Top 5 things to expect for the final edition. Paizo Stream 21 / 12 / 18

[Dante Doom]

Hey guys, we just had a good stream from Mr Jason Bulmahn!

Here I will summarize the changes that were mentioned.

So the top 5 was:

5- Add more flavor
The final book all abilities will have more flavor. Like how the wizard will have a "Thesis" that he get to chose the name and everything.

4- Chapter 1 Rework
Chapter 1 has been completely redone.
The large number of page references was taken out and in place we have a "little adventure" guiding new players in the basics of the game. As ther Story unfolds you learn the game

3- GM Resources
DC table was simplified (just one line for level and another for DC's). Conditions were reviewed. Some were split, some grouped.
There is a new condtion called "Doomed". It lowers the death threshold by the amount (Ex Doomed 2 you will be DEAD if you get do Dying 2)

2- Ressonance
Completly gone... Yeah that's righ... No more ressonance whatsoever! Even the Focus rework didn't did well.
(Some items will be changed to reflect this, like wands not beeing a spell in a branch)

1- Proficiency rework (HUGE)
The data showed that proficiency was a cool system, but the difference between levels was very low.
Ok so now we have:

Untrained: You get NOTHING, not even your level, you will suck hard my friend!
Trained: LVL + 2
Expert: LVL + 4
Master: LVL + 6
Legendary: LVL + 8

[dmerceless]

I gotta go watch that stream right now but I'm baffled and very happy, Paizo just changed almost all the things I disliked the most and changed them to be the way I wanted. I'd prefer Untrained as (1/2 level) - 2, but that way is also cool, and no more Barbs with +20 Arcana!

[Atalius]

Yes great change in proficiencies, +1 was weak. Good work Paizo!

[oholoko]

Well a bit sad over the untrained proef, but otherwise good changes. Even if i wanted a final update monday xD

[BretI]

Dante Doom wrote:

1- Proficiency rework (HUGE)
The data showed that proficiency was a cool system, but the difference between levels was very low.
Ok so now we have:

Untrained: You get NOTHING, not even your level, you will suck hard my friend!
Trained: LVL + 2
Expert: LVL + 4
Master: LVL + 6
Legendary: LVL + 8

If this is the case, I hope there is some way to help the untrained — especially with skills that require the group participate like disguise, stealth, and many cases of athletics.

[Dante Doom]

BretI wrote:

Dante Doom wrote:

1- Proficiency rework (HUGE)
The data showed that proficiency was a cool system, but the difference between levels was very low.
Ok so now we have:

Untrained: You get NOTHING, not even your level, you will suck hard my friend!
Trained: LVL + 2
Expert: LVL + 4
Master: LVL + 6
Legendary: LVL + 8

If this is the case, I hope there is some way to help the untrained — especially with skills that require the group participate like disguise, stealth, and many cases of athletics.

Maybe a Group Skill Check?

[Atalius]

With no resonance what happens now? Can a person just stockpile potions of heal or wands of whatever?

[PossibleCabbage]

I dislike losing +Level to untrained stuff, but +1/2 Level would be fine, I guess.

[Captain Morgan]

Huh, wow. Not sure how I feel about some of these changes. I liked untrained about where it was, personally. And I dunno how to feel about how big that proficiency gap is. Feels like we are getting back to "most of the party shouldn't bother attempting the check" territory. Also, trained being level +2 feels a little unnecessary. I rather liked it as level +1 for simplicity. But I guess at low levels that would be extremely small if you aren't taking a penalty to untrained anymore.

I think I'm onboard IF it means item bonuses are being cut back.

And if item bonuses are cut back, and resonance is gone, I wonder what items will look like?

Intelligence is now much stronger though, with being untrained being so severe.

[NielsenE]

Atalius wrote:

With no resonance what happens now? Can a person just stockpile potions of heal or wands of whatever?

They said yes on potions, and that wands will be redesigned to be something different than "lots of scrolls in a stick"

[Darksol the Painbringer]

Dante Doom wrote:

Hey guys, we just had a good stream from Mr Jason Bulmahn!

Here I will summarize the changes that were mentioned.

So the top 5 was:

5- Add more flavor
The final book all abilities will have more flavor. Like how the wizard will have a "Thesis" that he get to chose the name and everything.

4- Chapter 1 Rework
Chapter 1 has been completely redone.
The large number of page references was taken out and in place we have a "little adventure" guiding new players in the basics of the game. As ther Story unfolds you learn the game

3- GM Resources
DC table was simplified (just one line for level and another for DC's). Conditions were reviewed. Some were split, some grouped.
There is a new condtion called "Doomed". It lowers the death threshold by the amount (Ex Doomed 2 you will be DEAD if you get do Dying 2)

2- Ressonance
Completly gone... Yeah that's righ... No more ressonance whatsoever! Even the Focus rework didn't did well.
(Some items will be changed to reflect this, like wands not beeing a spell in a branch)

1- Proficiency rework (HUGE)
The data showed that proficiency was a cool system, but the difference between levels was very low.
Ok so now we have:

Untrained: You get NOTHING, not even your level, you will suck hard my friend!
Trained: LVL + 2
Expert: LVL + 4
Master: LVL + 6
Legendary: LVL + 8

5 isn't surprising and what I was going to expect from the final publication anyway. This isn't news.

4 sounds like a good boost. I read through that whole section for the very first time, with it referencing all this stuff, and the book was so eager to just throw you every which way. It was bad design for those who wanted to read it from beginning to end (and really only useful for someone who has actually played the game and knows its mechanics), so I'm glad this is getting addressed.

3 has some interesting implications. One flat DC based on level (without factoring in proficiency and such) might give PF1 fans the "OMG" Power they've been wanting for a long time (assuming they're still interested in the game). The Doomed condition might be awesome to enforce PC death (which isn't necessarily a bad thing; PC death should be a real thing that players need to prepare for), and as a houserule I'd honestly just change Wounded to Doomed, and save the word Doomed for if someone's soul is sent to the appropriate Hell.

2 is probably the most surprising change. No Resonance and no Focus? So what's keeping people from not "dumping" Charisma? I suppose making Intimidate and Deception and Diplomacy and Performance have interesting options to work with, which is something that Intelligence most certainly doesn't get much use out of. I'm also curious what they intend to do with the current items, since as you say, they plan to rework wands yet again.

1 is just "oof." I'm not saying it's entirely bad, but it is certainly painful, plus the scaling makes no sense. I'd at least make Untrained go based off of half your level so that even untrained high level people aren't complete slackers on stuff they don't usually do, with Trained being at-level. I'm also disappointed that they haven't made more of an effort to either A. make skill feats encompass more and/or scale better, or B. make proficiency gating matter more. In addition, as it stands, you only ever become Legendary in 3 skills, which means you only ever matter for 3 skills at the endgame (or 6 as a Rogue), which is silly design compared to however many Trained skills you can get. This ultimately depends on what the DC table has for numbers in comparison to the Trained skills, but with the current rules, having only 1-3 Legendary skills applicable (with everything else being merely trained) is just plain silly and unrealistic.

Overall, I'm hopeful about these kinds of changes, because I'm not sure I'll look forward to re-learning all of the PF1 shenanigans...

[NielsenE]

The other aspect in regards to 1 and 3, is that you'll now be able to get ahead of the DC curve in your specialty -- ie at level 20 a fully specialized person should have a 95% of succeeding at a level appropriate task. Rather than the treadmill-like progression staying stay at 60% for an optimized task.

[Atalius]

NielsenE wrote:

The other aspect in regards to 1 and 3, is that you'll now be able to get ahead of the DC curve in your specialty -- ie at level 20 a fully specialized person should have a 95% of succeeding at a level appropriate task. Rather than the treadmill-like progression staying stay at 60% for an optimized task.

Thank the Gods

[Tridus]

I kind of feel like removing that extra +2 for trained would be simpler, but I guess that would lead to a pretty small gap between trained and untrained at level 1.

I'm also hoping they include some kind of group skill roll mechanic for things like Stealth, because now we're back to "stealth is impossible unless you split the party" once you get past low level.

In general I'm feeling pretty positive. Untrained giving nothing makes a lot of sense, since you are untrained after all. INT thus makes a skill effectively usable, which certainly makes that a more desirable stat.

People in my group didn't want to interact with Resonance to the point that they tended to avoid stuff that required any significant amount of it. We're all okay with seeing that go away along with the extra number to track.

[Helmic]

Iunno about that last one, chief. If they had done one OR the other, sure, but doing both means that those are some f+$@ing massive numbers between untrained and legendary.

5e gets away with it because proficiency only ever gets so high - you might only get a +0 from some skill in addition to your stat mod, but even at level 20 you're only looking at a +6. Again, the numbers are smaller in 5e thanks to bounded accuracy, so that +6 is massive, but it's not so massive that someone that isn't proficient will auto-fail.

For their proposed change, it's just automatic failure. I really liked using training to better convey whether someone "autofails" something, and while I joked about the Kraken being an absurdly good dancer that's because Performance is a weird skill that probably should be a Lore skill based on CHA instead, so that characters who don't have it can get a big fat +0 to their modifiers for it while still having wizards be reasonably OK at action scenes and fighters not ruining every single stealth check they're involved in.

If they do go with that system, I hope they have something in store to make it so players can participate even when they're not specially trained in skills.

[dmerceless]

I want to add some stuff here that Dante didn't mention and I find important:

1 - Jason said that there will be more ways of getting decent at most things at higher levels. He didn't mention how though. The idea is probably that you can be decent at most things eventually, but if you want your character to be bad at something, he doesn't just suddenly become good at that.

2 - High proficiency will not be required to be level-appropriate. High proficiency will make you above the curve, eventually really above the curve. He mentioned that someone who is Legendary at something and has a good stat in that thing will have 90-95% success rate in an average check. He also mentioned the same rate for a high level Fighter with his best attack against an equal-leveled foe.

3 - Magic is going to be buffed across the board. They will definetly fail less often and a lot of individual spells will be improved.

4 - By the way he said that, it doesn't seem like damage is going to be separated from potency, but it is going to matter a lot less than it currently does. Character skill will matter more.

5 - Assurance is going to be reworked, but it is not going to become just a take 10 mechanic.

6 - There will be more guidelines in the GM part about when asking for a check is unnecessary and about checks in which failure doesn't mean complete failure, just taking longer or having some kind of complication.

[Derry L. Zimeye]

These are honestly some pretty good changes! The change to proficiency only bothers me in that I'm gonna have to rework some numbers when it comes to my conversion of Kingmaker to 2e- on its own its a fantastic change! ;D

[Atalius]

dmerceless wrote:

I want to add some stuff here that Dante didn't mention and I find important:

1 - Jason said that there will be more ways of getting decent at most things at higher levels. He didn't mention how though. The idea is probably that you can be decent at most things eventually, but if you want your character to be bad at something, he doesn't just suddenly become good at that.

2 - High proficiency will not be required to be level-appropriate. High proficiency will make you above the curve, eventually really above the curve. He mentioned that someone who is Legendary at something and has a good stat in that thing will have 90-95% success rate in an average check. He also mentioned the same rate for a high level Fighter with his best attack against an equal-leveled foe.

3 - Magic is going to be buffed across the board. They will definetly fail less often and a lot of individual spells will be improved.

4 - By the way he said that, it doesn't seem like damage is going to be separated from potency, but it is going to matter a lot less than it currently does. Character skill will matter more.

5 - Assurance is going to be reworked, but it is not going to become just a take 10 mechanic.

6 - There will be more guidelines in the GM part about when asking for a check is unnecessary and about checks in which failure doesn't mean complete failure, just taking longer or having some kind of complication.

Thanks for sharing that dmerceless! If Pathfinder 2 was coming out this Christmas I'd be buying myself a new present this year. This game looks very promising I particularly enjoy points 3, 4 and 5.

[Charlie Brooks]

Hm. So instead of a 7-point gap between untrained and legendary, it is potentially a 28-point gap (excluding ability bonuses and item bonuses).

Assuming that the proficiency system remains universal, that also means that somebody with legendary proficiency in an attack or save has a +6 advantage over somebody who is trained - basically the same as the 1st edition difference between a good save and a poor one once you hit the highest levels.

I'll be interested in how this turns out in play. From an adventure-writing perspective, you're going to have to hope that somebody in the group is trained in the skill that is most relevant to a challenge, because at high levels there just won't be a chance for, say, a group thin on Diplomacy to negotiate effectively. I'm also perhaps slightly concerned that the wider proficiency gap leads to the same numbers issues as in 1st edition, where a Will save that is challenging for a cleric to make is big trouble for the rogue, but the reduction in save or lose/die effects eases that worry a bit (as long as the only dying/losing on a critical fail remains in effect).

It's probably inevitable that the game will take a step closer to 1st edition as it nears its final form. This is probably a good thing, since 1st edition is such a fun game, but I really hope the high-level math problems get left in the past.

EDIT: The proficiency change will mean I go through fewer erasers when updating my character sheet, which is something.

[Paradozen]

Neat. Not sure if I like the change to untrained, but I see why it would be a good idea. Kinda sad there is no resonance-related ability, I really liked the theme even if the mechanics weren't working. Maybe PF unchained 2 will have something. I wonder how critical hits will change with the bigger proficiency bonuses. Perhaps the +/-10 system isn't going to apply to attacks, or monsters will be expected to survive many critical hits. Or just be more fragile, but with bigger attacks. Either way, I'll be interested in seeing it.

[Barnabas Eckleworth III]

I think level minus 4 was still plenty, especially with trained now being +2. That's a difference of 6, which is very significant.

[CharlieIAm]

I really appreciated that suckage was relative in the Playtest, and am skeptical that any way to get generally better will work as well.

[Porridge]

Interesting changes. I hope they don’t go back to body slots for magic items, though. And really hope they give Charisma something of value for all characters.

[Dante Doom]

Porridge wrote:

Interesting changes. I hope they don’t go back to body slots for magic items, though. And really hope they give Charisma something of value for all characters.

No, we will have a "Ressonance" system for invested items

So... I liked ressonance and I liked tight math. Feel this news are a steps behind. But I get it, Paizo needs to make money and the hate was too loud...

And then we come back to the days that nobody can sneak, since we can have a gap of 28 points.

Where the party will stockpile scrolls and potions!

[Justin Franklin]

Charlie Brooks wrote:

Hm. So instead of a 7-point gap between untrained and legendary, it is potentially a 28-point gap (excluding ability bonuses and item bonuses).

Assuming that the proficiency system remains universal, that also means that somebody with legendary proficiency in an attack or save has a +6 advantage over somebody who is trained - basically the same as the 1st edition difference between a good save and a poor one once you hit the highest levels.

I'll be interested in how this turns out in play. From an adventure-writing perspective, you're going to have to hope that somebody in the group is trained in the skill that is most relevant to a challenge, because at high levels there just won't be a chance for, say, a group thin on Diplomacy to negotiate effectively. I'm also perhaps slightly concerned that the wider proficiency gap leads to the same numbers issues as in 1st edition, where a Will save that is challenging for a cleric to make is big trouble for the rogue, but the reduction in save or lose/die effects eases that worry a bit (as long as the only dying/losing on a critical fail remains in effect).

It's probably inevitable that the game will take a step closer to 1st edition as it nears its final form. This is probably a good thing, since 1st edition is such a fun game, but I really hope the high-level math problems get left in the past.

EDIT: The proficiency change will mean I go through fewer erasers when updating my character sheet, which is something.

That assumes that at higher levels PCs will still have saves that they are only trained in. It was mentioned that even Wizards become Experts in Simple weapons eventually so I would think bad save all at least expert if not master and good saves are legendary. That would be a 2 to 4 point difference then.

[Atalius]

Porridge wrote:

Interesting changes. I hope they don’t go back to body slots for magic items, though. And really hope they give Charisma something of value for all characters.

Absolutely!

[D@rK-SePHiRoTH-]

Very good, now just add the ability for players to have a minimum guaranteed amount of uncommon abilities without GM fiat and I may even buy the game when it's out

[heretic]

Only got to listen to part of the Twitch feed but the 5 things were welcome.

As I have said on these hallowed fora before: I cannot warm to the philosophy that characters swiftly become like 1970's action heroes who just happened to be exceptionally good at everything except perhaps those things they are even better than merely exceptional at!

So I like that if you have never trained at it you are likely to be "amateur hour". I like that the so called "dabblers" i.e. trained jacks of all trades adventurers while "journeyman" levels of good don't swiftly overshadow focused master craftsmen, professionals, academics etc.
I support allowing the experts, masters and especially legends to really show their superiority over all the above mentioned.

I do feel that the trained "dabblers" still get comparatively good at skills that they have less obvious narrative connection to and would have liked something that slowed or even bettter capped the level bonus to respect that boot camp and on the job experience is great in most challenges but it is not going to cut it against a dedicated specialist in their field.

Still much happier today than yesterday about skills and proficiencies!

Glad to see resonance go. I just hope that whatever replaces it - in as much as it was the playtest replacement for item slots - is not just better than resonance but better than the slot system.

Did not like assurance from the day I read about it and the more I compared it to the take 10 mechanic it replaced the less it seemed like a improvement! I pray the new thing works with my philosophy that rules should be easily explicable to a new player both in terms of how it works and why.

E.g. For item slots & take ten you pretty much cover it if you say to the new player:

What: You can only wear one magic item on the same part of your body, one ring on each hand and here's a list of which parts of your body is a slot you can use.

Why: It makes sense you can't wear two pairs of shoes or spectacles and multiple necklaces or bracelets cause magical interference with each other. Anyway the rules need a way to manage just how much magical bling you can wear at one time.

&

What: You normally roll a D20 and add your skill bonus to see how well you did. If nobody is messing with you, you can choose to add ten to your skill rather than roll.

Why: This is because if you are doing a simple task relating to something at which you are really good, then you won't screw up 25% of the time. The way a shoemaker making simple shoes won't be going to home each evening having failed to make every 4th shoe or a surgeon doesn't kill every 4th patient whose appendix she is removing.

(Cue reminiscence of Runequest where 30% of ppl in the average village lacked a shared language with the other 70% and how games design has moved on...)

Explaining Resonance & Assurance was much less simple and fun!

On reflection Assurance never got used once by my wizard in the playtest.

As ever I await August's magnum opus with baited breath!

[Gorbacz]

While I'm on board with removing Ressonance and the differences between Trained and higher profs, the no +level to Untrained is disappointing. We're back in the "your party can't Stealth because there's that one person who didn't pick Trained" territory. Unless all PCs will have enough proficiencies at level 1 to make sure every PC can get Trained in basic adventuring skills, it will be a wasted opportunity to dodge one of core issues of PF1 and 5E.

[Edge93]

Man, I hate to say this but I'm not actually too thrilled about all this.

The no level to Untrained is really a bummer to me and seems like it could ruin the awesome nuanced system of how you are in a skill that skill gating provided. However this will probably be super-easy to houserule out if I don't like it in play so I can't be too upset. Hopefully most classes will at least get some more trained skills so we aren't back to PF1's your-superhuman-still-sucks-at-a-whole-lot-of-things.

I'm not a fan of doubling the proficiency bump either, again I would have much rather seen more non-number perks and abilities gained by advancing skills, that's way more exciting to me than any number hike. This one I expect will be harder to tweak if it doesn't play well to me as the DC tables will likely be balanced around that.

Between that and what sounds like only 1 DC per level of task it sounds like we might end up back a little too close to the PF1 levels of hard to challenge specialists. That said I expect 1 DC per level will be much easier to work with so that's cool.

But that variance between Trained and Legendary, let alone Untrained and Legendary, it just feels like we will be right back to "You can't challenge the specialist without leaving everyone else out". Again, I'd much rather have seen expansion on the more nuanced system we were teased with the Playtest rather than just bigger number difference.

Resonance, I mean I wasn't expecting too much different but I was of the unpopular opinion that Resonance was awesome and just needed a few tweaks to be excellent, certainly a huge improvement on item charges per day. But yeah, after all the complaints people had I figured we would end up with something flung far away. So sorry to hear it but no surprise. I'll look at what Paizo is doing for magic items before I decide if I need to try to work a form of Resonance back in.

The bit about Fighters potentially looking at a 90-95% hit chance on best attack against on level creatures actually REALLY disappoints me. That was the part in the reading here where my enthusiasm actually dimmed. My group and I have really enjoyed defense actually feeling effective and viable in PF2 and on the surface this sounds like we are running right back towards PF1's issue of to-hit so badly outdoing evasion. I'm really hoping it turns out better in practice than what it sounds like from those stream notes. 90-95% skill success for specialists on-level doesn't matter so much. and besides we already HAVE that as of the updated 10-2, but when you are putting abilities you have focused on against defenses your enemy has probably focused on to some degree as well, a 90-95% success rate just sounds frustrating.

And is +/-10 still around? I really hope it stays but 40-45% crit chance for Fighter sounds horrible tbh.

I just... I've been really excited about the Playtest since the get-go and have loved the great majority of what Paizo has done. I've been all over these forums trying to support a lot of things about PF2 and explain the good I see in them. But these stream notes, if accurate, really do have me feeling a bit let down from my expectations. Some of this, particularly the proficiency and success rate changes, the knee-jerk reaction is for it to feel like giving in to people complaining on the forums. But I do trust Paizo knows what they are doing, and I expect they are making their decisions fro more reliable sources than the forums. And of course I intend to buy the CRB when it comes and give it a good thorough look and check before I decide what exactly to do with it.

But I hope these stream notes aren't 100% representative because if they are then my running of PF2 might just look a lot more like the Playtest.

I don't want this to sound like I'm dissing Paizo though. Anything but Y'all have done loads of work on this and I expect you know what you are doing, even if some of these changes sound like a big step backwards to me. I'm hoping that my misgivings about the final product now don't follow through, or that if they do it will at least be easy to back-dial, but I wish you all the best success in this edition regardless.

EDIT: The proficiency change also makes me concerned about the state of saving throws. Another case where high proficiency provided enough difference (Through evasion-type abilities) without making a big number difference. Now the difference between Trained and Legendary matches the gap between a Good save and a Poor save at 20th level in PF1, and that really doesn't sound appealing to me.
Granted it's a little less harsh with how easy Expert is to get but that comparison really bugs me as getting away from that was one of my favorite parts of PF2.

EDIT 2: Sorry if this post seems downer-y, it may feel worse than it actually is because coming into a post titled "Top 5 things to expect for the final edition" with how excited I am for PF2 has me initially super-excited and having some of the changes be eh or be things I really didn't want makes it hit harder due to the raised expectations going into the thread. There are great changes here too but it's a little hard to focus on the when a couple negative points steal my focus away. I will try to look at these things better later when I am less tired.

[Steve Geddes]

Dante Doom wrote:

And then we come back to the days that nobody can sneak, since we can have a gap of 28 points.

Only if someone has gone twenty levels studiously refusing to learn how to sneak even a little bit.

Minimal effort closes the gap by twenty two.

[Gorbacz]

Welp, the choice between 5E and PF2 was very easy yesterday and somewhat difficult today.

[Edge93]

Steve Geddes wrote:

Dante Doom wrote:

And then we come back to the days that nobody can sneak, since we can have a gap of 28 points.

Only if someone has gone twenty levels studiously refusing to learn how to sneak even a little bit.

Minimal effort closes the gap by twenty two.

This is true, but that only actually means anything if classes get enough Trained skills to tag all of the skills that one mght expect to be used in group checks without sacrificing the stuff they want to be specializing in. This brings us a little too close to "skill taxes" for my liking.

[Atalius]

Edge93 wrote:

Man, I hate to say this but I'm not actually too thrilled about all this.

The no level to Untrained is really a bummer to me and seems like it could ruin the awesome nuanced system of how you are in a skill that skill gating provided. However this will probably be super-easy to houserule out if I don't like it in play so I can't be too upset. Hopefully most classes will at least get some more trained skills so we aren't back to PF1's your-superhuman-still-sucks-at-a-whole-lot-of-things.

I'm not a fan of doubling the proficiency bump either, again I would have much rather seen more non-number perks and abilities gained by advancing skills, that's way more exciting to me than any number hike. This one I expect will be harder to tweak if it doesn't play well to me as the DC tables will likely be balanced around that.

Between that and what sounds like only 1 DC per level of task it sounds like we might end up back a little too close to the PF1 levels of hard to challenge specialists. That said I expect 1 DC per level will be much easier to work with so that's cool.

But that variance between Trained and Legendary, let alone Untrained and Legendary, it just feels like we will be right back to "You can't challenge the specialist without leaving everyone else out". Again, I'd much rather have seen expansion on the more nuanced system we were teased with the Playtest rather than just bigger number difference.

Resonance, I mean I wasn't expecting too much different but I was of the unpopular opinion that Resonance was awesome and just needed a few tweaks to be excellent, certainly a huge improvement on item charges per day. But yeah, after all the complaints people had I figured we would end up with something flung far away. So sorry to hear it but no surprise. I'll look at what Paizo is doing for magic items before I decide if I need to try to work a form of Resonance back in.

The bit about Fighters potentially looking at a 90-95% hit chance on best attack against on level creatures actually...

I admire this mans passion for the game. This gentleman has contributed a lot to the Playtest forums. You can throw this man up a flagpole, and I'll salute him.

[Mathmuse]

Edge93 wrote:

Steve Geddes wrote:

Dante Doom wrote:

And then we come back to the days that nobody can sneak, since we can have a gap of 28 points.

Only if someone has gone twenty levels studiously refusing to learn how to sneak even a little bit.

Minimal effort closes the gap by twenty two.

This is true, but that only actually means anything if classes get enough Trained skills to tag all of the skills that one mght expect to be used in group checks without sacrificing the stuff they want to be specializing in. This brings us a little too close to "skill taxes" for my liking.

PF2 has 17 skills, counting Lore as a single skill. An Int 10 Barbarian would start with Athletics and Lore and 4 other skills trained. He gains 9 skill increases at the odd levels from 3rd to 19th. That could train 15 skills total if the character does not improve any skills to expert. That is two short of training all skills. Several other classes start with Lore and 5 other skills, too.

I assume that a boost to Intelligence gives an extra trained skill, too, though the rules don't actually promise that, so add 4 more trained skills from that due to Intelligence boosts at 5th, 10th, 15th, and 20th level. That could train all skills (essentially 19 skill increases from 0th level) including some expert skills. But one legendary skill would require 4 skill increases, leaving only 15 increases to train the other 16 skills. Okay, it's possible to train all skills, but right on the edge, and we would require Intelligence greater than 18 for an alchemist, barbarian, cleric, druid, fighter, monk, paladin, sorcerer, or wizard to have a legendary skill and all other skills trained.

Stealth is as likely as the untrained skill as any other.

[Cyouni]

Edge93 wrote:

The bit about Fighters potentially looking at a 90-95% hit chance on best attack against on level creatures actually REALLY disappoints me.

I'll note, having listened to it, the exact words are "against an average foe". That doesn't necessarily mean an on-level creature, nor one specialized in martial capabilities.

[Captain Morgan]

I'm sort of in Edge's boat right now. I'm at least worried about a lot of this. But I think there's some stuff that might be mitigated.

Edge93 wrote:

Man, I hate to say this but I'm not actually too thrilled about all this.

The no level to Untrained is really a bummer to me and seems like it could ruin the awesome nuanced system of how you are in a skill that skill gating provided. However this will probably be super-easy to houserule out if I don't like it in play so I can't be too upset. Hopefully most classes will at least get some more trained skills so we aren't back to PF1's your-superhuman-still-sucks-at-a-whole-lot-of-things.

I'm not a fan of doubling the proficiency bump either, again I would have much rather seen more non-number perks and abilities gained by advancing skills, that's way more exciting to me than any number hike. This one I expect will be harder to tweak if it doesn't play well to me as the DC tables will likely be balanced around that.

Yeah, I'm a little distressed by the possibility of numbers becoming the focus again over proficiency level. I'm bummed that this was addressed instead of one of my bigger problems, which is that skill feats don't live up to their conceptual potential. To be fair, it does sound like the project they have been working on has been the math, and they are now in the process of altering content. Jason talked about class feats being added/removed/changed to do more of what Paizo wanted them to do. Hopefully they are now doing the same for skill feats.

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But that variance between Trained and Legendary, let alone Untrained and Legendary, it just feels like we will be right back to "You can't challenge the specialist without leaving everyone else out". Again, I'd much rather have seen expansion on the more nuanced system we were teased with the Playtest rather than just bigger number difference.

To be fair, the gap between trained and legendary is no bigger than someone who goes above trained and also gets a +5 item bonus. If item bonuses are scaled back it might not be that bad. And I would vastly prefer skill items were less about numerical bonuses, for example.

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Between that and what sounds like only 1 DC per level of task it sounds like we might end up back a little too close to the PF1 levels of hard to challenge specialists. That said I expect 1 DC per level will be much easier to work with so that's cool.

Yeah, I'm not really sure what to think here. I liked having the different difficulty categories for DCs. I thought it could use some changes in execution-- too many things used the Hard DC, for example. But having the chart made it easy to make those adjustments on the fly. For example, I made identifying most common enemies a medium DC, and used hard for uncommon creatures. Because I have the medium DC right there, that change was easy to make.

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Resonance, I mean I wasn't expecting too much different but I was of the unpopular opinion that Resonance was awesome and just needed a few tweaks to be excellent, certainly a huge improvement on item charges per day. But yeah, after all the complaints people had I figured we would end up with something flung far away. So sorry to hear it but no surprise. I'll look at what Paizo is doing for magic items before I decide if I need to try to work a form of Resonance back in.

More than anything, I think Resonance is a really cool concept. Using your own personal mojo to power stuff like staffs and have it use your spell DC instead of its own was great. I feel like Resonance as a way to activate permanent items seems great, as opposed to charges or once per day uses.

But yeah, gonna depend a lot on what happens to items.

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The bit about Fighters potentially looking at a 90-95% hit chance on best attack against on level creatures actually REALLY disappoints me. That was the part in the reading here where my enthusiasm actually dimmed. My group and I have really enjoyed defense actually feeling effective and viable in PF2 and on the surface this sounds like we are running right back towards PF1's issue of to-hit so badly outdoing evasion.

Not necessarily. A monster and a fighter will (hopefully) still be an equivalent threat, but they don't need to have the same numbers. I've noticed even now that monsters tend to have slightly better to hit bonuses than PCs do, but slightly worse armor class. Your fighter might hit a monster 90% of the time but not a monk.

How that will look in practice... I can't really say. I do worry about how it will interact with the crit mechanics, and I hope monsters don't just become big bundles of hit points that are easy to hit but take forever to drop, a la PF1 and 5e. Some monsters should do that, but not all. And you're going to fight enemies with PC class levels eventually, so that needs to be accounted for.

Also, I like how you can shift the math in your favor with clever application of debuffs, buffs, and positioning. I hope the success rate doesn't get so high that stuff stops mattering.

[Captain Morgan]

Mathmuse wrote:

Edge93 wrote:

Steve Geddes wrote:

Dante Doom wrote:

And then we come back to the days that nobody can sneak, since we can have a gap of 28 points.

Only if someone has gone twenty levels studiously refusing to learn how to sneak even a little bit.

Minimal effort closes the gap by twenty two.

This is true, but that only actually means anything if classes get enough Trained skills to tag all of the skills that one mght expect to be used in group checks without sacrificing the stuff they want to be specializing in. This brings us a little too close to "skill taxes" for my liking.

PF2 has 17 skills, counting Lore as a single skill. An Int 10 Barbarian would start with Athletics and Lore and 4 other skills trained. He gains 9 skill increases at the odd levels from 3rd to 19th. That could train 15 skills total if the character does not improve any skills to expert. That is two short of training all skills. Several other classes start with Lore and 5 other skills, too.

I assume that a boost to Intelligence gives an extra trained skill, too, though the rules don't actually promise that, so add 4 more trained skills from that due to Intelligence boosts at 5th, 10th, 15th, and 20th level. That could train all skills (essentially 19 skill increases from 0th level) including some expert skills. But one legendary skill would require 4 skill increases, leaving only 15 increases to train the other 16 skills. Okay, it's possible to train all skills, but right on the edge, and we would require Intelligence greater than 18 for an alchemist, barbarian, cleric, druid, fighter, monk, paladin, sorcerer, or wizard to have a legendary skill and all other skills trained.

Stealth is as likely as the untrained skill as any other.

There's a lot of assumptions there. We don't have any reason to think skill increases are going to follow the same progression. We know that weapon proficiency won't, for example.

[Steve Geddes]

Edge93 wrote:

Steve Geddes wrote:

Dante Doom wrote:

And then we come back to the days that nobody can sneak, since we can have a gap of 28 points.

Only if someone has gone twenty levels studiously refusing to learn how to sneak even a little bit.

Minimal effort closes the gap by twenty two.

This is true, but that only actually means anything if classes get enough Trained skills to tag all of the skills that one mght expect to be used in group checks without sacrificing the stuff they want to be specializing in. This brings us a little too close to "skill taxes" for my liking.

To me it’s not a huge difference to give everyone the +1/level to everything or to give them more skill choices and letting them buy a small proficiency in most of them over time. It does change the incentives when building a PC - it’ll be a higher price if you don’t give any attention to some of those “group skills”.

[Edge93]

Captain Morgan wrote:

Also, I like how you can shift the math in your favor with clever application of debuffs, buffs, and positioning. I hope the success rate doesn't get so high that stuff stops mattering.

I will try to reply to more of this tomorrow when I am not trying to sleep but I did want to say, SO MUCH THIS. This has been the main thing I point to in explaining why I like typically starting at 50-60% hit chance for on-level foes, it makes all these on-the-fly alterations SO valuable. It's been a big factor in making PF2 combat a joy to run.

In PF1, with my groups, aside from pre-battle buffs these things were fairly disregarded except for flanking for sneak attack because hit chance was high enough that buffs/debuffs that didn't totally cripple the enemy didn't make enough relative difference to be worth the time to use them. The ONLY exception I have seen to this is one of my current campaigns, which has been the one where I have made the most effort to wrangle the math into some semblance of balance but even then it has only done so much. I would hate to see that again but some of the recent posts here make me think it may not be as bad as all that.

[Albatoonoe]

Paizo was interested in reducing the cases of "untrained might as well not try" in the playtest. I'm gonna think there is more to the system to mitigate that. I don't think they up and forgot that it could be a problem. I'm quite interested to see what they come up with.

[Cyouni]

One thing that's also been mentioned is a more "fail-forward" style, where in non-time-sensitive situations it's less about "roll to not fail" as it is "roll to do the situation without problems".

The example given was tracking a bunch of orcs through the forest, and if they fail the check the examples were "it takes longer, and the orcs have an advantage" or "they come out on the other side of a valley, letting the orcs harry them with arrows".

[Edge93]

Cyouni wrote:

Edge93 wrote:

The bit about Fighters potentially looking at a 90-95% hit chance on best attack against on level creatures actually REALLY disappoints me.

I'll note, having listened to it, the exact words are "against an average foe". That doesn't necessarily mean an on-level creature, nor one specialized in martial capabilities.

Okay, hearing that does do a fair bit to mitigate my concerns. Average foe could well mean something like basic level -2 mook considering you face a lot of such in DD. If that's so then it makes a lot of difference.

This accuracy thing was the change here that concerned me the most because altering something fundamental in the math like that would likely be the hardest kind of thing to houserule if I don't like it. That's why I love the solid chassis of PF2, it's the hardest thing to get right and having that taken care of for me makes my job so much easier. So feeling like it might be slipping had me getting rather worried. But it makes me feel a LOT better hearing that distinction. Thanks for mentioning it!

[PossibleCabbage]

Like if we drop +Level from Untrained, are we going to have like 15th level people who are untrained in religion who thus don't know stuff like "Butterflies are a Desna thing" or "a lich doesn't stay dead unless you destroy its phylactery"?

Or am I just going to have to skip rolling for stuff like that because obviously everyone at that level should know this.

[Nox Aeterna]

Would you look at that, good changes this late in the game.

Hoping their changes to the magic system will also make spells worth taking instead of the crap they were.

Who knows, maybe the release version will actually be decent after all.

[Ninja in the Rye]

Steve Geddes wrote:

Edge93 wrote:

Steve Geddes wrote:

Dante Doom wrote:

And then we come back to the days that nobody can sneak, since we can have a gap of 28 points.

Only if someone has gone twenty levels studiously refusing to learn how to sneak even a little bit.

Minimal effort closes the gap by twenty two.

This is true, but that only actually means anything if classes get enough Trained skills to tag all of the skills that one mght expect to be used in group checks without sacrificing the stuff they want to be specializing in. This brings us a little too close to "skill taxes" for my liking.

To me it’s not a huge difference to give everyone the +1/level to everything or to give them more skill choices and letting them buy a small proficiency in most of them over time. It does change the incentives when building a PC - it’ll be a higher price if you don’t give any attention to some of those “group skills”.

The difference is that if you give players choices then they will choose other things that better fit their character concept.

With a skill like Stealth is that there's no point in investing in it if you're not maxing it out, especially if you already have low DEX and/or armor penalties. You'll be mediocre at best at it with a 'minimal' investment. You're better off investing in the skills that either make you better at fighting/exploring or social skills that have broader applications. Why would I invest in Stealth when I could make myself an expert at Intimidation ASAP?

In the old system your Paladin who would otherwise never invest in stealth is at least capable enough to be willing to give it a try and had a non-zero chance of success when the Rogue comes up with a plan that requires sneaking around. Now the Pally will just laugh at the idea that he could hope to accomplish this and draw his sword.

[Pramxnim]

I gotta add my voice to Edge and Captain Morgan in saying that I'm cautiously pessimistic about these changes.

I felt the emphasis in PF2 on teamwork and eking out small advantages in order to turn the tides of battle makes gameplay a fun experience. Perhaps a few tweaks are needed to get the ideal experience for the average playgroup, but I think these proposed changes, taken in a vacuum, are a bit too drastic.

I disagree heavily with the proficiency changes to untrained. It is my impression that the prevalent argument for this change is that characters shouldn't be automatically good at everything just because of their level, because it breaks immersion. I personally think it's a minor sacrifice to make to ensure everyone has a chance at attempting something, even if they haven't trained in it. A hail Mary try to grab the ledge by the Bard who's never worked out in his life but who's desperate to stay alive makes for a cool story moment, because there's a chance he succeeds. With this new change, his chance of success is 0, and his chance to critically fail is high. The change also doesn't really solve the problem of immersion-breaking. A high-level character previously untrained in a skill could spend a Skill Increase to suddenly get a + Level+2 bonus to that skill? How does it make any sense that a frail old Wizard suddenly becomes decently athletic because he decided this level is the level he finally takes training in Athletics? I don't think it makes more sense than a Wizard who's adventured for 15 levels but who hasn't had any formal training in Athletics being somewhat good at it, just by virtue of his accumulated experience.

The widened gap between proficiency ranks also concerns me, in that it will be more difficult to balance challenges for characters of varying proficiency ranks. I'm sure Paizo is aware of this and will come up with some way to mitigate the effects of proficiency now being +2/4/6/8. I'll withhold further comments until they make this information available.

It's still too early to judge where these changes will lead, but my first impressions of them are below average.

[citricking]

They didn't say for sure that the changes to proficiency were for everything, or just skills. I'm still hoping to hit and AC are still +1 per rank, +2 makes prof too important for those things.

[Cyouni]

citricking wrote:

They didn't say for sure that the changes to proficiency were for everything, or just skills. I'm still hoping to hit and AC are still +1 per rank, +2 makes prof too important for those things.

High-level fighters' hit chances were mentioned in the same breath, and I'm quite sure they wouldn't have two different scales for the same system. I wouldn't hold your breath on that.

Edit: I'll also note that there's apparently more ways to improve your proficiency, so that you can become better in more things - high-level wizards can get expert on simple weapons.