Building in my last point, you'll probably be able to affect more enemies with a spell like sleep this edition than in PF1, since a lot less enemies have outright immunities to stuff and most enemies you fight will be at or below party level+1.
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Excuse me for liking games that I enjoy and being disappointed that paizo decided to make something that's basically unplayable as far as I'm concerned as a followup for my favorite ttrpg. Consider Mass Effect Andromeda or Fallout 76, PF2 is in the same league as far as I'm concerned.The point is not that you love PF1, but that you love the aspects of it that have traditonally and widely been considered its biggest flaws, and you double down on them.Yes, because those things are 80% of what makes the game fun to play for me. I wish more people shared that interest.
It's a little bit like a Souls game. Hard to understand and learn all the moving parts when you first pick one up, but rewarding and cool if you stick with it. Paizo could have really leaned into that niche, and made something that was even better than PF1.
A Souls game doesn't require 6-10 hours to build a character and start the game, as you've stated is basically mandatory in the past.
A Souls game doesn't stop midway because someone has to look up details about the system because it's incredibly convoluted.
And most of all, a Souls game is primarily a single-player affair, not a cooperative one.
Also it’s about skill, not builds.
*runs around with 2Handers and the prettiest outfits*
If a boss is as easy to defeat as its minions then what makes it a boss fight?Which is exactly why bosses shouldn't be immune to the effects. They're best used against them.It's bad against multiple/weaker foes. It's good against a boss, because their actions are generally worth more than a party member's actions.If two players spend two actions each to remove one boss action, and the other two focus on just damage, that fight probably becomes trivial.So players are trading 2 of their actions for one of a foes and that's a bad thing when it costs resources? I thought that's spells/feats were meant to have meaningful effects is the foe fail their normal saves... I don't see it.The fact that it's a/the leader of the opposing faction, aka their boss. If a party went to fight Apple I doubt that Tim Cook would be the toughest one there. But the fight with him would still be the final boss battle. If you're unseating a corrupt king, his best guards are probably stronger than him, but he's the boss.
Even if you're going for a boss who's stronger, his stats are already better than those of his minions. A balor is more likely to make his save than a marilith is, because he has higher stats. He doesn't also need a side rule to protect him.
I was specifically asking for boss fight, not someone being a boss though. Boss fights are supposed to be climatic, a threshold. Dealing with them exactly the same as their minions... isn’t.
Balor and Mariliths don’t have side rules to protect, it’s as you said a matter of having better stats from being higher level.
yeah...
look at demonsoul's final boss(spoilers), the king isn't even the final boss but someone pretending to be him, with him weak and pitiful beyond the bossroom, doesn't make the final boss that wasn't the "boss" not a boss though.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA too much boss
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For the record, spells with the Incapacitation tag actually effect creatures 1 level higher than the caster about half the time. It's those who have more than double the spell's level who get the bonus. That 'more' means that a 5th level Incapacitation effect cast by a 9th level Wizard works fine on level 10 enemies.
I bring this up not because it's directly relevant to ghouls (non-spells, it's just higher level than the creator of the effect), but because it is relevant in the wider context of how useful such spells are.
Which is exactly why bosses shouldn't be immune to the effects. They're best used against them.It's bad against multiple/weaker foes. It's good against a boss, because their actions are generally worth more than a party member's actions.If two players spend two actions each to remove one boss action, and the other two focus on just damage, that fight probably becomes trivial.So players are trading 2 of their actions for one of a foes and that's a bad thing when it costs resources? I thought that's spells/feats were meant to have meaningful effects is the foe fail their normal saves... I don't see it.
Uh...boss's aren't immune to most things that inflict Slowed. The Slow spell lacks the Incapacitation trait and is a great choice vs. bosses for that very reason. Of course, Slowed does not stack with itself, but still.
Bosses tend to be 'immune' (actually just super resistant) pretty much solely to effects that take them out of the fight entirely for one or more turns, not simple debuffs (which work fine and are very effective). So spells can absolutely ruin a boss's day, but they generally do so by making them less effective, not taking them out of the fight entirely.
The list of spells that have the Trait is pretty small in the grand scheme: Baleful Polymorph, Banishment, Blindness, Calm Emotions, Charm, Color Spray, Dominate, Fabricated Truth, Feeblemind, Flesh To Stone (sort of...it only applies to the ongoing Saves), Hallucination, Overwhelming Presence, Paralyze, Possession, Scintillating Pattern, Sleep, Subconscious Suggestion, Suggestion, Synaptic Pulse, Telepathic Demand, Uncontrollable Dance, Unfathomable Song, Vibrant Pattern, Warp Mind, and a few Focus Spells that mostly duplicate Charm or other mind control.
Plus the critical failure effects of Phantasmal Killer and Cloak of Dreams, I suppose, though that effects the usefulness of the spells a lot less.
Excuse me for liking games that I enjoy and being disappointed that paizo decided to make something that's basically unplayable as far as I'm concerned as a followup for my favorite ttrpg. Consider Mass Effect Andromeda or Fallout 76, PF2 is in the same league as far as I'm concerned.The point is not that you love PF1, but that you love the aspects of it that have traditonally and widely been considered its biggest flaws, and you double down on them.Yes, because those things are 80% of what makes the game fun to play for me. I wish more people shared that interest.
It's a little bit like a Souls game. Hard to understand and learn all the moving parts when you first pick one up, but rewarding and cool if you stick with it. Paizo could have really leaned into that niche, and made something that was even better than PF1.
A Souls game doesn't require 6-10 hours to build a character and start the game, as you've stated is basically mandatory in the past.
A Souls game doesn't stop midway because someone has to look up details about the system because it's incredibly convoluted.
And most of all, a Souls game is primarily a single-player affair, not a cooperative one.
Also it’s about skill, not builds.
*runs around with 2Handers and the prettiest outfits*
It's not a perfect parallel, just an example of how designing for a specific, smaller, more committed audience is not a bad thing to do. They should have continued to appeal to the most invested players in the system instead of everyone else.
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It's not a perfect parallel, just an example of how designing for a specific, smaller, more committed audience is not a bad thing to do. They should have continued to appeal to the most invested players in the system instead of everyone else.
Should they? From a business perspective, they probably shouldn't. Pathfinder is the lifeblood of their company, and needs to remain their primary revenue stream, limiting the appeal of your primary revenue stream is not a great call.
Niche games are absolutely great, but tend to either be made by a very small team, or be a side project for a company big enough that they don't absolutely rely on the product in question. Things that are the fundamental revenue stream of a company need broader appeal.
But actually, I don't think that's why they did it. I think the designers were primarily concerned with making a game that they, rather than some hypothetical part of the fanbase, wanted to play.
Sure, they adjusted stuff based on the playtest, and I'm sure they kept a weather eye on whether people would like and accept new stuff, but the fundamental ideas had to come from somewhere, and based on what we've seen of them playing and talking about the new edition, I think they started out aiming to make a game that they, the designers, thought was more fun than PF1, and one that they hoped the fanbase would feel similarly about. It seems pretty clear that they succeeded in the latter, and I think evidence suggests they succeeded at the former as well. And really, I think that's what all game designers should do in terms of the fundamentals. If you don't enjoy your own game, then there's something deeply wrong going on in the design process.
The fact that your own design sensibilities would've taken the game in a different direction is unfortunate for you, but I'd much rather have people making a game they actually enjoy than have them churning out content they don't.
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It's not a perfect parallel, just an example of how designing for a specific, smaller, more committed audience is not a bad thing to do. They should have continued to appeal to the most invested players in the system instead of everyone else.Excuse me for liking games that I enjoy and being disappointed that paizo decided to make something that's basically unplayable as far as I'm concerned as a followup for my favorite ttrpg. Consider Mass Effect Andromeda or Fallout 76, PF2 is in the same league as far as I'm concerned.The point is not that you love PF1, but that you love the aspects of it that have traditonally and widely been considered its biggest flaws, and you double down on them.Yes, because those things are 80% of what makes the game fun to play for me. I wish more people shared that interest.
It's a little bit like a Souls game. Hard to understand and learn all the moving parts when you first pick one up, but rewarding and cool if you stick with it. Paizo could have really leaned into that niche, and made something that was even better than PF1.
A Souls game doesn't require 6-10 hours to build a character and start the game, as you've stated is basically mandatory in the past.
A Souls game doesn't stop midway because someone has to look up details about the system because it's incredibly convoluted.
And most of all, a Souls game is primarily a single-player affair, not a cooperative one.
Also it’s about skill, not builds.
*runs around with 2Handers and the prettiest outfits*
No that's a horrible idea, especially since the "audience" in question isn't more committed than the other players, they're thing is just optimizing and theorycrafting the strongest builds they can.
And there's not really a parallel, Souls games are just hard, they don't require massive planning and building.
Arrows. Mostly arrows.
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It's not a perfect parallel, just an example of how designing for a specific, smaller, more committed audience is not a bad thing to do. They should have continued to appeal to the most invested players in the system instead of everyone else.
The market size of those two markets are vastly disparate.
Hint: The tabletop market is miniscule in comparison, and appealing to a miniscule portion of a miniscule market is a great way to go out of business, especially since that portion doesn't actually purchase any more.
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They should have continued to appeal to the most invested players in the system instead of everyone else.
You're assuming that they didn't.
You're not the only player who is heavily invested in the system. Some of us were very invested in it and recognized its weaknesses both, and wanted a game that kept the feel of what we were invested in while addressing those weaknesses.
In addition, as DMW noted above, you're also either claiming that a) the system designers weren't invested in the system or that b) they didn't design a system for themselves. I find both of those claims highly suspect.
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While I do not severely hate "Ivory Tower Design" which sherlock1701 seems to prefer (and I probably share with said person a generally pro-Simulationist approach in rules making) that much, as it by the nature of the d20 system severely stupefies non-spellcasters (or others deprived of similar abilities with definitive, guaranteed results), it had to be curbed hard.
The list of spells that have the Trait is pretty small in the grand scheme: Baleful Polymorph, Banishment, Blindness, Calm Emotions, Charm, Color Spray, Dominate, Fabricated Truth, Feeblemind, Flesh To Stone (sort of...it only applies to the ongoing Saves), Hallucination, Overwhelming Presence, Paralyze, Possession, Scintillating Pattern, Sleep, Subconscious Suggestion, Suggestion, Synaptic Pulse, Telepathic Demand, Uncontrollable Dance, Unfathomable Song, Vibrant Pattern, Warp Mind, and a few Focus Spells that mostly duplicate Charm or other mind control.
No wonder, I see (unsurprisingly) classic (martial) salary-robbers here. In that spirit, I suggest that
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Saying that getting rid of legitimate players is "sanitizing" is such toxic gate keeping. Seriously, just because they play the game for different reasons doesnt give you the right to un essence call them garbage.
That's what "sanitizing" means afterall, that they were dirty or unclean.
It's not a perfect parallel, just an example of how designing for a specific, smaller, more committed audience is not a bad thing to do. They should have continued to appeal to the most invested players in the system instead of everyone else.
Making claims of "legitimate" players and "most invested" sounds gatekeepy to me.
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Its worth noting that D&D 5e tried to solve the "boss taken out by whiffing on a save" problem by using Legendary Resistances (the boss gets to basically say "nuh-uh" on a limited number of failed saves per day) and it is one of the few cases where the 5e rules aren't elegant at all.
It requires the players to have meta knowledge about GM mechanics to know that they aren't wasting their spells (the amount of times I as the rules savvy player have had to say to my teammates out of character "its okay, you didn't waste your spell slot, you used up one of the bosses legendary resistances" is probably two or three times per boss fight) and if the GM or another player doesn't clue them in, it can be misleading by making the players think the boss is immune to their spells or that it auto succeeds all its saves somehow.
I think I prefer the incapacitation rules as they apply to everyone and everything that meets the level criteria, so at least it feels consistent and fair and doesn't require players to have to use out of character knowledge in a fight.
(A side note on 5e though, though I may not be a fan of legendary resistances, but I love legendary actions, as it solves the issues of boss action economy and makes a fight feel more dynamic without misleading the players in any way)
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One person said they should have focused on the "most invested" (meaning not most invested in then normal sense but in this sense the extreme optimizers and theorcrafyters) players instead of everyone else, which prompted the next person to say that getting rid of said small audience because they're reducing the fun of the larger audience (which the original statement is pretty explicit about doing) would be a good thing.
Definitely not how I would have worded it but I can certainly understand it. What makes a player more invested over another? What makes you [general] more invested than me?
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Gonna have to agree with Rysky on this one. If one part of the player base wants to be the "special children" that get everything they want and the designers design specifically for them instead of the wider player base...
Yeah, the game is better off without entitled people like that.
Not liking the game's direction is fine. Saying you wish the devs had gone a different direction is fine. Saying you wish the devs would listen to you and ignore everyone else is toxic.
Seems like an easy distinction to me.
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I agree they shouldn't develop for a subset of a subset, to do would simply be throwing away cash and livelihoods; and to think they developed something they didnt enjoy would be counter to their passion for the system.
I will also agree that they cant make a rule for everything. However, it would had been nice if the default rules had taken into account higher power games (to some extent): Instead of relying on random house rules, the game mastery guide helps a lot to solve some of these.
************
Saying that getting rid of legitimate players is "sanitizing" is such toxic gate keeping. Seriously, just because they play the game for different reasons doesnt give you the right to un essence call them garbage.That's what "sanitizing" means afterall, that they were dirty or unclean.
I agree that my word was a bit harsh. It doesn't remove my point. You can decide, as a company, to get rid of a part of your customer base if it reduces the pleasure of the biggest part of your customer base.
Pathfinder is a cooperative game. When one player trivializes the combat not giving anyone else the chance to participate, it is no more a cooperative game.HP grinding is actually a very simple system to make sure everyone has his share of victory.
The True King was an exception, every other boss in that game holds to the rule.
i was merely giving an example of a boss who isn't a boss but a boss pretending to be a boss for his boss, where the real boss wasn't a boss fight at all.
so we really didn't disagree at all.
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The True King was an exception, every other boss in that game holds to the rule.i was merely giving an example of a boss who isn't a boss but a boss pretending to be a boss for his boss, where the real boss wasn't a boss fight at all.
so we really didn't disagree at all.
I'll echo your earlier statement, too much boss.
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There have been a lot of good points raised about preserving the action economy of a single creature ("the boss") vs. a whole party's worth of actions which are excellent points.
Indeed they are.
In a 4-round fight; maybe 30-40 minutes of play you might hit once or land one spell.
Maybe that's GOODMATH(tm); but it sounds painfully boring and uninspiring to me.
This is not how fights in PF2 work. You're assuming an utter lack of basic tactics by the PCs...not even flanking, and certainly no debuffs if any sort, despite the fact that they'll all almost certainly have their third actions at the very least to achieve such things.
Taking down a boss in PF2 is an exercise in, y'know, actual tactics to maximize your odds of success.
In a complete shift of opinion to the majority of you; I (as the DM) loved sinkorswim effects specifically to save the group the chore of having to hack and chomp their way through some monster's copious amount of hit points. Granted, their saves were better so they were still the underdog there to land one, but when they did it was awesome for the PC and the party.
It's so STRANGE to me to think of a group of PCs, a PARTY, being *upset* because someone in their group (a wizard or cleric say) successfully dealt with a powerful foe in a manner that saved them from the danger of a combat with said foe.
When someone does it once, it's cool and a relief. When the same person does it every fight, it becomes a 'Wait, why are we here?' experience for everyone else.
And the latter is very much what happens pretty often in a classic Fighter/Rogue/Cleric/Wizard party with an optimal Wizard in PF1. It would also happen pretty often within a couple of rounds in PF2 if the Incapacitation Trait just ceased to exist.
You see, people like actually contributing to the group's success and having your entire existence basically irrelevant to whether the party wins is not fun in the long run.
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When someone does it once, it's cool and a relief. When the same person does it every fight, it becomes a 'Wait, why are we here?' experience for everyone else.And the latter is very much what happens pretty often in a classic Fighter/Rogue/Cleric/Wizard party with an optimal Wizard in PF1. It would also happen pretty often within a couple of rounds in PF2 if the Incapacitation Trait just ceased to exist.
You see, people like actually contributing to the group's success and having your entire existence basically irrelevant to whether the party wins is not fun in the...
And that is one of the main reasons of the change on the maths of the game, and a good thing. But with the current low chance of landing such a spell on PF2, is really necessary also Incapacitate? Seems like overkill to me.
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There have been a lot of good points raised about preserving the action economy of a single creature ("the boss") vs. a whole party's worth of actions which are excellent points.
Still, given the design of PF2 if you feel the solution to making a "boss" interesting is to:
- Make it immune to the types of spells that are specifically designed to deal with single high-power targets.
- Give it much higher AC, Attack bonuses, and Saves than the PCs
- Give it a boatload of hit points.Then I guess I just have to respectfully disagree with you and the game designers.
A Hobgoblin General is a level 6 creature; a Severe encounter for a group of 4 level 3 PCs.
PC's are likely to have ~ +9 attack bonuses vs. the HG's AC 25: a 25% to hit, which drops to 5% for any secondary attacks.
The HG's saves aren't too far behind (Fort +12, Ref +15, Will +13); and even with an 18 stat a spellcaster is going to be at DC 19.
This means that in order to "preserve the challenge of the fight" a martial or spellcasting PC is going to be lucky to do anything but miss in 66% to 75% of the rounds of the fight.
In a 4-round fight; maybe 30-40 minutes of play you might hit once or land one spell.
Maybe that's GOODMATH(tm); but it sounds painfully boring and uninspiring to me.
So let's look at some obvious counterpoints here.
1) Since the party has 4x the actions of the enemy, there's a lot they can do with them. Flanking is one example, but demoralizing, grappling, and making use of other abilities the party possesses can help that. A simple +1 status bonus + flat-footed (and Aid might be more helpful than actually attacking in some cases) ups the chance to 40% immediately, and neither of those are particularly difficult to get. Any +1 weapon ups the chances by even more, and chances are pretty good that there are at least 1-2, floating around the party. The easiest optimal example is probably a fighter with a +1 weapon, inspire courage, and flanking, hitting it with Intimidating Strike at +13 vs AC 23. On a hit, that makes it +11 vs AC 22 for everyone else. Not nearly as bad as it originally looks!
2) In this case, the spellcaster would know this, and mainly focus on spells that have good success effects. Alternately, they can keep using things that weaken enemies to help combo with part 1, or use other support spells (bane, bless, magic weapon, fear at the right time, etc). As a side note, half the lists have Magic Missile, which is also quite helpful in this situation.
It's so STRANGE to me to think of a group of PCs, a PARTY, being *upset* because someone in their group (a wizard or cleric say) successfully dealt with a powerful foe in a manner that saved them from the danger of a combat with said foe.
Picture this: you go to the final encounter, the thing you've been building up to for a year, and it's solved by one spell.
How is that engaging? It's more "was that really a threat?" It makes a joke of all the effort you've spent up to that point.
It completely ruins the tension when 1/4 of your party just casually solves all the issues consistently. As an example - and I wasn't even playing a full caster then - a party member made the comment that they were feeling completely useless because [my character] basically resolves all the problems anyways. (As an aside, the final boss of the campaign basically had to have doubled HP to survive beyond a round, and even that went to pieces when my kineticist crit.)
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And that is one of the main reasons of the change on the maths of the game, and a good thing. But with the current low chance of landing such a spell on PF2, is really necessary also Incapacitate? Seems like overkill to me.
The odds aren't that low if you target their low Save. A level 7 PC might easily have a Save DC of 23. The average 10th level monster Low Save is around +16, meaning they have 30% chance of failure flat out. With a good Intimidation on a Sorcerer, you can probably debuff Saves by another -1 with just the Skill, and spells can make it another -2 or so, easy, if you invest another spell (and, on Will Saves, an Aberrant Sorcerer can have a Focus Spell for that). That's 45% chance with only one turn of 'prep', maybe more.
And that's probably too high a chance of one PC taking out a foe by themselves with the investment of a single daily spell.
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While I get what you mean, targeting the low save, using all possible debuffs and using the higher spell slot, and then get around 40-45%of success, seems to me like is a 55-60% of losing the higher spell slot AND 1-2 turns of preparation. That can hurt. Is clearly a gamble, but Incapacitate robs the reawrd.
I'm considering dropping the incapacitation rule and use villain points, which solved the issue very well in PF1.
But I need to play this edition a bit before going with houserules.
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While I get what you mean, targeting the low save, using all possible debuffs and using the higher spell slot, and then get around 40-45%of success, seems to me like is a 55-60% of losing the higher spell slot AND 1-2 turns of preparation. That can hurt. Is clearly a gamble, but Incapacitate robs the reawrd.
That, again, is a 45% chance of instantly killing the boss, which again, could easily be something built up over a month of play. And this method can be repeated by each PC for a 90% chance if four PCs repeat the same strategy in that turn.
That is not a small chance.
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While I get what you mean, targeting the low save, using all possible debuffs and using the higher spell slot, and then get around 40-45%of success, seems to me like is a 55-60% of losing the higher spell slot AND 1-2 turns of preparation. That can hurt. Is clearly a gamble, but Incapacitate robs the reawrd.
It's a 45% chance of them just losing. Mostly, this version results in them having serious debuffs even if they succeed. Dominate would leave them Slowed 1, Frightened 1, and Stupefied 2 even if they succeed on the Save vs. Dominate, just as one example.
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While I get what you mean, targeting the low save, using all possible debuffs and using the higher spell slot, and then get around 40-45%of success, seems to me like is a 55-60% of losing the higher spell slot AND 1-2 turns of preparation. That can hurt. Is clearly a gamble, but Incapacitate robs the reawrd.It's a 45% chance of them just losing. Mostly, this version results in them having serious debuffs even if they succeed. Dominate would leave them Slowed 1, Frightened 1, and Stupefied 2 even if they succeed on the Save vs. Dominate, just as one example.
I don't have access to the books right now to consult, but...
Incapacitate makes that this 55-60% miss on the BETTER situation and using the highest slots is a critical success on the ST, not a success. That normally means no effect. That's harsh.|
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I don't have access to the books right now to consult, but...
Incapacitate makes that this 55-60% miss on the BETTER situation and using the highest slots is a critical success on the ST, not a success. That normally means no effect. That's harsh.
It absolutely does, and it is kinda harsh. And that's why using Incapacitation effects on such foes is a bad idea, but they're a tiny subset of the effects available. As has been discussed a few places, most debuffs lack that trait and still have decent effects even on a successful Save. You use those on bosses and save your Incapacitate stuff for when you're fighting slightly lower level foes.
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A simple comparison between Color Spray and Fear shows that the Incapacitation rule is actually very nice. Without it, Color Spray would have to be removed from the game or nerfed to oblivion. Having kept the save or suck spells is a good thing, it adds variety to the game.
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Essentially yeah, you debuff big strong monsters and incapacitate lower-level foes, because you don't want to waste time-fighting the low-level enemies.
Incap role is different in this edition and yes making an enemy higher level is easier than ever before.
If you want to house rule it out at your table, you are welcome to do so, not like someone is going to stop you. Just probably won't be the way most people play the game if you go to another table.
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Well at least the camps are clear, one is supporting the old-school, single-decisive-roll philosophy of the early RPGS and MMORPGS (often also called rogue-like games), the other camp is representing the (more?) modern type of approach, which more likely boils down to a chain of consecutive actions in order to get a result.
The former players are accepting that their or their adversary's demise can be dependant on any single check in any single round, while the later players explicitly do not want this kind of randomness in their games.
Both forms of play have their cons and benefits as well in the cineastic narrative as well as in the rules department.
And while one camp might argue that from a narrative point of view "it is anti-climatic if the enemy we were after for one year fails prone to just one single save" the other side may argue that from a rules meta point of view it is "anti-climatic to know that the enemy can never ever fail prone to just one save and always has to be grinded down to zero HP".
Having played RPGs and MMORPGs since the 1980's, respectively early 2000's, every single game development so far was a further step away from this early "randomness" (which often wasn't so random at all once you were familiar with the rules), simply to cater for the masses who would not bother to familarize themselves with the rules in order to be able to mitigate much of the apparent randomness. And a broader player base equals more money, so here we go...
To quote from my most loved DnD short: "What is your saving throw against spells and effects that do not allow for a saving throw?" ;)
As for individual effects against such things, holy inefficient use of word count batman.Again, the stark reality is that there is never going to be a single cover-all special rule that will work for all spells.
Only individual spells know how to create "partial" results of that spell.
There might not be a single optimal solution for all spells but the Incapacitation trait comes close (or is at least a step toward it) pretty elegantly.
The spells themselves still provide the partial effects and the trait gives a general rule on how those effects are changed. Low word count - big effects.
It's another discussion if just a level difference is the right measure and if improving by one save-step is the ideal effect. Taking level difference as the measure fits with the rest of PF2's design that doesn't need designations as "minion" and "boss" and just manages everything via level difference. That keeps the rules simple.
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I really appreciate that the same monster can be a boss or a sub-boss or a minion based on level context. Feels far less restrictive than arbitrarily designating monsters to certain roles. It also makes the GM toolkit more versatile.
I'm thinking of houserulling the Incapacitate trait... Instead of making you immune you get advantage in the save (as 5ed). What you guys think?
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I'm thinking of houserulling the Incapacitate trait... Instead of making you immune you get advantage in the save (as 5ed). What you guys think?
Mathematically, Advantage is about a +5 on the d20 roll, on average. So, in practice, this halves the penalty of using Incapacitating on higher level foes (since upping results one level is effectively a +10).
That seems a reasonable enough House Rule if you want a higher, but still quite low, chance of them working.
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After reading the encounter building section of the rulebook and reluctantly flipping through the first book of Age of Ashes (since i haven't played yet and want to avoid spoilers), this seems like an issue that only exists when you look at it in a vacuum. The book gives rules that assume a standard Boss Battle will be against a creature 2 levels higher than the player, not 3 so Incapacitation effects will only be felt in end of chapter/book boss battles. Creatures 3-4 levels higher than the players are explicitly called out as Severe and Extreme threats that challenge a player's tactics and resources so they're not going to be the average enemy you face.
EDIT: And a further point on that, on level and +/- 1 level enemies are the standard and moderate threats you'll be facing. The advancement track of Hellknight Hill and the monsters encountered in each section confirm this.
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Gonna have to agree with Rysky on this one. If one part of the player base wants to be the "special children" that get everything they want and the designers design specifically for them instead of the wider player base...
Yeah, the game is better off without entitled people like that.
Not liking the game's direction is fine. Saying you wish the devs had gone a different direction is fine. Saying you wish the devs would listen to you and ignore everyone else is toxic.
Seems like an easy distinction to me.
It's toxic to want a game that's tailored to my specific tastes? Isn't that what everyone wants?
One person said they should have focused on the "most invested" (meaning not most invested in then normal sense but in this sense the extreme optimizers and theorcrafyters) players instead of everyone else, which prompted the next person to say that getting rid of said small audience because they're reducing the fun of the larger audience (which the original statement is pretty explicit about doing) would be a good thing.
Definitely not how I would have worded it but I can certainly understand it. What makes a player more invested over another? What makes you [general] more invested than me?
Players who are willing to dig into the rules and interactions and put a lot of time and effort into mastering them are more invested, as they have put a lot more time into the game.
I'm thinking of houserulling the Incapacitate trait... Instead of making you immune you get advantage in the save (as 5ed). What you guys think?Mathematically, Advantage is about a +5 on the d20 roll, on average. So, in practice, this halves the penalty of using Incapacitating on higher level foes (since upping results one level is effectively a +10).
That seems a reasonable enough House Rule if you want a higher, but still quite low, chance of them working.
I believe I've seen the math on this one is only +5 when the base chance of success is hovering around 50%. The closer you get towards 5% or 95% success, the lower the benefit of advantage. Here's a reddit post that shows the change in probabilities on a flat check.
I think using advantage/disadvantage would probably work quite well as a replacement for "1 degree of success better".