pauljathome's page

I'll give my usual warning. Be very aware that you ARE making the game more random and deadly (that is kinda the whole point) as, in the long run, these things affect PCs at least as much as NPCs.

Make sure the players are happy with these and don't force them on unwilling players. Some players (eg, me) hate things like this with a fiery passion and using gentle (or ungentle) persuasion will likely just leave them unhappy.

That said, if your group is ok with the extra randomness and deadliness, go for it.

And what conclusion do you want us to infer from that?

We're screwed

Whatever the outcome of the last few years, plus the next 10... is... it won't be obvious what it means for another 30-40 years.

I mostly agree with you but I don't think that you're right with that 30-40 years.

I think in this case that we will know within a decade (and perhaps in significantly less time) whether or not there is actually enough political will to make the hard and major systemic changes that are required (absent miracle tech) if we're to stay below 2C (Unfortunately, I agree with QB that we've already realistically missed any chance at staying below 1.5C). And to stop the massive OTHER environmental issues that are NOT directly linked to Global Warming. Basically, the current movement grows and expands and changes the way we think or it doesn't. If it doesn't, then we're screwed. This really IS our last chance to voluntarily change

If you mean that it will take 30-40 years to determine whether those changes we DO make were actually sufficient to accomplish what we wanted then you're partly right. We'll know in less time than that if we've failed, but I agree it will take that long to know that we've succeeded

Basically, I'm HOPING that in 30-40 years we still won't know :-). That means we won't yet have failed and that is the best result possible right now :-(.

I spent most of today at Toronto's Climate Strike. Us old farts were invited this time :-).

I'm a long, long, long way from optimistic but an event like this makes me just a little bit less pessimistic.

If (and it's a HUGE if) young people actually get off their arses and vote in our upcoming (Oct) election it could make a HUGE difference. Like most countries our election turnout, especially amongst the young, tends to suck and most races are actually fairly close. Young people turning out in huge numbers could, theoretically, make quite the difference.

Of course, likely nothing will change. But, maybe, just maybe the Green or NDP parties will make inroads ( NDP is our left wing party). Not enough to actually win, but enough to have SOME influence on the agenda

pauljathome wrote:

WatersLethe wrote:

Hero Lab definitely beats Pathbuilder in terms of house rules and homebrew. Can't add bonus feats in Pathbuilder as far as I can tell.

Can you do this in HLO? One of the major complaints I've seen is that HLO is FAR less customizable than HLC.

Note - this is a genuine question. As noted above, I can't even try out the demo of HLO right now

The Permanent Added Abilities section of HLO lets you add absolutely anything that already exists to a character, so you can add all the appropriate bonus feats there. It's been great on the bonus feat front. It also lets you add class abilities or features, if you wanted to hodge podge some stuff.

What you can't add is wholly new feats or mechanics, unless you don't mind just writing a note somewhere.

Thanks for answering.

In HLC I fairly often want to add 1 to my AC, or add another feat, or add 2 to a skill, or the like. Fairly arbitrary math additions. Because of a house rule or a workaround when I want to use a feat/spell/trait/whatever from a source that I don't own the herolab file for.

Can I do this in HLO?

Hero Lab definitely beats Pathbuilder in terms of house rules and homebrew. Can't add bonus feats in Pathbuilder as far as I can tell.

Can you do this in HLO? One of the major complaints I've seen is that HLO is FAR less customizable than HLC.

Note - this is a genuine question. As noted above, I can't even try out the demo of HLO right now

Yeah but I don't think my holy avenger wants to fight undead. At least it grumbles each time I tell it "You need to keep guard on my closet because the Demi-plane of Dread keeps seeping in there..."

I think you need a sword of bane dust bunnies of DOOM for the closet. At least, that is what I need for MY closet

This thread got me curious (I'm a HLC user but not a HLO user) so I went over to the HL forums. Seems like people here are NOT the only unhappy ones. Even on their own site (which I'd expect to be mostly populated by mostly happy customers) there were a fair few unhappy people.

I tried a demo of HLO when it first went public and that seems to stop me from downloading a demo version again. I suspect I could call them and get that fixed but really doesn't seem worth the bother.

Yay Pathbuilder :-)

pauljathome wrote:

Quark Blast wrote:

pauljathome wrote:

...Still mostly glad that I'll be dead before things REALLY hit the fan, though.

There's still hope! We might have a nuclear war before then.

:D

I'm holding out for The Zombie Apocalypse, myself

I'd honestly prefer a regular divinely inspired one. Then I could use my holy avenger more.

Well, pretty much all versions of the Zombie Apocalypse are pretty darn magical in nature. Divinely inspired is as good a justification as any.

pauljathome wrote:

...Still mostly glad that I'll be dead before things REALLY hit the fan, though.

There's still hope! We might have a nuclear war before then.

:D

I'm holding out for The Zombie Apocalypse, myself

It depends on the people I'm playing with.

Both google and discord have occassional issues with some players. In both cases, I've had games move from one to the other (and sometimes to yet another talk tool) until we found one working on all players computers.

thejeff wrote:

It's not a tax that countries pay, it's a tax that people/companies pay to their governments when buying power. It's levied in whatever currency the carbon based power is purchased in. Likewise it's paid to whatever country to purchase is made in. If Google runs a server farm in the US, it pays there for the energy to run that server farm. If it runs one in Botswana, it pays there. It's done as a percentage, so countries with lower purchasing power will pay less, since they will use less power.

Mechanically, it's relatively simple, the problems are political (...)

I understand that consumers and companies are supposed to pay the tax, but I can guarantee you that it is absolutely NOT simple.

It's definitely not simple. But I think you're actually agreeing with the Jeff. The problems are political.

They're admittedly HUGE. But the Montreal Protocol does show that sometimes it IS possible to get international buy in when the stakes are high enough.

And the stakes are pretty darn high.

Practically, you only really need buy in from the major economies/powers. They have (collectively) enough clout to more or less force the rest of the world to go along.

I'm a very long way from optimistic but some recent developments with young people starting to mobilize make me very slightly less pessimistic than I was.

Still mostly glad that I'll be dead before things REALLY hit the fan, though.

pauljathome wrote:

But does PF2 have the same distribution as PF1?

Given that high level characters are less powerful than in PF1 an argument could be made that the numbers have shifted substantially. To pick numbers out of my posterior, a PF2 L20 is arguably about as powerful as a PF1 L12 or so. So maybe there are now as many L20s as there were L12's

For the record, and not to get into a big debate, I think this is factually wrong. Really optimized level 20s are no longer vastly more powerful than other level 20s, but I think that at the same level of optimization, level actually matters a lot more. A 20th level character is much more likely to kill four 16th level ones in PF2 than they ever were in PF1.

You may well be right. I was thinking more along the lines of a level 20 wizard or druid vs a city or an army of low level fighters.

But it's moot at this point. James Jacobs rather definitively addressed my point :-). The level distribution is the same in PF2 as PF1. I'm not stupid enough to argue the point with him :-):-):-)

But does PF2 have the same distribution as PF1?

Given that high level characters are less powerful than in PF1 an argument could be made that the numbers have shifted substantially. To pick numbers out of my posterior, a PF2 L20 is arguably about as powerful as a PF1 L12 or so. So maybe there are now as many L20s as there were L12's

I realize that "less powerful" argument primarily applies to spellcasters. But even non spell casters are relatively less powerful than the twinked out monstrosities that were possible in late PF1 with enough system mastery.

Note - Hopefully this won't move into an argument as to how much less powerful PF2 are than late optimized PF1. My point (which I think most would agree with) is that they ARE less powerful. The amount doesn't really matter all that much.

I'm running a Crimson Throne campaign and we considered switching. Even though its using only CORE+ (a fair bit of plus, admittedly, but nearly all is Paizo) rules we all decided that it just wasn't worth the hassle to switch

We did decide that the NEXT campaign will likely be PF2, assuming PF2 still seems like a good game a year or so from now.

As for Dr. Palmer's presentation. Well, he essentially echoes the many salient points I have made regarding the non-computability of our global climate in the year 2100 using our current data and models.
.

I watched the first half of that and no, he most certainly did NOT agree with you. In fact, he pretty explicitly had the opposite opinion to what I think you have (although you are so bad at expressing yourself that I admit I'm not at all sure I understand your position).

. The video on the economic side of getting CO2 emissions under control (Dr. Nordhause) made several excellent points. A few, but not all, are:

Regulating carbon with crazy local/national/international laws is a total ###### waste of effort, that is ofttimes even counter productive.

And I watched all of this. It was far too short and had assertions with little actual evidence. I agree that he thought a much higher carbon tax was the way to go and that he thought current measures grossly inadequate. But he did NOT say useless or counter productive

pauljathome wrote:

Agreed, but it is also WORSE than in PF1 in one significant respect. As far as i can see you aren't pulled adjacent so given that you're grabbed by a creature with reach the fighter (assuming no reach weapon which is the case for pregens) can't even strike back.

Core Rulebook pg. 475 wrote:

Sometimes part of a creature extends beyond its space, such as if a giant octopus is grabbing you with its tentacles. In that case, the GM will usually allow attacking the extended portion, even if you can’t reach the main creature.

I missed that. Thanks.

Too many versions of D&D floating in my head, all with fairly minor (but quite significant) differences. I'm an old fart, its hard to keep track of which is which :-(

Give it a fair chance!

I am really trying to! One reason that I post has been to see if people can convince me that I'm wrong :-). Or to identify mistakes that have been made.

But I also do realize that not all games are right for all people. And, unfortunately, its becoming quite likely that PF2 (at least PFS2) is just not for me. I have NOT yet made that decision but I'm definitely headed in that direction.

Oh, and I AM giving it a fair chance. Played every PFS scenario out there so far, ran most of them. Played under a variety of GMs.

Sorry that I'm coming across as quite negative. Not my intent although I definitely see how I'm coming across that way.

Also, for what its worth, I'm NOT saying that PF2 is a bad game. I am saying that I'm not sure its the game for me, which is a very different statement.

pauljathome wrote:

We TPKed last night (later reversed by GM fiat for reasons that I found unconvincing).

The Black Pudding is just brutal.

I'm not going to quote all of your response but I will reply to the gist of it,

I totally agree that we could have done some things better. Both the GM and players made some mistakes that contributed to the TPK.

But in an introductory scenario for a brand new game system I think it is just too hard. One can EXPECT the GM and Players to make mistakes. An introductory scenario shouldn't be so difficult that a failure to play smart (by looking for information on oozes BEFORE going in) combined with a bit of bad luck ends up in a TPK.

I think to some degree the adventure is intended to shake you of PF1 railroad tracks. It takes an action to do Knowledge checks. The fighter can do that check, Valeros has Occultism. But it would stop him from moving forward and (disastrously!) using Double Slice. Most peoples' instinct is not to "waste" an action on knowledge and pile on the damage. This is a lesson worth learning!

I wasn't playing Valeros. I don't think that it even occurred to the player that Occultism would let him know something about oozes. Maybe the GM should have hinted.

Note that being grabbed isn't quite as bad as it was in PF1.

Agreed, but it is also WORSE than in PF1 in one significant respect. As far as i can see you aren't pulled adjacent so given that you're grabbed by a creature with reach the fighter (assuming no reach weapon which is the case for pregens) can't even strike back.

Well I guess again the scenario works to teach a lesson: always talk about your healing strategy when mustering the party.

It was an online game. The player who was going to play Kyra didn't show up. We briefly discussed somebody swapping into playing Kyra but it was pointed out that PF2 was designed to make the cleric no longer essential. So we believed the hype and nobody chose to bite the bullet and play Kyra.

Our mistake I guess. The lesson is to not believe Paizo? Yes, I know this is largely unfair. It IS true that other characters can take on the healing role. Just none of the pregens. But is it really good introductory adventure design to make the cleric so crucial a character? I'm going to say no.

At this point you're being a bit sour grapes about it.

Not really, no. In my experience a very large number of new players take quite badly to character death, especially to what seems like unfair character death.

As to me, I didn't really mind the TPK per se (the chronicle was attached to a brand new character. No way I'm risking a real character on a Paizo pregen only scenario :-) :-)). One of my biggest concerns with PF2 is how limited and expensive knowledge skills are. And how crucial they seem to be. This scenario accentuated that concern. Big time.

I've got a knowledge monkey character. I'm getting very close to deciding that he is the only character I'll ever play in PFS because that role is so crucial and, in PFS, you can't rely on the other players.

I stand by my original position. This is too hard FOR AN INTRODUCTORY PREGEN ONLY ADVENTURE. Its acceptably hard with player built characters, its probably even going to be acceptable for pregens a year from now when the players and GM know all the rules. But it is too unforgiving for right now when the GMs and players are all making substantial mistakes.

As I said, the GM thought that he'd made enough mistakes that he retconned the TPK. Now that I know that he oops'd on the grab I almost agree with him. But mistakes like that are all but inevitable at this stage (I'm most certainly not blaming him in any way).

It has regular Grab not Improved Grab. That means after an attack that hits, it can spend an action to grab. Improved Grab makes it a free action.

You're right. GM got it wrong (as did I when I looked up the monster) and it actually would have made a difference in the fight. I feel less bad for the armwaved "you didn't actually die"

But man is PF2 failing the "simpler" goal. It's just as complicated as PF1, just in different places. If I look up a monster and see an action that includes grab I shouldn't have to look up every word in its attack line. One of the stated purposes of the 1,2,3 action icons was to reduce lookup.

I know, learning curve. But when EVERYBODY at a table misses something it's pretty good evidence that things aren't being explained well.

Sorry for being so negative. Part of the problem is that I WANT to like this game, I'm just finding it hard to. I keep stumbling over several issues that really bug me.

Grab takes an action,

I don't think that is correct. I think it automatically grabs on an attack.

We TPKed last night (later reversed by GM fiat for reasons that I found unconvincing).

The Black Pudding is just brutal. We knew we were fighting oozes but it never occurred to us that we'd need to go get better weapons. So, maybe our bad. But this is an INTRODUCTORY scenario and we were all concentrating on learning the rules, our characters, etc. And we've all been well trained to stay on the obvious railroad tracks in PFS. I guess a TPK will learn us :-)

An all but automatic grab on a creature with reach is just brutal. The check to get out isn't too bad but that takes 1 action, getting in reach takes a second, allowing only one hit. Which then splits the ooze. What happened to us seems quite likely. A character got grabbed early so running away was no longer a great option (you're leaving a character to die)

The scenario seems to assume that the wizard (who may or may not be along, of course) will make a knowledge check before the party splits the ooze into several component parts. Never happened since the wizard was slow and we'd already split the ooze into too many parts to handle by the time his initiative came up.

This would be hard with level 5 characters made by players. With pregens it really is over the top in how difficult it is. The pudding is fairly likely to crit whoever he hits and, depending on which character that is, fairly likely to put him unconscious in a single round (a full round attack starting with a crit does 6d8+28+6d6 damage, or 75 pts of damage on average).

And only one of the Pregens has in battle healing. We made the fatal mistake of not choosing to bring Kyra. Yes, PF2 has all sorts of ways to make a cleric no longer essential. Except none of the pregens had them.

This scenario brought me one step closer to deciding that PFS2 isn't for me (a lot of the issues I'm seeing can be handled by a decent GM. Except in PFS where GMs don't have the freedom to be decent :-().

If it was my first exposure to PFS2 it would definitely have been my last. As it is, it may well be my last.

You could do the same with an Eldritch guardian fighter with a safe familiar. If you started with a raven or thrush it could be giving orders the whole time.

Mostly. But the advantage of the Courtly Hunter is that the cat is far more viable in combat since it starts as a leopard with adjustments (more hit points, better to hit, etc). The Courtly hunter also ends up with WAY more skill points to play with. And the hunter spells can be used to buff the cat as well.

Also there isn't the temptation (which there would be, at least for me) with the fighter to actually make the fighter effective as well. With my cat, the human is very definitely just "staff" and almost a NPC (he is more likely to aid the cat or provide a flank than do anything else).

I'm really proud of my cat character. NOT catfolk, cat.

Mechanically, he's a Courtly Hunter with a leopard animal companion. Taken the Eye for Talent human trait and the huntmaster feat.

Comes on line at level 2.

Mechanically, we have a human with a leopard animal companion who can be transformed into a cat.

But I've totally flipped the flavour. The main character is an intelligent cat (I put the stat boost from Eye for Talent into Intelligence) who has a human servant (you need somebody with opposable thumbs, after all).

With an agile amulet (yes, it takes extra ring slot) the cat is even effective in combat (at level 3 or so). The hunter has high intelligence so the cat has LOTS of skills as well.

Its hilarious in play.

The heck with catfolk, I get to play a CAT

Its even totally PFS legal (well, the reflavouring is strictly speaking illegal but locally I'm not going to find a GM who objects. And if I do the character just becomes an insane loon who is convinced that he is the servant of a sentient cat which IS legal :-) :-)).

The exact same concept can be done with lots of other animals, of course. But I just wanted to play a cat :-) :-) :-)

Game balance is a myth since it cannot account for relative issues such as player/GM skill, objectiveness, proliferation, etc. Most min/max issues are not due to rules balance, but to rules mastery. Within hours of the CRB being released, we already has started to identify optimized options. That doesn't mean the CRB is unbalanced.

Fortunately Paizo seems to disagree with you. One of the stated goals for PF2 was to achieve better balance between classes and characters, to reduce the effect of character optimization and rules mastery.

Can perfect game balance be achieved? Of course not. Can a game be a lot more balanced than PF1 was? Absolutely. And if PF2 doesn't end up far more balanced and far more resistant to character optimization than PF1 I will certainly be very disappointed. And surprised. PF2 Core is considerably more balanced and resistant to character optimization than was PF1

How fast are they at updating it normally based on PF1 societies past?

I plan to only play Society as that is what the groups in my area plays. If I can't use the books I don't see the reason to buy them right away and by then they will be on AoN. If that happens than I probably will only buy a book when I plan on using an option from that book and its already been updated to be usable.

A wise choice.

In PF1 there was often a gap of about 6 months between a product being released and sanctioned. Hopefully they'll do better in PF2 with a slightly less bruising schedule but they do seem to be extremely busy right now so I'm not holding my breath.

Nor am I buying anything that isn't legal.

It does not get your penalty UNLESS it is a mount

You can get it through multiclassing into a bard. I'd be very tempted as a wizard.

pauljathome wrote:

I had to go to the forums where some NON employee pointed me at a FAQ that had no apparent link to it.

It is linked from the company’s home page under the support menu.

Fine. I looked for it for at least a couple of minutes and couldn't find it.

Support is NOT where I go to find fundamental pricing information on a product. It really isn't

For those of you bemoaning the loss of the “good old days” when players ruled the roost and GMs had no room for trust to be placed in them, I present the following evidence:

I completely agree with the main thrust of your argument but feel compelled to point out that at the moment its WAY too early to know the long term effects of the new paradigm.

Right now PF2 is "the new shiney" and people are interested in it for that reason. That will fade.

While I hope that the net effect of the new paradigm will be positive I can't help but think that it as at least plausible that it will be negative.

Its certainly all but guaranteed that table variation will increase. Take this thread as an example. There is a considerable divergence of opinion on what should be given out on a success. It is even up to the GM whether rolls will be secret or not which will have a very significant effect on how much critical fumbles affect things (I'm firmly of the belief that human beings can NOT ignore knowledge they have regardless of how much they try).

That increased table variation has risks. Bad GMs being even worse, groups splitting into subsets of like minded individuals, etc.

I'm NOT prophesying Doom and Gloom. I'm saying we have to wait awhile to see how it all shakes out. Like just about every major change, there will be both good and bad long term effects.

Starting with a 16 as your highest stat makes your ability modifiers flat out higher at levels 5-9, and 15-19. Your main stat will only be lower at levels 1-4, 10-14, and 20.

Uh, that is absolutely NOT true. There is no reason that the person with a stat of 18 at level 1 HAS to raise that stat at level 5.

Unless I was VERY confident that the game was going to spend a substantial amount of time at level 20 I'd NEVER raise my characters stat past 20. Just not enough benefit.

And I'd have to be reasonably confident of getting to level 10 before I'd raise a stat to 19. In my experience campaigns only rarely get to level 10.

I don't agree that the rules inherently give that impression. They clearly gave you that impression, but they gave me quite the opposite one, so I think the actual text is more ambiguous than that in what impression it grants.

But I'm clearly not the only one who got that impression. My GM (assuming that I'm right that he is NOT an arsehat) got a similar impression, several other people in this thread seem to have gotten that impression.

You (and others) got a different impression.

I do think that this means that, at the least, the rules should have been clearer in their intent.

The rules do not support that. See my post above from the Bestiary that Common creatures are “generally known”.

I agree with you but (there is always a but :-))

on a quick read, at least, the rules DO seem to somewhat imply that the GM be a bit of a hard ass on things. And the rules that act against that impression are scattered and easy to miss.

There have been several people who, in good faith, got that impression from reading the rules.

AFTER reading this thread I agree that the impression is stronger than what the rules actually state. But, players and GMs read 600 page books quickly and so that first impression is important.

When you combine that with the undeniable fact (admitted by just about everybody) that, by design, the characters get less information than PF1 for more effort AND that information is sometimes flat out false you do sort of get a multiple whammy.

I'm now much more hopeful than I was that this is at least partially an issue with switching to a new game and "soon" best practices will percolate into the community and so many of the issues that I was seeing will go away.

I AM still somewhat concerned how high level play will go when there are a dozen or more very significant things to know about a monster. But I'm certainly willing to wait and see how it ACTUALLY plays out.

pauljathome wrote:

Well, it probably beats the MASSIVE orphanage that used to be run by the gnomes. The one that turned out 90+% of paladins.

Paladins of Shelyn, of Iomedae, of Irori, of Abadar. Even, rumours hold, a long time ago Paladins of Asmodeus. It doesn't matter. ALL came from that orphanage

What is this a reference to? Fey foundling ?

Yup. At least around here and online its incredibly popular for paladins. 90% feels about right as an estimate

I would consider any GM telling me that learning the alignment of goblins or that they speak goblin was a useful piece of information worthy of my action was gaslighting me to intentionally make the rules seem unplayable.

I actually disagree. Back in PF1, my diplomancers would OFTEN ask for the "ecology" information on a creature first. The stuff that says their alignment, motivations, etc. I figure its what she'd actually know PLUS it often gave me insight on how to possibly make a deal with the creature (she ALWAYS tried to stop just about EVERYTHING non violently if that was a possibility AND the players were ok with not having a fight).

But I admit that is an edge case.

The more I think about it the more I think that the player being able to ask the question is the one really important thing I want in PF2.

It would really suck to build a ranger scout only to have your primary contribution to the party in exploration mode be overshadowed by someone’s cat.

People can rule it that way but consider the impact on other character roles before you rush to that decision.

Agreed.

Niche protection IS important.

Well, it probably beats the MASSIVE orphanage that used to be run by the gnomes. The one that turned out 90+% of paladins.

Paladins of Shelyn, of Iomedae, of Irori, of Abadar. Even, rumours hold, a long time ago Paladins of Asmodeus. It doesn't matter. ALL came from that orphanage

That does seem excessive in exploration mode (makes perfect sense in encounter mode).

I mean, I know my familiar was a cat but even cats have an attention span greater than 6 seconds :-):-)

It's not unprecedented, compare to the Ancient-Blooded Dwarf.

True enough. They're pretty comparable. I take that objection back.

Um, so they get +1 (or +2) saves vs magic once a round?

Wow.

And I REALLY hope that there is some actual restriction on their being casters (or, at least, wizards) because otherwise I expect to see many, many PCs who are the "exception that proves the rule"

Edit: In fairness, if they really can't play spellcasters then most martials have other things to do with reactions. Still seems quite powerful to me, though

To be clear, I am both saying that the action does provide a useful amount of information in PF2 AND that I am happy that it doesn't not provide as much information in PF1, which by the late stages was almost at a point where characters were walking encyclopedias on any threat they may face. It became simply a matter of spinning the damage type wheel and destroying the latest threat with impunity.

Those are not mutually exclusive positions.

This crossed with my other reply and more or less answers it.

I actually agree with you about how silly things got at mid to high tiers. I agree that some mystery should remain.

But I also think a character needs to reliably be able to choose tactics. I think the ability to ask questions (or at least indicate what information is key) is crucial both in game terms and for versimilitude. My fire blaster is going to prioritize knowing different stuff than my diplomancer or my enchanter.

Thanks again for the conversation (and thanks to others).

One thing I just realized, I'm still at least partially in the mind set that combats have to end quickly or you're dead. PF2 has more time to experiment in combat. I know that but haven't fully internalized it yet.

Behavior which, again, you describe specifically as adversarial in PF2 and specifically as relying on a benevolent houserule in PF1.
.

I'm getting tired of repeating myself, but I've said at least 3 times now that the behaviour was NOT adversarial but it was behaviour that gave the appearance of being adversarial to me.

I prefer the term interpretation to house rule since the rules don't say one way or the other. And it's one that, at least locally and online, seems universal.

I have only run 6 tables so far but from that limited game play experience I can say that the tables who took an action to recall info did far better in their encounters than those who didn't, so barring an alternative ready of how it works, it seems to be quite effective.

Fair enough. It just hasn't seemed that way to me (from both sides of the table). But hopefully this is at least partially a YMMV

2 questions.

1) did they do as much better as they would in PF1? I know, it's hard to answer but I'd appreciate your gut reaction.

2) what kind of information did you give out on a success? Either hypothetically or from memory, what would you reveal about a centipede swarm?

I already know from above that you agree that I should have gotten for free the fact that disrupt undeads did extra damage to zombies when I actually used it on a zombie.

pauljathome wrote:

Uh, no.

1) PF2 states unequivocally that the GM decides what information to give. PF1 leaves it open and that seems to have been largely interpreted as player asks

Where does it say that? It's not in text I quoted or the text of Recall Knowledge.

Page 506 in identifying creatures. Unequivocal may be slightly strong but "learns one of its best known attributes" seems to very strongly imply to me that the GM decides

As I've said several times, a considerable part of my problem is getting less information. I don't really care whether or not that is by design, I don't like it. One piece of information per action (with harder DCs to get more) is something I dislike. A lot. Compounded with false information I like it even less.

And yes, I'm aware that not playing PF2 is an option. It's one I'm trying to NOT take at the moment.

Yes I think it is rampant pessimism to expect this will turn out worse.

Uh, it seems a little unfair to dismiss what I've actually seen occur as "rampant pessimism". I'll note that so far NOBODY on this thread has replied with "in my experience this isn't happening. I've seen characters gain as much information as in PF1".

You seem to think this lack of knowledge is a GOOD thing. Which is a whole different argument than saying it's not a thing

Beyond only getting more info on a crit (rather than for every 5 points), and making more explicit that the initial piece should be fundamental to the creature (but potentially really useful...like both regeneration and weakness on a Troll), that actually reads almost identically in terms of what you get.

.

Uh, no.

1) PF2 states unequivocally that the GM decides what information to give. PF1 leaves it open and that seems to have been largely interpreted as player asks

2) in PF 1 the fairly standard wizard has a +9 at level 1, rolling against a DC of say 13 for a CR 3 creature. So gets about 2 pieces of information on average. For no action

3) In PF2 the wizard has a +7 IF it is an int based skill. Vs a DC of say 16 for a CR 2 monster. Ignoring crit fails, that averages to LESS than 1 piece of information. For an action. With a chance of getting a wrong answer so the information is inherently unreliable

4) in PF1 it is reasonably easy to build knowledge monkeys so they're fairly common in PFS. You'll often get multiple people rolling. In PF2 it's the rare non bard character who is good at most knowledge skills so multiple people with good rolls become rare. And lots rolling with low stats yields crit fails a lot of the time.

And the spread in numbers becomes (by design) much bigger in PF1 as characters level up. Masterwork tools, stat items, etc etc. High level characters learn a LOT. Which, given the numbers of abilities of the things they face is a GOOD thing.

Those aggregrate into a pretty massive difference.

pauljathome wrote:

Critical miss effects would very, very significantly affect the game and not, imo, in a good way.

I would see it more as, if the crit fail deck is used (because yes, it's a real product already announced to come in the coming months), it would be a deterrent to use these attacks

So you agree that it would very significantly affect the game :-) :-).

I guess that it WOULD weaken those pesky overpowered martials and help the grossly underpowered magic users :-) :-).

I'll pass. Learning one version of PF2 at a time seems quite sufficient to me.

pauljathome wrote:

I'm certainly NOT blaming any GMs.

Why not? Your various examples clearly describe a GM behaving in an adversarial, anti-player fashion, completely irrespective of the game rules.

To not put the responsibility for someone's actions on the person performing those actions is very strange.

As I said above (and others did too) because right now we're ALL learning the system. I know that I, personally, am running things far more in what I think to be a RAW style than I normally do because I'm trying to learn what the rules actually are before changing them.

And because I most certainly did NOT get a "Ha ha, I'm the GM and I'm in POWER" vibe from the GM. I didn't think he was trying to be adversarial or anti player, I thought that he was interpreting the rules the way he thought they were while frantically trying to remember what the rules actually were while running a fun game.

In other words, I think that he deserves a lot of slack right now. As do we all

For those who may be interested, I split out my issues with knowledge checks into its own thread

I apologize for partly derailing this one. If you want to comment on knowledge checks in PF2 that is probably a good place to go

It’s not new to this system. I don’t believe it will be worse in this system once GMs get more comfortable with the new rules and the culture we create around them.

Unfortunately, I think that it WILL be worse. I think the rules encourage this to some extent.

I'm very hopeful that it won't be MUCH worse and it won't be at all worse with many GMs but I think it will be worse.

And, even with the best of GMs, it is absolutely true that by the rules one is going to get a lot less information when spending an action than one got in PF1 for free (no taking 10, the math is a LOT tighter and skills actively lower, no getting more information the higher you roll).

Dubious knowledge DOES have the potential of helping a fair bit. Its pretty mandatory for any character who wants to be a knowledge monkey. Which I hate because it, inherently, raises huge Metagame issues (I, the player, will likely know far, far more than 50% of the time which information is right and which is wrong)

If playing a Fighter with a +2 in their main stat isn't viable then I guess all other martials are as well, since that's exactly how accurate they are with a +4.

As others have stated, a fighter is quite viable with a Str of 14. It loses far less from a lower stat than others do.

However, I admit that I run into a different issue.

I'm finding it very hard to think of a character that I'd build as a Str 14 fighter (as in class fighter, NOT as in English language fighter). Basically, unless my goal was to play a character who was VERY accurate why on earth would I play a fighter?

Note, I'm NOT trying to call badwrongfun. Tastes vary. But I just find the concept alien to me. If I wanted, say, a skill monkey I'd be playing a rogue. Or if I was going for social stuff a bard. Or a cleric if I wanted to heal. Or (well, you get the picture).

If I really wanted something like their attack of opportunity I'd dip into fighter as a multiclass.

PF2 (at least at the moment, I'm sure this will change) Silo's things a bit too much for my taste. And the fighters silo (to me, at least) is pretty much "Best at hitting things with weapons". So, why on earth would I play a fighter unless my character concept included (NOT restricted to any longer, but included) "Really good at hitting things with weapons"