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The game also doesn't work if you dont maximize your main statsYou could start by not responding to peoples unhappiness with "nothing is wrong with the game its surely the players who are wrong""Bulk is bad and needs to go away because my 8 STR Alchemist cant carry his equipment & 15 other things without being encumbered."
This is no different, you're actively choosing to leave your Cha at a negative score and you complain about the drawbacks.
Having a Character die because of poor rolls is one thing and it feels bad that I'll admit, but when the player knowingly chose to endanger the PC by relying on luck in order to use a Healing Potion... that on the player, not the system.
I agree it's like the bulk issue. For me, it's be like out of the blue saying heavy armor and heavy shields now require a 14 intelligence and fighters and paladin players complaining they have to spend the extra points to the basic functions of the game and their expected equipment. Or wizards spell books suddenly upped to 6 bulk and every wizard now needs a 14 strength.
From my perspective, if the game expects everyone st start with a 14 stats, you should JUST start with the and then make your character. This illusion of choice is annoying.
or secondary and you have to max as many stats as you can to get the the base minimum 50% chance and you can't NOT invest in stats it seems so that leaves us where? I know for me, it doesn't feel like the game wants you to make any meaningful choices when it comes to stats but to pick the single best stat array for your class and don't try to think out of the box!
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However, in my experience a party who plays without any healer is courting disaster, and it has been standard wisdom in 40+ years of D&D gaming to have a healer of some kind in the party, it’s only been during the lifetime of 3.x D&D that some groups have been relying on cure wounds wands and potions as their main source of healing, and at the risk of a “badwrongfun” statement, I think it’s a bad habit for the hobby as a whole to have established. It has taken what was once a viable role in the party (that of healer) and relegated it to “healing in a can.” Some people don’t like healer as a party role? That’s fine, but it’s been denigrated completely in PF1 as being “mechanically unviable” and “worthless waste of actions”.
Back in earlier editions of D&D I was the volunteer who played support classes such as cleric, but I liked more variety than always playing just a cleric. In the long run, defining a party as a cleric and three other people is not going to work.
If Pathfinder 2nd Edition won't offer healing in a can, then it ought to offer healing in a spell, such as the occult spell Soothe, or healing in a feat, such as Battlefield Medic on a character with a really good Medicine bonus. Can a bard, druid, paladin, or non-arcane sorcerer heal well enough to replace a cleric? The only other faint possibilities I see are a high-Wisdom monk with trained Medicine and Battlefield Medic, and an alchemist who saves most of his resonance for making infused healing elixirs.
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I feel like resonance needs a fatter bottom for starting out. something like 4 +charisma. would need more testing to see if that works. also it should for real be minimum 1. I thought it was but I guess not. my last thing is I think no item except for extreme cases (rings of wishing) should take both resonance and still have charges.
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I feel like resonance needs a fatter bottom for starting out. something like 4 +charisma. would need more testing to see if that works. also it should for real be minimum 1. I thought it was but I guess not. my last thing is I think no item except for extreme cases (rings of wishing) should take both resonance and still have charges.
I think we just need to give out enough resonance at 1st that there is no longer a reason to track it... Maybe infinity + charisma... :P
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Please, get rid of resonance - it's not good.
I dislike it intensely.
Not everybody feels like that I know, but for for me this is a dealbreaker.
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I feel like resonance needs a fatter bottom for starting out. something like 4 +charisma. would need more testing to see if that works. also it should for real be minimum 1. I thought it was but I guess not. my last thing is I think no item except for extreme cases (rings of wishing) should take both resonance and still have charges.I think we just need to give out enough resonance at 1st that there is no longer a reason to track it... Maybe infinity + charisma... :P
yes yes yes we all know you want infinite wands of doing all the jobs for you. easy mode and all that. Maybe that works fine for you. I have already said my peace to you on that. making the same argument over and over isn't getting anywhere. My suggestion was not directed at you I already know your whole burn it to the ground approach to the new PF2. I don't know why you don't just stick to PF1.
Having a limit on consumable magic items its a positive. Being rewarded for spending all your gold on consumables or having consumables be so cheap that it might as well be infinite are both bad designs. (If your going to do that Oh its not a bad design to have infinite items argument just stop right their it doesn't sound even rational to me.)
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yes yes yes we all know you want infinite wands of doing all the jobs for you. easy mode and all that.
You're acting like the only thing affected is wands: the issues run FAR, FAR deeper than wands. You bump resonance to allow more consumable use you also bump items worn and/or 1/day uses. 'fixing' any ONE of those uses throws the others out of whack.
Maybe that works fine for you. I have already said my peace to you on that. making the same argument over and over isn't getting anywhere. My suggestion was not directed at you I already know your whole burn it to the ground approach to the new PF2.
I don't think the whole thing needs burned down, but some portion of it does: resonance is one place I think it does. It's trying to do 3 different things at once and not doing any very well because if it. That's why I think they should be back to the drawing board and figure out JUST what they want to do well and make THAT rule element. Once they do that, we can debate on what to do.
I don't know why you don't just stick to PF1.
I might but it's kind of moot to the playtest. I played the playtest and give my impressions from that. Should I lie about how I feel about it?
Having a limit on consumable magic items its a positive.
It might be or it might not depending on who you ask: the problem is that that isn't the only thing resonance is or does.
Being rewarded for spending all your gold on consumables or having consumables be so cheap that it might as well be infinite are both bad designs.
Sounds like a good reason to look at consumable prices and scaling if that's the issue you have: why is an extra add-on rule that also covers other things preferable to fixing what you say is the actual issue?
(If your going to do that Oh its not a bad design to have infinite items argument just stop right their it doesn't sound even rational to me.)
If YOU are going this route, then you have to explain why you aren't advocating the actual problems you have be fixed. IMO, the current 'cure' is worse than what's the 'disease' and doesn't even fix the underlying issues, just being a cheap bandaid to cover them up.
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yes yes yes we all know you want infinite wands of doing all the jobs for you. easy mode and all that.You're acting like the only thing affected is wands: the issues run FAR, FAR deeper than wands. You bump resonance to allow more consumable use you also bump items worn and/or 1/day uses. 'fixing' any ONE of those uses throws the others out of whack.
Maybe that works fine for you. I have already said my peace to you on that. making the same argument over and over isn't getting anywhere. My suggestion was not directed at you I already know your whole burn it to the ground approach to the new PF2.I don't think the whole thing needs burned down, but some portion of it does: resonance is one place I think it does. It's trying to do 3 different things at once and not doing any very well because if it. That's why I think they should be back to the drawing board and figure out JUST what they want to do well and make THAT rule element. Once they do that, we can debate on what to do.
I don't know why you don't just stick to PF1.I might but it's kind of moot to the playtest. I played the playtest and give my impressions from that. Should I lie about how I feel about it?
Having a limit on consumable magic items its a positive.It might be or it might not depending on who you ask: the problem is that that isn't the only thing resonance is or does.
Being rewarded for spending all your gold on consumables or having consumables be so cheap that it might as well be infinite are both bad designs.Sounds like a good reason to look at consumable prices and scaling if that's the issue you have: why is an extra add-on rule that also covers other things preferable to fixing what you say is the actual issue?
(If your going to do that Oh its not a bad design to have infinite items argument just stop right their it doesn't sound even rational to me.)If...
I will tell you what why don't you give me the specific issues and I said specific on what you don't like about resonance. The impression I've gotten is you like being fully healed for every fight and nominalizing healing in general. Also you prefer using 5+ magic items at 1st level per character. I've already answered that question of what its fixing in other forums but you refuse to acknowledge it so lets go again I guess..
1. infinite magic via consumables. the intended limiting factor on magic is that a caster runs out of spells in a given day. Thats the whole philosophy with spell casting. Its balanced around not being infinite. wands staffs even potion to a much lesser extent allows caster to break this limit. Its been argued many times before that the fact that wizards running out of spells is a limiting factor is hog wash because of items such as that.
2. I would actually like for damage out of combat to have some purpose past a short pause and spamming the heal stick.
3. magic without limitations marginalizes every other factor of the game. every skill way of fighting way of traveling everything can be done better with magic. If I can on;y cast fly once per day maybe using that climb check might be better and save the fly for something more important but when I have infinite amount of flys then who needs the climb skill at all.
4. resonance if slightly tweeked would be a more interesting way of keeping track of items that would normally have limits like 3/per day. which is something I keep posting.
5. It gives a legitimate mechanical use for charisma. where you might actually want to bump it a bit instead of dumping it.
6. the complex one is because resonance limits your daily use of items it encourages you to not feel pressured to spend to much money on consumable items and instead invest more into permanent items. so if your playing a wizard you might think instead of lets get about 5 scrolls of every utility spell you might instead just get a few and spend that money on other things. In doing so your rewarded for it because having 500 potions is meaningless when you can only use 5 or so a day. so don't buy 500 buy like 5 per day you think you'll be out and about.
I have more but this post is already going on to long.
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For me, this looks like a character where the GM didn't quite do his job when he introduced the new game (yes, I read that the OP was also a GM). As a GM myself, I expect to have greater system mastery than my players do. My response to the character would be as follows:
"You made a dwarf fighter as your first character, huh? Can I look at your character sheet?... It looks like you dumped charisma, it's possible you may want to rethink that. As a front-line fighter there's a very good chance you are going to be taking some damage, and magic items, particularly including potions, use a resource in this game based off charisma. With an 8 you won't reliably be able to use healing potions at level 1, and you might even be at a disadvantage in using magic items at later levels. All your stats matter for important parts of gameplay now, so you have to make decisions on what you are willing to go without."
Knowing my regular players, whoever made this character would have follow-up questions where I would probably expand on the rules regarding resonance.
This would be a min-max rule driven approach. But if you have a RP heavy table, where every player creates the character according to a character concept and vision, a dwarf with a lack of social skills is not that far fetched. It would be sad if that roleplay aspect would fall short in PF2 .
I think that Resonance would be workable if it scaled off of highest of Intelligence, Wisdom or Charisma. That would alleviate the worst of the low lvl issues and allow lvls to scale it from there.
Pf1 did something I consider as a very bad thing, which was tell us that potions, wands and staves were common and unlimited use. I don't think that was a precedent they wanted to set and this is their attempt to alter that.
Resonance is a great concept, it just needs some work. Elixer prices might also need a good hard look. But if you changed Resonance to be highest mental ability score that should alleviate the worst of the low level bottleneck.
I think just give more starting cause even if its your highest mental your still inconveniencing martial classes. I say just give them more resonance at the start. Originally I thought it could be racial based like bonus hp but then I realized how much I was screwing over dwarfs still.
I think the wand thing is a gradual thing that happened in phases. so in 1st you got what dropped making items was depending on the game impossible or extremely difficult. (i'll skip 2nd since I don't have as much experience) in third edition you could make items but making the items cost experience points. so your probably not going to make 500 wands if I have to spend exp. Now in Pathfinder it no longer takes exp just gold so you can pretty well have whatever you want just spend the gold or at worst take a feat. it also brought the whole big six thing about.
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I will tell you what why don't you give me the specific issues and I said specific on what you don't like about resonance. The impression I've gotten is you like being fully healed for every fight and nominalizing healing in general. Also you prefer using 5+ magic items at 1st level per character. I've already answered that question of what its fixing in other forums but you refuse to acknowledge it so lets go again I guess..
This is an unnecessary attack. Just because someone doesn't like Resonance doesn't mean they free, unlimited, full healing between fights or that they want 1st level character covered in magic items.
I personally don't like Resonance because it's a dumb solution to a marginal problem. The whole reason it exists in the playtest is because the Paizo devs, who go to conventions and see a lot of PFS being played, don't like CLW wand spamming. They think the people who do that are playing the game wrong, so they've crafted a ham-fisted "fix" that causes other problems (read: healing in general, a well-recognized problem with the current playtest). This "problem" has much better solutions on the wand side of the equation that don't break other parts of the game.
This is a great example of how "problems" in PFS can have a huge effect on those of us that play home games.
-Skeld
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I personally don't like Resonance because it's a dumb solution to a marginal problem. The whole reason it exists in the playtest is because the Paizo devs, who go to conventions and see a lot of PFS being played, don't like CLW wand spamming. They think the people who do that are playing the game wrong, so they've crafted a ham-fisted "fix" that causes other problems (read: healing in general, a well-recognized problem with the current playtest). This "problem" has much better solutions on the wand side of the equation that don't break other parts of the game.
This is a great example of how "problems" in PFS can have a huge effect on those of us that play home games.
A-freakin-MEN!
If PFS is causing problems, then abolish/fix PFS.
Don't f*&$ up the entire game for those of us who wouldn't even notice if PFS died in a fire and never came back.
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I will tell you what why don't you give me the specific issues and I said specific on what you don't like about resonance. The impression I've gotten is you like being fully healed for every fight and nominalizing healing in general. Also you prefer using 5+ magic items at 1st level per character. I've already answered that question of what its fixing in other forums but you refuse to acknowledge it so lets go again I guess..This is an unnecessary attack. Just because someone doesn't like Resonance doesn't mean they free, unlimited, full healing between fights or that they want 1st level character covered in magic items.
I personally don't like Resonance because it's a dumb solution to a marginal problem. The whole reason it exists in the playtest is because the Paizo devs, who go to conventions and see a lot of PFS being played, don't like CLW wand spamming. They think the people who do that are playing the game wrong, so they've crafted a ham-fisted "fix" that causes other problems (read: healing in general, a well-recognized problem with the current playtest). This "problem" has much better solutions on the wand side of the equation that don't break other parts of the game.
This is a great example of how "problems" in PFS can have a huge effect on those of us that play home games.
-Skeld
This, PFS has crapped up the game in pf1 and now its crapping up the design of pf2
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I don't play PFS and I hate CLW wands. Makes the game too easy. If you want the game to be easier just ask your GM to lower the difficulty. The game shouldn't be just easy mode because some people don't want to be challenged.
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I don't play PFS and I hate CLW wands. Makes the game too easy. If you want the game to be easier just ask your GM to lower the difficulty. The game shouldn't be just easy mode because some people don't want to be challenged.
Or, yknow, you put limits on wands not potions permanent items and X use per day items, which is the actual issue.
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I don't play PFS and I hate CLW wands. Makes the game too easy. If you want the game to be easier just ask your GM to lower the difficulty. The game shouldn't be just easy mode because some people don't want to be challenged.
Isn't that a bit of a straw man, though? Your statement seems to suggest that you think anyone who's in favour of CLW wands and/or who's against Resonance doesn't want the game to be a challenge. Admittedly, that position has the advantage that you don't need to read any of the posts on this forum to find out why people dislike Resonance; unfortunately, it has the disadvantage of being completely wrong.
And your suggested fix works the other way around, too: if you dislike CLW wands so much, just ask your GM to remove them from the games they run.
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I don't play PFS and I like full healing after battles. Otherwise you have to make the encounters too easy, to avoid killing off the characters who might have been injured in the previous encounter.
If rules made for PFS cause problem in your home game, just house-rule it in your home game. And don't tell Paizo you'd be happy to see a significant portion of their market die in a fire and expect them to listen to you.
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I don't play PFS and I hate CLW wands. Makes the game too easy. If you want the game to be easier just ask your GM to lower the difficulty. The game shouldn't be just easy mode because some people don't want to be challenged.
Or, you can ask the GM to limit wand availability, make them more expensive, or do away with them altogether if you think the game is too easy.
I GM, so I set the difficulty. I like my campaigns difficult, but I also don't like 15 minute adventuring days or my party to stop and rest after every encounter. I'd rather them use a few charges from a wan and move on than stop/retreat and rest because their at half HP.
In PFS, wands are assumed to always be available and there's nothing the "GM" can do about it* in terms of restricting them or making the adventure more difficult.
I would much rather they fix wands than institute some bad mechanics. CLW wands get used because, 1) they're cheap (15gp/charge vs. 25gp for a scroll or 50gp for a potion), 2) wands carry a lot of charges (50 vs. a single-use scroll or potion), and 3) they easily portable (unlike 50 scrolls or potions).
Stop assuming because someone doesn't like Resonance that they want the game to be "easy." It makes you look like a tool.
-Skeld
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I don't play PFS and I like full healing after battles. Otherwise you have to make the encounters too easy, to avoid killing off the characters who might have been injured in the previous encounter.
If rules made for PFS cause problem in your home game, just house-rule it in your home game. And don't tell Paizo you'd be happy to see a significant portion of their market die in a fire and expect them to listen to you.
(Assuming that remark is directed to me) Whether or not Paizo listens to me is up to them - but if PF2 turns out not to be fun to play, I'll invest my money in another product instead. It's that simple.
I'm already having to run the playtest on this forum because my tabletop group wants nothing to do with it (actual quote from one of them after downloading and trying to read the rules: "F*** me! Life's too short to read this s**t!"). It would be sadly ironic if PF2 actually hastened our transition to 5E.
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Would it not make sense to do the opposite and NOT have an absolutely ridiculously op item in the game and instead ask YOUR gms to just have you start every encounter with full HP?
Wand of CLW (or wand of st level anything, for that matter) is not "an absolutely ridiculously op item." And the answer to your question is, no. It's easier for a GM to remove an item from the game than to invent an item to go into the game. That whole "ask the GM to let you start every encounter at full HP" is a hyperbolic question. Is anyone advocating that or doing that? Also, at low levels, a CLW wand still represents and expenditure of resources (gp); it's not as free as you imply. At mid to high levels, it might as well be free. All of that, however, is more of a problem with wand pricing (which I mentioned earlier), not the existance of the item.
-Skeld
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Having a limit on consumable magic items its a positive.That's an assertation. I've yet to see the proof.
So the game runs into issues when there are some things which are limited and other things which are completely unlimited. Sure some classes are restricted by things like spell slots and spell points, and other classes don't run out of anything naturally. So the Wizard will run out of spells but the fighter doesn't run out of anything except HP. If "running out of HP" isn't a real limit because healing is cheap and unlimited, then you have serious problems in adventure design since there's no real way to estimate "how long is it going to take a party to get through this part." If we further make this unlimited where magic classes can just keep going with scrolls and wands, anybody can finish the whole dungeon without resting if they have deep enough pockets.
And asking the GM to balance things around GP or item availability (when the system does a bad job at this) is a big ask.
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And yet balancing around Item availability is a thing that my gm has done reasonably and easily for decades.
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I will tell you what why don't you give me the specific issues and I said specific on what you don't like about resonance. The impression I've gotten is you like being fully healed for every fight and nominalizing healing in general. Also you prefer using 5+ magic items at 1st level per character. I've already answered that question of what its fixing in other forums but you refuse to acknowledge it so lets go again I guess..
1. infinite magic via consumables. the intended limiting factor on magic is that a caster runs out of spells in a given day. Thats the whole philosophy with spell casting. Its balanced around not being infinite. wands staffs even potion to a much lesser extent allows caster to break this limit. Its been argued many times before that the fact that wizards running out of spells is a limiting factor is hog wash because of items such as that.
2. I would actually like for damage out of combat to have some purpose past a short pause and spamming the heal stick.
3. magic without limitations marginalizes every other factor of the game. every skill way of fighting way of traveling everything can be done better with magic. If I can on;y cast fly once per day maybe using that climb check might be better and save the fly for something more important but when I have infinite amount of flys then who needs the climb skill at all.
4. resonance if slightly tweeked would be a more interesting way of keeping track of items that would normally have limits like 3/per day. which is something I keep posting.
5. It gives a legitimate mechanical use for charisma. where you might actually want to bump it a bit instead of dumping it.
6. the complex one is because resonance limits your daily use of items it encourages you to not feel pressured to spend to much money on consumable items and instead invest more into permanent items. so if your playing a wizard you might think instead of lets get about 5 scrolls of every utility spell you might instead just get a few and spend that money on other things. In doing so your rewarded for it because having 500 potions is meaningless when you can only use 5 or so a day. so don't buy 500 buy like 5 per day you think you'll be out and about.
I have more but this post is already going on to long.
#1 When have I suggested infinite? I even suggested they look into pricing and offered ways to make the CLW wand not the auto-best options. I've offered solutions and alternatives to resonance. It's not my fault you seem to ignore/miss those.
#2 Cool... I'd suggest increasing that wand rarity as a more viable option. For every person like you, there are people that want to play without a healer type character. Cutting off out of combat healing is telling them to play with a 5 min day: How deadly things are should be a group choice not an enforced one. Your desire for 'more meaningful damage' dramatically affects others that play the game differently. Adding an entire extra subsystem seems extreme when the DM can alter the rarity and take 'infinite' wand off the table for THAT group.
#3 What? Really, what? Have you read my posts? I want to be a christmas tree of minor items and couldn't give a darn if it's 'powerful' effects. I'll have an ioun torch, a travelers all tool, a minor bag of holding, tengu drinking jug, Apprentice's Cheating Gloves, Boots of the Winterlands, Cloak of the Hedge Wizard, ect..
You're asking for a limit on power, I'm asking for no limit on fun/flavor.
#4 if they want to make resonance JUST this, I'm all for it. That way it'd be a perk if you have it and but not a burden if they don't.
#5 I honestly don't care about this. I'm 100% fine with stats not every person needs. I'm fine is everyone doesn't need a str 14 or a cha of 14 or a int of 14. Right now, Int needs 'protection' more than Cha does. The game requires you to 100% max to get to 50% and you can't boost everything...
#6 This makes 0% sense to me. I ALWAYS spent money of permanent items. Now I don't buy the top of the line items but then I don't WANT the top of the line items: I want cool, flavorful and interesting items. it's why I WANT the christmas tree. As far as consumables, I've never really bought that many: most are found and used. I've bought as many healing items as I've bought 'utility' items might flasks of oil/acid/ect, scrolls, ect: once in a while, but I rarely buy multiple one at a time so even 5 is unusual, 50 is unheard of and 500 is something I think you're making up.
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And yet balancing around Item availability is a thing that my gm has done reasonably and easily for decades.
They even added a new rarity system but for some reason DIDN'T use it as the dial for accessibility for CLW wands.
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So the game runs into issues when there are some things which are limited and other things which are completely unlimited. Sure some classes are restricted by things like spell slots and spell points, and other classes don't run out of anything naturally. So the Wizard will run out of spells but the fighter doesn't run out of anything except HP. If "running out of HP" isn't a real limit because healing is cheap and unlimited, then you have serious problems in adventure design since there's no real way to estimate "how long is it going to take a party to get through this part." If we further make this unlimited where magic classes can just keep going with scrolls and wands, anybody can finish the whole dungeon without resting if they have deep enough pockets.Having a limit on consumable magic items its a positive.That's an assertation. I've yet to see the proof.
I see it the opposite way. It's MUCH easier to balance an encounter based on full health than a rough estimate of were you think attrition will leave them as something as simple as a few luck crits or unlucky misses can have that shift wildly.
And asking the GM to balance things around GP or item availability (when the system does a bad job at this) is a big ask.
It is? Why is it a bridge too far for wands but it works for spells, items, ect. We use a rarity system for those and it seems to work. Or do you think resonance works better than rarity?
Having a limit on consumable magic items its a positive.That's an assertation. I've yet to see the proof.
Will evidence for the contrary serve instead of proof? In the original post, callmedoug told us how resonance was a major obstacle at 1st level. That is evidence that a limit on consumable magic items is a negative by his values. But if anyone thinks, "Ooops no Cleric in party. sorry guys, I am done as a front liner for the day, will stand in the back until we can rest," is a positive, then that person can count it as a positive. I agree with callmedoug that it is a negative.
I mentioned my own Pathfinder 1st Edition experience with wands of CLW back win comment #23. I said, "The next near-death experience I recall was at 7th level." Let me describe that experience, because it reflects an encounter where individual party members were unusually vulnerable.
The party had entered the final room with a stranger in tow whom they had rescued. Secretly, the stranger was an assassin who had successfully bluffed the party and was waiting for a safe opportunity to kill any member--emphasis on safe, because the magus was cutting through CR 8 opponents like a hot knife through butter. He had used class abilities to push the critical hit range of his rapier to 15-20 and had rolled a few crits. But his cast-advance-strike tactic put him a few steps ahead of the rest of the party. The counterattacks concentrated on him and were whittling away at his protective Mirror Image spell and sometimes his hit points. Finally, his Mirror Image was down and he took enough damage to get down to one fifth hp. These enemies hit hard and could now one-shot kill him.
And that was only a little problem. The rest of the party moved up between him and his opponents and took over while he retreated. The party healer was on her way, too.
The assassin saw his chance. He had been preparing his death attack against the magus: "If an assassin studies his victim for 3 rounds and then makes a sneak attack with a melee weapon that successfully deals damage, the sneak attack has the additional effect of possibly either paralyzing or killing the target (assassin’s choice)." One more round and he would strike to kill.
Having a character who can be killed in one hit is a major weakness in a party that cares about each other, regardless of how strong the rest of the party is. Due to good teamwork, this party could ordinarily protect an injured party member, but unsuspected circumstances left the magus vulnerable.
And the magus tapped into his arcane pool to recall Mirror Image and recast it, conjuring up five new images, before the assassin struck. The assassin was not going to break his deception for a 1/6 chance at a kill. He switched to studying the bloodrager, who was also demonstrating how dangerous she was. Nothing happened in those three rounds to thwart the assasin studying his target, and the bloodrager was flatfooted against a presumed ally and flanked by a known enemy, so he made the death attack! The players were going to hate me for killing their NPC mascot (the magus had hero points to cheat death), so I doublechecked her sheet for defenses: oh, Uncanny Dodge and Improved Uncanny Dodge. The sneak attack required for the death attack failed. I roleplayed the assassin as shocked to discover that this sword-wielding sorceress had the uncanny reflexes of a barbarian, but really, I had fooled myself.
Defeating the surprised assassin who fought to the death was the final battle of that delve, so they had plenty of time for healing after that. They could have left the location and safely returned the next day instead of investigating the final nooks and crannies.
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A-freakin-MEN! If PFS is causing problems, then abolish/fix PFS.
Don't f&&$ up the entire game for those of us who wouldn't even notice if PFS died in a fire and never came back.
Oh, you'd notice, if you ever wanted new players or new products. Because without PFS providing a bunch of almost-free marketing for paizo there would be considerably fewer of both.
Also, PFS does not cause problems. What it does is highlight them.
1) I've been playing Pathfinder since it came out and have never needed to interact with PFS in order to find players.
2) Given that product/splat-book bloat is a real issue in PF1 (seriously, how many frikkin feats and magic items are in the game now?!) I could easily have lived with fewer products.
3) It is a matter of considerable debate whether the 'problems' that PFS has supposedly 'highlighted' are in fact real problems at all.
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Going to add "Because PFS" to the list of meaningless catch phrases that have proliferated here as soon as one person said it with little back up evidence. It can join "But 4th ED" "Video Game Like" and "MTG style" in list of meaningless but repeated phrases.
Know Direction did a Q&A podcast with Erik Mona and Logan Bonner on March 9th addressing the PF2 playtest. Early in the interview, they ask Erik about his pet peeves with PF1 and he mentions a couple of them. At ~45:15 into the interview, Logan is talking about magic items in PF2. Erik gets excited and starts discussing CLW wand spamming and how much he hates it. At ~46:16, one of the interviewers brings up how CLW wand spamming in PFS, to which Erik replies, "Yeah, I mean it's just stupid; so, we're not doing that."
Granted, Erik didn't say it's because of PFS, but those guys get to see a lot of PFS games played at conventions and they get a lot of feedback from PFS volunteer leadership, far more observation and feedback than they'll get from home games, so it's not much of a logical leap. These things are discussed in the video in the same context within about a minute of each other.
-Skeld
Edit: Also, Erik discusses how much he hates magic item identification and how PF2 does it and "it's pretty awesome."
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Know Direction did a Q&A podcast with Erik Mona and Logan Bonner on March 9th addressing the PF2 playtest. Early in the interview, they ask Erik about his pet peeves with PF1 and he mentions a couple of them. At ~45:15 into the interview, Logan is talking about magic items in PF2. Erik gets excited and starts discussing CLW wand spamming and how much he hates it. At ~46:16, one of the interviewers brings up how CLW wand spamming in PFS, to which Erik replies, "Yeah, I mean it's just stupid; so, we're not doing that."
Granted, Erik didn't say it's because of PFS, but those guys get to see a lot of PFS games played at conventions and they get a lot of feedback from PFS volunteer leadership, far more observation and feedback than they'll get from home games, so it's not much of a logical leap. These things are discussed in the video in the same context within about a minute of each other.
-Skeld
Edit: Also, Erik discusses how much he hates magic item identification and how PF2 does it and "it's pretty awesome."
Thank you, that is extremely informative.
Well, if that's the game they want to build, that's their prerogative of course; but it doesn't sound like a game I'd want to invest in. Time or money.
And yet balancing around Item availability is a thing that my gm has done reasonably and easily for decades.They even added a new rarity system but for some reason DIDN'T use it as the dial for accessibility for CLW wands.
But wouldn't it be rather weird for Heal (PF2's CLW equivalent) to be a common spell but for wands of Heal not to be common?
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Cheap unlimited healing for everyone is going away, and it needs to
citation needed.
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A-freakin-MEN! If PFS is causing problems, then abolish/fix PFS.
Don't f&&$ up the entire game for those of us who wouldn't even notice if PFS died in a fire and never came back.
Oh, you'd notice, if you ever wanted new players or new products. Because without PFS providing a bunch of almost-free marketing for paizo there would be considerably fewer of both.
Also, PFS does not cause problems. What it does is highlight them.
_
glass.
PFS regularly bans and limits far more options for the lower powered martial classes than it does for the casters. PARTIALLY this makes sense as it requires time to suss out the potential problems of an option, but the ISSUE is that options to improve and balance weak classes are put through a tighter lens than the power options the most powerful classes have from core book.
I submit that throwing obstacles at post core balancing options is in fact causing problems.
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And yet balancing around Item availability is a thing that my gm has done reasonably and easily for decades.They even added a new rarity system but for some reason DIDN'T use it as the dial for accessibility for CLW wands.But wouldn't it be rather weird for Heal (PF2's CLW equivalent) to be a common spell but for wands of Heal not to be common?
Why would it? All it takes is more demand than supply. If you have a bunch of other adventure group in the same general area, aren't they going to be buying up wands too? A mercenary group might buy up half before they even make it to market.
Quite simply, the rarity of spells used in the creation on an item need not have any impact on the items rarity.
Now if you are somehow worried about PC's making too many wands, then the same thing happens but with materials to make the wand. For instance, all the trees used to make 1st level wands were clearcut to make all those CLW wands for all those adventurers in the past: now the elves are only letting people cut down a few trees a year.
So it's not very hard to make it make sense to you put a little effort into it.
EDIT: also, even the worst explanation of wand rarity beats the current 'wands hate grumpy people or those that wear other magic items and work less often for them'...
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...<snip>...
Pf1 did something I consider as a very bad thing, which was tell us that potions, wands and staves were common and unlimited use. I don't think that was a precedent they wanted to set and this is their attempt to alter that.
Resonance is a great concept, it just needs some work. Elixer prices might also need a good hard look. But if you changed Resonance to be highest mental ability score that should alleviate the worst of the low level bottleneck.
It wasn't PF1 - it was D&D. PF1 inherited the 'problem', and opted to make their own high-magic campaign setting (Golarian, instead of Forgotten Realms) and continue the tradition of having magic all over the freaking place and commercially available.
There are campaign settings that use exactly the same d20 base rules and have none of this problem. Hello, Ravenloft? This isn't a mechanics problem, it's an expectations problem. Characters in high-magic settings use a lot of magic - both the PCs and the NPCs. If you don't want people guzzling potions like they're Big Gulps™, don't have your fantasy world awash in magic.
The reason that PFS games (apparently) have a problem with excessive use of cheap magic items is because Paizo decided to make cheap magic items easily and consistently available to PFS players.
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There's also the problem that the economics of magic items simply doesn't make sense.
The price of potions and wands goes up (more or less) as the square of the level, but the actual benefit of using that potion or wand goes up linearly. So, for the 300gp that could get you a Cure Moderate Wounds potion that will heal, on average, 12hp, you could buy six potions of Cure Light Wounds that each heal on average 5.5hp, or 33hp overall. It's nearly three times as effective to buy lots of first-level consumables than it is to buy a second-level consumable, if equivalent versions of both are available.
This is why even high-level characters carry around Cure Light Wounds wands. It simply makes no sense to purchase higher level wands, because compared to the first level wand, they're extremely overpriced.
This is a fundamental problem in Pathfinder. Resonance only patches over it, and doesn't fix the problem.
Fixing the problem isn't trivial. There are several constraints. First, you want low-level adventurers not to have too much gold, and not to be able to afford higher level magic items. Second, you want to have dragons able to sit on big hoards at higher levels. But, third, you want to have the economics of it all such that it's not a financially dunderheaded move to buy a higher-than-first-level healing consumable. I'm not sure you can satisfy all of this at once. Ideally, a CMW potion or wand will be enough more expensive than a CLW potion or wand that most PCs won't be able to buy it until 3rd level. But, you really want that CMW potion or wand to be more efficient in terms of hp per cash, so that it's what the medium-level characters will buy. This means that the wand price has to scale linearly with spell level, rather than quadratically. You then need to reduce the character WBL accordingly, drop the prices of everything else, and now you have the problem that 10,000gp is way to big of a hoard for a (say) CR12 dragon.
This is the core problem, and this is what should be addressed. Resonance is overdriving the system in an attempt to correct for bad steering by installing rocket engines pointing in the opposite direction. That sort of thing never ends well.
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Resonance is overdriving the system in an attempt to correct for bad steering by installing rocket engines pointing in the opposite direction.
I don't believe I would have been able to describe that issue in such a concise, picturesque and surprisingly on-spot image. :D
And yet balancing around Item availability is a thing that my gm has done reasonably and easily for decades.They even added a new rarity system but for some reason DIDN'T use it as the dial for accessibility for CLW wands.But wouldn't it be rather weird for Heal (PF2's CLW equivalent) to be a common spell but for wands of Heal not to be common?
Why would it? All it takes is more demand than supply. If you have a bunch of other adventure group in the same general area, aren't they going to be buying up wands too? A mercenary group might buy up half before they even make it to market.
Quite simply, the rarity of spells used in the creation on an item need not have any impact on the items rarity.
Now if you are somehow worried about PC's making too many wands, then the same thing happens but with materials to make the wand. For instance, all the trees used to make 1st level wands were clearcut to make all those CLW wands for all those adventurers in the past: now the elves are only letting people cut down a few trees a year.
So it's not very hard to make it make sense to you put a little effort into it.
EDIT: also, even the worst explanation of wand rarity beats the current 'wands hate grumpy people or those that wear other magic items and work less often for them'...
The issue is that rarity mainly determines how accessible an item is to someone who can afford it, not how expensive it is in absolute terms (as confirmed by the existence of "common" 9th level spells). Thus, the fact that Heal is a common spell would indeed mean that a wand of Heal must also be common, since nothing needed to craft a wand of a common spell can be anything other than common.
And supply and demand, while they are the ultimate driver of real world economics, don't actually work out too well for a game world where player characters are basically forbidden to become significantly richer than the standard wealth guidelines would allow -- which is something that would definitely happen to a cleric able to craft magic items if you priced Heal wands so that they were significantly more expensive than other magic items of comparable level.
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And supply and demand, while they are the ultimate driver of real world economics, don't actually work out too well for a game world where player characters are basically forbidden to become significantly richer than the standard wealth guidelines would allow -- which is something that would definitely happen to a cleric able to craft magic items if you priced Heal wands so that they were significantly more expensive than other magic items of comparable level.
None of that matters to NPC's: they can be as rich as they want. As such, NPC's can buy up spare wands leaving inly as many as the DM wants the party to be able to pick up.
And again, on the player side you can change it's rarity so it's not easy to pick up. It's an easy rules fix that the formula for a wand doesn't have to equal the spell. It's a SUPER easy fix to up the rarity of wands by 1 if you're looking for less wands.
Lets weigh things: Increasing the rarity of wands by one vs items not liking grumpy people and refusing to work as well for them. Which makes more sense. For me, it's not even close. One is easy to understand and the other is a clear bandaid that overlooks the base issues at hand.
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Also, PFS does not cause problems. What it does is highlight them.
PFS definitely highlights problems. It's not the cause of the problem (as I've mentioned numerous times, that's the wand pricing rules), but it grossly amplified the problem by making wands automatically available (you don't even have to spend money; you can use a prestige point or whatever they're called) and that makes the problem look way worse than it actually is. This creates a situation where the devs say, "something must be done about this," and instead of fixing the problem (cheap wands), we get resonance as a part of the core rules making it difficult for people in home games (many of whom consider this a non-issue at their tables) to ignore.
PFS isn't the cause, but it boosts the signal.I submit that throwing obstacles at post core balancing options is in fact causing problems.
I agree with what you've said, but I'll add something:
PFS uses its own set of houserules, making it a campaign within itself, complete with its own quirks. Because of its size and scale, it makes problems more noticeable and the number of people complaining about any given quirk is greater than any other home campaign. Add to that that Paizo IS the GM for PFS and you get people complaining about PFS on the boards constantly (and it's usually the same sorta stuff over and over). The "GM" (ie. Paizo) sometimes gets involved by issuing rulings and thus you get a whole bunch of errata to fix problems in a campaign that uses a bastardized ruleset. It's not different than if i had the ability to make all my houserules official is the PRD/SRD/AoN.It wasn't PF1 - it was D&D. PF1 inherited the 'problem', and opted to make their own high-magic campaign setting (Golarian, instead of Forgotten Realms) and continue the tradition of having magic all over the freaking place and commercially available.
Personally, I like Golarion as high fantasy. As they try to tie the Golarion setting and the rules more tightly together (which started with the Adventurer's guide) and the rules seem to be changing to encourage and lower-magic fantasy, then Golarion necessarily transitions to lower fantasy. Changing the established game world is probably my single biggest dealbreaker. As an adventure content customer, I want a consistent game world going into PF2 because I want all that stuff to remain compatible.
Resonance is overdriving the system in an attempt to correct for bad steering by installing rocket engines pointing in the opposite direction.I don't believe I would have been able to describe that issue in such a concise, picturesque and surprisingly on-spot image. :D
I've spent the last 20-something years as an aerospace engineer and I can't tell you how many times I've seen someone try to solve a specific problem by crafting a solution taht tries to solve multiple problems at once. It usually leads to bad thing (like things exploding unintentionally).
-Skeld
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...I will tell you what why don't you give me the specific issues and I said specific on what you don't like about resonance. The impression I've gotten is you like being fully healed for every fight and nominalizing healing in general. Also you prefer using 5+ magic items at 1st level per character. I've already answered that question of what its fixing in other forums but you refuse to acknowledge it so lets go again I guess..
1. infinite magic via consumables. the intended limiting factor on magic is that a caster runs out of spells in a given day. Thats the whole philosophy with spell casting. Its balanced around not being infinite. wands staffs even potion to a much lesser extent allows caster to break this limit. Its been argued many times before that the fact that wizards running out of spells is a limiting factor is hog wash because of items such as that.
2. I would actually like for damage out of combat to have some purpose past a short pause and spamming the heal stick.
3. magic without limitations marginalizes every other factor of the game. every skill way of fighting way of traveling everything can be done better with magic. If I can on;y cast fly once per day maybe using that climb check might be better and save the fly for something more important but when I have infinite amount of flys then who needs the climb skill at all.
4. resonance if slightly tweeked would be a more interesting way of keeping track of items that would normally have limits like 3/per day. which is something I keep posting.
5. It gives a legitimate mechanical use for charisma. where you might actually want to bump it a bit instead of dumping it.
6. the complex one is because resonance limits your daily use of items it encourages you to not feel pressured to spend to much money on consumable items and instead invest more into permanent items. so if your playing a wizard you might think instead of lets get about 5 scrolls of every utility spell you might instead just get a few and
1. ok for number 1 you suggested infinite just a little bit above that post it was how about if resonance is infinite + charisma. just a few short posts before that one.
2. what I can't express that I like it now?
3. Just because you hold on let me do this right: For every person like you, there are people that want to play with a skilled character. Cutting off skills is telling them to play your way.
Actually you know what everyone of your replys are about your personal preference you accused me and others of not giving reasons for liking resonance I gave you the reasons. Your replys aren't facts they are your personal preference. nothing you said is an argument against resonance its a statement of your personal preference and trying to use say your preference is more important then mine. I gave reasons plenty of reasons just because you don't like them is not an excuse for you to say "No one has given me reasons they life resonance"
also your heal wands be rare idea only makes sense if the heal spell was rare. which would be terrible. If were not getting enough healing they need to buff the heal skill.
I will tell you what why don't you give me the specific issues and I said specific on what you don't like about resonance. The impression I've gotten is you like being fully healed for every fight and nominalizing healing in general. Also you prefer using 5+ magic items at 1st level per character. I've already answered that question of what its fixing in other forums but you refuse to acknowledge it so lets go again I guess..This is an unnecessary attack. Just because someone doesn't like Resonance doesn't mean they free, unlimited, full healing between fights or that they want 1st level character covered in magic items.
I personally don't like Resonance because it's a dumb solution to a marginal problem. The whole reason it exists in the playtest is because the Paizo devs, who go to conventions and see a lot of PFS being played, don't like CLW wand spamming. They think the people who do that are playing the game wrong, so they've crafted a ham-fisted "fix" that causes other problems (read: healing in general, a well-recognized problem with the current playtest). This "problem" has much better solutions on the wand side of the equation that don't break other parts of the game.
This is a great example of how "problems" in PFS can have a huge effect on those of us that play home games.
-Skeld
WTF are you talking about me and gray have literally had the conversation before where she said she doesn't want to worry about healing outside of combat. She has said her preference would be to be fully healed after every fight. How about you inform your self before You accuse somebody?
In fact that is clearly what she is saying on a few posts above mine.
Resonance at `3 + CHA + Level / 2` feels right, and reminds me of many of the 1e uses per day equation.
The designers have already gone into why linear cost is problem for items and if you have exponential pricing for linear gain, you need to address what happens when you sell your Wand of CCW for lots of Wands of CLW and dramatically increase your overall healing.
Healing is the primary problem since its
a) an out-of-combat activity
b) scales linearly
c) has additive effects
which means lots of small heals equals a few large heals.
One solution is the FFSW approach where healing consumables do less healing with each usage. If your Wand of CLW used on the same person each day did 1d8 then 1d8-1, 1d8-2, etc. healing would quickly diminish and higher level healing again has value. But that requires additional adjustment for those in between levels. I don't think it's inherently a better solution than resonance, but does demonstrate that there are other potential solutions.
Ultimately this is a problem I feel that needs to be solved. And I know there are a lot of other people who want to make sure that wand spam stays in 1e.