master_marshmallow's page

I'll say it does feel arbitrary as presented since it's not the spells getting divided into essences, but just a superficial label on the lists.

Classes still have spells unique to their lists, like bards having their own version of heal, etc.

I imagine as far as actual gameplay is concerned it'll mostly get ignored when more spells are fleshed out to specific lists for specific class setups. It's a neat idea, but it's not really applying to anything other than flavor.

The Raven Black wrote:

Actually I find it more efficient to let things cool down and people forget their gripes and all the venom and aggression disappear and later do all the big marketing moves that will happen just before this whole new game is released

Is perfectly fine for them to go quiet for a couple weeks.

The problem is if they go quiet until August, pop back up, and say "tada!"

Because in august, if there was some part of the rules that they thought was fine, but was actually a real hangup for a lot of people, but it hasn't been accurately identified, people will respond with, "Yeah, but what about..?"

Almost certainly the worst thing that could happen is if PF2 goes all 4E on us and someone else goes, "heck this" and forks off with FinderPath the Unpathing (I'm terrible with names, sue me) and the majority of Paizo's audience follows because it was more in line with what they wanted and expected. Some of the 3PP are likely we'll situated to being able to do this and it wouldn't surprise me if someone is already working on a PF1 cleanup and revision "just in case" PF2 sours people.

I know I would be, if that was the kind of work I did (but I build software and never finish anything).

cough

master_marshmallow said wrote:

It was the lvl 12 playtest, so we had higher + weapons, and I built fighter with rogue dedication for attack bonus.

Remember, it cost me actions to trigger sneak attack, and requires a crit to trigger deadly, just to get comparable damage.

Okay. Not really sure what to say about that, it seems to be a pretty poor build for a fighter. Currently finesse style fighter isn't in that good a spot in my opinion. But it really didn't seem like you got any substantial bonus or use out of using the starknifes, so why not go for different weapons. If it was all about getting crits then something like light picks seems better (assuming you actually had a good str score) that could at least do the whole 9d8+2d6+19 on a crit, which seems like a cooler thing to build around.

I was testing a "Batman" build, and I figured if a fighter can't make the starknife work, no one can.

master_marshmallow said wrote:

The bonuses I got were in that I got to swing with more than a 5% crit chance twice, and relied on combining a single die of sneak attack with a single die of deadly for an extra 2d6 damage on a crit with star knives. My turns went Feint -> Double Slice. Doing this effectively used all my feats. The paladin with no feat investment did comparable damage by just swinging a d12 weapon, and I could never compare to a crit.

Well so you had two attacks at full to hit with 2d4+2d6 dmg vs 2d12 attacks. That seems pretty close. Sure you had to spend two feats, but you also got fighter dedication from that. The feint aspect I would assume was pretty bad though since perception is too high on the monsters atm.

Not to mention that you had deadly, agile and throwing traits.
Maybe going for a demoralize build with Dread Striker could have been more effectively.

EDIT: I can see you mention it was 1 sneak attack. Was it level 4? If so did either of you have magical weapons yet?

It was the lvl 12 playtest, so we had higher + weapons, and I built fighter with rogue dedication for attack bonus.

Remember, it cost me actions to trigger sneak attack, and requires a crit to trigger deadly, just to get comparable damage.

Doktor Weasel said wrote:

One idea I've seen that I think has merit is to give bonus magic dice based on the handedness. For example, one handed weapons always get D6 dice from magic and two-handed always get D10s. So a +5 dagger would be 1d4 + 5d6, while a +5 Greataxe would be 1d12 + 5d10. That gives averages of 20 for the dagger and 34

for the greataxe instead of 15 and 39. This would make the axe do 1.7 times the damage of the dagger instead of 2.6. Smaller gap, but still significant.

I still feel this actually limit weapon choice more than the current system does. Why would you bother with a d12 weapon once you start getting +1 or +2 and more in potency runes. The two-handed d10 weapons would quickly be better since all you trade is 1 damage on average for traits like reach, forceful or fatal.

And your specific example would actually make weapons like longsword worse than it currently is while making whips, starknifes, daggers better, thus once again likely removing the use of d8 weapons once you hit the mid levels.

master_marshmallow said wrote:

Imo, d4 and d12 weapons shouldn't even exist if the potency damage scales as high as it does, otherwise the design end of things becomes too difficult to balance on the DM's side of the screen. I'd feel forced to arbitrarily adjust enemy HP based on the weapons used to accommodate for pacing issues caused by the discrepancy. My own playtest left me with a sour taste for the system as it is written because I relied on crits to match average damage of those using d12 weapons. Felt like a bug in the design, not a feature.

Well didn't you get other bonuses then by carrying a shield or fighting with two weapons? I think overall unless you are trading damage for armor you can get damage pretty similar to d12 weapons with most builds. Of course a fighter fighting with a single dagger will be far below a greatsword, but a rogue would get pretty similar damage and even closer if they chose a shortsword instead.

I think the biggest...

The bonuses I got were in that I got to swing with more than a 5% crit chance twice, and relied on combining a single die of sneak attack with a single die of deadly for an extra 2d6 damage on a crit with star knives. My turns went Feint -> Double Slice. Doing this effectively used all my feats. The paladin with no feat investment did comparable damage by just swinging a d12 weapon, and I could never compare to a crit.

I'm fairly certain the biggest problem is potency scaling to +5, which creates a great amount of information entropy which is what caused so many fights to drag on, because monsters can't have reliably defined HP pools to accommodate for the variability, and in practice the game leans to the bigger dice being more important than most abilities, save for something like finesse which changes a major function of how the weapon is used 100% of the time, rather than smaller traits which only affect niche scenarios.

Imo, d4 and d12 weapons shouldn't even exist if the potency damage scales as high as it does, otherwise the design end of things becomes too difficult to balance on the DM's side of the screen. I'd feel forced to arbitrarily adjust enemy HP based on the weapons used to accommodate for pacing issues caused by the discrepancy. My own playtest left me with a sour taste for the system as it is written because I relied on crits to match average damage of those using d12 weapons. Felt like a bug in the design, not a feature.

master_marshmallow wrote:

Critical specializations on anything that isn't a sword probably isn't worth investing into.

It's kind of funny that you say this considering that a lot of people (Myself included) think that the Sword crit effect is easily the least interesting. There are just so many other ways to get flat-footed on a foe and most of the other crit effects do something useful or interesting. I've only seen a few of them come up but honestly that's mostly because I keep forgetting about it because I'm not used to the new rule. It's been cool when it has come up though.

Not a very strong case, but it's more true that swords inexorably improve hit chance with no action cost. The stats are there.

I have a couple players who don't want to buy or carry around buckets of dice.

The math scaling up with weapons that deal different dice creates so much mathematical dissonance that you really get no real choices.

Critical specializations on anything that isn't a sword probably isn't worth investing into.

For D&D, I prefer smaller handfuls of dice, with smaller ranges. There's just so much information entropy that running the game becomes daunting, honestly it felt like playing a different game completely and not a tabletop RPG.

In the spirit of constructive criticism, how would you suggest Paizo allow more customization or special tricks while fulfilling the design goals Paizo set out?

Redefine class niche to be mechanical game engine niches that feel different when you play them, and require different approaches to strategy rather than using the Golarion setting as an excuse to shoehorn players into a small number of roles.

Reduce arbitrary restrictions to meet level gating quotas, give a large list of class features to serve as feats that scale up with class proficiency (the thing that sets your class's DC), and include lists that go up with your proficiency rather than in level groups.

Then change multiclassing to scale up certain degrees by improving your secondary class's "Class DC" which would also open up the class feats of that group. Makes things become more open, and free, but still intuitively organized.

Dammit I solved this three months ago.

Most/ all martial classes oughta have a unique combat option that adds a secondary ability to hit/damage. It costs an action, and thus eats into your ability to make more attacks and do more damage.

You can do this and leave the Bestiary numbers exactly where they are, as it is actually perfectly balanced against them.

To be fair, tying your shoelaces would probably be an activity and take two actions to complete, not worth the action cost in a fight so you're better off not wearing shoes.

Clearly halflings are OP because of this.

Stuff that used to be covered by feats are now class features, combat stuff being the most contentious.

Given that most classes only progress one weapon group anyway, I'd recommend going back to WEAPONFINDER and giving the combat oriented feats as mere upgrades to proficiency with the weapon group. Fighters inherently get them all, and their feats can be dedicated to stances and tactical maneuvers. Et all

Also not able to download

Paladin_Knight_marshmallow wrote:

I feel like this edition now parallels 5e too much, with your choice being made early level and the rest of it is just padding and waiting.

it feels almost diametrically opposite to 5th Ed, for me, in many, many ways.

I think that is intentional.

The Playtest, so far, feels more like a cross between 3rd and 4th Ed, with some entirely revolutionary concepts, to me.

I'm unfamiliar with 4th edition, but what I understand is that it also had very limited choices in favor of more robust expansions on the core idea they forced on the class.

Rangers getting 8+combat styles is long gone, seemingly to enshrine the fighter as the guy who can fight using any style.

I don't see the roots of 3.x in this system much at all, could you elaborate?

Mathematically, you calculate the 'weight' value of an attack based on it's chance to hit with a factor based on it's chance to crit.

Given the ratio of crits, you really need to talk about true optimization, which means considering the best possible combination of weapons. Swords are bar none the best, rapier + short sword seems good, but longsword + short sword are comparable if not the defacto best configuration. Sawtooth sabers factor in as well. It comes from the +5 to hit on secondary attacks which isn't beaten by any other feat, and the fact that you'll have a chance to inflict the flat footed condition on a crit which opens the crit range up for secondary attacks, and tertiary once agile grace comes online.

On mobile so forgive the format of this:

Primary attack: 15% crit range, yields secondary attacks at either 15% or 25% crit range, which in turn yields tertiary attacks with 5-10% crit chance, and guaranteed flat damage on all but a Nat 1. Longswords have the biggest base damage, rapier compares with deadly (unclear on if it's d8s or d6s), and sawtooth sabers give flat damage boosts which amplify thanks to better hit percentage.

Given said ratio, combining agile grace and certain strike on tertiary attacks gives you the best DPR in the game. There's a case I believe for the falchion, but it has worse crit chance overall with 3 actions.

The importance of the ability to crit more than once in a round more reliably cannot be overstated.

EDIT: Doubling Rings become available before you even get magic weapons, so the cost of magic weapons is a non factor for dpr consideration.

You're wrong, check the math threads.

Crits matter more than raw damage, and Double Slice facilitates the best crit ratio in the game.

The issue is tied to weapon damage dice scaling so much that you need to make sure you're using the correct weapon in order to max out damage.

My group stopped testing, as they didn't want to keep doing all the work of fighting with me over which rules were and weren't functional. I personally refused to implicate house rules as it would ruin the test, and my players refused to play without some concessions.

I'm actually slightly optimistic about 1.6, since Jason says it's a big one and includes changes to more classes and feats. That's something to look forward to.

For me, the core essence and philosophy of PF2 is very far removed from what we had with the 3.x engine, in that there is so much less freedom in builds and player choices. There are a lot of choices, but it feels like they're all there to make sure you take skill feats, ancestry feats, etc instead of producing feats that are actually worth taking. They talked about this a bit when they talked about feats not being equal.

I also am not a fan of defined roles, and this goes to things like multiclassing taking away feats from your functional character progression all the way to the choice you made at first level telling you what weapon group you're stuck using for the entire character, and that choice is limited by your class's mechanics.

I never played 4e, because none of the groups I play with would ever go back to it. But what I understand about it is that it also had codified roles for the classes and took a lot of conceptual creativity away from the player in favor of more robust expansions on their defined mechanics. Rangers are stuck with archery, wizards always do blasting, etc. It's fine, but it's not what brought me to PF1, which was having a strongly refined and cleaned up iteration of 3.5. I see the parallelism, and I'm not gonna say it's the worst thing ever (it isn't) but it's not what I want from PF2.

I won't get into the math, y'all can find our threads where we figured out the respective formulae to figure out which choices were traps and which weren't. Just for good measure, I actually made characters to test the theory and was sad with the results lining up with the theory.

There's also a serious drought of crunchy discussion on the boards as of late, since so many updates have been fairly small in scope, with respect to having more content to test as opposed to merely updating or fixing common issues. Most of the updates were improvements, but some of them drove me further away from this playtest than pulled me in.

I'm not emotionally attached to Golarion at all, but I do appreciate that this edition may facilitate much better integration of the setting into the game itself, and it might make the APs much more appealing to someone like me if I don't have to learn a bunch of new optional rules that only apply to that campaign, etc. This change might be what Paizo needs in order to publish the stories they want, with more robust stories that can span longer into the level progression. It's of of my favorite parts of DMing to write around the narrative power gaps that leveling up provides, but I get that it's daunting when you need to write a new full campaign every year that has to account for high level play.

It certainly seems to me that PF2's quality will definitely be defined by how much more they feel they can explore and accomplish with their narrative.

master_marshmallow wrote:

Everyone needs to remember, the idea that anything in the playtest written for PFS play is categorically false.

While I appreciate your comment, I do not see any proof in your claim. The underlying reason for bringing up PFS is due to future planning and development. While I can see how you can think that the PT is disassociated with PFS, the future of PF2e WILL involve PFS play. To build something into the system for the future change of PFS play is not unforeseeable. It is something called planning and foresight for the future. What I see is a system design that indoctrinates players to accept what will be part of a standard organizational structure. After all, PFS play and rulings will be built upon the foundation of the PT results. You cannot ignore that the two will be interlinked intimately.

See, that's an exact quote from Jason, you won't see the thread anymore though because he shut the thread down.

Everyone needs to remember, the idea that anything in the playtest written for PFS play is categorically false.

I imagine what currently exists is there too give the game's mechanics and interface its basic architecture, and the more flavorful and concept fulfilling options will be fleshed out once the devs can finally get the hang on how design parallelism works with respect to each mechanic. They're still toying with how things are formatted and such.

Just saying, Pokemon had two games.

Are you using our formulas?

On mobile rn, but I was in need of a math thread.

master_marshmallow wrote:

Ephialtes wrote:

Bjørn Røyrvik wrote:

Yeah, if it came down to choosing between P2 and 5e, it would be 5e. And I don't like 5e.

I always wonder why those, who critisize the lack of char options in PF2 are swooning over 5e, one of the most simplified and dumped down systems without any character individualization at all, where feats are just a rare option for attribute enhancements. Why not Conan 2D20 with its talent trees or other Systems with enhanced character or simply staying with PF1 which already has more supporting material than 5e will ever have?

Please enlighten me why 5e character developement has more options for customization than PF2, I am very curious.

Any character can wield any weapon somewhat effectively so long as they are trained with it, and most of their class features are tied to the mechanics of the game rather than flavor options. Longswords upgrading dice two handed is their power attack, light weapons using DEX universally is their Weapon Finesse, etc.

Getting rid of feats however makes the game a lot more theatre of the mind and forces players and DMs to use colorful language rather than mechanical options on the character sheet to invoke this.

Apart of Mercer DMing, flavourful descriptions are rare a the average table in combat situations (though I ask players to describe their moves when taking out enemies). 5e is extremely fuzzy, when it comes to such situations and relies on GM fiat. With lacking any granularity in combat, 5e seemingly must rely on theatre of the mind heavily. But not every DM is a Mercer and so 5e quickly becomes too simplified and dice rolling without having any options at all.

I played 5e alot and got quickly bored. That's why I came to Pathfinder Playtest. Regarding to the pooled books Wizards has published yet, the playtest material is even in its incomplete stadium a wealth of character customization.
Why those missing PF1 wealth of options in the playtest material are now happily...

It is a system that rewards narration and it plays hard on Narrativism in GNS.

I've found when playing it, tackling the problem with the same mentality of 3.x, and following the steps is the best way to explain it to my DM, it's how I get my points at least. I guess whether you agree or disagree with that tells us something about your play style.

Seems good, though I am a fan of the half - race stuff being the human niche for racial variants.

Makes sense to me because humans seem to be the only race that can cross breed, unlike other races. Though some people don't like that and want half elf/ dwarf characters and the like.

Racial plane touched races were the weirdest thing in PF1 because they existed, but only changed your size and age maturity and nothing else. That's something that definitely could be looked at.

Bjørn Røyrvik wrote:

Yeah, if it came down to choosing between P2 and 5e, it would be 5e. And I don't like 5e.

I always wonder why those, who critisize the lack of char options in PF2 are swooning over 5e, one of the most simplified and dumped down systems without any character individualization at all, where feats are just a rare option for attribute enhancements. Why not Conan 2D20 with its talent trees or other Systems with enhanced character or simply staying with PF1 which already has more supporting material than 5e will ever have?

Please enlighten me why 5e character developement has more options for customization than PF2, I am very curious.

Any character can wield any weapon somewhat effectively so long as they are trained with it, and most of their class features are tied to the mechanics of the game rather than flavor options. Longswords upgrading dice two handed is their power attack, light weapons using DEX universally is their Weapon Finesse, etc.

Getting rid of feats however makes the game a lot more theatre of the mind and forces players and DMs to use colorful language rather than mechanical options on the character sheet to invoke this.

I sorta agree.

I pushed for the current change to Ancestry, and I'm glad to see it. I do think more heritage options like this would benefit the game, but not necessarily in core.

However, I do like the idea of looking at stuff like the Drow noble (and the feat chain to create it in PF1) to give us a baseline for what power scale the ancestry feats could be giving.

The racial feat chains from PF1 could easily be incorporated here, with base humans getting less options, but more versatility in getting generic options more often.

Look at concepts like the racial combat styles available to dwarves and elves, or even the chain of aasimar feats you have here.

That's where Ancestry feats should end up.

Good stuff, +1.

Ignoring the parts of PF1 that functioned better than PF2 is not going to make a better game.

PF2 is quite the ambitious project, because unlike PF1 there is no backward compatibility with 10+ years of products, this is an important factor in making sure that all the holes in this edition are patched up.

Honestly, pathfinder 1.5 would probably sell better, but would more than likely inherit more problems than it solves. You also basically got it when you bought Unchained. I used the Unchained RAE from day 1 and even publicly shared my house rules to clean it up and make the already printed materials actually compatible with it.

Mathematical comparisons to PF1 I'll agree are not helpful, because PF2 is using a whole new numerical architecture. Whenever I make math posts, I keep that in mind. It's about function more than fashion in that respect.

Breadth of option comparisons to PF1 seem to be where the contention is. It's not about being able to do x damage by y level, but rather about having the choice of doing q damage, r damage, or p damage at y level, but the game decides only certain classes get access to r, p, or q. Gaining access to this requires feat taxing in the new multiclass system which sacrifices class identity and functionality. That's a valid complaint, and the comparison to PF1 implies that it should not be impossible to fix for PF2.

Resource management is the underlying killer of the new edition. PF1 dumped new resources to manage on you all the time, instead of interrupting the ones from the core chassis of the game. They're trying to find a way to incorporate those superfluous resources into the main game for all characters and that's mostly where the disruption in the game's functionally is coming from.

That and the new rules directly working against each other stifling creativity on part of the players. The iconic characters don't even do what they intend well because of all the conflict. Bounded math ultimately negates the +/- 10 crit system for instance. The hidden design paradigms of the game which we uncovered in the math make posters like me feel duped by what Paizo was trying to sell us when they announced the game however many months ago.

Fighter with rogue dedication going Dread Striker -> double slice.

Max bluff, hope for the best. Having a 15-20 crit chance is the best you'll get on an appropriate challenge.

Rangers actually got to skip PBS thanks to their combat style. They only took it if they were dedicated archers and not switch hitters.

When we did the math threads earlier in the play test (first month) we discovered this and mapped out the damage distribution.

You have found the cap.

Potency scales too high for the damage to work, even between d6 and d12 weapons.

Deadly is the attempt to fix this, but given how little crit chance you actually have it's not very useful.

People can like fistfulls of dice, but when I play tested with starknife throwing, it became clear how useless my 'optimized crit fighter' was compared to a paladin just swinging a d12 weapon.

It didn't feel fun to need crits just to compare to the other guy's average hit. I multiclassed rogue, and built up Dread Striker for crit chance. Double Slice and a +3 to hit still didn't help.

The math just doesn't work. At least in PF1 magic weapons could be a bit lower in + and still be effective weapons.

I do like that idea with just pumping up a high quality gauntlet and using the Doubling Rings to get your golfbag build to be effective, but said golf bag is going to have a lot of the same weapons in it because of how punishing the math is. Additionally, every class but the fighter only increases their weapon proficiency with a single weapon group, so no switch hitting and no changing your style when you find cool loot.

Wizards conceptually have a defined role, but cantrips need to expand to cover more things. Spell durations should be a lot longer. Like, customize yourself for the day, and have a couple 'big gun' spells with the way the spell casting is distributed.

Been searching the forums for a minute now, what channels does one go through to seek a refund for products purchased?

master_marshmallow wrote:

I'm now curious about the balance levels of power in the APs, since I don't play them, don;t they usually only ever get to like 16th level tops?

Do you ever get to 9th level spells?

I like the idea of "e6 edition" where your "level" merely determines your feats (and thus character complexity) but the power balance of the game remains relatively similar.

I think however, that may be the underlying mechanism for 5e.

Typically the games tend to end around 14-16, yes. It's basically right about the time when the game starts to become particularly swingy(i.e. a full attack from a dangerous badguy is going to drop a character if it happens, full spellcasters can poof you from existence, ect). You rarely get access to 9th level spells. I've never seen someone drop a wish spell in an AP, ect.

Typically the encounters are balanced around the idea of a 15-20 point buy party of 4 without having to resort to 'knifes edge' optimization. Some encounters are just plain hard for certain parties while others make it look easy. Generally speaking, they are built in a way that most everyone has a chance.

That has been my experiences at least.

So, in meeting a design goal of telling the same stories, would it be fair to say that the last few power levels could be chopped off, and then you could level up faster, making something like RotRL play from 1-20, while retaining the same power balance?

master_marshmallow wrote:

Item levels don't feel attached to the item, they feel arbitrary. I don't hear Doubling Rings and think "oh boy a 3rd level item!" I think it's an item designed to help me use two magical weapons, and it retains its usefulness far beyond 3rd level.

3rd level item basically means "this item is of appropriate power for a character from level 3 on, but not before". Just as your level 3 class ability may remain useful later in the game, so can a level 3 item remain useful. The class ability might even scale to your higher level, just like the ring you mentioned scales, as you can use it for higher level weapons when these become level-appropriate for you.

Sure, but items that retain utility like this need a level of system competence to understand in order to know that making say, a 10th level character may still want to grab these even though they would have come online way sooner.

Compare that to the difference in a +2 and a +3 weapon, and it's obvious that the +3 weapon is better.

So I'm not sure how well I think the system is actually functioning.

I'm now curious about the balance levels of power in the APs, since I don't play them, don;t they usually only ever get to like 16th level tops?

Do you ever get to 9th level spells?

I like the idea of "e6 edition" where your "level" merely determines your feats (and thus character complexity) but the power balance of the game remains relatively similar.

I think however, that may be the underlying mechanism for 5e.

master_marshmallow wrote:

TriOmegaZero wrote:

master_marshmallow wrote:

It just feels arbitrary in a fantasy game.

Just like spell levels, amirite?

Honestly kinda.

Should we get rid of character levels too?

Depends on the system, but I think keeping one form of levels matters and making sure the rules make sense. If something like D&D 5th existed or there was a one-shots only kind of game where accuracy and such was bounded in a game that's designed around the e6 paradigm that might actually work. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's exactly what that playstyle is.

Item levels don't feel attached to the item, they feel arbitrary. I don't hear Doubling Rings and think "oh boy a 3rd level item!" I think it's an item designed to help me use two magical weapons, and it retains its usefulness far beyond 3rd level.

master_marshmallow wrote:

It just feels arbitrary in a fantasy game.

Just like spell levels, amirite?

Honestly kinda.

Though in my own setting, I have spell levels represented as a form of mathematical complexity, explaining magic as an exploitation of energy waves coming from a specific type of star and influencing matter at various energy levels (like the energy levels which determine the complexity of an atom).

I put a lot of effort into trying to make my own setting make sense, still doing some of the silly bits of math that no one would think to do.

master_marshmallow wrote:

Vic Ferrari wrote:

4. The "defined role' line seems to contradict a lot of what was previously stated.

Yeah, this is where all the Thanos jokes are coming from for me.

I am not aware of these, and have not seen the last Avengers film, please share, sounds amusing, I would really like to hear them.

Thanos is mostly known from the comics for the Infinity Gauntlet story, where he gets his hands on all the infinity stones and then snaps his fingers, killing half the universe.

In the film, Thanos is obsessed with being "Perfectly balanced, as all things should be."

By the end of the film, he snaps his fingers and kills half the universe-as in the book. The joke my player made was that Paizo snapped their fingers and half their customers dissipated.

The item levels made sense in Starfinder, because I could understand things like levels of security on a computer system, or levels of complexity/power on a digitally developed laser blaster.

It just feels arbitrary in a fantasy game.

1. So far this is the most complex iteration/version of D&D/PF1, so far, to me, byzantine and a very technical read. I would not introduce a new player to this system, as is.

I do find the immense volume of keywords to cause problems, because I'm stuck constantly flipping through pages and pages to find definitions of the keywords instead of being able to understand the abilities outright.

I like the idea, but the execution needs work. It feels like it was written by a programmer, and it plays like a computer program. (That might be a goal, in case they want to do a MMO again later on with this system implemented.)

2. I am not sure about that, if that means Golarian, or in general.

I never really played the APs or modules, I use my own setting because I like having more narrative control. It is easier to have more challenges that aren't invalidated by the PCs abilities at certain levels, but part of the fun for me was including those benchmarks as being the gates to what makes certain challenges 'high level' things. My favorite big ending to a campaign had the PCs using Interplanetary Teleport to get to the moon where the Lich's lair is, and needing to use spells and items to make sure they could survive in the airless, radioactive environment. They also had to fight a Lunar Dragon who guarded the entrance to the fortress. Obviously this is impossible now.

3. I would like some examples, all I am seeing is pretty much the Unchained RAE.

Retraining from Ultimate Campaign, and the Backgrounds replacing the profession skill seem to be what they're referring to here. I think. Fighters getting martial flexibility is certainly something that wasn't core.

4. The "defined role' line seems to contradict a lot of what was previously stated.

Yeah, this is where all the Thanos jokes are coming from for me. I'd totally pay for that Coppertone skin changing purple stuff and ship it to them if Jason would be willing to wear it for his inevitable Design Musings video on game balance.

5. Again, not welcoming to new players, this seems like a game for advanced players.

For sure, I've been recruiting newbies and it's getting difficult to teach them how complicated the system is. It's daunting even for advanced players thanks to layout and clutter. I noticed in the rules survey there actually is a question on removing the 'everyone gets this' stuff from the class tables and I like that.

The tables themselves feel empty to me, because I'm used to the spreadsheet laying out exactly what resources my character has so I can look at it and read it like a graph and understand what my character class gives me.

No, I'm merely picking up a discussion on something you posted. What were you expecting, that everybody will nod and move along? This is a discussion forum, not a blog with comments turned off.

You still can fix your mistake and edit that part away. C'mon, I'm trying to help you. Give me something to work with.

The fact that you're calling it a 'mistake' for me to prioritize the game over the politics is blatant flaming and yet again you are the poster attempting to derail and ruin a discussion I want to have about the content of the game.

If the politics is a discussion you want to have, start your own thread and we can discuss it there, I want to talk about the game, because like I said, bringing politics into it takes away from that as you are clearly demonstrating. Take the discussion elsewhere.

Oh look Gorbacz is trying to ruin another thread....

This shouldn't be political, it has nothing to do with politics, and giving people a licence to interject it derails conversations and ruins the experience.

My last thread got derailed and sucked into a hyperbolic crapshoot while I was at work and I got home to it being closed, let's not do that again.

In the aftermath of our efforts to get the devs talking we have a new blog with the goals of the game finally being communicated clearly to us, and they are as such:

I think the method for measuring balance is more important than the balance itself.

One of my players made the joke already that someone at Paizo snapped their fingers to create perfect balance and half their customers dissipated.

Baelor the Bard wrote:

Cyouni wrote:

Now I feel like making a dual-ax-wielding, ranged-heavy Barbarian, just to prove that it's playable without being useless (as people keep saying will happen as soon as you aren't optimal).

Lol I don't think it would be bad necessarily. Unfortunately though as Barbarian is right now it has no ranged or two-weapon options so I feel like the multi-classing you would have to do in order to pull that off would mean you wouldn't have a whole like of actual Barbarian options in your build.

Eh, I think people are vastly overestimating how much Double Slice and other fighter things are required to make a two-weapon character. I'm aware saying this is basically complete heresy on these boards, but you can just use the off-hand weapon as an agile one, so you can just start with d8s on the first attack and follow up with agile d6s. Is it slightly worse than Double Slice? Yes. Does it function? Yes. (If you were committed to multiclassing, dipping Ranger for Twin Takedown would be the only one I'd do.)

Using the hatchet as a ranged weapon (mediocre though the range may be, I committed to an axe barbarian) and getting returning on it is decent for ranged things. Bonus - since rage applies to melee weapons, it still works on thrown axes. Alternately, if it's for the level 12 playtest, you can use Spirit's Wrath as your "range".

Stat line of 16/16/14/10/10/12 at first level would be mostly acceptable. None of this is optimal, but it's all totally workable, and I'm pretty sure it would function fine in an actual game. It's certainly stronger than my last character was.

I can attest from experience that this build will not be playable. Barbarians don't get proficiency increases until level 13, so you'll be swinging at level +3 until 5th, then level +4, and the math of the game is such that you literally cannot land critical hits save for landing a nat 20.

And given the lower damage dice of your weapons, you won't feel like your character is contributing because you will be failing at your attempts more than you succeed, this is shown both in practice and in theory.

You really need to have the highest stat possible, and I mean need by its textbook definition. I've tried such builds myself a few times over, and they failed to perform in every scenario I attempted (lvl 1, 4, and 12).

When the game has such tight math behind it, the freedom of choice we think we have really is just there to pad out the length of the book.

I see this got productive. Really appreciate being accused of conspiracy theories and what not when I say that the game plays like it's intended for organized play. If you couldn't tell that I was referring to the limited options and how optimization doesn't actually destroy the encounters anymore but it's instead the assumed norm.

Hero points? Yes they can easily be dealt out for organized play. Organized play is now and will always be about rewarding out of game decisions, hence you need to buy the books to play the class/ archetype/ options.

The game as written would do fine for organized play, you can't make broken characters.

The paladin, the only class that can effectively wear heavy armor, who wears holy symbols of a select few gods, is not easily distinguishable?

I call BS

Ascalaphus wrote:

I don't think Retributive Strike should allow you to punish people for focusing on you instead of your allies; that would remove the whole "take me instead" incentive.

But I do think it needs to be more useful for non-Reach paladins. What about if it allowed you to take a Step or Stride in the direction of the triggering enemy so you can get at them? That would also make the paladin feel a bit more aggressive, because they're constantly moving towards enemies.

Except retributive strike isn't "take me instead", its "successfully hit my friends, so I can hit you back."

In fact retributive strike would work better as an anti-paladin feature because he could stand behind a wall of peasants with a pole arm and get extra strikes for attacking his "allies"

Perhaps retributive strike should be renamed peasant shield.

Bring back leadership so I can use my class feature.

On a serious note, this made me laugh audibly.