tmncx0's page

@Mathmuse

Numenera uses a similar advancement system to what you've proposed with the bilevel and dividend system - that game is divided into 6 "Tiers" that serve as a gateway to more advanced skills and features. When you reach a new Tier, you gain new class features for that tier. Within a tier, characters spend XP to purchase four advancements: Extra Stats, Extra Edge, Skill Increase, Extra Effort. You progress to the next tier only after you gain all four advancements within the tier. The price of an individual advancement is about equivalent to a "level", though that's kinda hard to gauge because Numenera allows players to spend XP just like PF2e's Hero Points, to reroll dice and perform other heroic feats. The system expects players to take an even split of spending XP in-play to banking XP for advancement. In general, players should be able to purchase new advancements around once a session.

It works, is easy to understand, is simple to execute, and it provides plenty of opportunity for players to see their characters improve outside of a 1-20 "D&D-style" leveling system. I could see such a system working out for PF2e as well.

Yeah, the "multiclass clerics can't channel" issue is easily rectified: create a Cleric multiclass feat that grants access to the Channel Energy feature. It's not like there's an inherent flaw in the multiclassing chassis that prevents this from being fixed.

It feels like an APL-1 encounter in Pathfinder 2nd Edition doesn't quite mean the same thing it did in 1st.

You’re right, it doesn’t, it’s a much more difficult encounter than it was in PF1e. You can arrive at the same conclusion by examining the encounter building math in the Bestiary.

The encounter math is balanced around a four-character party, but if we want to examine expected difficulty for a single character, you can use Table 5: Encounter Budget on page 21 of the Bestiary to calculate it.

The breakdown is like this:

For a four-character party, an Extreme-threat encounter (which the bestiary describes as “so dangerous that they are likely to be an even match for the characters” has an encounter budget of 160 XP. The “character adjustment” for Extreme-threat encounters is 40 XP, so to get the XP budget for an Extreme-threat encounter for a single character, use:

160 XP - 3 * 40 XP = 40 XP

Now, take a look at Table 4: Creature XP and Role - a creature with level equal to APL is worth 40 XP. Therefore, an equal-level creature is an Extreme-threat encounter for a single character. Again, Extreme-threat encounters are the most difficult kinda encounters that characters are expected to ever face under the PF2e ruleset.

Now, let’s examine a Severe-threat encounter - the next step down in difficulty from Extreme. Severe-threat encounters are described as “the hardest encounters most groups of characters can consistently defeat”. Trusty Table 5: Encounter Budget lists 120 XP as the budget for a four-character extreme encounter with a “character adjustment” of 30 XP.

120 XP - 3 * 30 XP = 30 XP

The pattern is pretty clear: the “character adjustment” for each difficulty level is equivalent to the encounter budget for a single character. Additionally, each of the difficulty levels from Trivial to Extreme correspond to creatures of APL-4 through APL-equivalent.

Trivial = APL-4
Low = APL-3
High = APL-2
Severe = APL-1
Extreme = APL

This is a paradigm shift from PF1e - now, the relevant challenges exist in the range of APL-4 through APL+4, compared to the previous edition’s spread of APL-1 through APL+3, and the system math is balanced around maintaining this challenge spread as tightly as possible. The tight math, spell success rates, +/-10 critical ranges, and attack accuracy are all balanced around this central design goal. An APL-4 creature from PF2e should be roughly as relevant as an APL-1 creature from PF1e, if the encounter building math for both editions can be trusted.

I love the rigor that many on this forum use in their playtesting. I’ve had a lot of fun examining and scrutinizing the inner workings of PF2e. Reading all of the debate and discussion of RAW and RAI that occurs here has helped my own precision and understanding of GMing PF2e.

I love this idea. It really allows flexibility in Backgrounds and it hits on all of the fun little narrative bits that PF1e’s trait system enabled, that the current Background system doesn’t quite match.

You can ready a spell. It's just that the spell list has so few single action spells that it usually plays as if you can't.

Right, which is why I worded this question as “should it be possible to ready an activity” not “ready a spell” :)

I've been allowing it on a technicality: If you think about it, the Ready action is the final action of the spell (since using a Ready is a reaction), so by taking the first action and then readying the second you technically are taking all of the actions needed to cast the spell "consecutively on a single turn".

Probably not RAI, but I think it works with a strict reading of RAW.

And obviously you should be able to ready spells; any reading of the rules that doesn't allow you to is clearly incorrect. :P

I fully agree it should be possible. I personally like the removal of the “all spellcasting actions must be spent during a single turn” stipulation of the Cast a Spell activity, because it also enables the multi-metamagic’d spell, and the trope of “protect the caster while they cast a multiple-turn spell”, while also fully enabling readying a spell.

I’ve denied readying a spell once, and allowed it another time, with two different groups. It hasn’t come up very often, but the time I allowed it, it did not feel overpowered. I think the rules around this should be revised for clarity and to allow even more flexibility when casting spells.

The Ready action reads:

You prepare to use an action that will occur outside your turn. Choose a single action you can use and designate a trigger. Your turn then ends. If the trigger you choose occurs before the start of your next turn, you can use the chosen action as a reaction (provided you still meet the requirements to use it).

-snip-

(Emphasis mine)

This explicitly only allows readying a single action, which precludes readying a spell. The rules for the Cast a Spell activity also seem to actively prevent any kind of readying shenanigans, where you partially cast a spell during your turn, then ready the final spellcasting action using the Ready action.

You Cast a Spell you know or have prepared. Casting a Spell is a special activity that takes a variable number of actions depending on the spell, as listed in each spell’s stat block. You can spend those actions in any order you wish, provided you do so consecutively on a single turn. As soon as all spellcasting actions are complete, the spell effect occurs.

-snip-

(Emphasis mine)

The bolded text makes it impossible to spread out the casting of a spell using the Ready action. The removal of this text would allow the readying of a spell, by allowing the completion of the final spellcasting action using the Ready action. Additionally, it would allow multiple-round casting duration spells to be cast during combat - and also allow the stacking of metamagic feats by allowing a spell's casting to extend to multiple turns by adding multiple metamagic casting actions to a single spell casting.

To me, none of these changes seem unreasonable, though it's possible there was an explicit design intent to prevent this. Either way, I've had multiple players express frustration when they are not able to ready spells by RAW. It's definitely something players expect to be able to do, especially because it was possible to do so in PF1e. Unless, of course, I've missed a rule somewhere that does allow this?

I've been thinking that background shouldn't give you ability points. If that was moved somewhere else, it wouldn't be hard to enable taking a second background. If they want to limit skill feat creep, have the second one not give the skill feat but still give the lore and any other effects.

I like backgrounds too, I just think they're doing too much now power wise (because of the ability scores) and that limits them.

That could be rectified by changing backgrounds so that you choose the ability boosts and skill feat from any one of your selected backgrounds, while still gaining all of the bonus lore skills from every selected background.

You aren’t even quoting the entire ability text. If you read the paragraph as a whole, an attack is not never excluded from the clause of escaping from hindering effects like you’re implying.

After suffering the effects of the attack, Grab, or Grapple, the ally can attempt to break free of effects entangling, grabbing, immobilizing, or restraining them. They can either attempt a new saving throw against any one such effect that had a saving throw, or as a free action they can attempt to Break Free or Escape from any one effect that allows such attempts. Finally, if the ally can move, they can Step as a free action, even if the ally didn’t have any hindrance to escape from.

I can’t see where you’re getting that attacks are excluded from any clause here, the text explicitly says that you may attempt the escape even if you only suffered an attack - and not a Grab or Grapple - this also allows the ally to escape or save from other effects that are restraining them that were not caused by the triggering attack.

Then, the final sentence stipulates that the ally may always take a step even if there were no saving throws or escape attempts due to the secondary effect. Again, the first sentence of the quoted text means that the following text applies to all triggering attacks, Grabs, and Grapples.

Taking Assurance (Arcana) helps with some lower level spells. Additionally, the Learn an Arcane Spell activity says that the GM sets the DC. So if you don’t want to deal with the randomness, by RAW, set the DC to 10 for all spell levels and players may auto-pass if they pay the feat tax of Assurance (Arcana).

Isn't line of sight defined as "anything that is Seen by the creature?" Here's a couple of excerpts from the rules:

Senses - Precise and Imprecise Senses

-snip-
You can usually see a creature automatically with a precise sense, unless the creature is hiding or obscured by the environment, in which case you have to use the Seek action to detect the creature.

Detecting Creatures - Seen

In most circumstances, you can see creatures without difficulty and target them normally, but various situations might make targeting more difficult.

The only real stipulation that the rules make is that you do not have line of sight to creatures that are only Sensed/Unseen/Invisible to you, which creatures can achieve when they have cover and/or concealment by taking the Hide or Sneak actions.

Defining line of sight using hard corner-to-corner rules would greatly restrict the ability to gain Sensed or Unseen using Stealth actions, or at least, make using the Hide and Sneak actions of Stealth much more fiddly:

Stealth - Hide

You hide behind cover or deeper into concealment to become merely sensed, rather than seen. The GM rolls a Stealth check and compares the result to the Perception DC of each creature that could potentially see you but that you have cover against or are concealed from.

The rules for cover are fairly easy to understand, so couple that with the Stealth rules, and it's pretty simple to determine line of sight - any creature that uses Stealth to Hide or Sneak breaks line-of-sight until the seeker manages to change the stealther's status from Unseen/Sensed to Seen, which can happen due a successful Seek action or by moving so that the creature no longer has cover and/or concealment. Additionally, creatures that are "obscured by the environment" cannot be seen. It is left up to GM interpretation as to when this occurs.

The diagram on page 314 makes it clear that the GM is meant to adjudicate when blocking terrain changes from giving cover to giving the unseen condition - The diagram depicts Kyra as able to attack an Ogre "through" a house - this must mean that there is some way for her to see past the house, either through a window, or hole in the wall, or maybe the Ogre is just taller than the house is - but in any case, a scheme that only involves drawing lines from corner-to-corner still can't resolve this situation unambiguously. It requires GM adjudication about the nature of the surroundings. Is the wall solid? How tall are each of the house and the ogre? Is there a window through which the Ogre is visible? Is the Ogre hiding from Kyra?

None of these questions are answered by drawing lines from corner-to-corner on a grid.

And right there is the issue: the best way to play a caster is to fire off a bow with your off actions. All people are pointing out is that fact, that having a minimum of 2 actions for a spell and 1 for a weapon in a 3 action system incentivises the use weapons in any round that they cast and quite a few people seem to want a casting option that competes for...

You’re right. Variable-action spells are woefully underutilized. I hope many more spells will gain this treatment in a future pass, and I hope most attack cantrips change to work this way. Someone else said it - the new action economy is a strong point for 2e, yet casters do not get to interact with it very much due to the dearth of 1 action spells.

snip

My favorite part was when you took offense to his implication that your gms and players are unprepared, and then in turn implied that his tables don't have dynamic play. Assumptions all around are bad, can we stop that?

I'm excited that 2e expands the list of viable encounters to APL +/- 4, this is a much wider range of level-appropriate challenges for GMs to design with. I'm also excited that APL+ encounters are actually meeting the difficulty as advertised, instead of having to add template upon template to creatures that, according to 1e's encounter design system, should be an adequate challenge for players. 2e really eases a lot of the load on GMs having to be on top of balance and fine-tuning of encounters to their party.

Of course, all of my excitement here hinges on the idea that the devs are going to deliver on their promise of rebalancing monster math and fixing the too-high stats rampant throughout the bestiary. Its unfortunate that we have to suffer through playtesting with broken, unintended math, because it seems to drive the conversation towards complaints that the system as a whole is broken.

It's not the tight math that's a problem, the problem is that the tight math is calculated based on an outdated progression chart that puts monster stats and saves much higher than players can achieve. I believe that this was an accident, and I have trust that Paizo can fix it for the final release. They've also acknowledged that their default assumption of optimization level was unreasonable, so again, I trust that they will act on this and fix that problem as well.

Right now, I love how the +level scaling system interacts with the concepts of battlefield control, debuffs, and save-or-lose effects, and their effectiveness against minions and bosses. The system has inherent scaling that makes it much easier to land these control effects against the mooks that actually should be crowd controlled, compared to the bosses that are supposed to be dangerous and fearsome and difficult. This is modeled by making bosses of equal level or higher to the party, which lowers the chance of success for these kinds of tactics. You can shoot for the moon if you'd like, but overall it handles the problem of "cast a spell, end boss encounter with save-or-lose" really nicely.

As an aside, I agree with complaints that the crit system is very bursty right now. I'd like to see them toned down, by changing something like "only double weapon damage dice" or "deal maximum damage" rather than double everything on a crit. The perfect balance point for crits for me is "more frequent, less swingy." My personal favorite is "deal maximum damage" because it still feels good and exciting when it happens, but is not nearly as dangerous for PCs as double damage can be.

I don't currently have a problem with how lengthy combat is, but my table tends to focus on that as their favorite aspect of the game. I can understand how making crits less bursty can lengthen combat further, but I still prefer it because players are the ones most punished by more bursty game mechanics. Hell, I'd be fine with even making this asymmetrical - PCs keep the current crit system, monsters just deal max damage on crit.

my personal dislike is how late you get to actually interact with it, since if you want to play some odd variant of say, ranger, or a combo-class with multiclassing (something that pathfinder as a brand prided itself on allowing), you're not actually playing anything different than the generic base class (and therefore the unique character you thought up and sat down to play) until level 2-4 which can be a hefty real-life time investment.

i've discussed the topic at length before, so i'll avoid just dumping a repeat here on the topic.

This concern is real, and I share it. However, I don't believe that the actual multiclassing chassis is to blame for this situation, it only occurs for two reasons:

1. Not all classes have access to a class feat at level one.
2. The multiclass dedication feats have a level two prerequisite.

Fix these two issues, and I am perfectly fine with the chassis and how it enables multiclassing. It's an extremely easy fix, so I've just been submitting my feedback addressing this, and hoping it gets looked at.

If it doesn't change in the final ruleset, I'll probably end up developing houserules to enable it. It's not my favorite solution, but luckily, it's very easy to do:

1. Every class gains a bonus class feat at level one.
2. Multiclass dedication feats are now level one feats.

I’m happy to see the acknowledgement that the tight math is tuned to a much too high level of optimization. I would like to see specifics for where they are going to aim with the final rules.

For instance, guidelines like:

Level 1: Ability Mod +3, Proficiency +1 = +4
Level 5: Ability Mod +4, Proficiency +5 = +9
Level 10: Ability Mod +4, Proficiency +11, Item +1 = +16
Level 15: Ability Mod +5, Proficiency +17, Item +1 = +23
Level 20: Ability Mod +5, Proficiency +22, Item +2 = +29
For “Good” monster progression

Level 1: Ability Mod -1, Proficiency +1 = +0
Level 5: Ability Mod +0, Proficiency +5 = +5
Level 10: Ability Mod +1, Proficiency +11 = +12
Level 15: Ability Mod +2, Proficiency +16, Item +1 = +19
Level 20: Ability Mod +3, Proficiency +21, Item +1 = +25
For “Poor” monster progression

That would put poor saves at 20% less likely than good saves when Level = APL, to reward targeting weak saves.

And then better attention paid to making sure that every monster in the bestiary has multiple defenses at both levels of progression.

You can suffer the effects of being grabbed only once, but that doesn’t mean that multiple creatures can’t attempt multiple grabs. It doesn’t do anything besides make the grabbed condition last until you escape both (or all, if there are more than two) grab attempts.

The text on page 319 does not cause an ambiguity. It reads "The shorter-duration condition effectively ends" but this does not mean that the effect giving the condition ends, it just means that you cannot suffer the effects of any given condition twice, i.e. they don't stack. This reading is unambiguous and easy to understand. What don't you parse about it?

So are you just going to completely ignore my responses? Because I answered your first question. The grapple rules are not ambiguous. The only ambiguous interaction is with the corner case of the Roc’s Snatch ability.

I also see that you ignore the response to your question about resilient sphere in the linked thread. Hmm.

Are you your own ally? Has this been definitively answered for this edition, or not? Because I’ve been letting my Paladins Retributive Strike enemies that hit them based on the ruling that “yes, you are your own ally”.

Seriously, there’s so much worrying over failing trivial tasks, and yet in the same breath, Assurance is called useless. It is literally designed to solve this problem.

A character gets 10 skill feats over the course of a 20 level career, and can raise up to 3 skills to Legendary proficiency. Spend 3 feats on Assurance for the 3 maxed skills and they will never fail at the trivial tasks for the skills the character is good at. And they still have 7 skill feats left to spend on whatever else they would like.

I was rereading my post, and I should clarify my revision to the Immoble condition clause - it should read: “If an external force moves you from the affected square, you are removed from the restrained or grappled condition from that source.” My first wording would introduce confusion as to if the grappled condition is removed entirely, which it should not be, from the Roc initiating the movement.

Another possible solution is to apply a grappled condition to all participants of a grapple, and whenever any participant of a grapple moves, all other participants move as well. This would require adding a new condition that is very similar to Grabbed but I think additional clarification is required.

Pretty much, we need specific grapple rules that outline these interactions with movement and multiple participants, because they are not clear by RAW.

I think the problem here isn't the grappling rules, but rather the interaction between the Roc's Snatch ability and the normal grappling rules.

By RAW, you may be grappled and restrained by more than one creature at once, and the rules work perfectly fine in that case. Where it gets screwy is when you try to use the Snatch ability by two Rocs at once - each Roc cannot move during the other Roc's turn, which means that a creature grappled by by both Rocs will move with the first Roc to use Snatch. Nothing in the rules say that the second Roc moves as a reaction when the first Roc moves, so clearly, that Roc exits the grapple.

Additionally, it's not clear if the Snatch ability overrides the following clause for the Immobile condition:

If an external force would move you out of your space, it must succeed at a check against either the DC of the effect rooting you or the relevant defense (usually Fortitude DC) of a monster rooting you, as appropriate.

This clause has some holes in it, for sure - namely, what kind of check is the external force supposed to make? Athletics makes the most sense, but it would be nice for the clause to explicitly call this out.

Wording issues aside, I think it's pretty clear that RAI, Snatch is meant to override that clause for a Roc attempting to Snatch a creature it has grabbed or restrained with its talons. Therefore, a Roc does not need to make a check against it's own Fortitude DC to initiate a Snatch.

However, by RAW, the two grappling Rocs must succeed on the checks against each other's Fortitude DCs in order to successfully Snatch a creature when both of them have a creature restrained or grappled. I think that the confusion here could be easily cleared up by adding another clause to Restrained, Immobile, and Grabbed: "If an external force moves you from the affected square, you remove the Restrained, Immobile, and Grabbed conditions."

Then, the situation would play out like so: Both Rocs may attempt to grab and restrain a creature simultaneously. When either Roc attempts to Snatch a creature, they must succeed against the other's Fortitude DC, and if successful, the creature is Snatched and is no longer grabbed or restrained by the other Roc.

Still, by RAW it is impossible for both Rocs to simultaneously Snatch a single creature - neither Roc may move as a Reaction when the other one uses Snatch and flies, therefore, they cannot both be Snatching a single creature at once. Additionally, by RAW, in order to Snatch a creature out of a dual grapple, the Snatching Roc must succeed on some kind of check against the other Roc's Fortitude DC. Those two facts are undeniable. There should be some more clarification around the other gaps in the situation.

Most of the previous analysis assumes a Creature Level = Average Party Level situation, which I don't think is the right balance point to assume, nor do I think it's the point the system has been balanced around in 2e. Paizo has shifted the expected range of level-appropriate challenges from the previous range in PF1e, changing from a range of APL-1 to APL+3 in PF1e, to a range of APL-4 to APL+4 in PF2e. Additionally, the number of encounters against equal-level or higher foes should be less than the number of encounters against lower-level foes due to the way the encounter design math works out.

In all but the most unusual circumstances, you’ll select creatures for your encounter that range only from 4 levels lower than the PCs to 4 levels higher. Each creature has a role to play in your encounter, based on its level, from lowly minions to a boss so mighty that it poses an extreme threat to your player group even though it fights alone.

Additionally, the bestiary prescribes the following:

Encounters are typically more satisfying if the number of creatures is fairly close to the number of player characters.

From an encounter design perspective, the expectation seems to be that encounters are balanced against enemies of APL-2, if you're expected to hit that "number of creatures is equal to number of PCs" sweet spot. Check the math - 4x APL-2 creatures is a High-threat encounter. Encounters against equal level and above enemies are reserved for "boss fights" and as such, should be even more challenging than the typical encounter.

The intention seems to be more "avoid anticlimatic boss fights where casters trivialize the encounter with a single spell" than "casters do not get to have nice things". This is achieved by making solo bosses (at equal level and above) more resistant to Battlefield Control, Debuff, and Save or Lose effects due to the level scaling and the balance point for the tight math. But against lower level foes, those effects become more and more attractive due to the increased success rate from the level difference.

In situations where debuffs and battlefield control are appropriate, the party should ostensibly have a +5-10% increase in success rate over what all of the current analysis points to. This puts casters in a good place regarding battlefield control roles in encounters against multiple enemies. They will struggle to end encounters against +/= level foes, but almost all of those encounters will be "boss fight"-style encounters, if Table 4: Creature XP and Role is followed.

Boss encounters are more difficult, but the frequency that the party will face equal-level or higher creatures is lower than they will face lower level creatures. A single APL+2 enemy is already a High-threat encounter, APL+3 is Severe, and APL+4 is Extreme. Again, let's read the Bestiary's description of these kinds of encounters:

High-threat encounters are a true threat to the characters, though unlikely to overpower them completely. Characters usually need to use sound tactics and manage their resources wisely to come out of a high- threat encounter ready to continue on to face a harder challenge without resting.

Severe-threat encounters are the hardest encounters most groups of characters can consistently defeat, and as such they are most appropriate for major encounters, such as with a final boss. Bad luck, tactics, or a lack of resources due to prior encounters can easily turn a severe- threat encounter against the characters, and a wise group keeps the option to disengage open.

Extreme-threat encounters are so dangerous that they are likely to be an even match for the characters, particularly if the characters are low on resources due to prior encounters. This makes them too challenging for most uses. An extreme-threat encounter might be appropriate for a fully rested group of characters that can go all out, for an end- of-campaign encounter, or for a group of veteran players with powerful character teamwork.

The encounter XP budget is tightly balanced, in Table 5: Encounter Budget. A single APL creature is a Trival encounter, 2x APL creatures is a High-threat encounter, 3x APL creatures is a Severe-threat encounter, and 4x APL creatures is an Extreme-threat encounter. The verbiage in the Bestiary makes it pretty clear that parties should be facing some mix of Low, High, and Severe threat encounters and should rarely ever face an Extreme-threat encounter. The way the math works out - parties should face enemies below APL more often than enemies equal to or above APL, therefore analysis of spell performance against average equivalent-level enemy stats is not looking at the whole picture of intended encounter design.

If the messaging coming from the devs about the overtuning of monster stats can be believed, and monster skills and saves drop by 1-2 points across the board, that should put success rates at the projected 60% success rate proven by the analysis of magnuskn and many others on this board. Add the additional 5-10% boost in success rate due to level difference, and I think casters are already in a place that's much better than has been projected in this thread, with a success rate closer to 65-70% for many fights, only dropping to 60% or below for boss-style encounters.

As an aside, I wish more spells would follow the Color Spray, or Slow model of having a minor effect on a successful save, instead of having no effect. It never feels good to spend 66% of your turn doing nothing. Debuffs should have more effects like this, because that will make them more useful in boss fights.

As a second aside, I also think that the overall tuning of monster stats against optimal PC stats is a little too high. Rather than assuming that each PC has max proficiency bonus, max ability modifier, and max item bonus at every level, I'd like to see a more relaxed balance achieved, where monsters are tuned a point or two below that optimal level, so truly optimal characters can squeeze an extra 5-10% efficiency out of the math.

I posted this in the character sheet thread in General Discussion, but I realize that this thread is the one with much more traction, so here's a mirror of that post:

This sheet is amazing! I only have a tiny bit of feedback, I think it's too strict with encumbrance rules - page 175 describes Bulk Limit as "You can carry an amount of Bulk equal to 5 plus your Strength modifier without penalty; if you carry more, you gain the encumbered condition." Currently, the sheet is showing the encumbered condition when carried Bulk equals the Bulk limit, instead of exceeding it. By RAW, you should be able to carry up to 5 + STR + 9L bulk without being encumbered, unless this was clarified in errata that I missed?

Actually, I also realized that there is currently a small bug in calculating encumbrance, the formula applies "Cannot Carry" when you exceed the encumbered bulk limit. The formula in I15 could change to fix all of the aforementioned issues. Namely, the if expressions for encumbered and cannot carry should be swapped, the expression comparing Bulk_Current should use '>' instead of '>=', and lastly, Bulk_Current should be floored before comparing - Light bulk does not actually equal 0.1 when comparing Bulk Limit, the only conversion that matters is 10L = 1, so flooring the value should rectify this issue. To quote the rulebook page 175 again: "Ten light items count as 1 Bulk, and you don't count fractions (so 9 light items count as 0, and 11 items count as 1)"

Updated Formula:

=if(floor(Bulk_Current)>Bulk_Max,"Cannot Hold/Carry",
if(floor(Bulk_Current)>Bulk_Encumbered,"Encumbered",
"Unencumbered"))

Alternatively, you could choose to apply the flooring in the formula at F15, where you would wrap the entire calculation in a call to floor. Either way would give the desired outcome.

This sheet is amazing! I only have a tiny bit of feedback, I think it's too strict with encumbrance rules - page 175 describes Bulk Limit as "You can carry an amount of Bulk equal to 5 plus your Strength modifier without penalty; if you carry more, you gain the encumbered condition." Currently, the sheet is showing the encumbered condition when carried Bulk equals the Bulk limit, instead of exceeding it. By RAW, you should be able to carry up to 5 + STR + 9L bulk without being encumbered, unless this was clarified in errata that I missed?

Actually, I also realized that there is currently a small bug in calculating encumbrance, the formula applies "Cannot Carry" when you exceed the encumbered bulk limit. The formula in I15 could change to fix all of the aforementioned issues. Namely, the if expressions for encumbered and cannot carry should be swapped, the expression comparing Bulk_Current should use '>' instead of '>=', and lastly, Bulk_Current should be floored before comparing - Light bulk does not actually equal 0.1 when comparing Bulk Limit, the only conversion that matters is 10L = 1, so flooring the value should rectify this issue. To quote the rulebook page 175 again: "Ten light items count as 1 Bulk, and you don't count fractions (so 9 light items count as 0, and 11 items count as 1)"

Updated Formula:

=if(floor(Bulk_Current)>Bulk_Max,"Cannot Hold/Carry",
if(floor(Bulk_Current)>Bulk_Encumbered,"Encumbered",
"Unencumbered"))

A few feats exist that alleviate some of the "Reaction Traffic Jam". For instance, there's Shield of Reckoning that allows Paladins to combine Shield Block and Retributive Strike, although that feat does come online fairly late. There's also Quick Recognition, which allows spellcasters to Recognize Spell as a Free Action. I think the game can benefit a lot by expanding on these kinds of feats for a wider range of reactions. Additionally, I would like to see the level-gating on many of these feats relaxed.

I do agree that Intelligence feels a little bit weak, especially when it gives you more than enough skill proficiencies to be trained in all of your desired skills at level one. Some characters are left picking very ancillary skills just to fill out these initial skill proficiencies. To fix this, I propose that level one characters be allowed to spend some of their initial skill proficiencies as Skill Increases to bump skill proficiency up to Expert for a number of skills equal to their Intelligence Modifier, if they so choose. This would make having a higher Intelligence Modifier more attractive for characters that don't need a wide variety of skill proficiencies. Additionally, this keeps Intelligence as a skill-focused Ability while providing tangible benefits to classes that don't synergize well with the "skill-monkey" role.

Because of the level-gating on Master and Legendary proficiency, this still limits a character to a maximum of three Legendary skills, but does allow them to increase other skills to Expert or Master aside from their three Legendary skills. Currently, it requires complete investment of all Skill Increases in order to reach three Legendary skills for all characters besides Rogues.

Perram is right - the rules are in the Spell Attacks section of the Spells chapter, on page 197 of the Rulebook.

Looked Up: Bolstered
Found

Looked Up: Change Grip
Not found, had to search the PDF for Table 6-2: Changing Equipment