Greetings to the community. I'm starting with the second edition and there's something I don't quite understand. If you are immobilized or can't see the attacker, can you benefit from the armor proficiency bonus (including your level)? I don't see very logical that if you can't move freely you can take advantage of it.
Immobilized doesn't mean paralyzed, so you can still dodge and weave in place and employ the protective properties of your physical armor despite that, unless one is immobilized because they're grabbed, which causes Flat-Footed. "Can't see the attacker" implies an unnoticed, undetected, invisible, or hidden attacker, which all invoke the Flat-Footed status on the victim
Flat-Footed is the extent that PF2 represents a target being unaware of an attack or otherwise unable to defend themselves due to circumstances. The only thing worse I can think of off the top of my head is Unconscious. You can stack its circumstance penalty with a status penalty like Clumsy, Frightened, and Sickened, which I think you'll find to be quite effective enough without also removing armor and/or Dex bonuses as in other systems
Baarogue wrote: Immobilized doesn't mean paralyzed, so you can still dodge and weave in place and employ the protective properties of your physical armor despite that, unless one is immobilized because they're grabbed, which causes Flat-Footed. "Can't see the attacker" implies an unnoticed, undetected, invisible, or hidden attacker, which all invoke the Flat-Footed status on the victim
Flat-Footed is the extent that PF2 represents a target being unaware of an attack or otherwise unable to defend themselves due to circumstances. The only thing worse I can think of off the top of my head is Unconscious. You can stack its circumstance penalty with a status penalty like Clumsy, Frightened, and Sickened, which I think you'll find to be quite effective enough without also removing armor and/or Dex bonuses as in other systems
Understand. But even when unconscious I don't see in the rules losing the armor proficiency bonus. A level 15 character trained in armor would still add 17 even if he was asleep or totally paralyzed.
Note that enemies (at least those in one's standard range to encounter & just AC for defense) will do about +50% damage for a mere +3 attack bonus (or -3 penalty to your AC). If Immobilized, Paralyzed, Blinded, or similar effects stripped you of your level bonus + proficiency, they would shatter game balance so much they'd be stripped from the game.
PF2 has grit, but it's not that gritty, which would be deep grimdark w/ nearly everybody shooting to impose one of those penalties first more than actually Strike. Because that'd amplify damage a ridiculous amount. Being a heroic fantasy game, it need not be that realistic since prophecy, luck, pluck, deity's blessings, and outright plot armor factor into the narrative.
So yeah, a legendary paralyzed Rogue can evade fireballs darn well as fantastic as that is, them being fantastic too. If you do want gritty, about as gritty as you can safely & simply get is to remove level from proficiency for everybody (perhaps keeping the difference advantage for bosses).
Castilliano wrote: Note that enemies (at least those in one's standard range to encounter & just AC for defense) will do about +50% damage for a mere +3 attack bonus (or -3 penalty to your AC). If Immobilized, Paralyzed, Blinded, or similar effects stripped you of your level bonus + proficiency, they would shatter game balance so much they'd be stripped from the game.
PF2 has grit, but it's not that gritty, which would be deep grimdark w/ nearly everybody shooting to impose one of those penalties first more than actually Strike. Because that'd amplify damage a ridiculous amount. Being a heroic fantasy game, it need not be that realistic since prophecy, luck, pluck, deity's blessings, and outright plot armor factor into the narrative.
So yeah, a legendary paralyzed Rogue can evade fireballs darn well as fantastic as that is, them being fantastic too. If you do want gritty, about as gritty as you can safely & simply get is to remove level from proficiency for everybody (perhaps keeping the difference advantage for bosses).
Sorry, what do you mean by this?
"Note that enemies (at least those in one's standard range to encounter & just AC for defense) will do about +50% damage for a mere +3 attack bonus (or -3 penalty to your AC)"
I don't understand the +50% thing, I don't know if there is some rule that I haven't overlooked because I'm still studying the manual.
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Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber
They're talking about how increasing chance to hit, and therefore also chance to crit, by a large number massively increases average damage output when you actually math it out.
It's not 50%; it' most likely around 30%. At most +15% chance to hit and crit which roughly translates to at most 30% more damage. If they have riders like deadly or fatal, crit damage can increase more than 1:1.
Ok, thank you very much everyone! I've played a lot of Pathfinder and I'm liking this second edition a lot but I had these doubts.
Yes, Hammerjack. It's the difference in expected damage based on odds, not direct increase.
nicholas storm wrote: It's not 50%; it' most likely around 30%. At most +15% chance to hit and crit which roughly translates to at most 30% more damage. If they have riders like deadly or fatal, crit damage can increase more than 1:1. The (about) 50% comes from a dev who then demonstrated the math because he understood how counterintuitive it is. Feel free to demonstrate math which contradicts that in case my memory's faulty. Note that it only applies to standard enemies, not those with significant level differences/AC abnormalities (like an ooze whose crit immunity also messes up the math). And standard weapons for that matter, those that double on a crit, not fatal/deadly/picks with weapon spec/et al.
And it is counterintuitive, plus somewhat a matter of language. For example, increasing 5% to 10% could be called 5% more or 100% more depending on one's emphasis. In terms of expectations/raw numbers, calling that 100% (or double) fits expected-damage models better.
For starters, if you hit 50% of the time (11+), so crit 5% of the time (a nat 20), a +3 changes that to 65% (8+) & 15% (18+). The crit portion counts as a hit too so that +3 takes it from 55 to 80 (about +45% comparative damage by proportion, not the 25% from subtraction). Of course there's a range of ACs one would have to factor in to demonstrate it in full, but that's the gist. Bonuses become more pronounced w/ MAP since the initial expected damage shrinks, while the increase in damage shrinks slower.
Beware if setting out to show this: either cap the normal-hit portion at 50% and double the percent influence of crits, or count them as separate threads of hit-damage to add afterward (as I did here).
Cheers.
(And I only did a cursory edit, so there's that...)
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