vestris's page

I don't think that you can throw heavy stuff with this belt. As it only says you treat it as weightless when you lift it and then exclusively states the object has its full weight and bulk for all other purposes.

My personal experience so far has been really good, mostly under 10 min for a level one character.

Most of my players are rather new, so some of them have a little bit of PF 1 or PF 2 playtest experience some have never played a pnp RPG ever before.

For level 1 characters we had roughly an hour per person, from scratch.

Level 8 Rogue with a completely new player 3h.
Level 8 Suli Monk, transfer from PF1 (with my custom suli conversion) 1.5 h with a relatively experienced player.

Which roughly mirrors my experience from the playtest, where I introduced ~10 new players to the system.

You sure can, you need 1 feat to gain access to bows and there are plenty of great spells that work really well with wizards/sorcerers shooting with a bow.

Magic Weapon as a level 1 spell is extremely powerful until you get magic weapons, then you can exchange it for true strike (better hits) or jump/fleet step, for increased mobility and getting to cover.

You can also fire your bow for 1 action + electric arc cantrip (actually any combat spell that does not include an attack is really good with a bow) as it is not an attack. Or fire twice with shield up.

+ Bespell Weapon on level 4.

Instantly killing 2 of 3 should count as a severe buff to the intimidation check though.

I think I like this as it gives quick (high initiative) fighters an edge over those that are slow. And if it is true it accounts for all weapon drawing.

So a fighter that wins the initiative and has quickdraw, walks up to the opponent, draws, strikes twice and gets an AoO against his opponent if he draws in front of him.

I would guess extra damage from a crit is not affected, while replacement effects still take place. So for fatal the higher die is rolled and doubled the extra die not.

Thank you for this unexpected birthday present, now I don't have to store my players characters on ancient stone tables anymore :)

I feel like paizo is trying to come up with rules that micromanage the game so that bad dm's can't fail. Never going to work and the good GM's aren't going to play that game.

What is stopping the good GM's?

I do not think I can really get back into the swing of writing full playtest reports for 2e again. My surgery recovery is slow, I terribly oversleep each day, my other games have been ramping up in terms of investment and prep time needed between sessions, I have been suffering extreme player attrition such that I ofttimes have only two players and must stressfully run two GMPCs, and my morale for 2e has been dwindling further and further. I am sorry.

I am sorry to hear this and hope your recovery will improve!

I understand the player numbers dwindling I guess with 13/13 TPK's one can build a reputation.

And I still do not understand how you even do it. I have not seen a single report that has had any trouble with the early encounters, it was always the players plowing through. Like even with the cleric being grabbed how do the spawns kill him easily with 2 times drained 1 through his athletics DC?

The first three encounters had terrible issues even hitting my PC's getting slaughtered almost by the paladin alone.

Other than the Shadows and Ilvoresh there has been no danger what so ever.

Can we agree that most Goblins are illerate?

They could still light the text on fire and read the flames no?

I guess a lot of problems with magic as of now arise from the fact that monsters seem to be too good.

I still think that casters are in a decent spot, being able to do multiple things on a turn (e.g. Cast + Attack, Truestrike + Attack spell, Shield + Spell, Wizard: Recall Knowledge to identify + cast appropriate spell, Sorcerer: intimidate + spell (which btw makes sure DC spells work better). I also agree that some spells need some attention, damage feels a little inconsistent especially if burning hands, shocking graps or the like is the only thing you do in a turn.

There could be some more metamagic, especially things like "heighten" as increase DC for an action or maximize (maybe costing one action + slow 1 on the next turn, or no non cantrip spells for 1 turn) that make you more consistent. Adding the spellmodifier for damage in turn for smaller dice might also work.

I would also say that the universalist ist likely one of the harder choices by default as relying on your focus needs some skill, while a specialist has a rather clear game plan.

Healing is too efficient compared to blasting from my perspective and that mostly because of the cha + 3 channeling that clerics get.

Centaur, Catfolk, Ratfolk and I hope at least two of them get the animal trait so that you can heal them with heal animal.

It seems like it would be useful for spellcasters to be able to dispel effects like Charm and magic items at character levels lower than 5th. You would think that low level spellcasters would be called upon to counter magic too. It also seems like relegating it to 3rd level limits the number uses quite a bit. In that you need to make a check against a DC, it works a bit like skill. Maybe a better approach would be to make it a spellcaster ability and use spell points or burn spells or daily uses instead. That could let it exist at lower levels and make it easier to have it available more if needed.

Or make it a level 1 spell that you can heighten, so use higher level spell slots to dispel higher level magic.

That would also allow the wizard to use it ritual like with Quick Preparation.

I guess with one player more it would have been a better experience, however I assume having fun fighting is not the premise for this specific adventure, rather than a tedious grind to test the healing capabilities.

Also which party compositions will be created with this kind of hard coding restriction, will there be mostly clerics? Will there be non-arcane sorcerers, how about bards? Paladins, druids (which order?)

Druids, bards and sorcerers (with cleric and bard having a higher likelihood having an area effect spell) can take care of mirror images, if your party is only going for melee combat there it is tedious, and well the spell does its job very nicely.

I would prebuffing Ilvoresh with a diminished party is a bit much.

I am really happy that AoO is not the default anymore, your could have readied actions to try to disrupt spells though.

This is actually an issue I agree on, objects, vision line of sight need to be defined in the core rules.

I would assume that it did not make it into the book due to space reasons, as something that is already well defined and easy to convert.

vestris wrote:

Defending (Raise shield + stride, 2 actions/round, not fatiguing)

You move at half your travel Speed with your weapon
out and shield raised. If combat breaks out, you gain the
benefits of Raising a Shield before your first turn begins.

Move half speed: 5 Stride/minute.

Always have a shield raised: 10 action/minute.
Total: 15 actions/minute. Less than 20.

Actually, the Defending tactics looks it has been created by some rule lawyer: "wait, you said earlier I can avoid fatigue by spending half my time taking non-fatiguing tactic?... OK, here's what I do: 1 round stride + raise my shield (fatiguing), 1 round raise my shield (not fatiguing), 1 round stride + raise my shield (fatiguing), etc. I spend exactly half my time using non fatiguing tactic."

I guess Detect magic tactic is "1 round cast the spell (fatiguing), 1 round Stride (not fatiguing), 1 round cast the spell (fatiguing), etc"; or: 5 stride, 5 2-action detect magic/minute, total 15 action/minute.

That's exactly the framework I used to create a "mount something" action earlier in the thread: assuming a standard optimized character (ie 1/2 chance of failing at handle animal), the tactic is: "1 round fail at handle animal (not fatiguing), 1 round succeed at handle animal + command animal (fatiguing), 1 round fail at handle animal (not fatiguing)", in the end it allows the character to move at half the mount's normal speed without fatigue.

Or: 10 handle animal (50% success rate), 5 command animal/minute, total 15 action/minute. The mount stride 5 times/minute, so half the mount's normal speed.

** spoiler omitted **...

So pathfinder 2 exploration mode is a stop motion movie? It does not say that you take a move action only every other turn. And you cannot let actions spill over turns, so it is stride + raise shield every turn with the extra prerequisite of reducing your speed while being on guard.

However it has been said often enough that strict translation from rules that are meant to control the action economy in combat into "roleplay" exploration mode is not the way to go. And it does not shed any useful insight on unclear exploration rules that are meant as guidelines with a lot of GM freedom that is intended to be fun and rewarding (as of raw) for the players.

Boli32 wrote:

Shield Block is not perfect - but a heavy steel shield will reduce the amount damage taken by 10 until you repair it - but even without this blocking its it still -2 to be hit.

I suspect I will badger my GM only to have a shield be dented on a Critical strike or something; they are afterall designed to take blows.

I like that, on a crit the shield takes 1 dent.

That would make shields practically indestructible (under current rules) if the wearer decides to preserve it as you shield block after damage has been rolled.

It is a very good feat, especially for the rogue. There are plenty of DCs that don't grow. Many NPC's that do not grow and are present everywhere. You can always skip low level DC's for high levels you have to roll of course. And also utilize good planning and intel to avoid personell with higher perception DC's such as the captain of the guard.

I as a GM will definitely work with proficiency gates that have low DC's for assurance. Like a master gate that has a DC of 20.

I could see an upgraded version for assurance that you can pick when you reach master or level 5 to bridge those gaps. Potentially adding your ability modifier to it.

A human rogue lvl 2, 1 Skill feat: Assurance (Stealth), Expert in Stealth, automatically makes a DC of 15.

A human fighter level 2, wisdom 12, expert in perception, bonus +4, has a DC 14 in passive perception.

If the rogue has the necessary surroundings to sneak and the guards are not actively searching. 0% chance to fail.

He can even sneak around a guard dog. Any goblin, ogre or orc except for the warchief.

This is something I am wondering about too, I have an explanation how it might work however this is not quite clear. And it might be a very wrong interpretation.

p. 195

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.

Lets say you start to cast lightning bolt which includes a somatic and a vocal action. Now you use your vocal action and ready the somatic action with the trigger, enemy in sight.

The rules for activities state that you have to perform the actions consecutively or in succession in a single turn which would allow this interpretation to my knowledge. However I am not a native speaker so I might be wrong here.

...

Proficiency gated tasks and assurance, with high proficiency levels, do exactly that. You can attempt what no one else can. And you achieve reliably what almost no one can do.

vestris wrote:

Matthew Downie wrote:

SuperSheep wrote:

To those people who want to hit 90% of the time on their optimized rolls... "Why?"

I like to achieve something at least 70% of the time I attempt to do anything that I'm supposed to be competent at.

Wasted actions are frustrating. Anything less than 70% and I start to feel actively incompetent. Imagine if Legolas sent arrows flying off in all directions...

The problem with iterative attack penalties is that if you're hitting 75% of the time on the first attack, you're missing 75% of the time on your last attack, and that doesn't feel good.

I think I'd rather attack with the same attack bonus for half damage than attack with half the hit chance...

Which is fair in general and no pressure scenarios, however if you compete against equally skilled opponents, as in combat you should not be successful 70% of the time. Or this would imply that defending is just a hell lot harder than attacking, to stay in the combat scenario.

That however would go both ways. This would make the already pretty deadly surprise encounter extremely lethal.

Against equally skilled opponents it is wise to not just swing like a mad man, which the current rules reflect nicely.

The whole point is that even if you're the same level, you are not 'equally skilled' as the specialist.

Why would the opposing fighter not be a specialist? Is that a thing only PC's can be?

We do not have that many monsters yet however there is a wide range of stealth values among them, to stay with the example. And we already have some variety which might indicate more diversity with more monsters to come.

Level 9 Elementals are good at stealth if in their element, haha, except fire, which makes sense.

Roper and Rakshasa should also be pretty optimised in stealth for level ten encounters.

Giants for example are terrible at stealth. So is the Tyrannosaurus, while devils and demons are pretty good again, I would like to see devils being significantly better there than demons.

But I agree the optimized ranger should not be the perception default example.

SuperSheep wrote:

To those people who want to hit 90% of the time on their optimized rolls... "Why?"

I like to achieve something at least 70% of the time I attempt to do anything that I'm supposed to be competent at.

Wasted actions are frustrating. Anything less than 70% and I start to feel actively incompetent. Imagine if Legolas sent arrows flying off in all directions...

The problem with iterative attack penalties is that if you're hitting 75% of the time on the first attack, you're missing 75% of the time on your last attack, and that doesn't feel good.

I think I'd rather attack with the same attack bonus for half damage than attack with half the hit chance...

Which is fair in general and no pressure scenarios, however if you compete against equally skilled opponents, as in combat you should not be successful 70% of the time. Or this would imply that defending is just a hell lot harder than attacking, to stay in the combat scenario.

That however would go both ways. This would make the already pretty deadly surprise encounter extremely lethal.

Against equally skilled opponents it is wise to not just swing like a mad man, which the current rules reflect nicely.

DM_Blake wrote:

Sure, sure, exploring EARTH with a 4 STR or a 7 INT might be fun. Go for it.

But Pathfinder takes place in a world where lethal monsters are creeping, walking, swimming, burrowing, and flying almost literally EVERYWHERE, where literally anybody or anything might kill you with a whispered word or a wiggle of a finger, where wickedly devious fiends are building lairs that are literally full of deadly traps and deadlier minions and even deadlier wickedly devious fiends...

Which doesn't really change anything. Having an actual handicap you have to work aorund makes for interesting characters. Everyone having the same relatively tiny variance in stats doesn't, and really doesn't fit a world with such diverse backgrounds.

As it stands now, they might as well turn out adventurers at a factory because the system wants everyone's stats to be so similar. There's no room for the really clumbsy guy who probably shouldn't be out adventuring but ended up doing it anyway and has to work around that by being strong or clever or persuasive. Now the worst you can be is "average".

You can still use the optional rule of rolling dice for your attributes. Or reduce one of your stats to achieve a weakness without a rule being needed for that. It will however not give you anything in return.

Interesting characters, due to weaknesses, are possible just not the default and it is not an optimizing tool.

That sorcerer is spending feats on fighter dedication to make a competent character. It's great that it's possible to create an effective character but it's not ideal that viable angelic sorcerer builds are tied to multiclassing and that sorcerers have so few class feats to begin with.

Are they? I had a very competent demonic sorcerer in my part 2 adventure. No multiclassing just sorcerer. That one of the viable options is to multiclass is fine.

Great write up and I agree a paladin of shelyn wielding a disruptive glaive against the undead menace is a sight to behold!

The opposite of reliability though, is that if you've got 50/50 odds of succeeding at something... say... telling lies in social settings, you have a 25% chance of succeeding twice in a row. And 12.5% chance three times in a row. Coming up with an infiltration plan is pointless at 50/50, because you're virtually guaranteed to fail OVERALL.

In the infiltration example you assume that every opponent involved is at the same level as the party is. And if that is the case in would be madness to attempt such a thing. Not just because the opponents are very skilled but also because if something goes of the rails the group will certainly die.

However a carefully planned infiltration will look for weak spots, engage the lower level opponents. Find out first who is competent and who is not, scout the opponents in low stake area's, talk to a couple of mooks in a tavern with no possibility to fail. Try to avoid contact with higher ranking lieutenants or potential bosses. And if it is inevitable keep those encounters to a minimum and leave them to the specialist. Or let the non competent characters prepare a distraction for those the lieutenants.

Which I find way more challenging and rewarding than rolling dice on which you cannot fail but to each their own.

I say if people want to do multiple encounters of a rewarding difficulty daily then yes magical healers should be mandatory. If they are fine with doing 2 encounters a week well then we can talk about non magical healing.

I also don't like retributive strike. It feels very against tone for Paladins - you can even use it on good creatures. It not only locks paladins into being defensive, but they can't go solo charge into the fray and use their main ability if their allies hold back and used ranged attacks, spells, etc. Plus, paladins shouldn't be about vengeance and retribution - that way leads to the dark side.

It also leads to situations like:
"Across the room you the the horrible demon you've been hunting, it doesn't seem to have spotted you yet."
"Great - time to end his baby sacrificing ways now - I charge in and smite it"
"Sorry, no more smite - you can wait for him to go first and hope to retributive strike him though. Too bad you got the jump on him, and also beat him in initiative."

Yes you can do it on anybody who tries to hurt your allies.

If paladins should not be about preemptive vengeance, in the sense of protecting their allies, should they instead be about preemptive violence? Based on nothing but a magic ability to see evil that will then be smited based on no other grounds? I would say killing something on purpose based on the assumption that a low level ability revealed the true nature leads to the dark side in a blink.

Considering that the paladin fights for the right side, the good side, anyone who opposes that is a baddie right?

For the horrible demon he can still call for blade of justice, I know many people dislike it I used it against undead with plenty of hitpoints and a disrupting +1 item, there the baseline bonus is +3, if you hit twice + retributive strike it is +9 damage a turn that explodes when you crit. Add the domain power of zeal and you have +4. Adding bonus dice is a paladin thing (especially for Iomedae crusaders) using deadly or fatal weapons is pretty good too. Which increases by a lot against demons and devils as it is good damage.

It can also be used every turn, compared to smite with 1+/daily uses. The burst is smaller the overall damage output certainly higher.

I would say nothing aids against good persistent damage. Maybe repentance for your sins or bathing in holy water well nothing a real evil entity would do.

Between my surgery recovery, my other business, and my general poor health, I really cannot say if I can write up my playtest reports in an apt time frame. However, I would just like to report that I have ran my Sunday group through Arclord's Envy. I had to run two GMPCs, one because of a low player pool, and the other because one player had flaked on me without a word.

They TPKed to the first encounter, the selfsame combat that the previous group had TPKed to. Unsurprisingly, higher-level melee beatstick enemies are terrifyingly powerful.

Yes, that means that ten out of ten of my playthroughs so far have ended in TPKs, and the two In Pale Mountain's Shadow playthroughs involved two TPKs in each session.

Can you give data on the player characters?

I just ran the encounter with 4 pregens, and except for some inconsistencies in the scenario description it worked fine just as a +2 encounter should be in difficulty.

The Lost Star is not suitable for new players - it's likely to turn them away IMHO.

I have at least 2 completely new players on my table most of the others have under 1 year of PF experience and they really like it.

I hated it to hear there was a second edition coming. I found it out too late to preorder some playtest material. Then I downloaded the PDFs and started reading and I hated it even more.

Finally I started to create my first character, a wizard and it felt bad in many ways as so many things had changed. However going for the wizard was very good as it forced me to reread plenty of the book. And the reread was awesome. I took more time to get to know everything and sure there are some things I am opposed against and some things that need to be tweaked but overall my impression changed from very bad to pretty good.

I then proceeded to call in my players and some new folks (overall most of my players are not very experienced).
We created some new characters it went smooth and quick, I helped them with the creation part. Then we started play-testing and after 2 games and a couple of solo testings I was actually thinking about converting my current campaign to 2E.
I loved it my players loved it we started to play more regularly with 2E and plenty of them me included went ahead to create more and more characters to explore the different options.

shroudb wrote:

"average" difficulty imo should be somewhere around 12-13+level. Which means that a trained guy with a bith on his ability scores, or an expert without good corresponding stats, should have around 50% to pull it off. And that the specialized guy with 18 and...

If that's the case, than what was the point of the automatic +1 and letting everyone get better at everything? If the DCs are set such that someone who isn't expert level, with equipment, and optimized stat in that thing is going to fail more than half the time and have a high chance to critically fail... they are better off not attempting it at all.

This has solved nothing from the old skill system.

I thought the goal here was to allow more people to participate by at least giving them a chance to be helpful in skill checks they didn't optimize for, but what we're actually getting is something close to the opposite of that: where you get false information, make things harder for the group, and in the case of Medicine, actively kill other players by trying to help.

Better to just let the specialist do it alone and sit out entirely rather than cause harm by trying to participate.

The high failure rate is for difficulties that are on the same or higher level than the pcs so that even "experts" have a rough time. What the level to everything does is that every character can succeed at tasks that are below their level.

E.g. swimming across a river, or jumping across a pit, or sneaking past a "normal" city guard is a difficult task for low level characters. But every highlevel fighter/wizard/cleric is now able to achieve it.

Well I would support what Rysky says, as often regarding this playtest.

However the playtest book has some inconsistencies in its wording, some emerge when you translate between the modes (e.g. fatiguing tactics) and some emerge from general descriptions to specific descriptions later in the book. This is true for some of the basic concepts like critical hits/failures as well as the different game modes.

p. 7

Downtime takes place when the characters aren’t
facing any active threats.
...
These three modes are distinct, but the game’s flow
between them isn’t always clear-cut. It’s possible that a
day that starts with downtime will involve the exploration
of the city’s sewage tunnels, leading the characters to the
secret base of a depraved cult and then into an encounter
with the cultists. The more you play the game, the more
you’ll see that each mode features of its own play methods,
but moving from mode to mode has few hard boundaries.

This would imply that you can have downtime at the start and likely at the end of the adventuring day while the PC's are in their makeshift camp.

But the description on page 332 is way more strict. I would argue stricter then intended as described on page 7.

So the final product overall needs some better clarifications about some concepts and how they are intended to work and descriptions how free a GM can rule.

I would argue that a horse does not automatically stop moving. So you need to handle animal every round but you do not need to make it move every round (e.g. you tell the horse to stride for 4 miles or until you say otherwise). Sometimes you need to make a roll to change direction or to deal with an obstacle.

That would come out at roughly 11-12 actions per minute which is fine and not fatiguing.

This ruling makes untrained riders very bad in combat but lets them travel overland on horseback, especially when using roads.

However the wording on command animal is at least problematic which originates from the specific action terms (as stride for a horse is 40 ft and then stop). But there are of course two different possible outcomes maybe being unable to ride is intended, if its not there should be a different wording for the exploration mode or at least a clarification.

Galloping however would always be fatiguing after 10 minutes, for horse and rider.

I would certainly take centaurs over goblins any day!

In general I would like more a bit different ancestries, Catfolk and Tengu have already been mentioned as non monster ancestries and of course there are still tiefling and aasimar out there.

But since I like the centaur proposal I just threw something together.

Centaur Core Ancestry:

Hit Points: 8 Size: Large Speed: 40 ft

Ability Boosts:
Strength
Wisdom
Free

Ability Flaw:
Intelligence

Languages:
Common, Sylvan

Bonus Languages:
Elven, Goblin, Orc, Gnoll, Skald, Varisian, Hallit, Shoanti (Representing their affinity for the wilderness and outskirts of civlization)

Traits:
Centaur
Humanoid

Senses:
Darkvision/Low Light

Human Sized Upper Body:
5ft reach, Medium sized Weapons

Ancestry Feats:

Steppe Runner: [1]
Increased Movement +5ft
Centaur Stampede: 2A [5]
You can move up to your speed over a smaller foe trampling them in the process dealing your level + strength modifier in damage. They can use a reflex saving throw against your Athletics DC to avoid the damage and move out of the way (being pushed to the field on the left or right your choice)

Four-Legged Combat: [1]
Your four legs guarantee you a sturdy stand granting you a +2-circumstance bonus to any fortitude or reflex saving throw against being tripped or shoved. If an ability would force you to move you 10-feet or more you are only moved half the distance

Uncivilized: [1]
While in the wild you get +2 on your survival and nature checks, being in civilized environments you suffer a penalty of 1 to all your diplomacy checks.

Natural Hunter: [1]
You are trained in Survival, you also get the Forager General Feat.

Siege Throw: [1]
If you use a Javelin you apply your Strength instead of your Dexterity bonus to the to hit role.

Weapons of Reach [5]
When critically hitting with a Polearm, Spear or a Javelin you apply the critical hit specialization effects.

Polearm Affinity: [1]
You are trained in all Polearm and Spear weapons, as well as every weapon with the centaur trait.

I would like to fully agree here too. It could open up several ways to build a sorcerer of any given bloodline, maybe with powers and maybe with physical alterations as well. As of now the Dragon Totem Barbarian feels more sorcerous than the sorcerer.

Especially for future splatbooks and customisation this would be a great change.

WHY KILL THE GOLDEN GOOSE?

...

So what is the flaw in Pathfinder Playtest? In order to implement the idea of critical failures, the play test invented hero points. So dig a hole in the system and create an artificial plug.

...

So Pathfinder Playtest moves more power to the GM and away from the players

I thought one of the designers said hero points would be an optional rule in the end not sure where I got that from atm though.

However most of the wording sounds as it would be optional. So I have a hard time following you in your connection of the new critical rule and hero points.

My real question though is how are hero points moving power to the GM?

So command animal is clearly worded for encounters not for exploration. Now lets say you want to adapt the skill use to riding in exploration tell the horse to move, tell the horse to change course tell the horse to stop that are roughly 3 actions needed for travelling on horse, you do not need to tell the horse every 6 seconds not to stop it doesn't have an autostop function. Except if you travel a cpu driven horse that exactly does what its told, in the sense of command = stride -> horse moves up to 40 feet, in combat yes not in exploration. This was if anything an oversight. I don't even think that it needs better wording.

Fatiguing however is something else entirely but not really the core of this thread. I like that magic is treated differently here than everything else, not sure about the metrics but the general idea is fine. There need to be different degrees of fatigue (which is one of the advantages of the labels in general, strangely fatigue does not have a value assigned to it) and then different types of rest to reverse said fatigue states, like: Short Rest: Duration: 10 min Reduce your fatigue level by 1, unless you are fatigued 5 which can only be reversed by a long rest. Everything of course if one would want to keep the current system.

I don't think it was necessary to give a name to "exploration" mode and hence create some basic rules for it making it complicated and create room for misunderstandings, missed labels (combat exploration labels for different skill uses) etc.. But that is where we are, I will never use any specifics from the exploration "ruleset" in practice when running non playtest games and even in those I don't think the intention was to hard limit the players but rather to give newer DM's some idea of whats possible and whats not.

{A} Retributive Strike

Make a Strike with the following enhancement:
The target is subject to your Divine Retribution until the end of your next turn. It takes a -2 penalty to any attack that doesn't include you as a target. The first time it makes an attack that doesn't include you as a target it takes good damage equal to 3 + your Charisma Modifier.

I really like the trigger of retributive strike, however it might be too tightly knit. I proposed earlier to modify the strike however we could also just modify the duration: Make retributive strike a reaction or action with the same trigger, essentially let the paladin follow the evildoer to smite him after he attacked an ally.

Making it fully proactive feels wrong for me. While messing with the duration we could introduce new feats to create storyline smiting, lets say you can chose this from level 6 ooooooooonward:

Endless Retribution:
If you witnessed a creature attack an ally/citizen or you witnessed it committing other atrocities (needs specification) you can mark that creature for retribution, your next strike against that creature counts as a retributive strike.

For smiting in general I think the blade ally + feats qualifies for that, especially against undead.

I really like the new paladin. Not sure yet how it plays on higher levels. My first doomsday dawn group had not really the opportunity to let it shine, however they were steamrolling the dungeon anyway.

Does it need some revision, maybe. But over all this feels way closer to my expectation of a paladin.

I could see an updated trigger condition with: A creature moves out of your reach to hit an ally. Or a merge feat that makes retributive strike and AoO work together. Or a range increase by 5 feet while using retributive strike. If it plays out poorly for the majority.

The detect/smite evil part always seemed sketchy/lazy to me especially in a system where alignment is inherent and not something you as a paladin needed to observe/judge on your own. All that especially from level 1, sure a veteran who fought countless of evildoers might get the gist of it quickly but a beginner?

I am not fond of the goblin inclusion neither would I be fond of orcs, other people want to have drows. How about we just make two versions of the rulebook or an early extension, Light and Darkfinder :D

I really love how weapon choice matters and interacts with your fighting feats, creating several distinct fighting styles from level 1. Weapon and crit abilities are really nice.

I created about 6-7 characters between lvl 1 and 4 and I still have plenty of ideas just from the get go it is fast and smooth.

Rameth wrote:

I would have to say that according to the rules if there is ANY light then that means the rest of the area is filled with dim-light

Is this an actual rule? Did both of the groups and I all miss it? This is a sincere question.

There is no rule in the book that states that, so you played that correctly to the book. Some people asked Jason on Twitch yesterday. Give that as feedback if you want it to be reinstated.

Rameth wrote:

Martial abilities

There simply was not a point to trying those fancy Athletics uses when directly attacking was the more straightforward method of solving the problem.

More straight forward but also less effective.

Most of the first level feats have corresponding weapons that work exceptionally well with them. I am actually really excited about the different ways a level 1 fighter can play out. Greatsword with powerattack for max burst alright, how about a forceful or backswing weapon with furious focus to utilize your misses, or the shieldblock reaction with a heavy steel shield so you can move twice and attack and still block if attacked if not AoO the moving opponent. Like there are so many things you can do.

Fighters are just so much more than move and swing max number of times.

Rameth wrote:

Having Drakus have his sword in hand was a terrible way to GM that.

The adventure prescribes, "Drakus reverts to his true form at the start of the battle and fights to the death." Given that he starts away from the PCs, the only legal way for him to revert to his true form and attack is for him to already have his sword in hand (action sequence: revert, move, attack), so that is how I ran Drakus.

Sure but I assume holding a longsword while eating is quite uncomfortable.

I don't like goblins as core I don't think they are intelligent nor charismatic. However with the storyline of them becoming somewhat sociable which is quite a feat for a race hated and warred against for centuries I would reason that such a feat can only be achieved by the most charismatic among them -> +2 Cha for player characters.

Not fitting for core was always reflected through their non regular stat modifiers so I guess if you want to reign them in you need to go a way like this and charisma is the only modifier that somewhat makes sense for me as I would never see nor depict pathfinder goblins as intelligent or wise.

I dislike the auto-confirming. Especially for 2nd and third attacks that by chance role a 20. For that reason I might even prefer a flat +10, -10 crit range abolishing the iconic 1 and 20 for success/failure. I don't think that you should crit if you are unable to hit normally.

Weapon abilities such as deadly make criticals really swingy especially with the reduction of static boni in favor of more dice roles.

However I do not think that it necessarily makes combat super swingy, but it certainly can do that especially when players do not consider the new critical rules in character creation. Which puts an emphasis on dex or armor.

Like running around with 11 armor and a low health total will get you killed. Especially with the monsters having higher attack rolls now.

I like that multiple threats like centipedes, especially with their poison, pose a real threat now. On the other hand I would prefer lower attack boni on monsters, such as goblins so that I can throw them in droves at the players.

From experience shields and heavy armor have proven to be very useful, an armorclass of 15-16 or above should be considered for most characters in creation to make sure "standard" threats only crit on a 19-20.

One thing of note is that in most fights players with high static damage boni do not profit from crits, the monsters do so that is a bit odd.

But how can that be???

I see a problem with the way ancestries are designed right now, however I think it is a cool idea to make the ancestries have some mid/lategame impact/changes.

I think overall the identity is lost with the current system which is a problem. Especially on genetic traits but also with things like weapon familiarity (with a higher emphasize on dwarfs/elves and other longliving species). Like if someone starts to go on an adventure when he is 50 years or older there should be enough room for practice in some shared cultural items.

What I like is that there is some diversity among the ancestries so not every Elf is the same, which is especially nice for half/elves/orcs where you can decide how elven/orcish you want to be.

So I would like to propose a negative selection lets say you have 4 ancestry feats, choose 3. And then include the option to buff those choices up at higher levels.

If you give an higher numerical bonus to proficiency, you go back to a system where to make a challenge for a Legendary character you have to set a DC that is impossibile for any other.

But I agree that, as things are now, high proficiencies feel a bit weak. What about a rule saying that you always get to roll twice (and take the better result) against lower-tier challenges/opponents?

You could still make challenges, where only one of the party has to succeed or where the legendary character can help (aid) the others to make give them the chance.