepare spells and cast them as many times as slots allow. Let the spontaneous casters spontaneously heighten for free and make the prepared casters prepare any heightened spells they want. We playtested about five to six months like that.

IMO, good old Vancian Casting is just terribly frustrating, cumbersome, and annoying to play with.

shroudb wrote:

At the very least, you should have been able to make the non-sturdy shields out of any material you could afford to.

...is making a magical shield out of a special material against the rules? did I miss that somehow?

There are no rules for it whatsoever. The magical shields are as presented. It would have been painfully simple to have added those rules.

Yep. There were serious issues in line with these in the playtest as well and they did absolutely nothing to fix them. Worse, they just updated them to the new shield format without fixing them. Shields were based off the early shields and did not scale with level and still don't. IMO, it is kind of ridiculous that they would fail to address this absolutely glaring error. I mean, it was a known issue, and is pretty obvious, and less than nothing was done about it. This is the kind of thing that makes this book look like an unfinished product.

They have plans to release a new rulebook with all the errata and even more. I'm pretty sure its slated for August of 2019. ;)

I am not a terribly big fan of Hero Points as written. I have houseruled them as such...

Each adventuring day the Heroes start with one, they reset to one at the end of the day. There are no out of game Hero Point rewards. Our table is a bit irked by the idea of trying to modulate player behavior.

All actions now cost only one Hero Points.

Heroic Recovery: As written
Reroll: As written, no refund.
Extra Action: As written.

Added two new Heroic Actions

Heroic Resolve: Outside of Encounter mode spend a Hero Point to recover half the hit points you are down. This helps offset toning down Treat Wounds.

Heroic Defense: Gain benefit of appropriate leveled Mage Armor, last one hour. Its literally plot armor for those times out heroes aren't in their armor etc.

The answer is no for a couple of reasons. Firstly, both Double Slice and Sudden charge require two actions for a total of four actions and your fighter only has three actions. Secondly, Sudden Charge lets you make a melee strike, it doesn't give you permission to use anything but a basic Melee Strike action.

Zman0 wrote:

But, as long as they keep it, its easy to houserule out and I'll deal. And my couple months of playtesting has led me to believe that it is indeed the playstyle for me. It just means that instead of buying a physical rulebook, I have to buy the cheaper pdf, modify the things that need it, and print it off and bind it with the remainder of the money I saved. Same for the Bestiary.

I know this isn't on the topic, but I don't think this forum has a way to DM people, so I'm sorry for that. How exactly do you modify things in the PDF before printing it? I would really like to do that, but I though PDFs were made to be uneditable.

I've just been adding comment txt boxes in foxit. When you print, it'll print the comment txtbox over what was there. You can't really modify the pdf itself, or at least not easily. But, so far, this has worked very well.

I've also been using the snapshot feature for errata updates etc, so my group is using just the printed rulebook in front of them, no reference sheets at all. When something needs changing or gets errata, I just reprint it and replace the sheets. With tabs in multiple binders(characters, GM/Playing, Spells) it has worked really well so far.

People have really been losing sight of the topic of the thread. Having Bound or +level be an optional rule for P2.

So much talk about how you can't tell those two kinds of stories in one system. Well, by making the removal of +level and optional rule, you definitely can tell those two kinds of stories in the same base system. Bound P2 tells stories in the same way 5e does, Unbound or stock P2 tells them very much the same way that P1 does. I see the opportunity to do both in the same base system incredibly appealing.

IMO, an official variant rules making it acceptable would go a long way. Some official support, ie a separate bestiary is probably too much to ask. Having the alternate lower values in parentheses or something seems more reasonable.

I find it fun, this is still a topic of conversation, literally one of my first threads on the forums was asking for two Pathfinders, a Bound and Unbound one. Still looking for official recognition of the play-style and bestiary support would be amazing.

But, as long as they keep it, its easy to houserule out and I'll deal. And my couple months of playtesting has led me to believe that it is indeed the playstyle for me. It just means that instead of buying a physical rulebook, I have to buy the cheaper pdf, modify the things that need it, and print it off and bind it with the remainder of the money I saved. Same for the Bestiary.

So much misinformation going on in this thread, I'm glaring at you, BryonD, in particular.

Removing the +Level scaling from P2 isn't difficult, it is quite easy to do. Yes, it does change encounter design, but largely lower level threats being a bit tougher and the higher level threats being a bit easier will balance out. The default +/-4 Level threat range effectively expands to +/-6 with a usable, albeit touchy, tail of +/-8 levels.

Remember, there is no change against equal level enemies. Because of HP, Damage Scaling, and inherent Potency bonuses, and proficiency increases there still exists a large amount of scaling as monsters level. This still constrains appropriate levels to a reasonable range. The super tight "ideal" +/- 2 Level Monster range from default is doubled to an ideal range of +/-4 Levels. By ideal range, I mean monsters that are most often going to be used and most appropriate to run against your party. Running the game without +Level means a monster that is 6 levels higher than your party is going to be a serious threat.

Sure, a horde of goblins with a bow can be a threat to a dragon, but mathematically because of auto hit 20s, than stock, and IMO its up to the DM to make that not a thing. And before we hear the arguments about there don't exist fantasy settings where that is a thing, I'll point out that it is so in the Witcher series. Hell, the "adventurers and heroes" there conspire to stop the peasants from figuring out they could take on the threats by themselves. Want to "fix" this problem, give every monster CR8+ or CR10+ DR5(or half level) to non magical damage, done, low level archers aren't killing your dragons now.

Yes, a couple of feats don't work, and listed DCs in spells etc need the same kind of adjustment as the bestiary, and some items like locks need new DCs. But, it comes with the huge advantage of being able to effectively remove the 10-2 Table. You get to use static DCs, and man that is easier. Numbers always mean something.

I've been running this houserule in effective playtest for over two months already. It works, and most of the kinks have been worked out. It isn't that difficult to use in practice. As far as I am concerned, it is is far better of a game than stock P2, P1, 3.5, and 5e. P2, with level scaling removed, is the game I want to be playing and the one I will be playing.

I'd love official support for that playstyle, the sooner the better.

Persistent Damage is one thing I'm not a huge fan of. On some level, I like the concept, but I'm not sold on the flat 20 check. IMO, I'd like to see the flat check be reduced by 1 for every turn you've had it, IE not possible it goes on for ever.

Love
1. 3 Action Economy
2. UTEML + Proficiency Gating
3. Bound System underneath +level scaling
*Really could add more

Hate
1. +Level Scaling
2. Unlimited Treat Wounds
3. Magic Weapon Potency Damage Dice
*The Rest is really minor

House Rules
1. Omit +Level Scaling
2. Restrain Treat Wounds.
3. Extra Damage Dice at level 4/8/12/16/20
4. Potency for Shields adding +1 Dend and +1 Hardness for Potency.
5. Hero Points. Per Adventuring Day instead of Session. No OOC awarding. All cost 1 HP. Add Defense(Leveled Mage Armor for 1 hr), Add Resolve(Heal half lost Hit Points out of combat)

Overall, P2 is the system I want to be running, even if it takes some tweaking, at least its easy to tweak. I don't come from the standard Pathfinder background, I loathed 3.5 and P1, and have been playing 5e for since it released, albeit with added content and effectively E10.

There definitely are some rough edges where the power fueled classes are concerned.

I wonder if those classes need a ability that grants them a bonus Focus if their primary stat is higher than their Char. IE your Wizard who had an 18 Int and 12 Charisma and has powers.

Under stock, they would have had 4 Spell Points and would have had level +1 Resonance.

Now, they would have only 1 Focus. With my suggestion, since their Int is higher than their Cha, they'd net a +1 Focus for a total of 2.

IMO this is good because it still gives the reason to boost Cha to Int -2 to maximize their Focus, but if they don't increase Cha much, they still are a bit better off because of their specialty. It maintains an incentive to boost Cha, and it smooths that rough edge a bit.

PS About the Harry Dresden argument, he definitely was a charismatic jerk, look at the loyalty he can inspire in others. Look at all the people who answered his call to get his daughter back from the red court.

I shifted cantrip damage scaling from odd levels up one to even levels and added a 10th level option.

Monster skills will be less than what is currently listed for a number of reasons. But, it doesn't look like they are going to errata the bestiary during the playtest so we're stuck with higher numbers for a while.

For final release, expect a better balancing of the item bonus in general, how it is calculated in Monster assumptions and PC DCs etc. Expect monster perception to be fixed, its currently being treated like a skill, but it isn't one.

If you're running a home game, I'd go right ahead and make that adjustment. You also wouldn't be far off subtracting 1 from skills and perception levels 1-10, and 2 from levels 11-20.

Basically, Monster skills are a known problem and will be addressed, its just they most likely won't be adjusting them in the playtest.

People are going to have differing experiences. Our group just ended our long running 5e game and are moving over to P2. We all enjoyed 5e. Some in our group were fans of P1, others weren't. One player after one Pathfinder experience with a different group in the past had to be begged to give P2 a chance. She was beyond resistant simply because it shared the name Pathfinder. Yes, she hated her Pathfinder experience that much, but we got her to give it a go and she seems to like P2 so far. It took two years of good will built up in two very successful 5e games, and my personal assurance that I too hated Pathfinder and 3.5, and that P2 was very different.

We're starting our own P2 campaign, albeit with a few variant rules, most notable running the system Bound.

As far as the playtest process goes, the scenarios are very different from a "fun" perspective than adventure paths or homebrew campaigns. Not to mention the options are pruned down etc etc.

Specific trumps general. RAW I see a strong case for allowing swapping bloodline spells. I see a weak case against it. RAI is less clear. Without a FAQ I’d let it happen. Plus, Sorxerers need a little love now and then.

IMO general feats are about where they need to be and should have roughly equal power to each other. Class feats on the other hand need to escalate in power proportionally corresponding to their level. IMO a General Feats should be roughly equivalent to a low level class feat, and should not equal a mid to higher level feat.

Essentially general feats can’t be equally powered compared to class feats because class feats are a moving target with a wide and escalating range of power.

I wouldn’t mind general feats, especially the ability to pick up expert in weapons proficiency making the fighter version expert or upgrade expert to master.

Bard is my favorite of the classes so far. I've just built a melee Bard who yells(inspire courage) at his companions and is a reasonable combatant. He can multiclass to fighter or rogue for tons more fun. Add in tons of skills and I'm happy as a clam. Only thing that i wish I had was a Ring of Wizardry that worked with Occultism not just Arcane so I can get more True Strikes in. Oh, and no easy access to magical striker. I did consider a Bard Sorcerer Gish for more spells, Arcane access to True Strike, and Magical Striker, but the feat load is brutal.

How important is balance? IMO, very.

How people define balance gets tricky, for me it means relatively meaningful choices with opportunity cost with only moderate differences between optimized and casual centered around meaningful baseline assumptions.

It is a very large reason I stopped spending anything on 3.5, spent nothing on Pathfinder, while spending hundreds on 5e even if it still needed some balance tweaking. And it is the reason I am planning on buy essentially every P2 product. With relatively small changes(most importantly removing +level) P2 will be the best system for the kind of games I want to run.

There is definitely a wealth of potential Backgrounds out there and I like a lot of he suggestions.

One thing I am doing at my table is allowing every character to pick two backgrounds, though each one only grants one ability boost in the named abilities, they no longer give a free boost. You get the skill feat and lore from each.

Using that houserule we now have the potential for Noble Warriors, or Noble Scholars or Merchant Sailors, or Criminal Sailors, or Criminal Laborers, etc etc. IMO it gives them more background flavor and diversity.

Here is how I would write a Tower Shield for P2

As Shield, ie +2 AC. -2 ACP, 2 Bulk. Allows the player to "take cover" action behind it for the +4 circumstance bonus to AC vs ranged attacks. Functions as well as a normal shield in melee at the cost of ACP and Bulk, shines as portable cover for the bearer against range.

The problem is, if a Fighter who invests everything into combat stays the same relative to the enemies, that means a Fighter who doesn't invest solely in combat will get weaker every level.

This isn't really true. By nature of its chassis, the Fighter pulls ahead of the average monster on combat stats and keeps pace with specialized monsters.

The new rules for Treat Wounds have one major unintended consequence, they absolutely obsolete Natural Medicine as a feat.

My suggestion is this...

Natural Medicine:
You can use Treat Wounds and Administer First Aid with Nature instead of Medicine. If you are in the wilderness, you do not require a Healer's Kit. If you are a Master of Nature you can Treat Poison using Nature instead of Medicine. If you are Legendary of Nature you can Treat Disease using Nature instead of Medicine.

Note: I have problems with Treat Wounds in general, ie magnitude of healing, time, number of patients, removing Wounded condition etc. But, this isn't a thread for that, its to specifically point out how Natural Medicine is now obsolete and a ruined feat.

I too am not a fan of Treat Wounds as written for many of the reasons you have listed.

Here is my solution, it also functions as a gritty realism mod.

Treat Wounds: Only affects 1 target in 10 minutes. Creature can only be affected once per hour. Heal is Con mod x level or 3 x level, whichever is higher.

I also changed Hero Points, characters now receive two after finishing a long rest. Each options only costs one. Heroic Recovery gets them up at 1hp, and stops them from gaining or increasing the wounded condition. They also have a Heroic Resolve option that takes a minute outside of combat, it allows them to heal half their HP.

This is where the gritty realism comes in.

Treat Wounds no longer removes the wounded condition, wounded is reduced by one after a long rest with a successful fort save.

Essentially, my solution allows for a heroic version of healing where the heroes can take a couple of deep breaths, recover a big chunk of hp(at a cost of other heroics including Heroic Recovery) and get back in the fight. Treat Wounds lets them top off after combats for the day, or a moderate amount with little cost ie the whole party take a 10min break, and each gets a decent chance to heal 3xlevel or more hp. Getting dropped is scary because it results in a lasting injury. Getting really hurt means you might be feeling that nearly lethal wound for a day or more. Even if you are wounded, you can still function to full affect, just with added fear of being dropped again.

IMO, it just fills all the needed pieces of the healing puzzle, and also fills the vermisillitude realism niche I'm looking for.

Well, with only three characters that made the fight Extreme difficulty, ie about a 50:50 shot the party could win. With the error in monster perception, its Perception is too high by about 2-3 pts at that level and will be addressed for final release. Its Perception and Intiative should and will be lower. So, your rogue should have successfully stealthed in that case, and initiative should have been more reasonable.

It made every single save... well its Will and Ref saves are not that good, but it will make most Fort saves as you'd expect when targetting a higher level monster's best save. Those numbers are in line. Its AC and attack modifier are as well.

This sounds like a combination of a 3 person party pushing a Severe encounter to Extreme, the known monster perception/skill issues, and bad luck.

As to all your hyperbole: This is a playtest. They did get somethings wrong. Letting them know what your party of three got rolled by the Sea Serpent is good. For all you know that was the aspect, or one of them, being stressed tested in that scenario.

People need to play the game and realise the only ones with a 50% success chance are the people playing Bounded...

*headshake*

That is not accurate at all. It shows a pretty large and fundamental misunderstanding about both the structure of the game and what playing Bound does to it.

Hell, the 50% reference everyone is making shows a large misunderstanding as well. Sure, certain things are calculated off the 50% benchmark, but many things shift one way or the other. This was done for a very specific reasons, usage of the critical success and critical failure rules. For instance, Trivial DCs are a 50% success rate for someone with a 10 Ability an is untrained. Now, any character that increases the related ability, or proficiency, or gets an item bonus greatly increases that 50% towards 75-100%. Both Low and High DCs can be out paced. Severe is set at the 50% benchmark opposite of trivial, scaling with an optimized character.

Many things like monster ACs are set a couple of points around that moving 50% for a trained martial with effectively optimized item and ability. And of courses, as you look at relative level you really push those up or down. Bound stil has movement of ~.5/level, and stock has ~1.5/level. Don’t knock Bounded players, they’re “50% experience” isn’t much different than normal players and against equal level, it’s identical.

I agree, medicine should be intelligence based.

Zman0 wrote:

Mekkis wrote:

Mark Seifter wrote:

Attack rolls tend to be rolled against the PCs a lot of times over the course of the game, whereas you might only roll a handful of truly crucial skill checks per session. Thus, with the larger sample size, it's often easier to see the true meaning of the numerical gap between two characters via their disparate AC (as you did), whereas a lot of the examples you'll see of the time the guy who wasn't good at the check rolled really high are talking about skills.

Isn't this a case for more disparate skill modifiers then?

But then if you start to increase the range of skill modifier increases you throw out a lot of balance being built around skill vs save and increase the range of skill vs skill and mess with class DC vs skill abilities etc.

IMO, the easily apparent difference in character skill competence needs lie in the proficiency gates being used more often, just just how they hit DCs. We need to proficiency gate more things, so its not just that that wall is DC17 athletics, its DC17(Trained), and navigating those royal social graces is a DC19(Expert) society check. Etc.

That way we can get away with some lower DCs ie Low DCs, but only the character of the required proficiency will do anything but "fail" and the question for the less than adequately trained will just fail or crit fail.

That is the last thing we need. That means that people without the appropriate skill might as well stay home. Adventures will grind to a halt because someone did not have the right skill.

Only if the adventure is poorly constructed and leaves only one way to bypass an optacle. Hinging the entire progress of an adventure in a single skill check is poor form, and no different that all the characters failing their roll etc.

@Mark Seifter

Ok, I felt your example was pretty cherry picked to show a modest benefit from Assist. So, I crunched the numbers and made a spreadsheet.

Assist Action Relative Math

What is shows is that Assist is never worth it for expending a first attack unless you are benefiting a character that has ~3x your damage or greater, and only if they also have an base chance to hit of 50%.

I also ran the math for iterative attacks above, per my gut instinct.

On a second attack a poor combatant gains a damage boost by assisting only a very competent attacker that deals ~1.5x+ their damage. If they double your damage, Assisting any competent attacker provides a modest damage boost.

On a third attack even competent attackers gain a relatively very significant damage boost that is overall still modest in absolute terms. This is is naturally heavily moderated by opportunity cost for other actions.

In Summary

The Assist action as written is incredibly niche, to the point of being able to be ignored the vast majority of the time. I would go as far as to say Assist as written is broken. But, removing the Attack Trait and removing MAP from the calculations turns it into a viable tactic that does not deal excessive damage boosts. It occasionally allows for a third attack to be traded for the equivalent of a competent attacker's secondary attack, and only if the ally attacks three times. This is absolutely an improvement over Assist as written and should greatly enhance combat maneuvering by providing a more reliable modest tactic.

I implore you to remove the attack trait from Assist.

The Assist action is at its best when there's another PC who does a significant amount more damage than you do on a hit, and especially if you think they will be making a fair number of attacks on the next turn. For instance, suppose you are a Strength 10, Dex 16 bard who has already used dirge of doom on the enemy and moved into a flank and are considering stabbing with your +1 rapier vs Assist on Amiri, and Amiri needs a 10 to hit the enemy on her first attack after Demoralize and flank (thanks to your nice Dex, you need a 10 also). A hit on a Strike would give you 7 damage, and a crit (on a 20) would give you 18.5 damage. On a successful Assist, you give Amiri a +2 (a crit gives more, but that cancels the possibility of -2 on a critical failure). If Amiri was going to swing 3 times, your Assist adds an expected 8/20 of Amiri's damage (+2 to all three attacks, and it adds +2 chance to crit on the first attack), and Amiri's damage with her +1 Large greatsword is 25. 8/20 of 25 is 10 damage, so you have a noticeably better expected result in Assisting Amiri than in attacking with your rapier. If Amiri is hasted, even better, and you're better off Striking if Amiri won't attack every time (unless the enemy has resistance).

Hey Mark. But, is Assist supposed to have the attack trait and suffer a MAP?

IMO it seems awfully niche as written, but without the attack trait it also becomes a solid alternative to an iterative attack. That kind of dynamic play would be useful. Even for a Fighter, giving up a -10 attack for a mediocre ally to get a circumstance bonus would be beneficial?

Nope, only Rogue and Ranger get beyond Expert. It is one of the character side problems that exacerbates the Monster Perception problem.

Hmmm....

Assist needs a couple points of clarification. Is it actually an attack, ie do you deal damage to the enemy. If so, then it is an absolutely great first attack for melee characters anytime you're double-teaming an enemy. For many characters it would be the default attack in that situation.

If you do not deal damage, and its merely a check using your to hit vs their AC, and its more a diversion, then Assist needs to lose the attack trait, as counterintuitive that sounds. That way you wouldn't suffer your MAP to it and it would just be an opposed check and it would work as intended.

Seeing as it doesn't specify its a strike, and has no downside compared to the standard strike, I'm inclined to believe its the latter an just a check in which case it needs to lose the Attack Trait so it doesn't suffer MAP.

Now, I'm more than ok with getting rid of Exotic Weapons. Right now we have only 4, they are already locked behind Uncommon, and three of them are race locked. Why not just make them martial and be done with it letting uncommon and race gating cover the territory of the old exotic.

I do agree with Ediwir, that the removal of Resonance allows spammable low level consumable abuse. Now, there are those who do not view that as a problem, but others including the devs do.

Here is how I suggested fixing the problem. Essentially is ensures characters even with very low Charisma will have access to resonance. It addresses low level consumables by removing resonance from oils and trinkets and making potions bolstered. For additional effects a character needs to expend resonance. It addresses healing by though the consumalbe tweak, and by allowing Hero Points to be spend for some healing. This necessitated a tweak to Hero Points as they currently were written.

Fixing Resonance, Healing, and Hero Points

Thread

Zman0 wrote:

I strongly disagree that Resonance serves no purpose. IMO there is a definite problem with spammable low level consumables ie wands and potions etc in 3.P.

What's the problem?

That characters spams low level healing items choosing them over higher level versions. It breaks verisimilitude, it breaks the intended economics. Some may not see it as a problem, but it runs counter to how the devs of previous editions and this one intend low level consumables to be used.

Zman0 wrote:

The Devs must not have absolutely adhered to that design goal, you can poach 10th level spell slots form the Cleric with nothing more than a 16 Wis, Legendary Religion, and Poaching their 10th level spell slot. If you didn't notice, I'm opposed to this and my recommendation would fix it. See, that is muchkinery, and I hope that the rules as written for the Cleric there not ok. Call that an example of the Dev's recognizing Niche Protection and giving out 10th level Cleric Spells for 2 feats, 3 skill increases, and a 16 Wis?

I believe the Cleric thing in the archetype section is a typo. I bet that they intend for the archetype feat granting higher level Cleric feats to have the same 1/2 level restriction as other archetype feats.

Most likely an earlier version or prototype version before they reigned it in. Level -4 works great. Same as 1/2 through 8th level.

I'm not very worried. The devs seem to understand that the Resonance/Healing/Consumable problem is complex and intertwined and working on it. We may not know what they're going to do, but I'd be money it'll be better than the current system.

Dueling Dance is a fine example of something that should be fighter only. Its the fighter interacting with the Action economy in a way only it should. I am not going to go line by line on your essay there. But all this "me, me, me" stuff is silly. Its you saying you want to be almost as good a duelist as a straight up fighter but also be a bard that cast 10th level spells. Thats munchkinism. If you cant see that, I cant help you see it - its freaking obvious.

The bottom line is that this is an asymmetrical game. Characters are meant to be different. Players who specialize in a class are rewarded for that. Players who diversify through dedication may get some versatility but they arent going to get the higher level toys. Players are told up front that they are probably going to get more bang for their buck from their own high level class feats but, hey, you can pouch a few lower level feats if you want.

The devs obviously have an understanding of niche protection and its an obvious design goal. Folks clamoring that this may be different than PF1: of course it is, its PF2.

Condescending much?

The me, me, me stuff? Well, you said that all desire like that were munchkinism, and there we will disagree. I literally had give give an example of something I'd like to play that would fit the scenario. It was a concept I made up on the spot and explored for the example. I never said I wanted the bard idea I had to be as good of a duelist as a straight fighter, I just wanted for it to have some level of competence and access to reasonable feats. It flat out cannot be as good as the fighter. Do you not see that?

How is the Bard under my example a worse duelist. It does not get Weapon Mastery and Weapon Specialization along with things like flexibility which are core fighter class abilities and should be locked with the exception of specific dedication feats like Opportunist. The bard gets Dueling Parry 2 levels later. Gets all the other feats at least 4 levels later.

That is not "almost as good" as the Fighter. But, it gets to the low end of required competence, something that is not possible otherwise.

Affecting the action economy in a way only a Fighter can, come on? We're talking about the bard in question spending their 18th level feat to be able to do it.

I saw giving up quite a number of powerful Bard feats just to get to low level martial competence as a duelist as reasonable. You call it munchkinery. See, I agree with most of what you said about it being an assymetrical game right there, and IMO, that paradign has been maintained.

The Devs must not have absolutely adhered to that design goal, you can poach 10th level spell slots form the Cleric with nothing more than a 16 Wis, Legendary Religion, and Poaching their 10th level spell slot. If you didn't notice, I'm opposed to this and my recommendation would fix it. See, that is muchkinery, and I hope that the rules as written for the Cleric there not ok. Call that an example of the Dev's recognizing Niche Protection and giving out 10th level Cleric Spells for 2 feats, 3 skill increases, and a 16 Wis?

Chargen system feels solid now. I have choices within my class (with more to come) and some flexibility to grab stuff outside of my class. Add to that the prestige archetypes and thats plenty of player choice in my book.

You can model plenty of player concepts with all that. As much as a game thats been out and released for years? No but that will be addressed with time. The only reason to want more on at this stage is if you want some higher level feat access for munchkinny shenanigans - not to realize a character concept or what not.

This edition seems to be doing a fair job of laying out plenty of player choice while cleverly blocking off extreme power gamey stuff. As both a GM and a player, this makes me happy.

Please keep it up Paizo

"The only reason to want more at this stage is if you want some higher level feat access for muchkinny shenanigans - not to realize a character concept or what not."

It is rather rude to dismiss people's ideas and concerns as munchkinery. I too have a large concern for balance and want to prevent the same kind of behaviors. I did ask you for examples of any problems my suggestion creates.

As far as realizing a concept, well here is one for you.

Now, with stock rules as a multiclass fighter I can pick up dueling reposte at 16th level. But I'm a bard so I don't have a 16th level feat, so that would be 18th level. Ouch. Dueling Reposte fits my theme, but man it isn't a very good feat. I could get Agile Grace or Certain Strike at 20th, but no way a pidly 10th level feat is worth giving up 10th level spells so I'll pass. Dueling Dance, perfect for my character, just not possible. Well, it started so good and fizzled out.

What about my suggestion of level -4. Well, I would choose between Dueling Reposte or Weapons expert at 12th, choices are good. I'm really lucky and at 14th I can indeed get Agile Grace or Certain Strike. They are good feats, probably not giving up Allegro good or delaying it to 18th. But for the concept, I could get on board. At 16th I've be able to pick up Dueling Dance, except I don't get a feat at 16th. So I'd snag it at 18.

Sure, if I wanted to be that dueling focused, I could just play a straight fighter, but I'd be very hard pressed to fulfill the other aspects of the character to the point it just wouldn't work.

Was anything imbalanced by that? No, it appears that a 4 level difference for the purpose of snagging feats is a pretty good balancing mechanic and at least for this character the difference between a mediocre representation of the desired character and a stellar one. Nothing was imbalanced, we gave up a lot of excelling at bard to be a reasonable duelist in combat. Through 8th level it functions exactly the base game does, except for Cleric that should be moved to the same for consistency, and the scale of pace between stock and my suggestion isn't terrible only opening up 12/14/16 level feats eventually.

Can you point to any feat combination using level -4 for multiclassing that appears even remotely overpowered? I can't. As I said before, I am very concerned about balance, but the half level requirement for multiclassing is pretty harsh and arguably too stringent.

I will agree with you, Paizo is doing a good job with P2, and I'm excited to see where it is going. I take offense to your accusations though.

This feels like a problem masked as a solution intended for a solution deemed a problem.

Gestalt for everyone pretty much means everybody is going to be a caster. Literally, even if you had a 10 in the casting statistic, the amount of utility say by picking up any caster is huge. That might be the right feel for certain adventures, but overall, as the default rule, no.

I am a big fan of feat based multiclassing, and have actually been running a variant of 5e for the last year or so that uses feat based multiclassing. IMO, its generally the most elegant implementation of multiclassing and avoids the pitfalls of multiclassing in 3.P/5e. As soon as we have multiclass dedications for each of the main classes, and start seeing some Prestige dedications, we'll really be opening up the versatility of that system.

On a tangent, personally, I kind of wish we didn't have "classes" and instead got to build our own characters that allowed us to pick and choose which tracks we wanted to explore etc. Balancing that system would be harder than balancing individual classes, and has some significant barriers for entry for new players, but that would be fun.

Zman0 wrote:

Why can't a Rogue, be enough of a Fighter to get a higher level feat?

He's not a fighter. Thats the reason. I honestly don't care how many feats he pumps into a thing, he still isn't that thing. Its niche protection.

3.X had stuff like BAB requirements or class feature requirements or whatever to do the same thing. Ultimately certain high level stuff was harder to poach. This is like that but it actually works.

The firewall is there and a player's ability to construct some silly Spirit Lion Totem Barbarian 2/Fighter 4/Frenzied Berserker 10/Fighter 4 isn't going to help them here.

Frankly, folks that want to be able to grab whatever and cobble a character together by nabbing any ability from here and there are probably better served by playing GURPS anyways. The current implementation stills gives folks flexibility but there is still some niche protection and a real effort to ensure build variety instead of players building around the same X feats.

By taking the Fighter Dedication Feat he's certainly trying to be a fighter.

You keep talking about niche protection. Seriously, so much of the fighter class would be unavailable to someone multiclassing in. And with some proper prerequisites certain feats would be out of reach without considerable investment. For the very icon things it doesn't preclude class gating certain things either.

Your silly Spirit Lion Totem example just isn't going to happen with this framework. A class has what 11 feats at best, and one of those is lost at 1st level. You can't pick up your first dedication until 2nd level. You can't pick up another dedication until you spent two feats in that dedication. By the time you get two desired feats from two different classes you've spent 4 feats, can't really have done it till mid levels, forgone poweful feats from your class, and devoted stat increases to those other stats. With most good feats being 8th level or later, its awfully hard to cherry pick via multiclassing. Given the Ability 16 and Dedication feat prerequisite, what exact combinations are we worried about? How many classes is your dangerous optimizer going to steal from.

Now of course, certain things like the level 20 abilities and others need be be carefully regulated. I just noticed that they do have a problem with Cleric, they haven't closed off its level 10 spells, so effectively Multiclassing Cleric and becoming Legendary in Religion would let you select 10th level spells at 20th level.

Hmm... maybe the amount of work to make everything equal to level for all multiclasses is just too much. But, equal to half level feels overly restrictive in some cases.

I think I like you count your multiclass level as your level -3. When someone gets the Advanced "Training" feature it functions exactly the same, but scales closer to the scaling for multiclass Spellcasting. It could cut out the 18th and 20th level abilities for the multiclass and would have a substantial delay for the others, in addition to the feat tax and ability requirement.

Zman0 wrote:

I think eliminating the counts as half level from multiclassing might be better, so long as some feats were properly chained with prerequisites.

Strongly disagree. I like that top level class feats are only for that class but other classes can poach the lower level ones. It protects class identity while also allowing some flexibility.

Honestly, the current implementation is extremely elegant and Paizo should be proud. It does need some more class feats to ensure more PC concepts can be modeled; once those are in there, this thing will be epic.

I don't think an optional high level class feat protects identity. I did specifically mention proper chain requirements, so to get certain ones the multiclass would be investing potentially a second or third feat in a chain with advanced maneuver plus the dedication feat plus the basic maneuver to unlocked advanced. IMO if a character is pumping 4-5 class feats into something, they've got an awful lot of that class to identify with.

Why can't a Rogue, be enough of a Fighter to get a higher level feat? So long as the feats themselves are balanced, or if particularly good have a couple prerequisites, I don't see a problem. We already have an example with Cleric Dedication and Advanced Dogma. It counts level equals level, not half.

Thanks for the feedback and analysis! The corollary, though, is that we have to provide enough feat options to cover the things each class wants to do in its stereotypical concepts, as you suggest. A decent part of the push for removing gates (or certain gates) comes from several missing niches in certain classes in particular (archer paladins, for example), so with the added pages we'll get in the final book, if we don't paradigm shift, we will definitely need to come up with some awesome feats to fill these niches.

Or alternatively ensure that there are enough multiclassing dedications and options available to fulfill those niches by borrowing from other classes.

I think eliminating the counts as half level from multiclassing might be better, so long as some feats were properly chained with prerequisites.

Ediwir wrote:

The 4-degree system relies on the idea that you are going to fight things that are lower level than you.
Just like in P1.

This is part of why it always seems off to me when theory crafters talk about fighting monsters on your level one-on-one in examples. Not that it will never happen, but it seems like, past level 1, the vast majority of enemies you fight over a career are going to be levels below you, giving you a lot more opportunities to feel awesome with the +level bonus, and then letting the occasional on level Boss really feel like a challenge.

The "occasional on level boss really feel like a challenge"? An on level creature is a low threat boss, its equivalent 1v1 or a PC. Even with a good number of minions that boss won't feel like a challenge. Now, a boss at level +2 with some level -2-4 mooks will.

Anyway, about the +/-10 Crit/Fail system really leveraging the level scaling. It is true for the party perspective when looking below you, roughly for every level below you you'll see ~1.5 lower AC. So, facing an enemy that is 2 levels lower than you you can expect their AC to be ~3 lower than on level. For 4 levels lower you expect AC 6 lower. When you pull out level scaling that is about .5/level lower instead of 1.5 lower. The inverse it true going up levels.

Stock P2 or Unbound results in a +5% to 30% chance of critting against acceptable enemies, ie levels 1-4 lower. Characters rarely ever crit on iterative attacks on anything but a 20, even against enemies 3-4 levels lower so it doesn't affect this much. Against higher level enemies characters are pretty much relegated to critting only on a 20 for enemies 1-4 levels higher, though fighters can get another level or two out of that.

Bound is a bit different, you end up with +/- 6 level range for acceptable enemies. The change in critical percentages roughly equates to Unbound values up to two levels lower though quite a bit more granular. The inverse it true, giving the party a crit advantage against enemies a couple levels higher.

It isn't that the +/-10 Crit/Fail system does not funciton bound, it does. Though the frequency is lower and a greater importance is put on situational modifiers ie Frightened and Flatfooted as they have a more meaningful impact on increasing crit percentage relatively speaking. The inverse it true, their is an increased importance of being granted circumstnace bonuses to AC ie cover or shields as they have an outsized impact on reducing crits.

IMO, this is a feature, and not a bug of running the game Bound.