tqomins's page

Spamotron wrote:

tivadar27 wrote:

...

3Doubloons is ... maintaining the compilation of all the errors.

... it's unclear to me if devs are working based off of that list or the thread itself, if it's the second, then having separate threads seems preferable.

On Discord, if I recall, Mark indicated that they use the github as one source for their master issues-list.

Thanks for the update!

In addition to what everyone else has said, the designers have confirmed several times on here that you decide whether to shield block after you know the damage

It's honestly difficult for me to get excited for this when we still don't have the LOWG sanctioned for organized play and no word on when that might come. I stopped playing PFS and probably won't revisit until LOWG and LOCG are available for play

Donovan Du Bois wrote:

Technotrooper wrote:

During the Paizo Friday Twitch stream, the devs promised an update addressing key critical issues (not every little error/typo) in the first printing of the CRB "soon."

Soon TM having the meaning of "Sometime between this exact second and the heat death of the universe".

I mean, sure, technically, but give us a little credit here. We are going to release a couple of important errata in the next few weeks, before the APG playtest to be sure.

Right now we are deep in GMG work and that has to take some priority. We will get out some updates as soon as we can without jeopardizing that books progress.

Hang tight folks, we will get you some answers.

That's understandable, of course, and maybe I'm misremembering ... but my recollection of what was said on the designer q&a stream, on previous streams, and elsewhere is that it sounded much more like we'd get a reasonably comprehensive first-pass errata document coming soon after release, not "a couple important errata" to happen in October

aka, you may have set expectations a little higher than this post attempts to dial 'em down to

and maybe I am misremembering! but I know I'm not the only one who got a certain impression from what's been said ...

Well, the information on the Othoban halflings is purely flavor. There's not an Othoban-related heritage nor is there an Othoban-related ancestry feat. If you can roleplay a time-displaced halfling who is particularly curious and keen on dressing well, you're good to go! However, it might be worth waiting so you can read the sidebar on halfling slang!

Oh, excellent!! I thought it was a heritage. But if not I'll just go ahead with it and retcon the rp when we get the book. Because time halflings! so cool! how could I not

This is a great post. I'm very excited for the book

But now I'm a little anxious because I might have to save my first PFS character (halfling wizard/cleric) until I get the time halfling! :-|

I'm generally just a little annoyed with unarmed attacks being all over the place like they are. Seems a better design would be to handle them like unarmored defense—they scale along with whatever else your class gives you. That would be better for all the same reasons the change to armor proficiencies from the playtest was a very good move: simpler all around, enables more concepts, doesn't have a real downside, prevents all these weird quirks.

Very happy to hear (on today's stream) that unarmed attacks should/will scale with simple weapon proficiency. Doesn't quite get the fighter quirk, but clearly that's the intent

I wouldn't put this in the same category, simply because nothing in the Fighter Class even suggests you should attack unarmed. The fact that you jump from Expert to Legendary is weird, but it's not a trap option since prior to that attacking unarmed is not actually encouraged in any way, making it much less of a trap.

That's fair. This one is a bit different.

I'm generally just a little annoyed with unarmed attacks being all over the place like they are. Seems a better design would be to handle them like unarmored defense—they scale along with whatever else your class gives you. That would be better for all the same reasons the change to armor proficiencies from the playtest was a very good move: simpler all around, enables more concepts, doesn't have a real downside, prevents all these weird quirks.

The monk has more than enough to make it the premiere martial artist—you don't need to make unarmed strike completely useless for most characters, and a trap for several, out of some fear that otherwise you'd step on the Monk's toes. Monks aren't threatened. (If nothing else, they're still the only one with powerful fist, much less the other stuff they get.)

But that's a bit of a tangent to a more general frustration, so I'll leave it there.

Thanks for this, DMW. These are some that have been bugging me as well.

the first (the one I think is an error) is that Sorcerers do not get to Expert with Unarmed (despite some Bloodlines giving Focus Spells entirely based on unarmed attacks) when they do with Simple Weapons, and Warpriests likewise do not get to Expert in Martial Weapons (despite getting Proficiency in them). These seem like errors because they are the only two times when a Class provides a weapon and encourages the character to use it then pulls the rug out from under them by not increasing Proficiency

This kind of thing is a big problem. But "the only two times" isn't quite right. I'm aware of at least two other such issues, both also having to do with unarmed attacks:

(1) Fighters can't apply their weapon mastery to unarmed attacks (as I explain here, for folks who don't see why that is). This both seems off, thematically, and also has the weird result that they start Expert in unarmed, it doesn't increase ... and then it leaps to Legendary at level 19

(2) Champions whose deities favor unarmed attacks are out of luck: their unarmed damage doesn't benefit from Deific Weapon and they can never raise their proficiency beyond Trained

Erik Mona has a few interesting posts about this on reddit. E.g., this one:

It’s not because of low sales. The Core especially is doing great on Amazon (better than the 1e Core at launch), Amazon often increases their discount when a book is selling well, and that’s what we’re seeing here.

Amazon's whole strategy is to leverage its massive network to sell at a steep discount nobody can compete with.

I didn't know about this particular pattern, to discount when something is doing well, but it definitely fits with their usual behavior.

(Which, obviously, Paizo has no input in or control over.)

Malk_Content wrote:

There is a marked theme with some of the uncommonings,restricted access expands stories. Teleport invalidated loads of stories, detect poison outright removes interesting detective work etc.

I can see why they'd want to restrict such things.

Or you could, ya know, write appropriate stories for the setting.

Is it even worth pointing out that the rarity toggles reflect the setting? This option or that option are not-common in Golarion, in the Inner Sea, in the setting for the PFS campaign. You want a different setting, play a different campaign

By the way if you haven't looked over all the uncommon spells- just spells alone, not even other options- you'll see a good number of spells that were commonly found in PFS.

** spoiler omitted **

^ This list includes focus spells. Which are class powers accessible by class choices. It doesn't really speak to the purported "problem" here. There's plenty of good reason to prevent a Cleric from grabbing the "uncommon" focus spell granted by, say, a domain their deity doesn't have, or a sorcerer bloodline, or whatever

Nah, this is a much better policy, i.e. a better decision overall for the campaign, than an alternative that would open up uncommon/rare items for wide use

Helps constrain power creep through elaborate builds using unexpected combos of uncommon resources

Lets the uncommon/rare options be more interesting/powerful bc they've got that rarity toggle to restrict them

Helps rewards of uncommon/rare options be more special and interesting

And really, most of the uncommon options are accessible via class choices so it's not like they're off the table

So sure, there may be some cases where you can't play a specific build bc a specific option is rarity restricted and you don't have a way to access it. But I don't see that becoming a huge issue of any sort. And looks to me like that cost is worth benefits like those above

Organized play isn't as flexible as home games. That's inherent in its nature and leads to perennial expressions of frustration (esp. hypothetical/anticipated frustration). But PFS seems to manage this kind of thing very well overall and I expect it'll actually be a lot better in the new edition

So, *shrug*

While shields do look pretty useful for casters, and I'm sure it will come up now and then, I don't expect it to be too common. For a few reasons. Let's assume a caster who's trying to stay out of melee:

(1) Shield will get you *most* of the benefit of a steel shield, and you probably don't expect to shield block more than a couple times in a combat even when you're dragged into melee (combat lasting only 3-4 rounds).

(2) Many casters will be low-Str and constrained by Bulk limits. A shield is 1 Bulk, and a repair kit to keep it together is 1 Bulk. But a spellbook is 1 Bulk and a Waterskin (full) is 1 Bulk. So if you've got an 8 Str Wizard, you're already encumbered if you carry anything more than that. And many casters will be low-Str. Which is to say, again, that the marginal benefit of hauling around that stuff as opposed to just using shield may not be worth it.

(3) But the real reason not to bother is that very, very often you'll find yourself having a better use for all 3 actions. Casting a spell is mostly 2 actions, you've got useful cantrips so you'll probably want to be doing that every round, and that 3rd action will almost always be better spent on moving, on metamagic, on a focus spell, or on something else.

It wouldn't bother me if casters with shields became common. But I don't expect them to, for reasons like these.

In addition to Lisa and Jason's comments, I thought this post from James was interesting:

Selling out may make for some snappy ad copy, but it's a terrible thing to do, because that means you didn't make enough to supply demand and miss out on potential sales and annoy customers. Selling out of Starfinder at Gen Con a few years ago made it easier for us to pack up the booth at the end of the show, but it caused a lot of frustration and aggravation and second guessing and other ripple effects down the road that would have been avoided had we not sold out.

A book doesn't have to sell out in order to be "successful".

We don't make our actual sales numbers public, and I'm not at Gen Con to see how much of what we brought to the show sold (and the show's still going, too)... but from what I can see it seems to be selling quite well.

tqomins wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

Proficiencies for Unarmed Strike sure look weird.

... Fighters start Expert and leap to Legendary at lvl19 with nothing in between, and can't use Weapon Mastery for UAS ...

I'm pretty sure unarmed combat works the same for fighters as any other weapon group. unarmed belongs to the brawling group.

I do think that's what was intended, and how I'd choose to run it as a GM. But the rules as written don't actually do that. Because (1) the Fighter's proficiency increases go to "weapons" in a weapon group, but (2) unarmed strikes are not weapons (even though they belong to weapon groups). So as a result, Fighter starts at level 1 as Expert in unarmed strikes, and has no way to increase that until level 19, when Versatile Legend swoops in and bumps that to Legendary.

Unarmed Trait:

An unarmed attack isn’t a weapon, though it’s categorized with weapons for weapon groups, and it might have weapon traits.

Fighter:

Choose one weapon group. Your proficiency rank increases to master with the simple and martial weapons in that group ...

Your proficiency ranks for simple and martial weapons increase to master. Your proficiency rank for advanced weapons increases to expert. You can select one weapon group and increase your proficiency ranks to legendary for all simple and martial weapons in that weapon group, and to master for all advanced weapons in that weapon group.

You are nigh-unmatched with any weapon. Your proficiency ranks for simple weapons, martial weapons, and unarmed attacks increase to legendary, and your proficiency rank for advanced weapons increases to master.

For perspective on proficiencies, check out my proficiency comparison chart

Playtest in OCTOBER??? :-O

Excellent job here.

Proficiencies for Unarmed Strike sure look weird.

If MC adds proficiencies, it might add even more value to include them in your table :-D

Yeah, Unarmed Strike is in a very strange place right now. For example:

1) No way to raise UAS if your class doesn't hand it to you

2) Alchemist only gets Trained, though mutagens seemed designed to encourage unarmed alchemist melee

3) Champions of gods that favor UAS still only get Trained (this highlights a separate issue with Champions not advancing proficiency of favored weapon)

4) Fighters start Expert and leap to Legendary at lvl19 with nothing in between, and can't use Weapon Mastery for UAS

Mark suggested that some of this was due to some details falling through the cracks as different sections of the book were handed off between different staffers. So I'm eager to see what kind of errata/clarification we get for it.

My preferred would be if UAS worked like unarmored defense: your proficiency goes up along with whatever else you're getting. I'm hoping that was the intention and what we'll see

To help with monster creation until we get the GMG, I put together a spreadsheet:

Basic data on all monsters in the Second Edition Bestiary

Comparison of basic proficiencies between the classes

I found this pretty informative to put together. Let me know if you spot any mistakes.

P.S. here is the list of resources I've put together so far for Pathfinder Second Edition

Basic data on all monsters in the Second Edition Bestiary

This data should be useful for system & build analysis and for reverse-engineering some monster creation guidelines

I input the data manually, and moved quickly to get this to you, so it likely contains some errors. Let me know if you spot any! (These are especially likely in the Attack & DC columns, since I was just skimming for the highest number there—it wasn't info in a fixed place like AC.)

And here is the list of resources I've put together so far for Pathfinder Second Edition

The list is complete!!

1) Absalom: Pathfinder Agent
2) Broken Lands: Aldori Duelist
3) Eye of Dread: Lastwall Sentry
4) Golden Road: Living Monolith
5) High Seas: Red Mantis Assassin
6) Impossible Lands: Student of Perfection
7) Mwangi Expanse: Magic Warrior
8) Old Cheliax: Hellknight Armiger
9) Saga Lands: Runescarred
10) Shining Kingdoms: Lion Blade

(Also, I was wrong! No Firebrands here. Interesting ...)

CRB p.278, Critical Hits. This section misstates the rule for critical hits, saying that any nat20 attack roll is a critical hit.

CRB 20, top-left under "Ancestry." The cross reference to the voluntary flaws sidebar gives p. 24, but the sidebar is p. 26.

Note that while Wisdom controls the Cleric's DC and spell attack rolls, you don't need to have 10+spell-lvl Wisdom to cast a spell of that level.

So you can play a low-Wis Cleric and just focus hard on buffing/healing allies (things that don't rely on Wis) and pump your Charisma for maximum extra heals.

Or if it's homebrew friendly as you say, just swap everything Charisma and Wisdom do for the Cleric and go with that instead of the divine sorcerer!

The Pathfinder Second Edition Core Rulebook has 46,690 possible combinations of Ancestry, Heritage, Background, Class, and Class Path—and that's before you add archetypes to the mix! If you add an archetype to your build parameters, you're up to 560,280 possible character options. That's ... a lot!!**

So what on earth should you build? Ask my character-suggestion spreadsheet! It'll give you new suggestions all day long. And if you prefer to roll physically, you can always pull 100 suggestions at once from the "d100" page to make a chart to roll on.

Enjoy!!

** And if you count the Wizard's Thesis as a "Class Path" choice, you bring the Wizard's number of choices up from 9 to 36 (= 9 schools * 4 theses), which bumps the overall numbers to 74,095 characters (without archetypes) or 889,140 characters (with archetypes) in the CRB. I haven't added in the theses yet, though, so I kept those out of my initial count.

P.S. The spreadsheet is coded so that it is very easy to expand as PF2 adds more content (including the ability to easily filter for the specific sources you want to draw on). I've already put in some options that we know are coming in the next few months in the world guides, and I'll keep adding to this for a while at least.

Does the book explain how to handle chases?

Looks like that will be in the Gamemastery Guide, out in a few months. The relevant bit:

• A catalog of subsystems to handle unique situations, from thrilling chases to researching mysteries to vehicle combat to elaborate duels to sandbox-style "hexploration" and more! Plus, a universal victory point system to help you design your own subsystems!

Somebody elsewhere mentioned that Rogue Dedication gets you proficiency with light armor (and thus is a better deal than the initial Armor Proficiency feat), but I have not yet confirmed that in my own copy of the book.

No need to check the book. We've already seen all of the multiclass archetypes, and the Rogue multiclass does indeed grant training in light armor.

The Lost Omens World Guide had a printing issue and has been delayed till late August

In that book, you'll find the Hellknight Armiger (= apprentice) archetype, which you can enter via the level-2 dedication feat

The Lost Omens Character Guide (October, I believe), will include more detail and rules support for Hellknights, including 2 further archetypes, which if I recall correctly are the "full" Hellknight and the Hellknight Signifier

If you have the Armiger archetype, you can enter the advanced Hellknight archetypes without having to fully satisfy the Armiger dedication

Can someone with the book clear up the confusion in the Cloistered Cleric thread?

What is the Cloistered Cleric's unarmored proficiency?

Hmm perhaps it might be advisable to just have new players write their stats down on a sheet of ruled notebook paper?

It would be less 'intimidating' looking and would probably have sufficient space for a starting character to write down most of the pertinent information...

The character sheet actually makes a lot of sense for the most part. I think after a couple minutes new players will really appreciate it.

It's not perfect (placement of reactions is the main thing I don't love), but it structures a lot of the underlying math/info in a way to help players organize it in their heads.

*Much* better than scratch paper.

What exactly is the trigger for the shield block reaction? Do you choose to use it before or after the damage is rolled?

For years now, I've used statblocks for my characters rather than character sheets. I find them a lot easier to use as a player (and also as a GM for pregens & NPCs)

So now that we have the PF2 character sheets, I went through those and a bunch of the monster statblocks we've seen previewed to create a statblock template for the new edition:

Pathfinder Second Edition Statblock Template

Feel free to use & share. And let me know if you have any suggestions for making it better (e.g., I'm not in love with how I put in Bulk and GP.) I'll maintain the template (as-updated) at this link for the foreseeable future.

(Note: I'm hoping that Paizo makes the action icons available for community use on release of the game. Big thanks to Rysky for suggesting that I use emoji for the job in the meantime. They work pretty well!)

For folks like me who prefer to write up characters in statblocks, I've made a first attempt at a template here (based on the various Bestiary statblocks we've seen)

Feel free to copy & use as you like.

(I'll likely try to find something more elegant for the action icons but the derpy Unicode characters work well enough for now)

EDIT: Thanks to Rysky's excellent suggestion, I dropped the Unicode for (much better!) emojis for the action symbols

TL;DR: What's the prerequisites for Monk dedication? And can a character multiclassed to monk get his unarmed and unarmored proficiencies up to expert+?

When the mountain stance feat for monks was revealed, I was dreaming about making a stoic dwarven cleric of Irori who multiclassed to monk and used this stance to ignore dex and armor. According to the transcript of all multiclass archetypes, monk dedication requires 14 strength AND dex. Can someone confirm that his is indeed the case so I might bury this concept before investing too much additional time thinking about it.

What is/are the primary attributes of champion? Only Str or are there other options?

Strength. See this handy chart, which was shared in the character creation blog.

EDIT: But according to The Orb, above, the chart is wrong! Add this to day-1 errata I guess

How many sample builds for each class? We saw that the Alchemist, at least, gets 1 sample build for each research field. Does every class get 1 build per class path/subclass like that? What about fighter and monk (which don't have class paths)?

I thought we might get an archetype related to New Thassilon!

For reference, here's the list we have so far:

1) Absalom: Pathfinder Agent
2) Broken Lands: Aldori Duelist
3) Eye of Dread: Lastwall Sentry
4) Golden Road: Living Monolith
5) High Seas: Red Mantis Assassin
6) Impossible Lands: Student of Perfection
7) Mwangi Expanse: Magic Warrior
8) Old Cheliax: Hellknight Armiger
9) Saga Lands: Runescarred
10) Shining Kingdoms: ?

I'm pretty sure we'll get something related to the Firebrands in the Shining Kingdoms. Looking forward to finding out next week!

Re: Dragon Instinct—we don't have to guess. We saw it in the UKGE slides. Below is a quick transcription of what I could see on the slides; put that with the two above answers and you've got basically the whole thing.

For "Running the Game" with Jason Bulmahn:

What does the Bestiary include in the way of templates or other ways to modify the printed monsters to increase the variety a GM can get out of the book?

(We've seen a number of monsters like the Zombie or Skeleton that include variants—very cool, but here I mean more universal templates or modifications.)

FaerieLore wrote:

I don't think we need to give other classes dex to damage. I think they should have something that encourages them to use dex as their melee stat even if they end up dealing a little less damage.

It needs to strike a precarious balance so that it is less good than STR builds but not so bad that no one will take it

Keep in mind that a 16 or 14 starting stat is really not far behind one that starts at 18 if you boost it every time you get your boosts.

A 16 is behind by +1 for 10 levels and equal for 10 levels. A 14 is behind +2 from 1-4 and behind +1 thereafter.

So a Dexterity build that adds Str to damage isn't struggling as it would in PF1. You just don't need it as much in this system. Dex melee will be fine.

Svirfneblin are there, but the heritage you take is not Deep Gnome, and the heritage does not necessarily make you svirfneblin...I'd love to explain, but some of us are staying somewhat vague upon request until Aug 1.

:)

Paizo folks have said on the streams that they didn't want to pigeonhole the core heritages and the abilities they grant by saying "you can only get this if you're from X region" or the equivalent.

They've given examples of gnomes with darkvision, goblins who grew up in the cold but aren't snow goblins, etc.

AKA, making it too specific would be felt as a restraint and less fun. Which all seems reasonable to me.

Mark talked about this a bit on this week's Know Direction and I think Jason talked about it on one of the previous weeks?

(Though of course that's just my understanding of their comments from what I recall, I may be misremembering)

Rysky wrote:

tqomins wrote:

singingzombies wrote:

Are Bards able to Shield Block by default since they had Shield Proficiency during the playtest?

Is the Draconic Sorcerer Bloodline Focus Power different from what they had during the playtest, the Draconic Claws Power?

I'd make the shield question more general:

Which classes get shield block by default? We know the Fighter does, but who else?

I believe everyone can do the Shield Raise to get more AC, but only Fighters start with the option to sacrifice their shield as a form of DR.

Champions, warpriest clerics, druids, fighters all gain the Shield Block general feats as a level 1 class feature.

Druids? That seems strange to me

Based on the playtest, I'm guessing any Rogue can boost Dex. Scoundrels can just boost Cha instead if they want.

Yes, both Scoundrel and Ruffian "may" use the alternative stat for their key ability score. (Mark read them out on Wednesday's Know Direction and I noticed that.)

Neat! This should be a fun little addition to characters. I'm especially glad to see a solid "default" option provided for folks who don't want to bother.

I think I missed some details, anybody know how the Doomed condition was inflicted?

Feels like thematic ability for BBEGs to amp up the tension, or for survival/horror adventures in general.

It came from the cursed key. The thing started glowing (I think just before or in the first round of combat), and then they all got doomed 1.

As you might expect, no explanation was offered

tqomins wrote:

FTR, Mark confirmed on Discord that:

(1) shield proficiency is gone, everyone can use a shield by default;

(2) the shield block reaction is *not* available by default—access to the reaction is granted by a class feature (as we see the fighter gets at lvl 1) or by taking a general feat

Sorry ahead of time if this was spoiled before. Does a shield do anything without using a shield block? In the playtest "It grants its bonuses to AC and TAC only if you use an action to Raise a Shield."

"Raise a Shield" (1 Action, +2 AC) is different than "Shield Block" (Reaction, reduce damage of an attack that hits you)

FTR, Mark confirmed on Discord that:

(1) shield proficiency is gone, everyone can use a shield by default;

(2) the shield block reaction is *not* available by default—access to the reaction is granted by a class feature (as we see the fighter gets at lvl 1) or by taking a general feat