Why should the Shield bonus always be there?
If you don't activly use the shield why would you get a bonus
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Why is it bad? It changes the skill from, "you can't know this, ever" to "let's talk about it at the table, maybe your specific character with her past would know something."
It opens up options. I thought Pathfinder players liked options.
There is a difference between having options and having table variance.
Options = having more choices, but all of those choices should be understand to work in the same manner at every table.
What we have here is undefined/ambiguous rules. At one table your character is able to make untrained checks on anything can provide even a tenuous justification, at the next table the GM rules nothing at all can be rolled on untrained. This results in nothing but frustration for both the GMs and the players.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Really not liking the sound of magic items and this "resonance" concept.
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Why is it bad? It changes the skill from, "you can't know this, ever" to "let's talk about it at the table, maybe your specific character with her past would know something."
It opens up options. I thought Pathfinder players liked options.
There is a difference between having options and having table variance.
Options = having more choices, but all of those choices should be understand to work in the same manner at every table.
What we have here is undefined/ambiguous rules. At one table your character is able to make untrained checks on anything can provide even a tenuous justification, at the next table the GM rules nothing at all can be rolled on untrained. This results in nothing but frustration for both the GMs and the players.
That sounds less like a rule issue and more like a GM issue.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Really not liking the sound of magic items and this "resonance" concept.
Mee too. Just seems another complex thing to track and remove some flexibility of characters. Also, will make some classes/roles more needed, like healers and etc.
Relaly hoping to be a good solution, but at first, it seems not, making me fell more cautious about this new edition...
Why is it bad? It changes the skill from, "you can't know this, ever" to "let's talk about it at the table, maybe your specific character with her past would know something."
It opens up options. I thought Pathfinder players liked options.
There is a difference between having options and having table variance.
Options = having more choices, but all of those choices should be understand to work in the same manner at every table.
What we have here is undefined/ambiguous rules. At one table your character is able to make untrained checks on anything can provide even a tenuous justification, at the next table the GM rules nothing at all can be rolled on untrained. This results in nothing but frustration for both the GMs and the players.
errr...outside organized play I don't see how that matters
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
That sounds less like a rule issue and more like a GM issue.Why is it bad? It changes the skill from, "you can't know this, ever" to "let's talk about it at the table, maybe your specific character with her past would know something."
It opens up options. I thought Pathfinder players liked options.
There is a difference between having options and having table variance.
Options = having more choices, but all of those choices should be understand to work in the same manner at every table.
What we have here is undefined/ambiguous rules. At one table your character is able to make untrained checks on anything can provide even a tenuous justification, at the next table the GM rules nothing at all can be rolled on untrained. This results in nothing but frustration for both the GMs and the players.
In organized play you are frequently playing with GMs you have never played with before, and each and every one of them will have his own opinions on how to run things.
If 90% of the GMs are good, you are still going to run into that 10% that rules every ambiguous line of text against the players.
Players have no way to avoid this in organized play. The ONLY solution is clear and unambiguous rules text. It reduces the chances of that one bad apple spoiling the game for everyone else.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
errr...outside organized play I don't see how that mattersWhy is it bad? It changes the skill from, "you can't know this, ever" to "let's talk about it at the table, maybe your specific character with her past would know something."
It opens up options. I thought Pathfinder players liked options.
There is a difference between having options and having table variance.
Options = having more choices, but all of those choices should be understand to work in the same manner at every table.
What we have here is undefined/ambiguous rules. At one table your character is able to make untrained checks on anything can provide even a tenuous justification, at the next table the GM rules nothing at all can be rolled on untrained. This results in nothing but frustration for both the GMs and the players.
Yes. The Core Rulebook should absolutely not be designed with Organized play in mind. Society will have its own rules and subrules regardless.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Yes. The Core Rulebook should absolutely not be designed with Organized play in mind. Society will have its own rules and subrules regardless.errr...outside organized play I don't see how that mattersWhy is it bad? It changes the skill from, "you can't know this, ever" to "let's talk about it at the table, maybe your specific character with her past would know something."
It opens up options. I thought Pathfinder players liked options.
There is a difference between having options and having table variance.
Options = having more choices, but all of those choices should be understand to work in the same manner at every table.
What we have here is undefined/ambiguous rules. At one table your character is able to make untrained checks on anything can provide even a tenuous justification, at the next table the GM rules nothing at all can be rolled on untrained. This results in nothing but frustration for both the GMs and the players.
Better solution: if we see potential issues they can be solved now, before they result in 500+ post flame wars here on the Paizo forums.
This is not hypothetical; it would take you less than 5 minutes to pull up dozens of these threads stemming from ambiguous wording in the rules.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Yes. The Core Rulebook should absolutely not be designed with Organized play in mind. Society will have its own rules and subrules regardless.errr...outside organized play I don't see how that mattersWhy is it bad? It changes the skill from, "you can't know this, ever" to "let's talk about it at the table, maybe your specific character with her past would know something."
It opens up options. I thought Pathfinder players liked options.
There is a difference between having options and having table variance.
Options = having more choices, but all of those choices should be understand to work in the same manner at every table.
What we have here is undefined/ambiguous rules. At one table your character is able to make untrained checks on anything can provide even a tenuous justification, at the next table the GM rules nothing at all can be rolled on untrained. This results in nothing but frustration for both the GMs and the players.
agreed, a lot of perceived problems with the PF system I see in this playtest forums seem to stem from organized play, but would never happen in home play. so the need to have this unnecessary new edition might come from the factor that people nowadays rely too much on organized play to get their games going. Instead of using the PFS as a chance to meet people that share the same hobby, befriend them and then organize home games with them, this next logical step seems to be forgotten and instead you haven an overreliance on organized play that needs stricter rules to even work than even the most pedantic GM/player in a home game would want.
In short: you have fixes to a system, that wouldn't need to be there if people would rely more on social contacts than on the service of organized play| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Yes. The Core Rulebook should absolutely not be designed with Organized play in mind. Society will have its own rules and subrules regardless.errr...outside organized play I don't see how that mattersWhy is it bad? It changes the skill from, "you can't know this, ever" to "let's talk about it at the table, maybe your specific character with her past would know something."
It opens up options. I thought Pathfinder players liked options.
There is a difference between having options and having table variance.
Options = having more choices, but all of those choices should be understand to work in the same manner at every table.
What we have here is undefined/ambiguous rules. At one table your character is able to make untrained checks on anything can provide even a tenuous justification, at the next table the GM rules nothing at all can be rolled on untrained. This results in nothing but frustration for both the GMs and the players.
Better solution: if we see potential issues they can be solved now, before they result in 500+ post flame wars here on the Paizo forums.
This is not hypothetical; it would take you less than 5 minutes to pull up dozens of these threads stemming from ambiguous wording in the rules.
It's not even an ambiguous rule. It's pretty straight forward. If you have an untrained knowledge check, the GM can decide if your PC can make it. That's not ambiguous at all.
You don't need guidelines for that, you just need to be able to communicate with your player/GM and use your brain. Relying on the book to give you every single corner case that's possibly imaginable is just a waste of book space and not a good practice for players - they become so reliant that they're unable to make decisions for themselves.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
In short: you have fixes to a system, that wouldn't need to be there if people would rely more on social contacts than on the service of organized play
I'm reminded of a forum post I saw a while back that I liked so much I copied it to Google docs. Unfortunately, I didn't copy over the links imbedded in the post, but here it is:
DMing a lot builds your confidence in making rulings. One need not be a rule cripple.* (that term is explained at the end).
[Non-relavent stuff cut out]
---------------------
* About the "rules cripple" thing I mentioned above: if one does not or cannot exercise a muscle, it atrophies. (Point of reference: breaking an arm or a leg and having it in a cast means that when the bone is finished knitting, one has to rebuild the atrophied muscle ...)
a. When GPS came out and became more used in the early 1990's, those of us who knew a bit about land navigation became concerned about those raised with GPS as their primary navigational tool. GPS gives you outcome, not process nor understanding about spatial relationships. We used the term "GPS cripple" to describe the lack of the ability to understand/innovate/make intuitive leaps that this induced. A similar problem cropped up in air navigation during that decade.
b. There was a long running debate about whether or not a pilot was a "HUD cripple" in terms of aircraft carrier landing skill. When the HUD (Heads Up Display) was up, the boarding rate was markedly higher among new pilots. But those who became HUD dependent weren't as good at simply flying the approach to the three wire when the HUD was on the fritz. (These days, HUD reliability is impressive, I will note).
From this RL experience, I propose the parallel problem of the rules cripple (it can happen to any of us in any edition of D&D since 1e AD&D): a DM who is so used to a rule telling him/her what to do, who is so book/rule focused, that the habit of innovating and improvising shrivels/atrophies, or never develops.
I will point out that something similar is happening among airline pilots: the term of art is 'children of the magenta line' and what is happening is that Over Reliance on Automation is manifesting itself in two critical problems: reduced hand flying skill, and significantly reduced airmanship/judgment.
What I find most interesting in D&D is that Gygax walked both sides of that line at the same time, in terms of what was for sale from TSR. The AD&D system was built to support the ability to play a standardized / convention style of play (the Schick influence), while at the same time, in the DMG, it spent no small amount of time telling DM's to play in the rules light method that Gygax himself ran, that Dave Arneson ran, that Rob Kuntz ran, etc. (Per commentary by Rob Kuntz over at the odd74 forums).
We, the gaming audience, were always hungry for more content, but once you got that mountain of content, what do you do with it all? The Dragon was full of 'try this' which made amateur play testers of a lot of us. The result tends to become "you take what you like and leave the rest" and you focus as a GM on running a game.
It takes some "learning by doing" to do that.
Nobody can expect to be a good GM without having tried it. (And at this point, please head to Angry GM's website).
D&D/PF isn't rules light; there is a certain amount of system mastery/understanding required to know the mechanics of the game well enough to improvise. (Analogy: to improvise well on piano, you have to first be really good at playing piano). So you can expect a learning curve as you run games. That's not a bad thing, since your decision making ability grows as you do it more.
Don't let the muscle atrophy.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
It's not even an ambiguous rule. It's pretty straight forward. If you have an untrained knowledge check, the GM can decide if your PC can make it. That's not ambiguous at all.Yes. The Core Rulebook should absolutely not be designed with Organized play in mind. Society will have its own rules and subrules regardless.errr...outside organized play I don't see how that mattersWhy is it bad? It changes the skill from, "you can't know this, ever" to "let's talk about it at the table, maybe your specific character with her past would know something."
It opens up options. I thought Pathfinder players liked options.
There is a difference between having options and having table variance.
Options = having more choices, but all of those choices should be understand to work in the same manner at every table.
What we have here is undefined/ambiguous rules. At one table your character is able to make untrained checks on anything can provide even a tenuous justification, at the next table the GM rules nothing at all can be rolled on untrained. This results in nothing but frustration for both the GMs and the players.
Better solution: if we see potential issues they can be solved now, before they result in 500+ post flame wars here on the Paizo forums.
This is not hypothetical; it would take you less than 5 minutes to pull up dozens of these threads stemming from ambiguous wording in the rules.
A wizard cast charm person on the barmaid. Can my fighter, with a 16 INT, but no training identify the spell.
Can you Cite RAW that supports your decision?
If you cannot cite RAW that directly supports your decision (Yes or No), the RAW is ambiguous and can, and will, be interpreted differently tomorrow by a different GM.
In PF1 this ambiguity does not exist. The answer is a clear No. Untrained knowledge checks are capped at DC 10.
In short: you have fixes to a system, that wouldn't need to be there if people would rely more on social contacts than on the service of organized playI'm reminded of a forum post I saw a while back that I liked so much I copied it to Google docs. Unfortunately, I didn't copy over the links imbedded in the post, but here it is:
This works well when you are playing with the same group of friends every weekend and can come up with mutually agreed upon answers before the campaign starts.
It does not work with a game that supports organized play and every GM has a different answer. In this environment, the only safe answer is to assume a response of NO or to completely avoid anything with a hint of ambiguity. The consequence of taking a risk on anything ambiguous is having your character crippled, or even rendered completely non-functional, by the one GM that categorically rules No.
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
I don't like resonance. It seems like a meta restriction to address flaws in the design of magic items themselves.
Perhaps more powerful healing items should also be more cost efficient?
It does not work with a game that supports organized play and every GM has a different answer. In this environment, the only safe answer is [...]
again, this is a problem of the enviroment, not of the rules. change the enviroment
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
A wizard cast charm person on the barmaid. Can my fighter, with a 16 INT, but no training identify the spell.
Can you Cite RAW that supports your decision?
If you cannot cite RAW that directly supports your decision (Yes or No), the RAW is ambiguous and can, and will, be interpreted differently tomorrow by a different GM.
In PF1 this ambiguity does not exist. The answer is a clear No. Untrained knowledge checks are capped at DC 10.
Can you cite the RAW and point out how it is ambiguous? No, because the rules don't exist for it in the public yet. For Lore, it is not ambiguous, per the Designers it flat out says the GM decides. That is not ambiguous. Just because you might play with GMs you don't like does not change that.
As for PFS, which tends to be a lot more codified on how things run, either the Society Guide or Additional Resources will cover this.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
It does not work with a game that supports organized play and every GM has a different answer. In this environment, the only safe answer is [...]again, this is a problem of the enviroment, not of the rules. change the enviroment
At this stage of development changing a rule like this is trivial. Tightening up the language is one of the purposes of the play test .
Changing society, on the other hand, is well beyond the scope of what the developers are capable of.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Well, we will find out how it works when playtest comes out, but I do have to note that at lower levels PCs don't usually have lot of magic items anyway and later levels they should easily be able to afford to invest resonance without being paranoid of "Okay, I can't afford to invest 3 points of my 15 resonance in my items, what if I need all those 15 heals?!" especially since system seems to favor "Do lot of healing at once, not tons of tiny heals"
Levels 1-3 are when you see a looot of CLW potions in Adventure Paths to keep the party from slowing down since they run out of health and resources pretty fast. Please think of the potions!
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
A wizard cast charm person on the barmaid. Can my fighter, with a 16 INT, but no training identify the spell.
Can you Cite RAW that supports your decision?
If you cannot cite RAW that directly supports your decision (Yes or No), the RAW is ambiguous and can, and will, be interpreted differently tomorrow by a different GM.
In PF1 this ambiguity does not exist. The answer is a clear No. Untrained knowledge checks are capped at DC 10.
Can you cite the RAW and point out how it is ambiguous? No, because the rules don't exist for it in the public yet. For Lore, it is not ambiguous, per the Designers it flat out says the GM decides. That is not ambiguous. Just because you might play with GMs you don't like does not change that.
As for PFS, which tends to be a lot more codified on how things run, either the Society Guide or Additional Resources will cover this.
Lore skills can be done untrained, it is up to the GM to decide if someone with out training would know a specific piece of lore/knowledge with no training.
We use what has been revealed by Paizo to-date as the proposed RAW, provide out link to the source, discuss proposed RAW, and provide feedback on the mechanics as they have been released.
Now, based on the cited RAW, can you answer the question I posed in a way that can be agreed upon by everyone?
A wizard cast charm person on the barmaid. Can my fighter, with a 16 INT, but no training identify the spell.Can you Cite RAW that supports your decision?
If your position is we cannot cite proposed rules from developer releases, there is no point in the playtest or the playtest forums. It's just an advertising medium where only positive feedback is permitted for the purpose of generating hype with no examination of the advertised product.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
We finally find out what a +1 weapon does.
+1 to attack, and you get the weapon damage a second time.(So magic daggers are really weak compared to magic swords.)
A nice hint at how damage scales into higher levels!
I'm glad that the type of weapon matters a little more than all the bonuses you put on it.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Changing society, on the other hand, is well beyond the scope of what the developers are capable of.
yes, but you don't have to play society. again: if the enviroment is the problem. change the enviroment. don't play PFS, but collect the people that you like that show up to PFS games and play with them in a home group
|
Contributor
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Lore skills can be done untrained, it is up to the GM to decide if someone with out training would know a specific piece of lore/knowledge with no training.
Pedantically speaking (since this certainly seems to be the place for it), that's not RAW. RAW stands for Rules As Written. What you have there is a short synopsis describing rules which we don't yet possess in written form. It's as RAW as "Power Attack is a feat that lets you take a penalty on melee attack rolls to gain a corresponding damage bonus."
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
In any case, I'm in favor of this whole "GMs being encouraged to judge situations and make executive decisions" thing with the Lore skills. Huge shock, I'm sure.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'm a fan of GM agency.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Pedantically speaking (since this certainly seems to be the place for it), that's not RAW. RAW stands for Rules As Written. What you have there is a short synopsis describing rules which we don't yet possess in written form. It's as RAW as "Power Attack is a feat that lets you take a penalty on melee attack rolls to gain a corresponding damage bonus."Lore skills can be done untrained, it is up to the GM to decide if someone with out training would know a specific piece of lore/knowledge with no training.
Pedantically speaking, this is a discussion thread initiated for the purpose of discussing rules snippets gleamed from the podcast.
People unwilling to use those snippets as a proxy for RAW have no reason to be commenting in this thread. (Other than trolling those who are are willing to discuss and/or debate the information as released.)
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
Well, we will find out how it works when playtest comes out, but I do have to note that at lower levels PCs don't usually have lot of magic itemsSpeak for yourself: Ioun Stones start at 150gp, Ioun Torch 75gp, Traveler's Any-Tool 250gp, Wayfinder 500gp, Boro Bead/Preserving Flask/Page of Spell Knowledge/Pearl of Power/Spell Lattice/Shard of Psychic Power/minor bag of holding 1000gp + armor, shield and weapons. I don't think I'll EVER have enough resonance to power what I would normally carry now, let alone to power per day abilities.
I would be really happy if one of the effects of P2e were to cut down on the clutter of tiny magic items giving you a +1 to this or a +2 to that. I'd rather have fewer magic items that were each more impressively magic.
| 7 people marked this as a favorite. |
This works well when you are playing with the same group of friends every weekend and can come up with mutually agreed upon answers before the campaign starts.
It does not work with a game that supports organized play and every GM has a different answer. In this environment, the only safe answer is to assume a response of NO or to completely avoid anything with a hint of ambiguity. The consequence of taking a risk on anything ambiguous is having your character crippled, or even rendered completely non-functional, by the one GM that categorically rules No.
There is another solution.
The scenario states under what conditions the PCs may make the check untrained.
PCs who are from Tien Xia or speak the Wayang language may attempt this check untrained.
For the purposes of this scenario, any PC may attempt the knowledge checks untrained but may not Take 10 on the checks.
Then the society rules are that they can be done untrained when the scenario says.
Except for a particular time when my playtesters explicitly tried to see if they could get away with saving money on CLW wand spam despite being high level adventurers who could afford a better wand, and a few extreme stress test situations where I told them "This is the only fight today. Nova your heart out," my playtest group never really hit hard against the resonance caps, even the ones with lower Charisma.
How does it work with Staves?
In PF1, staves are so expensive that they only come in at the relatively high levels. In my experience they are extremely rare until double-digit levels. Once you get outside Pathfinder, they are a staple of fantasy and have been for a very long time.
If you have to attune once to use a staff all day, that probably isn’t a problem. If you keep the same pricing (a very questionable assumption) and require resonance on each use, I doubt anyone will use them.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Apparently placing data in its proper context is trolling now. Fascinating.
No but refusing to accept the data trasncripts, as posted in the discussion thread, as a source for the ongoing debate is.
|
| 10 people marked this as a favorite. |
Agreed, a lot of perceived problems with the PF system I see in this playtest forums seem to stem from organized play, but would never happen in home play. so the need to have this unnecessary new edition might come from the factor that people nowadays rely too much on organized play to get their games going. Instead of using the PFS as a chance to meet people that share the same hobby, befriend them and then organize home games with them, this next logical step seems to be forgotten and instead you haven an overreliance on organized play that needs stricter rules to even work than even the most pedantic GM/player in a home game would want.
In short: you have fixes to a system, that wouldn't need to be there if people would rely more on social contacts than on the service of organized play
This perception of Organized Play is fairly common: that Organized Play should be a way station only, and that from there you should launch off into the perceived superior option of home games.
As someone who has played and Gmed both home games and Organized Play, I’ll tell you that I actually like Organized Play better. It is true that sometimes you can be in a home game with a stellar GM with a great story to tell, and that you can have a dedicated party with great chemistry. These games do happen, and when they happen, they’re magic.
But my experience of home games has included a lot of disappointments: people not being able to make time to play with one another. GMs burning out, not prepping, or having an outright incompatible gaming style. Dysfunctional gaming groups that just don’t cooperate. Half the players are distracted with other things and don’t even want to game.
Here’s what I love about Organized Play, and why I play it, GM it and even organize conventions for it:
1) Everyone there wants to be there. Reluctant spouses and significant others are a rarity. Everyone is focused and wants to get the mission accomplished.
2) Holy cow, cooperation. We cooperate with one another. PFS is amazingly jerk-free.
3) A delightful rotating cast of Regulars with the occasional new person. My Dreamers PFS crowd is my in person HOME gaming group. There are about 30-40 regulars now that rotate in an out. Flaxseed and Castamir’s are my HOME online groups, with about 400 members. Overtime, you get to know everyone in your community. It’s like a home game, only expanded out with other friends and social contacts. Not everyone plays every time, but people come back again and again. We get to know each other and each other’s characters without the community and the team getting stale.
4) People trade-off GMing. You get to play, you get to GM, and everyone appreciates what others do. In PFS, my tables thank me for the games, telling me how wonderful they were.
5) Shared storylines! When you’ve played a scenario, you can connect with other strangers who also have done the same scenario and exchange war-stories.
6) A Structure centered on Missions and Teamwork. Everyone gets a chance to shine, and there is a variety to what agents do.
7) Short Episodes leading into a Longer Story. You can accomplish a mission in four hours, but there is often a longer goal that unfolds over years.
But Hilary... What about the dreaded table variation?
Sure it happens. But most GMs are reasonable people who are part of an overall Organized Play community. Like their players, they want to explore, cooperate and report.
Hmm
VC, Play-by-Post
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm reminded of a forum post I saw a while back that I liked so much I copied it to Google docs. Unfortunately, I didn't copy over the links imbedded in the post, but here it is:
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
But Hilary... What about the dreaded table variation?
Sure it happens. But most GMs are reasonable people who are part of an overall Organized Play community. Like their players, they want to explore, cooperate and report.
And I agree, 90% of the time there is no issue.
But, and this is just an example, there's that one off time you get a GM that has a person grudge against DEX-to-damage and rules that your 10th level Dervish Dance magus can't. Even though that is the way the character has played at every-single-table prior to his for the last 5 years.
His justification - there is no FAQ specifically stating Dervish Dance works with Spell Combat.
|
Contributor
|
| 8 people marked this as a favorite. |
Apparently placing data in its proper context is trolling now. Fascinating.No but refusing to accept the data trasncripts, as posted in the discussion thread, as a source for the ongoing debate is.
You mean the ones with vague text that roughly summarizes not-yet-released rules text? The ones whose gaps you've chosen to fill with your own preconceived notions, like a dinosaur egg full of frog DNA?
I accept what's in the transcript, and nothing more - certainly not the part that exists only in your head.
So maybe you should think about that before you toss out more accusations of trolling. And while you're at it, learn to tolerate the viewpoints of those who wait for actual text before deciding to hate an unrevealed system.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Agreed, a lot of perceived problems with the PF system I see in this playtest forums seem to stem from organized play, but would never happen in home play. so the need to have this unnecessary new edition might come from the factor that people nowadays rely too much on organized play to get their games going. Instead of using the PFS as a chance to meet people that share the same hobby, befriend them and then organize home games with them, this next logical step seems to be forgotten and instead you haven an overreliance on organized play that needs stricter rules to even work than even the most pedantic GM/player in a home game would want.
In short: you have fixes to a system, that wouldn't need to be there if people would rely more on social contacts than on the service of organized play
This perception of Organized Play is fairly common: that Organized Play should be a way station only, and that from there you should launch off into the perceived superior option of home games.
As someone who has played and Gmed both home games and Organized Play, I’ll tell you that I actually like Organized Play better. It is true that sometimes you can be in a home game with a stellar GM with a great story to tell, and that you can have a dedicated party with great chemistry. These games do happen, and when they happen, they’re magic.
But my experience of home games has included a lot of disappointments: people not being able to make time to play with one another. GMs burning out, not prepping, or having an outright incompatible gaming style. Dysfunctional gaming groups that just don’t cooperate. Half the players are distracted with other things and don’t even want to game.
Here’s what I love about Organized Play, and why I play it, GM it and even organize conventions for it:
1) Everyone there wants to be there. Reluctant spouses and significant others are a rarity. Everyone is focused and wants to get the mission accomplished.
2) Holy cow,...
Then why, tell me, whenever a problem comes up that 'needs to be addressed' or 'needed to be addressed' with PF2, it stems from PFS?
|
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
But Hilary... What about the dreaded table variation?
Sure it happens. But most GMs are reasonable people who are part of an overall Organized Play community. Like their players, they want to explore, cooperate and report.
And I agree, 90% of the time there is no issue.
But, and this is just an example, there's that one off time you get a GM that has a person grudge against DEX-to-damage and rules that your 10th level Dervish Dance magus can't. Even though that is the way the character has played at every-single-table prior to his for the last 5 years.
His justification - there is no FAQ specifically stating Dervish Dance works with Spell Combat.
Yep, and it happened in my region. I am not saying that it never happens... Just that it doesn't happen as often people think. The player in question reached 10th level without ever encountering the alternate rules interpretation. There will be these kind of conflicts in home games too, though.
I am glad that the FAQ got rectified in that case.
Then why, tell me, whenever a problem comes up that 'needs to be addressed' or 'needed to be addressed' with PF2, it stems from PFS?
Does it always stem from PFS? There are times when the Organized Play community may be as baffled by a change as everyone else. We need to also remember something that Mark Seifter pointed out to me: all the game designers are players too. Some of these issues may have arisen in their own home games.
I will agree that PFS is a major testing ground for ideas. In PFS it is possible to create dozens of different characters, some experimental and specialized. With hundreds of thousands of players worldwide, ideas get played with, and weird combinations found. It's not surprising then that overpowered combinations are often discovered there.
It's not a PFS thing... It's a power gamer thing. PFS just offers more possibilities for play, and so more situations where these combinations can arise and get noticed.
Hmm
|
|
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
I will agree that PFS is a major testing ground for ideas. In PFS it is possible to create dozens of different characters, some experimental and specialized. With hundreds of thousands of players worldwide, ideas get played with, and weird combinations found. It's not surprising then that overpowered combinations are often discovered there.
It's not a PFS thing... It's a power gamer thing. PFS just offers more possibilities for play, and so more situations where these combinations...
More importantly, it is a on a level playing field of house rules.
In home games, house rules can throw balance out the window from game to game. The thing about PFS is that everyone is using the same rules. I know if some ones says x is crazy strong at a PFS table, I can evaluate his argument knowing that things like wealth, encounter strength etc are at a certain point.
By the very nature of PFS play, it is easier to see how strong certain options are, and then for the designers to modify them across the board.
okay, that's something, I admit, wouldn't happen on my tables, so I was not aware that this might be a proble at other tables. simply raising the cost for CLW wands might be the less complicated way to tackle that problem (if it is not just a theoretical problem, but something some players actually do)
It's something I've actually done. There have been numerous groups where my Sorcerer was the team's healer. How? They took max ranks in Use Magic Device and carried around a LOT of CLW Wands. Enough that even if the 'roll a nat 1 and fail, this item shuts down for the rest of the day' failure happened, they would just bust out the second.
It slowed games down a lot, but it was how the party stayed healed for lack of any other options. Nobody else was bringing much in the way of healing, and this happened across multiple groups with different players.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
okay, that's something, I admit, wouldn't happen on my tables, so I was not aware that this might be a proble at other tables. simply raising the cost for CLW wands might be the less complicated way to tackle that problem (if it is not just a theoretical problem, but something some players actually do)It's something I've actually done. There have been numerous groups where my Sorcerer was the team's healer. How? They took max ranks in Use Magic Device and carried around a LOT of CLW Wands. Enough that even if the 'roll a nat 1 and fail, this item shuts down for the rest of the day' failure happened, they would just bust out the second.
It slowed games down a lot, but it was how the party stayed healed for lack of any other options. Nobody else was bringing much in the way of healing, and this happened across multiple groups with different players.
So in these cases, the new rules would leave your groups more or less without healer. A group without healer, in my eyes, looks more like a problem than a group that heals with wands, even though that slows the game down.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
What's wrong with filling dinosaur eggs with frog DNA, all of a sudden? History tells us that something like that will never go wrong. Life is to preoccupied to find a way.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
so groups lacking a dedicated healer are now more f***ed than ever, I guess. That's nothing that bothers me on a personal level, but sometimes stuff like that happens. players have to drop out, no one else wants to change character and GMs still want to keep the game going even though the group is missing a Cleric. This complicates things for themso the resonance caps are high enough that they don't matter anyway?I think he's saying they only matter when you spam some limited resource item, such as wand or potion of CLW many times over.Player 1 is down 45 points of damage.
Strategy 1: Cure Light Wounds wand x10.
Strategy 2: Cure Critical Wounds wand x2.One of these is unlikely to run into problems from resonance.
That's definitely a design decision. In the Know Direction podcast, I remember one of the participants (sadly, I don't remember which one) say that they felt that cracking open a CLW wand like guzzling it down like a Gatorade was a crappy system, and one that was not found in any fantasy story ... ever.
I feel the need to point out that in this example, the massive upfront cost of a cure critical wounds wand (unless it was found / looted) would likely keep strategy 2 from ever existing / being pitched as a possible alternative, at least until a party was very high level and gold was being received in much higher amounts.
In strategy 1, the wand has an upfront cost of 750 and the cost of the charges used totals up to 150. In strategy 2, the wand has an upfront cost of 21000 and the cost of charges used totals up to 840. It's very easy to justify spending 750 gold on a healing wand for the party, and even a lower level party can pool resources to nab one. It's much harder to justify spending 21000 gold when there is other gear slots you could fill / upgrades you need to purchase, or trying to convince the entire party to put off a gear upgrade to pool for an advanced healing wand.
I'm not making a case that greater healing achieved in a moment should not come at an increased premium, however when the healing from higher levels spells comes at such a higher cost, it is only reasonable for players to look for a way to make the most of the fact that a more cost effective option exists and that they also the time in which to apply it (regarding out-of-combat healing). I would be very happy if there were better / improved ways to heal higher amounts using resources in 2e, as long as they are more cost effective as well. Perhaps they could be items that heal larger amounts of health for a reasonable cost, however they take several minutes to use and have them take effect. This would keep them from being used/abused in combat, and also prevent CLW wand tattoos from occurring on characters.
All of that being said I have to say that I dislike everything I have read thus far about the resonance system. Forcing every player to keep track of a point system reminiscent of Occultist focus is not a simplification in my mind, it's restrictive when it comes to a player designing their character, and it certainly isn't new player friendly / intuitive. What if a player simply wants a character that does not have to track a daily resource limit like spell slots / ki / focus, etc such as a vanilla fighter? 2e is completely removing the option to roll a character like that any longer? I could also easily see a player running into the following type of situation when finding a shiny new piece of gear:
PF1 - "Cool, enchanted armor! I remove my current armor and put on the new armor."
PF2 - "I drank a few potions earlier, except the last one I actually threw past my head because apparently I didn't want to drink it badly enough, and now I can't figure out how to put on this nice upgraded armor I found. Oh well, I guess I'll try again tomorrow."
The fact that a situation like that could occur in the new system frankly boggles my mind.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
To be fair, I very much doubt the potion misses your face, or that you're inside of dino b6 the armor, it'd be much more sensical if you simply didn't get the magical effect of those actions without resonance.
As for analysing the tidbits that have been released so far, can we not doomsday the changes by plopping them into PF1E, without the context of the rest of the system? It's not building well-founded hypothess on 2e. An edition change implies broad, systemic changes from 1e.
It's all well and good to say "hit by ten+=crit is broken, because of a 1e magus arcana", but the magus isn't even in 2e, let alone that specific Arcana, or what rules there there may be regarding touch attacks ability to critical hit, seems like a farly direct consequence to account for.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Apparently placing data in its proper context is trolling now. Fascinating.No but refusing to accept the data trasncripts, as posted in the discussion thread, as a source for the ongoing debate is.You mean the ones with vague text that roughly summarizes not-yet-released rules text? The ones whose gaps you've chosen to fill with your own preconceived notions, like a dinosaur egg full of frog DNA?
I accept what's in the transcript, and nothing more - certainly not the part that exists only in your head.
So maybe you should think about that before you toss out more accusations of trolling. And while you're at it, learn to tolerate the viewpoints of those who wait for actual text before deciding to hate an unrevealed system.
And what praytell do you intend to provide meaningful feedback on? Sunshine and happy dreams?
You either accept the information we have and provide feedback on it, or you accept that you have nothing of value to contribute.
"Jason, am I right in assuming that, u-unlike in 1st-edition Pathfinder, if you are not trained in a Lore skill - or in this case the person's using a Knowledge skill - in 1st Edition you just couldn't do it at all. In this edition you simply make it with the Untrained penalty?"
"You can make it with the Untrained penalty. However, there are certain bits of knowledge that the GM may look at and say 'Yeah, that's not something that a layman would know.' Right? But now we put that in the hands of the GM to decide. So in this case, if you wanted to ask me about common skeletons I might go 'Yeah, everybody's heard tales of the- the walking dead.' and might be able to relay you some basic information about them, but if you wanna know information about... ya know, some truly horrifyingly-powerful thing like a lich or something, the GM might go 'Uh, yeah, untrained people don't know anything about that, that's just a myth to you. You may have heard of the word but you know nothing about them other than the fact that they are avatars of death.' Right?
So, for starters, the information gleaned from this transcript is that you can make untrained Knowledge and Lore checks of any DC at a penalty, but the GM has the right to restrict what checks a player can attempt. I feel that it is important to state that we cannot take this as a 100% accurate reading of the rules text. It is not being relayed directly from the book - the podcast GM previously misremembered the rules for Acid Splash, flanking, and the new basic healing spell, so while we can assume that the information relayed is at least partially accurate we cannot assume that it is exactly how that rule is written out.
If this is indeed accurate, then it does introduce an element of table variance which could become a problem if it made its way untouched to the PFS rules. However, I believe there is a less-than-0% chance that Paizo is not aware of the potential for table variation on this, as they happen to be a strong team of experienced developers who have seen reports of table variation on things as silly as the DC to jump a 10' pit. It's pretty safe to assume that they've already started addressing this with PFS already.
While the podcast also gives us no context for how PFS will run the rule for Pathfinder 2e, I can think of a few possibilities that would completely negate the table variance introduced by this rule - they could rule that GMs are not allowed to grant untrained checks, or they could rule that the untrained checks must be tied to the player's chosen Background, or the modules could be written with specific allowances for such checks (say "You can make the check untrained if you are from X country"). PFS has already shown a willingness to change the core assumptions of the game for the benefit of organized play, so I think a ruling similar to one of these is almost guaranteed to make its way into PFS once Pathfinder 2e hits the market.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
You know, I always figured the penalty of dumping Charisma was that nobody would give a damn about what you have to say because you're not charismatic enough. And that you can't be a Charisma-based character. But apparently I was wrong, since so many people say that Charisma is the automatic dump stat for everyone.
I also figured the drawback to potions was that you DRANK THEM AND THEN THEY'RE GONE BECAUSE YOU DRANK THEM. But I guess I was wrong.
Furthermore, I figured that the drawback to wands was that they are finite and eventually run out of charges, and that was why staffs (which are technically infinite, but limited to the charges you funnel into them and the spells they allow) were so ludicrously disproportionately expensive. But, again, I guess I was wrong.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I don't think its bad thing to be skeptical, but I think its rather clear that whenever edition changes, you usually can't do identical build between editions. So thats why I find it bizarre to speculate based on 1e, I do think it makes more sense to speculate based on Starfinder since 2e clearly does share some aspects(such as the way of handling non-lethal combat I find annoying because its essentially up to gm whether they want to give pcs chance to interrogate foes :P)
I don't think anyone has disputed that a new edition means less to no compatibility with previous editions (I have seen people ask for it though, which isn't the same thing), granted I have trouble keeping up with the forums.
However, it's no more bizarre to speculate on PF2nd using knowledge from PF1e than it is/was to speculate about D&D 5e based on the previous editions of D&D. The game still carries the same name, the staff has expressed intent to keep the "feel" of the game the same. If people can't use knowledge of the previous edition to speculate on how the changes will play out; what would you have people do?
As for analysing the tidbits that have been released so far, can we not doomsday the changes by plopping them into PF1E, without the context of the rest of the system?
I ask you the same thing, what would you have people do then?
There is also that in Know Direction podcast they said they made alternate way of recovering HP between fights, so apparently its not necessary on low levels to use potions as much anymore?
I really hope I'm wrong but that sounds like 4e healing surges to me. If that's what it is... no thanks.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
So thats why I find it bizarre to speculate based on 1e
I find it bizarre NOT to "speculate based on 1e" for information not out there yet. It seems odd to assume something's different until they say it is.
In organized play you are frequently playing with GMs you have never played with before, and each and every one of them will have his own opinions on how to run things.
I run into this too playing online too. More often than not, I'm with a new DM and players every time a game starts.
I would be really happy if one of the effects of P2e were to cut down on the clutter of tiny magic items giving you a +1 to this or a +2 to that. I'd rather have fewer magic items that were each more impressively magic.
Me too. For instance, I take a Traveler's Any-Tool because I have ANY tool I want/need and not for the masterwork bonus. I'd be thrilled to to see plenty of nifty/quirky/awesome items of all levels. This is what turns me off of resonance, as I'd normally LOVE to have a ton a minor trinkets if the game actually does get rid of needing the big 6. Having to pick x amount of items/day sounds like there is either meant to be item turnover [like 4e] or you get a LOT less items and both kind of make me sad.