So, lots of Focus based things have been popping up in OO, so I thought I'd start a thread on the topic. Now, let's preview the things we know (please correct me if I get any of this wrong, I can't catch the episode live, so I'm gonna be a bit behind)
- Champions (and therefore, hopefully, other classes) can regain their Focus by doing a 10 min rest.
- Focus Spells seem the same/stronger than they were in the playtest
- There (might?) be a cap to the amount of times you can regain Focus with short rests per long rest
Again, correct me if I got anything wrong. LET THE DISCUSSION BEGIN!
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We still don't know if focus is based on Cha for everyone since the playtest characters are a Sorcorrer and a Champion. If they wanted to boost Cha as an ability they could have left it as Cha for everyone.
Monk having Ki be based on Cha instead of Wis would be strange but maybe it's Cha for everyone else and Monks can use Wis instead (similar to how alchemists could use int for resonance in the first version of the playtest)
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Champions (and therefore, hopefully, other classes) can regain their Focus by doing a 10 min rest.
Given that this is perfectly reflected in the fiction posted for the Cleric, I think we can safely say Clerics get this as well. Other Classes probably do, too, but Cleric is pretty much a sure thing.
There (might?) be a cap to the amount of times you can regain Focus with short rests per long rest
This terminology has issues. Firstly, it's from 5E, and secondly a short rest is an hour in 5E, not 10 minutes. So there's some potential confusion here.
Mind you, I'm not sure what other terminology to use, but this particular set seems wrong.
We still don't know if focus is based on Cha for everyone since the playtest characters are a Sorcorrer and a Champion. If they wanted to boost Cha as an ability they could have left it as Cha for everyone.
this only means anything for Wizards, Druids, maybe Monks, and very slightly for Clerics. It's hardly a general Cha boost. I thus consider it unlikely.
Now, if everyone got Focus that would be another matter, but they don't.
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It also just, like, hard buffs champion, sorcerer and bard relative to everyone else, and cleric to a lesser extent.
We still don't know if focus is based on Cha for everyone since the playtest characters are a Sorcorrer and a Champion. If they wanted to boost Cha as an ability they could have left it as Cha for everyone.this only means anything for Wizards, Druids, maybe Monks, and very slightly for Clerics. It's hardly a general Cha boost. I thus consider it unlikely.
Now, if everyone got Focus that would be another matter, but they don't.
Only Wizards, Druids, Monks, Clerics, and probably rangers as well ends up being a lot of characters.
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Only Wizards, Druids, Monks, Clerics, and probably rangers as well ends up being a lot of characters.
It'll only be some Monks and Rangers at most, and Clerics are already incentivized to have high Cha.
Even the most broad versions of this effect less than half the Classes and characters in the game, which seems to me to be a poor strategy for making Charisma matter to everyone.
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They said that it they went if Focus=Cha, then they would make some new things to help classes like Monk and Ranger...
If that in mind and knowing this new mechanic of recovering Focus, can't see a problem if they went if Charisma
Only Wizards, Druids, Monks, Clerics, and probably rangers as well ends up being a lot of characters.It'll only be some Monks and Rangers at most, and Clerics are already incentivized to have high Cha.
Even the most broad versions of this effect less than half the Classes and characters in the game, which seems to me to be a poor strategy for making Charisma matter to everyone.
It would switch it from a minority of classes caring about Cha to a majority of classes caring. And that fraction of classes would be likely to grow rather than shrink since Paizo published a lot more casting classes than non casting classes in PF1.
I very well may have missed something, but what was it that shows Focus can be regenerated multiple times per day?
All I caught was that it takes 10 minutes and isn't subject to same rest requirement as Spell praying,
but I didn't hear anything that demonstrated it could be done multiple times per day, AFAIK they never did so more than daily,
it was just brought up in context of "oh you didn't rest so you can't regain spellslots but you can still do 10min Focus refresh".
It may be the case it works more than daily, but I didn't catch anything positively affirming that, so I'm not sure if this is just an assumption?
I very well may have missed something, but what was it that shows Focus can be regenerated multiple times per day?
All I caught was that it takes 10 minutes and isn't subject to same rest requirement as Spell praying,
but I didn't hear anything that demonstrated it could be done multiple times per day, AFAIK they never did so more than daily,
it was just brought up in context of "oh you didn't rest so you can't regain spellslots but you can still do 10min Focus refresh".
It may be the case it works more than daily, but I didn't catch anything positively affirming that, so I'm not sure if this is just an assumption?
They did mention it in todays episode that it could be done multiple times per day.
OK thanks, guess I have to catch up!
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I keep seeing people mention Cleric as a Cha class, but the only thing we know for sure about Channel is that it was troublesome.
There (might?) be a cap to the amount of times you can regain Focus with short rests per long restThis terminology has issues. Firstly, it's from 5E, and secondly a short rest is an hour in 5E, not 10 minutes. So there's some potential confusion here.
Mind you, I'm not sure what other terminology to use, but this particular set seems wrong.
The second they come out with official terms for the 10-minute activities, I'll use those. In the mean time, I'm going to refer to them as "short rests" because that's what my table has become used to saying. And 5E isn't the only system with "short/long rests", it's just the most popular. As an aside, what do you personally call it? I'm curious what other people use to refer to non-officially named mechanics
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The second they come out with official terms for the 10-minute activities, I'll use those. In the mean time, I'm going to refer to them as "short rests" because that's what my table has become used to saying. And 5E isn't the only system with "short/long rests", it's just the most popular. As an aside, what do you personally call it? I'm curious what other people use to refer to non-officially named mechanics
I personally just refer to the amount of time 'We rest for 10 minutes.' is a whole one syllable longer than 'We take a short rest.'
It's also pretty mechanically distinct from the 5E term or most other systems versions since taking 10 minutes off does nothing on it's own, it's just the length a lot of specific skill uses take.
We still don't know if focus is based on Cha for everyone since the playtest characters are a Sorcorrer and a Champion. If they wanted to boost Cha as an ability they could have left it as Cha for everyone.this only means anything for Wizards, Druids, maybe Monks, and very slightly for Clerics. It's hardly a general Cha boost. I thus consider it unlikely.
Seems like it would also be relevant to anybody else MultiClassing in those, additional multi-stat dependency depending on choice of Focus / non-Focus Multiclass abilities.
Speculation on possible exlusive niche for CHA aside, I'm still wondering of over-all implications of unlimited 10min Focus refresh... Now that a major % of encounters should be able to assume Full Focus going in. Even if back to back encounters or time pressured "force marches" CAN diverge from that, it certainly is different dynamic than daily usages (which is it what Focus was replacing/consolidating, after all). I would expect durations for Focus spells to be more limited, given otherwise it's too easy to have them up all the time and full Focus on top.
I can’t find the exact part, but didn’t they say she could recharge her focus as long as she kept healing? What if this recharge only works when she’s already on empty?
At low levels, you’d effectively start with full focus every encounter, but once you got more focus, starting with only one charge in the barrel might not be as useful.
Edit: yep, at about the 31:20 mark, Jason says, “While this is happening you can regain your focus and use that again. Right. You can keep cycling it in ten minutes while he’s healing them.”
Doesn’t mean she had to be emptied, but it’s possible.
That'd be interesting way of handling it... They're definitely not spilling the beans fast enough :-)
I don’t think it means healing is a requirement. More likely, I think it means if they wanted to prolong their rest she would’ve had a chance to Lay on Hands someone else and regain that point right after.
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I can see the martial classes having something as well where taking a breather (10m rest) allows them to replenish certain resources.
This is already how long it takes to repair a shield (or, as has been noted, Treat Wounds), so yeah, I think more of this is fairly likely.
10 minutes was also how long it took to identify an item in the playtest, and it is a convenient amount of time for thoroughly looting/inspecting a room and a bunch of fresh corpses within it as well.
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It's cool that they seem to be embracing the 10 minute rest cycle that came about from Treat Wounds, item repairs and identification later in the playtest. Expanding that to focus is a great move. One problem focus had, was it often felt that the pools were too small to me. But making them too big could also be a problem with more firepower in a fight. Keeping the pool small, but making it replenishable with time, is kind of the best of both worlds. There is no real incentive to hoard your points now. And it does help remove the pressure towards the 15 minute adventuring day.
I'm curious if perhaps there is a way to extend this to spell slots. That's a trickier problem. But maybe some way to spend focus to regain slots could be nice. It would help deal with the vastly reduced number of slots and the requirement of hightening them, effectively reducing your slots further. It would also limit the nova potential compared to more spell slots, by not being able to throw so much at once. On the other hand it could encourage casters to blow through their high-level spells every fight. So it'd need to be handled carefully to deal with the limitations while not unleashing mini-novas. It could also cause issues with the excessive utility that many people found problematic with PF1 casters. Maybe something like the ability to spend a number of focus points to regain a slot of a level equal to the number of points. That would keep from being able to get so many slots back, I think you'll likely have fewer focus points than your highest spell level, so not everything could be regained this way. And the higher levels would presumably increase the rest time needed. I suspect it'll be one focus point regained per 10 minute rest, not all of them.
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One way you could do that is to have it be 1 focus per spell level and 10 minutes per spell level. If someone has the time they could get a ninth level spell back, but it would probably take about 3 hours (as they'll have to likely regenerate focus as well during the process.)
I'm curious if perhaps there is a way to extend this to spell slots. That's a trickier problem. But maybe some way to spend focus to regain slots could be nice. It would help deal with the vastly reduced number of slots and the requirement of hightening them, effectively reducing your slots further. It would also limit the nova potential compared to more spell slots, by not being able to throw so much at once. On the other hand it could encourage casters to blow through their high-level spells every fight. So it'd need to be handled carefully to deal with the limitations while not unleashing mini-novas.
So 1 point per 10 minutes with extra steps?
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So 1 point per 10 minutes with extra steps?One way you could do that is to have it be 1 focus per spell level and 10 minutes per spell level. If someone has the time they could get a ninth level spell back, but it would probably take about 3 hours (as they'll have to likely regenerate focus as well during the process.)
I'm curious if perhaps there is a way to extend this to spell slots. That's a trickier problem. But maybe some way to spend focus to regain slots could be nice. It would help deal with the vastly reduced number of slots and the requirement of hightening them, effectively reducing your slots further. It would also limit the nova potential compared to more spell slots, by not being able to throw so much at once. On the other hand it could encourage casters to blow through their high-level spells every fight. So it'd need to be handled carefully to deal with the limitations while not unleashing mini-novas.
Sort of. It's two different mechanics. 10 minutes to generate a focus. 10 minutes and a focus per spell level. The reason I combined the two in the example was because few people will just have 9 focus to spare on hand and thus some time would be spent generating more. If you already had the focus, say you had 3 and wanted a third slot back that would only interact with the slot system.
It could be too expensive.
I was figuring the lack of 9 focus on hand was kind of a feature rather than a bug. It's what keeps people from regenerating 9th level slots all day. So they might be limited to regaining level 5 slots or something based on their total focus pool.
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9 focus sounds like way too much, focus spells are supposed to self-scale already...
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It also just, like, hard buffs champion, sorcerer and bard relative to everyone else, and cleric to a lesser extent.When people complain that the sorcerer is weaker than the wizard, they can say "but the sorcerer has more focus."
I do not wish for Classes using CHA to become less useful/powerful in a game because they have to make up for having more focus.
Interesting tidbit on this spoiler:
37. Composition Spells Bard Class Feature
You can infuse your performances with magic to create unique effects called compositions. Compositions are a special type of spell that often require you to use the Performance skill when casting them. Composition spells are a type of focus spell. It costs 1 Focus Point to cast a focus spell, and you start with a focus pool of 1 Focus Point. You refill your focus pool during your daily preparations, and you can regain 1 Focus Point by spending 10 minutes using the Refocus activity to perform, write a new composition, or otherwise engage your muse.
Specifically, it looks like my guess that your focus pool needed to be empty before you could recharge it was wrong, and in theory you can start each encounter fully topped off.