thejeff's page

thejeff wrote:

graystone wrote:

HammerJack wrote:

The rules also tell you that Unique doesn't apply to the DC to recall about the general creature type.

It does say something like that in one of the books [Gamemastery]: it notes it's Unique for "discern specific information about" a Unique NPC but when "encountering" such an NPC, their Ancestry follows the rarity for that Ancestry.

This means that if you're trying to recall if an NPC is an orc, it's a Unique DC, but if you mean them, it's a Common DC.

Let's be honest; if this is something players/DM's are expected to know, it should be spelled out in a Main core book.

I assume that would apply to level as well. A high level unique orc shouldn't just be treated as common to know things about orcs, but you should also be rolling against the base Orc DC, not the one boosted for this individual's level.

I don't agree as ancestries have abilities [feats] that they get from levels. A level 1 DC can't tell you about a high level unique orcs Spell Devourer.

That's fair, I guess, but you should be able to get the basics of the ancestry.

PC style ancestries are weird anyway, since unless you know something about the individual, you wouldn't know which feats they'd taken

HammerJack wrote:

The rules also tell you that Unique doesn't apply to the DC to recall about the general creature type.

It does say something like that in one of the books [Gamemastery]: it notes it's Unique for "discern specific information about" a Unique NPC but when "encountering" such an NPC, their Ancestry follows the rarity for that Ancestry.

This means that if you're trying to recall if an NPC is an orc, it's a Unique DC, but if you mean them, it's a Common DC.

Let's be honest; if this is something players/DM's are expected to know, it should be spelled out in a Main core book.

I assume that would apply to level as well. A high level unique orc shouldn't just be treated as common to know things about orcs, but you should also be rolling against the base Orc DC, not the one boosted for this individual's level.

Unicore wrote:

Actually, thinking about it again, there is no way to jump away between targeting and the attack roll. Those are purely mechanical steps that don't exist in world at all.

This is untrue though. People wielding weapons absolutely do target and do hand-eye actions before successfully connecting, and it is absolutely the case that victims can react to that by moving while/in the midst of that hand-eye action taking place.

Targets can start to move in the midst of that hand-eye action taking place. It's the weirdness of the turn-based action system that lets them pause the swing while they simply walk out of range - potentially up to their full movement.

And meanwhile, if the attacker has Reactive Strike, they can get an attack in before the target gets away, before finishing their original strike that's now doomed to miss.

The trigger being valid, and therefore the strat, are ultimately GM fiat.

As far as I can tell, it's not powerful, let alone broken. Any encounter that could be default killed with this seems like it could also easily be default killed by other means. Even the ogre warrior has javelins handy.

But what's all this about Ready:Strike not working against an opponent that leaves your reach? For movement based reactions, doesn't the reaction occur before the target makes it out of the square?

I think the theory is that Reactive Strike works after they leave your reach, but allows you to hit them anyway. You can't duplicate that with a simple Ready:Strike, since once they've moved away you can't hit them. You wouldn't really want to duplicate it though - simply Ready to Strike when they start to move.

My final fight wound up kind of anti-climatic, thanks to a couple of crits and the fighter quickly getting in next to Nakhazarin and making it impossible for her to cast safely.

Then they went and nearly got slaughtered by the ghost in the scriptorium because they couldn't roll anything but minimum damage, which got reduced to almost nothing. :)

We've stalled another week on account of players having to miss and not wanting to do this fight understrength.

I do think they've got a decent chance of winning, but if they do TPK, I'll have Nakhazarin curse any who don't actually die in the fight. Keep them unconscious and locked up. Cause she's going to be basically the only ghoul left, which isn't good for her cult worship.
Then have Augrael sneak in and free them while she's out looking for corpses (and other victims to turn into ghouls to help her out.)

Leaves them alive, but badly cursed and needing to find a quick way to deal with that.

Then when they return (assuming they wind up taking some time to deal with the curses), they'll find she's turned the rest of the mitflits they'd allied with into ghouls to help her collect more bodies.

But in general, I think I'm going to have to lighten up a bit on the baddies reacting. Maybe still have them react intelligently (if not necessarily brilliantly) after PCs retreat for a day, but just cut down on numbers.

So my group here made a pretty successful first venture into the ghoul's section of the library, clearing out the main hallway, the reading room and the cultists south of that before investigating the side corridor and running into Aller Rosk, who chewed them up before they managed to take him down. So they retreated to Otari to rest and recover (and get a case of Ghoul Whispers taken care of).

The question for me as GM was then: What are the rest of the ghouls doing to get ready for the invaders who'd slaughtered half of them to return? I couldn't see them just sitting in their assigned rooms waiting to be killed. I had the group in the room near Rosk's watching in the northern crook of the main library hall for the party to return, along with one of the Cultists from C38. The other Cultist there was ready to join the main group in C33. And then of course Nakhazarin in the next room.

When the party returned the next day things went well enough at first: The party handled the first group pretty easily, but one ghoul had the chance to pound on the door to be sure those in the next room were alerted. Knowing that, they only took one round to Battle Medicine up a couple of the wounded and burst in. This fight didn't go quite as well, thanks mostly to some really bad saves against a Harm and critically against a Command to "Run". Thanks to unlucky positioning, that led to our Champion fleeing the last Cultist into the Temple, bringing Nakhazarin into the fight.
Which is basically where we left it. One Cultist left, much of the party badly wounded and up against a pretty powerful enemy.

This pretty clearly violated PF2's encounter design, because it essentially strung a whole bunch of tough encounters together with no chance to rest, but it's hard for me to see what else could be done to keep any sense of verisimilitude. I've always kind of had this problem running any kind of "attack the enemy stronghold" without bringing too many encounters down on the PCs at once and PF2's tight math and assumptions about always expecting PCs to be fully healed between encounters makes that even worse, I think.

Any thoughts or advice on how to have groups react somewhat reasonably to repeated invasions (or to alarms being raised in a single one) without leading to TPKs? Because I suspect it'll come up again later in this AP.

thejeff wrote:

The other thing about running this in exploration mode until the door is opened and initiative is rolled is that it intentionally limits what you can do at once. In exploration mode (barring certain feats), there's no such thing as stealthily listening at the door (or looking for traps) or stealthily reading for combat. Those are all different exploration activities.

Not quite true, Any action you can do in Encounter mode can be done in Exploration mode. Exploration activities are built on the foundation that you handwave repeated checks. Them actively listening also isnt a neccesity with hearing.

Active listening isn't a necessity but is how the original post described it and while you certainly can do it in exploration mode, you can't combine it with stealth. Which again, wouldn't likely matter in this situation, unless those on the other side of the door were actively listening themselves.

thejeff wrote:

As for opening the door: Are we treating that as a separate Stealth roll for the Rogue? If he fails (below their passive perception?), the enemy notices and presumably everyone rolls initiative. Can he still roll stealth for init, even though he's drawn attention?

The slight opening of the door to catch a peek is a "particularly unobtrusive action" and as such can be done with the use of a stealth check to remain unnoticed. Regardless if he becomes noticed or not he can still roll stealth as he was being sneaky and still benefit from either being undetected or hidden as usual for sneak, (but obviously not unnoticed).

It seems odd that failing the stealth check to open the door still gives him another stealth(initiative) check to remain undetected.

The other thing about running this in exploration mode until the door is opened and initiative is rolled is that it intentionally limits what you can do at once. In exploration mode (barring certain feats), there's no such thing as stealthily listening at the door (or looking for traps) or stealthily reading for combat. Those are all different exploration activities.

That's not really likely to matter here on the other side of a door, unless those on the other side have really high perceptions and are actively listening, but it does matter a lot of the time.

As for opening the door: Are we treating that as a separate Stealth roll for the Rogue? If he fails (below their passive perception?), the enemy notices and presumably everyone rolls initiative. Can he still roll stealth for init, even though he's drawn attention?
If he succeeds, they don't notice and the PCs can either back off or finish opening the door, rolling initiative and beginning the fight. At which point, other PCs could delay to let the rogue finish opening the door if they wish. When would enemies detect PCs? If anyone didn't use Avoid Notice, they'd be detected at the start of combat, though they might be out of line of sight, right? The same for anyone who didn't beat the enemies passive perception.

Rule of thumb: estimate how long you think an IT project is going to take, then double it.

Once you've doubled it, the next step is to bump up the units.

Estimate 1 hour? -> 2 days.

With time constraints, you don't have to get artificial at all.

In any place with traps, it's reasonable that you have an Alarm (not necessarily exactly per the spell) in multiple places in the dungeon and that some minions when encountered would attempt to run away and alert the dungeon boss.

Now, the PCs need to get to the boss before they escape.

Honestly, the fact that most dungeons don't actually end up like that is something that bothers me.

To me it's kind of like the idea that if armed intruders showed up at the Whitehouse, the president isn't sticking around to see how it turns out. The president will leave with any important items, and let his security team handle the situation.

And in this scenario, the boss doesn't need to be the overall boss. It can be a lieutenant or other trusted underling above the rank and file but not the final boss.

Escape only works in some situations, basically where the location itself isn't important to the boss or the PCs.

In many cases, the far more effective approach is for any such alarm to gather that security team and prep to take out the intruders in one big ambush rather than let the PCs keep taking out small groups piecemeal. It's a thing I have problems with even without an explicit mechanism.

Kojo Imperial wrote:

What IS the weapon Ulka is carrying? Is it just a stylized glaive, or something more orc-specific?

My best guess is that it's either a glaive or a guisarme.

Probably a guisarme, since those are harder to know what they actually looked like.

Obviously she's an AD&D character and it's a glaive-guisarme.

My biggest problem with all the comic catalog services (and even free programs) is that they all want a ton of individual data entry. Even just scanning each issue is a huge pain if you've got a lot to start with.

I really want to just be able to say "I've got X-Men 150-300" and track that, rather than enter each individually. (Also be really nice to have an easy way to track which issues you have reprints/collections of, so you can spot real gaps in the series)

SuperParkourio wrote:

But as for a pre-initiative Stealth check to avoid an entire encounter, I've never seen mention of this anywhere in the rules or in practice, even in PFS.

Just because something is in the rules...

Gamemastering Encounters wrote:

Some adventures have a clear and direct progression, with encounters occurring at specific times or in a specific order. Others, such as a dungeon filled with interconnected rooms the group can investigate in any order, are nonlinear, and the group can face encounters in any order—or even avoid them entirely. Most adventures are somewhere in between, with some keystone encounters you know the characters will need to contend with, but others that are optional.

doesn't mean that everyone is aware of it. Or that all campaigns or APs use it.

This quote isn't really specific enough to tie Avoid Notice to sneaking past encounters. It could equally involve just not opening a particular door that would lead to an encounter.

I also haven't been impressed with the new Claremont stuff, including KP&W. There were some good notes with Kitty dealing with the aftermath of Ogun, but it mostly feels like a dated rehash.

Also, I disliked the characterization of her dad and him being some ex tough soldier who'd known Xavier or whatever? Unless that was some previous retcon that I'd missed, it seems to completely clash with him from the original series.

If we're to take "senseless" literally in the stunned condition, the way some are arguing, shouldn't that also lead to being off-guard? (Or worse really, since off-guard is just distracted, not completely unaware.)

I hope we're not saying that's the implied intent as well.

Would you also be immune to effects that rely on you perceiving them?

It's hard for me to see what motivation Diamond has to steal here. Or cheat or somehow otherwise bend the rules to be able to sell their consignment inventory.

Any money from that is just going out to the creditors anyway, right? It's not like Diamond's owners are keeping it.

For those curious, here is an example of a paid PbP game.

Note this link takes you to a StartPlaying recruitment page.

The GM charges $15 per "session," where a session is 1 week of players posting and then once at the end of the week the GM posts results. Imaging playing Kingmaker at 1 action per week where your account is autodrafted $15/week.

If you look a little closer, that's not actually what's happening. It's not PbP. It's a weekly Sunday online game, that also lets you do some roleplay by post during the week, with responses to that at the end, presumably before the actual session.

Agreed. I don't even understand what is gained by creating this forum thread. Is there a numerical threshold of unhappy users that, once reached, would cause this decision to be undone?

Because if not ... this was all very pointless.

I think the point of creating this thread was to give us a place to talk about it that isn't the actual recruitment thread for the game.

But sometimes even a innocent change can bring about a irreversible change, like Pandora's Box.

It's always possible, but by the same token, it's nearly impossible to identify up front, so other than blindly trying to stop all change, there's not much to be done.

Some of this seems like catastrophizing. Paid GMs have been around for years now. They haven't destroyed the hobby. Paizo giving some support to that isn't going to change everything.

Yeah, "levels" is probably a better measure than anything else.

But really I was kind of enjoying boggling at the idea of playing through a bigger than AP volume set of adventures in 3 sessions.

Like even a PFS scenario is designed for 4 hours, right? How long would those sessions be?

Recurring villains are a staple of superhero stories by the nature of the media, not really by design. They come back because comics are (or were) a serial villain of the month business and there isn't always a good new villain idea. That isn't really a thing in anything like the same way in movie or even TV show versions of superheroes - at least not as they're being done today.
There's a vast reservoir of minor villains to be used and little need to go back to old ones for new stories. While I agree that such recurrence is often a key to making them engaging, we're not likely to get enough appearances of any such villains on the screen to make that work: There aren't enough shows being made.

And if someone does want to bring Taskmaster back? Villains coming back from the dead is also a staple of superhero stories.

THanks, TheJeff. I did say "appearances in the 80s and 90s." The list on the fandom site is a bit harder to make sense of, so I'm sorry if I posted a poorer reference.

Didn't really mean it like that I think.

I just clicked through and was confused by what they showed as the first appearance, since I thought I remembered him from earlier than that, so I dug around.

I had never even heard of Taskmaster until the character was announced for the Black Widow movie. And I even love B-listers. The Domino comics a few years back were great, for example. Never heard of Taskmaster though. When people were b$@$+ing about changes made to Taskmaster in that film,* I asked a friend of mine who had even been far more deeply involved in reading Marvel stuff since the 80s than I had been. "Am I missing someone critically important to the MCU? Why are they so pissed? Do I need to know who this guy is?" I asked. He replied, "Nah, he's not important. He's C-list at best, and mostly a joke. I have no idea why they're so mad, I think they're just complaining because of the gender swap."

I've since looked up his appearances in the comics. Looks like he had a major role in one Avengers storyline in 2014. Mainly appeared in comics 2009-2014 after a couple small appearances in the 80s and 90s. When I think of an "important" character I'd think of the main Marvel folks who've been around since the 60s and 70s. Doom. Spidey. F4. Cap. Magneto. Even Iron Man wasn't as a big a deal until the movie, but Iron Man I'd still call "important" and he's been around a long, long time.

I agree about Taskmaster not being a major player, but I wouldn't trust that site too much. That wasn't his first appearance. That was back in 1980 in Avengers 195-196 and he's popped up a lot more often than that. Though it does seem to have been awhile.

I just want to chime in with a few things I keep in mind when people ask to listen at a door:

1. Every door has a different sound dampening effect. Don't forget to include appropriate adjustments for perception check DCs (very easy to very hard, etc)! It's actually quite important for making the presence of the door matter! Also don't forget to factor in distance while you're at it.

2. Basic DCs are perfectly fine for most everything that's not trying to actively avoid notice

3. If people want to go through a dungeon room by room, and the person checking for traps says they also want to check for sounds, you can just stay in exploration mode and roll for them twice. Combining into one roll isn't nearly as fun, since it lowers the chance of mixed results.

1) There aren't any suggested adjustments for specific door types in the rules, right? I've got not problems handwaving it, but it would be annoying doing so because I missed the actual rule.

And like I mentioned, after the first door the "dungeon" is likely to be on alert and creatures will either be coming for the party or using stealth and so it changes how things play out anyways.

That's another question and one that I often struggle with. Especially with a lot of modules/APs: You've raised an alarm and the entire place is reacting and the whole thing is going to be at best a single running fight with no break from now on - if you're not simply overwhelmed and cut off.

Since PF2 ditched most of specific DCs for things like a casual conversation, or the specific modifiers like having a wooden door in the way, the other question to ask yourself is what can you hear on the other side of the door.

In the spirit of keeping the game moving, I'd definitely let a Searching PC hear a conversation on the other side of the door or a similar level of noise, and wouldn't allow for enemies who are just chilling to be heard. I wouldn't let dice enter into it. If you tell your players you'll tell them if there's something they could hear without them specifying, that's pretty much that.

Hadn't really thought about it in those terms, mostly because we're still low level.

What should the DC be, if any? Barring exceptional doors/circumstances, it shouldn't scale with level, so it'll quickly become trivial. Obviously anyone trying to be stealthy would scale.

I definitely think there are different starting points here: when you take a weapon like the shortsword, the weapon by itself is already fully functional and smooth to use, and the many different builds you can create off of that weapon using different classes all focus on making that weapon even better. By contrast, guns are not that smooth to use as a baseline and need a lot of build support to get properly going, with the Gunslinger being a class made up almost entirely of remedial mechanics for firearms. This means that unless you're going for a Gunslinger or some extremely niche build that's designed to work around a firearm, you're likely to have a much better time with other weapons that play similarly without as many of the drawbacks. Even the Gunslinger struggles to stand on their own two feet, because they're too busy making firearms more workable. It would be to the benefit of build diversity as a whole for guns to be easier to pick up without needing to also use the dedicated gun class, the subclass specifically designed to work with that one firearm you were thinking of, and so on.

Even if you do want to keep guns basically restricted to one class for thematic reasons, you could approach it by giving them the remedial mechanics straight up and not counting them against the class's budget of options.

thejeff wrote:

Claxon wrote:

When it comes to deciding whether or not you should use exploration activities vs other options, I always start by asking my self, does it seem likely that round by round activities will/can matter?

If so, then you're not in exploration mode (even though you might not be in combat, if tracking individuals rounds is or might be relevant you end exploration mode).

So if you were starting a dungeon by listening at the first most exterior door, that might still be exploration. Afterwards, it's probably best to track by each round. Which means (for me) it's valid to say "I go to the door and listen, can I make a perception check?".

And honestly, as the GM I'm probably running that first door as not exploration either, assuming the party is trying to by "stealthy" and ascertain if enemies are present and not just opening the door.

Part of it is that I want to skip dropping out of exploration at every door, especially those cases where there isn't a combat waiting on the other side.

In that case, the answer is simple (to me). The players tell you what they're going to do (not in game terms).

Having the player say "I'm going to search the door for traps and listen if anyone is on the other side" is perfect. You know what they're trying to accomplish, as a GM you can tell them what to roll and adjudicate how you want to proceed.

For me as a GM, it's better when the players don't try to tell me exactly what game mechanics they want to use (when outside of combat) because I can run the game in a way that feels the most seamless and smooth.

I tend to use exploration and encounter mode time flexibly, going back and forth often as fits the situation. I think of them as "real time" and "fast forward" modes. Do I (and the players) feel we need to give whatever is happening great attention? Yes? Encounter time. No? Then exploration it is.

Exploration rules are just to facilitate how to mechanically run the "fast forward" part of play, guidance if you...

And that's basically how I've been running it - as a legacy of playing PF1 and earlier D&D versions.

And I've definitely been thinking of it too strictly here, but that's because I'm trying to sort out how it's intended to work

thejeff wrote:

but I don't think it's RAW.

lol. We are talking about Exploration mode here. The rules are deliberately a bit lax. More like guidelines.

Fair. The text definitely led me off in the wrong direction then.

thejeff wrote:

Would Search apply to that as much as to traps on the door?

That is what I would do. Treat it like anything else that can be detected via exploration activities.

Traps
Other hazards
Hidden creatures / unexpectedly dangerous plants
Secret doors
Important objects

The Search rule is very focused on objects, up to saying "If you come across a secret door, item, or hazard while Searching, the GM will attempt a free secret check to Seek". It makes sense to extend that to creatures, but I don't think it's RAW.

thejeff wrote:

What was the controversy about the black costume? I remember some people not liking it early on, but chocked it up mostly to the regular costume being iconic and fans not liking change. Was there more going on behind the scenes?

According to the video, the original idea for the black costume came from a fan contest. They paid the kid money for the design, a couple hundred bucks. They also offered him a chance to write the story, but that didn't work out. Then a year later, the slightly altered version of that costume we all know and love was introduced.

To be honest, I don't really know how much of a controversy it really is. They paid the kid, and according to him his only true regret was not getting any acknowledgement from Marvel.

Then again, the theme of much of the video was not giving people credit, so maybe it's intended to show a pattern.

Oh. That I'd never heard.

Yeah, that kind of sucks. (Probably glad the kid didn't write the story, but acknowledgement would have been cool.)

When it comes to deciding whether or not you should use exploration activities vs other options, I always start by asking my self, does it seem likely that round by round activities will/can matter?

If so, then you're not in exploration mode (even though you might not be in combat, if tracking individuals rounds is or might be relevant you end exploration mode).

So if you were starting a dungeon by listening at the first most exterior door, that might still be exploration. Afterwards, it's probably best to track by each round. Which means (for me) it's valid to say "I go to the door and listen, can I make a perception check?".

And honestly, as the GM I'm probably running that first door as not exploration either, assuming the party is trying to by "stealthy" and ascertain if enemies are present and not just opening the door.

Part of it is that I want to skip dropping out of exploration at every door, especially those cases where there isn't a combat waiting on the other side.

So now that I'm running more regularly again, I'm trying to get myself and my players to rely more heavily on exploration activities rather than old school "I search the door for traps" stuff.

That much works pretty easily, though I haven't completely broken my players of the habit yet.

But in terms of some old commonplaces like listening at doors I'm not sure how they apply. There doesn't seem to be anything specific in the activities about noticing creatures - whether hiding or just talking on the other side of a door. Would Search apply to that as much as to traps on the door?

The assumption for most things seems to be that detection of potential enemies is just rolled up into initiative at the start of combat, but here PC would have the chance to act before then?

Or mechanically should it just be Scout and you get a +1 to initiative while just opening the door without prior notice? If you do detect and get ready for them, does it make sense for someone to "Scout" while opening the door to get the bonus or should that be factored in?

Like I said, I can hand wave this more old school, but it seems a common thing that should just work with Exploration mode and I feel like I'm missing something.

What was the controversy about the black costume? I remember some people not liking it early on, but chocked it up mostly to the regular costume being iconic and fans not liking change. Was there more going on behind the scenes?

Ooph! I’d forgotten how heavy those damned long boxes can be. Luckily, I had my boy to help carry a few of them downstairs.

It did inspire me to take a quick stock of my collection. I have 22 long boxes, and 29 short boxes. Plus another 16 drawers already full, each of which is about the size of a short box.

Counting the stuff not currently in boxes, rough numbers, I have something approaching 13,000 individual comics in my collection. If I reread one a day, it’d take me over 35 years to get through them all.

I had that revelation of "I'm not going to live long enough to read through all these comics again" awhile back.

I've thought about selling some off, though it would be a lot of work to go through and sort out what I want to get rid of.

I definitely don't like the idea of balancing a game so that some characters are good in combat and others good out of combat.

It tends to lead to "It's my turn to play for a while. You guys wait until the next fight."

exequiel759 wrote:

I don't really agree with "in PF1e is more fun to build characters"...

I also do not agree with that statement because it implies there's no possibility that a person recognizes that if you build a character "well" you will be able to regularly overcome much more potent challenges than if you build a character in some other fashion and then views that as a flaw in the game.

I personally hated building PF1 (and D&D 3.x before it) characters because I would have to weigh every choice made against whether it would cause me to overshadow the potency of other players' characters or be the potential beginning of arms race behavior with the GM (where they make challenges harder to try and challenge a potent character, only to have to continue increasing challenge because players respond to that with finding a way to be less challenged, typically because the actual desire is not to find the highest objective level of challenge they can still overcome, it is rather just to have the feeling of challenge while remaining confident in ability to overcome, so increasing the challenge is actually the opposite of what the players are looking for).

And I hate the alternatives to that, too, where I push the more mechanically potent character ideas on other players no matter what they are actually interested in just so we can all have a similar power level. Which I especially disliked while I was GMing but felt I had to do because the other outcome was someone unintentionally having a more potent character and taking up an unfair share of the spotlight.

I would phrase it as "In PF1 the build game was more fun as a game of its own, if that's the kind of thing you enjoy."

I definitely agree with most of what you say, but I'll also admit to having fun tinkering around with builds in PF1, even if I was never going to play them.

To be fair, it's also to prevent some things like lower-level enemies continually spamming a certain tactic until it works. Ghouls are one really basic example, but I remember some incredibly low-level clerics with Hold Person in Hell's Rebels, specifically so that they could toss out the coup-de-grace tactic on the off chance you failed against the insanely high number of them.

Ghouls are the classic example for this, mostly because they got multiple attacks per round any of which could paralyze.

Still, I think incapacitate is a bad solution to the ghoul problem, since it's too big a change for a 1 level shift in level. At first level regular ghouls were terrifying. At second, they were a joke. And I don't think they're correctly balanced for either.

Though the new version is cool, I do miss the paralyzation. Might have worked better if they stunned you or something, without incapacitation.

Finoan wrote:

But that is basically the description of 'more balanced and less breakable'.

That is what balance means. Each character, no matter how they are built, has approximately the same amount of effectiveness. Meaning that the amount of damage that they are doing each round is pretty close to the same.

You might get some variation in that one character is rolling 4d6 damage (spell slot spell), one is rolling 2d6 + 1d8 + 4 (precision ranger), and a third is rolling 2d8 + 3 + 5 (thaumaturge).

The thing is ... if some builds are noticeably different than other builds, some of them are going to also be noticeably better than others. And that is what leads to game imbalance.

Only if you assume that combat is the only place where a class should be balanced, if you break this assumption, you can have classes that shine in other areas and still feel good.

Even in combat, it only follows if you're focused on damage. Casters might be doing AoEs along with buffs and debuffs. You might have a wrestler tripping or grabbing enemies. And the differences between ranged and melee attacks.

Things should be balanced, but that doesn't mean "the same".

Incapacitation is very much a trait that helps PCs as much as it “hurts” them. When facing hordes of pre remaster ghouls, for example, the party will really notice when the fear of having to not ever roll a natural one goes away and a suddenly difficult enemy becomes something they don’t have to worry about nearly as much. The same with enemies that can dominate or control PCs or any of the ones that turn the party to stone.

If the PCs never get to experience that switch, they might not be likely to notice how much incapacitation helps them, but, directly from the developer’s mouth, we know incapacitation was designed to help PCs navigate the very intentional enemy progression chart of facing a solo enemy early on being a real challenge and potentially facing that enemy again later on as a minion for something else.

Am I missing something about ghouls or incapacitation? I'd thought it's when you're higher level and incapacitation applies that you're afraid of a natural 1. Before then, any failure is a huge threat.

The thing I really dislike about incapacitation, at least in cases like ghouls where it's not just a one shot like a spell, is that it throws off balance by making the effective difference between PL-1 and PL creatures much larger than expected.

thejeff wrote:

Deriven Firelion wrote:

What exactly is advertised?

Well, they will learn that a Severe challenge to level 1 is very different than Severe challenge to level 12 and a severe challenge to level 20s. That it is by intention so characters can feel the power of gaining levels.

Level 20 characters can destroy level 20 severe challenges with relatively ease. Do you want that difficulty increased? So you want level 1 to feel like level 20? Same level of difficulty across the game? Is that what you want?

I want a Sever challenge to be a severe challenge. As a GM, I want to be able to use the tools the game gives me to judge how difficult challenges will be, without having to apply a hidden level filter to that. Now I accept such tools will always be imperfect, but I don't think the game design should deliberately make them worse without notice.

And yes, I do want the same level of difficulty throughout the game. Extreme challenges shouldn't become Moderate ones at high level. That's the whole point of having such ratings. If you wanted the game to become easier as you go up levels, you could use the rating system to design easier encounters.

There are other ways of making the PCs feel more powerful than lying on the meta level about how hard encounters will be. Having previously scary solo monsters show up as minions is an obvious one that works across all levels.

Well, I am telling you how they did it. If you wanted something else, that's not PF2.

I don't know what your process is in these games, but my process is to take the new game and play it as it is out of the box. Then modify to suit my and my groups tastes.

After playing this game for however many years, the following is true:

1. Level 1 and 2 are still the most dangerous where you can be killed by one bad crit from a higher level monster.

2. Casters still start off very weak. Not as weak as previous editions, but very weak.

3. Monsters are different challenges not just by CR, but because...

I agree they've done a better job at this than in PF1. I think it's a hard thing to get just right, especially as high level PCs have more build options and they probably don't want to tune it so only the most optimized high level characters are viable.

Mostly, I don't think it's good as a design goal and I especially don't think if that was the intent that it should be hidden - left for GMs to figure out through experience (or reading game forums).

What exactly is advertised?

Well, they will learn that a Severe challenge to level 1 is very different than Severe challenge to level 12 and a severe challenge to level 20s. That it is by intention so characters can feel the power of gaining levels.

Level 20 characters can destroy level 20 severe challenges with relatively ease. Do you want that difficulty increased? So you want level 1 to feel like level 20? Same level of difficulty across the game? Is that what you want?

I want a Sever challenge to be a severe challenge. As a GM, I want to be able to use the tools the game gives me to judge how difficult challenges will be, without having to apply a hidden level filter to that. Now I accept such tools will always be imperfect, but I don't think the game design should deliberately make them worse without notice.

And yes, I do want the same level of difficulty throughout the game. Extreme challenges shouldn't become Moderate ones at high level. That's the whole point of having such ratings. If you wanted the game to become easier as you go up levels, you could use the rating system to design easier encounters.

There are other ways of making the PCs feel more powerful than lying on the meta level about how hard encounters will be. Having previously scary solo monsters show up as minions is an obvious one that works across all levels.

hsnsy56 wrote:

Deriven Firelion wrote:

The game should not feel the same at 1 to 4 as it does at 18 to 20. That part of the game is shown by how well you can handle a PL+2 encounter at level 1 and 2 versus how easily you can handle it at level 18 to 20.

I also like a level based RPG to feel a little different from the player side from low to high level.

But PL+2 is a behind the scenes GM construct? Unless the GM tells them or players' flip through the AP or GM notes after, the players will never really experience this progression?

They will get the sense of the fictional position of enemies within the world --- used to fight goblins and now fight dragons. And some sense that Dragons are more complex. But that would work just as well if the goblins were PL+2 and the dragons were PL+2 and both were hard fights at their respective levels. (instead of current PF2e math which means you throw a PL+4 or whatever at higher level parties to achieve the equivalent threat).

I'm not sure the shifting of what PL+2 means adds that much to feeling more heroic.

Heroic? It's an empirical way to show you are much more powerful that you are more easily able to defeat more powerful threats.

I DM a lot and play a lot. So I see the math on both ends. As a DM, I can see the players empirically go from goblins being able to create a deadly threat to level 1 or 2 PCs to CR23 creatures supported by level 18 creatures being easily defeated by level 20 PCs.

My assumption given this power progression that it is intended design to give the clear feel of increases in power.

It's a clear feel and an empirical way to show you're more powerful only if players are aware on the meta level of what CR enemies they're facing. Otherwise, being able to fight dragons instead of goblins already feels far more powerful.

And if this is intended, it's a tool that isn't made clear to new GMs. New GMs will assume that the system works as advertised and that a severe challenge is a severe challenge, regardless of level.

Deriven Firelion wrote:

The game should not feel the same at 1 to 4 as it does at 18 to 20. That part of the game is shown by how well you can handle a PL+2 encounter at level 1 and 2 versus how easily you can handle it at level 18 to 20.

I also like a level based RPG to feel a little different from the player side from low to high level.

But PL+2 is a behind the scenes GM construct? Unless the GM tells them or players' flip through the AP or GM notes after, the players will never really experience this progression?

They will get the sense of the fictional position of enemies within the world --- used to fight goblins and now fight dragons. And some sense that Dragons are more complex. But that would work just as well if the goblins were PL+2 and the dragons were PL+2 and both were hard fights at their respective levels. (instead of current PF2e math which means you throw a PL+4 or whatever at higher level parties to achieve the equivalent threat).

I'm not sure the shifting of what PL+2 means adds that much to feeling more heroic.

Yeah, it's a weird argument to me. It either means the game just gets easier with high levels or that the GM has to adjust difficulties, which makes it feel the same.

Though you do get more XP for the same amount of challenge, which seems weird. Like you say, it's a GM tool for judging what a group can handle, it should be consistent. (And it's far closer than CR was in PF1.)

It would be interesting to see him get resurrected somehow and find out how much the "post-knell clarity" actually changes him once alive again.

I'm also kind of surprised that she really does seem to care about him - even once he's dead and damned.

Reading through Volume 2 of the Micronauts original Marvel series, I can’t help but think how utterly stupid the powers that be at Disney were. They had a prime opportunity with that third Antman movie to introduce not only the Microverse and the Micronauts, but they could have had a villain probably vastly cooler than Kang - Baron Karza.

Instead, they gave us communist ants and probably one of the lamest versions of Modok ever. Sad.

Hey, though. The comics were awesome. Mantlo’s creativity impresses me even after all these years. It truly was a sad day for the entire comic book industry when we lost his genius.

Problem is that Marvel doesn't own the Micronauts - or at least most of the main toy-based characters.

Arkat wrote:

3rd level? Really?

The PCs can't be *that* dignified, then.

What an odd take. Why does level affect how important characters can be? It's primarily a measure of combat ability, not social standing.

It also affects all the diplomatic skills that might be useful for dignitaries. And most of the things that might qualify someone to be sent to a conference like this.

Obviously, someone could inherit a high social status from their parents or something, but even then you likely wouldn't send the noble's child to represent the nation diplomatically unless they'd proven themselves capable.
Or you'd send with advisors to do the real work.

I'm really disappointed that this game is turn-based, rather than real-time like those developed by Owlcat Games.

PF2e is so action economy based, I don't really see how you could do it justice RTwP.

Even the Owlcat games kind of broke with characters who needed more than basic "move and attack/cast".