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Guns/Gunslinger
- Balance: Guns and their ammo are far overpriced, considering how you can't full attack with them.
- Nonsense: Bullets ignore armor, but you can dodge them (touch AC)
- Balance: Gunslinger takes a bunch of terrible equipment, and piles on a ton of class abilities to make them the only way to use the equipment and not suck (free ammo, free gun, ability to use the guns more frequently, etc).
- Flavor: I don't really want cowboys in my d20 Fantasy.
- Flavor: These gun mechanics make it difficult for me to have decent flintlock wielding pirates (which I do like) as the guns are terrible and overpriced for anyone but a gunslinger, and gunslinger is not appropriate for most pirate concepts, which would fire the pistol/blunderbuss/musket, drop it/sheathe it, and then fight with a sword for the rest of the fight.
- Flavor: Guns are much too expensive for me to do the pirate gunslinger thing; Frequently quickdraw a loaded pistol, fire off a shot, and then switch to my sword for an attack or 3 and then do it again with a different pistol, for 5 rounds.
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Spell Resistance.
Creatures already have saving throws and already have energy resistance, just as creatures already have arcmor class and damage resistance. Spell Resistance is an additional layer of unneccessary complication that does nothing to improve balance or game experience. We've re-worked Spell Resistance as an SLA that grants +4 to saves vs. Spells and spell-like abilities.
Finesse.
So many problems/unrealistic options can be traced to Finesse. We've made Finesse a weapon trait rather than a feat and have applied it to all light and ranged weapons as well as a few select others like whips and rapiers - weapons with the Finesse trait automatically use Dexterity for attack and damage bonuses instead of Strength.
For the record, I hate everything about Gunslingers too. I could accept the inclusion of guns in my campaign - grudgingly - but only as you describe them above. They should be a weapon to be fired and then sheathed/dropped/used as a melee weapon until you get a full round to reload them. Some of the gun-juggling cheese the Gunslinger class has led to is as terrible as it was inevitable. People who are going to base an entire class around guns don't want flintlocks, they want revolvers and automatics... and if they want that, then there are plenty of game settings where its appropriate.
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Breastplate Armor.
Every warrior should be wearing this in some form. There is no way that "a single piece of sculpted metal" should provide 6 points of AC. Don't get me wrong, breastplates are very cool but 6 is too much. It takes out a lot of interesting variation. I cant believe that a Helmet does nothing to protect you but covering your chest makes you nearly invulnerable. Yeah "Fantasy" blah blah but let me believe it is plausible.
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I've always felt that armor was something where mechanics and flavor diverged... the 'name' of the armor type is really just the title of that specific degree of protection and flexibility, the actual description of the armor is left to the mind's eye. Breastplate armor, to me, is the standard 'full coverage' suit of armor including metal protection over vital areas with chain, leather and/or padding everywhere else.I also agree about helmets. I've never seen any successful efforts to make them relevant - perhaps they could grant +4 AC vs. critical confirmations?
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Intimidate and Diplomacy. Both are bad systems that have persisted through multiple versions of D&D and into Pathfinder. The way the rules are written you can turn even your worst enemy into your best friend for a DC 40. Which sounds hard, until you have someone who focus their feats and gear into it. I coudl go on, but there are many threads on the board about Diplomacy and Intimidate and many include posts and references to why the system doesn't work.
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I've always felt that armor was something where mechanics and flavor diverged... the 'name' of the armor type is really just the title of that specific degree of protection and flexibility, the actual description of the armor is left to the mind's eye. Breastplate armor, to me, is the standard 'full coverage' suit of armor including metal protection over vital areas with chain, leather and/or padding everywhere else.
I also agree about helmets. I've never seen any successful efforts to make them relevant - perhaps they could grant +4 AC vs. critical confirmations?
Helmet, Dwarven Boulder: This heavy, reinforced helmet can be used to make melee attacks. The wearer may also use the helmet when attempting bull rush maneuvers, granting a +2 circumstance bonus on the check, but after completing the maneuver (whether successful or not), the wearer is staggered until the end of his next turn. In addition, the helmet grants a +2 circumstance bonus to the wearer's AC against critical hit confirmation rolls. A dwarven boulder helmet adds 20% to the wearer's arcane spell failure chance. It occupies the head slot and is made of metal, not stone, meaning that it can be crafted from unusual materials as a metal weapon. A dwarven boulder helmet can be enchanted as a weapon (not as armor, despite providing some protection).
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The Withdraw action.
"Eeek! I'm a wizard next to a fighter! Now I'm going to run away without provoking an attack of opportunity from him, and weave around this chair in the room to prevent him from charging to catch up with me!"
Spending one round to get out of a dire situation 'for free' seemed so cheesy I disallowed it in my first campaign. Our other GMs allowed it, so I started allowing it, and it's always been abusive and cheesy, in my opinion.
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Intimidate and Diplomacy. Both are bad systems that have persisted through multiple versions of D&D and into Pathfinder. The way the rules are written you can turn even your worst enemy into your best friend for a DC 40. Which sounds hard, until you have someone who focus their feats and gear into it. I coudl go on, but there are many threads on the board about Diplomacy and Intimidate and many include posts and references to why the system doesn't work.
I agree. I'm not a fan of this. On the plus side, I came across a subsystem that replaces it nicely, and with a few adjustments, it's going to be making it into my game's houserules for Pathfinder (The Subsystem is in a Pathfinder SciFi Setting called NecroPunk which you can get for $15 on dtrpg. Basically you have A Social Bonus - Like BAB - and SMB/SMD, and then there's a detailed subsystem that replaces the typical "Mind Control Forever if he makes a skill check with a flat DC") that Pathfinder comes with. Those three scores, plus a "Confidence" hit points pool are used in conjunction with a bunch of mechanics that allow you to try to persuade people and do other social things, with some solid rules to do so.
The classes in the Necropunk book have Social Bonuses in their tables; and have some suggestions on how to add them to pathfinder classes. Personally, As I won't be using the Necropunk Classes, I am having the players spend skill points to raise their Social Bonus; So social bonus = Min((1/2 characterlevel + 1/4 skill points invested),character level) with the rounding down happening at the end. The result is you get something like BAB, except you spend skill points to go from bad BAB to good BAB, at a comparable rate/cost to how you would be keeping your diplomacy/sense motive or bluff/sense motive maxed out; if you have bluff/intimidate/diplomacy/sense motive as class skills, they count as 1 free point invested in your social bonus. It means I can use the Pathfinder classes, I don't have to heavily alter them, the players can build their characters to be as social as they like, and the subsystem just works.
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Pathfinders Guns. Unlike many, I dont mind guns in my fantasy. Heck I like advanced tech in my fantasy. I actually like the dying earth where magic, future tech operate side by side. But I dont like equipement that throws a very basic element of the game (armor) for a loop.
Do guns penetrate armor in real life? Sure, but so did crossbow bolts, long bows and a other weapons. Bypassing armor with this one weapon group creates all sorts of problems in game. Then this advantage is counterbalanced with more nonsense in terms of cost, the cost of these things is literally absurd. In an attempt to placate people who didnt want guns in their fantasy paizo made them 'rare and expensive' to explain why they werent all over the place. Then they left their damage comparable to normal ranged weapons while putting massive hurtles in the way of being able to attack more then once in a round. Again this messes with the basic assumption of the game that multiple attacks are the primary advancement of martial character's attack abilities as the game progresses.
Again I dont care that weapons take forever to reload in real life, this isnt real life its fantasy. Just make them work within the game system.
In the end the rules are clunky, they mess with lots of basic assumptions of the game, and create all sorts of problems that both the peoiple using the guns and the people opposing the guns have to jump through. It just doesnt work in my mind. And baring a really strong advocacy from a player in my game, I would use alternate rules before ever implementing these rules.
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The impossibility of multiple swift actions.
We made one minor change to an existing feat (Quicken Spell reduces casting time to a move action) and now our rounds allow the following options, where any action can be exchanged for a lesser one.
A character can make the following actions in a round:
Full round action, swift action.
Standard action, move action, swift action
Standard action, swift action, swift action
Move action, move action, swift action
Move action, swift action, swift action
Swift action, swift action, swift action
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Also the Antipaladin,
Name is stupid and class is nearly unplayable in a party setting. The interpretation of the rigid paladin alignment restriction into the evil antithesis makes party co op absurd. Even in an evil campaign what? Lets work together for... greater evil! No. It doesn't make sense and there could have been a cool alternative to the non LG divine warrior. Elemental Paladin? Dark Knight? Just like FF DK. Vampiric sword and done. Badass, but no. We get a necrophiliac skeleton herder who has to kill a kitten every 15 minutes or lose his abilities altogether.
Well when I saw the antipaladin, even though it's classified as a PC class, I consider it an NPC class. But as for rules I hate, spells that say they affect up to a certain number of hit die of creatures. It confuses me on what that means exactly.
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Guns and Robots, period. Im sorry, I know there are some great campaign worlds out there where technology and magic combine, heck even sci-fi but it stretches the conventional sword and sorcery genre quite a bit. Im gaming in Golarion and have basically written them out as much as possible.
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Action Economy.
The whole full-attack thing is a real sticking point for me. It destroys mobility and has served to focus a ton of resources from martial melee classes into just getting to be able to full attack. This is why pounce is so prized.
A 20th level Core Fighter with the TWF feat chain can move 5ft and attack seven times or he can move 10ft and attack once. This is a really stupid setup.
With the addition of Deadly Aim, pathfinder begs the question: Why pick melee? The only decent answer to that question is that Barbarian Rage doesn't add to Dexterity. But really... run the numbers... archers are flat out better. And why is this? Action economy.
I also dislike that while martials are getting extra attacks, a caster is sitting on low level spells that need to either be used out of combat or not at all because apparently it never gets easier to cast a 1st level spell.
And finally... Vancian Magic. Something points based or pool based that could provide a more flavorful model than vancian magic would be much preferred.
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Grappling
It's REALLY complicated, is like none of the other attack actions or subsystems, and is either totally useless (most cases) or extremely broken (when optimized to the extreme). Also, monsters with multiple attacks and grab special ability got the short end of the stick.
Among more obscure rules, I have long held a mild dislike for the high altitude rules. I would write my own if they were used often enough to make a difference, but I hardly ever encounter them live (which is probably the same reason the originals were mailed in).
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Hit Points.
Not hating them (hating is such a strong word!), mostly unsatisfied with the concept of hp.
I don't like the "one second you're fresh, one second you're dying" effect of going from 100 hp to 1 hp with no effects, a super narrow "disabled" window, and then its a race not to die.
I also don't like the undefined mixture of avoiding blows, withstanding damage and exhaustion, which rises questions like "how badly wounded am I really", and "how much more blood do I have in my body now that I'm 10th level". And if you bring out hp as the ability to avoid serious blows, then the "really, it takes me 10 days to sleep this off?" comment arises.
I understand they are meant to be abstract, but they also kill other abstract and cinematic tropes like "I sneak around and break his neck/cut his throat", or "I muster enough energy to give a last blow despite my two broken legs".
In other words, I find that it fails to convey the fast and cinematic feel that it was intended for.
'findel
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Outside of combat, there are a lot of PF rules that feel like they were never really played.
The rules on magical writing, for instance, are much too complicated for what turns out to be a negligible role in the balance of the game.
The multiple overlapping rules for identifying magic items. Spellcraft and Knowledge (arcana) [before you defend it, I am well aware of the "theory" vs "practice" argument, which still doesn't hold up if you look at the skill descriptions, and isn't the kind of thing the game needs anyway.]
There are many rules that rely heavily on things like a fortitude save every hour, or every minute. These are clumsy and hard to use at the the table because of spell durations.
Oh, and I just hate that power attack is prerequisite to cleave, and yet using power attack makes a successful cleave less likely. Cleave's always been a lousy feat, but now it is lousy and makes even less sense.
I'm not really in favor of changing any of this stuff, though. I can live with it. I'd rather see it all reorganized and maybe, just maybe, some of it gets deleted if it is truly obscure and irrelevant (magical writings...)
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I'd like to see the weakest three classes - monk, rogue, fighter - get their issues addressed.
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I'd like to see the weakest three classes - monk, rogue, fighter - get their issues addressed.
NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
And.... cue thread derailment to "this class is better than that class"... NOW!
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1. Casting in Combat.
(a). You can cast a quickened spell, and a normal spell -- both of which require you to pull stuff out of a pouch, wave your hands in secret signs, and recite the Gettysburg Address in pig Latin -- while tumbling across the battlefield at full speed. Meanwhile, if Fred the Fighter moves, he loses all but one of his attacks. WTF?!?!?!
(b). At low levels, it's hard to cast spells while people are swinging sticks at you. Good. But at high levels, it's a joke and you auto-succeed -- regardless of whether the people attacking you are mooks or world-class slayers. In other words, you automatically get better at casting while under attack, but the people attacking you somehow never get better at disrupting your casting. WTF?!?!?!
2. Spells that Supersede Skills.
(a). Rogue 3, Str 14, trained in Climbing. Total bonus: +8. Wizard 3, Str 5, untrained. Total bonus: +infinity (spider climb or levitation).
(b). Rogue 5, Dex 18, trained and max ranks in Stealth. Total bonus: +12, and cannot hide if observed. Wizard 5, Dex 10, untrained. Total bonus: +20, and can hide in plain sight (invisibility spell).
(etc.)
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Longbow Cost
-==- Laura and Arnold get stuck on islands and make awesome longbows but to get one in PF you are spending 75gp for the long bow and 30gp for the short my suggestion is create another weapon "rough longbow" this will be less than 15gp for the long and 7 for the short, that damage will be 1D6 for the long and 1d4 for the short, the range will be 30 for the long and 20 for the short.
Spontaneous castings
---- Sorcerers and wizards should have differences since they are 2 different classes but the ability to not have to preselect spells per day does not make up for the fact that lean spells slower, cast metamagic slower, and limited inventory of spells. I've played many games where people playing prepared castings are thumbing through the corebook on their turn to figure out what spell they are going to cast. I suggest a rule that all spontaneous spells have a percent chance of not consuming a spell slot. Or use a spell point system.
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Grappling
It's REALLY complicated, is like none of the other attack actions or subsystems, and is either totally useless (most cases) or extremely broken (when optimized to the extreme). Also, monsters with multiple attacks and grab special ability got the short end of the stick.
This. Grappling, FTW. Even with the D20 SRD Flowchart, it's a headache that takes too long to resolve.
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Attacks of opportunity.
They're clunky. Sure, they help mitigate caster/fighter disparity, but they are also incredibly complex and they slow the game down. I never realized how bad I hated them until I ran the Beginner Box scenario, which doesn't include AoO's, and it was so smooth and easy.
My solution: Make AoO's a fighter feat tree. That way the more advanced and tactically minded players can still use them to great effect and they'll actually be cool because that one guy is slicing up everyone that comes near him while the rest of us can move along smoothly.
Also, skill points per level. I could have a 16 year old human rogue kid (Int 10) with 9 skill ranks at first level, while my 110 year old elf fighter (Int 10) has 2. Yeah, it's the rogue's "thing," but what the crap did that elf DO for 110 years?! Long-lived races need to start with a few bonus ranks, even if they're just limited to Profession, Craft, and Knowledge. I just think skills are great for characterization and I can't see it unbalancing much to bump the picked on races/classes up a bit to represent past experience.
The Withdraw action.
"Eeek! I'm a wizard next to a fighter! Now I'm going to run away without provoking an attack of opportunity from him, and weave around this chair in the room to prevent him from charging to catch up with me!"
Spending one round to get out of a dire situation 'for free' seemed so cheesy I disallowed it in my first campaign. Our other GMs allowed it, so I started allowing it, and it's always been abusive and cheesy, in my opinion.
Even if I agreed with you that withdraw was overly powerful (which I don't), then I'd like to remind you that without it most parties will never ever flee from battle (untill they get other ways to escape). Personally I'd love having my players run away from a potential party wipe combat. As a GM I'm supposed to try and avoid the situation but it does happen from time to time and then it is nice that the players have a chance to escape.
I don't see how "Move away from opponent in a straight line and do nothing else on your entire turn" to avoid AoO from the first 5 foot square you leave is to powerful. Once they initiate withdraw that is it. The only choice they have left is how many feet they are going to move in a straight line.
The tactic doesn't even work once you start fighting large size opponents on the regular. Eventually every combat oriented humanoid in the game has a ring of enlarge person (in the games I participate in) and creatures all start being large or larger. Withdraw eventually becomes a non-option.
Of course, by that time the casters all have magical flight anyways.
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The Withdraw action.
"Eeek! I'm a wizard next to a fighter! Now I'm going to run away without provoking an attack of opportunity from him, and weave around this chair in the room to prevent him from charging to catch up with me!"
Spending one round to get out of a dire situation 'for free' seemed so cheesy I disallowed it in my first campaign. Our other GMs allowed it, so I started allowing it, and it's always been abusive and cheesy, in my opinion.
Even if I agreed with you that withdraw was overly powerful (which I don't), then I'd like to remind you that without it most parties will never ever flee from battle (untill they get other ways to escape). Personally I'd love having my players run away from a potential party wipe combat. As a GM I'm supposed to try and avoid the situation but it does happen from time to time and then it is nice that the players have a chance to escape.
I don't see how "Move away from opponent in a straight line and do nothing else on your entire turn" to avoid AoO from the first 5 foot square you leave is to powerful. Once they initiate withdraw that is it. The only choice they have left is how many feet they are going to move in a straight line.
Fair enough, but I never used the word "powerful". I just find it cheesy. And if people in my campaign ever used it to actually flee battles, I'm sure I'd be less against it, but instead they use it as a free chance to put some distance between themselves and slower-moving opponents and then fill them full of arrows and spells.
Have I mentioned how much I like the "No Escape" Barbarian rage ability?
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Appraise Skill
A large source of book keeping
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Wait, nobody has mentioned weapon sizes yet? I'm talking about when you scale down below Medium.
A small longspear, which is...well, smaller than a regular longspear, gives a smaller than medium-sized creature a 10 foot reach. Huh?
Then there are bludgeoning weapons, which rely on weight and impact to do damage. That tiny warhammer you've got there is basically a ball bearing on the end of a pencil. Good luck with that, oh mighty pixie barbarian.
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Challenge Rating. It's based on an assumption of a party of four versus a single monster, which is very unrealistic and very limiting. It also assumes four encounters per day, which is also very limiting.
I would love to see Pathfinder Second Edition adopt a system where Challenge Rating had a "squad versus squad" assumption instead of the "squad versus solo" assumption that's there now. Instead of a party of four Level 7 PCs going up against a CR 7 monster, Challenge Rating could be reworked to be intended for a party of X Level 7 PCs going up against X CR 7 monsters.
That way, it would be much easier to scale encounters based on the number of players. Fifth player for a Level 3 party? Add another CR 3 monster. Only three people showed up tonight with their Level 6 characters? Drop down to three CR 6 monsters.
The current version of Challenge Rating is needlessly limiting due to its unnecessary assumptions, and I don't like it.
I also don't like how Challenge Rating doesn't account for whether the monster makes use of its allotted treasure, but that's a side issue.
-Matt
The Withdraw action.
"Eeek! I'm a wizard next to a fighter! Now I'm going to run away without provoking an attack of opportunity from him, and weave around this chair in the room to prevent him from charging to catch up with me!"
Spending one round to get out of a dire situation 'for free' seemed so cheesy I disallowed it in my first campaign. Our other GMs allowed it, so I started allowing it, and it's always been abusive and cheesy, in my opinion.
Even if I agreed with you that withdraw was overly powerful (which I don't), then I'd like to remind you that without it most parties will never ever flee from battle (untill they get other ways to escape). Personally I'd love having my players run away from a potential party wipe combat. As a GM I'm supposed to try and avoid the situation but it does happen from time to time and then it is nice that the players have a chance to escape.
I don't see how "Move away from opponent in a straight line and do nothing else on your entire turn" to avoid AoO from the first 5 foot square you leave is to powerful. Once they initiate withdraw that is it. The only choice they have left is how many feet they are going to move in a straight line.
Withdraw only works in a straight line?
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Spell durations in precise increments. It's pretty much impossible to keep track of minutes/lvl and 10min/lvl spell durations meaningfully, because things like minutes and hours are almost entirely undefined in-game. The GM basically has to make an instinctual call. Even rounds/lvl spell durations are wonky. 95% of the time, everyone casts their spells, and if the fight goes on long enough, someone might say "Oh, right, what about our spells? Are they still running?" Then, the table has to think back and figure out which spells were cast on which rounds, in order to figure out which ones are still running. Ugh.
I would love to see Pathfinder Second Edition switch to abstract spell durations, much like Evil Lincoln set out to do.
-Matt
Challenge Rating. It's based on an assumption of a party of four versus a single monster, which is very unrealistic and very limiting. It also assumes four encounters per day, which is also very limiting.
I would love to see Pathfinder Second Edition adopt a system where Challenge Rating had a "squad versus squad" assumption instead of the "squad versus solo" assumption that's there now. Instead of a party of four Level 7 PCs going up against a CR 7 monster, Challenge Rating could be reworked to be intended for a party of X Level 7 PCs going up against X CR 7 monsters.
That way, it would be much easier to scale encounters based on the number of players. Fifth player for a Level 3 party? Add another CR 3 monster. Only three people showed up tonight with their Level 6 characters? Drop down to three CR 6 monsters.
The current version of Challenge Rating is needlessly limiting due to its unnecessary assumptions, and I don't like it.
-Matt
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I agree with this. I'd say base CR rating for creatures on a 1 for 1 basis, i.e one of these creatures is about as powerful as one character of approximately the same level.A party of four 7th level characters facing a group of four CR7 foes would be an even challenge. Six CR7 foes would be more challenging as would four CR8 foes. Seems like it wouldn't be hard to make a single table or formula to simply experience for those who don't auto-level at prescribed times during an adventure. In fact, its exactly this sort of algebra which put my group on the path to auto-levelling in the first place.
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I'd be hard pressed to say that there are subsystems I hate within PF. For the most part I view PF as a toolkit game with some subsystems easy to weed out or retain depending on the type of game I want to run. There are, however, a few subsystems that I think don't work as well as they should and could stand a fix or at least careful monitoring.
1) Magic item creation - one of the most transformative elements of the game when comparing 3e/PF to 1e/2e. Rather than making do with what they find, players craft/buy on demand what they want which tends to lead to non-bonus/big 6 items to be undervalued
2) Combat Maneuver system/Acrobatics - I give the CM system high marks for trying to streamline the game and, on that level, I find it works pretty well. I don't think it makes for good target numbers for avoiding AoO, though.
3) Open-ended stats - another big tranformer. Too many DCs can be inflated way too far for the checks to keep up with them. I like advancing stats in general, but I prefer to keep their growth manageable compared to the opposition.
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The ability to draw a weapon as a free action as part of a move action, but only if you have at least +1 BAB. This rule is a perfect example of a rule that really actually need to be a part of the system. It only matters at level 1, and it's something that really doesn't add anything to the gaming experience. Why is it still there?
Honestly, the whole system really needs some streamlining. Every aspect of the game deserves to be examined, scrutinized, and revised, in order to ensure a modern, smooth experience. It needs to be made easier to play, especially past the low levels, and it definitely needs to be made easier to pick up and GM.
I would love to see Pathfinder Second Edition make the genuine effort to do that, rather than design with cut-and-paste.
-Matt
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I don't like it that you can only craft one magic item a day, no matter the value of the item. A scroll of a cantrip ends your crafting day. You should be able to craft 1,000 gp's worth everyday, however many items that would allow, though I could understand making it so that items after the first count for more toward the 1,000 total than just their base value.
Also, I hate it that when wizards take a prestige class they lose their two free spells per level. I'm deeply grateful my DM's willing to ignore that rule.
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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I despise the Antagonize feat. A tabletop system with a live GM does not need a video-game esque "aggro" system. If you want to taunt your foes into attacking you then taunt them. And that's setting aside the fact that it nonmagically usurps player agency, and has utterly absurd uses when used outside of combat.
I'm not a fan of the custom magic item pricing table. Not a month goes by without someone finding this table and trying to create use activated true strike or some such monstrosity. Or just using "use activated" to get around action economy. The table causes more problems than it solves.
I don't like metamagic rods. They pretty much eliminate the balancing factor of metamagic(higher spell slot), and let you get away with no even taking the feats, all for money. I'd change them to either allow access to the feat(meaning they grant the feat to the user but nothing else), or allowing a user with the feat to apply it on the fly 3/day without affecting spell level.
I'm not super big on "magic mart" style play, but that can easily be fixed with campaign setting engineering. Also, the relatively low limit on availability in towns means most of the really good items still have to be found or made by the PCs.
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Guns - I have my own rules where they take a lot longer to reload, but they do a lot more damage per shot than bows. If bows are the machine gun, firearms are the bazooka.
Spellcraft - You can ventriloquism, and any commoner with a rank of spellcraft gets a shot at knowing what you did. The 3.5 rules gave you more options for hiding the casting of your spells so as to not completely screw over magical trickster types.
Counterspelling - Cool idea, but soooo pointless. You ready an action, which means giving up your normal turn. Then you have to Id the spell, have the right spell memorized to counter(or have a feat that lets you use another spell from the same school), otherwise you have to throw out a dispel magic, and hope it works. OR you can ready an action to shoot or blast the mage when they try to cast, and force a really high concentration check AND deal damage.
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Spell durations in precise increments. It's pretty much impossible to keep track of minutes/lvl and 10min/lvl spell durations meaningfully, because things like minutes and hours are almost entirely undefined in-game. The GM basically has to make an instinctual call. Even rounds/lvl spell durations are wonky. 95% of the time, everyone casts their spells, and if the fight goes on long enough, someone might say "Oh, right, what about our spells? Are they still running?" Then, the table has to think back and figure out which spells were cast on which rounds, in order to figure out which ones are still running. Ugh.
I would love to see Pathfinder Second Edition switch to abstract spell durations, much like Evil Lincoln set out to do.
Hooray! I love that rule. I hope people make it to the updated version at the bottom.
It really opens up spell durations as a game choice for players and GMs. You can now make meaningful decisions about when to cast without having to track time down to the minute.
If they were to include something like this in a future edition, I hope they don't go too far like 4e did. In the Scenes and Acts system linked above, the concrete time is still there as a guideline, but the abstract time helps you actually play the game.
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Hit Points.
All together now...
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I'm going to be perfectly honest, the fact that unarmed strikes are explicitly both manufactured and natural weapons for spells or effects, but are nonetheless locked out of Improved Natural Attack has always been source of immense frustration. It's just so incredibly unnecessary, like tying a brick to puppy before you place it in a sack to drown it in a river.
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Hmm. If you can come up with a way to have your unarmed strikes count as masterwork or have a nice GM, you can always get them enchanted.
I had ghost touch unarmed strikes in one game. that was fun.
This makes your unarmed strikes masterwork weapons, after which point (RAW/IMO) you should be able to enchant them directly.
From what I understand from something I recall SKR said about why AOMF is so pricey, each type of unarmed strike for each limb (knee, foot, punch, headbutt, etc) would count as a different weapon if they were to price out enchantments.
So with that spell in place, you can get your left punch and right punch enchanted, and then you're about on par with all of the TWFers.
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How many different rules do you need for fog? Pick one.
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Breastplate Armor.
Every warrior should be wearing this in some form. There is no way that "a single piece of sculpted metal" should provide 6 points of AC. Don't get me wrong, breastplates are very cool but 6 is too much. It takes out a lot of interesting variation. I cant believe that a Helmet does nothing to protect you but covering your chest makes you nearly invulnerable. Yeah "Fantasy" blah blah but let me believe it is plausible.
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I've always felt that armor was something where mechanics and flavor diverged... the 'name' of the armor type is really just the title of that specific degree of protection and flexibility, the actual description of the armor is left to the mind's eye. Breastplate armor, to me, is the standard 'full coverage' suit of armor including metal protection over vital areas with chain, leather and/or padding everywhere else.
Right, and that's how 3.5 described "Breastplate", as a metal breastplate with greaves, etc.
Actually the armors are not bad, just their names and descrptions for them. That's just fluff.
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Hit Points.
Not hating them (hating is such a strong word!), mostly unsatisfied with the concept of hp.
I don't like the "one second you're fresh, one second you're dying" effect of going from 100 hp to 1 hp with no effects, a super narrow "disabled" window, and then its a race not to die.
That isn’t Pathfinder. It’s D&D, and it’s a integral part of what makes D&D what it is. Love it or hate it, it’s just part of what D&D is, and if it goes away then PF stops being D&D, which means it becomes just another 3rd party FRP languishing on the bottom shelf of your FLGS.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I love HP, but I have played Arms Law, Chivalry & Sorcery and Runequest* and other non HP systems, and frankly, they suck even more. HP are like Democracy : Churchill's famous quote: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
* which are indeed "another 3rd party FRP languishing on the bottom shelf of your FLGS". Mind you, they can still be fun and I really enjoyed Runequest before AH got ahold of it and ruined it, but still, they are now mostly dead.