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For the record, I think that having the powers mixed in with the spells is a really silly idea - either include them at the end of the class chapter or as a separate section in the spells chapter.
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Unless the spells are actually organized I wont look any harder (alphabetically and not by level??? wtf)I know - it's shocking that it's been done that way ever since 3rd Edition debuted. Incredible, isn't it?
In PF1, spells didn't have a fixed level. The same spell could be level 2 for a Cleric, level 3 for a Druid. So by-level wasn't a practical option.
It might be possible now, but it would require spells to be listed with their level every time they're mentioned or you'd never be able to find them. For example, let's say you had a trap listed in an adventure that casts a spell if triggered. In order to be able to look up the spell in reasonable time, it would have to say something like, "Effect: Casts Blade Barrier (level 6 spell), heightened to level 7, DC 22."
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You get one 10th level spell per day. At 20th level. If you have the right Feat. They're really pretty limited.Hello, I saw some good spell nerfs, but I think Wish and Miracle are still dumb, but now even more dumb because they are free?
Note: saying they are level 10 spells are not an excuse, that just means PF2 goes to level 18 and pretends level 19 and 20 play is functional
A Wizard can use his drain Arcane Focus action on a 10th level spell, and as for specialists:
I can see skipping 10th level spells for most classes, but Wizards will find them more enticing, especially sine some of their other feats go off your highest available spell level and would get a boost from choosing 10ths.If you want to be a specialist wizard, choose one school of magic in which to specialize. You gain one additional
spell slot for each spell level you can cast, but you may use
these spell slots to prepare only spells from your arcane
school.
Fair enough. Wizards throwing around Wishes remains a 20th level thing only. While I sincerely hope campaigns get all the way to 20th in PF2, they sorta definitionally can't stay there long, since it's the level cap. Characters being ridiculously powerful at that level doesn't trouble me unduly.
I will say that this seems unintended and either Wizards shouldn't get three uses of Wish a day (potentially) or other people casters should get more rthan one, but that's definitely correctable more easily than radical rewrites of the spell itself.
For the record, I think that having the powers mixed in with the spells is a really silly idea - either include them at the end of the class chapter or as a separate section in the spells chapter.
This I agree with entirely. They should also all be listed in the Class entries with a page number to indicate their location.
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Prismatic wall in pf1 used to destroy all items and objects with no save, so even if you make it through all the save or dies you had no items left to fight with. Also each color is less harsh, for example blue in pf1 is permanent confusion and pf2 is confusion for a minute
Fair enough.
For the benefit of those paying attention to this thread but not the one I made on Monster Skills, Mark Seifter responded to that thread and has mostly allayed my concerns. I'm still not 100% sold on the math (more like 90%), but the lion's share of my issues are apparently due to the use of an outdated design document on monster stats in the Playtest Bestiary (at least for some monsters), and will thus almost certainly be fixed in the final version of PF2.
Which is great, and seemed to be information worth disseminating.
Prismatic wall in pf1 used to destroy all items and objects with no save, so even if you make it through all the save or dies you had no items left to fight with. Also each color is less harsh, for example blue in pf1 is permanent confusion and pf2 is confusion for a minute
Prismatic wall only destroyed objects with no save if they were unattended - attended (worn) objects always (edit) are fine if the player makes the save as per the item save rules. The text in Prismatic wall doesn't change that.
So if you throw your +5 brilliant dagger through the wall it goes poof - otherwise it's most likely not affected.
Proof (from back in the day):
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2kkvg?Prismatic-Wall-Violet-Layer-Severe#7
Just realized that all the old telekinetic tricks to knock someone through a Prismatic Wall are gone, leaving only Telekinetic Maneuver to get a 5' shove or a 10' on a critical success. Not great when you also have to maneuver them between you and the wall.
Coordination with a Fighter/Monk who has some of those "move even on a failed attack" feats might be pretty doable, though.
Just realized that all the old telekinetic tricks to knock someone through a Prismatic Wall are gone, leaving only Telekinetic Maneuver to get a 5' shove or a 10' on a critical success. Not great when you also have to maneuver them between you and the wall.
Coordination with a Fighter/Monk who has some of those "move even on a failed attack" feats might be pretty doable, though.
How well would boulder roll work here?
Monk Whirling Throw or Knockback Strike? Assurance might actually be useful on Whirling Throw when dealing with Huge creatures?
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I mean, if we're carrying or dragging Bob the 200 lb Fighter...is that 20 Bulk or 40?20, since people have handles in the shoulders, on the ankles. Also because "when in doubt, go with what benefits the party".
100% agreed on both "trained in 3 skills" is too few for martial classes and "signature skills are overly limiting."
Sorry if someone had already answered this,
On page 323:
According to this Medium creatures are Bulk 8 and small are Bulk 4.
Petrified
You have been turned to stone. You can’t act and you have the blinded and deafened conditions. You become an object with a Bulk equal to twice your normal Bulk (typically 16 for a petrified Medium creature or 8 for a petrified Small creature)...
... wait... are they saying Medium creatures typically weigh 40-80lbs?!?! o.O
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... wait... are they saying Medium creatures typically weigh 40-80lbs?!?! o.OI mean, if we're carrying or dragging Bob the 200 lb Fighter...is that 20 Bulk or 40?20, since people have handles in the shoulders, on the ankles. Also because "when in doubt, go with what benefits the party".
100% agreed on both "trained in 3 skills" is too few for martial classes and "signature skills are overly limiting."
Sorry if someone had already answered this,
On page 323:
According to this Medium creatures are Bulk 8 and small are Bulk 4.
Petrified
You have been turned to stone. You can’t act and you have the blinded and deafened conditions. You become an object with a Bulk equal to twice your normal Bulk (typically 16 for a petrified Medium creature or 8 for a petrified Small creature)...
UNREALISTIC BODY STANDARDS but no I'm pretty sure my left leg weighs 40 pounds. (40 pounds of muscle! >.> <.< yeah ...)
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Unless the spells are actually organized I wont look any harder (alphabetically and not by level??? wtf)I know - it's shocking that it's been done that way ever since 3rd Edition debuted. Incredible, isn't it?
At the very least 3.X had tag for each spell which class could cast them. Going through the spells chapter in the playtest document feels very confusing and exhausting, since you have to reference back to the class table everytime you are unsure to which class the spell in question belongs to. And there's also the issue of the spells not being sorted by school for sorcerers/wizards, which was a feature from the CRB which, for whatever reason, never made it into the splatbooks, to their detriments.
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... wait... are they saying Medium creatures typically weigh 40-80lbs?!?! o.O
According to this Medium creatures are Bulk 8 and small are Bulk 4.
Remember, bulk is not ony weight. I have seen people playing around carrying someone in their backs and even racing against other couples doing the same, and the same people would not even lift a single 100 pound barbell from the ground.
EDIT: this does not mean the bulk for medium creatures might not be wrong, and need a change. Just that we have to break that habit of translating stuff from bulk to pounds and viceversa, because it's not cut and dry.
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At the very least 3.X had tag for each spell which class could cast them.Unless the spells are actually organized I wont look any harder (alphabetically and not by level??? wtf)I know - it's shocking that it's been done that way ever since 3rd Edition debuted. Incredible, isn't it?
Weird. I'm looking at my PF1 corebook right now, and I don't see "magus" anyway near the Shield spell.
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... wait... are they saying Medium creatures typically weigh 40-80lbs?!?! o.O
Yeah...that's a workable number to allow carrying people, but I no longer have any idea at all what Bulk actually represents.
In other news, I ran the game and my play experience was pretty much fine. The only non-organizational issue I came across that hasn't already come up in this thread was that there appear to be no guidelines on what skill you use to identify what monster which is vague in an extremely non-useful fashion.
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... wait... are they saying Medium creatures typically weigh 40-80lbs?!?! o.O
According to this Medium creatures are Bulk 8 and small are Bulk 4.Remember, bulk is not ony weight. I have seen people playing around carrying someone in their backs and even racing against other couples doing the same, and the same people would not even lift a single 100 pound barbell from the ground.
EDIT: this does not mean the bulk for medium creatures might not be wrong, and need a change. Just that we have to break that habit of translating stuff from bulk to pounds and viceversa, because it's not cut and dry.
As a general rule, an item that weighs 5 to 10 pounds is 1 Bulk, an item weighing less than a few ounces is negligible, and anything in between is light. Particularly awkward or unwieldy items might have different Bulk values. A 10-foot pole isn't heavy, but its length makes it difficult for you to move while you have one on your person. Items made for larger or smaller creatures have greater or lesser Bulk, as described on page 191.
I was going off what the book describes Bulk as.
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... wait... are they saying Medium creatures typically weigh 40-80lbs?!?! o.OYeah...that's a workable number to allow carrying people, but I no longer have any idea at all what Bulk actually represents.
In other news, I ran the game and my play experience was pretty much fine. The only non-organizational issue I came across that hasn't already come up in this thread was that there appear to be no guidelines on what skill you use to identify what monster which is vague in an extremely non-useful fashion.
Barring an accidental omission I could see them being left vague for GM discretion on a case by case by basis, if so that should probably be spelled out as a general rule. As is they’re a little too vague otherwise.
... wait... are they saying Medium creatures typically weigh 40-80lbs?!?! o.O
According to this Medium creatures are Bulk 8 and small are Bulk 4.Remember, bulk is not ony weight. I have seen people playing around carrying someone in their backs and even racing against other couples doing the same, and the same people would not even lift a single 100 pound barbell from the ground.
EDIT: this does not mean the bulk for medium creatures might not be wrong, and need a change. Just that we have to break that habit of translating stuff from bulk to pounds and viceversa, because it's not cut and dry.
As a general rule, an item that weighs 5 to 10 pounds is 1 Bulk, an item weighing less than a few ounces is negligible, and anything in between is light. Particularly awkward or unwieldy items might have different Bulk values. A 10-foot pole isn't heavy, but its length makes it difficult for you to move while you have one on your person. Items made for larger or smaller creatures have greater or lesser Bulk, as described on page 191.I was going off what the book describes Bulk as.
I know the description is there, but it also says it's a general rule. It then explains how a 5 pound 10 feet pole has a larger bulk than, say a 20 pounds backpack who is correctly aligned and perfectly tied in your back.
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Barring an accidental omission I could see them being left vague for GM discretion on a case by case by basis, if so that should probably be spelled out as a general rule. As is they’re a little too vague otherwise.
The issue with it being entirely GM discretion is that that makes for table variation of the worst kind:
Specifically, the kind where you make a PC to be good at X and then they aren't. Or the kind where you can't make a PC good at X at all if X is 'knowing about Oozes' and you have varying GMs (since what skill that is will vary wildly).
I know the description is there, but it also says it's a general rule. It then explains how a 5 pound 10 feet pole has a larger bulk than, say a 20 pounds backpack who is correctly aligned and perfectly tied in your back.
The issue with this is that a 200 lb man who's currently unconscious is not actually a particularly easy 200 lbs to carry. It's bulkier and more difficult than average, in all likelihood, which should make it at least 20 Bulk...and yet apparently it's 8.
The definitions need work.
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A weird and likely unintentional omission:
Many Skills lack a magic item to give them a +5, which is unfortunate. All lack any items to give them +1 (I'm guessing there's a mundane option for that I haven't found yet?)
Diplomacy in particular lacks an item to grant more than +3, and Lore lacks any item to grant a +2, +3, or +4 (it lacks a +1 option like everything else, too...all it has is the +5). Both seem unintentional but notable holes in the item list.
At the very least 3.X had tag for each spell which class could cast them.
We don't necessarily need an associated class for each spell, as the type of magic (arcane, divine, occult or primal) tells us which classes can access it. With several spells shared across different types, this might be another area where symbols could be relevant? Agree that we need something, as referencing is a mess atm.
I've found this site (which should be legal under Paizo's Community Use Policy) very helpful for spell/power searches. Credit goes to shinzer0 for the hard work.
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Barring an accidental omission I could see them being left vague for GM discretion on a case by case by basis, if so that should probably be spelled out as a general rule. As is they’re a little too vague otherwise.The issue with it being entirely GM discretion is that that makes for table variation of the worst kind:
Specifically, the kind where you make a PC to be good at X and then they aren't. Or the kind where you can't make a PC good at X at all if X is 'knowing about Oozes' and you have varying GMs (since what skill that is will vary wildly).
I know the description is there, but it also says it's a general rule. It then explains how a 5 pound 10 feet pole has a larger bulk than, say a 20 pounds backpack who is correctly aligned and perfectly tied in your back.The issue with this is that a 200 lb man who's currently unconscious is not actually a particularly easy 200 lbs to carry. It's bulkier and more difficult than average, in all likelihood, which should make it at least 20 Bulk...and yet apparently it's 8.
The definitions need work.
One issue with Bulk is that if you define Bulk w/ any rigor, then you may as well use weight. If you define Bulk loosely, you get variance on what should be cut & dried situations.
Can I lift him/the grate/the jiggly mcguffin?That seems a minimal level of continuity for a game system to address. Dragging or carrying an ally is a common event, yet unaddressed. Right now, the "Shove" maneuver is the best way to move them, except awkward due to Fort saves.
My main issue is that awkward discontinuity keep arising, such as when pillaging an armory. The armory raid should be a litmus test for encumbrance systems.
"No, I couldn't lift another longsword."
"Well, take these 9 shortswords instead."
"Ok, sure."
I'd imagine merchants would make hilts detachable because it'd be a lot easier to transport 2 L objects than 1 B. Reassemble upon arrival. Heck, everything should be transported piecemeal.
Encumbrance/Bulk/whatnot needs to use weight as a baseline, period.
That game term should correspond consistently enough with actual weight that we may as well use pounds or kilograms and the simple addition that involves.
If one wants to account for odder objects (an idea that appeals to me) then a multiplier could be used. Long x 1.5, mushy x1.5 to x2, etc.
Then a backpack (et al) could be a good way to set all those multipliers to 1. Also "In hand" so that the polearm you carry & can balance as you like doesn't encumber as much as those spare polearms strapped to your back that shift your center of balance.
Except now we're venturing into mundanity, so maybe we should just stop with weight and specify that GM rulings may overrule unusual items.
Don't like GM rulings? Well, Bulk relies on them, w/ contradictory guidelines to boot due to its abstract nature.
Given what we know, I cannot see any method to get to a Medium person equaling 8 Bulk (other than fiat due to the petrification entry), or even to one specific number for all. It really should be several times easier to toss the dainty Elf over one's shoulder than the powerhouse Half-Orc.
Please, Paizo, even if a Bulk system remains in play, keep the weights listed alongside the items. And have a sidebar stressing the abstractness of Bulk, note its fluidity for GM's ease. Maybe have guidelines for converting weight to Bulk other than just a range of values (i.e. adding/multiplying based on nature of object).
I find Bulk frustrating & disjointed in ways I never found regular encumbrance to be.
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Weird. I'm looking at my PF1 corebook right now, and I don't see "magus" anyway near the Shield spell.At the very least 3.X had tag for each spell which class could cast them.Unless the spells are actually organized I wont look any harder (alphabetically and not by level??? wtf)I know - it's shocking that it's been done that way ever since 3rd Edition debuted. Incredible, isn't it?Weird, I didn't know that Magus could time travel to the release of the CRB and insert themselves into that book. Oh, wait, they can't.
But good to know that you are on the side of terribly organized books.
You missed the point. Tagging classes in the spells is only a solution if you don't plan to release any more classes, ever. Otherwise, you need something else.
One issue with Bulk is that if you define Bulk w/ any rigor, then you may as well use weight. If you define Bulk loosely, you get variance on what should be cut & dried situations.
Can I lift him/the grate/the jiggly mcguffin?
That seems a minimal level of continuity for a game system to address. Dragging or carrying an ally is a common event, yet unaddressed. Right now, the "Shove" maneuver is the best way to move them, except awkward due to Fort saves.
My main issue is that awkward discontinuity keep arising, such as when pillaging an armory. The armory raid should be a litmus test for encumbrance systems.
"No, I couldn't lift another longsword."
"Well, take these 9 shortswords instead."
"Ok, sure."
I'd imagine merchants would make hilts detachable because it'd be a lot easier to transport 2 L objects than 1 B. Reassemble upon arrival....
You can ridicule any system you want, if you try to break the boundaries, because no system will ever be as good at simulating reality as reality itself.
For example, I have a character with str 24. How long can be the pole I carry in my backpack? If it's thin enough, can I carry a 2 mile long pole? If so, can I put a knife in one point, and have a 2mile reach? Can I use my 2 mile pole to deliver messages to people in the nearby village? I mean, I can lift that amount of pounds. So, why not? What do you mean with "a GM will rule against that"?
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You missed the point. Tagging classes in the spells is only a solution if you don't plan to release any more classes, ever. Otherwise, you need something else.Weird. I'm looking at my PF1 corebook right now, and I don't see "magus" anyway near the Shield spell.At the very least 3.X had tag for each spell which class could cast them.Unless the spells are actually organized I wont look any harder (alphabetically and not by level??? wtf)I know - it's shocking that it's been done that way ever since 3rd Edition debuted. Incredible, isn't it?Weird, I didn't know that Magus could time travel to the release of the CRB and insert themselves into that book. Oh, wait, they can't.
But good to know that you are on the side of terribly organized books.
I agree that it is always a little bit of a mess for classes which have been released later, where you need to reference their full (at the time) spell list from the book they've been released in. However, I take that small evil any day over the nightmare of organization we got in the playtest document.
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One issue with Bulk is that if you define Bulk w/ any rigor, then you may as well use weight. If you define Bulk loosely, you get variance on what should be cut & dried situations.
Can I lift him/the grate/the jiggly mcguffin?
That seems a minimal level of continuity for a game system to address. Dragging or carrying an ally is a common event, yet unaddressed. Right now, the "Shove" maneuver is the best way to move them, except awkward due to Fort saves.
My main issue is that awkward discontinuity keep arising, such as when pillaging an armory. The armory raid should be a litmus test for encumbrance systems.
"No, I couldn't lift another longsword."
"Well, take these 9 shortswords instead."
"Ok, sure."
I'd imagine merchants would make hilts detachable because it'd be a lot easier to transport 2 L objects than 1 B. Reassemble upon arrival....You can ridicule any system you want, if you try to break the boundaries, because no system will ever be as good at simulating reality as reality itself.
For example, I have a character with str 24. How long can be the pole I carry in my backpack? If it's thin enough, can I carry a 2 mile long pole? If so, can I put a knife in one point, and have a 2mile reach? Can I use my 2 mile pole to deliver messages to people in the nearby village? I mean, I can lift that amount of pounds. So, why not? What do you mean with "a GM will rule against that"?
It's funny how it's you that has to bring up the completely ridiculous example, while Castilliano is just using the bulk system as is. And the bulk system as is turns out to be irredeemably bad.
The system tells me a Light Mace, a Light Shield, a Javelin and a Potion are all equally hard for someone to carry, whether by weight or because of a combination of weight and other factors. It tells me that carrying ten Light Shields is as hard as carrying a Club. That a Club is just as hard to carry as a Bastard Sword. That a Longbow (whether composite or not) is just as hard to carry as any polearm, or a greataxe, or a greatsword.
And this just goes on and on and on. A casual glance at the bulk rules and the assigned bulk for items should be all that's enough for someone to realise it's all out of whack.
And the variable weight-to-bulk translation makes it hard to define how hard it is to carry someone. Or to get loot that's not normal (Ancient tapestries, a solid gold decanter, the chair of First Emperor Taldaris, or what have you.).
It's good at simplifying encumbrance for gear, and it basically fails at everything else.
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I agree the organization in the playtest document is a problem, but I rather see a solution, than implement a non-solution that was proven wrong in the past, only because it was used in the past.
However, as someone posted, the fact that there are only 4 spell lists now, helps. You can tag each spell as "primal, arcane, divine, occult", instead of class. That also helps with classes that have multiple spell lists available, like Sorcerer.
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It's funny how it's you that has to bring up the completely ridiculous example, while Castilliano is just using the bulk system as is. And the bulk system as is turns out to be irredeemably bad.
I made the ridiculous example to make the point, but you don't need to be ridicule for encumbrance to be absurd. It is absurd as it is.
The 24 str character in my example has 233 lb of carrying capacity before any encumbrance. That means he could drop his 2 mile long pole, go to Castillano's armory, and pick 116 short swords, without any encumbrance. If he is willing to accept the penalties for heavy encumbrance, he could carry 349 of them.
He could instead loot 70 boarding pikes, or 34 armchairs. or 149 chairs.
The only thing that precludes him to do something absurd like looting 34 armchairs, is GM judgement. Which is the same thing that could preclude him to loot 200 light shields in a bulk system.
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However, as someone posted, the fact that there are only 4 spell lists now, helps. You can tag each spell as "primal, arcane, divine, occult", instead of class. That also helps with classes that have multiple spell lists available, like Sorcerer.
Yeah, it really doesn't, unless all new arcane caster classes get the exact same spells. Which limits their design space significantly.
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However, as someone posted, the fact that there are only 4 spell lists now, helps. You can tag each spell as "primal, arcane, divine, occult", instead of class. That also helps with classes that have multiple spell lists available, like Sorcerer.Yeah, it really doesn't, unless all new arcane caster classes get the exact same spells. Which limits their design space significantly.
with the caveat that anything can change during the playtest, I'm pretty confident that's the case.
now i'm just imagining some sort of armchair-based barbarian, or an armchair paladin
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Actually it is container capacity that stops you from looting 70 boarding pikes or 34 armchairs (short of a bag of holding of course). Even with three backpacks (one on back, and in each hand), you can only barely stow 12 Bulk (in up to 4 bulk increments). Which is also just about as much as a character with 24 Str can carry unencumbered.
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now i'm just imagining some sort of armchair-based barbarian, or an armchair paladin
My pirate needs to carry their folding boat for Boarding Actions.
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It's funny how it's you that has to bring up the completely ridiculous example, while Castilliano is just using the bulk system as is. And the bulk system as is turns out to be irredeemably bad.I made the ridiculous example to make the point, but you don't need to be ridicule for encumbrance to be absurd. It is absurd as it is.
The 24 str character in my example has 233 lb of carrying capacity before any encumbrance. That means he could drop his 2 mile long pole, go to Castillano's armory, and pick 116 short swords, without any encumbrance. If he is willing to accept the penalties for heavy encumbrance, he could carry 349 of them.
He could instead loot 70 boarding pikes, or 34 armchairs. or 149 chairs.
The only thing that precludes him to do something absurd like looting 34 armchairs, is GM judgement. Which is the same thing that could preclude him to loot 200 light shields in a bulk system.
Where is he carrying everything though? Backpacks? Those can carry 2 cubic feet, so not much fitting in there. Sacks? Those hold 1 cubic feet, so even less.
Is he just tying ropes to every item and dragging them with him? I mean, that's hilarious, but more power to him of course.
Meanwhile, in PF2, how much can a backpack hold? 4 Bulk. Ok. So 4 clubs. Or 40 daggers. But can it carry 40 shortswords? Can it carry 40 light shields? The rules say probably not, since:
"Containers can hold the listed amount of bulk, but some items might not fit due to their dimensions"
Ok, so shortswords and light shields are obviously bigger than daggers (but not, apparently, as hard to carry as clubs), so how many can a backpack hold?
The belt pouch is mostly the same in that regard. And we haven't even gotten to Bulk - items and how you can carry as many as you want of them with no repercussions.
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One issue with Bulk is that if you define Bulk w/ any rigor, then you may as well use weight. If you define Bulk loosely, you get variance on what should be cut & dried situations.
Can I lift him/the grate/the jiggly mcguffin?
That seems a minimal level of continuity for a game system to address. Dragging or carrying an ally is a common event, yet unaddressed. Right now, the "Shove" maneuver is the best way to move them, except awkward due to Fort saves.
My main issue is that awkward discontinuity keep arising, such as when pillaging an armory. The armory raid should be a litmus test for encumbrance systems.
"No, I couldn't lift another longsword."
"Well, take these 9 shortswords instead."
"Ok, sure."
I'd imagine merchants would make hilts detachable because it'd be a lot easier to transport 2 L objects than 1 B. Reassemble upon arrival....You can ridicule any system you want, if you try to break the boundaries, because no system will ever be as good at simulating reality as reality itself.
For example, I have a character with str 24. How long can be the pole I carry in my backpack? If it's thin enough, can I carry a 2 mile long pole? If so, can I put a knife in one point, and have a 2mile reach? Can I use my 2 mile pole to deliver messages to people in the nearby village? I mean, I can lift that amount of pounds. So, why not? What do you mean with "a GM will rule against that"?
Was it ridicule, or was it that common gaming situations leading to abnormal conundrums sounded ridiculous?
Your examples are atypical, even contrived specifically to sound ridiculous. Except for the joke re: merchants, mine weren't.
So if they sound ridiculous, that's a major flaw in the system. If you can't discern the difference, we will have trouble establishing a reasonable foundation for discussion.
GMs are expected to adjudicate in atypical/contrived instances because of course no game system mirrors reality. Nor should one go into the minutiae required, as I implied re: the mundanity of it all.
Why would you argue anybody here thinks otherwise?
I did not "try to break the boundaries". Picking up loot & moving allies should be well within the game's boundaries.
If a player says their PC can only carry out one Bulk from the armory and then chooses to take 19 shortswords rather than 1 longsword, are you going to intercede?
And if the Bulk system requires more GM adjudication (even for common actions like these) than going by weight alone does, why switch to the Bulk system?
Other than the appeal of having simple numbers on one's character sheet, I have found Bulk to be a major failure when it comes to actual gameplay and interaction w/ the setting. (This comes from Starfinder too.)
Bulk needs fixing, or at least the PF1 weights listed in the PF2 rules for those wanting that grounding.
with the caveat that anything can change during the playtest, I'm pretty confident that's the case.However, as someone posted, the fact that there are only 4 spell lists now, helps. You can tag each spell as "primal, arcane, divine, occult", instead of class. That also helps with classes that have multiple spell lists available, like Sorcerer.Yeah, it really doesn't, unless all new arcane caster classes get the exact same spells. Which limits their design space significantly.
Ooof. Well, we'll have to see. But I still think that this would limit the design space for those classes in a detrimental way.
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Bulk needs fixing, or at least the PF1 weights listed in the PF2 rules for those wanting that grounding.
At the very least there's a silver lining. If the worst comes to pass and this doesn't happen, you can still just use the old PF1 Encumbrance rules fine. It's the same stats and the same items, so it shouldn't be a problem. Kinda hard to do in Starfinder since we don't actually have weights for a lot of things, but PF1 to PF2 is really easy.
I mean I'm going to do this if I ever run WHFRP 4th edition since that game also uses a Bulk system. Just use 2nd edition values and you're fine.
A weird and likely unintentional omission:
Many Skills lack a magic item to give them a +5, which is unfortunate. All lack any items to give them +1 (I'm guessing there's a mundane option for that I haven't found yet?)
Diplomacy in particular lacks an item to grant more than +3, and Lore lacks any item to grant a +2, +3, or +4 (it lacks a +1 option like everything else, too...all it has is the +5). Both seem unintentional but notable holes in the item list.
The greater messengers ring gives a +5 to diplomacy.
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The greater messengers ring gives a +5 to diplomacy.
You're quite right. I seem to have missed that one. That still leaves +4 Diplomacy, a lot of skills +5s, and all Lore bonuses other than +5 missing in action.
This would be less of an issue, but the monster skill math seems to be predicated strongly on having the maximum possible skill item in all skills you want to be any good at, at all times.
In terms of Bulk: I like the ease of use, but there really needs to be some sort of correspondence with weight for basic consistency.
One partial solution for Bulk would be a chart with escalating weights for objects to fall under a specific Bulk. As long as there's a chart, I'm fine with it.
L = 2 lbs or less
1 = 5 lbs or less
2 = 20 lbs or less
3 = 40 lbs or less
4 = 60 lbs or less
5 = 80 lbs or less
6 = 100 lbs or less
7 = 150 lbs or less
8 = 200 lbs or less
9 = 250 lbs or less
10 = 300 lbs or less
11 = 350 lbs or less
12 = 400 lbs or less
13 = 500 lbs or less
14 = 600 lbs or less
15 = 700 lbs or less
16 = 800 lbs or less
17 = 900 lbs or less
18 = 1000 lbs or less
19 = 1250 lbs or less
20 = 1500 lbs or less
That chart seems good to me, more or less corresponds to the kind of weights PCs could lift in PF1.
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Pardon me if you have already addressed this: I just found this thread and have marked it so I can keep up with it.
Do you feel that Signature Skills could be salvaged if there was a way to add to them via backgrounds? I agree that they seem tto penalize players who want something other than a cookie-cutter character.I also agree that Signature skills as written are just bad.
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed your thoughtful analysis of PF2 and look forward to more.
... wait... are they saying Medium creatures typically weigh 40-80lbs?!?! o.O
No. That isn't how bulk works.
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Pardon me if you have already addressed this: I just found this thread and have marked it so I can keep up with it.
Welcome to the thread! :)
Do you feel that Signature Skills could be salvaged if there was a way to add to them via backgrounds? I agree that they seem tto penalize players who want something other than a cookie-cutter character.I also agree that Signature skills as written are just bad.
Backgrounds alone? Probably not. I strongly feel that you need at least one chosen separate from anything else in order to properly make many characters.
Personally, if I was gonna do them at all, I'd tie them to the phases of character creation, granting one from Ancestry, one from Background, a varying number from Class, and one of your choice during the same stage you distribute your four free ability ups.
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed your thoughtful analysis of PF2 and look forward to more.
Thanks. :) More analysis will continue as I run the game and look through all the details on things like individual spells and magic items.
... wait... are they saying Medium creatures typically weigh 40-80lbs?!?! o.ONo. That isn't how bulk works.
Of course it isn't. But then...how does it work? I'm really unclear on what scale it is supposed to be using.
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Proof (from back in the day):
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2kkvg?Prismatic-Wall-Violet-Layer-Severe#7James Jacobs as proof? my dude, I'm sorry, but that is not proof and it came up a lot.
Prismatic wall destroyed all your s@@#, it was stupid, and now it's gone
Yes - James Jacobs as proof. He did rules work on the PF1 core book and was pretty involved with that space. It didn't come up much - and the spell didn't change from the 3.x days either.
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?36687-Items-and-Prismatic-Wall
Attended items are always considered part of your character - unless you roll a 1 then one gets destroyed (or if it's magic gets a save - even if the effect doesn't allow a save).
The spell text doesn't contradict this *specific* rule.
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Weird. I'm looking at my PF1 corebook right now, and I don't see "magus" anyway near the Shield spell.At the very least 3.X had tag for each spell which class could cast them.Unless the spells are actually organized I wont look any harder (alphabetically and not by level??? wtf)I know - it's shocking that it's been done that way ever since 3rd Edition debuted. Incredible, isn't it?Weird, I didn't know that Magus could time travel to the release of the CRB and insert themselves into that book. Oh, wait, they can't.
But good to know that you are on the side of terribly organized books.
Given the fact that we now have four traditions of magic, and all classes reference one of those traditions, this is kind of future-proofed - you can add as many arcane casters as you want, a 5th-level Arcane spell is a 5th-level Arcane spell for everyone who uses Arcane spells. There's no good reason to exclude this info from the spell entry.
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I will say one thing in defense of Bulk.
It vastly simplifies the encumbrance math. It is so much easier to use 15 with a few -1's thrown on than try to figure out 116-8-5-whatever else. With encumbrance changing every time you pick something up, it very quickly became something my group never bothered with, except in VTT play, where the math is done for you. The Bulk rules were actually utilized in our playtest, which is probably the most important point of what these rules were trying to achieve.
Two of my experienced players explicitly mentioned that they liked the simplification of Bulk. My third experienced player protested the layer of unnecessary abstraction. Our new player was unbothered either way, but understood and applied the rules.
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If you haven't seen Jason's playtest twitch stream on Friday, he admitted that the design team would take a good hard look at Signature Skills and decide if they were really adding anything to the game. I'd expect the concept to get heavily reworked, if not discarded entirely.
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... wait... are they saying Medium creatures typically weigh 40-80lbs?!?! o.OYeah...that's a workable number to allow carrying people, but I no longer have any idea at all what Bulk actually represents.
In other news, I ran the game and my play experience was pretty much fine. The only non-organizational issue I came across that hasn't already come up in this thread was that there appear to be no guidelines on what skill you use to identify what monster which is vague in an extremely non-useful fashion.
It seems to me that those key word blocks should have Arcane/Divine/Occult/Primal so that a GM knows which skill to look at. We already have info that indicates a Dragon is Arcane, Angels & Demons are Divine, most animals should fall under Primal, and Brain Collector should probably fall under Occult.
Edit: on the topic of Weight vs. Bulk, look at the differences in light wooden shield vs a Staff. The shield has an L and the staff has a 1, though a shield weighs more.
Just shows the disconnect between weight and bulk.
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Given the fact that we now have four traditions of magic, and all classes reference one of those traditions, this is kind of future-proofed - you can add as many arcane casters as you want, a 5th-level Arcane spell is a 5th-level Arcane spell for everyone who uses Arcane spells. There's no good reason to exclude this info from the spell entry.Weird. I'm looking at my PF1 corebook right now, and I don't see "magus" anyway near the Shield spell.At the very least 3.X had tag for each spell which class could cast them.Unless the spells are actually organized I wont look any harder (alphabetically and not by level??? wtf)I know - it's shocking that it's been done that way ever since 3rd Edition debuted. Incredible, isn't it?Weird, I didn't know that Magus could time travel to the release of the CRB and insert themselves into that book. Oh, wait, they can't.
But good to know that you are on the side of terribly organized books.
I agree with Sherlock, we have those Keyword blocks right there so the type of magics that can use it should be listed in there too. I would also recommend that it list Material/Mental/Spiritual/Vital so we can see WHY it is on that list.