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To be clear, I plan on playtesting Resonance as it stands. However, I don't have a great deal of faith in the system and I think it would be smart to have a replacement ready to go in the event that my group's enjoyment is unduly hindered by it.
I'd like to generate some discussion about the consequences of removing Resonance, and use this thread as a reference to start from when we have access to the full rules.
Here are the advantages listed in the Trinkets and Treasures blog post:
1. Using items is clear and consistent. Spend the required actions and 1 RP, and you activate or invest your item. If someone else wants to use the same item, you can remove it and let them put it on and invest it themselves.
2. You have less to track. We get to remove some of the sub-pools that individual items have (such as "10 rounds per day which need not be consecutive" or "5 charges") because we know you have an overall limited resource. There are still some items that can't be used without limit, but they get to be special exceptions rather than being common out of necessity.
3. It puts the focus on the strongest items. Because you can't activate items indefinitely, your best bet is to use the most RP-efficient item, not the most gp-efficient item. You want a high-level healing wand because you get more healing for your Resonance Point rather than getting a bunch of low-level wands because they're cheap.
4. Investiture limits what you can wear. That means we don't need to rely heavily on an item slot system, creating more flexibility in what kind of worn items are useful. You'll read more about this on the blog on Friday, when we talk about removing the magic item Christmas tree!
Here are the concerns I currently have:
1. Resonance may interfere with the items I give out that may be necessary for planned challenges. Ex: The players may not enjoy me effectively spending their Resonance for them by giving them water breathing potions before a flooded dungeon.
2. None of my players enjoy having past purchases become invalidated by future ones. Ex: In PF1e a low level wand is always useful, but in PF2e it may not be worth the Resonance at higher levels. This is like throwing out low level potions in an MMO.
3. My players may not enjoy tracking consumables and Resonance. Ex: Scratching off a potion and ticking off a Resonance point is that much extra tracking.
4. My players are highly risk averse, and will not utilize the overspending feature of Resonance. Ex: They have spent in game hours tearing down a door with a pickaxe to avoid taking a CLW charge worth of damage from a blood sacrifice puzzle, asking them to flip a coin for the cost of a potion will not fly.
5. I don't want to have to ask the players to do item preparation in the morning, especially for non-casters. This is personal preference, but if they're wearing an item I'd like to assume they have access to its abilities.
6. Resonance does not replace item slots, so it may be inconvenient to have no formalized list of slots. If there is such a formalized list, then it would be easier to just use that.
7. It's a change in flavor that my group may not enjoy. Ex. One of my players specifically plays martial characters to have fewer resources to track and to be an all-day character. Lack of spell-like tracking is important to him.
8. My players like gold, such that the question about whether they will use an RP efficient item versus a GP efficient one will mean they will err toward spending as much RP as possible and waiting for it to come back to minimize gold use. Ex: They've spent days resting during quest to avoid using a handful of wand charges. They decided they'd deal with the fallout of the delay as it comes.
There are more, but the above list gives me the sense that it's worth preparing an alternative. That being said, it looks like a straight removal is going to be impossible.
My current plan is:
1. Remove Resonance from characters baseline.
2. Items can be equipped in slots, or just equipped if slotless, and their "Invested" bonus will be active.
3. Let gold be the primary limiter on consumables.
4. Give Alchemists exclusively a Resonance pool for their class features that use it, resized appropriately.
5. Everyone gets a charisma based UMD skill for Wands, Scrolls and Staves. No spell caster needs to roll UMD for these.
The hard one:
6. Items that have an RP requirement for their activated abilities will instead be usable 1/day.
7. 1/day per 4* levels you can make a UMD check to regain a single item's 1/day charge. *Adjustable based on expected number of Resonance uses outside of potions and investment per day at different levels.
Please let me know what you think would be a good alternative to Resonance. Remember, I intend to playtest Resonance, but if it puts up too much of a barrier and prevents me from playtesting the rest of the system I will not hesitate to excise it. I just want to be able to do it with some thought.
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I think your biggest challenge is going to be "3. Let gold be the primary limiter on consumables." The game design isnt going to account for this, so you are going to have to either do the maths or wing it.
Agreed. PF1 didn't even manage this well consistently and it was trying.
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I think the simplest change would be to say consumables (scrolls, potions, trinkets) don't cost resonance and see how that plays in your group. Add wands to the list depending on your play style and preferences.
If you keep wands still costing resonance most of the consumables are still on the relatively expensive side and might be self-regulating. Also depends on how your group deals with encumbrance/bulk (adherence to the rules pushes for the less cost-effective solutions).
People will likely have a bit more resonance to spend on permanent items/activations. Depending on your table style that can be a good or bad thing. But its a very simply change to try without having to re-balance a ton of other things.
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I'd say you're on a decent track for it... Honestly the easiest way for me is to keep resonance, make potions and other consumables not use it, lower the pool to half level + Cha instead of level +Cha. Now it functions as a limit on the number of permanent magic items you can have without dictating slots, but doesn't allocate temporary potions and such or risk failure because you just don't buy more permanent items than you have slots for, or sell one off to upgrade.
For keeping resonance as it is, I'll offer my thoughts on some of your points to maybe give ideas (which I know may or may not work for your table) that can help you do less houserules and avoid complications
Thank you Shiroi, I do plan to try out some tinkering to see if I can get Resonance to fit so suggestions like yours are helpful. As far as point 6 is concerned, I consider the fact that you can't wear two pairs of boots or two cloaks to mean there are unspoken item slots which I would prefer to have out in the open at the start. Some people might assume they could wear multiple belts while someone else might not, so it's better to have that clearly outlined at the start.
I think your biggest challenge is going to be "3. Let gold be the primary limiter on consumables." The game design isnt going to account for this, so you are going to have to either do the maths or wing it.
Gold works fine for my table, though we're obviously not representative. I'm curious though, can you outline what game design problems you expect to arise from this?
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I think your biggest challenge is going to be "3. Let gold be the primary limiter on consumables." The game design isnt going to account for this, so you are going to have to either do the maths or wing it.Gold works fine for my table, though we're obviously not representative. I'm curious though, can you outline what game design problems you expect to arise from this?
Sure. In PF1 you get guideline tables for treasure from encounters. In PF2, these are going be based around resonance and probably less likely used then your purposes. You are going to have to figure out how often the PCs will be able to buy consumables, and use them, and adjust treasure guidelines in a way that PF2 isnt going to consider.
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Then again, I don't like catering everything in the world to my PCs. They are adventurers, not boy scouts going camping. I'll give them a fair challenge, and pull my punches if I feel like I overdid it, but if they start doing out of character or unheroic things because they don't want to use a potion, then they can get wrecked.
I tend to take a "play it straight" approach. I decide ahead of time what they'll find in a location and what sorts of monsters or challenges are there. Then it's up to the players to decide how they go about things. Since this is a TTRPG, they always surprise me. It's not my job to change what's behind the door to discourage them from playing wrong. Sometimes there are enemies who line up a rail gun to fire at the party as soon as they break down the door. Sometimes it's a harmless situation and they have hours to spare, so they circumvent my puzzles.
I am also planning to remove resonance for consumables and attachement. I will reduce the RP reserve and just keep it for magic items. I generally only give custom, strong, flavorful magic items during a campaign, like 3 for each players at maximum, but they start strong and become even stronger during the campaign, and are generally artefact or not far at the end.
Magic items except consumables are very rare and expensive (in the rare case one of them can be bought in a auction) in my adventures. But they are really strong like a ghost heavy shield which requires no hands and can be used as a reaction to make a wall of force, or boots that allows you to jump 20ft between each attacks or things like that. And I used automatic bonus progression in PF1 for the « must have ».
So for what I am planning to do, just keeping RP for the x/day utilisation of my custom items will be perfect for my players. For the rest I will probably throw some kind of automatic progression for saves and the like if it is needed, and consumables will be like usual, easy to find and no RP to use.
If there are som kind of unbalance because of that I will just give some classes more RP like for the Alchemist. And why not a homebrew feat like Artificier to increase RP. Homebrew feats are going to be perfect in this game to make whatever change you feel is necessary.
As for your problems with your specific group, add NPCs that can help them before their exploration, allow them to transform their older items with skills checks and roleplay research and gold in something more powerful. For Resonnance tracking if you are on table and not computer, use a dice in front of each player with the resonnance number on it. It works very well to keep track of things without writing and erasing all the time. My Magus player used that to track Arcana point. Try to make them more confident if they are always on the edge by lowering a little bit the difficulty, or by making risk taking more valuable. Like « if you attack them quickly you will probably not be perfectly ready but the new round of guard is still not here so it can be the best thing to do ».
Anyway just a few ideas and personal example I hope it helps.
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Fair enough. If it were me, I'd start applying a bit more urgency to tasks if this was a common occurrence.This can take the form of limiting other resources, such as food and water, or having wandering monsters.
For your example of hacking down a door with a pickaxe: EVERYTHING in the dungeon would know that something is going on after hearing a pickaxe clang against stone for hours and they would be waiting on the other side of the door for them.
This particular scenario took place beneath a city, after many floors of magical traps and tests. Beyond the door was presumed to be either empty or filled with friendly creatures that had long been sealed away.
The test was designed by a strict sect of dwarven fundamentalists, and involved lifting a heavy stone block that could only be touched if you wore gloves with internal serrations that dealt some HP damage. The intent of the message was "If you're serious about entering, you need to sweat and bleed for it, like a dwarf"
All of the players decided their characters both didn't like the attitude of the dwarf creators and didn't want anything to do with those gloves.
If you want to remove resonance from the game then I suggest that you linearize wealth and item costs and level lock items (so a level 4 character can't use a level 6 item). I can help with the math once the full game is out and I know the value for things.
Really, I may even try and do a 3PP thing with it and release that system along with a few other alternate wealth/item management systems.
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Myself, I'll just look at what the item does, try to find it's PF1 counter part or something close to it, and then carry the numbers from PF1 over to the item in question.
Numbers tweaked if need be.
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For items with an RP use, let the players spend their universal class resource on it. Being able to turn channeling or stunning fists into invisibility is probably balanced. That should be the only change you need.
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I am planning on using Resonance for the playtest and then removing it from consumables. I am fine with it for investing worn gear. Staves will be recharged by resonance like normal and not cost a resonance point to invest, but the charges can be used without the resonance cost, spontaneous casting from the staff will cost 1 charge from the staff.
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I'm ok with the idea of using Resonence to attune a permanent magic item to you, maybe even with charged items like wands. I can live with that but I'm not going to use it for consumables like potions and scrolls. It just doesn't make sense to me.
I drank too many potions today, so now they don't work?
and for a wizard to suddenly not be able to use a spell scroll, that he wrote in the first place? that's ridiculous.
I'm just tossing that in the garbage right now.
At best I can see an argument for spending a point of Resonence when I create a Potion or Scroll to invest it with some magic at creation.
Items that have an RP requirement for their activated abilities will instead be usable 1/day.Isn’t this an enormous nerf that destroys all the items that do so. Like the cloak of elvenkind is balanced around having many uses of invisibility per day. Making it once per day would completely invalidate the item for its cost and make it much much worse as nothing fills that niche.
Indeed, effectively one of the benefits of resonance is that it lets you use your boots of speed for significantly more than 10 rounds/day, just by spending 1 RP for an n round burst of speed as many times as you want. Likewise your Celestial Armor can let you cast fly as often as you like for 1 RP each.
Sure, reverting those two items to their PF1 forms will be fine but eventually there are going to be items without direct analogues.
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Just the act of having some basic consumables NOT cost Resonance might be the boost those items need to spur their purchase. In my own experience, players tend to like their gold. Consumables tend to get pushed a little further down the list.
I appreciate the OP's reasoned/thoughtful approach to this. I'm curious how it will play out, myself.
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Items that have an RP requirement for their activated abilities will instead be usable 1/day.Isn’t this an enormous nerf that destroys all the items that do so. Like the cloak of elvenkind is balanced around having many uses of invisibility per day. Making it once per day would completely invalidate the item for its cost and make it much much worse as nothing fills that niche.
Yes, that's my biggest concern. My thought process was this:
If you're expected to have an amount of Resonance equal to (R), and you're expected to invest in the morning a number of items (I) and it's assumed that you save some resonance for consumables (C) what's left over is the resonance you can spend on activated abilities of certain pieces of equipment (A).
R = I+C+A
Obviously I will increase as you level, but C should probably not. I'm tentatively guessing at a progression of a 10 Cha person as:
Level 1: (1) = (0)+(1)+(0)
Level 5: (5) = (2)+(1)+(2) One activatable item
Level 10: (10) = (4)+(2)+(4) Two activatable items
Level 15: (15) = (6)+(3)+(6) Four activatable items
Level 20: (20) = (8)+(3)+(9) Six activatable items
Once you boil it down to 1/day per item that leaves you at 20th level with approximately 6 "Resonance" per day for activatable items, albeit locked to those items.
This is where the UMD to regain charges comes in. You can make a UMD check (modified by charisma) to regain up to 5 "Resonance" (or uses of selected items). This has two benefits, one it doesn't lock you out of using a magic item later in the day if you spent all your resonance and two it gives you potentially slightly more overall uses per day than base Resonance.
I have yet to decide what those DCs should be, but since skill checks are modified by level it should be pretty easy to make at high levels. Obviously this is all up for debate.
If I was doing this I might just do as follows:
1) Leave Resonance score (cha mod + level) but, bar Alchemist, not use it as points.
2) Can Invest up to Resonance score (or Resonance score/2) items.
3) Can activate items a number of times equal to Resonance score (or Resonance score/2). Going past this could incur the flat roll as usual.
4) Remove it from consumables.
5) Give out piles of gold. Enjoy the escalation in power level.
3) Can activate items a number of times equal to Resonance score (or Resonance score/2). Going past this could incur the flat roll as usual.
I meant to say each. Else not much point in not using actual resonance.
If this is too strong, you could always just use the proficiency progression. E.g. at the earliest level you can get Expert in something (I forget the benchmarks) you can activate each 1/day, at the earliest you can get Master you can activate each 2/day. At the earliest you can get Legendary you can activate each 3/day. Probs give out tonnes of stuff to make this more fun.| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
Folks. Y'all realize if you houserule Resonance out of the playtest instead of actually testing it, it is probably more likely that it will make it into the final product? The further you push your game from the paramaters of the game, the less useful your feedback will be and the more likely it is that it will be disregarded.
Resonance is definitely one of the most extreme decisions Paizo has made. They have said in interviews that when they have been unsure on whether to make an extreme change or a more core conservative move, they have gone with the former because they can always change it back for the final product. They have also given examples from the Starfinder development cycle to show that even incredibly integral systems can be scrapped if they are sufficiently disliked during the playtest.
That means Resonance may indeed be removed from the final product. But the best way to ensure that will be actually playing with it as written, and then carefully documenting any problems you have. Theory crafting is unlikely to be a useful exercise, and the more you play with it the heavier your opinion will be weighed. Houseruling it out without even playing with it just means you have zero actual data to back up your objections, and I'm skeptical of there being a huge window to adequately playtest it and then apply house rules and have THEN adequately play tested in time for Paizo to implement them.
I know the OP specified they will be playtesting Resonance as written, but it still seems worth pointing out for other people.
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I have a pretty in-depth way to run a Pathfinder game without resonance:
Play 1e
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Captain Morgan is correct. It's very important to playtest it, document any problems you might have, and give robust feedback. The purpose of this thread is to discuss ways to excise Resonance with minimal disruption to the rest of the game only if Resonance makes the difference between your group continuing to playtest or not.
To make it clear, my group is full of casual players who can't meet very often. I would like to think that their opinions on the game are valuable, because they represent a pretty significant portion of the community who might otherwise not have their voices heard during the playtest.
If something is a consistent point of contention and lowers their enjoyment significantly, I could potentially lose out on a large percentage of my playtesting opportunities. Meeting once a month means we'll have something like 12 chances to try out the rules. I don't want to be in a position where Resonance means I can't provide feedback about revised action economy, class design, ease of character building and all the various things that PF2e is supposed to improve and I want to have a say in.
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It's too early to plan for houseruling it out, you haven't even seen the full playtest rules, let alone playtested it. In addition, playtest rules are not necessarily the final rules.
If you're going to playtest something, you need to actually playtest it, not judge it from a blog.
I'm not a big fan of Resonance for the reasons stated. I'll probably be going without it as well.