Will Corefinder be using the old combat system or will it go the 3 action system?
Is there a release date?
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One of the selling points for me is not having to relearn the system. That is one of the main reasons to stay with PF1 for some of us that are very invested in the current system and have not much time to study new books of rules. To that end the basic mechanics should remain, and terminology should be frozen.
Simplifying (by removing stuff), clarifying and maybe adding some small features here and there is the best to keep us invested in the system. If the changes are broad enough to make you have to study, you can all the same go and study PF2.
One good point would be to bring to the core assumption advanced rules that have been very successful, like background skills. Using those variant rules helps the game without forcing people to learn new stuff. Things like variant multiclassing, hero points, stamina, etc... could make things more interesting without technically introducing new stuff.
For the last year I have been compiling ideas on something I have come to call Pathfinder Reforged. Feel free to fetch from there anything you find useful.
Among other things it includes:
- Some ideas on how to shorten long attack rounds at high level by bringing the essence of the 3-actions without breaking the standard+move+swift action economy.
- Extra ranks for the 2/level classes, but tied to thematic game decisions
So the issue with items like this is how they influence the math.PF has issues with the math requiring these items, the math being designed with them in mind. It stifles creativity in item design since you can't make an item that conflicts with those, and they're among the most boring magic items you can get.
We can give them other effects, but the only compromise I could see is just making all of these bonuses inherent and just give different items other unique things they can do. We could just make them tattoos or something like that, so you can still 'get stronger', but don't have the mechanical baggage of it.
The math requires +stat items, as it must or they rapidly become game-breakers. It also makes logical sense that such items would exist in-world. The notion that they would not, when magic does everything else, is nuts. Players are going to want them and in a game built around killing things and taking their stuff to advance, that's possibly the ideal way for them to come by such items. Yet, the slot congestion is real and means PCs pass up items that might be fun because they're occupying a mission-critical slot.
So why not remove slot affinities? Any magic item effect can occupy any body slot and transferring effects between slots is trivial. Like if you find a headband of Charisma and your headband slot is full, you could ask the party wizard to polymorph it into a belt or gloves or something. We functionally had that in 3.0 and it was the wrong move to insist in 3.5-onwards that the items must be better choices and they must further always occupy particular slots lest one pay a hefty penalty in creating the thing.
That may mean that the fighter can have +6 to all their physicals without paying a wbl tax for them, but that's basically fine. Removing the ability to do so was a stealth nerf to martials.
Alternatively, if the items themselves are really that objectionable, you could take the 3e route that +stat spell buffs last hours/level. Then the items are roughly interchangeable with the buffs and who takes what is largely up to party comp.
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We're conditioned to the need for magic items that boost stats, but they kinda don't make sense, when you think about it.
Right now, the spells that grant the stat boosts function *exactly* like the magic items.
What's the point of having both, aside from 'we're used to both being in the game.' They don't stack, so you can't cast your Bull's Strength on your fighter before a big fight cuz he's probably already got 'magic item of strength boosting'.
Getting rid of stat boosting magic items gives support casters more to do, and also makes their casting choices matter a bit more.
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Make abilities function the same for both players and monsters for example if a monster can use a breath weapon every 1d4 rounds with no limit then the player should be able to do so as well.
We're conditioned to the need for magic items that boost stats, but they kinda don't make sense, when you think about it.
It doesn't make any sense that either items exist which can do Thing X and other magic does not, or that magic does not and items do. If the items exist and the magic does not, it at least implies that nobody knows a non-item way to do this. That would only fit if stat-boosting items were some kind of artifact. If the magic exists and the items do not, then why haven't wizards who can put anything else into a scroll, potion, wand, etc have not managed it for this one?
We can solve both these problems if the items are permanent but of fixed bonus (like they are now) but the spells are of long enough (hour/level would do it, since that's functionally all day; most or all 10 minutes/level buffs should probably be hour/level) but unsure bonus (say 1d4+1). Which is how things were done in 3.0 when stat-boosting items were certainly desirable, but not nearly so mandatory as they became in 3.5. The norm then, to judge from what I saw on forums at the time, was that people eventually got stat boosts for the two to four stats they used most but the whole party probably had a mass bear's endurance running at higher levels. You'll never get a +6 out of the spell, but that's why you get the items for your primary focus.
You wouldn't need stat boosting items if starting stats and stat growth was actually much better then it currently is in the game.
You could fairly easily bake stat increases into the system like Starfinder or ABP does. But I think there will always be a desire to have something like Thor’s belt of strength.
This is why I think having parallel ABP and magic items is the better solution.
As for moving stat items to other slots, I think that’s just to make it harder to buff multiple physical stats. We don’t want to have to have a belt of strength with gloves of dexterity and boots of constitution.
You could fairly easily bake stat increases into the system like Starfinder or ABP does. But I think there will always be a desire to have something like Thor’s belt of strength.
This is why I think having parallel ABP and magic items is the better solution.
As for moving stat items to other slots, I think that’s just to make it harder to buff multiple physical stats. We don’t want to have to have a belt of strength with gloves of dexterity and boots of constitution.
I actually do want that and think its being heavily wbl taxed in 3.5 and onwards was an undeserved nerf to martials. It ought to be reverted.
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The thing is, once you add ABP and 3-action economy, it's not really PF1 any more and likely not what many "please just fix few small things but I've never had a problem with +2 swords and swift actions" people want.
That's kind of where I am. A lot of the issues that people have had with the game going back to August of 2000 are things I either don't think are problems or are, at least for me, genuinely good for the game and ought to be preserved. I don't mean like caster-martial disparity, which is egregious, but stuff like the Christmas Tree effect, wands of CLW, or magic not being "mysterious" and/or "rare", neither of which it has ever been in any mechanical sense. I honestly don't even mind a lot that the game fundamentally changes when players get access to teleportation, flight, or divinations.
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Very interested in this.
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I always enjoyed magic items. It's one of the most fun parts of the game for me. I played Giantslayer using advanced bonus progression and it kind of took a lot of the fun out of the game.
Personally I am fine with how races are stated up in Pathfinder 1E, the only problem I have is the lack of love for many races.... and some missing options and race concepts I would have liked to have seen.
I am fine with the class skills we have and don't want to change that except maybe combining climb and swim(and jump) to athletics and maybe acrobatics(except jump) and fly together.
Though I would love a lot more work done with craft and profession skills.
I like the idea of craft skills tied to magic item creation, no feats needed, just the right number of ranks in the proper skill.
It's going to be impossible to meet everyone's expectations, because they will conflict. My expectation is that Corefinder will be as different/improved as possible, while retaining as much backwards compatibility as possible.
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I would be interested if it is compatible with Spheres of Power / Might.
Hey, Spheres of Might developer here.
While we can't say it'll immediately be compatible, we're absolutely willing to work with the DDS team on a conversion doc.
I always enjoyed magic items. It's one of the most fun parts of the game for me. I played Giantslayer using advanced bonus progression and it kind of took a lot of the fun out of the game.
Interesting, can I ask what about the ABP made things less fun?
It's going to be impossible to meet everyone's expectations, because they will conflict. My expectation is that Corefinder will be as different/improved as possible, while retaining as much backwards compatibility as possible.
That's basically our end goal. We're going to do as much as we can to maintain what worked and change what didn't. PF wasn't everyone's cup of tea from 3.5, so we know we won't meet certain people's expectations. So at the end of the day, we've gotta do what we think works.
ABP takes away a lot of the fun of loot. Especially in APs. Getting a bunch of “masterwork” items that should have been upgrades but are now just vendor trash is depressing. Even a few artifacts go from powerful items to amusing trinkets.
This is why I say you should have both the items and slow ABP. Let loot be loot, but don’t make characters worthless without it.
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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ABP takes away a lot of the fun of loot. Especially in APs. Getting a bunch of “masterwork” items that should have been upgrades but are now just vendor trash is depressing. Even a few artifacts go from powerful items to amusing trinkets.
This is why I say you should have both the items and slow ABP. Let loot be loot, but don’t make characters worthless without it.
I agree that a pure automatic bonus progression makes loot a lot less fun. That being said, I'd love magic items that did more cool stuff and had less static bonuses. I think one option was touched on in ultimate equipment which introduced magic items which gave ability score bonuses, AND gave some other cool abilities. Maybe that's part of a solution - to only give static bonuses when the item does more than just that, which incidentally would increase the cost of such items and push them a bit further out for PCs to acquire, and create more interesting choices. I think some of the problem with magic items are they the static bonus items are not only so "needed" for the character progression assumptions in the game, but also are too cheap compared to other items (or other items are too expensive). When you also factor in magic items which grant a target a save have super low DCs, those types of items are almost never a good choice. Fixing magic item DCs to scale better with the DCs a character can get for their class abilities would make them FAR more attractive than static bonus items.
I really enjoyed the ABP when we used it in the Mummy's Mask. It gave me a chance to buy stuff I normally don't get to.
I really enjoyed the ABP when we used it in the Mummy's Mask. It gave me a chance to buy stuff I normally don't get to.
What did you get that you normally wouldn’t? And will you be tired of those other options after playing a few campaigns with ABP?
ABP takes away a lot of the fun of loot. Especially in APs. Getting a bunch of “masterwork” items that should have been upgrades but are now just vendor trash is depressing. Even a few artifacts go from powerful items to amusing trinkets.
This is why I say you should have both the items and slow ABP. Let loot be loot, but don’t make characters worthless without it.
Pretty much what they said. It took that element of managing items and trying to find a new one to give you that little extra edge out of the game. Gaining loot became boring. Finding items became boring. It just turned the game into talk, fight, level, and repeat. I like digging through a book filled with magic items and saying "ooh, I'll have to find one of those, so I can do X."
Maybe that's a problem specific to Paizo APs. They never have decent loot. I don't know. I'm not a developer, but I play and run games and I know what I like and what I don't like.
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Maybe we should just have both? I don't mean an overlapping system, I mean have ABP in the core book and make it clear it's just as legitimate an option as bonus-granting items.
So to touch on all of this, our decision was never to just lift ABP, there was always changes planned.
The main thing we want to do is remove 'math items', like things that just increase numbers. If an item's sole purpose was to fix the math, we want to remove that so when players receive magic items, they're always unique. To me, in the contest of a +1 sword vs. a sword that can turn water into acid with a poison effect to it, I know which one seems more interesting.
There's also the idea that magic in a setting can't permanently make someone stronger without physically altering them (like permanent polymorph spells). A lot of people's perception of magic is different than others, so I don't think a lack of magic that permanently increase's someone's abilities is that odd myself.
I assumed that backwards compatibility would include working with modules and APs. So, if you don't have incremental items, what are you going to do by default with those items in established adventures?
Melkiador, many skill boosting items(boots of elvenkind, cloak of elvenkind, Vest of Escape, etc.), both a ring of freedom of movement and a ring of evasion, periapt of health, and a lot of wands.
Could we just make stat boosting items like 2nd and 5th ed were it made a stat a set number but didn't increase the stat if it was already equal to or greater. For example lets say Gauntlets of Ogre Power granted you Str 18 if your Str was lower, but has no effect otherwise.
What about the magic system, are there any spells that you guys will be looking at?
I like the idea of getting rid of math heavy magic items, but I do like static bonuses from feats. So I do want to keep stuff like toughness, cunning, skill focus, alertness, great fortitude, etc. the same.
So...why do a whole new game instead of, say, a "Book of Experimental Might"-like book for Pathfinder 1E?
I guess what I'm wondering is, from a design standpoint, what perceived PF1 problems are you trying to solve? (The initial post is rather vague.)
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There are a few generally agreed on issues with PF1. Of course some will argue for these issues, but they seem to be in the minority.
As for why not to just make another unchained book? It’s really kind of confusing to go that route. It’s nice to have a base assumption of the game you are playing and unchained-style means that every campaign will have to have a growing list of all of the rules variants it’s going to be using.
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RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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So...why do a whole new game instead of, say, a "Book of Experimental Might"-like book for Pathfinder 1E?
I guess what I'm wondering is, from a design standpoint, what perceived PF1 problems are you trying to solve? (The initial post is rather vague.)
Also, if they plan to make changes and updates to say 50% or more of feats, spells, etc, even if many are small tweaks, then I know I'd want a brand new book with everything integrated, rather than a supplement I'd have to constantly cross index.
What does ABP stand for?
When it comes to magic items, I think there are too many feats. Maybe you should try trimming it down to 2, like consumables (scrolls, potions, wands, and staves) and wondrous (wondrous items, arms and armor, rings, and rods). Or maybe just the one feat, or get rid of magic item crafting feats altogether and let any spellcaster to make magic items.
Automatic Bonus Progression. It's a subsystem from unchained made so you don't have to worry about the Big 6(Stat boosters/Ring of Protection/Amulet of Natural Armor/Cloak of Resistance, Magic Weapons/Armor). These items are built into the higher level math of the game and disproportionately effects martials over casters if the DM is being stingy.
Plus when the necessities are taken care of, you can buy cool utility items.
One other random idea:
Have both ABP and numbwe-boosting items, but let people exchange the number boosts they can't use for additional magic effects of equivalent value. So if you get a +2 sword when you have +1 ABP, let +1 from the sword stack and let the player exchange the other +1 for something like flaming.
Last time I ran with something like ABP, magic swords only had qualities like flaming (no enhancement bonus of their own) and you couldn't use those qualities until you had an equivalent enhancement bonus from ABP.
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What about the magic system, are there any spells that you guys will be looking at?
I like the idea of getting rid of math heavy magic items, but I do like static bonuses from feats. So I do want to keep stuff like toughness, cunning, skill focus, alertness, great fortitude, etc. the same.
Why, those are literally the most boring feats. There's nothing less exciting than +2 to something.
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The problems with ABP in my opinion are the following:
- backwards compatibility with published adventures: you will need to describe new powers for the replaced items, forcing people to relearn, not very different than converting to PF2
- less interesting (no story): finding a belt of ogre power seems definitely more appealing and interesting to me than bumping up strength automatically at level up, the belt has a story (you took from/find in/craft with, etc.)
- increased power level: unless the replacing items are only circumstantially useful you will end adding the power of ABP + another goody from the new free item slot + wealth (unless you plan to decrease wealth by level accordingly = even more changes to the game we know)
- decision paralysis: equipping high level characters is time consuming, as you have not only more wealth but more items available to chose from. Some players are eager to go through the huge quantity of item tables available to complete the items found during the adventure, but I see as many other players struggling to find the time to decide what to equip. Having an array of "go to" items is a time saver we people enjoy. Don't force us to go waste more time looking up for marginally useful other items.
- other items will arise: related with the previous reason, people will find another array of "go to" items. Maybe current second best, but that is the nature of the people behind the characters, as two powerful human traits move us there: improvement need/power optimization and laziness/time optimization
Summing up my thoughts I would recommend to leave experimenting with ABP and other similar replacements to +X items to new systems like PF2.
I understand what people do not like is they do not have room for decision making because they have to fill the slots with X. To this end I think the best solutions for these people instead of static progression are:
- magic shops restriction: by restricting what you can buy at the shop in campaigns where the GM and players want to see less "go to" items, the players will have to deal more with what they find or can craft for themselves. In the time of apps and internet there are out there good applications to generate on the fly shop item lists. Point the GMs and campaigns towards there if you want more item diversity slotted in your adventures and the need to decide among what is available.
- item qualities: by using the weapon/armor/shield quality system (something well known to the players), you can give the configuration desires some players want for these items. Let's say you want 'lesser fortification' on your cloak, ok, that would be a +1 quality, so your cloak +2 is instead a cloak of resistance +1 of lesser fortification. Your headband +4 could be instead a headband of cunning intelligence +2 of see invisibility, etc...