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I sure hope Assurance is useful in the final version of the game.
Of all the things in the playtest, Assurance had the widest gap between "how good of an idea it is" and "how useful it is in practice".
I think someone on the forums scooped this already from a comment Luis made in the Know Direction comments from playing in my playtest game with his fighter (not Randyll, my first kill in the playtest, the new one Solveig) with the new Assurance feat but it's way stronger now, both in terms of scaling smoothly not choppily and covering the DCs that it should cover. It's not like it now lets you auto-beat hard tasks of your level or the like, but as Luis mentioned, he could easily use it for things like Battle Medic and it now has you covered for a strong spectrum of DCs no matter which level you are, rather than being way behind the curve until level 15, then OKish at level 15 if you were legendary but then falling behind each level beyond, like it was before.
I never had any doubt that Assurance would be fixed. Exactly how, I don't know, but that a fix had to be found always was a no-brainer. Thanks for the confirmation, for the anxious among us :-)
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My biggest takeaway from listening to the podcast was that, overall, PF2 will be very similar to the Playtest rules. There are a few significant changes (like no resonance) and a lot of little changes (a +1 here might become a +2 there, etc.), but the general look and feel and play of the game will be very familiar to those who did the playtest. There's been some tweaking, but not major changes in direction Whether this is a good or bad thing, is of course a matter of personal preference.
I don't agree with that at all. The 'superhero' (at least, the Hercules style demigod narrative) is part of the point of D&D/PF, and eventually trivializing mundane tasks is the system working as intended.
The world doesn't need to scale, just the challenges. And yes that means the PCs can get to the point that they can knock over a small town whenever they feel like it. But trivial fights can be handwaved with more focus on competitors/rivals/extraplanar threats/whatever.
Honestly, I don't see a 'punishes you for roleplaying.' As much as 'being hopelessly incompetent = roleplaying' is being played up in this thread, it isn't something I've ever seen in the real world, or in people playing the game. Most adults make some effort to fix their inadequacies, especially when big stakes or life and death are on the line.
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On the other hand, I definitely agree about armor types being locked into class progression. That is immensely frustrating, and I can't fathom the logic for it. I'd love to see armor and weapon training bumped out of classes and into general feats, not a But Thou Must commandment about how every single paladin, rogue, etc must dress (World of Warcraft style).
Well... Armor training was locked to fighters in PF1 and i think it's a fair comparison. But i do think at least expert should be available to everyone with some classes being able to get to master and one being able to get legendary.
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I think someone on the forums scooped this already from a comment Luis made in the Know Direction comments from playing in my playtest game with his fighter (not Randyll, my first kill in the playtest, the new one Solveig) with the new Assurance feat but it's way stronger now, both in terms of scaling smoothly not choppily and covering the DCs that it should cover. It's not like it now lets you auto-beat hard tasks of your level or the like, but as Luis mentioned, he could easily use it for things like Battle Medic and it now has you covered for a strong spectrum of DCs no matter which level you are, rather than being way behind the curve until level 15, then OKish at level 15 if you were legendary but then falling behind each level beyond, like it was before.I sure hope Assurance is useful in the final version of the game.
Of all the things in the playtest, Assurance had the widest gap between "how good of an idea it is" and "how useful it is in practice".
Mark have I ever told you that you are my favorite person in the whole five minutes since I read this post? :P
Seriously, Assurance was in my top three "please fix this" for the Playtest, I'm super ecstatic to hear you confirm it's being fixed.
On the topic of scaling difficulty:
One thing that people need to keep in mind IMO is that, for better or worse, PF2e is using a unified math, and that causes some problems with certain implementations of scaling difficulty. "The specialist can't fail, the non-specialist can't succeed" is perfectly fine for Perform checks. It's distinctly not fine for attack rolls and Will saves.
Well, everyone is (and should) be trained in all the saves. I think "you have 0 chance of hitting with this weapon you honestly have no idea how to use" is fine.
Where "the non-specialist gets hosed" troubles me is armor class, since based on what we've heard you can potentially tank someone's AC by a huge amount just by putting them in the wrong armor.
I'm less concerned about that as long as there isn't an easy way to force someone into armor, honestly. As long as everyone is trained in unarmored (which seems certain), there shouldn't be too much issue... as long as there are no situations where you are forced to use a specific skill to defend yourself.
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On the topic of scaling difficulty:
One thing that people need to keep in mind IMO is that, for better or worse, PF2e is using a unified math, and that causes some problems with certain implementations of scaling difficulty. "The specialist can't fail, the non-specialist can't succeed" is perfectly fine for Perform checks. It's distinctly not fine for attack rolls and Will saves.
This unified math is clearly for the better, as far as I'm concerned. It greatly simplifies the rules, making them much more logical and naturally understandable. It also opens a lot of possibilities for using skills in combat: That's why the devs were able to remove things like CMB and CMD from the game, another very welcome reduction in complexity.
This has a lot of value, and if a couple of minor trade-offs are required, then I'd say it's worth it. Seriously, has any character ever been forced to wear armor? Besides, if it did happen and it made their AC much worse, wouldn't that be a perfectly reasonable narrative?
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Well, everyone is (and should) be trained in all the saves. I think "you have 0 chance of hitting with this weapon you honestly have no idea how to use" is fine.
Where "the non-specialist gets hosed" troubles me is armor class, since based on what we've heard you can potentially tank someone's AC by a huge amount just by putting them in the wrong armor.
I'm not entirely thrilled about having no bonus to attack with a weapon you're not trained in, to be honest. I've found that if your martials are Dex based you fan wind up with party that can't really use the McGuffin weapon you need to kill the monster. It is a corner case, but it is gonna be a casualty.
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I feel like another things with weapons if we dropped "no level bonus to untrained weapons" is that we need to change the rules from "if you are trying to do nonlethal with a lethal weapon or vice versa, you are untrained". Since that was an elegant way to express the penalty if you're going from like +10 to +6, but not great if you're going from +23 to +5.
Since it should be harder to hit someone with the pommel of your dagger, but not that much harder.
I feel like another things with weapons if we dropped "no level bonus to untrained weapons" is that we need to change the rules from "if you are trying to do nonlethal with a lethal weapon or vice versa, you are untrained". Since that was an elegant way to express the penalty if you're going from like +10 to +6, but not great if you're going from +23 to +5
They already did that, actually.
Page 294—In Nonlethal Attacks, in the second paragraph’s
first sentence, change “calculate your attack roll result as if
you were untrained with the weapon.” to “you take a –2
circumstance penalty to the attack roll.”
Circumstance penalties don't stack though, right- you just apply the biggest one? So if I'm already eating a -3 circumstance penalty from something else, I can attack for free then with the wrong kind of damage?
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Circumstance penalties don't stack though, right- you just apply the biggest one? So if I'm already eating a -3 circumstance penalty from something else, I can attack for free then with the wrong kind of damage?
That seems technically correct. The best kind of correct.
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Pretty late to this conversation, so pardon if someone's brought this up already, but I'm really happy about this bit.
But if you’ve invested, “you should absolutely crush it. And the playtest wasn’t doing that. And that should be for everything, not just skills.
In the playtest, very rarely did a character feel awesome or heroic. If Paizo can address that problem, then I think there's definitely hope for PF2.
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Pretty late to this conversation, so pardon if someone's brought this up already, but I'm really happy about this bit.
But if you’ve invested, “you should absolutely crush it. And the playtest wasn’t doing that. And that should be for everything, not just skills.In the playtest, very rarely did a character feel awesome or heroic. If Paizo can address that problem, then I think there's definitely hope for PF2.
To quote Mark Seifter in another thread:
For example, an "extremely hard" level 1 DC is extremely hard for a level 1 character and pretty likely to end in critical failure no matter the PC, but while an "extremely hard" level 20 DC is by no means a sure thing for a level 20 character, they have a much higher chance to succeed (could even be more likely than not if they're really optimized for that skill).
MaxAstro would like to know what the number would be that would actually be extremely hard for a level 20 PC. Frankly, it's useful to know that; I want to have that information too. But the problem with providing it inthe DC chart in the gamemastering section, as revealed by many of you in the playtest on both the boards and the surveys, is that GMs who don't read all the advice about how to use the chart might just pull DCs from the chart, so the playtest showed that we needed to present DCs that didn't keep up with the PCs so that someone just quickly reading the chart could use them as intended and allow PCs to progress and be awesome. We can always put the information on the side somewhere and not in the chart so that someone who reads everything will have it but someone using the chart alone won't accidentally create a treadmill.
Does that make sense?
So...that sounds very much like the DCs have been explicitly adjusted to allow exactly this. Something I, for one, am overjoyed (but not surprised) to hear.
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I think having a table of reference values is very important. But it rapidly becomes a table specific issue and a place where groups can make their own feel. So the details of the table are not nearly so important as the gross "ball-parking".
The system need to figure out if it is going too be tight (incompetents always have a chance to get lucky and heroics can always fail on a really bad roll) or wide (incompetent can be off the scale with no hope and heroics can be off the scale with no need to roll) or they can go for some flexible clever compromise. That is a big important choice.
Once that is set, where the DCs land just needs to be reasonable. And having the designers state intent with regard to "a 14th level character has a better chance at a 'hard' L14 thing than that character had at a 'hard' L1 thing at 1st level", vs. "hard remains roughly 30% success at all levels". But that is really just good information for the GM to have. If a good GM wants to stay with 30% and understand that the core mechanic has progression built in, then the GM can adapt. If the good GM wants his game to be harder or easier than the default, than, again, it is easy to adapt.
Clear communication of default numbers and the basis for those number is important. The specifics much less important because it is so easy to modify numbers so long as the core mechanic works.
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Yeah, that's... pretty subjective and not something to be stated in such an absolute manner really. At my table the characters felt awesome and heroic on a regular basis throughout the entire Playtest, so it's not a ubiquitous issue.
In the playtest, very rarely did a character feel awesome or heroic.
But surely you agree that this was frequently noted and thus something that should be taken as a serious consideration. Right?
Just as I do agree that it is subjective and some groups, apparently including yours, did not.
Do you agree or deny?
Yeah, that's... pretty subjective and not something to be stated in such an absolute manner really. At my table the characters felt awesome and heroic on a regular basis throughout the entire Playtest, so it's not a ubiquitous issue.
In the playtest, very rarely did a character feel awesome or heroic.
I suppose I thought it was clear from context that I meant in my experience with the playtest. I can speak only for myself and the players in my group, others are sure to have different (and equally valid) experiences.
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Yeah, that's... pretty subjective and not something to be stated in such an absolute manner really. At my table the characters felt awesome and heroic on a regular basis throughout the entire Playtest, so it's not a ubiquitous issue.
In the playtest, very rarely did a character feel awesome or heroic.
My Ranger felt lousy to play. He is pretty much the only experience I have with the characters because I really disliked the character creation and flat didn't want to make another character, so I just stuck with the one I had, and he never really got any better. He felt under powered, His Archery skills just never seemed to measure up and he had a poor excuse for a pet the entire playtest. It felt like if I wanted to be good at something I had to give up half my character concept. Either be an archer or a guy with a faithful wolf companion, but trying to maintain both at a decent level just seemed futile. Ultimately I just stopped wanting to play it.
I still think it's got a good system though. I like the combat and the general systems. The 10 above or below Crit Success/Fail is just fine.
I just can't stand the characters
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Yeah, that's... pretty subjective and not something to be stated in such an absolute manner really. At my table the characters felt awesome and heroic on a regular basis throughout the entire Playtest, so it's not a ubiquitous issue.
In the playtest, very rarely did a character feel awesome or heroic.My Ranger felt lousy to play. He is pretty much the only experience I have with the characters because I really disliked the character creation and flat didn't want to make another character, so I just stuck with the one I had, and he never really got any better. He felt under powered, His Archery skills just never seemed to measure up and he had a poor excuse for a pet the entire playtest. It felt like if I wanted to be good at something I had to give up half my character concept. Either be an archer or a guy with a faithful wolf companion, but trying to maintain both at a decent level just seemed futile. Ultimately I just stopped wanting to play it.
I still think it's got a good system though. I like the combat and the general systems. The 10 above or below Crit Success/Fail is just fine.
I just can't stand the characters
I had a similar experience. It felt like you were really being shoehorned into a single concept, and working against that was punishing. I had a similar experience in other systems that eventually I stopped using.
The shoehorning was real, but it's not inherent to the structural concepts of the playtest rules. So, it's nothing the predictable expansion of options in the final CRB can't fix.
I just can't stand the characters
Is this fair to say when "pretty much the only experience" you have is a single character?
Yeah, that's... pretty subjective and not something to be stated in such an absolute manner really. At my table the characters felt awesome and heroic on a regular basis throughout the entire Playtest, so it's not a ubiquitous issue.
In the playtest, very rarely did a character feel awesome or heroic.My Ranger felt lousy to play. He is pretty much the only experience I have with the characters because I really disliked the character creation and flat didn't want to make another character, so I just stuck with the one I had, and he never really got any better. He felt under powered, His Archery skills just never seemed to measure up and he had a poor excuse for a pet the entire playtest. It felt like if I wanted to be good at something I had to give up half my character concept. Either be an archer or a guy with a faithful wolf companion, but trying to maintain both at a decent level just seemed futile. Ultimately I just stopped wanting to play it.
I still think it's got a good system though. I like the combat and the general systems. The 10 above or below Crit Success/Fail is just fine.
I just can't stand the characters
Did you use the updated ranger rules or the old ones? The updated ranger is a lot better. Really all you need to be a great archer is take the first level feat that lets you attack the hunted target twice. Then you could spend the rest on the animal companion. Hunt target, double bow shot, and control your companion sounds like a pretty great round. Companions also got some AC buffs in the updated rules.
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Ranger is probably the worst Class in the playtest. Too many of its options are glorified Skill Feats that only come up in niche circumstances (and, unlike rogues, they get no bonuses to actual Skill Feats to lean into the skill monkey niche), and its combat based powers are generally a bit lacklustre as compared to other dedicated Martials.
The other candidate for worst is non-Arcane Sorcerers, who have a serious lack of anything to make up for the fact that other Classes with the same spell list tend to get flatly better Class Features.
Neither are unplayable, and I have high hopes both will be fixed in the final game, but it's worth noting.
Honest shoehorning is better than illusory freedom. Sword and board anyone, crossbow anyone and non-gunslinger firearm users all agree.
I feel like just removing feat taxes from the game and thus also "class A gets more feats than class B, so to make class A better at something we make 'being good at it' cost a lot of feats" is going to go a long way.
I mean, shoehorning exists in the playtest mostly because of a comparatively small number of feats and archetypes, but one thing I know about Pathfinder is that there will be a near endless supply of future ones. Sure, you can't play a Paladin who makes good use of a crossbow, but you also can't play a Paladin who makes good use of a gun either, and we have strong reason to suspect the latter is coming eventually, so why not the former?
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One thing I'm pretty interested in is the opportunity for easy house rules like: Removing or reducing class feat level restrictions, granting everyone double the number of feats, removing ability requirements on multiclass feats, etc.
With tighter math, controlled action economy, and limited buff stacking, literally doubling the number of class feats you can take has a much, MUCH smaller impact than it would in PF1e, but lets you scale up and down your group's versatility and power level.
I can't wait to see what the final iteration of the classes looks like, because I really wanted to tinker with that stuff in the playtest.
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One thing I'm pretty interested in is the opportunity for easy house rules like: Removing or reducing class feat level restrictions, granting everyone double the number of feats, removing ability requirements on multiclass feats, etc.
With tighter math, controlled action economy, and limited buff stacking, literally doubling the number of class feats you can take has a much, MUCH smaller impact than it would in PF1e, but lets you scale up and down your group's versatility and power level.
You are right that it would work way more cleanly in PF2, probably by an order of magnitude. So much so that we are likely to include official variants for something like doubling, free multiclass, etc as an official variant in the GMG, with discussion of impact and how to run those games, since we know some groups love high-powered games and it's way easier to get that feel now without making it way harder to balance.
You are right that it would work way more cleanly in PF2, probably by an order of magnitude. So much so that we are likely to include official variants for something like doubling, free multiclass, etc as an official variant in the GMG, with discussion of impact and how to run those games, since we know some groups love high-powered games and it's way easier to get that feel now without making it way harder to balance.
Does this mean the GM Guide is going to be a separate book? I really hope so.
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You are right that it would work way more cleanly in PF2, probably by an order of magnitude. So much so that we are likely to include official variants for something like doubling, free multiclass, etc as an official variant in the GMG, with discussion of impact and how to run those games, since we know some groups love high-powered games and it's way easier to get that feel now without making it way harder to balance.One thing I'm pretty interested in is the opportunity for easy house rules like: Removing or reducing class feat level restrictions, granting everyone double the number of feats, removing ability requirements on multiclass feats, etc.
With tighter math, controlled action economy, and limited buff stacking, literally doubling the number of class feats you can take has a much, MUCH smaller impact than it would in PF1e, but lets you scale up and down your group's versatility and power level.
Mark, that is music to my ears. Official support means I don't have to monkey around as much with Hero Lab!
You are right that it would work way more cleanly in PF2, probably by an order of magnitude. So much so that we are likely to include official variants for something like doubling, free multiclass, etc as an official variant in the GMG, with discussion of impact and how to run those games, since we know some groups love high-powered games and it's way easier to get that feel now without making it way harder to balance.One thing I'm pretty interested in is the opportunity for easy house rules like: Removing or reducing class feat level restrictions, granting everyone double the number of feats, removing ability requirements on multiclass feats, etc.
With tighter math, controlled action economy, and limited buff stacking, literally doubling the number of class feats you can take has a much, MUCH smaller impact than it would in PF1e, but lets you scale up and down your group's versatility and power level.
I am very amenable to such a solution~
Does this mean the GM Guide is going to be a separate book? I really hope so.
I feel like "PF2 is going to have a Game Master's Guide" is about as certain as "PF2 is going to have a Bestiary".
I mean, there are always going to be rules players do not need to learn, and it's best to quarantine those in books that signpost this in the title to just lessen the cognitive load for new or less experienced players.
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You are right that it would work way more cleanly in PF2, probably by an order of magnitude. So much so that we are likely to include official variants for something like doubling, free multiclass, etc as an official variant in the GMG, with discussion of impact and how to run those games, since we know some groups love high-powered games and it's way easier to get that feel now without making it way harder to balance.Does this mean the GM Guide is going to be a separate book? I really hope so.
Depends on what you mean by "GM Guide". I think what Mark talk about here is probably closer to the GameMastering Guide they made for PF1, with Everything you need to play/DM a game into the core book. I don't think they'll revert to two core books like all previous D&D edition did. So the DMG will mostly be optional rules, ways to play, systems, and DMing tips.
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I just can't stand the charactersIs this fair to say when "pretty much the only experience" you have is a single character?
Yes. I only played the Ranger and gave up playing at all, mid way through the playtest. (Couple of factors, most notably had to move to another town for education)
I have tried several times to make other characters though and just got frustrated with the set up. Normally I really enjoy making new characters and exploring different options and ideas. I hate Level Gating of abilities, and I really hate than anything useful is fighting over Class Feat slots, you have to narrowly specialize or you end up good at nothing. I hate that to fit certain ideas I have to multiclass and I hate how multiclassing works.
This is not a flexible character creation system, and it is not something that allows for creativity. Hell I couldn't even do a really basic ranger concept of a Lawman woodsman and his faithful Wolf Companion. I was hoping for something closer to Rogue Genius games line of "Talented" classes and instead I got something that reminds me of the worst aspects of 4E.
I like the overall system of PF2. That is something I have said several times. I am very likely to adapt a lot of the core systems. But character creation they have come up with is not something I can enjoy, and is the key point that will keep me from buying the new game.
Instead I'm going to be working on a campaign based around Drop Dead Studio's Sphere system. It's much more open when it comes to representing interesting character concepts.
You are right that it would work way more cleanly in PF2, probably by an order of magnitude. So much so that we are likely to include official variants for something like doubling, free multiclass, etc as an official variant in the GMG, with discussion of impact and how to run those games, since we know some groups love high-powered games and it's way easier to get that feel now without making it way harder to balance.One thing I'm pretty interested in is the opportunity for easy house rules like: Removing or reducing class feat level restrictions, granting everyone double the number of feats, removing ability requirements on multiclass feats, etc.
With tighter math, controlled action economy, and limited buff stacking, literally doubling the number of class feats you can take has a much, MUCH smaller impact than it would in PF1e, but lets you scale up and down your group's versatility and power level.
I am encouraged by the fact that thought is already being put into 'official' variants that are easily applied to the new framework and what the impact is of those changes has already been running through the developers minds.
The GMG sounds promising, even before an official product intro, and we haven't even seen the actual Core book in print yet. ;)
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Depends on what you mean by "GM Guide". I think what Mark talk about here is probably closer to the GameMastering Guide they made for PF1, with Everything you need to play/DM a game into the core book. I don't think they'll revert to two core books like all previous D&D edition did. So the DMG will mostly be optional rules, ways to play, systems, and DMing tips.You are right that it would work way more cleanly in PF2, probably by an order of magnitude. So much so that we are likely to include official variants for something like doubling, free multiclass, etc as an official variant in the GMG, with discussion of impact and how to run those games, since we know some groups love high-powered games and it's way easier to get that feel now without making it way harder to balance.Does this mean the GM Guide is going to be a separate book? I really hope so.
This is consistent with everything Paizo has said throughout the playtest, and what I took Mark to be alluding to
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You are right that it would work way more cleanly in PF2, probably by an order of magnitude. So much so that we are likely to include official variants for something like doubling, free multiclass, etc as an official variant in the GMG, with discussion of impact and how to run those games, since we know some groups love high-powered games and it's way easier to get that feel now without making it way harder to balance.One thing I'm pretty interested in is the opportunity for easy house rules like: Removing or reducing class feat level restrictions, granting everyone double the number of feats, removing ability requirements on multiclass feats, etc.
With tighter math, controlled action economy, and limited buff stacking, literally doubling the number of class feats you can take has a much, MUCH smaller impact than it would in PF1e, but lets you scale up and down your group's versatility and power level.
(1) This is cool!
(2) Probably not the best place to ask, I know, but since I forgot to ask on the stream and this post at least glancingly refers to bonus types ... Is the design team considering changing the bonus type names from the playtest? I found "conditional" and "circumstantial" as two of the three to be just a little too close in how they looked/sounded, which proved a stumbling block both (a) for new players when learning and (b) for myself while GMing and having to process so much information on-the-fly. So any change in the names to make the bonus types more obviously/at-a-glance distinct would be greatly appreciated :-|
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You are right that it would work way more cleanly in PF2, probably by an order of magnitude. So much so that we are likely to include official variants for something like doubling, free multiclass, etc as an official variant in the GMG, with discussion of impact and how to run those games, since we know some groups love high-powered games and it's way easier to get that feel now without making it way harder to balance.One thing I'm pretty interested in is the opportunity for easy house rules like: Removing or reducing class feat level restrictions, granting everyone double the number of feats, removing ability requirements on multiclass feats, etc.
With tighter math, controlled action economy, and limited buff stacking, literally doubling the number of class feats you can take has a much, MUCH smaller impact than it would in PF1e, but lets you scale up and down your group's versatility and power level.
I am encouraged by the fact that thought is already being put into 'official' variants that are easily applied to the new framework and what the impact is of those changes has already been running through the developers minds.
The GMG sounds promising, even before an official product intro, and we haven't even seen the actual Core book in print yet. ;)
In fact, the fact that we can create variants so elegantly and easily (and thus you guys will be able to houserule more easily too without as many of the unintended consequences houserules often brought in PF1) is a big part of what attracted us to some of the ways we handled the rules.
I am unbelievably excited about some of the ideas for the book, but it's too early to talk about much of anything yet! We're still working on the CRB and Bestiary right now. I'll just say that to me the core concept of the book strikes the perfect balance of not being required to run and play the game in its most basic form (the CRB is truly all you need, plus the Bestiary to get the monsters if you're someone who uses monsters like a GM or summoner) while enriching the game quite a bit for those like me who love to go beyond that (and this particular variant demonstrates that nicely).
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You are right that it would work way more cleanly in PF2, probably by an order of magnitude. So much so that we are likely to include official variants for something like doubling, free multiclass, etc as an official variant in the GMG, with discussion of impact and how to run those games, since we know some groups love high-powered games and it's way easier to get that feel now without making it way harder to balance.One thing I'm pretty interested in is the opportunity for easy house rules like: Removing or reducing class feat level restrictions, granting everyone double the number of feats, removing ability requirements on multiclass feats, etc.
With tighter math, controlled action economy, and limited buff stacking, literally doubling the number of class feats you can take has a much, MUCH smaller impact than it would in PF1e, but lets you scale up and down your group's versatility and power level.
I am encouraged by the fact that thought is already being put into 'official' variants that are easily applied to the new framework and what the impact is of those changes has already been running through the developers minds.
The GMG sounds promising, even before an official product intro, and we haven't even seen the actual Core book in print yet. ;)
In fact, the fact that we can create variants so elegantly and easily (and thus you guys will be able to houserule more easily too without as many of the unintended consequences houserules often brought in PF1) is a big part of what attracted us to some of the ways we handled the rules.
I am unbelievably excited about some of the ideas for the book, but it's too early to talk about much of anything yet! We're still working on the CRB and Bestiary right now. I'll just say that to me the core concept of the book strikes the perfect balance of not being required to run and play the game in its most basic form (the CRB is truly all you need, plus the...
I will repeat that I am glad to hear about this book and about this direction. One thing that let me down about 5e was how Next promised this level of rules modularity that it failed to deliver on. There is no "advanced" 5e DnD, in my opinion, and that is really the game that I would prefer to play.
Moreover, my biggest disappointment with the Pathfinder playtest boiled down to the class feat build bottleneck. I know logically that breaking up this bottleneck makes the game harder to balance and that expanding the number of "real" feats would only serve to intimidate new players. I just don't like that version of the game as much as one with more feats and I probably never will. It is exciting that there might be a version of the game that allows for more tech on a single character.
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Honest shoehorning is better than illusory freedom. Sword and board anyone, crossbow anyone and non-gunslinger firearm users all agree.
I hope we eventually have a better set of choices than that. ^_^
And I never had any problems with sword and shield characters in PF1. Crossbows I'll grant, though.
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Honest shoehorning is better than illusory freedom. Sword and board anyone, crossbow anyone and non-gunslinger firearm users all agree.I hope we eventually have a better set of choices than that. ^_^
And I never had any problems with sword and shield characters in PF1. Crossbows I'll grant, though.
Whai sword 'n' bord when u can has smash face 2h (or maybe twf)? The discrepancy in rise of attack and AC in PF1 made sacrificing offense for defense only really worth it with some cookie cutter specialised defensive builds. And we're back in the "this could work, but you'll need book A, B, X, Y and Z in order for this, pretty much iconic and straightforward build to compare to an effortlessly made greatsword user".
Same with guns - every attempt to build a solid firearm user ends up in "take 5 levels of gunslinger". You pretty much can't do it otherwise.
No firearms yet, but do folks really believe they will be any good with them without being a gunslinger or multiclassing into gunslinger?
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Really great to see you posting again, Mark.
No firearms yet, but do folks really believe they will be any good with them without being a gunslinger or multiclassing into gunslinger?
No real way to know. But I will say I expect firearms to be balanced VERY differently. Targeting touch AC is no longer nearly as big as deal, which makes them less likely to break games like Giant Slayer and reduces the need to have them be as strictly gated. The 3 action economy has a lot of interesting potential to interact with reloading, and we don't have weapon specific feats like weapon focus or rapid reload anymore. I also think rarity makes for a more sensible controlling factor than making firearms exotic weapons. By all accounts, it is easier to murder someone with a gun than a longbow, but having the weapons be rare stops them from popping up in most settings without GM permission.
You might be right that getting good with them will probably call for multiclasssing into gunslinger, but teamwork new multiclass rules make that significantly easier and less disruptive to your build.
If I had to hazard a guess, I would say guns and gunslingers will wind up more like crossbows and Rangers. They can be viable for simple weapon users and balanced by needing reload actions, but the gunslinger will have stuff like running reload that makes them better on a full-blown martial.
Edit: actually, I forgot until I looked I at that other thread that gunslingers probably shouldn't be a class at all and just become a universal archetype like cavalier did. Makes way more sense.
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No firearms yet, but do folks really believe they will be any good with them without being a gunslinger or multiclassing into gunslinger?
As Captain Morgan hypothesizes, I suspect Gunslinger will be an Archetype rather than a Class. They've shown a willingness to do that with niche Classes with Cavalier and it seems tailor made for this.
Which means it doesn't matter if you need to be a Gunslinger to be good with guns, since you'll be able to take the Gunslinger Archetype (and have it work the same) with any Class.
I mean, PF1 had a bunch of archetypes for "this one does guns" (e.g. Holy Gun Paladins) so it makes a lot of sense to make "uses guns" an archetype even if Gunslinger is a class again.
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I mean, PF1 had a bunch of archetypes for "this one does guns" (e.g. Holy Gun Paladins) so it makes a lot of sense to make "uses guns" an archetype even if Gunslinger is a class again.
I'm deeply unsure what purpose a Gunslinger Class serves that an Archetype doesn't do better, but yes, I suspect an Archetype is in the offing even if they do create it as a Class for some reason.
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I mean, PF1 had a bunch of archetypes for "this one does guns" (e.g. Holy Gun Paladins) so it makes a lot of sense to make "uses guns" an archetype even if Gunslinger is a class again.
Well the nice thing is that pretty much any class will also be an archetype given how multiclassing works. But I don't think the gunslinger really has enough meat to warrant a full blown class. Like, even people who wanted to be dedicated gunslingers tended to stop taking levels of it after 5.
Have we gotten confirmation that the multiclassing is sticking around? I really hope so. They could potentially create a variant system for multiclassing in the more traditional level spending way, but IMO it shouldn't be a core feature.