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Goblin Squad Member. ***** Venture-Captain, Ireland—Belfast 409 posts (417 including aliases). 2 reviews. No lists. 1 wishlist. 42 Organized Play characters. 1 alias.


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The Exchange 5/5 *** Venture-Captain, Ireland—Belfast

Yes, you get the gold awarded on the chron from your adventures & if you decide to, via downtime earning.

The gold accumulates and can be spent as per the purchasing guidelines.

Though having access via a chronicle rarely changes the cost of an item it does mean that normally available items can be bought at a lower level and normally unavailable items are on the menu.

Items you find or are given by an NPC during an adventure eg a scenario, you can use until the adventure ends then they are gone. You’ll often find people using consumables of this kind ahead of ones they actually paid for.

Worth maybe mentioning that when you, using the purchasing guidelines, buy something you can pretty much use, abuse or even destroy it. You could in many cases even sell it back for half the purchasing price.


Selling Back Equipment
Equipment can only be sold back for ½ the gold spent to buy it. Equipment that was purchased as part of a bundle, such as a class kit, or a magic weapon can only be sold back as part of the same bundle, and all parts of the bundle must be sold. Partially consumed items cannot be sold back. Rebuild boons stating kit values are an exception to the ½ price resale.

The Exchange 5/5 *** Venture-Captain, Ireland—Belfast

Congrats all round!

The Exchange

PF2 is a fairly high fantasy game and in a world of physically impossible things being accepted left and right it can really annoy when boring reality bites.

That said things like the extra shot that appears from nowhere from incredible ricochet or the wonderful silliness of dance of thunder cover this fantastical side of things better than having someone reloading a flintlock without a free hand every round as a core class feature - which would further undermine the handiness rules.

The narrative rule of thumb for longbows/crossbows/black powder is that they are different creatures story telling wise. Rate of fire, ease of use and damage being part of the qualitative triangle where there’s a trade off between each side.

So reloading being the bane of an Aramis style hero’s life seems thematically spot on, same for a Sharpe style musketeer.

If you want to play a wild west gunslinger or a Golarion John Wicks you really need a weapon that via mechanical or magical means holds several shots between reloads.

All that said I can see dual wielding needing some work if it turns out as being as (relatively) poor an option as some are predicting.

Avoided ‘slingers in PF1 but looking forward to experimenting with this!

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2e is a great system. It is not yet perfect but is playing well. I still have nostalgia for earlier versions AD&D being my first love but 2e PF is working well.

So how not perfect?

There are certain aspects which need more work after a year out in the wild. I’d like to see more on the transition from Exploration mode to Encounter mode

I have always felt that the number of hands needed for stuff needs a little work.

I would love to see casters get some of the swashbuckling fun that martials get. I always felt derating the power of the spells the caster can cast while tying them to a 3 action economy where they still only (mostly) get to do one cool thing a round was a bridge too far.

Evolving from the 3.x world there is an expectation that though the rules may no longer strive to cover every possible eventuality there is still IMHO a need for a clarity on lots of small but important things.

Over all the system is a success!

W

The Exchange 5/5 *** Venture-Captain, Ireland—Belfast

Nefreet wrote:

[my interpretation; not shared by all]

We are told explicitly that copying a formula uses the Crafting skill. While normally that would take at least 4 days of Downtime, we are then told that it instead takes 1 hour. We are not told that the costs are reduced, so they aren't. The benefit of paying that cost is eliminating all of the L bulk formulas that would weigh you down over time.

This makes sense but there are questions raised.

Surely we are told that you can copy it into a book in an hour first. Then after that we are told that if you have a formula you can Craft a copy using the Craft skill.

If it is saying: copying a formula requires the use of Craft with the exceptional rule that it takes one hour and costs the full amount I’d expect it to read much more like it! I’d particularly expect express info on how the exception impacts the cost/time aspect of Craft & not leaving it for us to infer.

A natural reading of the paragraph does strongly imply a distinction between copying into a book and crafting a copy.

Does it only take an hour when put into a 1 gp, mundane Formula Book but follow the usual rules on any other medium?

All that said: given that a formula in a book and on a schemata scroll do the same thing one copied at essentially zero cost In resources and the other being pretty expensive seems really odd.

Too good to be true as per pg. 444 Ambiguous Rules sidebar?

The Exchange 5/5 *** Venture-Captain, Ireland—Belfast

A lot of good points made here. I am probably missing something here if so please do set me straight!

My initial reading was that because the CRB says you can copy a formula into your book in a hour with with no other qualifications that settles the matter.

Going through the posts I recalled the 1e argument about wether gauntlets in a suit of adamantine plate were made of adamantine or plain steel.

So I ended up mulling this over.

Can you Craft using a Formula you have possession of wether in a stand alone schemata or a in Formula Book regardless of who actually put the formula into it and however it was obtained?

Given that you can buy a Basic Crafters Book (pg. 289), the description of the formula Book pg. 280 & that pg. 293 says you can copy directly from someone else formula book I would have to say yes.

So are we saying obtaining a (tightly rolled) Schemata via purchase or Craft costs time and money according to table 6-13 & the rules on Craft?

And are we also saying

Copying any formula into a freely exchangeable Formula book costs 1 hour and 1 gp (for the blank book)

Interestingly the Bulk of both a single schemata (however rolled) and a Formula book with space for 100 formulae is the same @ 1L.

Why bother with making a stand alone schemata especially with a level 2 or higher formula if you can just copy it into a 1 gp book for an hours work and zero other costs?

Exceptions to item trading rules in PFS impact on if we can do it in PFS of course... but does the principle hold?

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Sibelius Eos Owm wrote:

I was about to say I think you more or less have the right of it, but I checked the wording of the activities again and noticed something interesting. While the Seek action specifies both creatures and objects, further dividing objects into secret doors, hidden treasure, and hazards, the Search activity seems to limit its descriptions purely to hidden objects (specifying 'hidden doors, concealed hazards, and so on') and makes no indication that it applies equally to hidden creatures other than a stretch of the imagination regarding that 'and so on'.

This is interesting because I was just considering that issue--an ambush encounter against Searching party members resulting in two checks being rolled to determine stealth. In hindsight I think the intent is that the Initiative check is meant to be the party's "How aware are you" check regarding the start of combat, but instead of Seeking or becoming aware of hidden opponents you are rewarded for a high result by the chance to act first (including the ability to take a Seek to notice hidden foes before they act)

I follow your line of argument. If the (Search generated) Seek action that Michael mentions is restricted in effect to hidden objects but not hidden creatures that is a bit odd but that may well be the intention. It means that the only thing you can do when heading into an area you think is suspect is to get a plus one from Scouting or perhaps hope using Detect Magic as a sonar pulse and hope the ambushers have a talisman or a potion.

This needs a clarification though. It seems counter intuitive that the party spot the log trap or spike pit dug in the forest trail but not the half dozen ambushers.

Pretty please powers that be :-)

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Michael Sayre wrote:
Flambe wrote:

2)Seek is used in combat, in exploration mode it is the search activity.

Though it might be relevant to remember that all the Search activity does is generate Seek checks, so any benefits they have to Seek will all still apply while they Search.

I appreciate this is a little necromantic but.... I am still seeking clarification on how a Searching PC interacts with an ambush. If it is answered elsewhere please point me to it!

Eg 4 baddies seek to ambush our heroes. They lie in wait hidden in the forest undergrowth. Each rolls their stealth plus 2. For the sake of this they all beat the party’s relevant skill DC usually perception. So that means they are unnoticed and undetected until they break cover. What though about the PC who was generating the Seek checks while in Search exploration mode?

As standard if the ambushers beat the PCs’ perception DC, losing initiative doesn’t impact their state of awareness. Equally taking a seek action that beats a stealth DC reduces the awareness state. As I understand it a Searching character gets a Perception roll to spot a hazard, proficiency level permitting.

If Searching let’s a character start any ambush Encounter with a free Seek action that reduces the ambushers to hidden that is pretty powerful.

If it doesn’t what does it do?

W

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I read the example of the Paravicar vs a similar level rogue with interest. I imagine the example is mechanically sound enough. I am not entirely convinced I draw the same conclusions.

In all sincerity if I am missing something about the effect of the Unconscious, Blinded, Restrained, Paralysed, Prone, Flanked & Flat Footed conditions please set me straight!

I recognise too a character who relies on an armour bonus will be impacted depending on what they wear when bedding down.

Of course there are occasions when a target will be unconscious with more than 1 HP for other reasons than having gone to bed and thus will be normally attired.

As I understand it being asleep gives a -4 status penalty and if also prone a -2 circumstance penalty to AC against the first attack and being flat footed are subject to sneak attack damage. For further attacks they’d be flat footed by dint of being prone. This example assumes they don’t sleep standing up!

So the sleeping character here is down 4 AC compared to, that same character awake but prone, for one attack & then becomes mechanically identical in terms of AC.

A Paralysed or Restrained Character is mechanically no more vulnerable to attacks than any other flat footed one. Naturally these conditions are a big hindrance for as long as they last but not when it comes to being stabbed with the pointy end.

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Yqatuba wrote:
What if, say, the rogue stabs a sleeping person in the jugular? Would it just do normal damage?

There are number of threads that have appeared about this and it seems that for many players putting in a mechanic that allows helpless individuals to be significantly more vulnerable to a fatal attack than they would be if armed and alert is considered bad game design.

In 2e there is no CdG mechanic and at the time the game came out it struck me how much hard work this would be for the executioners of Golarion.
In that limited case the executioner sorts that problem.

Perhaps an optional rule can be created for those of us who feel the game is lacking something it could benefit from.

W

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Malk_Content wrote:
I think if it was used rarely then you weren't using it realistically already.

Well I guess we’re are all free to express an opinion on games we have never had any personal experience of.

The mechanic was used when appropriate. That is to say incapacitating an opponent with a view to a CdG was not used as the go to tactic but if a character was attacking a paralysed character then the rules were there as an option. Given it was a full round action it didn’t come up that often.

@Malk_content. There is a distinction but not one well reflected by current rules. Attacking a helpless foe is not much different to attacking an active one.

W

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Luke Styer wrote:
Aratorin wrote:
Because that turns a spell like Sleep from a fairly weak spell into a TPK. Heck, even a critical success on a Grapple would be insta-death. Once you have rules for it, players will be dying left and right. Now that is not fun.
That’s the “practical” reason I don’t miss it from PF1. I also just don’t enjoy playing PF in a world where characters routinely kill the helpless. My PF1 tables generally operated with a sometimes unspoken and sometimes explicit understanding that if PCs don’ Lt routinely coup monsters and NPCs then NPCs and monsters wouldn’t routinely coup PCs. We didn’t quite ignore the rule entirely, but it was, thankfully, a rarity.

Thanks folks. Not really being won over but thanks for sharing.

Making rules that fly in the face of common sense because reality can be ugly and put PCs into jeopardy seems really odd. And accepting that RPG rules are inherently abstract is no reason to indulge in magical thinking!

If you insist that making someone fall deeply asleep, paralysing them or restraining them so they are immobile & bound hand and feet essentially a tactical irrelevancy......it is immersion breaking.

I disagree very strongly that requiring players to deal with life or death jeopardy isn’t fun and giving them a get out of jail free card because the bad guys might take advantage of them seems wrong.

The CdG was used in my games rarely & only when it was appropriate: generally players who managed to get a chance to slay a dangerous foe that normal methods of attack were failing or when the specific reason that someone was fighting was to kill a particular character and there was nothing else useful for the would be killer to do and so on.

Yes an effect that renders you helpless is a very powerful thing by dint of the fact you are so tremendously vulnerable.

I do recognise that the developers must not like the idea of the CdG as it is notable by it’s absence and the rules around an executioner.

W

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In a rules discussion forum it is surely fair to wonder if it is optimal that the only efficacious way to hold someone at e.g. knife point it is for the GM to decide it is a good narrative fit.

The executioner’s ability removes the need for that in very limited circumstances.

What I would like to better understand is why there is such deeply felt resistance to allowing rules where a helpless character is very much more vulnerable to a focused lethal attack than one that is not helpless.

If you are posing no significantly bigger threat attacking a paralysed foe with lethal intent than you do attacking one that is awake and fighting back then that is a bit daft! The increased chance of critical hits really doesn’t make it much less daft.

W

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coriolis wrote:
** Side note: The correct term is coup-de-grace (literally stroke of grace, meaning 'final or terminal strike'). Although it IS pronouced kou de gra in English, coup de gras means stroke of grease or stroke of fat, which conjures a very different image! **

Yes ‘coup de gras’ always conjured images of fantasy liposuction.

I was saddened to see CdG being dropped in the playtest: the image conjured up there was the incidence of RSI in headsmen or the grumbling in Galt about endlessly resetting of Madame Guillotine before the condemned was consigned to the tender care of Pharasma. So this is a step forward I guess!

I don’t think the general RAW on attacking a helpless target are quite there yet. Though if I have missed something I will be very happy to stand corrected!

W

The Exchange 5/5 *** Venture-Captain, Ireland—Belfast

We ran this at our local games day this weekend and I think it was enjoyed by those on both side of the GM's screen. There are a couple of things that I am still not 100% clear on and as it is a repeatable scenario it is likely to get a decent amount of play.

So forgive me if I have missed the blindingly obvious here but....

1) If the players decide to travel on through a checkpoint how does that work?

The travel is abstracted & how long there is sunlight is unclear. If they do try to get a few more miles in before dark what's the impact on progress and if they decide to travel through the night other than fatigue what is the mechanical impact (e.g.swapping sleep for time available to gather info or glad hand the other teams, environmental concerns & of course how it impacts their standing in the race).

2) Some trials are more specific than others about how many PCs can/must partake in that trial. Post the fixes is it that all the trials now set up that everyone gets a go if they want and garners points on successes (barring a crit. fail ending certain ones early)?

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Ssalarn wrote:
WatersLethe wrote:
This attitude is exactly why I firmly believe +lvl to untrained should stay removed. Making a DC18 or whatever check to climb a brick wall is objectively an impressive feat. I can't do it in real life. With +lvl failing to climb that wall is a joke to the rest of the party at higher levels. Don't you see how this cuts the tethers to reality, and makes the super high DC stuff seem normal rather than actually hyper impressive?

Personally I think this way of thinking is actively harmful to the game and horrifically immersion-breaking. Climbing a brick wall is impressive for you or me; it shouldn't be an impressive feat for a 7th level character.

Here we have it folks. For many people out there this is makes self evident sense. For others like myself it is complete and utter nonsense.

If you are a 7th level character in traditional D&D you don’t get free mastery of parkour just by getting better at your profession. If you want that you use limited resources and thus don’t get better at something else.

7th level is a term used exclusively out of character and is a player side game term.

The desire that the 90% of Golarions population without any class levels should point at the PCs and reflect if only I had become a paladin for a few months I would be soo much better at camel herding than my 20 years of herding camels has allowed me to be. That and I could tightrope walk real good too, better than my twin, Barbara the street acrobat....

There are loads more problems & on these Fira we’ve all been around and around this.

I used the term pulp superhero with it’s echos of Doc Savage or old school Batman who just happened to be experts in everything. That is a perfectly good idea for a particular sub type of RPG. Not sure it is going to pass muster as the latest and greatest iteration of the worlds oldest one though.

So if I can accept you get your bell rung by being able to say to the GM, my Ezren style wizzie runs the army training course in a fraction of the time the trainees can, because I am 7th level. Can you accept that is when Hooke’s law kicks in regards of the suspension of disbelief for myself and others?

W

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John Lynch 106 wrote:
Darksol the Painbringer wrote:
I think people are taking issue with the fact that, apparently, Wizards can't be good at avoiding attacks. Why does a Wizard have to be bad at avoiding axes or fireballs to the face? Because he's a Wizard? It's just silly

It's a silly that has survived since the game was originally created in 1974, with the exception of D&D 4th edition (which Pathfinder was created in response to many players rejecting). Most reasonable people who have problems with these sorts of things, probably stopped playing Dungeons & Dragons and certainly wouldn't have stuck around playing Pathfinder. There are lots of alternatives that avoid such silliness after all. GURPS is one example.

Trying to convince people, many of whom have played with the current rules for 15 years+, that the game they've enjoyed for years, if not decades, is silly seems like a fruitless exercise.

It would appear that the collective wisdom of the enthusiasts on these fora knows no fear! The way forward for PF is apparently to create a PF2 that is a radical departure from what went before, refusing to be hidebound by 40 odd years of precedent and the devil take the hindmost. It is a high risk strategy for reasons that have been endless debated. As I expect to be running quite a lot PF2 as part of Pathfinder Society come August I look forward to seeing what is in store.

W

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Unless I missed it being addressed already: a condition refinement around grabbed and restrained. So you can bind a captive but still have them able to walk etc. that degrades their effectiveness -re a manipulate action, activity, free action, or reaction - more than by a simple 5 flat check. Like a player round here mentioned: we're back to cutting the captured mage's thumbs off.

W

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Tridus wrote:
heretic wrote:

Look folks.

You are missing the point.

You can have different flavours of pulp adventures, you can have different flavours of super hero adventures.

When you do pulp superhero stories ala old school superman/batman and the afore mentioned Doc Savage you are dealing with something outwith traditional heroic fantasy even relatively high fantasy.

High jinks and craziness are all par for the course. Being homo superior by level 1 or 6 or 20 isn't.

Anyway as I keep saying we'll see what the final product is like but the fundamental break with tradition that the +1 per level to every thing for every member of the adventurer super species with addition of the UTMEL to differentiate between the supers who have left base humanity so far behind is noticeable and deeply felt.

No, we get the point. We disagree with it. Those are not the same thing.

Right now I'm playing a Cleric who can literally walk on air, conjure enough food for 324 people a day with only a single level's spell slots, banish relatively strong demons to their own plane by uttering a few magic words, imprison a champion of a big bad wielding an artifact sword into my scimitar (true story, was great), bring the dead back to life, and call down literal Miracles. I can do all those things at more or less the same time in one day, and still have enough power left over to wield fire and lightning, heal impossibly grievous injuries, cure nearly any disease, engage in diplomacy with nearly anyone successfully, sing a pretty great aria...

I mean, this isn't an exhaustive list. This is stuff on my spell list from two game sessions ago and a couple of skills that are jacked right up (although I haven't had to feed an entire town lately). And that's not even a particularly powerful character, I built a healer because they're fun. :)

So I mean, if you're trying to say that +1 somehow breaks tradition because PCs aren't world altering forces at high level... my not so optimized Cleric wants...

My feeling that people are missing my point is rather backed up by the sheer number of words you have used without actually addressing it!

You are admirably addressing someone else’s assertion that PCs are not world altering forces at high level. That is not my assertion.

So thanks for sharing some of the heroic high fantasy adventures you’ve had and taking time to tell me what a cleric can do in game currently.

I knew this by the way. High level characters are very powerful though currently and traditionally have some significant flaws too. Reaching the 40th anniversary of my first game this year in fact. So not my first rodeo.

Wanting mechanics for an adventure where things can play out in a fashion according to heroic high fantasy standards does not require that every PC is a magically enhanced pulp superhero akin to Doc Savage.

+1/lvl is a significant power up for PCs compared almost all of the rest the world in which they live in.

Allowing for a narrative where there is magic is no reason for a narrative based on magical thinking.

W

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Look folks.

You are missing the point.

You can have different flavours of pulp adventures, you can have different flavours of super hero adventures.

When you do pulp superhero stories ala old school superman/batman and the afore mentioned Doc Savage you are dealing with something outwith traditional heroic fantasy even relatively high fantasy.

High jinks and craziness are all par for the course. Being homo superior by level 1 or 6 or 20 isn't.

Anyway as I keep saying we'll see what the final product is like but the fundamental break with tradition that the +1 per level to every thing for every member of the adventurer super species with addition of the UTMEL to differentiate between the supers who have left base humanity so far behind is noticeable and deeply felt.

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thejeff wrote:
heretic wrote:

Reading the various threads populated by most of the same people I am increasingly dismayed; we are certainly not forming a consensus which is fine but nor are we showing respect for our differences, which isn't

If Paizo want to produce a Golarion skinned pulp superhero RPG I have faith that they make a very good one.

If they want to make a successor to Pathfnder which has the DNA of the world's oldest RPG running through it then I am sure they can do that too.

Reading these threads has only strengthened my original thought: It will be next to impossible to do both in the same game.

Don't many people already see PF1 as a "Golarion skinned pulp superhero RPG" "which has the DNA of the world's oldest RPG running through it"?

Come now, if thought that then my statement would clearly make no sense. So please lay of the rhetorical questions. They are getting us nowhere, fast.

A party of 4-6 Doc Savage, Man of Bronze style super adventurers might make for a good game, but for my money will materially disconnect from what went before. Like I said we will have to see what delights Jason and co. will serve up to us.

W

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Reading the various threads populated by most of the same people I am increasingly dismayed; we are certainly not forming a consensus which is fine but nor are we showing respect for our differences, which isn't

If Paizo want to produce a Golarion skinned pulp superhero RPG I have faith that they will make a very good one.

If they want to make a successor to Pathfinder which has the DNA of the world's oldest RPG running through it then I am sure they can do that too.

Reading these threads has only strengthened my original thought: It will be next to impossible to do both in the same game.

I await as ever with baited breath for August to see what is in store.

W

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Gorbacz wrote:
MaUC wrote:

It's possible... Although I'd question how "great" SF is doing.

Oh, well... Only time will tell.

You don't need time. It's ahead of Pathfinder in sales, as far as Icv2 industry reports go.

Not being a subscriber I don't have access to to the Icv2 data, though a quick google found this league table from Spring this year.

1 Dungeons & Dragons

2 Starfinder

3 Pathfinder

4 Star Wars

5 Genesys

This is old news of course and so limited that it really raises more questions than it answers. Is there better data or even better informed analysis available that sheds light on how well things are performing compared to expectations?

W

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Tectorman wrote:
heretic wrote:

Though this is a bit of a tangent I have read some of the points of views up thread before , so just a quick history lesson if I may.

AC for a character didn’t usually change according to level because in traditional D&D the relationship between HPs and AC addresses how a more experienced adventurer is harder to land a telling blow on.

That is: cleanly cutting the throat of a 20th level mage (or anybody in fact) is every bit as deadly as doing it to a first level. However the high level mage is much harder to get that telling blow on (ie more HPs). So you get closer to the killing blow by whittling away HPs. AC being an additional bulwark meaning that it is harder to whittle and is based on other variables than level. Naturally it was the preserve of martials with the casters sacrificing that extra durability for magical oomph.

It fits in with the trope of the scurrilous bad guy “cheating” by using poison to barely scratch our hero yet get a telling blow in.

It is a design that worked for many years as an enjoyable abstraction. 4e moved away from this if I recall. PF2 is too and it may well work brilliantly.
It is not though, fixing something that has ever bothered my simulationist brain one bit!

W

It's fixing a conceptual issue that I always had. At low levels, AC is presented as "the mechanism that tells how well you avoid getting hit", with the distinction between "a successful non-damaging hit" and "a hit that also does damage" falling to the wayside. At higher levels, the paradigm becomes "any hit that deals damage but doesn't knock you out is you successfully (though strenuously) dodging and avoiding 'meat damage'".

Except, this is never explained nor intuitive. Even at high levels, I'm expecting AC to be my means of avoiding harm and hp damage to be my failure at accomplishing that goal. AC isn't supposed to let the first attacks through and only affect the iterative attacks, it's supposed to cover them all. Hp damage is still based...

I don't know about that. The traditional HP/AC paradigm works across all levels . Lvl 1 the Mage has few HPs compared to a warrior and worse AC. The disparity get worse as the characters get more submerged in their career paths.

HPs have never for me been just about how many hammer blows Rocky can absorb before going down for the count but the totality of the assault he is subjected to. AC is also not just about how hard it is to make contact with your enemy - plate mail actually makes it easier to hit someone but must less likely to hurt them i.e. land a telling blow.

Not sure that it matters that this theorical basis is not all spelled out as it is imho pretty clear in practice.

W

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Ediwir wrote:

I'm sorry, why is this whole "desert fighters shouldn't know how to swim" still a thing?

Regardless of what the Untrained modifier is, your Fighter will be able to swim because he can climb rocks. Athletics isn't a split skill, and you get it automatically. And if not, you'll get it anyways to trip/disarm/grapple.
What you want is a more fragmented skill system, where you can forego ranks in Starting Campfires to gain ranks in Ways To Kill An Opponent With Your Thumb while still retaining the ability to Track Bandits.
...OR INSTEAD, you might want to roleplay the fact that your character, despite having +26 in Athletics, has a paralyzing fear of water. Which you can do without entirely decoupling the skill system from the combat system, willingly gimping yourself for no benefit whether Untrained has level or not.

Only one of those two examples creates a fun moment at the table. I'll let you figure out which one.

A number of interesting points.

Surely though saying that the mechanics for all things athletic should apply to .... all things athletic.... because it currently applies to ... all things athletic i.e. It is not a split skill is rather a circular argument??

Wanting choices to count and mean that if you want to learn to swim/ speak Kellish/ play the drums etc. you cannot do so without making time to do that as opposed to something else.... is not a revolutionary idea!

Plus a system that says you are free to produce flawed characters (even ones like poor old Ambrose) but by default you are practically flawless seems rather off at least to me.

There is a clear lack of consensus as to just how inherently universally superior Pathfinder PCs should be to normal mortals. I have faith the developers will produce a brilliant reveal that won't break too many hearts but it was never gong to be easy.

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Though this is a bit of a tangent I have read some of the points of views up thread before , so just a quick history lesson if I may.

AC for a character didn’t usually change according to level because in traditional D&D the relationship between HPs and AC addresses how a more experienced adventurer is harder to land a telling blow on.

That is: cleanly cutting the throat of a 20th level mage (or anybody in fact) is every bit as deadly as doing it to a first level. However the high level mage is much harder to get that telling blow on (ie more HPs). So you get closer to the killing blow by whittling away HPs. AC being an additional bulwark meaning that it is harder to whittle and is based on other variables than level. Naturally it was the preserve of martials with the casters sacrificing that extra durability for magical oomph.

It fits in with the trope of the scurrilous bad guy “cheating” by using poison to barely scratch our hero yet get a telling blow in.

It is a design that worked for many years as an enjoyable abstraction. 4e moved away from this if I recall. PF2 is too and it may well work brilliantly.
It is not though, fixing something that has ever bothered my simulationist brain one bit!

W

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MaxAstro wrote:
heretic wrote:
As much as there are ppl who want PCs who are kind of supermen/women who by osmosis are better than a doctor at surgery, a footballer at football and the flute than a master flautist etc. There are others who feel that is not wanted or needed.

I think that's a rather hyperbolic explanation of what untrained getting +level-4 achieved.

For one, surgery is not a thing you can even attempt untrained no matter your bonus.

For two, to be better than a master flutist, you would need to be 8 levels higher than the flutist, AND have just as much Charisma, AND have any magic or circumstantial items the flutist did... and you still couldn't put on a full performance because that's trained only.

That said, your point about the huge jump from untrained to trained I completely agree with - that's one of the things I strongly dislike about this change. Admittedly it was just as possible in PF1e.

Gosh! Excuse the length of this, I am speaking from my heart here!

My point isn’t really to do with whether or not there was a skill gated treat disease/treat poison vs administer first aid! Though the “surgeon” will be rather depressed at how good an untrained person is at that while his lifetime of study & years medical practice never granted him a single cleric spell or fighter class feat.

BTW when I say master flautist I assume you felt I meant “had a master proficiency” in it? If so, no I just mean master in the sense of really good, not just a journey man let alone an apprentice or gods forbid that guy who having murdered a piece proudly proclaims they’ve never had a single lesson.

The point is that under the playtest every PCs as they move up the levels are inexplicably good at all manner of stuff from Galt folk dancing to virtuosity with the rare Orcish nose pipes to acrobatics etc.

So a workaday jongleur will be outshone by a sorcerer within a few levels and by a tone deaf dwarf barbarian not too long after. When in ‘reality’ noone has any business being comparably good with a pro unless they actually spend time away from other endeavours learning how to be!

BTW surely an adventurer is more likely to have fancy magic kit over a jobbing pro musician not the other way round?

The inevitable impact that most DCs ending up as being level dependent regardless of a largely impractical instruction that they are not to be was my very first concern on reading the skills.

Anyhoo...

I am not expecting to dissuade you from thinking PCs should be superior in all things by design.

Accusing me of hyperbole while you (with all respect) are splitting hairs over skill gates for a ‘surgeon’ and argue the toss over wether a flautist will have the same stat as a levelling adventurer then suggesting a -4 to skills or possible access by everyday pros to cool magic items answers my concerns no more persuades me.

I was just hoping to explain why the developers might have felt a need to marginally derate the playtest skills system.

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Come on folks! This has been hashed around many times!

The reason for this change must be connected to playtest feedback. I am guessing that many others expressed alarm at the paradigm of a PC being just plain amazing at everything because ‘level’.

As much as there are ppl who want PCs who are kind of supermen/women who by osmosis are better than a doctor at surgery, a footballer at football and the flute than a master flautist etc. There are others who feel that is not wanted or needed.

The fact is that electing to become trained means you swiftly became one of worlds greatest exponents of a skill - and there are plenty of opportunities to do this is - is still rather too much in the wrong direction for me. I do applaud the idea that at least some choices must be made and a balance struck.

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Tridus wrote:
Darksol the Painbringer wrote:
pjrogers wrote:
The above comments may or may not be accurate, but I don't think they take away from my original point. There is nothing that has prevented or does currently prevent Paizo from doing a more evolutionary PF1.5e as "Build from the Ground Up" project. PF1e's "juryrigged" state is a result of choices by Paizo, choices that I generally disagree with.

I don't think it's been said that Paizo is prevented from rehashing PF1 into PF1.5. They are more than welcome to do so if they so choose.

All I've said is that I believe it's not a very good idea, or a good and productive way to spend Paizo's employee time and money. And based on the decisions they've made so far, they're in agreement on that conclusion.

Agreed. They certainly could go off and make PF 1.5, or 3.875 if you're following all the way back to the direct ancestors. But if they're going to do that and be married to backwards compatibility, there is a lot of stuff that is immediately off the table. But fundamentally if you don't have that, I don't think you have "PF 1.5".

At this point, it's pretty limited on the design side to be based on a 20 year old system when the competition has moved on from those restrictions. That's really it. If the goal is to make a better system than 5e, it's pretty hard to do that when you can't change the fundamentals due to needing to work with PF1.

The thing is I imagine that to most of us still playing Pathfinder they already have a better system than 5e. What they don’t have are better sales. I am very dubious that anything Paizo does will mean they can eclipse 5e the way they did 4e. I am hoping they can though make a system that improves their sales and brings most of us who prefer PF along for the ride!

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Gorbacz wrote:
heretic wrote:
The challenge to Jason et al is to make a new RPG that existing players will love more than the one we have now (the answer to which we will find out) and do a better job of creating it than they might have done with a reworking (which can only be speculation!)

The only challenge Jason et al have is to make a new RPG that will reverse the trend of playerbase (and sales) dwindling away. If you have X existing players left and that's not a number that rocks your boat financially, getting them to love your game more than they do now won't change squat. You need to expand.

That is not really the point though.

While in theory there is a scenario that a new RPG appears from Paizo that alienates everyone but the play-test’s most energetic fans on these forums but so entrances new customers that they have improved their player numbers and sales. I am comfortable that is an extreme possibility.

The reality of the situation is that a game called something like Pathfinder 2 will need to bring over much of Pathfinder’s existing player base.

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thejeff wrote:
It's that last part that's going to be hard. That hypothetical rework that only exists in our heads is always going to be better than any real game.

True.

I have occasionally wondered about a “phantom edit” of Pathfinder. That is what books or more importantly bits of books I would use if I were to really REALLY prep for a campaign?

Which lead to thinking if I would also rewrite how lighting works, making a clear rule in stealth means being silent & hidden but not deodorised, ruling that when a new class gets a spell via an existing spell list the description is changed to reflect the appropriate casting stat etc. etc. etc.

It would have been great to see how they pro’s would have undertaken the task.

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Gorbacz wrote:
pjrogers wrote:
The above comments may or may not be accurate, but I don't think they take away from my original point. There is nothing that has prevented or does currently prevent Paizo from doing a more evolutionary PF1.5e as "Build from the Ground Up" project. PF1e's "juryrigged" state is a result of choices by Paizo, choices that I generally disagree with.

The moment your biggest problems with PF1e are poor interactions between dim light and low light vision or unclear rules for mounted combat while somebody else's biggest problems with PF1 are caster/martial disparity or the rocket tag nature of combat, there's simply no "tweaked PF1" that will make everybody appy. If it was to tweak only thing you think that are wonky, it will leave the other deeply unsatisfied, but if it does something fundamental (like altering the action economy or the way monsters work), you'll likely say it's no longer "tweaked PF1" but a new game you didn't ask for.

It's pretty much the same reason why WotC didn't "tweak AD&D 2ed a bit" but instead went with a new ruleset with a mostly different design paradigm, power level and focus when making D&D 3.0. It's also the reason why not everybody moved to 3.0+ and some keep playing the older versions.

No matter how devoted one might be to the changes in the playtest vs PF1 the suggestion that there is no milage in a PF1.5 is surely a bridge too far?

From Paizo’s point of view I totally get that a new system offers a much freer hand and going down that route makes sense.

Moderated by the caveat that they cannot not afford a PF2 that has become so different that brand loyalty turns to disaffection and an unsupportable number of existing players seeking a supported system look past Paizo entirely.

So there won’t be a PF 1.5 but there could have been and everything else being equal I reckon it would have been very cool!

Simply put integrating the spirit of Unchained particularly a ‘from the ground up’ implementation of the new action economy & making a CRB that is designed to be the basis for a mechanically superior implementation of the best bits of the hard and soft covers would almost certainly have left us better off than just continuing with PF1. I do remember that converting content from most different D&D versions was pretty easy (often just done on the fly) up until 3.0.

The challenge to Jason et al is to make a new RPG that existing players will love more than the one we have now (the answer to which we will find out) and do a better job of creating it than they might have done with a reworking (which can only be speculation!)

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Though I have severe misgivings from multiple angles about the playtest solution I don’t pretend there is a not a debate to be had about skills.

There is an inherent problem that every character class is designed to be able to make a reasonably satisfying contribution to combat but if the encounter is based on skills there are times a PC is so much baggage.

Yes: in a ruck the less skilled fighter is generally more effective than a skill monkey but both get to do stuff.

Of course there are fights where a certain class ends up making a minimal contribution (bards/enchanters vs undead or constructs) but rarely to the extent that a character with only physical based skills feels surplus to requirements in a social encounter or a ‘face’ character feels when presented with a rope climbing race.

Add in the possibility of crit failures it all gets rather fraught.

But....

Not getting to make a personal impact in every single encounter is not a problem that warrants making the challenges of the non adventuring world laughable to PCs with a few lvls under their belts.

I hope the finished product can square the circle and do so better than the other options out there particularly compared to PF1.

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WatersLethe wrote:
Cyouni wrote:


Right now, I anticipate it being as PF1 in "oh, no one went completely out of their bailiwick to learn Nature? Okay, we have no idea about anything that's going on, so let's go back to plan A: break down the front door".

Your opinion is perfectly valid, but I want to stress that this exact scenario is not only acceptable to me, but is *crucial*.

I strongly believe groups with different compositions and skillsets should solve problems differently. It is antithetical to my enjoyment of the game if every group is assumed to, for example, be adept in wilderness lore and every scenario assumes not only that competence but success at the relevent roll.

I would be in the same school of thought.

I really hope we don’t end up so that being an adventurer means never having to say Sorry.....

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These things are all relative I guess. Simulation in a world like our own one but with magic vs a world governed by magical thinking.

How do we keep it exciting while keeping it real?

Do we view our playing experience as sub optimal (with apologies to Sir Terry) if the million to one shot does not happen 9 times out of 10. Or 8 or 7 etc. Or 1 time in 20?

The PCs are at the end of the day adventurers so need certain competencies but do we really say that if you want to try something there is a decent chance you can succeed regardless of context? Or do we accept that like character death sometimes failure is an unavoidable consequence of choices?

For me a lvl 20 barbarian cannot fly by flapping their arms even if that spoils the otherwise brilliant infil plan! Rules that permit this kind of thing are not to my taste at all!

On a less extreme note: If you never bother to lean how to swim then starting to learn mid ocean is too late.

From personal experience I know just how damnably close I was to not be able to help an increasingly distressed swimmer get to safety despite knowing how to swim. I was very glad my parents made sure I knew how but definitely wished that day I had spent much more time keeping in practice. Thank God I was not wearing chainmail.

I hope that getting the balance right is something we will be congratulating the developers on in August.

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Folks I don't think it is contentious to remind ourselves that there is a genuinely held philosophical divide here!

PCs in an old school Batman mold. By default at least competent at every task they face, brilliant at many and as they progress become brilliant at everything they haven't become super human at.

So in the *normal* course of events there is no task that the PCs cannot individually manage, no failing that handicaps the rest of the party.

Vs

What I would call the traditional D&D paradigm of PCs who are very good at some things and lousy at others.

Where players had to choose where to focus and there was never enough resource to excel at everything.

The playtest was very much the former.

The changes make a modest step towards the latter.

Even now using one skill choice on getting trained means after a few levels the Ezren style wizard has become a formidable athlete or acrobat when compared anyone who isn't an adventurer.

IMHO In the case of ppl who made a foreseeable degree of inquiry about the playtest they were taking part in Paizo was clear the design choice was to test the most extreme versions of ideas. Which kept me sane playing a wizard where everything seemed to have save bonuses higher than my DC for instance :-)

I am still very much hoping that next years rather scary looking foreign exchange prospects still permit me to make the trip across the pond to welcome in the new edition, warts & all, in person!

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Only got to listen to part of the Twitch feed but the 5 things were welcome.

As I have said on these hallowed fora before: I cannot warm to the philosophy that characters swiftly become like 1970's action heroes who just happened to be exceptionally good at everything except perhaps those things they are even better than merely exceptional at!

So I like that if you have never trained at it you are likely to be "amateur hour". I like that the so called "dabblers" i.e. trained jacks of all trades adventurers while "journeyman" levels of good don't swiftly overshadow focused master craftsmen, professionals, academics etc.
I support allowing the experts, masters and especially legends to really show their superiority over all the above mentioned.

I do feel that the trained "dabblers" still get comparatively good at skills that they have less obvious narrative connection to and would have liked something that slowed or even bettter capped the level bonus to respect that boot camp and on the job experience is great in most challenges but it is not going to cut it against a dedicated specialist in their field.

Still much happier today than yesterday about skills and proficiencies!

Glad to see resonance go. I just hope that whatever replaces it - in as much as it was the playtest replacement for item slots - is not just better than resonance but better than the slot system.

Did not like assurance from the day I read about it and the more I compared it to the take 10 mechanic it replaced the less it seemed like a improvement! I pray the new thing works with my philosophy that rules should be easily explicable to a new player both in terms of how it works and why.

E.g. For item slots & take ten you pretty much cover it if you say to the new player:

What: You can only wear one magic item on the same part of your body, one ring on each hand and here's a list of which parts of your body is a slot you can use.

Why: It makes sense you can't wear two pairs of shoes or spectacles and multiple necklaces or bracelets cause magical interference with each other. Anyway the rules need a way to manage just how much magical bling you can wear at one time.

&

What: You normally roll a D20 and add your skill bonus to see how well you did. If nobody is messing with you, you can choose to add ten to your skill rather than roll.

Why: This is because if you are doing a simple task relating to something at which you are really good, then you won't screw up 25% of the time. The way a shoemaker making simple shoes won't be going to home each evening having failed to make every 4th shoe or a surgeon doesn't kill every 4th patient whose appendix she is removing.

(Cue reminiscence of Runequest where 30% of ppl in the average village lacked a shared language with the other 70% and how games design has moved on...)

Explaining Resonance & Assurance was much less simple and fun!

On reflection Assurance never got used once by my wizard in the playtest.

As ever I await August's magnum opus with baited breath!

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It is interesting that a desire to have characters swashbuckling with relative ease through an adventuring life leads to a belief that is far more heroic to try something you are good at (thus not putting yourself in jeopardy) than taking a tremendous risk by trying to something you are not good at.

I mean I do get it: people want characters whose default setting means they are smarter (& stronger & faster & charming etc.) than the average bear. What makes the rogue different to the wizard is that the wizard can only juggle 3 clubs while traversing the tight rope but the rogue can do 4 and his clubs are lit on fire!

Also like to say that voluntarily taking flaws is not fun in the same way as designing a character whose dedication in the training ground means she ignored her studies or who spent his days playing cards in the tavern rather than working on his core. You want characters to be built equally but not homogenously.

I await the release of the final magnus opus next summer with baited breath.

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Wulfhelm II. wrote:
heretic wrote:
In the absence of any proof I kind of like the last option (which is what my history teacher taught us).
Which source did he refer to? I don't know any that claimed Barbarossa voluntarily jumped into the river without knowing how to swim.

Though I appreciate this could be seen a sort of derailing, the teacher in question back in the mid 1980’s did not feel the need to provide spotty teenagers with authorities:-).

The moral of the story was that he could have enjoyed the cool waters safely but refusing to take off his armour found himself in a fatal position. Who can tell what really happened?

Additional thoughts.... mariners in the age of sail I have read did not learn to swim. These were people surrounded by the opportunity to learn and certainly had the physical capacity. Apparently they often didn’t though because if the ship went down at sea being able to swim meant a slow death rather than a quick one. You have to choose to expend effort to learn a skill.

So to mix metaphors like mad.....On reflection it seems that PF2 sees skill choices as means to distinguish you from other ‘supers’ not for you to risk being outshone by mere muggles. I miss the idea of being able to customise the character warts and all.

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Wulfhelm II. wrote:
heretic wrote:
Barbarossa was a renowned king & warrior from history who showed that with great power comes the responsibility to learn how to swim when you jump in a river just as it comes to people who have little or no power.

Bit unfair there, old chap. He was thrown off his horse, it's not like he voluntarily jumped into the water. ;-)

In any event, I agree with what you are saying. I think the problem is that skills are completely integrated into the matrix of what I'd like to call "core adventuring competencies". If there is a whole character class (or several, even) casually referred to as the "skill monkey", then obviously being good with skills is one possible area of specialization among adventurers.

My suggestion would be to get away from this paradigm and instead separate out all core competencies into their own things. Early versions of D&D did this, partially because they had no skills. 3.x did this for magic, combat and saving throws, but worked former thief abilities, as well as some other things, into the skill system.

There is debate about how poor old Freddie B died. Fell of his horse? A heart attack brought on by cold water in the Armenian sun coupled with the shock of being dismounted? It is also said he was very hot and wanted a paddle to cool down (some say after a meal.....perhaps with a little too much vino) but having sworn to not remove his armour until he did something or the other in the holy lands made the wrong decision. In the absence of any proof I kind of like the last option (which is what my history teacher taught us).

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In an earlier post I likened the skill system and the plus 1 per level to how Batman was presented in years gone by. That making characters be like Bruce Wayne with magic is a bad idea. In the context of the rest of the post I thought the analogy was clear. Apparently not.....

In old Batman stories the hero was a genius academic, martial artist supreme and an actor of the highest calibre and these were just a few tips of an iceberg of awesomeness where the audience lived out vicarious power fantasies through a character who was just brilliant at everything.

How was this possible? Well because well he was Batman and Batman had done all the things that you’d ever need to do to be brilliant at everything while becoming Batman and he keeps current and learns new skills at the same brilliant level in the down times between adventures. Thus no matter what fate or the Joker threw at him he was always prepared and never left his fans feeling irrelevant by proxy.

In PF2 you can add in magic to further empower good ol’ Bat’s awesomeness.

For me PF characters are ordinary people who share our human flaws and foibles who become extraordinary because they become diplomats or warriors, wizards or burglars of the highest calibre. They have to work at it just like we all do: there are no free lunches.

Hope that clarifies.

Thinking on it.....

Barbarossa was a renowned king & warrior from history who showed that with great power comes the responsibility to learn how to swim when you jump in a river just as it comes to people who have little or no power.

My father, God rest him, was recognised as being one of the most promising in his profession as a young man. As my mum would relate he was not at all good at dancing. 20 years on at the top of his profession he still could not dance to save his life.

I forget her name but a celebrated writer who had lived in Moscow was speaking on radio in the U.K. saying that she shared the commonly held idea that if you just lived in a foreign city for a few years you gained the language by osmosis. Turns out this is of course nonsense. You have to make the effort to learn Russian: a flat by the Moscow river and an entirely anglophone circle of friends and associates won’t cut it!

W

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Darksol the Painbringer wrote:
heretic wrote:
I much prefer a choice: The strong, brave but rather dim and academically limited warrior, the highly educated but athletically useless cleric or the wizard who can move mountains but would quiver when faced with asking a girl he fancies to dance (for instance because he has always chosen learning arcane mystery instead of dancing or social interaction).

The thing is that this system doesn't take that choice away. It makes it more of a player-dependent choice than a mechanics-dependent one, that much is true, but it's not like you can't not be worse at what you want to be worse at. The only big differences are that A. Players make that choice, not the mechanics (or GM, usually), and B. Players don't get any sort of compensation for choosing to be worse. That's it.

If the complaint people have towards this is A., then I'm not really seeing why having a mechanical reinforcement would be of any help other than to sate one's ego of "people have flaws', especially when not every player wants to play a character with glaring flaws, like having a 7 Intelligence score as a Fighter. Playing a tactical master who is skilled with a sword is just as valid (and interesting) a character.

If the complaint is B., then people just need to understand that PF2 wants to cut down on minmaxing shenanigans, and this is a deliberate design choice in that direction; if they don't like it, they can say something about it, but if the developers don't want to do anything about it (or don't think anything needs to be done), then there's the door, and don't let it hit you on the way out. Chances are, PF2 won't be for you, and I wish you the best of luck in finding the system that better suits your needs.

In all candour I find it almost impossible to be receptive to anyone who includes a “ if you don’t like this then this game isn’t for you etc.” I will try not to let the door hit me on the way out.

I wonder though if I am really in a demographic that Paizo would so blithely dismiss as surplus to requirements.

Your point A leaves me rather nonplussed. In any system including PF a player can decide to role play in specific character flaws to make them bad a stuff for story reasons. It is not really great in a rules heavy system.

Point B. Heck yes solving the problems by making the standard characters who are now akin to old school Batman clones seem even more inexplicably cool by comparison is not imho a good idea. It effectively removes choice remembering that the adventures a PC is expected to deal with are set to challenge a standard build. Like ppl turning up to PFS sessions with builds incapable of fufilling their role because of a cool backstory.

Referencing min maxing as something that justifies this doesn’t convince. A desire that you don’t have to so skew your resources so that you are only good at one thing to be mechanically relevant is understandable. Wanting to be relevant at a tactical level in any and all circumstances ... not so much & insisting all PCs are Bruce Wayne with magic is not the best solution!

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Thinking on this it struck has just me that next year will be the 40th anniversary of my first game of D&D.

In all those years I can’t think of a time I would have thought of introducing a rule that high level characters were a sort of homo superior who were soooo cool they got good at everything by osmosis like a parody of a 1970’s secret agent. The suggested solution that if do you feel that this is silly is to hamstring your PC thus making the standard PC by comparison all the cooler yet is not helpful at all.

I much prefer a choice: The strong, brave but rather dim and academically limited warrior, the highly educated but athletically useless cleric or the wizard who can move mountains but would quiver when faced with asking a girl he fancies to dance (for instance because he has always chosen learning arcane mystery instead of dancing or social interaction).

The point at which 4e finally lost me was when in response to a question about playing a musical instrument for which there was no mechanic was that if you wanted to be a virtuoso (on the bagpipes iirc) you just declared you were and so it was. We were invited to feel liberated by this and if we really had to associate it with a skill then use diplomacy. Seemed wrong . Surely there should be a quid pro quo mechanically.

PF2 is of course not 4e though I feel in many cases both sets of developers indentified the same philosophical problems and solutions with the 3.x they were moving on from and made their own stabs at fixing them within some inevitable similarities.

I hope our developers can square the circle . So inter alia we don’t end up with every wall in Absolom that needs to thwart level 7 PCs consequentially being an insoluble problem for a level 1.

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Gorbacz wrote:
So if a *player* with an arguably low IQ rolls an Int 18 Wizard, do you tell them that they need to quit playing the character because they can't realistically roleplay the rules? Will your group constantly pressure them to drop the "smart" aspect of the character?

Surely it is not a fair inference to draw from the suggestion that if you want to play a stupid character that is mechanicaly nudged into having an ability score that makes them of average brightness the player will be encouraged to play them that way?

In fairness though if you want a dumb brute the playtest rules allow you to drop int, you just don’t get any bumps in other stats in exchange.

I am hopeful things will allow for some mechanical reflection for creative representation of inequality

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GreyWolfLord wrote:
......However, most of those pushing against the +1/level are JUST as unrealistic, if not moreso about how the world works, thinking a world class neurosurgeon only is 20% better at brain surgery than the guy off the street. Their training has only made them 20% better at it rather than years of experience and training......

Genuinely confused as to where we're going here Greywolflord. I am not a fan of 5e so this may be a comparison to how 5e skills would work, even allowing for that I remain puzzled as to what you mean. I don't think that anyone is saying "keep the current skill system but don't have a mechanic for any skill progression at all".

The issue is that in the play test a brain surgeon gets better at brain surgery at the same rate that a professional ballerina does and the ballerina gets better at ballet dancing at the same rate that surgeon does. (ignoring medicine as a gated skill for now).

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thejeff wrote:
Questor X wrote:
I don't like the +level system. A 1st level rogue should be better at picking pockets than 10th level fighter, cleric, or sorceror. A wizard, even high level, should not be able to go into melee combat with the town guards and expect good things to happen.
Though of course back in PF1 (or earlier D&D versions) a high enough level wizard could just go into melee with the town guards - even without buffs up.

Hmm.

pre 3.x. A lvl 10 wizard would struggle to hit the guards enough with his dagger or staff before they did the 10 to 60 points of damage required.
In PF a lvl 10 wizard would certainly be able to stand up to a few disorganised lvl 1 warriors in a fight but with lousy AC and low DPR the opposition would not have to be stellar to embarrass the mage.

As I have mentioned before any adventurer eventually getting half decent in a fight even if they only rarely get up close and personal is perfectly OK and explicable. I am much less sure about how good, how fast and the change in how AC is treated.

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Unicore.

The perform skill has play a musical instrument in the same list of things with a perform trait as singing, dancing or comedy. All above the section of the skill requiring training. Now I would hope that a GM would house rule a training gate for a musical performance on an instrument. Same for being able to out perform a dancer or opera singer.

I hear what you are saying about lived experience in combat making you better at avoiding injury. Hence the increase in saving throw bonus. I still reckon the soldier in body armour will fare better in a ruck than the one in dress uniform and proper kit and specific experience in hand to hand will better prepare you to deflect or side step the killing blow than a career focused on bomb disposal. Though both require neves of steel and bravery.

i have read with interest elsewhere that the life of an adventurer should mean that effectively you should be treated as having a minimum 12 in physical stats. If that is the case then we have physical stats to alter to reflect this much less abstractly than increasing all skills dependent on every stat by 1 per level.

Also regarding picking up the survival skills by ozmosis despite the ranger doing all the work is like the myth that if you live in a non English speaking country you will become fluent even if you never try and only communicate with anglophones.

I don't buy the idea the game design to ask players not to make use of legal options to allow versilimitude rather than bake it in is the way to go.

As to your last point you are of course entitled to your view.

W

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thejeff wrote:

) But the same wizard back in PF1e would still be getting better at hitting things in melee combat (BAB every other level) and getting physically tougher (hp).

As Tarik said: twice the hp and better BAB, all from trying to stay in...

Leaving aside the *relatively worse rate of wizards BAB, getting slowly better at hitting stuff and surviving multiple battles when you are delivering rays, the occasional touch spell or desperate back against the wall staff bash etc is an acceptable explanation and as you say the rules are abstract. Again a rogue may be a trap smith but he will be a trap smith who is trained to sneak attack and avoid fireballs. Again rules are as you say abstract.

Surely that does not mean that suspension of disbelief can be demanded for every fictional conceit with a straight face?

*edited to replace "rather" with "relatively" in line one.

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Tarik Blackhands wrote:
heretic wrote:

Also uncomfortable but introducing the idea that you get harder to hit in your pyjamas than a knightly squire in plate armour because of years spent in the library between avoiding combat at cost during dungeon crawls.

So do we absolutely need to hurl the narrative baby out with the mechanical bath water here?

This logic always confuses me. If you stick around studying books for years and avoid danger and adventure...you aren't going to be high level making the whole point moot. And even if you go through the logic of "well I need a Legendary sage for plot dumping" it's the same problem in PF1 where that same sage who sat around studying tomes has more than twice the hp of the local squire and probably a better BAB too.

I will try to explain. I think you have missed my point, my apolgies if my poor choice of words or typing confused things.

Avoiding melee combat so you can effectively use your arcane ability is not avoiding danger or adventure. It is the means that caster have operated and likely will still do so as it remains the most action efficient way to operate.

The question of needing mechanics to allow non adventuring types to exist as useful characters is not unimportant but not really linked to the +1 per level AC or skill bonus.

An adventuring career of blasting things from behind the paladin and spending downtime in the library or fest hall does not really explain the relentless advance to super Olympian athletics or being really good at standing toe to toe with heavily armed and armoured folk while sky clad
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Don't get me started on the sudden realisation you have always been a virtuoso bag pipe player but only found out on seeing your first set. :-)

The Exchange

DataLoreRPG wrote:

I don't think the benefit of proficiency = level is to feel epic. That comes at the cost of verisimilitude and doesn't seem like a conscious decision devs would make. Also, if I just want to feel epic there are plenty of systems that specialize in that (Godbound, Exalted, Supers games, etc).

The benefit is, I'm willing to bet, easy math and a sense of accomplishment going from one level to the next. It also fits easily with their AP paradigm since the level range of effective threats with this system is probably roughly that which you would normally face in an adventure that is part of an AP.

This is the the type of cost/benefit I speak of! :-)

I am comfortable with the idea of explicable cause and effect. So making fire issue from your fingers due to mastery of arcane study is fine. Being able to flawlessly trip the light fantastic despite never having danced or indeed even seen the dance requires similar explanation. Time spent in the alchemical lab or flinging bombs about isn't a good explanation. A youth spent skipping Galt classes in school to attend a dance master: great! A pair of very special red ballet shoes.... maybe

But we know the point of contention here.

I don't know if all the other 'cool stuff' you get for levelling isn't sufficient to get a buzz out of levelling. Hell it was back in the days of AD&D and the rewards were less than salubrious!

Not sure that making all things perilous scale with each other is worth the price of losing the narrative consistency (or verisimilitude ) that you'd expect with well written fiction.
It is not as if many parts of the skills are not already qualified by requiring training.

Also uncomfortable but introducing the idea that you get harder to hit in your pyjamas than a knightly squire in plate armour because of years spent in the library between avoiding combat at all costs during dungeon crawls.

So do we absolutely need to hurl the narrative baby out with the mechanical bath water here?

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