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For those also wondering, yes, that's Runelord Xanderghul on the mirage dragon for the GM Core. We've put a runelord and their dragon buddy on the previous two GM books, after all.

What are you guys going to do for the GM books of Pathfinder 7th and later edition?

Hanish seems awfully cavalier about entering into an empty shop that smells of blood, and deciding to deliver a package from someone who may have been murdered...

She looks very bow-legged. Has she been riding around too long?

I think the issue is that her feet appear to be further apart than the width of her shoulders, without anything dynamic in the pose to make it a reasonable stance to be in.

My advice: Wait until the full final rules have been released next August before converting.

According to the dictionary (and Warhammer for a slightly less authoritative example) the two are indeed both pronounced Dee-mon.

And according to Paizo's James Jacobs, it's pronounced "Day-mon", and given that it's their system...

modus0 wrote:

Jason Bulmahn wrote:

This sort of change might seem like an extra thing to learn, but it can also be seen as about 100 things you don't have to learn.

How does removing part of the spell entry, in favor of yet another keyword, equate to not having to learn 100 things?

You now don't have to read every single spell that does the exact same as every other spell multiple times to make sure it actually does the exact same. That means you don't have to learn whether each spell does something outside the ordinary because if it does it will have entries for that and if it doesn't it won't.

What's clearer for you: "this spell does half a thing on a successful save, no things on a crit save, a whole thing on a failed save and double the things on a crit failed save" or "this spell works like Fireball but it's cold damage"? Or put another way: Would you like to have a table for each spell explicitly stating whatever it doesn't do alongside whatever it does?

Only, now I need to read every spell description to find out if it does damage so that I'd know how to handle the saving throws, instead of quickly looking at the save results list in the spell's description.

And I don't know about anyone else, but I don't tend to memorize spell entries, so I'd be looking up each spell to figure out what exactly it does regardless.

For your question on what clearer, the first example. Because it's right there in the spell entry, and I don't have to bounce around the book looking up how a fireball spell works, then having to look up how basic saves work, just to understand how the spell interacts with saving throws.

This sort of change might seem like an extra thing to learn, but it can also be seen as about 100 things you don't have to learn.

How does removing part of the spell entry, in favor of yet another keyword, equate to not having to learn 100 things?

Thing is, though, that a lot of crit success and crit fail effects read "as a normal [success/failure], plus [some additional condition]." You need to have the basic success/failure before the crit versions so that the crit versions can refer back to their lesser versions.

No, they don't. There are about 200 entries with a Critical Success section, and only 15 of them don't either paraphrase, directly restate the Success section, or have their own description independent of the Success section.

Those 15 entries rather inconsistently reference the Success section, using "Per a success" (10), "As success" (3), or "As a success" (2).

My question regarding the stat generation is: What makes Elf Rogue A different stat-wise from Elf Rogue B?

Why wouldn't I use 10, 18, 16, 8, 12, 14, or 10, 18, 16, 10, 12, 12 for the stats on every Elf Rogue I create?

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

Only it seems that for the majority of entries, the Critical Success line either paraphrases or [/b]downright repeats[/b] what the Success entry states, then adds its own info.

• Success: The creature resists being banished.
  
• Critical Success: The creature resists being banished and you are stunned until the end of your next turn.

Searching the PDF gives almost 200 entries for "Critical Success", and 10 of them have "Per a success", 2 have "As a success", and 3 have "As success" in them.

That's 15 entries where the Critical Success entry references the Success entry. Not nearly enough, in my opinion, to justify listing Success first.

Wizard Weapon proficiency lists "light crossbow", which doesn't exist in the table of simple ranged weapons. There's a "crossbow", "hand crossbow", and "heavy crossbow", but no "light" crossbow.

Given the damage and Bulk values, I'm inclined to think that either the light crossbow or the hand crossbow is miss labeled.

Do you really need a summoned monster to hang around for more than 10 rounds though?

And while the Concentrate action might take up 1 of your actions, you still get 2 other actions yourself, and 2 actions for the summoned creature, effectively giving you 4 actions per round.

But the whole point of this playtest is for thousands of non-Paizo people to play through the game as it is, figure out what doesn't work, what does, what doesn't feel right, and then refine things to try getting something that pleases the greatest number of people.

So play some casters during the playtest, get some actual experience in how spellcasters work (or don't work), instead of just "theorycrafting", and then provide your feedback based on what happened in the game sessions.

The thing is, I can actually see a potential with the current system, if they divorce themselves from the idea of "balanced" races and treat the Ancestry Feats as Traits from 1st Edition.

Have dwarfs start out with their normal poison resistance and magical stunting stubborness, maybe a connection to stone. Then have the Ancestry Feats work as a way to flesh out the culture and/or heritage of said dwarf; did he come from a clan of dwarven warriors that habitually fought with giants?? Take Weapon Familiarity and Giant Bane!
Maybe he grew up in a mountain valley that was raided from time to time by duergar and orcs? Take Rock Runner and Ancestral Hatred.

That would work so much better, than the current "Evolve-into-1E-dwarf-over-17-levels" deal that they are currently going for.

Race should be a very big impact on your character, not just a difference in +2 hit points vs +5 movement speed.

So essentially placing the "biological" features of the race back in as defaults, and leave the things that could be "cultural" as Ancestry Feats/Heritage Feats?

I have to admit, I am really, really confused about why we have resonance, X times a day effects, duration tracking, and charges for magic items. Yikes! This feels like a lot of unnecessary complexity and balance redundancy to attempt to make most magic items work like they did in PF1 without spending the time to reconfigure them to a new system. I'd much rather have less magic items at first and have them balanced around not needing x times a day or charges, and then let more items trickle in in supplements.

Didn't they state that one of the reasons for Resonance was to get rid of X/day on magic items?

If it's not doing that, and PCs aren't really ever at risk of running out

Except for a particular time when my playtesters explicitly tried to see if they could get away with saving money on CLW wand spam despite being high level adventurers who could afford a better wand, and a few extreme stress test situations where I told them "This is the only fight today. Nova your heart out," my playtest group never really hit hard against the resonance caps, even the ones with lower Charisma.

, then what exactly is Resonance good for?

I'm not exactly keen on weapon and armor magic properties being "Runes", though the idea of being able to swap out properties or move them to a better weapon is nice. No need to carry an axiomatic holy weapon and an anarchic holy weapon in case of demon or devil fights, just one weapon with a holy rune, and spare axiomatic and anarchic runes to use as needed.

No, you've got two different instances of the spell, not one more powerful instance.

What it would do is require anyone within the area of overlap to make two Reflex saves for each spell, which would slightly increase the chances of them failing.

Another thing: It seems p.16/17 contradicts p.555 in terms of intelligence and skill points. P.16/17 indicates int does NOT grant you skill points for previous levels, only for levels you gain with your new int score.

Where are you getting that interpretation from?

P. 17 states only that your Int modifier affects the number of skill points gained each level.

It does not state that you don't retroactively gain skill points.

I seem to recall it being pointed out somewhere during the beta that the intent was to have Int bonuses apply skill points retroactively, particularly to ease the creation of high-level NPCs, like wizards, who would have their Int changing.