da_asmodai's page

This ended up WAY longer than I expected so I stripped out all the references to specific ancestries, backgrounds, classes, feats, etc. and focused on the core mechanics only instead. Hopefully this is helpful and I'm curious what others think of these things.

Ancestries – I think the general concept is an improvement on 1e’s race (though I still would have called them races). I love how half-elf and half-orc are “Heritage” feats for humans. I love how races now give you hit points so level 1 characters aren’t so squishy. I don’t like how Size seems near meaningless now. I love the concept of ancestry feats but I think it's confusing to call them "Feats".

Backgrounds – No strong opinion for or against. It’s different, it’s fine, no big deal. I could do without it but it doesn't hurt anything being there.

Classes – I like how Class Feats largely replace all the various class specific options but as with Ancestry Feats I think it's confusing to call them "Feats".

Ability Scores – I’m ok with how they’re generated, it’s unlikely I’ll ever see a character whose primary ability isn't 18+ now but it’s not make or break for me.

Proficiencies – I don’t feel like these create a large enough difference between the levels. There’s very little difference between an untrained character and a legendary one and most people can't even get to the top two levels anyway for that wopping extra +2.

I like the general concept of weapon proficiencies replacing BAB, saving throws as proficiencies, armor as a proficiency, and perception replacing initiative to a large extent… but again the difference just isn’t that much between untrained and legendary. A level 20 Wizard should not have +20 to hit with a staff while a level 20 legendary staff fighter has +23 (not counting ability score mods). 1e has +10 BAB for a Wizard vs. +20 for a Fighter so they went from literally twice as good to a tiny 15% difference. Likewise “good” saving throws were +12 at level 20 while “bad” were +6… so again classes that were good at something ended up twice as powerful at it as those who weren’t. Now there's very little difference.

Skills – I feel like these are completely broken. Making them proficiencies grants them the same problem noted above. Proficiencies have little difference between legendary and untrained. Also it makes it so effectively every time you level you put a 1e skill rank IN EVERY SKILL. This makes everyone at least ok in everything at which point I feel like we might as well just get rid of skills and just make “skill checks” an Attribute Mod + level and call it a day. A level 20 fighter who doesn’t give a crap about Stealth should not have a +18 compared to a Rogue who had focused their entire adventuring career on it and built it all the way up to legendary gets a +23 (+18 vs +23... really? What was all that practice for?) That difference doesn’t feel at all “legendary”, the rogue specialist is just marginally better than someone who’s completely untrained.

To make matters worse though there are lists of actions that can and can’t be done trained and untrained… within each skill! Heck, some actions are now further gated behind “Skill Feats”. This is restrictive and confusing. In 1e if a new player (knowing nothing of skills) asks to do something I can almost always apply a little common sense to figure out what skill that would be, come up with a DC, and have them roll. In 2e there are giant action lists for them (and me) to memorize and it’s possible that I’ll have to tell the player “I’m afraid you can’t attempt that use of the skill even though you can do these other ones.” That's HORRIBLE. Now there are a few things you can’t do untrained in 1e like use a magic device but then it’s clear that you can NEVER use that skill until you put a rank into it (no big list of this but not that to look at) and those skills are the exception not the rule (I wouldn't have minded 1e dropping the concept of kills you can't do untrained). In 2e most skills have can and can’t lists now and those can’t possibly cover everything so there's going to be confusion when new actions come up... is this new action something that can be done trained or not… does it require a feat… who knows? I guess everyone will just houserule differently. I don't see how this is in any way an improvement on the 1e skill system.

I DO like the concept of skill checks largely replacing CMB and saves replacing CMD though, again I don’t like the seemingly arbitrary action gating so you can do a trip or grapple with athletics untrained but to even try to disarm you have to be trained.

Feats – Generally speaking I like Race and Class feats though I think it’s confusing to call these things feats as well. The mechanic itself I think is an improvement over 1e. General feats are basically our old feats and those too are fine as well with the exception of skill feats which I covered in skills above .

Equipment – I like the move to the silver economy. I don’t care one way or the other on bulk. I DO like how the proficiency levels are applied to items in place of the old “masterwork” system. I don’t like how armor items have both AC and TAC instead of both just being results of calculations with and without the item bonus, I feel it adds complexity where the 1e system makes sense that you don’t get the AC bonus of items on touch attacks (touching the item still delivers the effect). My biggest equipment complaint though the lack of different damage by size. Again, as noted in the Ancestry section at the beginning, size seems nearly meaningless now… just a flavor field unless I’m missing something.

Spells – I actually really like the spells in how the VSM take actions and I like the 3 action economy. I also like the new heighten abilities within spells.

So I'm still very new to Starfinder. I've played 3 organized play sessions so far (Woot, level 2!) and the last session was my first ship combat. Inspired by the ship combat I sat down and designed my own ship class:

SNEKKJA (TIER 6)
Large destroyer
Speed 10; Maneuverability average (turn 2); Drift 1
AC 10; TL 12
HP 170; DT n/a; CT 34
Shields Light 60 (forward 15, port 15, starboard 15, aft 15)
Attack (Forward) linked twin lasers (10d8)
Attack (Aft) flak thrower (3d4)
Attack (Port) gyrolaser (1d8)
Attack (Starboard) gyrolaser (1d8)
Attack (Turret) light torpedo launcher (2d8)
Power Core(s) Pulse Orange (250 PCU); Drift Engine Signal Basic; Systemsbudget long-range sensors, crew quarters (good), mk 1 armor, mk 3 defences, mk 1 tetranode computer (tier 3); Security anti-hacking systems mk 1 (DC +1); Expansion Bays escape pods, life boats, science lab (general), sealed environment chamber
Modifiers +1 any four checks per round

Note: The above is WITHOUT crew so numbers need to be adjusted to include Crew skill ranks etc. Minimum crew is 6 but you need 5 just to man all the weapons at the same time so I invision the standard crew being 10. (6 for the escape pods and 2x2 in the life boats)

The name is a placeholder but the idea behind it was to make something my homebrew Pathfinder players could crew should they decided they want to dabble in some Starfinder. The problem being I have 7 players and I wanted AT LEAST an NPC Captain since they can't OWN this ship and are new to Starfinder as well. That puts the crew up to at least 8 and most smaller classes top out at 6.

I wanted it fast with long range sensors so they can run. The aft flak thrower is also intented to use when running (and I wanted them to see how the Point property works). The Starboard and Port Gyrolasers were chosen so the players manning the side weapons could be included in more combat rounds (demoing the Broad Arc property) and to cover for the rear point weapons 1st range increment only restriction. This gives it a fair punch in the front with a total of 14d8 possible if everything hits so it's a bit of a glass cannon but it's mostly an exploration vessel.

Again this is my first crack at this so feedback is welcome (and by all means let me know if I did something wrong or misunderstood something)

I don't think a refresh every 10 years is a horrible idea on the surface. As to this specific refresh it's too early to tell as we don't know EXACTLY what the refresh is going to be. 4e of that other game for example was very bad but getting rid of THAC0 for example was VERY good.

As for name being the hot new thing, name recognition, freshness I really don't think a new edition is going to solve that. The problem is that Pathfinder came from that other game, even if I listen to Glass Cannon Podcast or livestreamed games that often slip and refer to that other games name instead of Pathfinder (free advertising for your competitor.) The Old Spice joke class was clearly Pathfinder for those of us who can tell but it was reported all over the media as D&D. I never saw one major article headline that referred to it as Pathfinder, that's not going to change with a new edition.

As for how easy it is to learn it's apples to oranges to compare ALL of the published Pathfinder 1e books to just the launch books for 2e. Of course it's easier to learn 1 book compared to many. You don't HAVE to use any of the books in 1e beyond the first though so is 2e less complex than ONLY the 1e Core Rulebook while maintaining or improving the level of customization? If not there's no point. 2e will no doubt build up a large selection of books over time too and you're just throwing out your old books to start the same thing over.

Also if others have pointed out if the goal is to streamline the rules and make them easier for new players at the expense of customization options (again vs. the 1e Core Rulebook) then that's just what 5e did. If people wanted that they'd already be playing 5e.

There's a very important reason for this- it's almost impossible to influence a d100 roll with game mechanics. I think cyclops-related stuff is one of the few ways to influence an arbitrary percentile roll- everything else only messes with a specific type of percentile roll.

Meanwhile, there are a million ways to mess with an arbitrary d20 roll.

I have no idea what you mean by "influence" or "mess with" rolls or "cyclops-related stuff".

If you're talking about like messing with the actual throw of the dice then if you believe d20 is so easy to cheat then it's far MORE of a problem that almost everything else IS based off of that instead of the few exceptions not. Should we not then replace the attack roll with d100? It's really easy to teach new people "you have to roll this die for almost everything" and when the few exceptions come up (like different damage dice by weapon) it's usually not too hard for new players to get why the dice they roll has changed. When a d100 comes up and the player sees every base roll and every modifier is divisible by 5% there's no good reason it can't have been done on a d20. d100 is good for when you need MORE granularity than 5% (encounter tables, treasure tables, for example), it's not when you don't.

I wouldn't mind them cleaning up the specific items by the OP by Sword is a generic term referring to an entire group of weapons to many and having a single type of item named that would be confusing... isn't a short sword also a sword or a great sword. I know Longsword is technically incorrect but not only is there tradition at this point, tradition that's been copied by many other games so as to cause confusion if it changes now but also pretty much any new player understands short, long, and great when describing a sword... even if the name IS historically incorrect. I'm not convinced most RPG players are big enough history buffs to even realize it's incorrect.

As for Plate Mail where did you get that from? That's already been fixed as Pathfinder's Equipment chart has no "Mail" in the name of plate armor. There is Breastplate, Half-Plate, and Full=Plate; no Plate Mail. Only Chainmail, Scale, Splint, and Banded have "Mail" in the name.

I would like to note that being less complex, more simple, easier for new players, etc. isn't a good thing if that comes primarily through there being less books. The real test will be comparing what's in the initial book(s) for 2e vs. what's in ONLY the Core Rulebook for 1e.

For example sure it's complex finding Archetypes in all the various published books now. So having a unified Archetype list in 2e (and streamlining how they work) is great... EXCEPT there were no Archetypes in the Core Rulebook and not having to deal with a system at all is clearly easier for new players than even the most elegant system. Furthermore I have no doubt more stuff, Archetypes, feats, whatever are going to be added in future books for 2e as well recreating the same problem.

Ultimately the question will be is 2e, easier to learn, easier to play, and at least as, if not more, customizable than the 1e rules found ONLY in the Core Rulebook. If the answer is no then what's the point? If that's the case 2e will likely get just as complex by the time it reaches the same number of published rulebooks.

Personally I'd like to see the Monk removed from the core and put in a book with Ninja and Samurai, the Asian races, Asian style equipment, etc. (Oriental Adventures?) New players pretty much always seem confused at why there is an Asian style martial arts monk in with the other core classes. The first time you list off the classes and one of them is Monk they pretty much always picture a Gregorian-style monk and are confused. Plus, glancing down the equipment list they see the Asian names weapons and have no idea what they are then wonder what these few clearly Asian named weapons are where the katana and Samurai armor are if they're including things from Asia.

First a little background:

I played that other game from the early 80's to 3.5e and bought 4e, hated it then kind of dropped out of RPGs for years until picking up Pathfinder a little over a year ago. I bounced around for a few months in groups that couldn't stay together until I gave up and started my own. I have a group of player, some of which have never played any RPGs in their life before so these and despite all those years PLAYING I'd never run a game... none of us are really what you could call an EXPERT at the ins and outs of Pathfinder rules. (we even started out just using the Core Rulebook and I've kept what we added to a minimum beyond that so as not to overwhelm the new players) Additionally I've been playing an organized player character at my local hobby store for about 2 months now (just hit level 5 on my -1!)

On to the meat:

"Streamlined Proficiencies" - Does this means skills? Because I've never had a player have any major issues with skills... there really aren't that many of them (especially after some were combines from 3.x already) and their pretty self explanitory as to what they do if not how exactly the mechanics work.

I'll tell you along those lines the single biggest issue I find new players have is the HUGE number of FEATS. They look at that giant list of feats in the the Core Rulebook and throw up their hands... and feats are added in LOTS of later suppliments to the point where noobs just have no idea what to do. A fair number get annoyed later when they find out feat X would have been really good to take but they had no idea it existed in the vast multitudes of feats available. In the old days noobs used to play Fighters because they were the easy entry level class... now not so much. Fighters are Feat machines and with the insane number of feats noobs have to decide every level which one they are going to pick... it's an exercise in frustration.

I've never had a player have an issue with initiative... especially after they got rid of the reroll each round in earlier editions. The "actions" IS something that confuses them (move, standard, swift, etc. etc. etc.) as a result "Simplified Actions" sounds great!

After 4e "Easier to Play" scares me. That's where that other game went with 4e and 5e is supposed to be ok but offers less customization, I'm playing Pathfinder for a reason. I hope you don't stray too far.

We play a homebrew campaign so "Golarian-Infused" isn't useful and if it's so tightly infused to the point of making it difficult to play non Golarian games that's an issue.

I hope you break it back into three core books. The Core Rulebook is very large and can be a bit intimidating to new players if you tell them that's the basic book if they want to buy a physical copy. Telling them that if they just want to play they don't need the second half doesn't help much as then they ask why they'd buy a book they only want half of. People like to have the physical book and so a Player's Handbook is a good thing.

Keep the basic d20 based mechanic and fix where it's broken. Specifically why are there percentage checks where the increments are always divisible by 5 (if not 10)!?!? Arcane Spell Failure, Concealment, etc. would be easier to understand if they were just more d20 rolls.) If you're going to use % for things it should be more granular than 5% increments. Guess what, there are exactly 20 5%'s in 100%.

Not sure what needs fixing in multi-classing but my new to RPG players haven't had any issues with it. Contrary to what may be believed though new players don't jump at Archtypes and Backgrounds currently as the number of classes in the core rulebook alone are a lot for a new player to take in. Explaining the conceptual difference between a sorcerer and a wizard or a fighter and a barbarian, while simple to grasp for people who've been playing for a long time, is not so much for brand new players... adding archetypes for each class just makes it worse. Gone are the days of Fighter, Wizard, Thief, and Cleric. Heck some of my players couldn't figure out why they didn't just make a Barbarian a set of feats a fighter takes, a Paladin a multi-class cleric/Fighter, a Bard a Sorcerer/Rogue, etc. Adding the Hybrid classes from the Advanced Race Guide just made the situation even worse. What's the difference to a new user between a hybrid and a multi-class... it just seems unnecessarily complex.

10th level spells doesn't seem that great... it's handy to be able to roll 1d10-1 for a spell level. There are already 10 levels of spells, they just start at 0 and go to 9 intstead of 1-10.

Anyway that's my $0.02 for now. If you made it this far... WOW. As the title says I'm cautiously optimistic (I don't think an edition every 10 years is a bad idea actually but I feel burned by that other game after they made the game I loved "Easier")

First let me say I backed the Tech Demo and I'm a Pathfinder Online backer and have no regrets about doing so. The question in my mind comes down what level I will support the project NOT if I will or not. I love what they are doing and want them to succeed. Furthermore I agree that a $15/month subscription model is the way for them to go and love how they have implemented a mechanism similar to EVE Online to pay for your subscription via in-game coin. I likewise agree that there are a lot of Theme Park MMOs out there and they they don't really compare to a sandbox MMO. As an aside however there are several non-AAA fantasy sandbox MMOs so it's not like no one else is attempting to do what Pathfinder Online is and Pathfinder isn't exactly a AAA hype machine either. That said Pathfinder Online is the one I've chosen to support largely because my affinity to the pen and paper game as well as my confidence in those creating it (many having worked on EVE and/or World of Darkness).

I don't think sandbox MMOs require more support than theme parks. First of all theme parks are more popular as many people are confused when someone doesn't hold there hand and tell them what they are supposed to do next. Additionally in a theme park what a player has available to do is only what "attractions" the developers create for them making it A LOT of work for the developers to attempt to create content faster than the players consume it. In a sandbox on the other hand much of the content is not created by the developers at all as a properly designed sandbox provides systems by which players can create content for each other. (I hire you to do X for me) Each individual system properly designed allows for different players to create different content instead of the same NPC giving the same quest to everyone. This efficiency is what is going to allow a small company like GoblinWorks to compete with the big guys if everything comes together as we hope.

So if free players can't train and thus advance then it's a pay-to-win system? The more you pay the more of an advantage you have? I'm honestly asking, I want to be sure I understand what is being said.

You can only train one skill at a time per character and that skill trains 24/7 no matter if you are online or not right?
If that's the case there is no incentive to buy more time then real time, buying a month of training time each month would effectively be a monthly subscription. I guess that's good in limited the pay-to-win effect but it also caps the revenue generated from the more dedicated players. The removal of such caps is commonly cited as one of the main reasons free-to-play is thriving. DDO developers often cite for example how they have many players who pay well over the old monthly fee but there would be no point in doing that in Pathfinder Online. As stated by others though DDO can do this because it's a largely instanced theme park game and what a character does has minimal effect on other players and the game world in general. That will not be the case with Pathfinder Online.

Does that training time apply to every character you have or do you have to pay per character?

If the minimum training time you can buy is 24 hours, assuming a 30 day month for easy math, then at $0.50/day it would cost $15 (the going MMO monthly subscription rate.)

I just don't see how this model can work. Perhaps it's because I'm just not understanding it correctly but it sees to highlight the weak points of the various models. It seems to be pay-to-win with revenue caps. One would think you'd either embrace pay-to-win and let people pay as much as they want to boost their character's stats or oppose pay-to-win and give the characters at least the possibility of advancing without having to pay (even if you can pay to advance faster).

Maybe I AM misunderstanding it though. The other interpretation I can see of "buying training time" is that free players advance in real time but you can buy time to "skip ahead". Training a skill that takes two weeks? You can either wait two weeks and get it for free or you can buy some or all of it. Buy two weeks of training time and your skill is instantly trained. Buy one week and you've cut the real time it will take in half. This doesn't sound like what others are saying here and is more of a pure pay-to-win mechanic but it at least appears to make more sense then the previous interpretation.

Sure free to play games get a lot more people but those people don't have any skin in the game so to speak. Because it doesn't cost them anything they don't really care about what they do and they can ruin the experience for those that are invested. This arguably works out okay in some theme park games because character actions have limited effect on those outside their party let alone the game world in general. In a sandbox game however these issues will be magnified greatly.

My suggestion is that the game be cheap, perhaps $5/month or $50/year. Also if a boxed copy is sold it could go for the regular game price ($50-$60) but include a year subscription instead of the normal month. In addition have seasonal/quarterly free to play weekends as well as a once a year "try us again" week form former players whose accounts have lapsed more than a month.

The big suggestion though is to take a page from EVE Online and allow players to purchase with in-game currency tokens for a month of free access. This means that the game could effectively be free to play for those who are actually being productive instead of people who don't really care about the game. These tokens could also be traded to other players or given to friends to get them to try the game.

I'm also not opposed to a cash shop that sells cosmetic enhancements or other non-game balance altering items.