Search Posts
I've written a guide to the Remastered Swashbuckler. I hope it will be useful for somebody. :) A Guide to the Pathfinder Second Edition Swashbuckler (Remastered) by Magnus
This is a thread for collecting suggestions for needed rules errata to be addressed in the spring errata cycle for 2025. Please do not start long discussions here, just post your desired errata issue(s) in a well ordered manner and go make a separate thread if you want to clarify or dispute anybody else's errata suggestion. If the thread becomes clogged down in long discussions, it will make it more unlikely that the developers will read all of it to get your suggestion. Please also be polite and concise. Since the fall errata 2024 was focused on older books and Player Core 2 did not get as much attention as I would have liked and the "Fall Errata 2024 Questions" thread is a.) not titled right for the developers to notice and b.) already mired in pages long discussions about some rule or another, I thought to make a new thread which hopefully will catch the developers attention and make them adress the rules issues players have. Here goes, to start things off, my personal one thing I really, really want to be clarified. Class: Champion
However a soft reading of the text suggests it is supposed to last longer, i.e. "for 1 round", which a lot of people would read until the start of the triggering creatures next turn, especially since other causes reactions are much more generous with their duration than the RAW reading of the Grandeur reaction. Therefore, the worth of the Grandeurs Champion's reaction depends a lot on ones gamemaster and since that gamemaster can change a lot in PFS, it may make this cause very inconsistent to use there. Please clarify the duration of Flash of Grandeur, to make the reaction's duration consistent for everyone.
The Acrobat archetype has the wonderful Tumbling Strike action compression feat at level 8. However, I ask myself if by RAW you can use the Strike you get out of Tumbling Strike for a finisher, given that they normally are considered their own action (like Confident Finisher). On the other hand, Confident Finisher, as the example mentioned, says "Make a Strike", so it is possible that you indeed can use your Strike you get from Tumbling Strike for a Confident Finisher. I'm still new to the exact use of these rules, so I hope for some clarification here.
So, I got this idea in my head for a Barbarian who, after getting hasted, leaps into a group of enemies and then uses Whirlwind Attack. You can reduce your action economy for jumping to a single action with Quick Jump and there are a lot of supporting skill feats and Barbarian class feats to allow for some pretty amazing distances you can jump around. However, as per RAW, you can only Stride (or Strike) with your extra Haste action. I cannot find any clarification if jumping (i.e. the Long Jump or High Jump actions) would be considered Striding or if they are completely separate from Striding and thereare are not legal for use with the extra Haste action. By logic it would make sense that you can jump as part of your normal movement, but logic and rules are often separate things. Any ideas on this?
So, I gotta ask, is Trunau and their hopeknifes still a thing in Belkzen? Because if that lore hasn't been quietly shuffled beneath the carpet, that stands in pretty stark contrast to these more honorable Warcraft-y orcs we have been presented with lately.
Since a few of the other classes have gotten their remastered wishlist thread already, I thought to add one for the Champion. All in all, I find the Champion to be a solid class, but the one thing which bothered me so far is that the Champion's Reaction doesn't upgrade its range from 15 feet, outside of a class feat at level 16, which also imposes an action tax per round, which is, uh <check's notes>, not good. Meanwhile opponents tend to get bigger and bigger at high levels, with increased reach, which makes the standard 15 feet range of the Champion's Reaction feel less and less useful. So, my one wish for the Champion in his remastered form is that they get automatic range increases to their Champion's Reaction without a feat tax (or at least get a class feat much earlier and make it a stance, instead of a once-per-round thing), so that they can reliably use their Champion's Reaction even at high levels against rune giants and the like.
Well, the embargo is over (as Aaron already pointed a few days ago), since it's October 30th and the books have started shipping. So, I thought I'd create a compilation thread where links to all the previews from Youtubers can be collated. Beginning today is Ronald the Rules Lawyer, with his "The 10 MOST IMPORTANT CHANGES in the Pathfinder 2e Remaster!" video, which can be found here. Wisdom Check shows of the Remaster changes to the Witch in his "Remaster is HERE! Player Core Witch Changes" video, found here. And not yet up, but going live in about two hours at this point in time, Roll for Combat does their first look in "Pathfinder Remaster First Look with Pathfinder 2e Co-Author Mark Seifter", found here. I will update this thread with more links as they come in over the two following weeks.
So, with the War of Immortals playtest making it pretty clear now that multiple gods will die and rampant speculation already underway who it is going to be, I thought it might be fun to make my personal tier list, of the best and worst gods of the setting (and those in-between). And of course everyone else can post their preferences as well. :) I'm of course including all the big 20 in this list as well as some personal favorites of mine from the minor gods as well as one of the mayor gods of Tian Xia. : These are the best gods the setting has to offer, in terms of flavor and personal preference. Saranrae: My absolute favorite deity of Golarion above them all, her themes of redemption and swift justice, together with her dedication to good and honesty, just make her really compelling to me. Cayden Cailean: The self-made god of freedom and bravery is basically a top tier choice for adventurers and it's always fun to play as an adherent of his credo, with his penchant for alcohol in moderation and parties in general. Nocticula: The demon lord who rose above her own nature and became a prime example of how free will can also lead to a better road down the line. Since I am big on redemption in stories, of course I feel quite drawn to her. : These are gods who are thematically well placed in the setting and have interesting and/or fun themes, but do not quite make the cut to be ones favorite. Asmodeus: He's a real go-getter, having subdued an entire nation with the help of mortals, generally having his finger in a lot of pots and also having competent underlings overall. He's not as interesting as, say, Mephistopheles, but definitely someone who has an important role in the setting and who's presence is felt in the lore at most times. Desna: The other god of adventurers, she is an inspiring figure, who gets set a bit back by her seeming aloofness, due to her alien origins. When reading about worshippers of her in the setting, to me at least there always was a bit of a disconnect when determining what they found so great about her. Pharasma: Probably the most influential god in the setting, due to her governing life and death itself and being the judge of souls at the end of their journey. Also, psychopomps are really cool. Still, the severeness her followers normally exhibit in interactions with others makes me personally also feel a bit cold towards her. However, she's the only "true" neutral god in the setting which actually seems to have a personality of sorts. Urgathoa: While I personally find her abhorrent, it's undeniable that her focus on gluttony and hedonistic behaviour, aside from her being the goddess of undeath, makes her stand out from other evil deities of undeath I've seen in other settings. Also, her worshippers can be pretty dang stylish, if evil. Zon-Kuthon: Well, talking about stylish, the spiky torture edgelords who follow Zon-Kuthon certainly stand out and their very presence has a big influence of how the entire setting is perceived. That they often turn up in adventure paths as minor or mayor antagonists (or even unexpected allies in some cases) makes his presence felt like few other deities of the setting. Besmara: I like pirates in media and dang, she's the most stylish one a person could wish for. Her beautiful red-headed priestesses from some AP's also make me like her a lot, what can I say? Shizuru: I also like samurai, so a goddess of samurai, honor and the sun is bound to be a favorite of mine. IF Paizo makes the mistake of killing Saranrae, I do hope she can step in and take over for her. : These are deities who fill important roles in the setting, but have something missing, be it flawed personalities or just unteresting/off-putting aspects to them, so that they miss getting into the top spots. Abadar: Another very important god to the setting, the one who is responsible for fair prices, economic stability and the growth of civilization. However, given his view of "law over decency", at times his worshippers come off as impediments to overcome rather than persons, as can be seen for example at times in Curse of the Crimson Throne. Iomedae: Ah, yes, the goddess of honor and warfare and smiting your behind with 20d6 points of damage if you dare to get sassy. I fear Wrath of the Righteous has colored my view of her somewhat negatively, what can I say? Milani: Given the prevalence of tyrannies on Golarion, one would think that she would have a bigger place in the cosmology, but Milani is relegated to minor god status, due to what I think is Cayden just being better at what she does and more popular and fun to be a worshipper of as well. : These are deities which have some cool elements, but which are held back by either being pretty boring or just problematic elements. Calistria: Goddess of Lust and Vengeance. For me those two aspects just don't gel together very much. And to be honest, the bee motive also doesn't do it for me at all. That she is the main goddess of elves also doesn't work for me, given that I view elves on Golarion as neither particularly lustful nor vengeful. Irori: The concept of Irori as someone who pushes his believers towards a path of self-perfection is generally good, but in practice results in a lot of NPC's who come off as boring try-hards. Irori lacks, to me, a fun component which makes playing as one of his worshippers just thematically more interesting and fun. Norgorber: Three aspects of Norgorger are interesting, i.e. espionage, thievery and assassination. The fourth aspect, killer clowns with giant razors, i.e. murder, is what ruins him in my personal opinion. Also the name Norgorber, which for me always makes me want to name him Norgorby, in honor of the great Mikhail Gorbachevs nickname Gorby. Lamashtu: The example of how you don't rise above your own nature when ascending to godhood. However, the pretty gross focus on monstrous births makes her at least somewhat interesting as a provider of antagonists to player characters. : These are deities which are mostly just boring or have serious flaws which put them below other deities in terms of being interesting or just likeable. Shelyn: Shelyn kinda lacks personality traits which make her interesting and, to be perfectly honest, her worshippers who have turned up in the AP's I've played have also been boring the hell out of me. She needs a bit of an edge to go beyond just a nice person who wants beautiful things and has a drunk mean brother she wants to fix. Rovagug: Making his followers just unreasonable CE murder-hobos, who you can kill without feeling bad and him having zero personality traits beyond "kill! destroy!" makes Rovagug pretty boring. You can barely make an adventure around Rovagug cultists, because they are so self-destructive that they just fill the role of trash mobs to rush the party. Torag: I gotta say, Torag is way too much of a "generic dwarven deity", after already having spent time with Moradin in the Forgotten Realms. I certainly have not seen a single interesting aspect of the guy and his tendencies towards murking the "enemy of his people" as a LG deity is kinda problematic for me as well. Gorum: Another case where the lack of personality aside from "I don't want peace! I want problems, always!" is kinda killing my interest in him. He just comes off as way too neutral in things for me, so that lack of personality is just off-putting. Erastil: Aside from the de-canonized woman-hating bits about him, Old Deadeye still comes off as too much of a stodgy bore to me, personally. He needs to get a bit more proactive to make him interesting in my eyes. : Yeah, I'm skipping directly to F, since the last two deities just don't work for me at all. And of course it's those filty Neutrals, Kif. With enemies you know where they stand but with Neutrals, who knows? It sickens me. :p Gozreh: Gozreh is just... boring. And I get it, neutral god of nature, because nature is neutral. But, sorry, other settings have produced at least interesting gods of nature, like Mielikki. I think there's no greater sin for a god in a fictional setting than being plain boring. Nethys: And again, Nethys is boring. Yeah, he has a dualistic nature and his worshippers dress funny, but magic is a really important part of a fantasy setting, which to me means that we should get a god of magic who at least has interesting principles. This "cycle of creation and destruction" thing just feels impersonal and off-putting. I would prefer it much more if he got his shit together and started doing more stuff hands-on. So, those are my opinions. What are your favorite gods? Who do you wish should be more prominent? I certainly would love for Nocticula to get a big 20 spot.
So, mono-element Kineticists can get composite impulses via the Elemental Overlap class feat at level 8, which has the prerequisite of "exactly one kinetic element". Technically, you can fork the fork the path at level 9... what happens then? You suddenly have two elements, yet you already "purchased" the feat and composite impulse one level earlier. Does your feat/impulse stop working? Or does "I got this earlier" trump the prerequisite of the feat?
Big fan of The Legend of Korra and Avatar: The Last Airbender here (in that order, too. Sue me. ^^) and I always wanted to build the Avatar in Pathfinder. With the Kineticist in 2E this now seems to be at least doable by mid-game, if one sticks to the four "traditional" elements of air, water, fire and earth and takes Dual Gate at the start. You'll have a all four necessary elements by level 9. But how viable is this compared to a single element Kineticist? Anyone already has done some calculations? I'd love to hear your opinions.
Well, I'm not playing Pathfinder 2E yet, but I'm definitely moving myself (and my players) in that direction, getting all the new books, etc. One thing which stuck in my craw back in the playtest was the lack of a group escape spell, since Dimension Door was nerfed to be just a personal spell. Back when I got to be a player in a Way of the Wicked campaign, playing a Sorcerer, I saved the party in two sticky situations by recognizing that the party had to bail out, calling together the other player characters so that they moved to my character and then using a Dimension Door to escape. That option doesn't seem to exist anymore in 2E, unless some new spell I don't know about yet has been introduced in the meantime. Now, I know that the tactical depth of Dimension Door also makes it an excellent offensive spell for getting the melee characters to an otherwise difficult to reach boss. So did the inaptly named level 5 bard spell Bard's Escape from 1E, which turned out be a veritable end boss killer. Hence a new spell of that kind would have be tuned to be only for escape, i.e. you can't use it tactically to re-position in a fight under practical circumstances. The level 6 bard spell Getaway from 1E would actually be a perfect way to achieve this in 2E. So, that is basically my one petition, as an aspiring 2E player, to the developers for the Remaster (aside from un-nerfing Prestidigitation, ahum ^^). Re-introduce Getaway into Player Core 1 or Player Core 2, make it available to more casting traditions and thus allow player characters a way to get away from a TPK with Getaway. Yay.
I'll be finishing my Hell's Rebels campaign somewhere around the start to middle of March and the new GM (for the next campaign, Strange Aeons, at least) has already announced that he wants to begin at the start of May, so I'm looking for a short 2E adventure running for something like 4 to 6 3 hour sessions to tide us over and get a hang of how the new edition plays. Buying something like the The Fall of Plaguestone seems to run too long, since the reviews say that the whole adventure would take 12 to 15 3-4 hour sessions to complete. I also thought about running the Doomsday Dawn scenarios from the playtest, but as far as reviews of them go, it seems the quality was a bit lacking overall, not to mention that they were written with the playtest rules in mind. Anybody got good advice what materials there are to run something short in the timespan I described above (4 - 6 sessions, each 3 hour long) and get it to completion? I was thinking about choosing a Pathfinder Society scenario, but I have no experience how long they run or of their quality.
For everybody who thought "Well, the Gray Maidens should obviously be cavaliers, duh!", here's a conversion of the level 3 Gray Maidens from Seven Days to the Grave. It uses the Sister-in-Arms archetype, which is tailor-made for Gray Maidens. GRAY MAIDEN FOOT SOLDIER CR 2
I will be doing higher level versions for the later modules, but that will probably be months away, since we play only every second week and I am giving each character unique storylines to resolve in each module (except Skeletons of Scarwall, because it is so removed from the rest of the story).
So, I'm starting to prep Hell's Rebels now. And, while working with a character background, I noticed that Hetamon Haace has a starting similarity in appearance to a certain Cardassian who lives on a space station in the boonies and also has a tailor shop... and also is more than what he seems. Makes you think if that was the writers intent or just a coincidence. :) In any case, now I got a personality for that NPC which I'll love to play. :D
So, I'm two thirds through Shattered Star and well into prepping Hell's Rebels as the next campaign I'll be running (finally!) and, going another time through the Player's Guide, I find once again that the portrayal of the current status of the Silver Ravens is very uneven, to say the least. The Silver Ravens, at the same time, are: - Legends from the past, about whom very little is really known because of the Thrune redactions to Kintargo's history (Historian of the Rebellion trait) - A currently leaderless, but very much currently existing rebellious organization, because most of the leadership has been taken out or been disappeared in the Night of Ashes (Reasons to protest: Meeting a contact). - Popular enough that at least one member of them (Jackdaw) can serve as the focus of fandom obsession for a player character, where said PC expects her return RIGHT NOW, despite her not having been seen for a 100 years (Star Struck trait, with focus on Jackdaw + Reasons to protest: Looking for your idol). I don't know, this makes it quite difficult to get a handle on how to convey to my players what they know or don't know about the Silver Ravens at the start of the campaign and how they should build their characters. Has anybody found a way for a coherent portrayal what the current status of the Silver Ravens is, in terms of their actual current existence and the popular knowledge of them? Also, as an side, many thanks to whomever had the bright idea to put Assassin and Red Mantis Assassin first in the list of campaign-appropiate prestige classes in the PG, while they are about the farthest away from campaign-appropiate I can think of. I had a hell of a time explaining to my players that non-good characters really are not a very good fit for this campaign after they saw that.
So, I got a little situation in my group, where one of my two number crunchers (the one who doesn't understand the concept of "don't overdo it") has built himself a neat little concept, where he ends up with a +14 enhancement bonus on his shield slam. It goes like this: Get a +5 Defiant (something) shield and a +5 Defending Bane (something) weapon. As per the feat Shield Master, your enhancement bonus to AC adds "to attack and damage rolls made with the shield as if it were a weapon enhancement bonus". Now you transfer as a free action through the Defending quality the enhancement bonus of the weapon (including the Bane bonus) "to your AC as a bonus that stacks with all others". The wording would suggest that this is possible. The only thing I could think of is saying that the transferred enhancement bonus now is an untyped bonus and therefore would not work with Shield Master. Any thoughts?
Is there any chance that Paizo will release a high-resolution image of the assembled Runelords (like the one we had in the trailer for Return of the Runelords which exists on Youtube, with Mhar Massive as the backdrop), or maybe even a large poster to pin on my wall at home? Honestly, with all the high-quality fantasy artwork Paizo has produced over the years, I'm shocked that they haven't commercialized it more. Publishing 18x24 or 24x18 posters would probably do quite well, financially. I'm sure there are a good number of people who'd love to decorate their homes with some of the best artwork Paizo has published over the years.
As some people who have read the forums are probably aware, I have been mostly negative about the playtest so far. This has largely come my initial shock at reading the playtest document, where I found about all spells of my favorite class in PF1E, the Sorcerer, to be nerfed. I’ve been advocating since then to lessen or remove those nerfs. There are other issues I heavily disagree with, like the level bonus and the need to have a Cleric in the party to have a decently long adventuring day. But the issues with arcane casters and spells in general have been what have made the playtest a depressing experience for me so far. But uninformed advocacy is not really helpful to a conversation and hence I’ve taken the time to first do a statistical analysis of what expected monster statistics are for each level, as well as expected spell DC’s for arcane casters and AC/TAC and attack bonuses for four of the common martial classes you can expect to be frontline fighters. This has given me some deeper understanding about which success chances the developers are desiring for players spells and melee attacks, as well how well frontline classes can stand up to being attacked in melee by opponents. I have mostly focused on same level threats, since those are the ones which should be best balanced to face player characters. However, before I begin with my analysis, a bit about myself: I have been playing D&D/Pathfinder since 1998, where I began with AD&D and then changed to D&D 3rd Edition in 2000. I’ve been playing that game ever since, through 3.5 and PF1E. My core group of gamers I play with has stayed mostly stable, with a group of 4-6 players since 1998 and another group of 4 players since about 2007. I have been GM’ing for the first group since 2002, run three home-brewn campaigns to level 20, and a good number of AP’s to their conclusion, those being Curse of the Crimson Throne, Rise of the Runelords, Carrion Crown, Jade Regent (twice, once for each group), Wrath of the Righteous and Reign of Winter. I am currently running Shattered Star. I also have played or even GM’ed other RPG systems like Star Wars: Saga Edition, Shadowrun 4th Edition, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Vampire: The Masquerade and a smattering of play sessions in other stuff. I think I can say, without being a braggart about it, that I am an experienced GM. Back to the topic: My analysis of average saving throws, spell DC’s, attack rolls and armor class values has yielded one clear conclusion: You are expected to, on average, succeed and fail 50% of the time with your spells or attacks against a same level opponent. There are of some variations on that, for example that the Fortitude saves monsters produce have generally more of a 60% fail chance for your caster. But since spell DC’s are only dependent on having a maxed out main casting stat at all times, your level and getting your one stat boosting item at level 14, the chance to succeed against same level threats is a very stable affair.
What that means is that it isn’t possible anymore to optimize a character to beat certain saves, which was the bread and butter of spellcaster offense in PF1E. The ability to do so made builds like blasting, save or suck or action denial useful in the first place. With the new paradigm, succeeding with a spell at beating a saving throw of a same-level threat is basically a 50/50 coin toss, sometimes even less than that. This means that since optimization is not possible anymore, the best outcome is either the enemy failing the save or that there is a good effect on your spell even if the opponent does make its save. Since the number of spells per day has been nerfed, you have to make your actions count more than you did before. Having a spell do nothing in combat means you not only wasted your action but also that you shortened the adventuring day of the entire party so much more. Attack bonuses and armor class values skew the same way, with Fighters having a better chance to hit same-level threats than Barbarians, Monks and Paladins (about 60-65% for their primary attack, compared to 10% less for the other three classes) and Paladins having the best armor values, with “only” a 55% chance to get hit with a same-level threats primary melee attack at most levels. This is however very dependent on them having maxed out their primary stat, getting their weapon and armor runes at the appropriate levels and getting their one stat booster at level 14. So, where does that leave arcane spellcasters? The arcane spell list, as presented in the playtest rulebook, heavily skews towards five aspects: Utility, blasting, buffing party members, debuffing opponents and battlefield control. So, how do they stack up? Let’s examine each one individually: Utility: These spells count towards providing services to the party like fast travel, flying, opening things, communication, magic reconnaissance, even cleaning stuff and making life easier. This area has been hit with the double whammy of almost all of these spells being nerfed in their functionality and about half of them having been put on the Uncommon list. At least, if your GM is nice enough to allow you getting those uncommon spells like Teleport or Magnificent Mansion, you provide something which no other class can do. Otherwise the occult, primal and divine spell lists each share quite a lot with the arcane list now. Still probably the strongest aspect of the arcane casters, but being the butler for the rest of the party is not exactly the heroic fantasy I have for playing a Wizard or Sorcerer.
Blasting: Oh, so much nerfed. Never the strongest options in PF1E, this is now even worse. Having to fill higher level spell slots to cast a half-decent nuke at your level is painful and, given the static 50/50 chance to actually deal full damage, is not really worth it. The exception are low threat encounters where you can clear rooms quickly, but you might as well let the martials do that stuff and contribute a few cantrips. Damaging cantrips are the only half-way decent aspect of blasting, since they don’t cost you spell slots which let you do actually useful things instead.
Buffing: There are a few worthwhile things left to put on yourself, like Mage Armor, False Life and Mirror Image. Yet the majority of self-buffs have been limited to a one minute duration. You are probably best off putting the few long-duration ones up and only cast Mirror Image or Fly at the start of combat on yourself, as the situation dictates. As for buff options for other party members, Haste, Blur or Invisibility (fourth level version) are among the few worthwhile ones which remain. You will only have time to put up one of those each combat, since the duration has pretty uniformly been reduced to one minute. They are single target only, too, at least until really high levels where Haste gets back its normal number of targets at thirteenth level.
Debuffing: The 50/50 chance to succeed means one thing: Only take debuffs which somewhat hinder the target even on a successful saving throw. The best option for that is Blindness, which leaves the target blind for at least one round (except on a critical success). Since blindness is a really strong condition, this puts the spell heads and shoulders above all the others. Enervation still is pretty good and there are useful spells like Slow, which provide a mass variant at higher level. But at least half the debuffing spells are just worse variations on each other, with no result if the target saves. Dispel Magic is much reduced in its utility, since it is strictly single target now (no more Greater Dispel Magic) and you need to know which spell you are dispelling beforehand.
Battlefield Control: There are some still the “Wall of…” spells which allow you to separate non-flying opponents from each other. Black Tentacles got half a nerf and half a buff, since both spell DC and Fortitude DC’s scale pretty linearly, but the tentacles are now attackable and pretty fragile. There’s even an anti-flying spell on the list. Of course everything is nerfed in some way from before, but this aspect of being an arcane caster actually still works.
So, where does that leave us? It’s pretty clear that the developers want an environment which is less high fantasy than what we had since 3.0 dropped in 2000. Magic has become weaker almost universally, the Uncommon spell list makes fast travel and many conveniences dependent if your GM likes them to exist and specialization into one aspect of your class has become mostly impossible. Blasting is by far and large useless, effective party buffing has been relegated to the high levels of gameplay and debuffing/battlefield control are aspects we share with the occult and primal spell lists, while buffing is better done by divine and occult spellcasters. The only thing left where arcane casters can uniquely help the party are some utility spells, of which many of the good ones are, as already pointed out, on the Uncommon list. And being the bus boy and butler for the party is really why you’d play a Sorcerer over a Bard or a Wizard over a Druid? To make it worthwhile again to play a Wizard or Sorcerer again, in my opinion something has to be done. Hence, my recommendations to the developers is to do some of the things as follows: - Drop the Uncommon spell list. Getting access to utility spells should not be left up to the whim of the GM or the roll of a die. This is especially egregious for the Sorcerer, who has about a 70% chance of failing his Arcana check for his spell research and should just be able learn those spells as he gets access to their required level, anyway. - Restore the duration on at least some of the buff spells, like Resist Energy, since they become useless if they have only a one minute duration. A longer duration should probably not exist for spells which provide additional actions or attack buffs, but a spell which prevents only some (very much nerfed) elemental damage on one party member (and only very much later to multiple ones) is essentially useless if you can only cast it when already in combat. - Reverse the nerf on harmless quality of life spells like Prestidigitation and Unseen Servant. Nerfing fun quality of life for nebulous reasons is really the cherry on top of the pile of disappointments arcane caster fans had to go through since the playtest started. - Provide more spell slots per day, if the short duration on spells stays like it is. Otherwise the adventuring day becomes obviously much shorter than it already is. This hits the arcane casters as much as all other classes (except the Cleric, the class which by itself doubles the average adventuring day of a party). - Include options to make blasting worthwhile again, i.e. Elemental Focus/Greater Elemental Focus like class feats. Personally, I’d remove the spell heightening requirements for additional damage dice as well, since the opportunity cost of an eight level Fireball is so much worse against the vastly expanded hitpoint pools at higher levels. - Allow spontaneous heightening for Sorcerers for all their spells, since so far the Wizard comes out so far ahead that I, someone from whom the Sorcerer has been his favorite class since 3.0 came out, can't see the point of choosing one over a Wizard. This is probably my last hail mary to change the minds of the developers. I’ll still try and get my guys organized for playtesting throughout the next months and have them and myself do the surveys. But if I don’t see announced actions until the end of the year to pull back on a good number of the published nerfs, I will probably decide in the end to stay with First Edition and plunder Second Edition for useful house rule ideas, like the racial hit die at first level, the action economy with slight changes for swift action heavy classes, some scaling cantrips and probably some other stuff. My adventure path subscription will probably lapse after the first new AP has been published, since as a consequence of most utility spells now being available only at higher levels (and on the Uncommon list), the fundamentals of how certain aspects of an AP’s story will be told will also have to change. That makes converting the new AP’s back to PF1E probably not worth the time, although I admit that really interesting story premises might make me come back and subscribe for another half year. In the short run this will actually benefit Paizo financially, since in that case I will get all the hardcovers I am still missing, all Pawn collections I still need, at least the Mummy’s Mask AP and maybe even a few softcovers, all to the tune of about 600-700 Euros. But in the long run, I’ll be a lost customer for all the published hardcovers and adventure paths in the future. Since I got published AP material for at least the next six years, this doesn’t bother me as much as it would otherwise. But I still have hopes that the developers really put out only the most extreme version of their new rules and are still prepared to pull back from the most egregious of those extreme changes. We’ll see. So, quo vadis, Paizo?
I'm sure that some people were expecting me to come back from my playtest session with my hair on fire, but, a bit surpringly to even me, it was about as perfect a run as you can wish for, for both players and me as the GM. There were some issues, but I'll bring those up presently. Introduction: I ran The Lost Star with three players and a GMPC, since the fourth player managed to pull a muscle when he started to ride his bike to our play location. We took about two hours for character creation. The set-up was extremely classical, with a Rogue/Wizard/Cleric/Fighter party. Group Composition: Elf Rogue with Bludgeoner, armed with a rapier, club and sling, in studded leather armor. Dwarf Cleric of Torag, with warhammer and shield, in chainmail. Dwarf Wizard, armed with a warhammer (took weapon familiarity ancestry feat) Human Fighter, armed with longsword, light hammer, dagger and heavy steel shield, with Power Attack and Sudden Charge (took natural ambition ancestry feat). Used a hooded lantern to illumuinate the dungeon for himself and the elf, which normally cost him the first round to put down the lantern, draw his sword and ready his shield. Playthrough Notes: Sewer Ooze: An extremely easy fight. The sewer ooze went dead last, and got absolutely hammered in two rounds. It released its slime wave, against which everybody saved except the fighter, who critically failed. With a cry of "he slimed me!" he was the one to deal the final blow. 2d4 points of damage on the fighter, but only minor wounds (3 HP). No healing was applied. 4 Goblin Warriors: Due to the two dwarven warriors with darkvision and the hooded lantern this was much less dangerous than for many other parties. While the dwarves took care of the two goblins who rushed down the left side of the room, the fighter and rogue took down the two on the right. After the fighter and rogue ran out of goblins on the right, the illumination rules immediately reared their head, since the fighter had left the hooded lantern back at the rooms entrance and the entire left side of the room was pitch black, due to the blocking colums in the middle of the room. Luckily the two dwarves managed to finish off the remaining goblin before further intervention was needed. The cleric was hit by an arrow and a dogslicer and the rogue and fighter took minor wounds as well. The cleric used his first heal on himself. The Raise Shield action prevented an entire hit on the fighter without denting the shield. The party proceeded to ignore the Vermin Den and Fungus Bloom, since they were warned by Talga of the danger in those rooms. The party then proceeded to the Purification Fountain and managed to find the Lamashtu idol, which the Rogue then fished out with a grappling hook and a thievery check. After which the cleric proceeded to smash the idol, because he found it a blasphemy against Torag. Hence, what followed were 2 Quasits: This fight also went surprisingly well. The party rolled well on initiative and the rogue immediately sneak attacked one of the flat-footed quasits. After another hit from the cleric and the wizard, that quasit turned invisible and hid in a corner to heal. The other quasit went on the attack against the cleric, but only managed to inflict minor damage. The cleric saved against the poison. The fighter was on the furthest away from the remaining visible quasit and, as usual, spent his first action putting down the lantern, drawing his sword and then moving into a better position. The second quasit then got basically destroyed by four focused attacks on him when everybody else got their turn again, so we were left with a very nervous invisible and heavily hurt quasit. Here is where we ran into some minor rules troubles, since at first it was unclear if the quasit would need to use verbal components for his innate spells. After consulting the bestiary nothing was found which contradicted the need for them (spell-like abilities in PF1E have no verbal components for example), hence Seek actions were spent trying to find the position of the invisible quasit. After again searching through the PDF (an onerous action if there ever was on a dingy tablet), it once again was determined that Invisibility does not grant a bonus against Seek actions and so Perception was simply rolled against Stealth. After one of the characters found the square where the quasit was in, he spend an action pointing it out to the others. This resulted in a lot of attacks over the span of about one round and a half, which killed the second quasit dead. A second Heal was cast by the cleric, since enough damage had accumulated on the fighter by this point. After noting with approval that the fountain was starting to slowly clear up, the party then proceeded to ignore the southern door. The rogue searched the northern door and easily found the trap. The party thus proceeded to advance towards the goblin headquarters unnoticed. Since Talga had warned them about the falling rock trap, the fighter took a Stride into the room past the rock trap, set down the lantern to illumante most of the room and raised his shield. The others followed. Goblin Headquarters Initiative was rolled and the figher went first, goblin warriors second, followed by the rogue, wizard and cleric. The goblin commando and pyro went dead last. I moved the fighter into the middle of the room and attacked, without readying the shield, since I wanted to see how that would affect things. The goblin warriors surrounded the fighter and managed to land some minor hits. The rogue followed next and critically sneak attacked the still flat-footed goblin commando, killing him instantly with exactly the 20 HP the poor goblin had. The cleric, who had used his domain power to absorb a bit of the damage inflicted upon the fighter, cast Bless and the wizard used Electric Arc (which he used a lot during the entire run) on two adjacent goblins. The fight then proceeded as well as one could hope for the party, with the rogue harrassing the goblin pyro so well that he couldn't position himself for a decent Burning Hands (also the remaining goblin warriors also were blocking the area) and the cleric, fighter and wizard taking apart the three goblin warriors in short order. The pyro went out last, but only managed to singe the rogue a bit with the burning hands spell. A third Heal spell were used by the cleric to heal up the party after the fight, this time as a 30-foot channel. The party looted the room and the rogue and fighter climbed the ledge. Notably, the rogue wanted to use his grappling hook, but apparently the entry what the thing does is missing in the playtest document. The rogue and fighter then searched the area, with the fighter finding the secret door. While the fighter helped up the two dwarves up the ledge (rules on what checks were necessary were a bit fuzzy, so I resorted to strength checks, since the put the rope around their shoulders and they then were pulled up), the rogue success/failed his thievery checks to a zero result. After some assistance from the wizard, who for some reason had taken thievery as a LN dwarf, the secret door was opened. The party proceeded to sneak into Tarkus lair. After seeing the chest, the rogue immediately found and disabled the poisoned lock, but failed to open the chest, even with assistance by the wizard. The party then decided to find the key and the person holding it. After failing to sneak successfully, an alerted Tarkus transformed back into his form and arrived one round later. Tarkus: That dude had a baaaad day. Tarkus had blocked the passage to the shrine. The cleric went really fast and cast magic weapon on the fighter. The fighter sudden-charged Tarkus and hit for 2d8+4, causing 16 damage on him with the first hit, then readied his shield. The rogue proceeded to hit him with his sling for another 4 damage, after which the wizard used a three action magic missile to hit him for another 12 damage. At this point Tarkus did a triple attack and critically hit with the first, yet only for 10 damage, which the fighter took on his shield, putting a dent into it and letting 5 damage through. The second attack then did 8 damage and the third missed. The cleric proceeded to use the two-action Heal to bring the fighter back up to only five damage, after which the fighter missed and then the wizard used a reaction to recall his magic missile and converted Tarkus into confetti. The party then proceeded to restore the shrine, take the book and Star of Desna to Keleri and gave the loot from the chest back to the citizens of Magnimar, as well as notifying the temple of Pharasma about their holy site and the holy items in it. Conclusions: Number One: Taking a classical party composition really helps a ton to make things go more smoothly. Number Two: Having the players roll several crits during the five combats and the opponents only a single one is also extremely helpful. Number Three: Having a cleric helps out immensely. I think the party would have had to retire back to rest after the third fight at the lastest without a dedicated healer. Clerics are just superior to all other classes in that field and, if you have nobody who wants to again have to play the class, can be a problem for the party staying power. Number Four: The fights went, from my perspective, very smoothly with the new action economy. Problems only came up when stuff like "how does Seek interact with Invisibility" or "Do innate monster spells use verbal components as the spell?" came up. It is very frustrating to not have the book and instead have to comb through a PDF. Number Five: The illumination rules need a bit of a revision, since if you are not in the direct light area, you are immediately in pitch darkness. This makes dwarves and goblins superior races to everyone else, given their unlimited range darkvision. Low-light vision is essentially worthless in dungeons, since there are no dim-light areas from torches, lanterns, etc. anymore. The other players found that the individual fights lasted longer than in PF1E (which they took as a positive) and also commented that the new action economy goes much smoother. All in all, my fears of a shortened adventuring day were not confirmed, but then again I had the perfect set-up to work with. The wizard was especially happy that at first level he never had to resort to 1d3 acid splash cantrips, instead always having something useful for each round to use. He ended the adventure with one spell memorized. The cleric ran out of spells in the Tarkus fight and had one channel energy Heal left. The wizard also commented positively about having enough HP to endure a bad hit at first level. I will probably delay playing the second part of the Doomsday Dawn until the physical copy has arrived, also because I had to print out about 50-100 pages of materials and spent three hours only copying cantrips, first level spells and powers into a Word document to give to the cleric and wizard players. Since I played a GMPC, I'll do all three surveys tomorrow, if that is technically possible. I pressed my players to do the player and general survey and hope that they will take the time out of their day to fill them out. I'd love to confirm for myself if having a non-optimal group composition would lead to having to rest much sooner, but I fear real life time constraints make that impossible. I guess I'll have to rely on other playtest reports. I'm very interested to see how the other adventures will go. The wizard player was, at first glance, not that impressed about the idea of having to memorize Mage Armor as a higher level spell. GM Tracking Sheet: How long did it take to play? Four hours How long did you prepare? Ten hours, including three hours copying spells together for greater clarity How many sessions? One How many hero points did you give out? Two, for punctual arrival How many times was a player reduced to zero HP? Zero times How many PC's were killed? Zero Player Tracking Sheet: How long did character creation take? 2 hours for everyone How many times were you reduced to 0 HP? Didn't happen to anyone How many times did you reach zero resonance? The cleric healed everyone alone How many times did you critically fail overspending resonance? Never How many times did you run out of spell slots? The cleric ran out in the final fight and the wizard was down to one spell How many times did you run out of spell points The wizard only spent one on Force Bolt, but the cleric spent several on Divine Ward and probably was very close to running out. How many hero points did you use Zero were spent during the entire adventure.
This has been going on for years, but the playtest seems to have brought it to the foreground again: Somebody makes a post or opens a thread where that person clearly intends to elicit angry responses out of other members of the messageboard, by snarking about hot button topics or implying ulterior bad motives to a perfectly straightforward statement. Using the "Personal insult/abusive" option really doesn't do it for such cases, since those things are not as easy to spot as open insults. But it still is easy to spot the bad intent to start a flame war, which of course leads to mass deletions, thread locks, etc. I think if "baiting" was an option for flagging, moderators might look at certain type of posts with a more critical eye, which would be good for the overall tone of the messageboard (and the playtest). And, yes, it's possible that some would abuse this feature, but I think those same people are already flagging posts which content they just don't like, anyway. Putting "Baiting" as an additional option would at least mark posts of that kind in a category where moderators can get more informed feedback why a post was flagged in the first place.
Since the game has heavily changed towards a "use powers for one combat" style of play (with most buff spells lasting for only one minute), the "overbuff your party and run through an entire dungeon" tactic so common at higher levels should be effectively dead. At the same time, though, spells per day have been reduced by a factor of about 33% and we have the additional issue of resonance to deal with now. Both of those serve as limiting factors on extended dungeon runs, where parties are now forced to retire much faster from their adventuring day. This gives place to the dreaded 15-minute adventuring in a now more severe version, the probably 10-minute adventuring day. To avoid having to sit 23 hours and 50 minutes per day on their behinds, how about a much shorter rest period per day to regain spells, hit points, spell points, etc.? Is there place for a 4 hour rest period or maybe even a 2 hour rest period? With three 2 hour rest periods per day, parties could still make significant headway into an adventure, while also having to endure the typical hardships like getting their camp raided. It would make the entire "you are fatigued after casting a spell for 10 minutes" thing a tiny bit less annoying, since you only need a 2 hour rest period to reset fatigued. Maybe up to three two hours rests per day and a mandatory eight hour rest period to sleep could be a good solution. What do you guys think?
Given how the devs will probably start looking at the boards tomorrow, I thought I'd start a first feedback thread for things people are unhappy with and would like to have changed back or at least have the severity of nerfs be amended somewhat. This is of course still coming from a pre-playtesting standpoint, so I'm sure in half a year some of those points will seem less valid. However, I am pretty sure that just from reading the rules one can make some solid technical inferences. Please refrain from "I'm done with this game!" grandstanding, since that isn't considered useful feedback by the devs. "If you don't like it, go away!" messages are singularly unhelpful as well, btw. 1.) Staying Power or The 10 Minute Adventuring Day By now the conclusion seems inescapable that the developers have chosen a playstyle where parties need to rest after only a very few encounters. This will of course become less noticeable at higher levels, but the combination of low resonance, very limited non-magical healing and few spells per day (which to boot have drastically reduced durations in most cases) makes it seem an inescapable conclusion that short forays into dangerous territory is the desired playstyle. There are the dissenting voices which say cantrips and "gritty gameplay", where you go half-healed into the next combat, are the solutions to that, but I neither think that zapping single enemies with low-damage spells from the back for extended combats is very satisfying gameplay for a lot of people, nor that most players will be happy if they get TPK'ed because they grittily walked into the room of a more dangerous than expected enemy. Solution: I personally think this playstyle is too limiting and would like to see it reversed, either by a.) longer spell durations or b.) more spells per day and c.) removing resonance costs from consumables, but instead just making lower level healing consumables ineffective at high levels. 2.) Spells have in many cases been overnerfed Looking through the Sorcerer/Wizard spell list from a PF1E standpoint brings a tear to my eyes. I get that the new math makes it necessary to nerf many of the effects, but the additional duration reduction on most spells combined with less spells per day overall makes spells more like "encounter powers" in most cases. Except Heroism, by the way, which is in a sort of strange in-between place, where it is a shadow of what it was before, but still long enough to encourage a "go go go!" playstyle where people rush from room to room to get the most out of those ten minutes. My issues, aside from just being a bit emotionally distraught at seeing full casters being brought so low, are of the same nature as from my first point, this all seems geared to make people adventure less per day. Solution:
Oh, and un-nerf Prestidigitation at least. It's a mechanically insignificant spell which nonetheless gives creature comforts to player characters. It just feels good to have something for your character to chill your drinks, clean your clothes and smell good. If there have to be nerfs, don't nerf fun, please. 3.) There's too much power for the GM to screw over players through inexperience or grognardism For reasons I don't really get there are now quite a few situations where player power has been unnecessarily given to the GM. The three which stick out most to me are a.) pure GM fiat when you can come back from the dead; b.) secret and arbitrary DC's for crafting non-magical and magic items and c.) uncommon and rare utility spells, like Tongues, Magnificent Mansion, Rope Trick and Detect Scrying. Solution: Get rid of giving the GM rules power to arbitrarily screw over player characters. Some will do so without rules, anyway, but don't have the official rules make it easier to so wittingly or unwittingly. In the case of uncommon and rare spells, do so with strange and complicated spells, don't suddenly push very common utility spells onto that list. 4.) Signature skills Those are just wrong and a needless brake on character customization and roleplaying. There is no good reason to prohibit a fighter or wizard to be super good in intimidation or diplomacy, if the player wants to play a character like that. Solution: Just remove them completely and let players choose in what kind of skill they want to be masters and legendary in. 5.) A dedicated healer is now 100% required This once again hits the "adventuring days are too short" niche of complaints, but I think it bears repeating: Resonance costs on consumables and very limited non-magical healing make it a necessity to have a dedicated healer in your party if you want any chance to go beyond a few rooms in the dungeon and so extend the duration of the adventuring day. I personally think this is the exact wrong direction for the game to go and feels terrible from an in-character perspective. Solution: Remove resonance costs from consumables, but make lower-level consumable healing items less effective at higher levels. That kills the "bags of wands of cure light wounds" problem, while still allowing more non-standard party compositions. I think those five things are the ones which stood out the most to me. There is of course more I don't exactly like (yet?), but those things aren't dealbreakers to me. So, what feedback do others have for the devs of what they think needs to change to get them to like PF2E? I'd like to hear your thoughts.
Well, I've read through all the sections of the rulebook. I surely have not absorbed all the rules and have only skimmed most class entries and feats, but I think I have now a generally informed idea of what the new rules entail. I also cross-referenced the bestiary to get an idea how AC vs. attack bonus is supposed to work, as well as saves vs. DC's. What I got away is that the system is designed to provide better balance at every level. That is why we get +level to everything, since it makes the randomization factor much smaller, where some classes pulled so far away from the rest in their field of expertise that the GM was forced to throw outsized challenges at a group just to reign in the super specialized characters. That is a laudable goal and we'll see from the Doomsday Dawn playtest if the writers managed to reach said goal. However. The price we have paid is a much more limited customization for characters, since through class feats many abilities everyone of a certain mien will want to have (all martials, all casters, etc) are now gated away to certain classes. The second price seems to be that spellcasters overall have been heavily nerfed, both in terms of their power level through spells and as well in their daily endurance. Most spellcasters will also produce the same spell DC's when compared at the same level to each other. As someone who loves playing spellcasters, the latter is a bit offensive to me, because when I compare my current Sorcerer I'm playing it's almost comical how much more powerful and enduring the magic he produces is, compared to what a same-level counterpart in PF2E could do. The PF2E version would still mop the floor with him, due to the "level to everything" mechanic, but overall it seems that the developers went way overboard in making almost every spell worse than the PF1E version. I think my main two problems with the playtest version of PF2E are that characters seem to have lost a lot of their adventuring endurance, through less spells per day and consumables costing resonance. If I could give only one piece of feedback, it would be to give spellcasters back more spells per day, but keep the nerf to spells themselves, so that there is more parity between casters and martials and cut "consumables cost resonance" and rework the resonance numbers to accomodate for that in terms of permanently equipped items and some class powers. Making the already short adventuring days even shorter seems like a poor solution to "bags of cure light wound wands". I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the playtest document is laid out in a really unintuitive and obtuse manner. Class powers should not have been mixed into the spell lists. Spells should have a clear indication which classes can cast them (it worked out quite okay in PF1E after all). It gets really annoying if I always need to flip back or forward a few to some hundred pages to get the full information for one particular thing my character can do. Please improve this for the full release. Overall, I am not really too happy, but I am willing to give this a chance and hope to influence the developers to pull back on some of the things I really dislike. I hope to get people together to provide some actual game playtest, so that I can provide more substantial data.
So, I zipped through the book and looked up the most important topics to me, and here's what I got away with: - Spellcasting has been nerfed with a flaming baseball bat with nails sticking out in all directions and barbed wire wrapped around all that. There's not a single spell I've looked up which did not have its duration or effect severely nerfed. Casting defensively is gone. Defensive spells are way worse than before. I'll have to do actual math to see how well spellcasters can defend themselves before saying if the nerfs were too much, but initial impressions are baaaaaad. :( - Resting is as usual, with 8 hours of full rest being required to recover spells, resonance and abilities. Natural HP recovery is a bit better if you have a high constitution bonus. But it's far away from Starfinders method. Combined with more limited resources, that means that the 15 minute adventuring day is probably now a 10 minute adventuring day. - Summon Monster almost only has neutral (30%) or evil (67,5%) monsters on the list. Thanks for that, much fun to play a good-aligned spellcaster who wants to summon things. The only good-aligned monster is on the 10th spell level. -.- - Oh, did I mention that spell durations have been nerfed? Because stuff like Heroism (10 minutes) or Mirror Image (1 minute) won't last you for several fights. Okay, Heroism will, but 10 minutes is far away from 10 min/level as it was before. Again, shortening the adventuring day. I'm not a fan of a "venture into a dungeon for 10 minute, run away" playstyle. So far it seems the devs have shifted gameplay in that direction.
I think everybody who ordered the playtest books in whatever form did get the e-mail last week that our credits cards would be charged two days ago. It's probably already happening for some, as physical copies are not all shipped on the same day (as it is for adventure path books, for example). However, this leads me to a distinct worry: I am concerned that some people will get the playtest books significantly earlier than August 2nd and then we will have a two class society of people who can discuss the actual playtest book much sooner than people in, say, Europe and who will have the ears of the devs that much earlier as well. I think if people do get their books before August 2nd, the playtest PDF should release as soon as the first people start posting their first impressions. Otherwise this will lead very early on to a skewed perception of the playtest and many, many angry customers. Which will make for a bad start to the playtest, IMHO.
My next campaign to GM will be Shattered Star. Given the focus on dungeons and the amount of traps in them, I'm trying to give my players an extended list of classes or other sources which have the Trapfinding ability. I'm not that interested in prestige classes, since they only come into play after four to six levels. So far I've come up with the following list. If you have any other official options you know about, please add them to that, I'd really appreciate it. Here goes: Rogue / Unchained Rogue
Traits:
I wonder if the developers ever did a blog post about their design goals for Starfinder. If they haven't, doing a post-mortem on Starfinder after its release would really be appreciated, so that we can see what they wanted to do with the game as a whole.
Every GM knows the situation: Suddenly you have another player or two. Or maybe one of the player leaves, leaving your group understaffed. Or one of the players of your four player group has built a truly optimized character and suddenly the other three players feel useless. How do you best adjust the adventure path or your homebrewn adventure with those and many of the other common problems cropping up? Some GM's are able to do this on the fly (and are not shy about pointing that out on this forum). Others struggle mightily and their campaigns suffer. Some days ago, James Jacobs posted the following: Frankly, a "how to adapt adventures" product is a good idea. A product that helps GMs adjust adventures for more players or to account for new character build options is something I've wanted to do for a LONG LONG LONG time. It'd double down with a "How do you build adventures" handbook and perhaps even a book to help GMs run higher level content, with tips and suggestions for how to keep a game running smoothly at those levels. Unfortunately, I've had no luck (obviously) convincing management that such a book would be a wise idea to put on the schedule, and they are probably right, since a book like this would most likely sell a LOT less than another book filled with character options. I would like to see this product published. I am quite an experienced gamemaster by now after 15 years of doing the job, but I still struggle to adapt pre-existing material to my six-player group. I feel high-level content has its constant problems and I'd love to see what Paizo's take on the issue is. I still think I can learn from others and get better at what I've been doing for years. I also hope that a book like this will get more people into GM'ing and, hence, more people into Pathfinder. I think it is way more necessary than Paizo management thinks, because I still remember how many of my past campaigns smashed into hard obstacles because I didn't have good advice back then how to adjust for unusual circumstances of the many varieties we encounter in our job as gamemasters. Getting good advice on how to GM in unusual circumstances is a crucial part of getting through some of the harder parts of GM'ing. How many new gamemasters abandon their job because they did not know how to deal with these very common problems? How many new players left the game because their groups disbanded because of inexperienced gamemasters? So, if you support the idea of this book getting published, voice your support and get managements attention. If you don't want this book or think it is unnecessary, please refrain from threadcrapping. There are more than enough books for player options getting published each month, so one book of GM advice can't be such a detriment to your enjoyment, even if you think you already know better about everything that is going to be in this book or just personally never GM.
Since I see this a strong contender for my next AP to GM, I am already taking a closer look at the set-up for the entire AP. One thing which caused my brow to furrow a bit is the campaign outline presented in module one, specifically the last module. To explain my stance, I also GM'ed Curse of the Crimson Throne and my least favorite aspect of that excellent AP is when the players are taken out of the city of Korvosa for two entire modules. Hell's Rebels avoids this problem, until the last module it seems. At least the second half of the last module seems to be the PC's "invading hell" and while that is pretty cool it also is pretty standard and just when the endgame of the AP arrives takes the party away from the place they cared for and liberated throughout the entire AP. Yes, you invade hell to complete the liberation of Kintargo, but I really hope that the last module mostly plays in the city proper and not mostly away from it.
Spoony (maybe known to some here, he is an internet reviewer of games, movies and other things) has a show named Countermonkey, where he exposits about roleplaying and tries to give out advice and tell some stories. In his latest episode, just uploaded yesterday, he recounts a tale which should be familiar to all who have played through or GM'ed Second Darkness. I got a big kick out of listening to his story and thought that maybe some people would be interested, too. Hence, a link to the video: Countermonkey: Baboon!
As a German GM, I've done partial translations of the flavor text of several AP's by now (the second half of Jade Regent, all of Wrath of the Righteous, beginning on Rise of the Runelords), since I got a player in my group who has a very poor command of the English language. Since I'd like to spare other German GM's the arduous work of translating, I would like to share my translations, as poor as they may be, with other fans on the appropiate board. But since the AP's are, of course, the property of Paizo, I'm first asking if I can do this under the community guidelines, without getting into trouble with you guys. :) So, what's the official stance on this issue? The translated parts are mostly the flavor text for locations and speeches from NPC's. As a direct follow-up question, in case that you allow me to post the translations, can I post them directly to a thread or would you require me to only provide a link to an uploaded document?
Let’s open with a disclaimer: This a review with some anger in it. If that hurts your feelings so much that you can’t stand to read it and think that no constructive feedback can ever be taken from words written with some passion behind them, then you can stop reading now. And probably should never aspire to be someone who publishes a written work, because getting negative feedback and learning from it are an important part of being a writer. That being said, welcome to my review of Wrath of the Righteous and the applicable parts of Mythic Adventures. Why review these two together, you ask? Because, as it applies to this AP as written, they are inextricably linked. Wrath of the Righteous was conceived to be used with this new set of rules and as such, when looking critically at the adventure path, one needs to look at the rules behind the roleplaying to see why this adventure path so disastrously fails. And, yes, this AP is a failure on a truly epic scale. Or, I guess, a mythic scale. It doesn’t fail because of its story, which is pretty rote to the standards AP’s aspire to, only scaled up in the degree of severity if the party somehow manages to fail at their task. No, it fails because Mythic Adventures is, simply put, broken. Broken mechanically in a way which makes a joke of opponents which should make your players characters shiver with dread, but instead makes those opponents into walking loot piñatas. Now, rambling aimlessly is pretty fun, but it makes for a poor review. Hence I’ll put some structure to this, before you all wander off bored. Spoilers, of course, abound after this paragraph, so read further at your own risk. The AP and its story The story of Wrath of the Righteous is quite standard. Bad guys want to take over the world, you stop them. Contrary to some AP’s, you get to know a lot of the bad guys up close during the first module, although they don’t leave much of a personal impression. Which, given how at that point they could reduce your low-level player characters to ash with a glance, is probably somewhat of a good thing. Not that there is much to them as personalities. Beyond evil gloating and evil ranting, that is. I think the villains with the most personality in the AP are an ally who betrays you (Nurah Dendivar) and that one female Glabrezu who talks with you during part three. You could add Nocticula here, too, but she is actually an ally with more likeability to her than Iomedae herself. The story is competently written as AP’s go, with no immediate logical contradictions beyond the usual “Why don’t the villains stomp on the party when it is still not on their level of power”. But then again every AP seems to suffer from that problem, due to the level system of Pathfinder. There are laudable efforts in the AP to present to the party options for the redemption of evil opponents but they are pretty bare bones. You mostly get a paragraph or two about it for some of the more important opponents or a sentence for the minor villains. Arueshalae, the risen succubus, gets several pages dedicated to her, but her redemption comes far too easy if you follow the options as written. Furthermore, while much is made of her desire to be good, not much is given to you about what actually prevents her from fulfilling that desire and how those problems may manifest. She already appears to be redeemed, as far as her presentation in the AP goes. Another positive aspect which should be mentioned is that the AP presents you with a selection of NPC’s, who can even accompany you on your adventures. Where they will probably stand in the way and perish, due to their comically underpowered level and WBL, but the thought counts.
I really would recommend concentrating on two or three really interesting NPC companions, if Paizo decides to continue to add permanent companions to their AP’s. I know it worked out pretty well in Jade Regent, where Ameiko and Shalelu made really interesting NPC’s whom enriched the campaign. However, too much is too much, especially if the many companions you get are difficult to distinguish from each other or have no defining personality traits associated with them. The modules: The Wardstone Legacy: WotR starts out pretty strong, with an epic scene which sets the tone for the AP. There is not much interactivity to it, but with some slight modifications it can make your players feel as if their characters are more involved.
Sword of Valor: This module starts with the group given command of a small army of Paladins. Which kind of presents a problem, as 100 level four Paladins would simply end the entire opposition as presented in this book. So the GM has to contrive why they cannot accompany you into the dungeons you are presented with during this module. If the best you can say to your players is “look, this is an abstract system, so let’s not think about it too much”, you got a problem. Since this module happens below tier three, opponents still present a challenge. If your group is not careful in following up on leads that Nurah is a traitor, they can be in real trouble if they suddenly get assaulted from the front and the rear later in the module. The module adds another four significant NPC’s to the five you are already traveling with after the first module and it gets really hard to keep some of them apart in terms of personality. If you want to keep all nine NPC’s relevant as personalities, you better come prepared to add significantly the descriptions given in the two first modules. Demon’s Heresy: Aaand here is where things fall apart. The module itself is pretty okay, from a writing standpoint. However, mythic tier three (and getting more mythic feats) is the breakpoint where the ridiculous power issues crop up. Fleet Warrior and Mythic Improved Critical+Mythic Power Attack for martial characters, Arcane Metamastery for arcane casters and just a lot of other options which come together in really scary ways. Although you’ll probably see the immediate results of tier three from your martial characters. The casters just come together in combinations which are not just as obvious. Unless you heavily modify the opposition in this module, they really don’t represent much of a threat. I used heavily beefed up encounters and still only managed to make half the modules opposition worth my players time. Midnight Isles: This module makes a demon lord sympathetic. It introduces the Midnight Isles, the ruler of the realm, Nocticula and the capital of her realm, Alushinyrra. Aside from the future problem of presenting a city with an absurdly high gold pieces limit in what appears to be reasonably friendly terrain (a feature of the game world my players are sure to try to take advantage of in future AP’s), the story again is suitably good. In fact, I think meeting Nocticula may count as the most interesting moment the AP has to offer, since she doesn’t behave quite like you’d expect her to and there are even tantalizing hints at a redemption story.
Herald of the Ivory Labyrinth: This module is something of a mess. The party goes into an environment where they have a set of goals, but no set way of getting there. Encounter areas are vague for the most part, ways to get from part A to B are also vague and the story itself is haphazard at best. Combat is an utter joke at this time, with the party being able to land single hits which wipe out everyone but the last optional encounter (Baphomet) in one hit.
City of Locusts: At the point I am writing this review, I am one encounter away from ending the AP, where I combined three encounters as written (with vastly beefed up opponents) to present at least a little bit of a challenge. Combat is mostly meaningless, since the party can only really lose if everyone gets killed. Even the most mighty opponents can be brought down with two critical hits (or just two characters regularly hitting one opponent with a full attack). The story aspect has mostly fallen to the wayside, given how the last module didn’t present much of a story and this module also only offers the slightest excuse for one. With the last opponents vanquished and their objective met, the party will have done a great service to Golarion and walk as living demi-gods over its surface. But what does it matter, if they didn’t really have to struggle to get here during the last months? Mythic Adventures was as like typing in cheat codes in a computer game for them. *edit* Aaand Deskari was easily exterminated. No big surprise. The mechanical side and how it destroys the AP As you likely have surmised by now, I am not happy with how this AP has developed. Much of this is due to how Mythic Adventures was designed and I am putting the clear blame on the developers for that. Some small disclaimers before I go on.
Given all of this, the mechanical side of the game completely collapsed somewhere in book four. Legendary weapons, full attacks after moving and vastly enhanced critical hits pumped up the martials to a ridiculous degree. Casters were a bit slower to follow in the overpowered department, but boy did they catch up by this current point. At the point this review is written (level 20 and tier 10, although this cropped up around level 15 and tier 8), when a martial character hits, how the game proceeds depends on if he rolled a critical threat. If he does, he autoconfirms the critical hit for something like 400-800 damage, normally taking out whatever he has hit on that strike. With casters, it depends on how much mythic power they want to invest in that round. With enough opponents around and the right spells, they can put out thousands of points of damage, with no resistances or immunities allowed. This makes normal gameplay utterly irrelevant. Only by anticipating the player characters and putting in specific defenses there is even a modicum of challenge. Or by having defensive abilities which simply negate attacks, something which the opposition, as presented by Paizo, does not possess. So, what went wrong? At my best guess, nobody of the developers thought to test high level combat under mythic conditions. At all. Otherwise they simply could not have missed that the monsters and opponents they thought up simply couldn’t match in HP the damage output player character could provide with single critical hit. If there was one single high-level game playtest at Paizo of Mythic Adventures, I would be incredibly surprised (unless they did it after publishing it or with martial characters which took the “flavor options” over the obvious ones). Be that because of time constraints or lack of care, we are left with a broken product. Anyone who wants to experience the story, I recommend that you don’t use Mythic Adventures to tell it or at least a very heavily nerfed version of it. Very heavily nerfed. Way harder than I did. I managed to finish the campaign because I hate the idea of abandoning a campaign once started. Many other GM’s who posted on this AP’s sub-board, people who were as excited or more than me about this AP, dropped it midway through. I personally would counsel against playing this AP, because of its corrosive way of undermining trust in Paizos developers and also raising expectations that the game will always be so broken even without the use of Mythic Adventures. May the developers learn something and stop rushing out products. I understand the time constraints of having a constant output of published work, but the stellar reputation Paizo has among many gamers also depends on them publishing polished and well-written supplements. I have noticed that the care the writers seemed to have earlier in the lifecycle of this edition seems to have vanished ever more with the addition of new splatbooks. How Mythic Adventures destroyed Wrath of the Righteous is so far the greatest example of the tendency of Paizo developers to not think their new rules through to the end and publish new sub-systems without a proper playtest in-house. If I can give any advice to the writers, it is “stop adding new sub-systems to AP’s, they make the experience almost always worse”. Finally, I asked each of my players to give a very short review of the AP. Here is what they said: Samurai: The setting was good, although there were too many fights. It felt too much like a tabletop and the rules were too complicated. Cleric: <sarcastic> One-turn offense rules. Yeeeeah. Yippeeee. Ranger: I had a lot of fun, although I did not get a lot of the rules. But I loved being super effective throughout the entire campaign! Barbarian: The AP had a nice story, although it was very fight-centric. The mythic rules are way too broken, though. Sorcerer: The story was nice. Although Mythic Augmented Maximised Empowered Meteor Swarm at DC 81… are you kidding? Paladin: The setting was super. Mythic is much too powerful. It is a nice idea and has a lot of style, but it is simply too broken. My final verdict: The story aspect (story, characters, setting) gets a 7/10 from me. It is epic, true, but the storytelling is standard. Other AP’s have done this better and have a better follow-through on story aspects. The mechanical aspect (Mythic Adventures, opponents, extra rules) gets a 2/10 from me, due to the positive experience of the first two modules. If it were Mythic Adventures alone, it’d be a 0/10, because this system destroys campaigns. Thank you for your time and have a nice day. For me, it's on to Rise of the Runelords, which at least is an AP which I know is well crafted and which doesn't fudge around with barely tested new rules.
So, now that the ACG is out, I thought of rating the new classes in their published version. I expect that some of my opinions will probably be overruled by feats/abilities/items I have missed in my first perusal of the ACG. Arcanist: Extremely powerful class. SAD, because you really don't need Charisma after all, since the really good exploits don't depend on that attribute. Seems to me that the guys at Paizo looked at the Schrödingers Wizard stereotype and said to themselves "I wonder if we can do that...". Some of the exploits are crazy good, like counterspelling as an immediate action. 10/10 for power; 1/10 for class design. Bloodrager: Very solid melee class. I don't think that the spellcasting is as beneficial to the class as many would think, since you can't do it faster than normal (as the Warpriest can), but if you select some long duration buffs, it will still be beneficial. 8/10 Brawler: Again, a solid class, although I think that the limited charges per day on Martial Flexibility are not enough to use it as much as you would want to. Paizo has shown a great proclivity for implementing limited charge class abilities in their class design, but I think that here they may have calculated a bit low. 7/10 Hunter: I like redheads and wolves, so I am pre-inclined to like this class. :p However, upon looking at the class instead of the iconic(s), I think it still is underpowered. Since the class wants to do things by itself (and not only have the animal companion do them), it suffers from its 3/4 BAB and a lack of self-buff spells. The Animal Focus class feature does not seem to provide the necessary "ooomph" it would need. 5/10 Investigator: A very good skill monkey, with added versatility due to his alchemical expertise. As far as I can see, Studied Strike is a trap option, since it robs you of your far more important Studied Combat buff. This class seems far less predestined to be a ranged combatant than I felt the Alchemist to be and thus hulking up via mutagens seems far more appropiate to it. 8/10 and only so low because of the Studied Strike trap option. Shaman: I guess it is a solid caster, since it gets full spellcasting. The spell list does not appeal to me very much, but my personal preference goes heavily to buffing other party members or blasting, so that will affect my perception. Others will probably love it much more than I do. 7/10 Skald: Okay, it's a bard with much less useful buffing abilities, overall. Probably a better martial combatant, but then again it runs into MAD problems. 6/10 Slayer: I like this class. It obsoletes the Rogue almost completely, but I like it. Because, what skill monkey class doesn't obsolete the Rogue, anyway? It's on the list of classes I might want to play someday. 8/10 Swashbuckler: I'm playing one right now at 14th level in a RotRL campaign (started with the last playtest version, which is mostly similar to this one), so I am biased in favor of it.
Warpriest: Did it have to only get two skillpoints? :-/ It's a very solid divine melee class, but same as the Swashbuckler, it suffers from having too many class abilities which activate with swift actions. Since you can't "buy down" a move action into a swift action, that quickly becomes a problem when you want to do three or more things at once with it per round. But it does get around the whole "combat is already over when you are done buffing" problem melee monkey Clerics still have. 7/10 One last thing not related to the classes: The Divine Protection feat should be erased from the book. My goodness, what were you guys (the developers) thinking when you wrote it? No wonder PFS disallows it. 10/10 for powergaming, 0/10 for feat design (yes, worse than the Arcanist).
Well, I got into a discussion about the combat to roleplaying ratio and about more coherent roleplaying scenarios and stories in the "Giantslayer! What do we know?" thread and was asked to take it to another thread. So, I'll try to recreate the discussion in this thread and see where it goes from here. My starting post: Probably a lost cause, but an AP centered on roleplaying instead of constant fighting would really be appreciated. Joseph Wilson's reply: Probably a lost cause, but an AP centered on roleplaying instead of constant fighting would really be appreciated.
Well, I've been asked to create an ongoing thread covering the balance and gameplay issues with mythic combat encounters and in regards to my own Wrath of the Righteous campaign. Since it seems that I am about the most vocal person in regards to general high-level balance issues, I think that at least qualifies me to try to prove my point via continuous coverage how those perceived issues actually resolve themselves in my own campaigns. In the interest of keeping this thread going from my side, I will only deal with detailed issues of roleplaying and general campaign circumstances when I feel it is warranted. If I feel obligated every week to do a detailed recap, I think I won't be able to keep motivated in stressful weeks to come to keep posting. As it is, I will only give general combat statistics and try to mention where issues arose. Secondly, I'll enumerate the anomalies in my campaign from "standard" play here: - 20 point buy
Thirdly, the party set-up: - Dasseem Ulthor, lvl 6 human Paladin of Iomedae/Champion 1
And that's about it. There are a few more minor things, but nothing else which substantially would alter the play dynamics. So, let's begin: Session of January 14th 2014: Not much happened this session, with two players not in attendance and the rest coming in quite late. Two combats and some roleplaying, all in all maybe 2 1/2 hours of actual gameplay. - Combat vs. 1 Incubus, 2 Brimoraks. AP encounter as written: 1 Incubus.
- Combat vs. 5 Advanced Fiendish Gargoyles. AP encounter as written: 3 Gargoyles.
I think I need to remind myself that the flip between "combat is hard and deadly" and "combat is lightning fast and only deadly for monsters" happens only after about levels 9-11, not yet at this point.
Hm, I don't even yet have my suscription PDF of part four and you guys already make blog entries for part five.
So, anybody seen this? I love the Borderlands setting and the characters, so a series of adventures, without all the shootery, sounds like a great idea.
Ruminating a bit about creating a violin/fiddle playing bard as my next character, this question came up: Can a bard who uses an instrument which requires two hands (which the violin/fiddle does, if you use bow to play it) cast spells while doing so? Going by RAW it seems not to be the case. However, I found an ancient post by Jason, which indicated that he was considering allowing bards to do just that. It seems that dropped by the wayside during the writing process of the CRB. Is there a way to overcome the two-handed instrument limitation?
After a playtime of one year and one month, with sessions of three hours once per week, our group today finished Jade Regent. Ameiko claimed the Jade Throne and due to the diligence and might of her group of friends, ushered in an age of prosperity the likes of which Minkai has not seen before. All hail Amatatsu Ameiko, first ruler of her name, empress of Minkai! I have now played three adventure paths from Paizo to conclusion, Curse of the Crimson Throne, Carrion Crown and now Jade Regent. Of those three, Jade Regent assuredly was the one which managed to best convey a real connection to the non player characters accompanying the party. It should be noted, however, that establishing that connection is very much left to the GM, because after the introduction in module one there is near zero support for the NPC’s in the rest of the AP. The cast of NPC’s themselves has some problems, many of which are probably attributable to my own perception of those characters. While Ameiko’s outgoing personality was easy to play and Shalelu being a stoic lent itself to some good character moments, Koya seemed mostly fixed for the role of “wise grandma” and I never got a good handle on Sandru. I would have preferred more extended hints as to how to develop the NPC’s, the lack of which left Koya and Sandru pretty much floundering, while Ameiko and Shalelu hogged all the spotlight. In terms of the adventure set-up, all six modules of the AP have memorable plots and dramatic moments. Personally, I found the shift from a western adventure with asian influence to an almost purely asian adventure very enjoyable and preferred the second half of the adventure path to the first half. I hope that Paizo one day soon will release a complete Tian-Xian (or even Minkai) themed AP. The difficulty of the AP is not easy for me to adjudicate, since I had a six player and 20-point buy situation with the group which just finished their last session. I am running a four player, 15 point buy group with other players, so one day I hopefully will be able to come back to this thread and give a proper impression of how this AP plays when using the proper parameters, but as far as this current group goes, they ripped through everything in their path, even at the end with additional enemies, opponents with maxed out hitpoints, double advanced templates and every other trick I could conjure up by myself and with help from this board. The final confrontation today went very one sided to the player characters, with three of the main antagonists not even getting their turn before being killed. The newly introduced sub-systems (caravan and relationship rules) both were definitely the worst part of the whole adventure path.
As for the individual modules: The Brinewall Legacy was a pitch-perfect start to the adventure path. Introducing the real stakes of the story gradually, it managed to turn a local Varisian adventure into the beginning of an epic journey. Castle Brinewall did not feel too long as a dungeon and for players of past adventure paths, seeing some of the inhabitants of Sandpoint once again (before leaving forever) might be a fond trip down memory lane. Night of Frozen Shadows surprised me with how suspenseful it was for the players. At first read I had found the chase after Suishen a bit too railroady, but in actual play the plot gave the players enough freedom to plan out their own approach to the presented challenges and also managed to put enough pressure on them with the escalating events sothat both groups of players (the second group is currently in the middle of module three) felt obviously threatened by the worsening attacks. The Hungry Storm turned out to be my least favorite module of this AP. Compared to the other modules, it had fewer roleplaying opportunities and the drawn out journey over the north pole of Golarion felt interminable. I am pretty sure that this was actually the point, given how this module was all about traveling thousands of miles in a caravan, but in actual play it boiled down to an “one encounter per day” standard, which are always the easiest ones to win for a party. Having to replace the broken caravan combat rules with actual combat encounters did not help in this regard. I will say, though, that this module contained the most complex encounter I have ever seen in an AP, with difficult environmental rules and lots of moving parts, in the first encounter with Katiyana in the Storm Tower’s peak. Forest of Spirits was carved up by me into the first half of the module, which was kept as written and the second half, which replaced Munasukaru’s Penance completely with the Ruby Phoenix Tournament adventure. Everything in Ordu Aganhei was comedy gold and of all the elements of the adventure path, its roleplaying opportunities were the pinnacle of the whole AP and a definite guide on how to provide such opportunities with a relatively small page count. Prince Batsaikhar easily wins the price for most memorable ally-antagonist since Laori Vaus. The travel to the meeting with the Kami through the actual forest of spirits was okay… it suffered once again from “one encounter per day” disease and the spirit possessions soon became a sort of routine, too.
Tide of Honor was an great introduction to Minkai and, in its entirety, is my favorite module of the AP. It managed to show the current situation of the nation, allowed the player characters to make contact with the local culture, gave them interesting allies and had one of the more memorable villains with Yugureda Shosaito, who really perfectly looks and feels like the part of “evil asian wizard”. The only negative thing I and also my players noted was that the three different plots (ally with the Ninja clans, free the geisha O-Sayumi, kill the Daimyo Sikutsu Sennaka) all connected too well to another, making the railroad tracks seem a bit too obvious. The Empty Throne was a worthy ending to the adventure path. At this point, my group was well beyond the point of blasting through every encounter the AP could put before them and my adjustments did not do the trick more often than not. I can’t say yet how it will hold up when a four player party at a 15 point buy will confront those encounters, but I find the idea that such a party will need the NPC’s to succeed in the encounters wildly pessimistic from the author.
So, in closing, is this AP good?
Thanks to all the people involved at Paizo, I had a great time with this one. Now, on to the next grand adventure, fighting demon lords in the Worldwound!
In the recent Mythic Adventures hardcover, epic damage reduction seems to have suffered a severe nerf. As the text says on page 7: "DR/Epic: A type of damage reduction, DR/epic can be
This seems like a very great reduction of effectiveness in DR/Epic. Circumstancially (like with a +4 Bane or +4 Furious weapon), this means that DR/Epic is less effective than DR/alignment. Was this intended as such, or are there other factors to take into account?
Is it just me, or does the second half of an adventure path (levels 10+) serially go off the rails in terms of player power vs. opponent power? It seems that the general opposition player characters face cannot even deal with moderately optimized characters? And I am not saying I want monsters to kill more player characters... we had a case where a Fire Yai critted one of the characters and would have killed him in one hit, were it not for hero points... but the balance of the game seems to shift way too heavily towards the dreaded "rocket tag" in the second half of the AP and characters which need even one round of set-up compared to say, archers, can only deal with the minions which are left milling around stupefied while their boss has already hit the dirt. It happens way too often that after level ten or eleven PC's autohit opponents with all their attacks and just liquify them into a fine red mist. If they know what they probably will deal with (like... demons in Wrath of the Righteous, maybe?), it only becomes more of a massacre. What I am trying to say, it isn't fun for the GM and most players I know if 95% of all combats in APs turn into one-sided slaughters and while the lower levels of the AP's are fun and challenging, the higher levels need more extreme situations to do that for the level of power player characters have at that time.
So, I got my PDF of Mythic Adventures opened and am not burdened with too much to do today. If anybody has questions, I'll be happy to try to answer them, although I don't want to post rules wholesale... that is frowned upon by the developers, IIRC. Still, I hope I can help you guys out. So, who goes first?
There are three new archetypes in the Dungeoneer's Handbook which deal with traps. Two of the three have some issues with the wording of their trap related abilities, however. The Trap Breaker alchemist archetype is the one which clearly states that it can disarm magical traps. The Dungeon Rover ranger and Terra-Cotta monk archetypes, however, seem to be unclear. Here is how their respective abilities are worded: Dungeon Rover ranger: Stone Scouting (Ex) A dungeon rover gains a +2 bonus on Perception checks to notice underground environmental hazards, including traps, potential cave-ins, and dangerous flora. A dungeon rover receives a check to notice these hazards whenever he passes within 10 feet of them, whether or not he is actively looking.
Terra-Cotta monk: Trap Intuition (Ex) At 2nd level, whenever a terra-cotta monk comes within 10 feet of a trap, he receives an immediate Perception check to notice the trap. The GM should make this check in secret. A terra-cotta monk gains a +2 bonus on Perception checks to notice traps. This bonus increases to +4 if the trap is located in a stone wall or floor.
The problem for me is that there always has been a clear distinction between mechanical and magical traps. Mechanical traps could be found and disabled by everyone with Perception and Disable Device. For magical traps one needed the Trapfinding ability. These new abilities make no mention of the different types of traps, so for me it seems unclear if the language is all-inclusive or if it is insufficient to include all types of traps. Furthermore, the archetypes seem to have no ability to disarm magical traps, even if the wording allows detection of them, which I personally find as pretty sub-optimal design, unless there is a new "You gain Trapfinding" feat in the book. Opinions?
This is revised version of my prior attempt at a 20 level swashbuckler class from last year. While there was nothing fundamentally wrong with it, I found some things which still could be improved. So, without further ado: The Swashbuckler I'll address the most common complaint from my last go-around ahead of time: No, a similarly quality equipped swashbuckler at most times does not outfight the fighter. A sword & board fighter ( the worst kind of fighter in terms of DPR ) came out ahead in terms of damage bonus and AC at every level for my last version of the swashbuckler, while the swashbuckler was be slightly ahead in terms of to-hit bonus. I've done the math pretty thoroughly on that at levels 4,8,12,16 and 20. My new version gains a new ability, Lightning Strike, at level 15, which allows it to get another attack at its best attack bonus while doing a full attack, while dropping its attack bonus on all attacks by -2. This versions DPR is higher than the S&B fighter, while still being quite below a two-handed weapon fighter. I am a bit unsure if that can count as "overpowered", but the class desperately needed an attractive high-level ability to which people could work toward.
As for the second complaint I got, "the class is just better than the Fighter at non-fighty stuff", that's certainly true for every other frontline full base attack class, too. And thirdly, no, getting both his class level on damage rolls and 1/2 his level of his dexterity bonus is also not overpowered. I've taken great pains to make sure that you cannot combine this bonus with Power Attack, Piranha Strike or a similar type of "attack bonus for damage" type of abilities and you only get it for your mainhand attack with finessable melee weapons. It balances out, it really does. R&R as you wish, and if you like the class, you certainly got my permission to use it in your games.
After reading the adventure background for the first module of Reign of Winter, I must say that I am more than a bit conflicted about the role Baba Yaga will actually play in this AP. Although it is still months away, I think we can safely assume that the adventurers are going to free Baba Yaga and defeat Elvanna. While my sympathy for Elvanna is close to zero ( since bringing eternal winter to all of Golarion is her plan, after all ), my sympathy for Baba Yaga, after reading what she does to her daughters and their descendants, is even lower. Assuming for now that the adventuring party will obtain the information laid out in the adventure background for The Snows of Summer, I think that there will be a lot of good-hearted adventurers who will chomp at the bit to challenge Baba Yaga, too, after defeating Elvanna. Will the writers provide a chance for that? I assume that, since Elvanna was able to best her mother, the high-level adventuring party will have a chance against Baba Yaga, too. I'm pretty sure that this would involve the new mythic rules, so can we at least expect a statblock for Baba Yaga in the "Continueing the campaign" segment of the last module?
Well, I did today the work I do for every AP I run, calculating the WBL pay-off of the individual modules, to adjust treasure allocation for the group(s) I am running this AP for. Quite a bit harder here, since I need to calculate the gear for the main NPCs, too. What came out of all these calculations was a bit surprising. Past APs where I've done this ( Kingmaker and Carrion Crown ) had pretty much kept with the formula of WBL = 120% of what a party of four PCs would get. This calculation was done with the assumption that players would find all gear and that they would sell every magic item for 50% market price. Turns out that Jade Regent, in regards to the last four modules which I combed through today, only pays out 90-95% of WBL for a four character party, with the exception of Tide of Honor, which gives out a bit too much. Not that I had a big problem with that, after all players can be expected to keep some of the equipment which comes in during their adventures, but it seemed a curious change in treasure allocation. Any particular reason why this was done?
In the last days there has been quite a bit of controversy regarding the relocation of threads from General Discussion into the Suggestions/House Rules/Homebrew forum, due to perceived weight ratios of discussion about the system itself vs. suggestions made on how to change it to function in a better way. The main problem perceived is that the Suggestions/House Rules/Homebrew forum is an awkward mix of people posting their own homebrewn classes/skills/etc. versus people wanting to theorycraft and compare how their proposed solutions to the perceived problems of the system compare to each other. Hence, I would make a recommendation to the forum moderation staff to split the forum into a Houserules/Homebrewn and a Theorycraft/Suggestions forum. This way, people who just want to present their houserules or homebrewn classes/feats/etc. can continue to do so ( and please, do not assume that I do look down on that, I myself created a Swashbuckler class which is posted on that forum ). And the people who want to have a discussion on parts of the existing Pathfinder system, throw up some theories on how to improve it and then bounce those off the opinions of other people can do so on a forum dedicated to that purpose. The designers can take a look in which direction players are going in their opinions, maybe giving them also some ideas on where they want to take Pathfinder for its second edition ( which we all know is coming in the future, although I personally hope it is still at least five years down the line ). Or not, depending on how much player feedback is wished for on that topic. I would normally say that the General forum served the purpose of theorycrafting well enough, but since lately it seems that threads posted there are always in danger of suddenly being moved to another forum, I would suggest that ending that awkwardness and just simply making a proper forum for theorycrafting would be the best way to go.
|
