houser2112's page

The reasons they gave were that:
1) free heightening is too powerful, which reasonable people can disagree on
2) it creates "analysis paralysis" at the table, which just about everyone sees as a b$&@$@#~ argument at best, and a "problem" that should be solved at the table, not by the designer.

houser2112 wrote:

They needed to do something to make two-handed weapons more attractive.

It is called enchantment. On a recent playtest we gave our only +1 weapon to a fighter with a greatsword. 2d12+4 dmg is no joke at level 4 and the couple of criticals he got absolutely devastated some tough foes.

Apparently I really do need to explain the joke.

In PF1, due to many factors (chief of which, I believe, that 2H weapons added 1.5xSTR instead of STR, and Power Attack further exaggerated the benefit 2H weapons got from STR over 1H weapons), 2H weapons were the kings of the battlefield. Through my own observation and overwhelming supporting evidence from the community at large, I consider this to be axiomatic. YMMV, but most people I've read think that something needs to be done to correct this imbalance. A new edition of the game is the perfect time to address it.

PF2 comes out, and not only do they not improve the situation, they make it worse. Being able to use a shield in combat in the first place requires sacrificing a precious action. The one interesting thing they added, Shield Block, allowing your shield to take some damage for you, they tied to reactions (a resource shared with AOOs, which are going to be rare now), and shields seem remarkably flimsy to justify wanting to throw them in harm's away.

So, to summarize: PF1 2H weapons were overwhelmingly popular and "needed" to be reined in. I made a joke by asserting the opposite is true, in a thread that is discussing how much shields actually suck even more in PF2.

That's the humor. You're welcome, gamers.

Free heightening improves sorcerers way more than it does wizards.

Free heightening is thematically appropriate for the sorc to have. The current heightening rules double down on the wizard's strength, and the sorc's weakness.

Paizo needs to change Hunt Target. Bonuses that depend on 2nd and 3rd attacks are at odds with the entire implementation of the class and the rest of the game.

Not only does attacking with Hunt Target compete for actions with animal companions and moving, but the only ranged weapon that Rangers have direct feat support for is the crossbow, with which you will never (with the current feats, anyway) get more than two shots a round.

Do you mind giving me some examples of where 1e core has more character diversity than 2e?

Sure.

I'm pretty sure every single 2h melee character

Right here. The fact that you said "character" and not, let's say, "fighter" is the biggest difference.

players can still build a dual-wielding ranger

Yes, players can build a dual-wielding ranger, because ranger has a lot of feat support for that build. There's not a lot of feat support for other styles.

The point I'm trying to make is that PF1 had more build diversity because there wasn't as much ability siloed into classes. There were feats you could take to advance a fighting style that weren't utterly dependent on your class features like the ranger is on Hunt Target, or the paladin with Retributive Strike.

houser2112 wrote:

They needed to do something to make two-handed weapons more attractive.

No, they didn't. Two handed weapons were THE definitive melee choice in PF1. It's SHIELDS that needed to become more useful and attractive in 2E.

I know. I thought this was so self-evident that I didn't need to explain the joke. I guess I was wrong. :)

I agree fully with the changes suggested here. Sorcerers only have 75% of the feats other spellcasters get (6 compared to 8) because their level 6 and 10 feats are locked behind their Bloodline powers.

This is especially bad because many perceive the bloodline powers to be rather lackluster.

Spontaneous casters having to learn higher versions of their spells and only getting to choose 2 (or 4 spells with a feat) spells to auto-heighten each day doesn't feel very 'spontaneous'.

Only bards get Additional Heightening as a feat option. Sorcerers do not, and this is unacceptable.

If the point about spontaneous casters is to have flexibility with how they cast their spells at a cost of spells known, then why limit them further by requiring them to spend precious spells known on redundant spells? This is one point where 5e did well: if you cast spell in a higher level spell slot, it gets heightened to that spell level, no questions asked.

The heightening rules build on a wizard's strength and on a sorcerer's weakness, and this is unacceptable too.

I agree that 5E's magic system (in general, not just the heightening rules) is a lot more elegant, and I'm rather shocked that Paizo didn't implement it across the board, seeing as how they published it first (in the Arcanist).

Witch of Miracles wrote:

Quote:

4. Sorcerers must keep learning the same spell at higher levels.

Why does a Sorcerer need to keep relearning Fireball at every level up in order to be able to consistently blast with good damage? Sorcerers already have limited spells known, all this change does is make Wizards more unholy powerful by comparison by effectively making Sorcerers less able to efficiently utilize said spells known.
Metamagic in the past did a fine job of making higher level spell slots more powerful. This just makes wizards stand out as powerhouses more than they already were.

I know I've been a broken record about this, but combined with spontaneous heighten, I'm pretty sure this works out to a net buff over PF1. Many spells that get value from heightening used to be a line of spells or have lesser/greater versions (e.g. Invis, Summon). Using spontaneous heighten, you can effectively get nine levels of summon X for the low price of one spell known in the best case, and two or three spells known for the price of one in others.

Spontaneous heighten's two picks are also generally enough to support your main sorc gameplan (e.g. summonbot, fireball bot), negating the restriction on the spells you need most.

When I first read the rules for spontaneous casters I thought the same this as OP. But them I realized that a Sorcerer still has more flexibility than a Wizard during a single day. Lets say they both get into a situation where they need to cast Fireball +3 three times; as long as the sorcerer knows the spell she can cast it three times, while the if the Wizard didn't prepare all three slots with the spell she may only be able to cast it once. If you know what will happen on a given day the Wizard is better, but the Sorcerer is better at handling surprises.

That's the main trade-off between wizard and sorcerer, though. Limited in-the-moment versatility with an unlimited repertoire vs unlimited in-the-moment versatility with a limited repertoire. Allowing the wizard to autoheighten the spell he needs to learn only once builds on his core strength. Not allowing the sorc to do the same builds on his core weakness.

I agree that paleovancian casting should be sacred hamburger at this point in favor of neovancian (5E/Arcanist) casting. Though I'm resigned to the likely fact that ship has sailed, I'm glad to see yet another thread bringing this up because it gives me hope that Paizo will get out the wood chipper and put poor Bessie out of her (our) misery.

This was brought up and addressed as a readability issue - in quite a few cases, the Critical Success is based on the Normal Success, and it's weird to have that above the normal success. It just doesn't flow that well. It may seem a bit odd this way right now, but it's ultimately better.

I'm reminded of this joke:

If are hurting readability by basing the crit success/fail on the normal success/fail, don't do that. When I am looking up what it means when there's a crit, I don't want to have to read another line to do that. I want to flip to the spell, go to the crit success line, and be on my way.

The resonance complainers haven't even played with the new rules.

We don't need to have played with the rules to know we don't like them. You could say this about every opinion expressed in this forum, good and bad.

The developers stated that, resonance wasn't an issue in most of their playtests.

Well, knowing that my usage of magic items was limited beyond the items themselves would certainly affect my tactics. When I play spellcasters, I rarely run myself dry as well for the same reason.

The fact is Multiclassing is extremely easy in 5e

This is definitely less true in 5E than it is for 3.PF. In 3.PF (base classes, we'll leave PrCs out because there's no 5E comparison to them), MCing is easy as can be: pick a class, add the numbers that are in common, and gain the features. In 5E, there are ability requirements, and not all features are available when a class is not taken at 1st level (notably, saves and skill proficiencies). A fighter/wizard is a lot different than a wizard/fighter. It's true that both systems allow you to make suboptimal choices, but 5E precludes you from even making certain choices if you didn't plan them from the start.

In addition, multiclassing *doesn't require feats*, so it's not competing with another resource (yes, it's got a separate feat progression chain, but it's not eating feats if you dip four levels). Honestly, it's a well-thought-out system that discourages *too* many shallow dips by having them delay your feat/skill bonus progression.

Your proficiency bonus is one of the few things that is based on character level and not class level.

I'm not going to go and say that 5e has more build options than 2e will, but it's not out of the realm of possibility.

I think the PF2 playtest alone has almost more build diversity than core 5E, but I strongly dispute that full PF2 will be less diverse than 5E.

The fact is at every level in 5e, you get to choose:

* a class to progress in

No. I explained why in my first paragraph.

* feats/stat bonuses every 4 levels

As you said, only if you take your classes in 4-level chunks. This contradicts your "easy" assertion if you have to pay close attention to how you take your levels to not lose out on that precious ASI. This alone (ASIs being granted by class level) is bad enough, but the fact that feats compete with ASIs for the same resource is adding insult to injury.

* a class ability choice every few levels (archetypes)

For most (many? definitely not all) classes, the archetype is a choice you make once.

In pathfinder 2e, these are all lumped into the same choice, so we're getting more options, but fewer choices (if that makes sense). Granted, yes, these are happening approximately once per level, but that was also true of 5e...

Only spellcasters have choices to make every level. Other classes do not, for the most part. Your skills are locked by your race/background/first class. Your saves are locked by your first class.

Why are magic items fundamentally different from other resources. Why aren't you complaining that in PF1 and PF2 you can't blow all your spellslots and then still be ready for the boss fight?

That's not the argument Resonance haters are making. To use your analogy, we're complaining that because you cast magic missile last round, you used up your last point of your arbitrary spell resource that is completely separate from your prepared spell list, so you can't cast fireball this round, even though you have it prepared.

To be honest-- there's a much greater chance I will just go to 5th ed instead than go to PF2 as it looks now because of the lack of any new/interesting idea other than "everything's a feat and you get a buttload of them".

Judging by what I've seen you write, I don't think you'll be very happy with 5E. The character building options are quite shallow. 5E is fun to play, but not so fun to think about away from the table like the 3.PF family of games are.

Let me simplify this for you.

<snip>

Please the court, is there a question anywhere in our future?

Ok, you just regurgitated the Resonance rules to us, but what does this have to do with the topic of how the hell do we interpret Resonance and reconcile the rules with existing lore?

Because we're all gonna have clerics.

Yes, because you can't fill the gap with consumables anymore.

If the wizard had to learn every version of a spell to get around the auto-scale nerf, he'd be doing so by leveraging his strength (unbound spell access). The sorcerer has to lean even more heavily on his weakness (limited spells known) to compensate. Adding the 2/day spont heighten is a bandaid, and is thematically odd (having to decide what these spells are at the beginning of the day, reminiscent of prepared spellcasting). It would be slightly better if these slots were decided spontaneously as well.

What do y'all mean now? Or that they got a nerf? Spontaneous casters didn't lose anything. They had to learn both invisibility and greater invisibility before.

It is just prepared casters got something and spontaneous didn't get as much of it. Instead they got the ability to choose how to heighten a spell on the fly, which the prepared caster doesn't have.

Actually, that's only really true for wizards. Clerics and druids have always had full access to their entire spell list, and now they finally have a universal restriction from rarity. The wizard now gets more mileage from learning certain spells than they used to, definitely. But I get the impression that most folks who think wizards are OP don't think the cost for gaining more spells known was ever a super significant barrier to begin with. It cost 160 gold to copy Greater Invisibility for example. That isn't a huge saving between editions.

Meanwhile, the spells that get drastically different effects based on heightening will be prime candidates for spontaneous heightening.

I think you may be forgetting that ALL spellcasters were nerfed in the sense that spells no longer scale in potency with caster level anymore. Prepared casters can get increased potency AND higher level versions when available by preparing a spell in a higher slot; spontaneous casters (well, the sorcerer, anyway; the bard preview was rather vague on this point) only get their 2/day spont heighten, and the only way around that is spending Spells Known, which is already stretched thin.

houser2112 wrote:

Gyor wrote:

I'm more convinced them ever that Pathfinder should just go with a neovancian system like 5e, but like this system (3 actions, four power source spells lists, and so on), but with neovancian instead of vancian.

Gods, yes! I hate paleovancian with a passion. Paizo came out with the neovancian system before 5E did, I was sure that PF2 would use it for every caster. I guess I should have known better, considering how they implemented "psionics".

By how you mean not at all?

Exactly. We asked for 3.5 psionics, we got vancian psychic spells. I'm thankful Dreamscarred stepped up.

I'm more convinced them ever that Pathfinder should just go with a neovancian system like 5e, but like this system (3 actions, four power source spells lists, and so on), but with neovancian instead of vancian.

Gods, yes! I hate paleovancian with a passion. Paizo came out with the neovancian system before 5E did, I was sure that PF2 would use it for every caster. I guess I should have known better, considering how they implemented "psionics".

I would agree with GM DarkLightHitomi that the spell heightening that is basically duplicating a different spell, like greater invisibility, should not be free for the sorcerer (I don't think it should be a thing in the first place, actually), but he should be able to freely intensify the effectiveness of his spells.

The sorcerer has made the choice to trade overall versatility for momentary versatility, limiting spontaneous heighten just doubles down on his weakness.

My take on Resonance is that it solves a problem that doesn't exist, and does it poorly, particularly with respect to charged items. To me, the point of magic items are that they are a source of power outside the character. Something to use when your own abilities have run dry or are inadequate for the task at hand. It makes no sense to me that your ability to chug a potion is at all dependent on whether you depleted some character-based resource shooting laser beams out of your sword 6 hours ago.

CLW wands too cheap, or contain too many charges? Change them. I think 5E's way of handling charged items is more elegant if you want to limit spamming (lower number of total charges, recharge 1dX per day, use the last charge and you risk burning it out forever).

Regarding Charisma, if we must have a character-based resource for this purpose, Charisma is the one to use for sorcerer and UMD reasons.

OP: Though I agree with you that Resonance is a bad idea in the first place, I don't think we know enough about the system as a whole yet to make informed decisions about how to ignore Resonance other than "assume all characters have infinite Resonance" (because I think it has its fingers in too many pies to simply ignore it).

I think that the order should be best-to-worst or worst-to-best. Either one is ok with me, just don't mix them up.

Their justification for doing it the way they are is "but we sometimes refer to the success condition to describe the crit success". Well, don't do that. I don't want to have to read multiple lines to determine the result of the save, I want to go directly to the line that tells me how to interpret what was just rolled.

Starting out, you can prepare four cantrips and two 1st-level spells each day. In addition, you also select your arcane school at 1st level, which grants you one extra spell slot of each level that you can use only to prepare a spell from your chosen school.

Yay, paleovancian casting returns! </sarcasm>

I love the simpler math instead of the "I have a +8bab, +4 from strength, +2 for flank, +2 from weapon, +2 from spell, and...damn, missed..." next round: "crap, I missed last round because I forgot about my X bonus or I would've hit last round".

I think you're overstating things a bit here. Do you really calculate your bonus to hit from the ground up every time you roll the dice? Smart players would record their attack bonus with all "permanent" bonuses baked in on the character sheet, and add situational mods as needed. I agree that there are "s%*&, I forgot my flanking bonus" instances, but there should never be "s$~~, I forgot to add my Strength bonus".

Seth Dresari wrote:

Okay, now I have to ask... What's this Bounded Accuracy thing that Pan mentioned?

Instead of having everyone use different base attack bonuses, and gaining random bonuses from feats and class abilities, everybody uses the same "proficiency bonus" progression. All classes start with a +2, and end up with a +6 by level 20 (I think you get it sooner, but that's what it is at the end).

You add your proficiency bonus and the relevant ability score bonus to your attack, whether it is a weapon attack roll (if you are proficient with the weapon), a spell attack, or whatever.

Other than a few rare abilities and magic items (+1 sword, etc), that is the only bonus you add to your attack. Spells may add bonus dice (roll 1d4 and add to your attack roll), and similar, but gone now are the days of bonus counting.

That is bounded accuracy.

The effect of Bounded Accuracy is not only streamlining the resolution system, but it also reduces the disparity between high level and low level PCs. Monsters that can be ignored (regardless of number) by high level 3.PF PCs are still threatening (in sufficient numbers) to 5E PCs. Skill tasks that can challenge low level PCs still challenge high level PCs.

The most adjacency you have during level ups is the "path" your class allows at 3rd level.

Once you take the Ranger's Hunter path, you make a choice every time you get a feature. At 3rd level, it's Horde Breaker or Colossus Slayer, for instance. I know not every class gets such choices, but there's at least one.

I had a similar issue, but I'm more concerned with the fact that I can't make any sacrifices at character creation to get more skill proficiencies.

Well, you could be a variant human and take the Skilled feat. How's that for sacrifice? :)

Unless you're trying to get brownie points with the Slashdot crowd, or get some use out of a computer that's a bit long in the tooth to run current Mac/Windows OS. there isn't a real compelling reason to run Linux as anything other than a dedicated server implementation such as a Plex media station for example.

I can think of at lea$t one very real compelling rea$on to run Linux in$stead of Mac/Window$ O$.

You know, the low amount of first-party material means very little power creep and great opportunities for third party publishers to step in and provide awesome content.

If you think about it, this decision is great for third party publishers.

On that note, if Paizo were to start publishing 5E-compatible APs, that would be a huge deal, and a huge opportunity for Paizo.

-Matt

If only there was some way for third parties to Openly make Gaming content... a License, if you will. That would be great, yeah.

I would definitely say the Evoker Wizard is the best, given that my experience playing as a Black Mage is limited to FF1 (NES) and FFTactics (PSX).

As you say, there is a lot more to the Evocation school than the elemental blasty spells that are the hallmark of the BM (Fire/Ice/Bolt 1-4, and Flare), but just about everything the BM does is in Evocation.

As for the rest:

• The Poison spell is best reflected by the Necromancy spell ray of sickness (in that it inflicts the poisoned condition rather than just doing poison damage, like chromatic orb, cloudkill or poison spray).
  
• Toad maps pretty neatly to the Transmutation spell polymorph.
  
• Death is best matched by the Enchantment (curiously, not Necromancy) spell power word kill.

All of these spells are available to both the Sorcerer and Wizard. The Evocation Wizard will be good with all the Evocation spells, but the Sorcerer is pretty much married to a particular element for the same effectiveness (adding ability score to spell damage). In order to use a Sorcerer to do Black Mage stuff equally well across all elements, you'd need to custom design a Sorcerous Origin. That, combined with the fact that the only feature Sorcerers have the Wizards don't is Metamagic, I'd definitely choose Evoker to emulate the Black Mage.

There are lots of weapon enchantments that are pretty situational (ghost touch comes to mind). This strikes me as one of them. It's worth the cost of enchantment, but is the kind of thing that varies depending on the campaign.

Yeah, but at least a ghost touch weapon, while situational, isn't useless when its useful situation isn't present. BE weapons are explicitly useless against two broad categories of monster.

Haladir wrote:

...

The psionic classes have names that don't mean anything outside of the context of the game: "psion," "soulknife," "vitalist," etc. If I referred to a non-gamer about a "wizard" they'd know what I was talking about. If I mentioned a "soulknife..." well, not so much. Heck, even the term "psionics" has far more traction within the role-playing gaming world than as a general term.

Better names for the classes, with ties to what the names actually mean in a literary, mythological, or socio-historical context would greatly increase my desire to use them. Terms like "telepath," or "seer," or "spiritualist," or "fakir," or even just "psychic" have meaning outside the context of the game.

That's weird. This is quite literally the first time I've heard this complaint about the system.

In fact, we are constantly told to ignore what the class is called and focus on what your character does and call him whatever you want. (For example: I've seen a ranger/shadow sorcerer/arcane trickster that called himself a ninja.)

I agree. Really?

I wouldn't get too hung up on names.

I recently met a friend's girlfriend. He seemed rather nervous about us meeting and I couldn't figure out why.

Until... She informed me that the crystal jewelry wasn't jewelry. They were powerstones with bindings to hold them in the focal points of her aura. The tattoos where to guide the flowing power of her surroundings into the powerstones and replenish them.

There were just so many things I wanted to say that I couldn't decide where to start. But, I looked at my friends nervous expression and decided I didn't want to start a fight. So, I just smiled (I tried very hard to not smirk or sneer) and said I had never seen anything like it. Which was very true.
On my way home I was laughing so hard I almost wrecked my car.

You are a better man than I; it would have taken immense willpower to not ask to see her psicrystal.