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I'm pretty sure every gnoll has fingerprints that no other gnoll has.
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I guess the question is "how do we make PCesque antagonists credible threats at high levels without making the party absurdly wealthy from scavenging all those magic items?". I mean, " special rules for NPCs" is almost certainly the cleanest way to do it, but are there other solutions?Starfinder's method of having items sell back at 10% market value certainly would stop the absurd wealth bit.
10% market value for rare magic items that can't easily be made or found makes no sense whatsoever and is totally divorced from anything even remotely resembling a rational market. The economy doesn't have to make a ton of sense, but +4 Shocking weapons aren't that common. The idea that someone will pay ten times more for one because it's in the magic item store than if they bought it directly from the adventurer that pulled it out of the dungeon is just not working for me at all.
True story: I ran a campaign once partially inspired by Recettear, where the PCs were working to clear out a dungeon and in order to pay off a debt, were also running a magic item shop and were using the stuff they found to stock the store. It was pretty entertaining, especially when the store got enough higher value stuff that they became concerned about it becoming a robbery target.
If 10% market value for selling was a thing, I would respond in game by hiring some NPCs to run my own store and selling everything I find there. Then the DM can try to justify why the store down the street can sell the exact same item at 10x the price my store can. That should be super fun for our group of roleplayers to try and justify.
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1) Yea or Nay? When asked, overall what’s your optimism for PF2, in light of the playtest rules and all updates through the playtest? Currently, only 4% of responses are negative about the direction things are going. 66% of responses are overwhelmingly positive. Jason says he’s pretty confident in the accuracy of that small 4% number.
(snip)
Talks about how they failed to communicate the nature of the playtest. “I’m worried some folks came to this thinking they’d be playtesting what was basically a finished game.” Wishes they’d just released Burnt Offerings (which they did internally) as a fun, relaxed adventure to go along with the stress-test of the rules like Doomsday Dawn.
This is exactly the problem my group has had. The most openly negative player is an avid PF1 player and was under exactly this impression. We had a conversation about it just a few days ago after our last playtest session, because she thought we were testing something close to the release version.
She's not active on the forums or Twitch and was totally unaware of the nature of the playtest as a result. I didn't know it from the rulebook, either. I learned it interacting around here. When we talked about it and I explained the nature of the playtest to her, my other comment was "I don't envy the marketing department's job in having to get past the negative impression that the playtest left with you."
Skills & +1/lvl? Jason talks about the fractional formula math in 3.5/PF1, add your level or a fraction of your level for everything you do. Easiest way to solve the problem caused by fractional math was to get rid of fractional math. There has been some negative feedback and they’re thinking about whether/how to change. E.g., they’ve looked at what happens if untrained doesn’t add character level. Would that be a dealbreaker? “The answer might not be no.” But they’d have to make sure that no critical defense is based on something that could be untrained. E.g., can’t have any attack target your Acrobatics DC if that would be 10 if you’re untrained. So would require adjustment but might be worth it for players’ sense of verisimilitude (I’ve never trained stealth—why at a high level am I suddenly good at stealth?)
Untrained preventing the +1/level would almost certainly put to bed the idea that INT doesn't give you enough benefit, considering just how big a swing it would be in a skill as you gain levels. (Of course, gaining an INT boost and suddenly gaining +14 in a skill might itself feel odd, but that might be less difficult to accept than the idea that a level 10 Paladin with absolutely no Stealth training whatsoever is better at it than a level 4 Thief.).
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Besides, those magic items aren't rare or wondrous at all. They're dime a dozen at any ye olde magic mart along...
I've never been in or run a campaign where you could buy those without a globe trotting quest to find somewhere actually stocking one (with a lousy success rate). Last time we went shopping for items in the upper price brackets, we couldn't find half of them anywhere.
Might be a DM thing, but the idea that an item loses 90% of its value because it's not an NPC selling it is totally immersion destroying for me.
Brand names and discount days.
That's how most retail stores (especially high-end luxury-oriented stores) operate. Industrial equipment suppliers are similar, but tend to balance that with contracts, guarantees, and support.
That said... I'm totally digging the potential for "advertised adventurers" here, showing of the latest products in armor plastered with slogans and glamered illusory mascots.
More seriously, I think the 10% thing starts to make sense if you factor in how long most items sit in the shop before being sold, the costs of advertising and maintaining the shop, and any taxes the local government is throwing at you. I bet you could probably balance a system where the PCs *can* operate a magic item shop and come out with 15-20% value per item sold, in return for extra bookkeeping (and of course the plot and story elements).
It was a pretty fun plot when I ran it, extra bookkeeping aside. :D
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Level 10 Paladin vs. Level 4 Rogue?
Rogue: +4 Proficiency, +4 from DEX, Expert in Stealth (+1) = +9
Paladin: +10 Proficiency, +0 to +1 from DEX, untrained in Stealth (-4), Armour Check Penalty from +2 Full-Plate (-3) = +4.
I think you need a lvl 15 Paladin to beat a lvl 4 Rogue (assuming it obtains a +3 Full-Plate).
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Level 10 Paladin vs. Level 4 Rogue?
Rogue: +4 Proficiency, +4 from DEX, Expert in Stealth (+1) = +9
Paladin: +10 Proficiency, +0 to +1 from DEX, untrained in Stealth (-4), Armour Check Penalty from +2 Full-Plate (-3) = +4.
I think you need a lvl 15 Paladin to beat a lvl 4 Rogue (assuming it obtains a +3 Full-Plate).
And even without the armor check penalty, the Paladin is STILL worse than the rogue 6 levels lower.
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I'm fairly certain that one of the larger surveys covered the idea of tying damage to level instead of items. If you want that change (or want to make your voice heard in the other direction), I highly suggest taking that survey of you haven't already.
Which Survey, and which question?
The closest I could find was this "I would prefer no potency on weapons and armor at all. Attack roll bonuses and AC bonuses would come from item quality, damage would come from my character's inherent martial ability, and any necessary saving throw bonuses could come from elsewhere."
Which is the closest option they present to what I would want, but still isn't particularly accurate to what I want. I think that damage bonuses should come from level, is that "martial ability"? I don't know. I also see no reason for saving throw bonuses to be coming from "elsewhere" and I'm rather meh on the idea of attack and AC bonuses coming from item quality.
By lumping all of those statements in together it makes it very unlikely that I'd pick Extremely True or even Very True on it. But, apparently, it's what they're looking at to determine if they should keep runes or not.
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Yuck! Some people actually want skill ranks back? :{ :p :PYES. I hate the "proficient skill" setup. I want to invest specific amounts in specific skills and have no bonus to other skills. The fact that this doesn't work well with +level is a testament to how bad such a system truly is.
I hate making a 5th level character and having to asign ever single point for skills and really those little points don't mean anything besides a bonus. Its tedious and my whole group feels the same way. assigning Skills has been the least fun part of our D&D experience since 3.0.
The current skill system is a good start that needs polishing. the prof system needs to expand more for when you increase an prof (yes like catfall #Catfallisperfectskillfeat). Which I still have hopes for.
I do not need to 96 little skill points to break up between 11 skills to somehow maximize my role playing ability with my character. saying trained or master or legendary is way more role play friendly.
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All this talk on statistic is starting to feel like "The statistic don't represent me so they must be wrong"I mean, I'm personally very disappointed that the statistics don't represent me. I'm extremely unhappy with where this edition is going and I'd like to see it change, but it is what it is I guess. I just might never play pathfinder again once the PF1 games dry up.
You do realize that a gaming system comes out its out forever. My old DM still plays 1st edition D&D. It only drys up when you let it.
I like the 3 action economy, I was just remarking that it isn't a new deal; such as UTEML, and other parts of the new game.I think it doesn't really matter where it comes from. Whether taken from an optional rulebook, an older iteration of the game, a different game system, or if it's truly new, a good idea is a good idea. I think Vidmaster's point here is more, someone who dislikes PF2's action economy is really an outlier. I mean, the vast majority of folks on the forum as well as in the surveys really like it. It's often cited as the #1 improvement over the PF1 game experience. Personally, I wasn't aware of this option's existence in Unchained, and I'm seriously thinking of bringing that rule over in the middle of my PF1 campaign.The big one really Is i feel the 3 action system is the biggest improvement they made.That is not really an improvement, more as porting something over from the previous edition (Unchained RAE).
Fair enough I should of been more specific. I think at least most people knew what I meant. I meant New for being in a core system as the main rule that things are based on.
Hmm for the magic weapon dice thing why don't we just split the difference between level and magic items. So potency runes would max out at about +3 dice and you could get the other 2-3 from character level? (Proficiency isn't steady enough for it imo) you could probably but a class ability in if you needed it that just gave + dice. alternatively you could have a weapon specialization mechanic like there is in Star finder. instead of a bonus dice. so you could be a 10th level whatever with a +2 potent sword and get 3d8 +10 before other bonuses.
Oh yes I remember Saga edition doing that. My only complaint about saga was how ridiculously high the skill checks got at low levels and what they could accomplish (DC 30 to pull down that star fighter you say? well i'm only level 1 but i'm +19 I think i got this.)
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I really don't see the appeal of skill ranks at all. Like I've not played a PF1 character who put more than 0 but less than [Level] ranks in a skill, since it's pretty much pointless to do so.
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I really don't see the appeal of skill ranks at all. Like I've not played a PF1 character who put more than 0 but less than [Level] ranks in a skill, since it's pretty much pointless to do so.
I've frequently had 1 rank in class skills, or enough ranks in something to hit a threshold such as auto-passing a specific ride check.
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I really don't see the appeal of skill ranks at all. Like I've not played a PF1 character who put more than 0 but less than [Level] ranks in a skill, since it's pretty much pointless to do so.
I've actually played a lot of characters who put one rank in a bunch of skills. A Bard or Investigator with one rank in every Knowledge Skill is actually pretty respectable at all of them well into the high levels (since they have scaling non-rank bonuses), and I've similarly put one rank in a number of skills I have good Ability Mods in just to make the total high enough to casually succeed on random minor Skill Checks.
Numbers other than 0, 1, or your Level were vanishingly rare, however.
All that said, I absolutely agree that Skill Ranks are fiddly and terrible. I like Skill based systems that let you assign any rating to a skill...but those are systems without Levels or Level based stuff, where things like Melee and Firearms are Skills. Trying to mash up Skill Ranks and a level based system was always awkward at best, and I feel like the Proficiency system is a good compromise between that weirdness and Skills being a have/have not binary.
1/2 level might be the better way to go anyways since if we only reduce the dice by 2 dice around what 8-10 damage average? so half level would fill that in nicely. Plus maybe the people complaining about rolling to many dice will be satisfied with only 1-4 (maybe up to 6) dice instead.
Its funny actually we used to add the + of our armor to certain saves (usually aoe type stuff) in 1st edition. I never knew if that was a house rule or what because I could never find it in the books, but to be fair there was a lot of things I couldn't find in those books.
Yes I was going more for the strange funny. But yes it always strikes me as odd when I see things we used to do in 1st D&D seem to come back around in these later games. There was a ton of things in 5th that reminded me more of 1st then any other editions. some things in PF1 as well that took me back that I saw vanish in between editions.
Its true that stuff is hidden deep. It blew me away the first time I found that chart that listed all of the AC values and had a certain to hit bonus all different weapons got to hit vrs different AC's. I think the assumption being some weapons would be better at puncturing armor then others. (war picks got a huge bonus against higher ACs)
Its true that stuff is hidden deep. It blew me away the first time I found that chart that listed all of the AC values and had a certain to hit bonus all different weapons got to hit vrs different AC's. I think the assumption being some weapons would be better at puncturing armor then others. (war picks got a huge bonus against higher ACs)That one is not so hidden (weapon type vs. armour), also an optional rule in the 2nd Ed PHB. It's actually quite cool, and can make some weapons that are usually ignored, to be actually used.
I didn't even know that chart made it to second. We found it needlessly complicated. Sometimes the logic made sense with it and then sometimes it didn't as well.
OP, thank you for presenting your notes!!
I really don't see the appeal of skill ranks at all. Like I've not played a PF1 character who put more than 0 but less than [Level] ranks in a skill, since it's pretty much pointless to do so.I've actually played a lot of characters who put one rank in a bunch of skills. A Bard or Investigator with one rank in every Knowledge Skill is actually pretty respectable at all of them well into the high levels (since they have scaling non-rank bonuses), and I've similarly put one rank in a number of skills I have good Ability Mods in just to make the total high enough to casually succeed on random minor Skill Checks.
Numbers other than 0, 1, or your Level were vanishingly rare, however.
All that said, I absolutely agree that Skill Ranks are fiddly and terrible. I like Skill based systems that let you assign any rating to a skill...but those are systems without Levels or Level based stuff, where things like Melee and Firearms are Skills. Trying to mash up Skill Ranks and a level based system was always awkward at best, and I feel like the Proficiency system is a good compromise between that weirdness and Skills being a have/have not binary.
I think I'd prefer to go the other way and have points to put into melee and firearms. The chief problem with skill points is the flat cost per level. The proficiency system appears to be an attempt at using an escalating cost to advance, while hiding the numbers for ease of use. Unfortunately, because the cost is permanently escalated once advancement to the next tier is available, there's an extra cost in buying trained in anything once you can buy expert. They could remove the simplification and put the full points cost out there for everyone to see and use, or they could let you buy two of the previous level once you've purchased the tier above it in any other skill.
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Honestly, I'm happy beyond measure that the "Monsters NPC aren't built from the same Lego bricks as PCs" direction took hold. Having just emerged from an adventure path finale where I spent 6 hours building i.a. 3 PF1 high-level classed enemies statblocks using HeroLab only to have one of them die in an instant (heal + Reach Spell vs. undead can be brutal) and the whole final fight taking LESS THAN THE TIME USED TO BUILD THE STATBLOCKS I'll sell my kidney for a system which will make coming up with high level opponents more time-effective.
I don't care about the fact that having NPCs not use PC classes prevents all the little tiny duckies in my brain from falling into correct rows and sitting pretty. Never had much of these ducks to begin with, anyway.
I very much agree, but the real advantage I see, is that monsters vs NPCs created with player character rules, tend to be easier to run and give an appropriate performance. The last bit came from running to many terrible soldiers with about 8 teamwork feats, that actually did very little to make them a credible threat.
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Honestly, I'm happy beyond measure that the "Monsters NPC aren't built from the same Lego bricks as PCs" direction took hold. Having just emerged from an adventure path finale where I spent 6 hours building i.a. 3 PF1 high-level classed enemies statblocks using HeroLab only to have one of them die in an instant (heal + Reach Spell vs. undead can be brutal) and the whole final fight taking LESS THAN THE TIME USED TO BUILD THE STATBLOCKS I'll sell my kidney for a system which will make coming up with high level opponents more time-effective.
I don't care about the fact that having NPCs not use PC classes prevents all the little tiny duckies in my brain from falling into correct rows and sitting pretty. Never had much of these ducks to begin with, anyway.
That sounds so weird to me, nearly everything is consumed faster than its made. Food, adventures, television, books. All take more time to make than consume.
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I think I'd prefer to go the other way and have points to put into melee and firearms.
You pretty much need to get rid of level and even Classes to do a proper Skill-based RPG. I don't think trying to go that route on Pathfinder would be a good idea. It would create something so widely divergent as to be unrecognizable.
The chief problem with skill points is the flat cost per level.
It really isn't. The chief problem is fiddliness and bookkeeping. Even accountants often find the process of assigning and keeping track of skill points overly laborious, and that's a bad sign.
The proficiency system appears to be an attempt at using an escalating cost to advance, while hiding the numbers for ease of use. Unfortunately, because the cost is permanently escalated once advancement to the next tier is available, there's an extra cost in buying trained in anything once you can buy expert.
I actually disagree. This is debatably true of the difference between Trained and Expert, but is fundamentally not true in the same way between Expert and Master or Master and Legendary.
Those have some increasing benefits (though even there, not everyone needs 3 Legendary Skills by 20th to be effective, especially not since they're adjusting the math), but not an increasing cost, as they come from the same pool of points and are equally difficult to get more of.
They could remove the simplification and put the full points cost out there for everyone to see and use, or they could let you buy two of the previous level once you've purchased the tier above it in any other skill.
I really don't think this would accurately represent what they're trying to do or make the game work better in any way. It would go back in the direction of overly fiddly for relatively little gain. It would grant some extra skills to generalists...but honestly I think that's better done by just granting extra skill ranks.
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That sounds so weird to me, nearly everything is consumed faster than its made. Food, adventures, television, books. All take more time to make than consume.Honestly, I'm happy beyond measure that the "Monsters NPC aren't built from the same Lego bricks as PCs" direction took hold. Having just emerged from an adventure path finale where I spent 6 hours building i.a. 3 PF1 high-level classed enemies statblocks using HeroLab only to have one of them die in an instant (heal + Reach Spell vs. undead can be brutal) and the whole final fight taking LESS THAN THE TIME USED TO BUILD THE STATBLOCKS I'll sell my kidney for a system which will make coming up with high level opponents more time-effective.
I don't care about the fact that having NPCs not use PC classes prevents all the little tiny duckies in my brain from falling into correct rows and sitting pretty. Never had much of these ducks to begin with, anyway.
Which by no means prevents us from cutting down the make to consume ratio. Doubly so given that it's a hobby, nobody is getting paid for making statblocks and it competes for our time with several other hobbies and leisures, some of them much less time consuming.
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RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
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I'm fairly certain that one of the larger surveys covered the idea of tying damage to level instead of items. If you want that change (or want to make your voice heard in the other direction), I highly suggest taking that survey of you haven't already.Which Survey, and which question?
The closest I could find was this "I would prefer no potency on weapons and armor at all. Attack roll bonuses and AC bonuses would come from item quality, damage would come from my character's inherent martial ability, and any necessary saving throw bonuses could come from elsewhere."
Which is the closest option they present to what I would want, but still isn't particularly accurate to what I want. I think that damage bonuses should come from level, is that "martial ability"? I don't know. I also see no reason for saving throw bonuses to be coming from "elsewhere" and I'm rather meh on the idea of attack and AC bonuses coming from item quality.
By lumping all of those statements in together it makes it very unlikely that I'd pick Extremely True or even Very True on it. But, apparently, it's what they're looking at to determine if they should keep runes or not.
I think you're spot on. I picked "Extremely True", specifically because I'd read the discussions on these boards and figured that was what they were trying to ask about. But if what they are actually trying to ask is, "Should you automatically get extra damage dice when you level up?", then I think a lot of people who like that idea would be led astray by the wording of the question and think they're talking about getting rid of all magic item bonuses.
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I guess the question is "how do we make PCesque antagonists credible threats at high levels without making the party absurdly wealthy from scavenging all those magic items?". I mean, " special rules for NPCs" is almost certainly the cleanest way to do it, but are there other solutions?Starfinder's method of having items sell back at 10% market value certainly would stop the absurd wealth bit.10% market value for rare magic items that can't easily be made or found makes no sense whatsoever and is totally divorced from anything even remotely resembling a rational market. The economy doesn't have to make a ton of sense, but +4 Shocking weapons aren't that common. The idea that someone will pay ten times more for one because it's in the magic item store than if they bought it directly from the adventurer that pulled it out of the dungeon is just not working for me at all.
....
While I don't generally think that 10% is honestly a reasonable value to use as the base, I'm more than willing to argue that something more like the 50% that was typical in Pathfinder is more than reasonable.
People like to complain about the 50% you get from selling things in pathfinder, and say... how come the shop down the street can sell for more. The reason is quite simple. The shop down the street has quite a few things, of which quite a few people want, and who quite a few people know. They aren't selling the longsword for 100% price, they are selling their whole inventory for normal 100% price, and a small subset of those items get sold every certain period of time.
The reason a particular adventurer can't just turn around and sell an item for 100%. They are defining the object they want to sell and the time they want to sell it ('now') and they may not even be known, or considered reliable, so it is perfectly reasonable for the sale price to reflect this.
This can be seen in what happens in real life. Car dealers generally get more for the cars, because they have the inventory and people come to them when they want something. They have to maintain the inventory, but they get to charge more, and offer to fix up the car if need be and something come up. Private party sales of cars, the buyers pay less, because they know they can get the price down because the person selling it probably really wants to sell it sooner rather than later.
So if you have a group of adventurers who collects a whole bunch of poorly maintained weapons and armor from goblins, gnolls, bandits and such, and expects to sell these at the same price as the local, well liked weaponsmith at the corner, they should be laughed at. If they have a small warehouse, and later on some more bandits are heard from and the demand for some weapons and armor goes up once again, if they have someone to watch the store, yes, they may very well start selling a percentage of their inventory at market value. (potentially adjusted for quality, if they weren't cleaned up and repaired to make them like-newish)
Guess what, the easiest way to do that is to take all that treasure, and allow them to consider it as and investment in a shop business. Then they can have a small percentage of return based on the shop selling or swapping the gear in inventor in an advantageous trade.
Again, 10% seem a bit on the short side, I will grant, although some conditions can easily warrant it. For instance, you may only get maybe 5 dollars for a stack of a hundred magic cards, but you don't realize that there are 5 cards in the deck that are themselves worth 5-20 dollars each. Even if you realize it... those cards are only worth that to the people who want them, and need them for their deck. Some people may look at them as only be a pretty, ugly, or shiny card, and consider them worth 5 cents. And until you find the right buyer, that is all their worth. Even if you find the right buyer, they have to be able to afford it. If the right buyer knows it is worth $20 but only has $10, you will only get $10 selling it to them, unless you can negotiate something non-cash that they have, that they can do without, that you would value and they would be willing to part with.
That example could work... You might be able to find a buyer for a magic item in a small town, but they may not be able to afford to pay list price for the item.
But if someone hires you to recover an item that is worth 1000gp, and it is rare enough they'd be willing to pay for it again, it is perfectly reasonable for them to offer you full price for it. If you uncover something from a ruins, and it is just the right collectors item, and they have reason to believe you might have reason to want to keep it yourself. It is perfectly reasonable for the GM to offer you list price for an item when the collector comes by.
But, if you're trying to unload a bunch of stuff, it is perfectly reasonable to see people paying less than list price for the stuff you are trying to convert into cash. In fact, if you are unloading a lot of the same stuff, and stuff that isn't exactly in a lot of demand a the moment (already flooded market of that item), it is perfectly reasonable for you to be offered less than half for stuff. Potentially as low as half of what bulk pricing for the items might be, of the quality that you're selling.
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For me here's the big difference with the new monster rules:
Making a monster from scratch in PF1e took hours. If the monster had class levels, it could take all day for a single monster.
Without there even being monster building rules available yet, I was able to build a level appropriate monster for PF2e in about 30 minutes.
You'll have to argue some pretty big drawbacks to convince me that isn't a win.
I can make a high level monster with class levels in PF1E in 30-45 minutes from scratch. It's not anywhere near an all day task.