j b 200's page

To move on:
I really like what I am seeing in the Alchemist write up. While you can't really make a decision without seeing the actual formulas available, it looks like a really fun class to play.

I agree that you aren't going to see a wide variety of builds, really just one of 3. But I'm ok with that. This is the CRB. Meaning that this is the vanilla version of this class. New feats from the next options book (I like this term better than "splat") should help alleviate this issue.

And I see we are getting into "realism is important when its an arguement against an idea I dislike" territory with the breaking.

+1 to this.

Some things are expected to be common sense, and the rules are written assuming you have a human body and know how they work.

I mean, there's still a class feature (i.e. ALL alchemists get it) that requires you to have grown two extra arms somehow (create 3 items with 1 hand free... i like to see how you're holding them)

I'm not sure where you are getting this? Why can't you hold all 3 in one hand? This feels like reading way too much into the rules that assume you have can apply common sense. If all PC classes have only two hands and the game allows you to create 3 items, the game assumes you can hold all three.

There's still class features that simply don't work unless you pick up specific high level feats (sure, create 2/3 items at once, but they spoil before you can use them, genious indeed)

Umm... Quick alchemy is one action, and you still have two actions to go that round. Quick alchemy, drink, throw. If you make 3, who says your companion can't take the third item from you before the beginning of your next turn?

The language for the Bulk is actually worse, since it adds a (l) bulk ON TOP of all the bulk your actual complete alchemical items costs, meaning we still require from alchemists hulk levels of strength just to carry around their daily spells.

Again, what makes you say this? Alchemists only have light armor, they don't carry shields. Many probably don't have more weapons than a dagger or short sword for emergencies. 10 L = 1 bulk, and the reagents are reused each day, it just means that you reserve 1L bulk for each day.

The majority of the feats read as stuff that other classes get for free baseline or just stuff that you HAVE to pick "just to make the class work" instead of being cool extra things you can do.

This is disingenuous at best. A multiclass Alchemist that takes ZERO alchemist feasts after level 1 is still a full functional alchemist with lots of free bombs and elixirs and mutagens. Feats give you more free items, or faster free items, or better bombs, or debuffing bombs etc. but how are they "things you have to pick"?

Darn, that will make it hard to do a Campion of Irori if they have a limited pool and slow recovery of them.

It's a "once per encounter" kind of thing. While you probably can't use it in every room of the dungeon, you can probably use it sever times in each adventuring day. Also each time you take a new FP ability it increases your FP pool by one, so while you only get one back every 10 minutes, you may have a pool of 3 or 4 per day.

(trying to keep it to one question per post)

If the Midnight Isles do still exist how would they change with the loss of Nocticula? I would expect the Porphyry city to be less hospitable to non-demons, since that was one of Nocticula's big things.

Will the midnight isles still exist after the ascension of Nocticula? My understanding is that Abyssal Realms are strongly affected by the specific demon lord that controls it.

my 1st order is just

core book
Bestiary and plaguestone.
hoping it ships soon
once i get my notification how long does it normally take to actually be shipped?

They do all the authentications (haven't finished gencon pickup batch) and THEN start doing the non-subscriptions authentications and THEN they start shipping.

Before the end of the year, there will be a lorefinder video just about the jump from PF1 to PF2. Likely September!

You should post on the boards when theses go up (assuming you don't already).

My understanding is that there is a short section in the CRB with setting info, that might be enough to give them the broad strokes.

Is it just me, or does the image at the top use the old iconic art and not the new stuff?

. Maybe cleric domains are a better model for patrons than wizard schools since I feel each patron should probably grant a few spells not from the normal occult list as well as a basic hex with other more powerful hexes being optional.

I agree. Easy class feat to put together. "Gain greater patron spell from your patron"

Really Hexes are now just Unique cantrips: Use all day, scales with level, doesn't use spell slot. I could see some as a focus power like Flight or some of the other 1/day, or only X/day.

Its the difference between:
- You fail the check and the adventure is over and
- You fail the check, continue to step 2 but now X more difficult

The lock picking is a good example. Another one that comes to mind is "You have to defend the keep/castle/town/etc from overwhelming force." Since the PCs can't win every fight, you abstract it to "defense points" or "preparation bonus." Failure to collect enough "McGuffin fluffs" means that you "fail" to defend the location, but instead of just ending the adventure there you continue to the next phase (usually go kill the BBEG), just with less resources or more mooks in the fight, or the BBEG has better spells prepared etc.

There is a consequence for failure without being a TPK (not that those are always bad). It's the same idea as a GM fudging the TPK into, "you all wake up in the dungeon with out any of your gear." You failed, spectacularly, but is allows you to still finish the story.

Do you not remember how every single rogue talent was used to get a feat instead since they were all complete garbage compared to keeping up in combat? Have you not seen how every single feat for a Witch is used to get a Hex since they are just so much stronger than any feat you could take before quicken spell? This is why they have siloing. This is to get you to actually take a skill feat. It also helps to avoid the unintended consequences of feat design.

By saying this feat is only for fighters, you avoid powergaming corner cases and eliminates the need to have encyclopedic knowledge on the part of the designer, not to mention the player. I don't have to load up prerequisites on a feat to keep the full BAB classes from getting it too early, while also not gating it away from anyone who doesn't have 6 extra feats to burn just to get to it.

To be an effective archer rogue, you had to be a human, take point-blank shot and precise shot, use your first talent to take stealthy sniper, and expert sniper at level 3. OR god forbid you don't want to be human, you have to wait til level 3 for precise shot and then use your level 4 rogue talent to take expert sniper.

But you're also still behind the curve, because the fighter with the same Dex has a +4 to hit and +3 to damage by level 5 (weapon focus, weapon training, weapon specialization) and is using a longbow instead of a short bow.

How do you maintain a separation between work and fun, particularly since your job is making a game? I will often get a spark of inspiration for a new adventure while reading a book or watching TV, or even just reading twitter, and will grab my phone to jot down the idea for later. But if you're in that mind-space all the time I can imaging it being hard to relax since you're always "working."

developers have commented on other threads that for most monster you just grab the one from P2 instead of P1. Like, if the P1 AP says you fight an Ogre, just grab the P2 Ogre instead and it should be fine. They tried to convert monster CR to monster level on a 1 for 1 basis, with very few exceptions.

The only thing to keep in mind is the DC for skill checks will need to be converted as DCs all sccale by level more directly in P2.

Lanathar wrote:

It could be seen as limiting though

No could about it. This change takes Longbows from the definitive ranged weapon of D&D going back decades to a niche campaign specific option. That's a huge degree of culture shock and very punishing to anyone who wants to wield a longbow in a traditional campaign.

Yes but the point was to eliminate the "this is the best weapon no matter what and everyone will take it unless they can't" weapon categories. The longbow is still good, just not the best martial ranged weapon in every circumstance. Again, nothing says you can't use a longbow, it just might not be the best ALL THE TIME.

Everyone used a longsword, and a heavy shield, and breastplate was the only used heavy armor, and when was the last time anyone wore half-plate, etc. Why is Paizo printing 500 weapons if everyone is just going to pick from a group of 4 or 5?

Isn't there a leg of The Tyrant's Grasp that goes to Geb or does

Oh, also, the reason feats are silo'ed isn't just to create an individual version of each feat for style's sake. Some feats would be worse on other classes, and some would be way better. For example, Double Slice would be worse on a barbarian who needs to move and rage their opening round, but would be way better for the Rogue than the fighter. The rogue already had to use smaller weapons for sneak attack, where the fighter gave up those d12 weapons or using a shield. So the rogue can either spend a single feat to gain something not as good, or two higher level feats to let them really pop off. Meanwhile, the barbarian player doesn't have to wade through combat feats that don't work well with Rage.

Or see this post from Mark explaining why Barbarians would want Certain Strike so bad..

This is a good point. By restricting a feat to a specific class, it frees up the designers from needing to know every possible corner case exception. They can just make fun toys instead of worrying how this fun thing can be exploited to break the game by a class the designer never even considered likely to take this feat.

What will you be doing during gencon?

If you want to say Rogue doesn't have as many "features" as they did before. I will go with level 5, because it's a good marker for where it starts to become a problem (remember feat taxes help the early levels in PF2):

PF1 UC Rogue 5 -

Features: Finesse Training, Sneak Attack, Trapfinding, Evasion, Rogue Talent X2, Danger Sense, Uncanny Dodge, Debilitating Injury, Rogue's Edge

Feats: Two Weapon Fighting, Combat Expertise, Two Weapon Feint

So let's take a look here. We have 10 Class Features and 3 Combat Feats. I chose the above, because I've actually played a similar character before. I have Feint prowess, good damage with two swings (+1 swing vs. others), and I have all my Rogue goodies as per usual, which I can swap out for whatever I want.

Now let's look at PF2 Rogue 5 -

Features: Finesse Striker, Sneak Attack, Deny Advantage (I am deliberately excluding "Surprise Attack" since PF1 Rogue's got this by default)

Class Feats: 2 Rogue Feats

So let's just draw comparisons where it makes sense:

Finesse Striker and Finesse Training are identical. Sneak Attack same story. Deny Advantage and Uncanny Dodge are about on par, but UD is actually a little stronger, however, given mechanics for combat have changed enough, let's just call it a wash.

Now, Rogue's get additional Rogue Skill Feats, and they get 2 extra. However, PF1 Rogue gets 2 Rogue Talents. These Talents are at least as good as the Skill Feats presented (and in some cases, vastly better, because they can provide actual Combat Feats, like Weapon Focus and Combat Trick). However, let's call this a wash too.

That means what we have left to...

The problem with your example is two fold 1) many of the lost features were just math fixes.

Another thing, COMPARING THE UNCHAINED ROGUE TO ANYTHING CORE IN P2 IS EXPLICITLY COMPARING APPLES TO ORANGES.
Unchained Rogue is STACKED with class features so that they can compete with the Fighter. They try to limit your build taxes (Int 13 for combat expertise) or straight up pay it for your (finesse training) and EVEN THEN you are going to select Combat Trick and Weapon Training rogue talents just so you can keep up.

In P1 you spent half your feats just so that you didn't fall behind regardless of your class or build, and you ended up pigeon holing yourself because if you're good at tactic A, you can't invest at all in tactic B. In P2, you can give away every class feat you have and still be a competent Cleric/Barbarian/Rogue whatever. It's a different game. Are you going to want more feats? ABSOLUTELY! That's because they're all so awesome. But that's not a problem. If I didn't want ALL THE FEATS, then why am I playing this game it sounds really boring.

Campaign traits were explicitly better than regular trait. Am expecting campaign backgrounds to also be more attractive.

Since most of the Backgrounds have free skilled in a specific Lore, just the fact that the Lore selection will be better suited to the campaign arch should make them more attractive.

I don't know that it is. The expected DC is about 10 + 1/2 PC level + 1-4, give or take. If you've been running Pathfinder 1 for any appreciable time, you should be able to eyeball a DC for a level appropriate encounter.

That about sums it up. Also, conversion support will be, um, I dunno, good luck? Likely to be much more difficult than the 3.5 to Pathfinder RPG transition.

Since it's the same company many of the monsters will be the same. You should just need to adjust the CRs and use the P1 vs. P2 stat block.

Despite being Bi, Trans, and polyamorous I can't say I've ever really cared about inclusivity or found it important in media. However it seems like it does make some people happy so I guess that's nice. I'll continue not to care so long as it doesn't affect product quality or end up barring some content for some reason.

Yes, but consider it from the other direction where depictions of LGBTQ+ persons and relationships (and god forbid actually acknowledging LGBT SEX!) were not only not represented but explicitly BANNED and any product that even hinted at this type of content was immediately barred from production or forced a rewrite or relegated to an adult's only category with explicit content warnings! That's assuming that they were stocked at all.

There was a time very recently that a literal angry mob would form if you even hinted that a character was anything but straight in any media.

Inclusivity is important, not for tokenism, but because to do so otherwise is to erase or diminish the identities of LGBTQ+ persons and somehow imply that they are shameful or deviant or offensive. There are parts of this country (USA) where that is still the case. Even for people who do not identify as LGBTQ+, acknowledging that they exist and are just people goes a huge way to show those who are not (knowingly)exposed to LGBTQ+ people that those people are just like anyone else and helps to eliminate the stigma of identifying as such.

the problem for kineticist was that it was a really bug strain on the existing framework of P1. It more than any other class REALLY stretched the limits of what the system could handle.

For P2, I would expect this to be much easier. Cantrips in P2 are already what the "blasts" were for P1. An auto scaling at-will spell ability. For wild talents, just have a class feat that adds an action the blast add a new shape for feature or whatever. Also replace Burn with Focus Power. Finally for the utility talents, those can be class feats too.

Without the need for burn, you would shift this away from a Con class to probably a Cha one, as a ranged spellcaster you don't really need all the extra HP, since you're not casting from it.

Heck, we still dip into Dungeon periodically when things fit our storyline. Not having a library of adventures isn't appealing.

There's always a plethora of PFS content if you're really hard up for content.

I will sometimes take a scenario or even an encounter from an older AP and maybe reskin it for a current campaign.

THANKS Diego!

I would imagine Plaguestone to sell like gangbusters, if only b/c it is an introductory adventure to P2. I'm buying it as a way to ease both myself as GM and my players into P2 without shelling out for an AP that may not make it to book 2 (if say the table decides to stick with P1).

It's also something you would only do at 1st level, since there are lots of free stat boosts at you level up. Adding in the fact that you can go from 16 to 18, but only 18 to 19, it really only benefits you at low level.

I'm pretty sure that any thing that gives you a new focus spell also increases your focus pool by 1. I would also expect there to be a general feat that increases your focus pool by 1. That being said, having a large focus pool is not necessarily good, since it still takes you 10 minutes to regain 1 FP, regardless of how many points you have. Just means you spend 10 minutes after the NEXT encounter to gain a point instead of this one.

If I subscribe to rulebook subscription, will I get both CRB and Bestiary? I assume so, but it wasn't showing in the cart.

Also, my order was cancelled after I selected "Pick Up at Gen Con." I also assume that is normal? having never done gen con pick up I don't want to screw it up.

A Dragon in the Darklands, makes me think Shadow or Umbral Dragon, could be wrong though.

I wouldn't expect to see either of those in this AP, or the next one. I would think that they would skew very hard toward monsters already in the P2 Bestiary, since they were literally writing both at the same time.

Darkwynters wrote:

Spoiler 83 has explorer’s clothing:

Explorer’s Clothing: Adventurers who don’t wear armor travel in durable clothing. Though it’s not armor and uses your unarmored defense proficiency, it still has a Dex Cap and can grant an item bonus to AC if etched with potency runes.

"I'm too agile for my clothes!"

There's a reason gymnasts wear leotards and not blue jeans.

In my experience, the vast majority of players really just play themselves over and over again, regardless of the actual stats on the character sheet. So if the guy is a pain, he'll be a pain whether he has a 6 Cha or a 10.

On topic, I really like the option. As someone who has had a ton of fun playing a Halfling Barbarian and other off type race/class combos, I appreciate that it opens up more room for creative and off the wall combinations and RP opportunities. I also like that is has a cost, since there may be ancestry options that work well from a optimization stand point but are off type otherwise. This helps to mollify min/maxing.

An example would be a small druid or other pet class getting access to mounted combat options AND having an 18 starting Str. This is now doable in P2, but that means you have to pay for it with a lower stat elsewhere.

As far as character creation is concerned, This system won't likely be used by fairly new players. Additionally, since the whole system is designed to avoid the new vs. veteran system master gap, I would expect the a new player would do just fine with ONLY a 16 in their main stat. In P2 we are much less likely to see two melee PCs with a +4 difference in their to hit at the same level as you did in P1.

Kovlar is a small dwarven city in Five Kings Mountains built in the tunnels and caverns at the southern outskirts of the fallen great city of Saggorak.

At least according the PathfinderWiki.

From a GM perspective it's really easy to fix since the idea of a "expert" or "master" weapon is just flavor text anyways.

"In the treasure horde you find a sword of unsurpassed quality. The edge of the blade is honed to a razor thin line while the pommel and brace are perfectly balanced. It feels as if the grip was molded specifically for your hand. It moves like an extension of your arm and flows as water. Clearly a work of art that had to be crafted by a truely legendary swordsmith, whose skill was unsurpassed and whose like is not seen but once in a generation."

"treat this as a +3 longsword"

j b 200 wrote:

Also the goblinblood wars were ended 18 years ago in setting. The vast majority of the living goblins weren't even born when the war ended and a majority of the humans were either not born or small children.

Umm, average lifespan of humans in setting isn't 40 years <_<

Yes, but the middle years have been hollowed out due to, you know, war. And as is common in real human settlements, you would expect there to be a baby boom after the war ended, so after 18 years you would expect families of 4 to 6 children to be somewhat common and that is ignoring the idea that in a medieval setting you would expect a fairly high birth rate even without a post-war baby boom.

I am really interested in the Living Monolith!

Although stating it a bit differently, I agree with zimmerwald that this area could use some fleshing out. Although I believe that there are 4 Tales novels set in the golden road? Death's Heretic, two of the Pirate ones and the one with the alchemist, the name escapes me at the moment.

I place my order a week ago and it's still only pending. Is there any eta on it shipping?

Also the goblinblood wars were ended 18 years ago in setting. The vast majority of the living goblins weren't even born when the war ended and a majority of the humans were either not born or small children.

I would also note that more spells in P2 tend to have an effect even on a successful save, so having particularly high saves works as a type of SR b/c it allows for a critical success, meaning the spell was fully resisted and has no effect.

Drain is much more common at high levels, you know where character math become exceedingly complex and the game mechanics break down. i.e. it comes on line just in time to be even more confusing.

Again, in P1, you have Strength drain, so you have to look up what strength drain does and how it effects your PC, also it may stack with other conditions. Or maybe not.

In P2 you have encumbered 1. You go to the glossary and it says encumbered does X, so you apply the penalty to X equal to your encumbered value (in this example 1).

Another thing that P2 does is that it eliminated the "different names for the same effect at different levels of severity" issue. There is no longer frightened shaken and Panicked, the frightened. now I only have to look up one rule instead of 3.

Also it allows for scaling bonuses/penalties. Take sickened. It does -2 at level 1 and level 20. While -2 at level 1 can be debilitating, at level 20 it may not be noticeable. In P2 we have one condition that scales up, so a weak spell gives encumbered 1, and a strong spell gives encumbered 3, and a devastating spell give encumbered 5.

It ALSO allows for a minor effect on a successful save vs. all or nothing. In P1 it's either -2 to attacks/skills/saves or nothing. P2 has encumbered 2 on a failed save, encumbered 1 on success and encumbered 3 on a crit fail and no penalty on crit success.

Every example I give uses just one rule: encumbered, as opposed to half a dozen different rules that may or may not interact with each other and are set in stone no matter what level of ability we are talking about.

I think he assumes that Aroden would have left anti Tar-Babhon traps in the Cathedral so he just wants to blow the Cathedral up :p

The idea that Aroden explicitly designed the test to exclude TB isn't something I considered, but I really like the idea.

I agree that TB probably sees the test as beneath him. "I'm not taking some 'test' to prove my worth. Literally surviving being smote by a GOD is test enough. I am TAR-BAPHON AND I TAKE WHAT I WANT!! MWAHAHAHAHAHA." (villain monologue)

Heya, just caught this thread and it looks like our system hiccupped along the way: the pricing for the Core Rulebook and Bestiary PDFs is actually $14.99.

Chris, how can you stomp all over this love fest like that?!

The real reason that APs stop at level 17 +/- is not because people don't play high levels, or even that the game falls apart and turns into rocket tag. It's because stat blocks for high level monsters and NPCs took up so much room that they literally couldn't fit all the encounters in the book. Even without a big write up for a character, the stat block for a CR 15+ monster takes up a full column and a half. God for bid it's a spell caster, cause then you're filling two full columns, and that is before we need room for say the room description, tactics and maybe some artwork.

Part of the reason NPCs don't use PC rules is to cut down on the giant stat block, of which you actually need like 5 lines to run in an encounter. This saves word count, thus allowing the AP to be more adventure and less bestiary.

I wonder if Master proficiency might be a Bomber path feat? That would make sense to me at least, making the guy who specializes in Bombs better than any other guy who focuses their alchemy on other things.

j b 200 wrote:

I realize that many people are concerned that everyone will multiclass, but I'm not sure. Is a handful of fighter feats worth being a less effective cleric? Is ONE 8th level spell per day worth giving up some really powerful late level Barbarian abilities?

I really don't know.

And even with the new action system, you still have only so much you can do in a round. For example the barbarian with spells, you might be able to do a simple attack and cast a spell, but that spell will prevent you from doing your more powerful 2 action attacks that come from your barbarian feats. Also, you might still be more effective just attacking twice with your weapon. The spells do give a nice bit of versatility, but it's not quite a no-brainer that you'll always want to use them instead of focusing on what you're good at. We'll have to see how the feats stack up in the final version, but I think there are likely to be pros and cons of both single and multi-classing. Which is as it should be.

I do like how multiclassing doesn't tank your base competence though. No more losing bab for multiclassing out of a martial or losing spells for multiclassing out of a caster. One player I play with regularly loves playing clerics, and he's mentioned that for the most part, it's a bad idea to multiclass a cleric because even the prestige classes and such that give you spell levels, usually don't improve your channel. And channel is one of the best tools a cleric has. With this style of multiclassing, you don't have to give that up, which makes it more of an option to get some other options for your cleric to be unique. Archetypes have some potential to recreate some of the interesting ideas from prestige classes, but not require so much sacrifice to get (or being quite so unbalancing as many 3.5 ones were).

I agree 100%. In P1 there was a lot of pressure to stuck with one class b/c you really wanted your class ability to advance. I would expect that to be the same in P2. I don't expect multiclassing to pop up in a lot of optimization builds, instead it's going to be something like was mentioned above, I "dip" to get a specific ability like AoO or something like that. I see MCing as a way to get to a specific character concept despite not being optimized not because of it.

I realize that many people are concerned that everyone will multiclass, but I'm not sure. Is a handful of fighter feats worth being a less effective cleric? Is ONE 8th level spell per day worth giving up some really powerful late level Barbarian abilities?

I really don't know.

The Djinn has that as a special limitation:

Quote:

1/day—grant up to 3 wishes (to non-genies only)

(Though I don't see any evidence that making such a wish corrupts your soul.)

Other beings do not have the same restriction.

Of the two Genies with Wish, one is LE (Efreeti) and the other is CN (Marid), not necessarily alignments you want casting ultra-powerful spells that literally warp the fabric of existence. The Genie "nobles" that also get wish require you to "capture" them first. I would be reticent to ask for wishes from a ultra-powerful creature, that is noble member of it's race, that I have captured and enslaved for my benefit.

The Spirit of Abadon is a Demigod. Pazuzu also has wish 1/day. A demigod casting wish is not game breaking as it is literally divine intervention.

The only other monsters that come to mind that has wish sla is a Glabrezu and a Pit Fiend (once per month and year respectively). I don't think I need to go into the pitfalls of making a wish on a demon or devil?

On another note, one good change to conditions - relative to PF1 - is that there are no longer any conditions that require recalculating your player sheet. I.e. nothing reduces stats that cause other things to need to be recalculated (such as reducing say your dexterity or your level).

THIS! This is a huge help in play, but a HUGE help for a GM that might be running 8 monsters simultaneously.