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Pre-Pathfinder the issue was 15 minute adventuring day. First few encounters result in Casters using most of their spells in the battle or on healing characters, causing the party to call it day after 15 minutes of game time.
Pathfinder introduced cheap healing via Wand of Cure Light Wounds. Now the issue is after every fight the PC top off their hit points, resulting in the need to make every encounter that matters to be deadly enough to wipe out all the characters hit points.
Pathfinder 2.0 is introducing resonance which effectively turns item use into a daily resource on par with spell casting. Its as if everyone is given a spell-like ability called “Activate Item”. Useable once per level + Chr Bonus per day. Resonance covers most all permanent items and consumables thereby doing dual service of limiting daily consumables and number of permanent magic items used & worn. Limiting consumables limits out of combat healing which hopefully reduced the full hitpoint for every encounter syndrome.
Using Resonance to limit permanent items and to activate item powers that would otherwise be X daily use, seems to be reasonable, but for consumables such as wand/staffs with charges, Potions, and Scrolls the use of Resonance seems to break the suspension of disbelief revealing itself as a rule mechanism to limit daily item use.
If the real problem is unlimited cheap healing then the fix should target that issue. Healing needs to have a daily limit mechanism. Resonance does that, but with an overly broad fix.
For a more focused fix, look at Magical healing, it forces the body to heal quickly. It’s easy to imagine the process of forced healing causing stress to the body and that repeated forced healings within a day could have a negative effect.
A more narrowly targeted mechanism at limiting healing could work by allowing a character to be healed a number of times per day equal to their Fortitude without penalty. The source (spell, potion, scroll …) or level of the healing doesn’t matter. Once they exceed their Fortitude value the PC would take the Fatigue condition equal to the overage until they get an overnight rest. If an element of luck is preferred, the overage mechanic from Resonance could be applied to healing overage to determine if you get fatigued (flat DC10 roll, with the DC modified by the overage.). In any case, healing would still work regardless of the roll.
Resonance mechanic would still be used for permanent item limits and activate item powers, replacing the item slot mechanism and daily uses for individual item powers. Consumables would work without Resonance.
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Unlimited use of consumables.
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How about "none of the above"? There is no problem, because making every combat engaging and dangerous is the best way to run encounters. Every non-threatening combat encounter is a waste of everybodies time, which in itself a very limited resource which should be spent on better things, like more dangerous combat encounters or more roleplaying.
Also, having to make every encounter so dangerous that it always presents the danger of a TPK situation is also a bunk argument. If the encounter is dangerous to put at least one PC in serious danger, it is good enough. Ideally it also will scrape a good amount of HP off the rest of the party, so that players will feel that their characters were threatened, but if it was clear that one PC had a close brush, then every player should have gotten the message.
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I sort of feel that if we just increased the price of wands by a factor of 5 or 10, and potions by a factor of 5, there's no problem.
And the wand of cure light wounds wasn't a Pathfinder thing; it's been in the game, at the same stupid low price, since 3.0 came out in 2000.
Both-ish. I don't have much of a problem with out of combat healing, so it's more to me that unlimited use consumables are a thing (hit the fighter 7 times with a stick to make them feel better is the main thing, but other cheap-for-their-level consumables still bug me on a case-by-case basis), but I also feel that out of combat healing should be generous, but not unlimited. Give the players a reason to value each hit point lost. 4e, 5e and Starfinder all do this, by having some form of limited use pool of healing that you get for free each day. I don't know that resonance as it stands is the best mechanism for this, but I do think it's better than not having it.
For a more focused fix, look at Magical healing, it forces the body to heal quickly. It’s easy to imagine the process of forced healing causing stress to the body and that repeated forced healings within a day could have a negative effect.
I feel like this doesn't need to cover healing from character-derived resources (spell slots, a Monk's ability to heal himself (if P2E Monks get something like that, Lay On Hands, etc) since they already have their own limitation, anyway. The in-game justification could be that healing magic stresses the body, but the caster shares that stress with the recipient. And then the explanation for when the caster IS the recipient could be that the body learns how to handle that potnetial for stress when the caster learns how to cast the spell (or otherwise magically heal himself).
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How about "none of the above"? There is no problem, because making every combat engaging and dangerous is the best way to run encounters. Every non-threatening combat encounter is a waste of everybodies time, which in itself a very limited resource which should be spent on better things, like more dangerous combat encounters or more roleplaying.
I'd strongly disagree. IME players enjoy having the occasional fight that is well within their capabilities; it gives them the opportunity to feel heroic, see the effects of their accomplishments comparative to the world around them, and try out new tactics in fights where a miscalculation isn't going to mean someone dies. PCs who remember how badly that ogre boss beat them up who fight a phalanx of ogres three levels later and mow them down with their new abilities and higher level spells get to see how their characters are becoming more potent pieces of the game world. From a mechanical perspective they'll probably still take some dings and bruises and burn a few spell slots (which contributes to the overall attrition expected by the game mechanics that balance limited-resource-based classes against classes whose only limited resource is hit points), but that's not the only value that less-challenging encounters add to the game environment.
Also, having to make every encounter so dangerous that it always presents the danger of a TPK situation is also a bunk argument. If the encounter is dangerous to put at least one PC in serious danger, it is good enough. Ideally it also will scrape a good amount of HP off the rest of the party, so that players will feel that their characters were threatened, but if it was clear that one PC had a close brush, then every player should have gotten the message.
That may work if you have the ability to accurately predict what your players will do from encounter to encounter, but my experience is that most GMs do not. "Think of every possible solution and the players will come up with six more" or some variation of that idea is a pretty common gaming adage. If the encounter is strong enough to potentially put one PC at risk of death, than it's either speed-bump targeting that player or it has the potential to spiral into a dangerous TPK situation with just a bad roll or two. An experienced GM may be able to avoid this with subpar tactics or by fudging rolls behind the screen, but some GMs view fudging as cheating and others don't have the experience to turn a "bad" combat around on the fly.
I've played with hundreds of gamers over the years and worked with numerous companies producing TTRPG content, and one of the main takeaways I've gotten from those experiences is that the number of players who like brutal, Gygaxian death marches where every encounter is high risk represent a relatively small subset of the total gaming market. Some people actually need encounters soft-balled a bit as they develop their tactics, others like a higher challenge curve, and many like a mix where sometimes they get to hew their way through armies of mooks with relatively less risk and other times only tactics, teamwork, and a little bit of luck can see them through.The venue that you play in can impact what kind of game you want as well. If you're playing Play-by-Post you probably want fewer but more challenging encounters (since the time to complete an encounter takes so much longer), an open table at a public venue will definitely want the first encounter or two to be less challenging so the group can get their feet under them and familiarize themselves with the other players, and a dedicated home group will have preferences as varied as all the possible combinations of encounters that fit in a session (some groups will only want challenging encounters, some will want a scaling mix that starts easy and trends up so that they get a climactic build, and some will see combat as a tool that progresses the narrative but otherwise isn't something they want to spend too much time on.)
I sort of feel that if we just increased the price of wands by a factor of 5 or 10, and potions by a factor of 5, there's no problem.
And the wand of cure light wounds wasn't a Pathfinder thing; it's been in the game, at the same stupid low price, since 3.0 came out in 2000.
I dusted off my old books to double check, but you are correct the CLW wand was from DnD 3.0.
I believe, they chose to reduce the cost of healing potions to about 1gp to 2gp per point of healing for minor, lesser, moderate, and greater types of healing potions. The top two Major and True healing potions come out at 5gp and 17gp per point of healing. I'm not sure about the cost of CLW wands, but the level 3 staff of healing cost works out to about 2gp per hp and that is without recharging it. The point is that the healing items previewed are in the same ballpark as far as healing cost, so PCs will use a mixture of items.
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Also, having to make every encounter so dangerous that it always presents the danger of a TPK situation is also a bunk argument. If the encounter is dangerous to put at least one PC in serious danger, it is good enough. Ideally it also will scrape a good amount of HP off the rest of the party, so that players will feel that their characters were threatened, but if it was clear that one PC had a close brush, then every player should have gotten the message.
I try to do this, but that is often a preposterously fine line. I had a group in really bad shape facing two T-Rexes (ostensibly CR11) at level 10 in the rain (limited visibility, no more than a round to prepare by buffing before the attack).
At level 11 against two level 13 NPCs (with NPC wealth and NPC elite stat array, which is I think matches a 15 point buy), one of the four party members was knocked out and another was stabilized after the fight just 3 HP from bleeding out. One of the party members (alchemist) was a little low on buffs, but otherwise they had a lot of resources available.
Then at level 12 with no relevant new gear, they facerolled a Saurian (CR16 by himself), a level 13 druid with a nigh-unhittable Allosaurus animal companion, and 5 extra CR4 distractions that were basically there to eat actions (and did, thoroughly dividing the group's attention), because they were the aggressors, knew they were significant underdogs, and buffed ahead of time. The wizard, who is a hilariously "suboptimal" blaster whose player rarely even remembers what spells he has prepared from session to session never mind how they work, got a little lucky on a dispel check to cancel the Saurian's summoning of some T-Rexes. He had literally never even asked about how counterspells worked before, despite years of playing wizards (typically blasters). Almost nobody in the party took any damage until I gave the Saurian some extra HP mid-combat just so he could have one more round and get Meteor Swarm off once before getting knocked out (I didn't have them all strike one player because that seemed pointlessly harsh when they'd essentially already won).
A lot of the difference is just the way an encounter can spiral when someone goes down, or the weird balance issues in a fight where one character has 14 more AC than another, or is especially vulnerable to touch attacks, or whatever.
I didn't think that 2 t-rexes would be close to fatal for two characters right out of the gate, but I sure thought that last encounter (which was supposed to bring back memories of the 2 t-rexes) could easily be deadly for the entire party, even going in prepared.
The other problem with this is that suddenly *everything* the PCs face needs to potentially be deadly or it's irrelevant. If the "encounter" is intended to be a dungeon with a few handfuls of rooms, but they have time to stop and think for ten minutes about a puzzle, then they have time to heal between the fights. That trap that did 1/3 of a character's health in damage? Might as well not exist. The triumph of figuring out how to disable the complex trap so the rest of the party could get past it unscathed? Never experienced. Everyone just walked through, and waited for a few rounds while they run through 150 gold worth of healing.
A lot of the power in an adventure, or plot of any kind, is the contrast of highs and lows. And with easy healing, only overwhelmingly dangerous fights or "rocks fall" level traps can be dangerous. Surviving really deadly encounters can feel meaningful to the plot, but if every single fight in an adventure feels that way then none of them feel special, either, which is anticlimactic because there's no build-up. The game-ending fight is the same as the fight before it, because that's the only option for danger. By contrast, restricted healing means that the players who figured out how to get past the tricky trap actually contributed to the fight at the end of the dungeon, because the party had more resources to bear in the last battle. Maybe that's what makes the adventure-ending fight go from impossible to a narrow victory.
Edit: It turns out I basically just gave specific examples to agree with everything Ssalarn said.
For a more focused fix, look at Magical healing, it forces the body to heal quickly. It’s easy to imagine the process of forced healing causing stress to the body and that repeated forced healings within a day could have a negative effect.
It's funny, because that's basically how I first was able to mentally picture resonance. Credit goes to whoever it was that originally suggested thinking of it as a tolerance that is gradually maxed out (I've also seen it described as magical encumbrance) rather than a resource that is used to activate magic items. That mental model addressed the flavor aspect, though. I add the extra element to the model that magic put into items is the issue, that it's inexorably altered in some way. Maybe it's missing something, and has to strain your body's natural magical limits to work.
Another approach would be to think of it as the body extracting and processing the magic, like it does normal nutrients. Take a lot of vitamin C? Guess what, it does nothing (although at least it isn't poisonous).
Too many potions? Sorry, your body is "full" of this itemized magic. The potion was magical, but like all those extra vitamins, you basically just pee it out later.
I'd actually rather have the healing limit tied to a trade-off that you can control as an interesting decision of what magical items you use and how, rather than the "healing surge" model of just random x/day healing.
That doesn't address the mechanical clunkiness of some of the resonance-using items (I liked it more when it seemed like x/day everything was dead), but we'll see how that shakes out. I get the impression that it's a 3/4 baked mechanic, and with a little more time in the oven, it's probably a winner. I don't like the Alchemist attribute exception, but I don't know enough about the class mechanics to know why it's needed. I also think that the problem might not be the resonance mechanics themselves, but with a small few items that haven't fully embraced them, like wands. Possibly just a slight tweak to how many resonance points everyone gets. We'll see.
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For a more focused fix, look at Magical healing, it forces the body to heal quickly. It’s easy to imagine the process of forced healing causing stress to the body and that repeated forced healings within a day could have a negative effect.It's funny, because that's basically how I first was able to mentally picture resonance. Credit goes to whoever it was that originally suggested thinking of it as a tolerance that is gradually maxed out (I've also seen it described as magical encumbrance) rather than a resource that is used to activate magic items. That mental model addressed the flavor aspect, though. I add the extra element to the model that magic put into items is the issue, that it's inexorably altered in some way. Maybe it's missing something, and has to strain your body's natural magical limits to work.
According to my notes, Vidmaster7 originally posted the resonance as tolerance idea in comment #692 of the Paizo Blog: Trinket and Treasures discussion. Sometimes reading the long threads is worth the time. I repeated the idea in my thread, Interpreting Resonance.
I haven't seen resonance as encumberance. If anyone has a source, I would like to add that to my thread as a 9th idea, if it is sufficiently different from resonance as attunement.
According to my notes, Vidmaster7 originally posted the resonance as tolerance idea in comment #692 of the Paizo Blog: Trinket and Treasures discussion. Sometimes reading the long threads is worth the time. I repeated the idea in my thread, Interpreting Resonance.
I haven't seen resonance as encumberance. If anyone has a source, I would like to add that to my thread as a 9th idea, if it is sufficiently different from resonance as attunement.
I think I read the original Vidmaster7 comment in that thread, which I apparently read all 1000+ posts. I remember it coming up before your thread, which I haven't clicked since there were only 3 posts in it, so that's probably the right one.
As far as I know, the "itemized magic as vitamins that you only can metabolize some of and urinate out the excess" is original to my post above, and I'm incredibly insulted you don't think it's worthy of inclusion in your collection.
Edit: Also, here's where I first saw it described as "encumbrance": Comment#106 in How to Not use Resonance
I'm still digging the metaphysical encumbrance interpretation. I think that'll be fairly easy to explain to new players.
Everything else I'm seeing on a search of the playtest forum makes it look like they're only talking about the bulk rules and not resonance, so I think it's the first description of it in those terms, which is a super useful shorthand.
As far as I know, the "itemized magic as vitamins that you only can metabolize some of and urinate out the excess" is original to my post above, and I'm incredibly insulted you don't think it's worthy of inclusion in your collection.
That is not an interpretation for the previewed resoance mechanic. That is a new mechanic. You are too creative for my humble thread.
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I haven't seen resonance as encumberance. If anyone has a source, I would like to add that to my thread as a 9th idea, if it is sufficiently different from resonance as attunement.Edit: Also, here's where I first saw it described as "encumbrance": Comment#106 in How to Not use Resonance
I'm still digging the metaphysical encumbrance interpretation. I think that'll be fairly easy to explain to new players.Everything else I'm seeing on a search of the playtest forum makes it look like they're only talking about the bulk rules and not resonance, so I think it's the first description of it in those terms, which is a super useful shorthand.
I'm glad you like it! I first posted the idea earlier in the same thread here.
According to my notes, Vidmaster7 originally posted the resonance as tolerance idea in comment #692 of the Paizo Blog: Trinket and Treasures discussion. Sometimes reading the long threads is worth the time. I repeated the idea in my thread, Interpreting Resonance.
I haven't seen resonance as encumberance. If anyone has a source, I would like to add that to my thread as a 9th idea, if it is sufficiently different from resonance as attunement.
I think I read the original Vidmaster7 comment in that thread, which I apparently read all 1000+ posts. I remember it coming up before your thread, which I haven't clicked since there were only 3 posts in it, so that's probably the right one.
As far as I know, the "itemized magic as vitamins that you only can metabolize some of and urinate out the excess" is original to my post above, and I'm incredibly insulted you don't think it's worthy of inclusion in your collection.
Edit: Also, here's where I first saw it described as "encumbrance": Comment#106 in How to Not use Resonance
I'm still digging the metaphysical encumbrance interpretation. I think that'll be fairly easy to explain to new players.Everything else I'm seeing on a search of the playtest forum makes it look like they're only talking about the bulk rules and not resonance, so I think it's the first description of it in those terms, which is a super useful shorthand.
Oh man I'm being referenced as the source of something. that's cool.
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I'd strongly disagree. IME players enjoy having the occasional fight that is well within their capabilities; it gives them the opportunity to feel heroic, see the effects of their accomplishments comparative to the world around them, and try out new tactics in fights where a miscalculation isn't going to mean someone dies. PCs who remember how badly that ogre boss beat them up who fight a phalanx of ogres three levels later and mow them down with their new abilities and higher level spells get to see how their characters are becoming more potent pieces of the game world. From a mechanical perspective they'll probably still take some dings and bruises and burn a few spell slots (which contributes to the overall attrition expected by the game mechanics that balance limited-resource-based classes against classes whose only limited resource is hit points), but that's not the only value that less-challenging encounters add to the game environment.
Having one encounter between twenty where you steamroll an enemy type you encountered before, which was difficult at the time, is fine. Having more is a waste of everybodies time, IMO. And I feel very strongly about this as well.
That may work if you have the ability to accurately predict what your players will do from encounter to encounter, but my experience is that most GMs do not. "Think of every possible solution and the players will come up with...
Actually, my experience is that players will most of the time turn an encounter which you planned a challenging into something very much less so, just by their own ingenuity or practice with the rules.
I have no idea why people would want to play a game where their characters just steamroll weak opposition. At that point you probably just could boot up World of Warcraft and go questing in the world. Having encounters which get your heart pumping because you fear that your character is in serious danger is, IMO, almost always the better solution. Yes, every now and then throwing in an encounter where you ROFL-stomp some fools can be nice as well. But I think it is vastly better when your party is cautious what is around the next corner, instead of just waltzing about feeling themselves invincible all the time.
Of course I play with fixed groups since 20 years, so I lack experience with the other types of play you described. So, it could well be that I am speaking erroneously there from my limited point of view.
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Of course I play with fixed groups since 20 years, so I lack experience with the other types of play you described. So, it could well be that I am speaking erroneously there from my limited point of view.
Yeah, I wouldn't enjoy playing at your table. If every encounter is a do or die, someone is always on the verge of death, I would be way too stressed out to enjoy it.
But I'm glad you've found a playstyle that works for you.
I've played with DM's like that. It is for real stressful. We actually quit playing under one of our older DM's who DM-ed like that. It wasn't that reason in and of itself but it contributed.
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I have no idea why people would want to play a game where their characters just steamroll weak opposition. At that point you probably just could boot up World of Warcraft and go questing in the world. Having encounters which get your heart pumping because you fear that your character is in serious danger is, IMO, almost always the better solution. Yes, every now and then throwing in an encounter where you ROFL-stomp some fools can be nice as well. But I think it is vastly better when your party is cautious what is around the next corner, instead of just waltzing about feeling themselves invincible all the time.
You've missed something. That assumes that the design of the game is around combats where every single decision should have immediate, potentially fatal consequences. 3.0 was trying to move away from that idea. The design, instead, was to create tension around weaker combatants by making the resource game important. Even if you screw up and things go badly, the party would be able to recover and move on. This was deemed important since it was no longer possible to toss a handful of dice and whip up a replacement high-level character for a dead party member in 3 minutes.
So where does the tension come from? Resource management. A bad encounter against mooks might no longer result in a character death, but the party is in much worse shape afterwards in terms of spells, per-day abilities, and consumables. That makes continuing to fight more dangerous, even against enemies of supposedly weaker power levels. Thus, the danger (and engagement) increase as the adventuring day continues.
I vote for none of the above. My players aren't playing Pathfinder for the combat stomps (Well, except for David, who liked hacking monsters to bits in Jade Regent as a way to relax). They play Pathfinder to create the story of their characters.
For example, in Lords of Rust in my Iron Gods campaign when the party entered the underground stronghold of the Lords of Rust, they had already been fighting the worshippers of Hellion, but now they encountered the video image of Hellion talking to them on a monitor screen. That was not combat, that was story. That Hellion was wastefully throwing his minions at the party with orders to kill while also trying to convert the party to worshipping him was both combat and story. The minions were weak, except for a few sub-bosses, which meant that the combat was not a risk, but the party was learning about Hellion and his technology as they progressed.
Then further down, they stepped out of Hellion's territory into the caverns of the dark folk. These opponents had a different combat strategy, creating impenetrable darkness for their fights. The party had to invent new tactics to defeat them. That combat was a tough mental challenge for the players rather than a tough physical challenge for the player characters.
Risk is not the only thing that keeps a game interesting.
Obviously, that didn't happen. So, what went wrong? Two things. One, the designers miscalculated, badly. They assumed the 2E norm of continuing to adventure until the GM said there were no more hours in the day would hold in 3E. Yes, believe it or not it was normal back in the day to make the wizard keep going after his spells were gone, throwing daggers and praying not to be targeted for wearing silly robes in a combat situation.
I partially remember those D&D 2nd Edition days. The party kept going because retreating while deep in the dungeon was almost as dangerous as advancing, and a lot less profitable. Instead, we carried several days of trail rations and when we finally spotted a secureable room when depleted, we spiked the door and camped for the night. Spiking the door meant literally nailing the door shut, so we would have time to don armor if a monster started breaking down the door. Thus, our consumables were rations rather than healing potions.
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Two, they made an important resource , HP, far too easy to convert a more trivial resource, GP, to obtain.
I personally never found HP a fun/enjoyable/interesting out of combat resource to manage. It ranks up there with managing how many dung balls and live spiders are in my component pouch... I'd much rather balance remaining class/race abilities vs the danger I'm facing than retreat because of hp lose while having plenty of other resources left.
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Personally, while I have no problem with unlimited low cost healing, I detest a heavy emphasis on consumables. I especially dislike how the solution is never "save consumable items for emergencies" it's "carry more consumables."
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I especially dislike how the solution is never "save consumable items for emergencies" it's "carry more consumables."
I never saw this: some consumables where ALWAYS saved and those where the higher level ones or potion/scrolls and they often saw 'break in case of emergency' use. It was only CLW's that fell under "carry more consumables." I can't recall a game where someone didn't have a potion or scroll on hand for emergency healing, condition removal or niche situational spells/effects.
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For me the problem is that HP is an abstraction of a number of things, including stamina. The various things HP represents also have different rates of recovery.
I'd prefer there to be a flat post-combat heal, like level + Con mod, to represent catching your breath (perhaps like a 10 min rest) so long as you are consious. Another idea would be to half actual HP and grant a pool of Temp HP for the remaining half that refreshes at the end of combat.
An approach such as this still allows the deadly meaningful combat but reduces the need for out of combat heal spamming and helps break the thematic disconnect that activity can bring.
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Both, imo. Resource attrition is a time honored aspect of the game and I think resonance is a good way to manage it. Now if you like to kick in every door and run face first into every buzzsaw (legitimate playstyle) I think there are easy ways to achieve it. Devs have mentioned added healing opportunities for all types of characters. You can also double, triple, etc the amount of resonance per day to taste.
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Resource attrition is a time honored aspect of the game and I think resonance is a good way to manage it.
It does more than that though as it also limits what you wear and use.
Now if you like to kick in every door and run face first into every buzzsaw (legitimate playstyle) I think there are easy ways to achieve it.
It doesn't have to be 'that' playstyle to run into an issue. Daring to wear a few magic items and not having a main healer can start off with an issue, especially if you fail your 50% roll right off the bat.
Devs have mentioned added healing opportunities for all types of characters. You can also double, triple, etc the amount of resonance per day to taste.
Maybe if the divorce items worn from consumables and "double, triple, etc" the base it's ok. I'd want the base game to work like that though as the chances of finding a game houseruled as you like are unlikely [I don't have a home game].
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Pre-Pathfinder the issue was 15 minute adventuring day. First few encounters result in Casters using most of their spells in the battle or on healing characters, causing the party to call it day after 15 minutes of game time.
Pathfinder introduced cheap healing via Wand of Cure Light Wounds. Now the issue is after every fight the PC top off their hit points, resulting in the need to make every encounter that matters to be deadly enough to wipe out all the characters hit points.
Pathfinder 2.0 is introducing resonance which effectively turns item use into a daily resource on par with spell casting. Its as if everyone is given a spell-like ability called “Activate Item”. Useable once per level + Chr Bonus per day. Resonance covers most all permanent items and consumables thereby doing dual service of limiting daily consumables and number of permanent magic items used & worn. Limiting consumables limits out of combat healing which hopefully reduced the full hitpoint for every encounter syndrome.
Using Resonance to limit permanent items and to activate item powers that would otherwise be X daily use, seems to be reasonable, but for consumables such as wand/staffs with charges, Potions, and Scrolls the use of Resonance seems to break the suspension of disbelief revealing itself as a rule mechanism to limit daily item use.
If the real problem is unlimited cheap healing then the fix should target that issue. Healing needs to have a daily limit mechanism. Resonance does that, but with an overly broad fix.
For a more focused fix, look at Magical healing, it forces the body to heal quickly. It’s easy to imagine the process of forced healing causing stress to the body and that repeated forced healings within a day could have a negative effect.
A more narrowly targeted mechanism at limiting healing could work by allowing a character to be healed a number of times per day equal to their Fortitude without penalty. The source (spell, potion, scroll …) or level of the healing...
That strategy was available back in 3.X, so no, it wasn't (technically) pre-Pathfinder. It's just that Pathfinder was the first system to effectively "tell" that by basically assuming you run with one or two at all times. I don't know if 3.X was designed with that in mind, but its possibility has existed well before Pathfinder hit the shelves.
And that's not an issue if the game is properly designed around it. If the game assumes you will be healed up at the end of the combat (like most video games do in certain tactical strategy genres), which CLW wands permit you to have happen, then having combats that constantly threaten your character's lives is a good thing. If the combats were extremely boring or too easy and never posed a threat in numerous dynamic ways, players would just grunt and groan about having to do "worthless" encounters, and likewise would dread the use of the word "treasure," since that would mean combats ensuing, which means more "boring" gameplay just to get something that moves along to more of the same "boring" gameplay. The problem here is that Pathfinder doesn't have a "video game"-y atmosphere in regards to its appearance, which means the natural approach they could take, can't be taken, which means you're trying to fit two different jigsaw puzzle pieces together that aren't meant to fit together, and say they look just fine. Except, to an expert, it's not correct whatsoever.
The problem in-and-of itself is the Wands. They are so cheap and effective at their job, without requiring people to compromise other parts of their abilities (such as Clerics burning spell slots for Healing spells), that they were effectively "Healer in a Can." This was mostly because of the "Tim/Jim" paradigm being enforced which caused the wands to surge, and because there were no reasonable competitive alternatives to choose from. It was either CLW Wand or bust.
Resonance might be one way to solve it, but with how much else it affects, it's too broad of a fix for something as minor as a CLW Wand. Remember, it's only a CLW Wand that is causing a problem here. It's not CMW Wands, or CSW Potions, or Heal Scrolls that are causing this problem, it's only a very specific wand of a specific type and level of the cheapest GP/HP ratio that no other source could compete with, due to how widespread, cheap, easy to use, and freeforming it is.
...Pre-Pathfinder the issue was 15 minute adventuring day. First few encounters result in Casters using most of their spells in the battle or on healing characters, causing the party to call it day after 15 minutes of game time.
Pathfinder introduced cheap healing via Wand of Cure Light Wounds. Now the issue is after every fight the PC top off their hit points, resulting in the need to make every encounter that matters to be deadly enough to wipe out all the characters hit points.
Pathfinder 2.0 is introducing resonance which effectively turns item use into a daily resource on par with spell casting. Its as if everyone is given a spell-like ability called “Activate Item”. Useable once per level + Chr Bonus per day. Resonance covers most all permanent items and consumables thereby doing dual service of limiting daily consumables and number of permanent magic items used & worn. Limiting consumables limits out of combat healing which hopefully reduced the full hitpoint for every encounter syndrome.
Using Resonance to limit permanent items and to activate item powers that would otherwise be X daily use, seems to be reasonable, but for consumables such as wand/staffs with charges, Potions, and Scrolls the use of Resonance seems to break the suspension of disbelief revealing itself as a rule mechanism to limit daily item use.
If the real problem is unlimited cheap healing then the fix should target that issue. Healing needs to have a daily limit mechanism. Resonance does that, but with an overly broad fix.
For a more focused fix, look at Magical healing, it forces the body to heal quickly. It’s easy to imagine the process of forced healing causing stress to the body and that repeated forced healings within a day could have a negative effect.
A more narrowly targeted mechanism at limiting healing could work by allowing a character to be healed a number of times per day equal to their Fortitude without penalty. The source (spell, potion, scroll …)
I can't remember the DMG guide's rules for purchasing magic items, but the fact that crafting them costed xp in 3.x and not in PF is possibly one of the reasons it grew in scope in PF. Now, I think crafting having an xp cost is a way worse system than resonance, if for no other reason than ease of running the game, but if you couldn't guarantee having that want in 3.5, but could in PF, that results in the rampant use of it in PF.
Personally, I feel that the best mechanism to solve this is to just have a limited use pool of healing (as has been done in other systems), that negates the necessity for a wand of CLW, and then have resonance apply for the cases that aren't covered by this (Potion of CSW in combat, scrolls of heal at higher levels for necessary out of combat heals), such that it's in line with other consumables. Maybe also an increase in resonance in low levels. But if there's a (non-unlimited) out-of-combat healing option that's cheaper than wands of CLW, then that solves my main issues with the wands.
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Fair enough on the EXP crafting, but most people didn't take Craft Wand as a feat anyway in PF1, so I don't see that as a strong reason why it was rampant in PF1 compared to 3.X. You can say item crafting in general was ramped up in PF1 as a result of that, but the evidence of PF1 would say that it was mostly condensed to Wondrous Items and the occasional weapons and armor.
Another big thing that changed was that the rules for items and such were in a DM-specific book, whereas PF1 changed it all to be in one book accessible to GM and player alike, thereby letting players have access to those rules. A smart GM may have caught on to this in 3.X from his DMG, and decided to not have that happen at their tables for fear of this very exploit happening. Similarly, players weren't aware of such a combination or exploit existing in 3.X, and were less likely to come across or identify it.
But the fact of the matter is that this was solely a CLW Wand issue, because wands of any other nature were fine and balanced, since they didn't (meaningfully/scalingly) alter something as important as Hit Points, and were the most cheap option of healing available out of combat. It also freed people from having to make significant character commitments to healing since the role was pawned to consumables instead, a front in which I support wholeheartedly, since the "Tim/Jim" paradigm is a shoehorning matter that most fantasy genre games can do without, and while some systems try to rid that responsibility entirely, the fact of the matter is that the game still assumes people want to do that sincerely and be important in doing so, when in reality having a game that requires healing (and thereby creates the "Tim/Jim" paradigm) and doesn't require healing (thereby invalidating those peoples' playstyles) is, in fact, mutually exclusive due to its binary nature.
Either healing matters and the "Tim/Jim" paradigm is enforced (in which case people will do whatever they can to not have this thing happen if they don't want it to), or healing doesn't matter (in which case people will want to reinstate the "Tim/Jim" paradigm because they actually believe it to be better for the game if it was, either because legacy, or because they want those who believe "Healing matters" to find value in their role).
Unfortunately, Resonance tries to hit two birds with one stone, or more accurately, thinks it's a big enough bowling ball to complete a 7-10 split for a spare. It's just not happening without some absolute cutting edge capability, along with some stupidly blind luck to make it work. At best, it shifts the problem from "I can't heal from a dozen puny sticks anymore" to "I can't use this item because I'll need to use these bigger sticks to heal later." At worst, it's wholly unnecessary to fix a problem that really only originated from one subset item. It's the biggest workaround I've ever seen for something so minute that it's apparently broken the entire game's infrastructure.
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My game recently kind of already has near unlimited out of combat healing without Potions or wands.
I've been using the Spheres of Power and Might books for a campaign. One of the things they have in that system is Rituals which pretty much gives you access to the noremal Pathfinder spells. Including of course the Cure Spells. As a result a caster with the Life sphere can, once out of combat, cast Cure Light Wounds as much as they need. It just takes 5 gold and 5 minutes for each casting.
I'm finding It's the Time factor that is prouving to be the best control factor. The group needs to debate if they want to burn spell points and potions for quick healing or pull back to someplace safe for a half hour rest while the priest ritual heals them (While monsters of the dungeon now have that half hour to react and plan)
I'm not having too much of an issue with it so far.
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Keep in mind that I'm pretty certain that it has been said that Resonance isn't to stop the CLW wands, although it is one of the more obvious aspects.
It was supposed to act as a balancing mechanism to keep someone of a particular level from stockpiling their wealth to get consumables that cause their effective ability to be significantly higher than they would otherwise. [be it in vast flexibility, or quantity, or even both]
So it was also stop the Christmas Tree assortments of many magical items, and as well as dealing with the Batman wizard, and potentially some forms of multi-potion chugging buffing builds.
To be honest, if you don't have a problem with people going from almost dead to near perfect with minimal effort between combats, my suggestion is embrace it. As I find it hard to get completely past my suspension of disbelief to have it happen naturally, I'd say, allow non-combat application of healing magic that is calculated by a die, or at least 5HP, if applied out of combat, can have the action be stretched to a minute, and requires the target remain rested for x minutes (maybe 5) and basically grants either double HP healing, or half of the person's max HP, whichever is greater.
This way in many cases, all it would take would be one tap from a CLW wand in between encounters to boost someone up pretty far, no matter the level. This would actually make me feel better about not waiting on multiple taps of the wand to quickly heal them, a smidgen at a time when they are a higher level. And when used at lower levels it would certainly boost the healing (and might basically be similar to allowing them to have a critical success at healing, or a Coupe de Heal).
If you don't want cheap out-of-combat healing via items, you could also simply rule that after an item based healing is applied to you, you can't receive additional healing until a specified time has expired. The time could even be determined by the 'level' of the spell, so more powerful magics can be applied more frequently. That would give an incentive for higher level characters to be willing to pay for more powerful healing items.
If I wanted some options to allow healing to be used/attempted within the time, it would only be able to heal at most, new damage taken since they were healed. Or limit its healing effect to prior damage to be at most the minimum amount of healing it can roll. [Alternately, I'd consider allowing it to function if it was enough to heal them completely. Otherwise falling to its minimum.]
Anyway, healing wasn't the only thing resonance was supposed to deal with. So all of the above doesn't really solve what many have identified as a problem with magic consumables. However, that doesn't mean one couldn't change how healing works (or basically how healing stacks over time) if it helps you produce a more fun style that fits with your view of most fun storytelling.
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Resonance is a band aid for the real problem, cheap and easy item creation rules that allow PCs to craft and buy magic items.
That is the fundamental problem right there, always has been since 3.0. Note 5E has gone back to AD&D more or less when it comes to magic items.
Note during playtesting and early 3.0 people tended to play it like 2E, that changed due to the internet where people could share builds and things like that I noticed it back around 2002 once people figured out things like haste and item creation and that lead to 3.5 and Pathfinder.
The 3E playstyle or whatever did not exist as such it kinda mutated out of the 3E product cycle.
I tried a game back in 2008/9 after 4E came out and banned the item creation feats and brought back the 2E Spells and Magic item creation rules and it actually improved the game IMHO. You could still get wands of CLW but you could not mass produce them/acquire them.
The wand by itself is not broken.
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This seems to be one place where 2E seems to be replacing adaptability with a one-size-fits-all bolted on solution.
People unhappy with how wands of CLW impact their PF1E games are people who *are playing* PF1E because, ultimately, it still delivers a fun experience overall.
And there are lots of ways to manage this issue in the game. It doesn't exist as a problem at my table because the group of players agree to not break the game because they would rather have more fun than grab up exploits.
That is not a reversible situation.
If you bolt on a solution into the fundamental ruleset, then i'm using that rule if I play the game. Rather being someone who plays PF1E with a work around, or someone who plays PF1E without the problem at all, I'll simple be someone who doesn't play the game.
The whole "sneak past the guards" issue falls under this as well. The concept of GMs working with good plans from the players to allow them to solve problems goes way back before 3X ever existed. But if you bolt into the mechanics a "solution" then the game refuses to support the idea that clunky dwarves in plate mail are not at all sneaky. Option A is flexibility to may frustrate some people, but not so much that they don't play. Option B is telling everyone that they need to do it this way or just play something else.
Some people will be thrilled. But others will simply choose to play something else.
Bolting on solutions fractures the fans base and sends a portion out the door.
I'm not at all in favor of sticking to 1E. That engine is old and the industry has evolved. But you don't have to stick to 1E to avoid sticking everyone with "solutions" that only support a portion of the fan base.
Here's hoping that the playtest will result in modifications that allow some people to have the solutions they want without forcing the game to caster a smaller net across the fan base. If the D&D brand can crash despite an awesome design team, then PF can too.
Options and inclusiveness will be very important to success. Without that wider fanbase, even people who do love it will be upset sooner than later.
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1. A wand of •monkey fish• by itself trivialised two skills on its own. Unlimited use of consumables is a problem.
2. CLW wands were boring. Glad to see them gone.
One way I suppose to look at potion limits is this...
How much can you drink?
Can you drink a gallon of healing potions and still feel good? How many potions make a gallon? Perhaps after 10 healing potions, you've drunk a gallon of them.
At that point, might you not start to feel sick...and if you drink more than that not able to drink any more?
How about if using a scroll or wand, while not as verbose and taxing as a spell cast by a caster themselves, is still somewhat taxing. It takes the power and fortitude of it from your body itself...sort of like lifting weights.
How long can you lift weights for...can you do it forever without giving your body a rest? How about the next day.
Are you able to do this forever...consume constantly. Is it reasonable to say that you can have an unlimited amount of consumables?
Which is probably where the problem arises...not that resonance is actually all that realistic either...being able to drink 10 gallons of healing potions at 10th level may not be exactly the most realistic either?
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1. A wand of •monkey fish• by itself trivialised two skills on its own.
Does it? Not really.
Climb: "The creature must make a Climb check to climb any wall or slope with a DC higher than 0, but it can always choose to take 10". Any moderately difficult climb, like "An uneven surface with some narrow handholds and footholds, such as a typical wall in a dungeon" requires more than the take 10 and the bonus for climb speed. As such, You NEED an investment in the skill AND the spell.
Swim: Much like climb, you're only hitting the median difficulties with the spell alone. For any difficult tasks, you need to invest in the skill too.
So, it only really trivializes trivial obstacles which seems fine IMO.
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1. A wand of •monkey fish• by itself trivialised two skills on its own. Unlimited use of consumables is a problem.
But if everyone is good at climbing and swimming all the time, then those two skills trivialize themselves.
2. CLW wands were boring. Glad to see them gone.
Why did you do boring things on game night?
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2. CLW wands were boring. Glad to see them gone.Why did you do boring things on game night?
Well you can CLEARLY see how much more exciting casting a healing spell is to using a healing wand... ;P
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Well you can CLEARLY see how much more exciting casting a healing spell is to using a healing wand... ;P2. CLW wands were boring. Glad to see them gone.Why did you do boring things on game night?
One option involves tactical use of daily resources by a character, and the other involves spamming a wand at no real cost. I know which one is more interesting to me.
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One option involves tactical use of daily resources by a character, and the other involves spamming a wand at no real cost. I know which one is more interesting to me.Well you can CLEARLY see how much more exciting casting a healing spell is to using a healing wand... ;P2. CLW wands were boring. Glad to see them gone.Why did you do boring things on game night?
But was one EXCITING and the other BORING? Not to me, neither one is either one. "tactical use of daily resources" isn't wildly interesting/exciting in an out of combat sense when all you are doing is shifting resources. If you could trade a spell for ki, would using it be nail biting, edge of your seat excitement? To me, it's up there with the thrill of counting arrows, rations and spell components. :P
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But was one EXCITING and the other BORING? Not to me, neither one is either one. "tactical use of daily resources" isn't wildly interesting/exciting in an out of combat sense when all you are doing is shifting resources. If you could trade a spell for ki, would using it be nail biting, edge of your seat excitement? To me, it's up there with the thrill of counting arrows, rations and spell components. :POne option involves tactical use of daily resources by a character, and the other involves spamming a wand at no real cost. I know which one is more interesting to me.Well you can CLEARLY see how much more exciting casting a healing spell is to using a healing wand... ;P2. CLW wands were boring. Glad to see them gone.Why did you do boring things on game night?
To me, the use of finite resources is one of the most interesting (and enjoyable) parts of a pen and paper RPG. Do I burn this spell slot on a buff (or debuff) or save it for healing? Do I use Smite Evil now, or save it for later? Can I bluff (or negotiate) my way through this encounter, and conserve combat resources? Can I come up with an unexpected solution to avoid having to fight this army head-on, saving resources for killing the Big Bad?
Most classes have to manage resources in one way or another. A whole party doing so effectively can be the difference between clearing a dungeon in one go and having to stop and rest every 3 rooms (which I find both tedious and immersion breaking, for a variety of reasons).
To me, pushing past the expected limits of a group is exciting. Scraping by when most parties would be burned out, and then surviving by the skin of your teeth as you kill the boss is a great feeling.
Of course, you can take this idea too far in one direction or the other. Really heavy survival / attrition games can be a drag and can lead to death spirals.
But the extreme of the other direction would be where you no longer have to worry about resources outside of a single combat. HP/MP and abilities/spells automatically refresh after combat, and are available for every combat. Now, daily resource management is no longer a thing. And that can be a fine system -- I've played Dragon Age, and I enjoyed it. But it's not what I'm looking for in a TTRPG.
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I like making choices that matter.
Having HP mean something makes me enjoy the game more, as my decisions matter more.
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Most classes have to manage resources in one way or another.
I'm fine with resource management: I just never found the fun in out of combat hp management.
To me, pushing past the expected limits of a group is exciting.
Sure, but your group's only resource wasn't hp's was it?
I like making choices that matter.
That's fine... I'm not sure how that means that it's a universal truth that CLW wands where boring for everyone that ever played the game. The game is filled with plenty of meaningful choices without micromanaging out of combat healing. Your statement of "CLW wands were boring" sure sounds like you're stating fact and not an opinion of yours on resource management. :P
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Most classes have to manage resources in one way or another.I'm fine with resource management: I just never found the fun in out of combat hp management.
To me, pushing past the expected limits of a group is exciting.Sure, but your group's only resource wasn't hp's was it?
I like making choices that matter.That's fine... I'm not sure how that means that it's a universal truth that CLW wands where boring for everyone that ever played the game. The game is filled with plenty of meaningful choices without micromanaging out of combat healing. Your statement of "CLW wands were boring" sure sounds like you're stating fact and not an opinion of yours on resource management. :P
Eh your guys argument has broken down to personal subjective opinion at this point. Dead end IMO.
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Eh your guys argument has broken down to personal subjective opinion at this point. Dead end IMO.
LOL That was kind of my point. It's one thing to say 'I find CLW wands boring' but quite another to say CLW wands ARE boring.
That and 'meaningful choices' are something similar gets bandied about a lot too. IMO, all that seem to boils down to is liking an attrition style game play: as if people that do NOT play that style have no 'meaningful choices' in the game. :P
Eh your guys argument has broken down to personal subjective opinion at this point. Dead end IMO.LOL That was kind of my point. It's one thing to say 'I find CLW wands boring' but quite another to say CLW wands ARE boring.
That and 'meaningful choices' are something similar gets bandied about a lot too. IMO, all that seem to boils down to is liking an attrition style game play: as if people that do NOT play that style have no 'meaningful choices' in the game. :P
Its no quite as extreme on the axis as that I don't think. To me I see it as a wll I'll make a visual representation
Fully healed after every combat no resource required -|----|--- No in game healing that doesn't take serious time (other end of spectrum)
the first | is how close I feel your position is to an extreme one step from healing being irrelevant the only reason I say its one step is the wands at least cost something so they are not infinite but they are very close.
the second | IS where I feel the option of easy out of combat healing but with some investment but still strictly limited. Which would be my preference.
Your preference seems very extreme from my perspective. I could also get into how I dislike the flavor of wands doing all the work etc. etc. but thats subjective and doesn't get us anywhere I think we proved that the last time we talked about it.
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Your preference seems very extreme from my perspective.
I don't know: I've seen more than a few on the boards happy with CLW healing and it's much rarer to see attrition style game where I play. But extreme doesn't have to mean uncommon though. I could agree with 'at one end of the spectrum'.
"Fully healed after every combat no resource required": Myself, I'm perfectly happy to throw cash at the problem. I'd rather the PC's were making their meaningful choices in which spell to cast in combat or if they should save that spell for next combat than using those choices for , IMO, boring tasks like out of combat healing.
"healing being irrelevant": I'm fine with out of combat healing being irrelevant. In combat healing is actually a meaningful choice IMO.
"easy out of combat healing but with some investment but still strictly limited": I don't mind an investment to make out of combat healing irrelevant but I wouldn't want it so limited that it holds back the fun. Basically, I'd rather have to end the day of adventuring because everyone ran out of their daily resources and NOT because they ran out if healing but still had plenty of other resources left.
Your preference seems very extreme from my perspective.I don't know: I've seen more than a few on the boards happy with CLW healing and it's much rarer to see attrition style game where I play. But extreme doesn't have to mean uncommon though. I could agree with 'at one end of the spectrum'.
"Fully healed after every combat no resource required": Myself, I'm perfectly happy to throw cash at the problem. I'd rather the PC's were making their meaningful choices in which spell to cast in combat or if they should save that spell for next combat than using those choices for , IMO, boring tasks like out of combat healing.
"healing being irrelevant": I'm fine with out of combat healing being irrelevant. In combat healing is actually a meaningful choice IMO.
"easy out of combat healing but with some investment but still strictly limited": I don't mind an investment to make out of combat healing irrelevant but I wouldn't want it so limited that it holds back the fun. Basically, I'd rather have to end the day of adventuring because everyone ran out of their daily resources and NOT because they ran out if healing but still had plenty of other resources left.
Well to me whether we run out of resources or healing first seems to jsut be something that would need to be tweeked which is what the playtest would be good for.
Also it could be a tactic issue. Like if your running out of healing but still have everything else maybe you should of used some of those other resources to end fights faster instead of holding on to them. If you play with a mindset of never use resources then I could see that happening. I could use my firball to end the fight now or just single target 1 of them with a cantrip so I don't use the spell and let the fighter finish them off. We can just heal after. If you make decisions like that then I see the situation you mention happening.