vagabond_666's page

Bulk is still unguided. Knowing whether or not they could carry a key, potion, or backpack would be nice.

Unless the rules say somewhere that bulk is determined differently for NPCs, the rules on pg 272 state that "You can carry an amount of Bulk equal to 5 plus your Strength modifier without penalty ... You can’t hold or carry more Bulk than 10 plus your Strength modifier"

Edit: forgot to halve for tiny.

Well I cannot speak to the other adventure as I have not read it yet - but for Plaguestone ... that is on the players if they blew all their resources on the first fight of the day. Maybe it does take a TPK for them to learn they have very limited dailies and you will not allow camping out after every fight.

If the players hadn't "blown" all of their resources on the first fight then it would have either been a TPK or at the very least the death of 2 PCs. I'm not going to insist that my players conserve resources and force them to die, and punishing them for trying to rest having spent all of their resources just trying to stayt alive seems like appalling GMing at best.

Even so for this specific encounter they have a ranger guide they can camp overnite with if they need to. While she is written to not get into combat, she certainly is helping with handouts. I am saying as a GM add up the 'sequential' encounters and give the breaks and even naps where they can be justified that continuing on is not going to add up.

And they did get her to set them up a campsite so they could safely rest between the two encounters. This does not change the fact that as written the encounters are supposed to run back to back, and both encounters nearly wiped my players from full resources, consuming all of their daily resources each time.

The lashers fight is actually only severe if you melee them. Range they can do nothing but die in place. As I said it took a near TPK to figure this out. The next lasher encounter was very lopsided (and boring to GM as there is nothing you can do). So when you see a severe out of place as the first fight of the day, look for that weakness that was put there to make it not severe. If players are not using recall knowledge give them a freebie to clue them into this game mechanic whose sole purpose is making fights easier.

The bloodlash bushes have resistance against piercing damage, making bows fairly ineffective, and the area the combat takes place in is small enough that you can either let them melee you, or you can leave. Kiting them and making ranged spell attacks with cantrips from the one character that has one simply isn't possible.

Alternately if the suggested course of action is for the sorcerer to run into sight of the clearing, fire off acid splash or similar, and then run back out of sight, waiting until the bushes return to their starting location before repeating the process ~46 times until the bushes are dead; why is the fight even in the scenario?

'PC Ranger you would know from having lived in these woods (or been warned by your Ranger Guide) to steer clear of lashing vines". The fight just became trivial...then let players know next time they need to spend an action roll for that free advice - or choose investigate mode in exploration before hand.

They saw the wolf corpse and tried to sneak around the edge of the clearing, which didn't work for them.

Anyway, if my complaint was "these two fights that are supposed to be back to back are too hard" your encounter specific advice, good or bad as it may be, might be useful, but it isn't. As per my original post in this thread my complaint is "almost every fight I have run has gone the way I have described, to the point that two of my players are gritting their teeth and letting me finish running the scenario rather than just quitting the game in frustration". I'm pretty sure that if this wasn't something I was running for 8-10 weeks and then we stop, and was instead Book 1 of an AP, both of them would have quit the game by now.

NemoNoName wrote:

-1AC, -1 Reflex, and a bunch of minor other negatives

I'd hoped PF2 wouldn't require players to track lots of minor pluses and minuses...

Well, they're all bundled up into a single condition, and you only apply the worst penalty of a given type. Any simpler and you're basically playing 5e D&D.

Haven't run Plaguestone, but between converting WftC and playing in Age of Ashes, this feels pretty odd. Are your guys just sitting still to take the beating? What relative level enemies are they facing?

They're currently Level 2, and last session fought three Bloodlash Bushes (https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=427) and then rested up before fighting two mutant wolves (which are Creature 3, have AC 19, 45 hp, bite for +11 doing 1d8+4 + 1d6 acid, and if they hit with the bite can spend and action to auto do a further 1d6 + 2 with 1 persistent acid). This just seems to be too high a to hit and damage compared to the PCs, and to be AC on par with the PCs with substantially more hit points.

Both these encounters appear to be "Severe" according to the XP budget system, but based on the way the book presents them and the described behaviour of the NPC that is leading them around in the story, it seems the assumption is that these fights should be taken back to back with perhaps a 10-20 minute break or so in between. That said, the same dynamic has occurred in a lot of the fights they had at level 1, and those were all moderate.

Being experienced in PF1 can be a disadvantage in PF2. Not in character creation, but in terms of tactics in play.

For example (and this is only one example), vs. many higher level foes, their actions (especially their second and third ones) are worth more than yours so moving in, attacking, then moving back is extremely worth it. Versus foes with low movement this is even more true (and a lot of horrifying single foes in PF2, and especially in Plaguestone, have lower than 25 movement).

That's super unintuitive for people used to the full attack meta of PF1, but it remains true.

The Ranger is a TWF ranger, so his MAP maxes out a -4, so he wants to get next to them and "full attack", and if they backed off between goes the rogue would lose flanking, plus once they've been downed it's two actions to stand up and retrieve a dropped weapon, so if they also backed off, they likely just get downed again without actually doing any damage.

I take your point that if they can move far enough with one action that the enemy needs to spend two to follow up it may be advantageous to kite them around, but
a) the bushes have reach, even though they are move 20, and the wolves are move 35, so that's not likely to be that useful a tactic here.
and
b) if someone gets downed, either the cleric needs to get within single move striking range to heal them up again, or if the other melee PC backs off you no longer provide a credible alternative threat and the downed PC gets mauled to death within a turn.

I've played a few sessions of Plaguestone, and the most notable difference for me so far is how much your health can yo-yo between combat and out of combat. It feels like we are taking more damage, but it's balanced by the fact that it also seems much easier to get back up on your feet after being knocked down. Of course my party has no 10HP classes in it, which could be a big part :P

I'm GMing Plaguestone. The party consists of a Ranger, a Rogue, a Sorcerer, and a Cleric.

Pretty much every single combat consists of the following:

A first round where the Ranger and the Rogue get in position and make 2 or 3 attacks, the sorcerer casts a spell, and if he goes before the monsters the cleric casts a spell.

Then monsters drop either the Ranger or the Rogue (or both), the sorcerer casts a spell, and the cleric heals whoever was knocked out back into the fight.

The dropped character picks up their weapon, stands up and makes one attack, while the other gets a few hits in. Then the monsters drop the other PC and the cycle repeats.

Once the fight is over, the cleric is out of heals, the sorcerer is out of spells, and they need to rest for a day or the next fight will be a TPK (also the Rogue and Ranger are usually have a high level of wounded).

These are all 1st Ed players that are good at 1st Ed Char Op, and as far as I can tell their characters are reasonably built.

As far as I can tell the Rogue and the Ranger players utterly hate 2 Edition and when Plaguestone is over will insist that we never play it again. The sorcerer is having fun but isn't impressed, and I assume the Cleric is bored out of his mind by his only role in combat being to use his turn keeping people on their feet.

So why do I have to be able to spontaneously craft a sentence that a fictitious person would find intimidating in order for my character to make an intimidate check?'

1) Because either you or the GM needs to come up with something, otherwise the game will become the least engaging thing in existence.

Player: "I try to intimidate the guard"
GM: "Roll the dice"
Player: "I rolled a 12"
GM: "The guard is intimidated."

Wheeee. Fun times.

I cannot imagine that if the person in question had made even the vaguest attempt "I tell the guard to back off or I'll tear his head off", that the GM was going to turn around and say "Eh, not scary enough, you don't get to roll".

2) The fact that you (and plenty of people like you) consider being asked to provide some amount of imaginary conversation in a game about imagining various situations to be "ableism" alongside not making government buildings accessible to people that can't walk, or providing visual material that people can't see properly because of a defect in their vision that could be easily fixed, or whatever else, is why I can't take the term ableism seriously, and why I automatically assume anyone that is using it is either seeking attention, or using it as a rhetorical club to attempt to beat people into agreement with them because they aren't capable of making compelling arguments for their position.

We're not being "problematic" by expecting the same representation other groups get

You do have the same representation though.

The rules for blind and deaf characters are on pages 618 and 619.

The optional rules for running a character with disabilities as though they aren't disabled (your dare-devil type scenario) are in a side bar on page 487.

Assuming that it is common sense that a wall of force would stop sound or scent is far from a common consensus of opinions. Can I bang on the wall to make sound on the other side? What if the wall does not enclose the target? sound very easily travels through physical objects and around corners as can smells.

Wall of Force says it blocks physical effects. Assuming it blocks a corridor or something similar rather than just being a barrier in a vast space you can just go around, it definately blocks scent (although you would be able to follow a scent trail up to the barrier if it was left prior to the wall being formed), and there is a very reasonable argument for it to block sound, and while I wouldn't argue against a position of "you can bang on the wall of force to make noise on the other side" I certain don't feel you have any supporting evidence for that position.

I thought it might interest some of you to know that humans can echolocate, but it's not usually something you magically get by being blind, it's a skill that takes a lot of practice. So probably best represented as a feat.

As impressive as that is, based on the Youtube video I just watched of a kid that can echolocate who was shooting hoops, he struggles to find and pick up a basket ball. If he was in a sword fight, he's dying within seconds.

colloquial usage of sight as the default sense

It's used that way, because sight is the default precise sense.

Wording things so that they are capable of being interpreted as also working for magical senses, or the level of hearing possessed by bats or whatever, will just make the CRB even more clunky and annoying to read than it already is.

I fail to see what is wrong with their "assume sight is the default, and in the rare case a monster has a sense that is as good as sight or better, reinterpret things as required". If that is ableist against bats and their superior hearing ability, then so be it, and I should hope that Paizo will decide to continue to make their books as readable as possible to their existing audience, even if it does mean on missing out on whatever sales they might have made from the disgruntled Chiropteran demographic that now refuses to buy their product.

There is absolutely zero reason to not do that.

Because you want the text in your rulebook to flow naturally when people read it, and not have potential players turned off because your game reads like the owners manual for a Honda Accord?

(and no, your one example in isolation will not ruin the way the CRB reads, but following it to its logical conclusion and doing it everywhere will)

See the thread on this. It gets pretty confusing

Do you mean the "Uses for a familiar" thread? Because, if I'm charitable, all I see in there is one camp that wants ironclad rules for everything, trying desperately to justify how applying the rules for familiars in combat to them outside of combat doesn't just result in what is very obviously complete nonsense, and a second group of people who should just be ignoring their assertions for the obvious nonsense they are, but are for reasons I cannot fathom, choosing to engage with them.

- whether familiars can take an action in exploration mode (I suspect no)

If you can't get familiars, minions, mounts, animal companions, and even just trained animals to do general stuff they are capable of during exploration mode without having to use a command action every 6 seconds to keep them on track, things become extremely peculiar.

I don't really recall much confusion.

Feel free to search either the playtest forums or the Pathfinder_RPG subreddit for anything to do with how shields and dents work, you're looking for posts from the point of the playtest rules release until around the release of the 1.1 errata.

Well, that's the real trick. I think Jason plays it simpler for the stream but who knows. What I do know, is that I had a long conversation with Mark Seifter (one of the PF designers) about this and he stated this was how it worked. Although he did say that he wasn't authorized to make it official as Paizo wants to have a single source for definitive...

Given that following the Shield Block confusion in the playtest it was apparent that the different Devs had different ideas about how the shield block rules actually worked; until there is official clarification I'm not sure that any one Dev's statement is an indication of anything other than "this is how this Dev runs that rule in their game".

Temperans wrote:

It's kind of weird that the one item which has traditionally been always better for defense (both irl and in PF) has so few ways to scale for better defense (not talking proficiency).

Is it though?

I'm pretty sure that what that video demonstrates is that One on One:

And also that in mass combat:
Spear & Shield (aka ttwawtsbui2hiohwhas) > Sword & Shield, so long as the Sword & Shield aren't free to move around as they please (so basically PF2 combat ruins this tactic).

How should the correct 30 and 60 cone look properly? Could you provide a correct image? Cones were already hard for me to wrap my head around due to certain visual and geometric disabilities, and this is only making them worse.

https://imgur.com/gallery/OWqrMai

is my interpretation of the 30 foot cone.

Because one rule is weird it's okay for all rules to not really be rules?

It was sarcasm. They really should have taken the opportunity to redefine all areas to function consistently but we've got what we've got and it's too fundamental to think they'd errata it now.

(I'd have gone with everything starts at the center of a square "0" and you measure all areas with "could you walk there from zero?" ignoring walls as appropriate, or walking around them for spreads. Draw two lines from the center at 90 degrees to each other for a cone, only squares fully inside the lines are effected, and all squares of a large creature count as "0", except for lines and cones where they pick which one they want it to be.)

Don't bursts always begin at a grid intersection?

I don't really see how an emanation can also be a burst. The definitions are too different.

Orthogonal cones always start at the edge of your space, except when they don't, why should bursts be any different?

(The 15 foot cone was wrong in 1st Edition, because it didn't start at the corner of your space. They've changed the language defining cones, so it's now correct, but that means the 30 and 60 foot examples in the book are now wrong)

I'm running Fall of Plaguestone soon, but my book only just arrived last night (Australia QQ). I've had time to skim read the beginning and some of the gazeteer & characters, but feel wildly unprepared for setting up any kind of mystery.

So, any advice on the key beats I should hit for the first session to lay the groundwork? What's important to know about the encounters/story?

Thanks!

I'm assuiming you'll read the summary on page 3, so that said, the beats in my game were as follows:

Caravan trip - let the players introduce themselves, bit of roleplay. Introduce the other Caravan NPCs. (there's a typo where they look to have changed an NPCs name but missed one instance, don't let it confuse you)

Fight wolves. - if your players are decent spray them with acid straight up if needed. They can kill the big wolf in one go, and they should get to see it in action to really get an idea of something weird is up.

Arrive in town - Bort goes to run an errand, don't let them follow him.

In the feedmill - Hallod is there, they get to see him be a jerk, but he leaves, don't let them fight or follow him. They should see the goblin Phinick, probably don't let them question him too much at this point.

Dinner - Bort tells stories. There's a section in the book with outlines of the stories he tells for you to embelish.

Bar brawl - players might step in, might not, doesn't really matter.

Bort dies eating dessert - Investigation begins. Several people aren't here at the point that Bort dies (Trin, Phinick are the main candidates). The PCs probably wont notice, but you should skim this section to be aware of who they are, because they will want to speak to those people immediately.

I ended my first session here. (about 3.5 hours)

From here the players can go a bunch of different places. Mine went that night to Trin's house, and then the Orchard the next morning. If they go to bed and then are a bit slower, you'll probably have a chance to do the tour of town bit first.

Hope that helps.

If you don't have time to read the book, but have a commute or something where you can listen, there's at least one actual play podcast you could listen to as well.

By comparison, getting 20' worth of steps seems cute as far as min maxing goes.

Given how few things have Attacks of Opportunity now, is moving 20 feet without provoking really that much better than the stride of 50 odd feet (or whatever ridiculous movement distance a 9th level elf monk already has)

b)Elf Step, Modifies Step to be 5ft. And it has 2 subordinate actions, Step and step.
----b1)(step 1)Everything that modifies step modifies it.
---------Tiger makes the steps 10ft
----b2)(step 2)Everything that modifies step modifies it.
---------Tiger makes the steps 10ft

...

you do a move action, that doesn't provoke, modified from 5 to 10 back to 5.

...

is it any more clear now?

As mud.

You seem to be saying it goes from 5 feet to 10 feet back to 5 feet, but your stepwise example reads to me as each of b1 and b2 ends up as 10 foot.

Also, the rules aren't a computer program, otherwise Corvo is correct and you can't put stuff that is too small or light inside sacks.

It isn't an unreasonable assumption that if feather step can change the two steps in elf step, that tiger stance modifies it, and that the language in elf step is either a last editing pass by someone that was so used to the term 5-foot step in PF1 that they reworded it thusly, or is there as a reminder of what a step action normally does (who knows, maybe they recieved a lot of playtest feedback from GMs who thought it was broken that elf step gave you two stride actions, because they both start with s and so people kept getting them mixed up)

While this may well be intentional on the part of the Devs, if we're going to have specific can override specific but only if it's specific enough situation, they need to be way clearer and less ambiguous with their wording, because if you're going to be this rigid about what things can and can't do, they're eventually going to end up with more totem warriors and monkey lunges where they didn't intend them.

vagabond_666 wrote:

Except the wording is "beating the DC by 10"

No it isn't.

"You critically succeed at a check when a check’s result
meets or exceeds the DC by 10 or more. If the check is an
attack roll, this is sometimes called a critical hit. You can
also critically fail a check. The rules for critical failure—
sometimes called a fumble—are the same as those for a
critical success, but in the other direction: if you fail a
check by 10 or more, that’s a critical failure" Page 445, CRB

"Beating the DC by 10 or more is referred to as a critical success" Pg 10

Good job Paizo

Ira kroll wrote:

So, the first failure is at DC-1, since if we make the DC, we have a success. Then, counting down, we have:

DC Success
DC-1 Failure by one.
DC-2, Failure by two.
...
DC-10, Failure by ten (or more). Equals critical failure.

If we did that on the other side, then

DC+0 = Success by one.
DC+1 = Success by two.
DC+2 = Success by three.
...
DC+9 = Success by ten, critical success.

i.e.: 15 DC would critically succeed on a 24, not a 25, using that same reasoning.

Except the wording is "beating the DC by 10" and I interpret "beating the DC" by 1 to be one higher than success not just equal to the DC.

I'm not sure if that is RAI.

I assume it's intentional so that the math is simply +10 and -10 rather than one of them being either 9 or 11 to keep the probabilities nice

if you fail a check by 10 or more, that’s a critical failure.

If the DC is 20 and you rolled a 19, how much did you fail the check by?

Rarity does not tell you what is actually available in any given town/shop. It tells you that if something is available, what would have a higher % chance of actually being present. Moreover, rarity is a tool. A DM is still required to determine how that tool is used.

Sure, but while it never outright states how available, the impression I get from the rulebook is that common items should be fairly widely available (especially in large towns/cities). If you start denying your players access to common items and formulas on a regular basis, they will be fairly justified in being annoyed at you.

Which was my entire point. The game has set up a situation with a very obvious best course of action. Any attempt to "fix" that course of action (rather than change the underlying situation) will simply cause your players to have a justified grievance.

vagabond_666 wrote:

PF1 has it's issues, but in relative terms it is way more realistic, since at least in PF1 those 9 shortswords are the equivalent to 4.5 longswords

and not the 0.9 of a longsword that they equal in PF2

You have effectively just said "ghosts are way more realistic than skeletons"

Nonsense.

A) both are systems attempting to model real world phenomena, therefore one can be more realistic than another (to be more realistic is not to be an 1:1 exact match, but to be closer to being that). I am willing to accept a longsword is twice as heavy as shortsword, I am not willing to accept that it is either 10 times as heavy, or alternately 10 times as unwieldy.

B) Skeletons are more realistic than ghosts. Everyone has a skeleton. Ghosts don't exist.

vagabond_666 wrote:

John Lynch 106 wrote:

why include encumbrance at all?

An excellent question.

Well if you don’t know the answer I would suggest you don’t actually know what the design goals are and therefore cannot know whether or not it achieves those goals.

You are, of course, free to disagree.

I have given you the reasons I believe the bulk system exists. They are inferred from the text in the CRB, dev blog posts and comments about the bulk system, and some general common sense.

You have provided zero evidence that they are incorrect, nor suggested that I am missing any. For want of any further credible argument on your part you have retreated into "only the devs can possibly comment on this".

You are a troll, and I will not respond to any further posts from you.

Because "Quick maffs" was the primary reason why no one used Encumbrance before.

Which, as I've stated before, I get completely. What I cannot fathom is, given it fails at every other aspect of being an encumberance system so badly, why anyone thinks it is better than just dumping encumberance completely?

why include encumbrance at all?

An excellent question.

You need to face the fact that your favored abstraction is also riddled with holes because it is a terribly simplistic abstraction. Just because you don't like the new abstraction as much doesn't mean it doesn't do what it's supposed to do and doesn't have areas it outperforms your favored abstraction.

I don't particularly like PF1's encumberance, and given that magic items more or less remove it's use from about 3rd level at the latest, I'd only really ever use it in a low level survival focused game.

It's simply that PF2's bulk system has nothing going for it beyond "quick maffs" and is so riddled with issues like "10 shortswords = 1 longsword" that it clearly and obviously does not work, and so I just cannot fathom why anyone thinks it is an improvement, and that if PF1's system was too involved to bother with, that they shouldn't have just ditched encumberance completely, if this system was the best alternative they could come up with.

Ascalaphus wrote:

PF2 bulk isn't as realistic as PF1 weight...

Both systems are roughly equal in the "realistic" category.

If for no other reasons that because both systems claim than an entire suit of rigid plate armor can be put into a standard-sized backpack, and both systems allow for a character to have 9 short swords hanging from their belt with no issue.

PF1 has it's issues, but in relative terms it is way more realistic, since at least in PF1 those 9 shortswords are the equivalent to 4.5 longswords

Strill wrote:

Because the old system was too much bookkeeping, and no one used it. The new system is simpler in that your bulk value can be calculated entirely by counting, with no need for long addition or addition tables.

Then the goal isn't solely to provide an approximation of how much equipment characters of differing strength can carry, while bearing some resemblance to the real world.

I'd be interested if Vagabond666 can give us any further insight into what he thinks the complete goal of bulk is.

As was stated by someone else, it was to also incorporate how unweildly some items are, which I have responded to with

it was also, as the poster above suggests, to simplify the math, which it achieves at the cost of every other aspect of it's purpose

which is why I cannot fathom why anyone thinks it is a good system, and encumberance shouldn't just have been abandoned instead.

vagabond_666 wrote:

what I don't get is why they think a system that clearly doesn't do what it's supposed to

Can you please link to an authoritative statement as to what bulk was intended to do? Because without knowing what the goal was, how are we meant to judge whether or not it achieved that goal?

If the goal was get people to reconsider using encumbrance then it has succeeded. If the goal was to make strength matter for more than damage then it has succeeded.

Bulk is clearly intended to provide an approximation of how much equipment characters of differing strength can carry, while bearing some resemblance to the real world.

I welcome any Paizo employee to come and tell me that I am wrong and it is simply a means of providing an incentive to take a higher strength score and that any resemblance between the size and weight of items and their amount of bulk is purely coincidental despite all the text in the rulebook that describes it thusly.

I don't get the argument that weight is more accurate for tracking carrying capacity. Tracking solely weight is just as much of an abstraction.

It is, because most of the encumbrance issues are around the stuff you have in your backpack rather than "can I fight effectively while I'm holding onto an inconvenient beach ball"...

I get that people don't like the minutae of tracking the weight of everything, what I don't get is why they think a system that clearly doesn't do what it's supposed to is an improvement over what they had before, just because the maths involved in a system that doesn't work is easier.

I find that any reasonable load out of gear seems to "make sense" as being carry-able without noteworthy hindrance

This is my issue with bulk.

They've made it work with your standard first level kit for each class based on what their strength is likely to be (except the alchemist, but that may or may not be an error), so at first glance it seems perfectly reasonable.

It breaks down immediately after that though when you get into "I've picked up a few extra bits and pieces, can I carry them?" territory. Depending on what they are the answer is wildly different.

If I am 1 bulk away from being encumbered, I can't strap a longsword to my hip, but I can carry 2 hand axes, a light mace, a crowbar, a hammer, a spare set of cold weather furs, that pup tent the pup tent merchant from a few posts ago sold me, and still have capacity for 2 more light bulk items.

Again I ask, if you're happy to allow a PC to carry that assorted extra gear that must surely both weigh more, and be more inconvenient, than a longsword, why bother tracking encumbrance?
Just let people carry "a reasonable amount" and be done with it.

A) ... I don't understand this point. Why would I care about how many bulk 10 pounds is?

B) The chair is a light wooden collapsable chair that can be folded flat and stacked easily. I could easily carry five by threading one arm through them.

If you can't currently look at an object and estimate it weighs 10 lbs for first edition, how do you look at something and estimate it weighs 10 lbs and is therefore 1 bulk and not light bulk or 2 bulk for second?

Fair enough, your chair is a small stacking chair as I listed in my "unless" section and is probably 1 bulk.

I don’t need to estimate that. You are misunderstanding me. Yes I can convert pounds to grams fine - though as I’ve previously ignored this system (because it is too fiddly and the reason I talk about in the next paragraph) I’ve never had to.

But if you asked me to estimate how heavy say the chair I front of me was, I would have no clue about it’s gram weight. I’d probably say it is fairly light for a chair... maybe 1 bulk? (Ok that last part is partly in jest - but only partly) Hence the second part of my paragraph about finding something labelled with that weight to try and lift.

So your issue is your inability to estimate the weight of an object, which while I get you think the bulk system helps with, it really doesn't, because

I have to ask... am I the only one that laughs because of the examples of how non-functional bulk is that boil down to "if you do this thing that basically no character ever had, or will have, a reason to do it is clear that it's ridiculous."?

Like, good job pointing out that a rule meant to simplify tracking of your limit of carried stuff doesn't happen to perfectly handle load-outs of gear that players have no incentive for their characters to carry... but you are doing to encumbrance what treating every loss of hit points as actual injury to physical body (or "meat points" as it sometimes gets called) does to hit points.

The example I gave is meant to illustrate the following point:

If the system that is meant to track me carrying a reasonable amount of equipment allows me, with baseline strength, to carry 200+ lbs of items in a backpack and a ridiculous amount of stuff hanging off my chest, what on earth makes you think that when a player says "sure, I'm under my bulk" that the numbers represent anything approaching what you'd think is a reasonable amount of gear for them to be carrying?

For pounds I have to first find and use a calculator

It's close enough to 2 pounds = 1 kilogram that for rough estimates a calculator is completely unnecessary.

Kinda wish quick-release backpacks were explicitly written as core, just so GM's and players alike can just assume people are carrying around a reasonable amount of gear and can pick up treasure and then just quickly and safely drop it once combat starts.

Carrying a backpack in your hand rather than slinging it on your back only adds a light to your load, so you've got that as an option for most characters if you just want to drop it as a free action in the first combat round. The people who are using a 2H weapon or have a shield that wont let them carry something in the same hand or whatever probably have the strength required to just keep wearing it anyway.

With my Strength of 10 I also like being unencumbered by my backpack full of 40 pup tents as I wear my Bandolier that gives me quick access to the 8 Cold Weather outfits I keep in it.

That assumes all magic items are available everywhere, which just seems crazy to me. I realize there are games that play that way, but It just doesn’t really feel like DnD to me. Though admittedly, I’m straying into a different topic. But if someone is playing a everything, always available campaign, then I would imagine they would need to tweak things accordingly. This thread seems like it will help with that.

Well, unfortunately for you, there is now a Rarity system that dictates what items or formulas are readily available, and so most of the items that would fall into this discussion are going to be, while perhaps not trivially easy to acquire, fairly easy to get a hold of.

Also, if these permanent items are available and are so sought after, seems to me the seller would jack the price sky high.

This is a large portion of what has kicked this thread off. The price of consumables compared to permanent items makes them not worth using. You may as well take up burning money as a hobby if you do. Any sane analysis of the situation from an economics point of view dictates that these would not be the prices, either permanent items would go up, or consumables would come down. However, the designers have priced them as they are, so, there you go and here we are.

I didn’t catch this, but are the consumables selling for, at least, half price?

As far as I am aware, it is basically the same as PF1 "Sell for half, Craft for half", with the exception that you now need to buy (or otherwise aquire) a formula to craft an item, but the formulas are relatively inexpensive, so it ends up closer to "sell for half, craft for 0.55 for the first item and half for any more"

Unicore wrote:

This is true at wealth by level but wont be true in play or at least not at my table. The whole party will sell any item that doesn't immediately fill an essential need and spend all down time crafting wands with their spare gold.

Good for them? I'm pretty sure they'll wind up behind in the math by a fair bit if they really do this as much as you seem concerned about, making this a pretty bad idea.

Sorry, is it seriously your contention that a party that sells 4 single use items to create an item of equivalent power that can be used anywhere from "once a day" to "is permanently on" is somehow going to end up behind in resources?

It's hardly complicated or needless minutae.

CRB pg 502 wrote:

It usually takes 1 day of downtime to sell off a few goods or shop around to buy a couple items. It can take longer to sell off a large number of goods, expensive items, or items that aren’t in high demand.

It takes a day to sell a few goods. A few items is somewhere between 2-5 items. You look at how many things they want to sell and then tell them how many days it takes.

I definitely don't see how it would be more reasonable for it to take just 1 day to sell everything regardless of how many things you have to sell. Not every merchant wants to take every adventurers unwanted stuff off them.

I live in a city with several million people in it. With 5 days I could visit every store in our Central Business District and buy something from each one and have time to spare. How a group of adventurers couldn't exhaust every merchant in pseudo-medieval town in less time than that boggles my mind.

Also a simplistic rubric of you can sell 4 items a day is just going to make players annoyed. Those 4 swords in the example given, it takes a whole day just to sell those? Really? Alright GM Killjoy, we'll just stay in town for "number of items divide by four" days then. Have we sold everything now?

Yes. Congratulations, you haven't solved a single thing about "permanent items are so much better than consumables it isn't funny" and now your players are slightly annoyed.

No. Congratulations, your players can't sell or buy stuff, something they have a perfectly reasonable expectation of doing, and now they're way more annoyed.

vagabond_666 wrote:

shopping simulator 2019

roleplay interactions with every damn shopkeep

Secondly, even if you don't have a table of players who want to RP bartering every transaction, how is the new system going to take longer and lead to more eye-rolling players than the old one?

Roleplaying interactions is fine, and if my players wanted to spend half a session interacting with random NPCs, I'd probably let them. I'm using the term SS2019 to evoke the idea of the similarly named series of German computer games that are all about the incredible minutae of doing whatever it is that they're simulating. Specifically what is missing from your example:

PF1:
"I want to sell blah"
"ok sure, that's X gp"...

PF2:
"I want to sell blah"
"Ok, that takes 5 of your downtime days and you get X gp"

is figuring out why it takes 5 days to sell all that, and not say 4, or 6, or more reasonably 1, taking something that is already using a spreadsheet at my table and making it require even more minutae.

So you can't just casually sell a massive bag of consumable magic items whenever you want.

Except you can just take a few days in a decent sized town to play shopping simulator 2019 while your players roll their eyes and ask if you can just get on with the game. Most Adventure Paths have plenty of these situations available (and if they don't they find a way around it - eg. the planar merchant in Reign of Winter)

Alternately, you can say "no, you can't sell stuff, or buy the stuff you want because I said so" (even though the rules imply that this is a perfectly reasonable thing for the players to do) because you need a fix for the players trying to do the glaringly obvious thing based on the situation the rules have presented. I'm sure they'll think you're a fantasic GM as a result, and not a complete stick in thew mud.

I just did a quick skim of Hellknight Hill for consumables and found a grand total of 29 potions, elixirs, and scrolls (there might be another consumable or two, but not all that many).

Most are level one to three.

That adventure takes you to level 5. And that's the number found in the whole adventure. I'm...rather deeply skeptical that the 'take and sell eight of these, buy one permanent item' strategy is meaningfully usable in that adventure. Certainly not more than once.

I'd make 3 points

1) Hellknight Hill was written while the rules weren't finished, and is also the first 2e AP, it may not be particularly representative of what is to become "standard". We do however only have 2 data points right now, so it is what it is.

2) Levels 1 and 2 are a bit wonky in terms of magic items in 1e, that may also be the case in 2e.

3) In order for an AP to utilize the "you'll use consumables because you'll need them to survive" it has to run a very fine line of not overwhelming you, versus not being too easy. If it overwhelms you, you need to spend resources raising characters or restorations or the like putting you further and further behind the 8-ball as the game progresses. Conversely, if it is too easy, that makes it possible for the PCs to sell consumables and replace them with permanent items. This puts them more and more ahead of the power curve as each time they do this, the get relatively more resources and things become even easier.

Survival Horror computer games usually handle this by dynamically allocating how much ammunition and healing you find based on how well you are doing. As a series of 6 pre-published books, this isn't really possible for an AP.

I think that fundamentally Paizo have chosen to make a number of design decisions around how consumables will work in the game that are mutually exclusive, and based on prioritizing some over others, the fallout is that resource wise, consumables are not worth consuming.

Saving up for a Ring of Fire Resistance might be the optimal long-term investment strategy, but only if you live long enough. Declining to waste your money on an "overpriced" Scroll of Resist Fire in the meantime looks smart right up until the moment you get roasted by a fire elemental in the next dungeon.

Consumables also offer greater versatility for the price compared to permanent items. If you somehow know that your current quest will take you to the Plane of Fire, that Ring of Fire Resistance is an obvious choice (assuming you can afford it). But if you're not sure what you'll encounter next, getting four or five different scrolls/potions/talismans with a variety of effects might be a better use of your gold at the moment.

As I mentioned to someone earlier, this argument only makes sense if the scenario where you gather enough consumables to sell them and replace them with a permanent item before an opportunity to use them only happens very rarely, and in my games it happens almost every session.

Also, the ring of fire resistance is the obvious choice if you expect to take fire damage more than 4 times in your life. Again, I don't know about your games, but in mine...