Goblin Squad Member
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This was recently asked so for newer people to the forums...
Everyone gains experience points at a set rate whether you're logged in or out. You don't get more xp for going out and killing lots of things there is no power leveling (and being a sandbox there is no endgame). You'll need enough xp and maybe some minimum attributes (Str, Dex, Con, Int, Wis, Cha) and/or "merit badges" from doing related stuff in the world and visit a trainer to train up another level in a skill or start a new skill.
Skills/feats are organized into trees. There might be (example only) 15 levels of a very basic Skill A. You might have to train that up to certain levels before you can train levels of Skill B. As you get into more advanced skills and pre-requirements you might need 5 levels in both Skill E and Skill R from another part of the tree to train Skill Y. Got how that works?
So if you want to be a rogue, you train daggers, flanking attacks, hidey skills, etc. compared to wizards who train abilities to cast higher level spells and magic feats.
Instead of leveling up on xp and then getting more hp, saves, and abilities all at once from the ding, you spend xp to train up hp, saves, and abilities as you go until you eventually achieve another level.
You can train flanking attacks, fireballs, and healing spells all at onceif you have the xp and meet pre-reqs for those skills. You can slot a limited number of abilities and feats at one time to use (8?) so it's a players' judgement to pick and choose features of different archetypes or slot just 1 archetype and get a bonus.
As time goes on, we can max out training in a particular area; 2 1/2 years is the current thinking for an archetype. At that point progression stops being vertical and expands horizontally into other areas. In the long term a 6 year old fighter won't faceroll a 2 year old fighter because their fighter skills are nearly equal; the 6 year old just has 4 extra years of training in other areas too. Where the 2-year has been laser focused on only fighter skills the 6-year might have those, and army leadership skills, and some extracting skills, and market skills for trading, and be the equivalent of a level 12 wizard too.
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Goblin Squad Member
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good summary!
I'll add two points:
1) Slots. You will not have hotbars with 20+ abilities in combat. There are limited hotbar slots that can be swapped between combats. (similar to TSW).
Spreading yourself thin gives flexibility but less power. Laser focus gives you the best min/max builds but there is always another build to beat yours.
2) Stats. Str, Dex etc will be prerequisites for high tier skills. They are also gained by training skills (and racial bonuses). This allows sorting skills in tiers without making complex skill trees: if I want a Dex:14 skill, I'll need to have trained lots of lower tier Dex skills first - but I can choose whether to build my Dex through stealth, archery or dodging.
This should make 'horizontal expansion' significantly faster since you already have the stats to fast-track powerful skills.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Nice summary.
I'd also recommend reading Your Pathfinder Online Character and then Are You Experienced?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I thought I saw it somewhere, but I don't recall where now, but is it correct that there is no longer a capstone planned?
That's correct.
As currently conceived, the "Dedication" system replaces the previous idea of "Capstones" (as something you would only get if you take all 20 levels of a role in sequence).
And here's the post that introduced the Dedication Bonus:
So what we're proposing now is the idea of a "Dedication" or "Focus" bonus.
Essentially, whenever you only have feats from one role slotted (rounded out with generic feats that aren't role-specific), you'll gain a bonus to doing what that role is supposed to do. This bonus is pegged to making the pure build competitive with the best synergistic multi-role build, may shift over time as new synergies are discovered, and may scale up in power based on your level (becoming similar in power to tabletop's Capstone at 20th level if high-level synergies are really powerful).
For example, if we decide that Paladins are supposed to be the best in the game at melee damage vs. evil targets, but testing determines that there's a synergistic Paladin/Ranger/Fighter build that does better without losing any real effectiveness in other areas, we may tweak the Paladin Dedication bonus to increase Smite Evil damage. This gives us the ability to shore up specific corner-case issues without having to rebalance the feats of a whole role (which may propagate out to cause further issues).
Your bonus is entirely dependent on what you have slotted, not what you know. If you build a Fighter 5/Barbarian 5, you get the Fighter bonus if you only slot Fighter feats, the Barbarian bonus if you only slot Barbarian feats, and no bonus while you slot feats from both (or neither) roles. And there may remain situations where you prefer the synergy of two or more roles to whatever the individual bonus is. If we scale the bonus in power by level, it will likely be based on the highest-tier feat you have slotted.
Thoughts?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Wasn't there a developer post that said attributes in PFO would be significantly different from what they traditionally have been in other games? That if you had 18 strength it meant you would learn athletic skills more easily than if you had 10 strength, but not that you could pick up a laden pony on your shoulders where the 10 strength guy could not?
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Being, that is correct.
Strength in PFO is not a measure of how strong you currently are, but rather how adept you are at learning to do things that utilize your strength.
I didnt think it was based on actions though, but the equipment you use and the xp you put into skills that give attribute bonuses.