Any limits on the number of buffs active at once?

[Dr. Johnny Fever]

One of my group's major complaints about PF1 (and OGl 3.5) was there was no limit to the number of spells a character could have active at the same time.

While, on the surface, this seems like a great idea, in reality it was a time sink keeping track of the buffs and their durations, especially at higher levels, where people could have 10+ buffs active at once.

Does P2E do anything to limit or address this?

[pixierose]

There is no limit to the amount of buffs that can be cast on you, but buffs tend to give the same type of bonus, so lets say one spell gives you a +1 status buff and the other one gives you a +2 status buff, you will only get the +2 status buff.

[Azurespark]

Buffs have been reduced to 3 types of bonuses, circumstance, item, and status. So that should reduce the number of buffs people have up at any one time.

[Kyrone]

Buffs from spells are usually status bonus and these don't stack with each other, so you will not see a lot of +1 and +2 on attacks and duration of buffs are reduced with most of them having 1 to 10 minutes duration.

But buffs that do other stuff like Fly, Resist Energy, Enlarge and Haste do stack.

[shroudb]

Dr. Johnny Fever wrote:

One of my group's major complaints about PF1 (and OGl 3.5) was there was no limit to the number of spells a character could have active at the same time.

While, on the surface, this seems like a great idea, in reality it was a time sink keeping track of the buffs and their durations, especially at higher levels, where people could have 10+ buffs active at once.

Does P2E do anything to limit or address this?

there are only 3 types of bonuses:

+status which is the majority of spells
+item which if from your equipment and some consumables
+circumstance which is, well, circumstantial and usually from mundane sources.

so, while there isn't a hard cap on how MANY buffs you can have on you, their effects overlap more often than not, so there isn't an inherent need/drive to have a quadzillion of buffs on you to begin with.

[jdripley]

Additionally, typically spell effects are Status effects, meaning you are incentivized to pick one buff, then start fighting, rather than having this whole routine of buffs you use as basically all of your buffs don’t stack with each other.

I think this is really good. It also dove tails nicely with damaging cantrips and other damaging spells. You can buff or debuff, maybe you have one of each, then if you need to you can drop a fireball or burning hands or whatever, otherwise you can use the damaging cantrips to contribute.

[Dr. Johnny Fever]

Interesting...sounds like a viable alternative to what we’ve seen in past editions.

Thanks for the info, all!