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Yeah it feels good for the Martials to actually get a chance rolling some damage dice compared to the 1d12 + 30 in 1e.
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Rolling dice is fun. Rolling lots of dice is lots of fun.
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Nothing is more fun than being reminded how weak your character is!
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Having played a character who did like d8+46 damage on a hit, I prefer having more dice and fewer static modifiers since it basically wasn't worth rolling those d8s.
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Rolling a ton of dice IS fun, regardless of what the party poopers might say - while the source of the dice is questionable, I would rather have a character dealing an extra 4d6 than a character dealing an extra +15.
We’d have the exact same thread if PF1 had weapons that added +20 flat damage and characters had no bonuses.
(That said yes mandatory items need to die in a fire and you might have noticed some mild support from the idea coming through my posts, but the point is flat bonuses are not the right answer)
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Strange, because my reaction is just the opposite.
I would rather the crits did less, especially since it is the NPCs and monsters that are going to be getting more crits.
Often encounters are against opponents that are higher level than you. They frequently will have an attack bonus that has a greater than 50% chance of hitting. With the new mechanics, every bonus to hit also means a bonus to crit. This means that the monsters will crit more than the PCs.
A streak of lucky rolls is even more likely to take out the PCs than it was in PF1.
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I play a lot of Warhammer so I’m pretty firmly in the camp of “Dump a literal bucket of dice”
I'm pretty much the opposite for the same reason. The current design of warhammer is a poster child for roll (and reroll) buckets of dice for minimal purpose and result. Especially with their hit/wound/save system, where you can literally roll 300 dice and only end up killing a model or two.
And then move on to the next unit.Rolling a bucket of dice is a complete waste of time.
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Strange, because my reaction is just the opposite.
First of all, I don’t find it particularly fun as GM or player to watch people the time it takes to total the dice. Watching people count dice is the opposite of exciting in my opinion.
I also would rather the crits did less, especially since it is the NPCs and monsters that are going to be getting more crits.
Often encounters are against opponents that are higher level than you. They frequently will have an attack bonus that has a greater than 50% chance of hitting. With the new mechanics, every bonus to hit also means a bonus to crit. This means that the monsters will crit more than the PCs.
A streak of lucky rolls is even more likely to take out the PCs than it was in PF1.
Strange, because my reaction is just the opposite.
I would rather the crits did less, especially since it is the NPCs and monsters that are going to be getting more crits.
Often encounters are against opponents that are higher level than you. They frequently will have an attack bonus that has a greater than 50% chance of hitting. With the new mechanics, every bonus to hit also means a bonus to crit. This means that the monsters will crit more than the PCs.
A streak of lucky rolls is even more likely to take out the PCs than it was in PF1.
Encounters are just as likely to put you against groups of monsters of lower level. The standard high encounter includes 4 monsters at APL-2. I've run several of those recently, and the PCs crit all over the place. If the monster does out level you, then you definitely outnumber it and can use stuff like flanking or demoralize to increase the chances to crit and hit.
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Encounters are just as likely to put you against groups of monsters of lower level. The standard high encounter includes 4 monsters at APL-2. I've run several of those recently, and the PCs crit all over the place. If the monster does out level you, then you definitely outnumber it and can use stuff like flanking or demoralize to increase the chances to crit and hit.
Debuffing is much stronger in PF2 than it was in PF1, especially since many of them will reduce the AC of the affected creature.
Unless they are going to change a lot of standard plot lines though, boss fights are against something better than the group. I can’t think of an AP or module where that isn’t true. It is usually the case for scenarios as well.
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I like rolling lots of dice, but I think they are more fun when you have a debuff on a critical hit. Like rendering foes flat-footed or pushing them around the field. That is why I really like critical specialization effects in PF2. The lots of dice thing isn't as big a deal for me, though I like that d12's are a good choice.
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I feel like a big failing in PF1 is that most cases of "party against higher level solo boss" were tilted heavily in favor of the party, since it was basically impossible for the boss to overcome the action economy disadvantage they were at. Having level actually affect as much as it does in PF2 really does help to resolve this since the APL+2 boss's actions, though less numerous, are significantly more valuable than the party's actions.
IDK if I'd say that a string of lucky rolls is more likely to bring down a player in PF2 as you surmise but you could be right. But I think it's worth noting that due to the dying rules a string of lucky rolls is mch less likely to KILL a player than in PF1, so there is that.
Think of it like this then:
In PF1, the best you could do with a critical was 25% chance and that was only possible on certain weapons. Many of the highest damage weapons would have a maximum of 10% chance and that required investment.
In PF2, just having a hit chance of 75% gives 25% chance of critical. It doesn’t matter what type of weapon it is, all weapons have the same chance of critical hit assuming equal investment. Some weapons (such as rapier) do more on a crit, but the chances of the crit are mostly determined by relative level.
I do agree that the chance of direct death by crit is much lower in PF2 than PF1, especially at medium to high levels. I don’t have a good feel yet as to which is more likely to cause a death spiral because of a crit landing at the wrong time. Take out the wrong person, and the whole party is likely to go down.
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I play a lot of Warhammer so I’m pretty firmly in the camp of “Dump a literal bucket of dice”I'm pretty much the opposite for the same reason. The current design of warhammer is a poster child for roll (and reroll) buckets of dice for minimal purpose and result. Especially with their hit/wound/save system, where you can literally roll 300 dice and only end up killing a model or two.
And then move on to the next unit.Rolling a bucket of dice is a complete waste of time.
I used to play bad Moonz Orks.
The fact that only one hit out of 20 would kill a Marine never really took the shine off saying “alright, this unit fires, it’s 56 shots” and then flipping the bucket.
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I play a lot of Warhammer so I’m pretty firmly in the camp of “Dump a literal bucket of dice”I'm pretty much the opposite for the same reason. The current design of warhammer is a poster child for roll (and reroll) buckets of dice for minimal purpose and result. Especially with their hit/wound/save system, where you can literally roll 300 dice and only end up killing a model or two.
And then move on to the next unit.Rolling a bucket of dice is a complete waste of time.
I used to play bad Moonz Orks.
The fact that only one hit out of 20 would kill a Marine never really took the shine off saying “alright, this unit fires, it’s 56 shots” and then flipping the bucket.
You’ll love the new codex. They get some fun stuff.
Also I think we the best way to summarize our stance is.
“Like Dakka, you can never have enough dice buckets.”
I am personally not a huge fan of all the dice, as I have seen players taking excessive amounts of time to calculate the final result.
If gentle pressure to "count faster" doesn't suffice for your group, may I suggest an app?
I personally am not a big fan of more dice = more fun, but I was not a fan of the way damage was handled in PF 1 either with things like 1d8+16+2d6. That said, I like that the Playtest decided to do something different with damage than how PF1 handled it, and it is a fairly interesting and unique design space for the game to occupy, even if I personally find it tedious. I will probably adopt average rolls for all monsters and maybe even PCs if my group decides to make the switch to PF2 just to be able to keep playing Paizo APs.
I love rolling lots of dice, but then I am a fast counter. Hell, I often have the totals of other players' rolls before they do. I won't announce it unless they seem to be struggling, however.
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It's not. And no I won't use an app. I bought my dice so I can roll them. And d12 is the crappiest die ever.
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PF1e damage, with regard to crit, was consistent. Being able to set player expectations is important, and going in knowing that a crit would carve a real chunk out of someone was always nice. It wasn't jump-up-from-the-table-and-holler fun, but it certainly was worth a solid fist-pump.
PF2e damage, with regard to crit, is a lot of fun... when the dice are kind. You want to watch a player deflate? Let them roll that crit against the big bad and then get 1s and 2s on their bucket o' dice. Or I could reach into my way-back pocket and talk about my group's foray into Star Wars: Saga Edition, where our Soldier popped a Destiny point (auto-crit) for his Blaster Rifle (3d8) and managed 8 damage total.
One thing my group has done (for some d20-based games, we haven't tried it for PF2e yet) is that crits, rather than dealing double damage, become more cinematic. Lopping off limbs or setting the enemy prone and forced to run for 2 turns... things of that nature. Of course, crits work both ways, so watching the Paladin be stunned for a round and shaken for a round after that because the bugbear hit him really really hard has also made for rather interesting RP opportunities in combat.
It feels like "roll regular damage then double it" is a reasonable way to make crits not take more time than regular hits. All you're really losing is "odd numbered damage".
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I am personally not a huge fan of all the dice, as I have seen players taking excessive amounts of time to calculate the final result.If gentle pressure to "count faster" doesn't suffice for your group, may I suggest an app?
What if using an app to roll your dice for you is not fun?
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I am personally not a huge fan of all the dice, as I have seen players taking excessive amounts of time to calculate the final result.If gentle pressure to "count faster" doesn't suffice for your group, may I suggest an app?
My experience is that players really like their dice, and considering that we have a fair number of players who are into programming trusting an app might not work.
I am not disagreeing that an App might work, but I have seen people advanced functionality in roll20.net and quite often that took more time and was prone to errors.
Actually asking players to be quicker, usually has the opposite effect, I am personally happy if they manage to put all the dice they require on the table before they end up needing it.
That is also an area where the playtest rules where the playtest rules kinda demand players bring more dice... I could shower people in D6 but frankly, that gets harder if the game needs d12.
Since I offer a fair bit of PFS at conventions, right now that could mean bringing more dice to provide to players, though to be fair, offerings aimed at new players usually are in the lower levels.
It feels like "roll regular damage then double it" is a reasonable way to make crits not take more time than regular hits. All you're really losing is "odd numbered damage".
In the 'feels' department, certainly. It's (basically) just as fast as a regular roll, and still feels good. Problem is, it's even more varied, statistically, than rolling the bucket o' dice.
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I am personally not a huge fan of all the dice, as I have seen players taking excessive amounts of time to calculate the final result.If gentle pressure to "count faster" doesn't suffice for your group, may I suggest an app?My experience is that players really like their dice, and considering that we have a fair number of players who are into programming trusting an app might not work.
I am not disagreeing that an App might work, but I have seen people advanced functionality in roll20.net and quite often that took more time and was prone to errors.
Actually asking players to be quicker, usually has the opposite effect, I am personally happy if they manage to put all the dice they require on the table before they end up needing it.
That is also an area where the playtest rules where the playtest rules kinda demand players bring more dice... I could shower people in D6 but frankly, that gets harder if the game needs d12.Since I offer a fair bit of PFS at conventions, right now that could mean bringing more dice to provide to players, though to be fair, offerings aimed at new players usually are in the lower levels.
We have started just sharing our dice more at the table. You'd think it would get annoying, because you need to track which dice belongs to who, but there's something about everyone tossing in a dice on a crit that gets everyone hyped.
My group was getting their butt kicked by Drakus the Taker, but the paladin got a scythe crit on a retributive strike, probably saving the life of the barbarian. Because it felt like such a communal moment, I had all 3 players roll one of the d10, which made the stupid high damage finishing blow feel really epic.
I think it is one part that sharing your dice makes you feel like part of the crit, and one part that anything that keeps you engaged between turns is good, even if only to make sure you get your dice back.
It feels like "roll regular damage then double it" is a reasonable way to make crits not take more time than regular hits. All you're really losing is "odd numbered damage".In the 'feels' department, certainly. It's (basically) just as fast as a regular roll, and still feels good. Problem is, it's even more varied, statistically, than rolling the bucket o' dice.
One solution is to just roll the damage dice once, then add the maximum for the crit. Thus a crit will always do more damage than a normal attack and could do up to double if you're lucky. This eliminates the terrible feeling of rolling low on a crit and doing below average damage for even a normal hit.
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I have a couple players who don't want to buy or carry around buckets of dice.
The math scaling up with weapons that deal different dice creates so much mathematical dissonance that you really get no real choices.
Critical specializations on anything that isn't a sword probably isn't worth investing into.
For D&D, I prefer smaller handfuls of dice, with smaller ranges. There's just so much information entropy that running the game becomes daunting, honestly it felt like playing a different game completely and not a tabletop RPG.
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It's kind of funny that you say this considering that a lot of people (Myself included) think that the Sword crit effect is easily the least interesting. There are just so many other ways to get flat-footed on a foe and most of the other crit effects do something useful or interesting. I've only seen a few of them come up but honestly that's mostly because I keep forgetting about it because I'm not used to the new rule. It's been cool when it has come up though.
Critical specializations on anything that isn't a sword probably isn't worth investing into.
Not a very strong case, but it's more true that swords inexorably improve hit chance with no action cost. The stats are there.
Even though it involves a save, being able to inflict "slowed" on a crit is very nice for monks who are using a hit and run strategy, since it extends your action economy advantage.
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Not a very strong case, but it's more true that swords inexorably improve hit chance with no action cost. The stats are there.It's kind of funny that you say this considering that a lot of people (Myself included) think that the Sword crit effect is easily the least interesting. There are just so many other ways to get flat-footed on a foe and most of the other crit effects do something useful or interesting. I've only seen a few of them come up but honestly that's mostly because I keep forgetting about it because I'm not used to the new rule. It's been cool when it has come up though.
Critical specializations on anything that isn't a sword probably isn't worth investing into.
Only if they aren't already flat-footed, though. There are soooo many ways to make them flat-footed.
Even assuming a white room scenario with no other support from flanking, spells, feats, or what have you, the sword critical specialization is worse than the hammer or flail, which knock the enemy prone. That makes them flat-footed and either costs them an action which provokes or gives them a melee penalty.
Going back and looking at it, I think a lot of the critical specialization effects are good. Only ones I think are of dubious quality are club, shied, axe, and bow. Bow is good when it lands, but "standing next to something you can pin them to" might not come up a lot depending on where you're fighting. But knocking someone prone, inflicting enfeebled or slow are great and there's no reason to complain about the knife, dart, and pick ones since it's literally just "extra damage" and no one says no to extra damage in this game.
I guess polearm being good or not is contingent on whether you can make AoOs. Sword honestly seems like a weaker one, since a lot of the time you want to make them flat-footed before you start swinging, like my elven curve blade rogue has no use for that critical specialization ancestry feat since she feints first to set up sneak attacks.
This does mean my copious d12 which have barely seen the light of day since I finished playing 4th ed will have a use once more.
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I think I might be having a slightly different experience than a lot of you who enjoy multiple dice. I feel like it takes too long to adjudicate at my table with my players. They typically have taken to asking me to roll their damage for them around level 9+ to 'speed up' play. Essentially every crit or spell I'm rolling damage for them because they don't want to have to play 'go fish' for more dice every time they roll well.
I think I might be having a slightly different experience than a lot of you who enjoy multiple dice. I feel like it takes too long to adjudicate at my table with my players. They typically have taken to asking me to roll their damage for them around level 9+ to 'speed up' play. Essentially every crit or spell I'm rolling damage for them because they don't want to have to play 'go fish' for more dice every time they roll well.
Why don't they just roll twice and add the totals?
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I, too, dislike rolling a heap of dice in an additive system. I don't even like rolling more than a d20. Too many dice just slow down the pace of the game, especially if any players have dyscalculia.
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In 30 years of D&D and PF I have never bought any more dice than the ones I found in my basic set, except for another d10 with double digits for percentile rolls.
As a DM or as a player, the occasional 14d6 fireball means that I roll 14 times my green cube and add up; I'm really fast at math (well, a bit less nowadays), but the time to roll is still not negligible and it has been ok only because it was just that, occasional.
In the last few years I have only been playing online (unfortunately), so again it's mostly not a problem; but I guess I would really have to buy some more dice if I ever play PF2 live.
Will I like it? Probably not much, but I guess I will get used to it. The time lost may be a problem; on the other hand, having rolls become a bit more important than in PF1 shouldn't be a bad thing: 1d8 is meaningless when you add 37 to it.
Some middle ground would be the best, to me.
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I, too, dislike rolling a heap of dice in an additive system. I don't even like rolling more than a d20. Too many dice just slow down the pace of the game, especially if any players have dyscalculia.
The 10 grouping method speeds this up and I'm sure it would help people with dyscalculia. Roll your dice and then look for 4s, 5s, and 6s. Group a 4 with a 6, group 2 5s together put them to the side. Then look for 7s or 3s, then look for 8s or 2s. so on. Count the remainders. You don't have to remember any of the dice you already counted because they are grouped to the side by 10s. It helps a ton believe me.
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I, too, dislike rolling a heap of dice in an additive system. I don't even like rolling more than a d20. Too many dice just slow down the pace of the game, especially if any players have dyscalculia.The 10 grouping method speeds this up and I'm sure it would help people with dyscalculia. Roll your dice and then look for 4s, 5s, and 6s. Group a 4 with a 6, group 2 5s together put them to the side. Then look for 7s or 3s, then look for 8s or 2s. so on. Count the remainders. You don't have to remember any of the dice you already counted because they are grouped to the side by 10s. It helps a ton believe me.
Depends, I can recognize 6 and 4 and 5 and 5 as grouping by 10 pretty easily, but I don't parse the other configurations as well. It's not impossible, but it takes me a little bit to recognize it, enough that just adding it up by counting on my fingers after I add all the numbers I can sort is quicker. (I don't really like dice rolling websites; I'll use them if a disintegrate crits or something, but I prefer not to.)
The bucket o' dice type of rolling by no means makes games unplayable for me, but it does take notably longer, especially when I'm GMing and tracking multiple characters.
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My 1d10 is meaningfull to me even when i add +52 and 1d6 then another 2d6 to it. It eventually becomes 4d10 or 5d10 or more(iterative attacks and aoo triggers).
People take weapon spec for 2 damage. 1d10 has an average of 5.5.
EDIT: I know this is nitpicking and not entirely related to the op. Sorry about that. It just feels wierd when people calls 1d8s or 1d10s meaningless.