It might be an unpopular opinion but I really like the stamina and resolve pools.I understand that resolve could have been less complicated and have more uses at lower levels. But man I'm going to miss the stamina and resolve. I know there are ways to keep them in SF2e, but they have stated multiple times they want everything backwards capable. So if it doesn't benefit pathfinder it's out. Which sucks. They sould make it it's own game instead of pathfinder in space. Oh well, they probably make supplementary rule and put it in another book like they did with the mana pool.
IMHO, the reason that PF2 Stamina didn't catch on and become popular like several of the other variant rules did is because:
1) After-combat Healing is much easier to get.
2) Only being able to use Healing spells and magic after being down half your HP, and then having it only heal you back up to that half-way point isn't as good as being able to heal HP normally.
3) Resolve points aren't used for anything else in the game. So there is no tradeoff balance. You get your 4 or 5 Resolve points each day - and you can use them for recovering stamina. That's it. You aren't ever tempted to do some cool ability that costs resolve points and risk not having enough to recover stamina with later that adventuring day.
If the Stamina variant rule was a core rule of Starfinder2e and other things in the game used it, then those problems can probably be fixed.
Resolve is used with almost every class ability to either increase its effect or to override a creature that saved against the effect. My Envoy would burn through it to dangerous levels every session.IMHO, the reason that PF2 Stamina didn't catch on and become popular like several of the other variant rules did is because:
1) After-combat Healing is much easier to get.
2) Only being able to use Healing spells and magic after being down half your HP, and then having it only heal you back up to that half-way point isn't as good as being able to heal HP normally.
3) Resolve points aren't used for anything else in the game. So there is no tradeoff balance. You get your 4 or 5 Resolve points each day - and you can use them for recovering stamina. That's it. You aren't ever tempted to do some cool ability that costs resolve points and risk not having enough to recover stamina with later that adventuring day.
If the Stamina variant rule was a core rule of Starfinder2e and other things in the game used it, then those problems can probably be fixed.
I think they mean with the PF2 variant rule. In Starfinder (as you know) there are a ton of alternative uses for Resolve but in Pathfinder 2 it's a variant rule so Stamina and Resolve don't interact with any other aspects of the game.
I expect that the resolve variant rules might be a little more popular in SF2 than in PF2, since Starfinder players are more familiar with them, and because Starfinder Enhanced will provide a good base of inspiration for what other tempting things resolve could be spent on.
I didn't know pathfinder had stamina variant rules. I haven't played any pathfinder, but the rules that I just looked up are same. I can see why it didn't catch on. It seems like easy mode, free healing after combat. And no point to the resolve. So how I would run it in starfinder, using the plates soldier as an example. Hp=5, stamina=5+con. I like the idea of releasing hero points with resolve points. You get 1+your key abilitie modifier per session. You can use them to reroll a dice, To instantly recover your stamina, Or to enhance your classes abilities (example as a Soldier you can spend one resolve point to make your primary target to fail its check to be Suppressed.) You can recover one quarter
of your stamina without a resolve point with a 15 minutes of uninterrupted rest but after doing so can't benefit from another rest for 1 hour.
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I think they mean with the PF2 variant rule. In Starfinder (as you know) there are a ton of alternative uses for Resolve but in Pathfinder 2 it's a variant rule so Stamina and Resolve don't interact with any other aspects of the game.
Yes. Starfinder has Stamina. I like Starfinder stamina - that was a really well done system.
Pathfinder2e also has Stamina as a variant rule. I have never seen it played. No one uses it because it has more drawbacks than benefits, and nothing else in the game references it.
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I think they mean with the PF2 variant rule. In Starfinder (as you know) there are a ton of alternative uses for Resolve but in Pathfinder 2 it's a variant rule so Stamina and Resolve don't interact with any other aspects of the game.Yes. Starfinder has Stamina. I like Starfinder stamina - that was a really well done system.
Pathfinder2e also has Stamina as a variant rule. I have never seen it played. No one uses it because it has more drawbacks than benefits, and nothing else in the game references it.
It's been great to add a bit of a gritty feel to our bronze-age Pathfinder game, along with proficiency without level. Not being able to get any real healing until you're in dangerous territory makes fights feel a lot more serious, and it caps how much it's even possible to be healed up by.
I vaguely remember a PF2 thread about it.
But that's the only the one that I actually remember about anyone discussing it.
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This came up in another thread, but I thought I'd share it here too. Stainma is great out of combat to heal up, but in combat using PF2e rules with the over 10 is a crit, having healing limited to only HP could get deadly really fast.
It's not been one of the issues I've followed closely, has it been confirmed if it's gone or not?
I think the "your characters have an ablative health layer that is trivial to replenish" is a thing you could reproduce in a different way (like personal shields that give you temp HP which recharge when depleted.)
Of course HP has always been an abstraction on the fantasy side of things. A higher level Pathfinder character can get shot by like 100 crossbow bolts and walk away from that. Out-of-combat healing is *very* available and effective in PF2, and I imagine that this will carry into SF2.
The "resolve as a metacurrency for class abilities that represent you pushing yourself" thing can be done other ways, like "focus" or "unstable" or a new thing like one of those.
If it releases and there's not as much support for it, one can homebrew an easy enough use for it. PF 2e is surprisingly easy to homebrew due to standardization, so doing something like using the PF 2e variant stamina rules, but rolling Hero Points and Focus Points into your Resolve points system may give people the feeling they want.
Oh, I only just realized that stamina isn't part of the field test.
I'm... actually kinda disappointed at this. in a more futuristic setting, where attacks are far more deadly, Stamina does help to abstract the health.
Given how popular Stamina seems to be, it is extremely likely that its inclusion (or exclusion) will be decided in the actual playtest. I'd bet good money that possible solutions have already been thrown around internally for a while. The likely reason we don't see those in the field test is because it complicates things more, at a stage where you want to test "new" stuff in relative isolation from other new stuff as much as possible.
The idea that it should be mostly compatible with PF2e I think is a good one, and Stamina would be a natural loss from that due to it being optional, and the optional rules just... don't really fit in wider parts of the game.
I wouldn't be so sure about that. As long as the rules are as simple to convert as the Stamina rules, you wouldn't get many complications. It wouldn't even have to be the same as the PF2 variant rule, you could just print SF2's own conversion guide somewhere.
Even most optional stuff that ties into Stamina wouldn't hurt. It is optional after all, so your PF2 character could just take a different feat for example. The only problem would be classes having heavy interactions with Stamina. There you would basically have to run PF2 with Stamina for at least one PC and that's stretching the "100% compatibility" thing a bit too much.
in a more futuristic setting, where attacks are far more deadly,
I'm not sure that's the actual intention, to be honest. Like based on the field test data, a level 1 Rotolaser actually does less damage on a shot per shot basis than the PF2 Arquebus (they're both d8, but the latter has Fatal d12.) The advantages the future guns have is more "you don't have to constnatly reload the thing, and it's capable of automatic fire" since "I'm going to put a hole in you where you don't want one was pretty dangerous in every era.
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3 shots per round is honestly pretty bad in this system (because of MAP.) We're likely never going to get agile ranged weapons here.
Like to put it in context- in order to hit with your 3rd shot, you would need to roll as high as you would have to critically hit with your first shot.
I assume the norm for Pew-Pew characters will be 2 shots/round (after all, it's not "Pew-Pew-Pew".) The "Automatic Fire" activity seems intended to cover the "bullet hose" stuff.
3 shots per round is honestly pretty bad in this system (because of MAP.) We're likely never going to get agile ranged weapons here.
We do have Agile Ranged weapons. They just have very low damage. d6 is an outlier on the high side. A fixed 1 point of damage is had by twice that many.
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I guess if we get agile laser pistols, we'll still be looking at "you probably have something better to do with your 3rd action than attacking at -8."
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I guess if we get agile laser pistols, we'll still be looking at "you probably have something better to do with your 3rd action than attacking at -8."
Yes. Especially with low damage weapons and the characters that tend to use them.
I was about to say, the entire Small Arms category is prime material for being agile prime weapons.
I have to admit if they do away with Stamina I will be disappointed. However I think there are a couple reasons it will happen. One being that they didn't include it in the original Beginner box, because they felt it complicated the rules too much. And I believe that one of the things they learned from the Starfinder beginner box was that they wanted the Beginner boxes to not have 'different' rules than the full game, just a smaller selection, or subset of the rules/choices.
I think that to keep stamina, they would need to simply it enough that it would be ok for it to be a part of the Beginner Box rules. In order for that to happen, I would imagine it would need to be detached from Resolve, as I have trouble believing they would be willing to track Focus points, Resolve, and Hero Points in the eventual Beginner Box.
I think that their choice to say all healing only could affect HP was extra complexity that actually made some people dislike the easier refresh of some of their health. Some thought if my healer can't heal me up to full, how will I stay prepared for the battle. They also had to choose between using some of their more powerful class abilities, or keeping their resolve to keep themselves up. This is a mechanic that feels very much like using hero points to do things your class is supposed to be able to do, which discourages many players from doing their 'thing'.
If most healing, would have spilled over and healed stamina as well, it would have made it simpler in several aspects. It would still discourage the use of HP healing methods from regaining stamina when using fixed resources in any case where you had time, as taking a breather would be a cheaper option, especially if it didn't chew up a resolve point.
So my suggestion, making most if not all healing be able to restore HP as well as stamina. (There could be specific exceptions as far a specific spells/abilities, but the general rule should be yes it works) Make the Take a Breather not take a resource generally. You could have them make a CON check, which can be aided by medical care during the breather. If they fail they only get restored up to HALF their normal stamina and need to wait an hour for their next check. Crit fail, and they don't regain stamina and need to rest an hour. Spending a hero point (has the option, without needing to roll again, of improving the tier of result by one category). You would also limit taking a breather to being only available when they don't have the Wounded condition (or might even consider limiting it to needing to have not had the wounded condition for at least an hour) to give some impact to characters having been taken down.
If they must, you potentially have healing be less efficient at restoring stamina, like max half the normal healing. Making it less efficient on stamina. But I don't really feel like it is necessary as the normal ease of recovering Stamina by taking a breather should discourage over usage of HP healing to regain stamina, unless the person loses the ability to recover stamina for some reason.
So I think for me, I am sad to see that Stamina may be going away from the baseline, however I don't know that I'm that sad to see resolve going away, as I think the combination of Focus points, Hero points, and potential daily abilities may take care of what they were doing better than they had. I certainly imagine that it would get published in the eventually StarFinder books as a definite 'optional rule', even if primarily for historical perspective and those who were so used to using it. However, I think it would be really nice if Stamina could be made simple enough that it could make it in the beginner box rules and part of the main expectation for StarFinder books, and HP only would be the optional rule. It would advertise how stamina could be leveraged in Pathfinder if desired and show how flexible the games are. That the games can be fully compatible even when baseline one game may typically use what the other game considers an optional rule and vice-versa.
I don't know, at least my perspective is that Stamina was a definite factor in contributing to the fun and flavor of StarFinder. I was less attached to Resolve specifically, as it felt more like a limitation than a contributor, but others may feel differently.