[Spoiler] Remastered Dislikes

[Kaspyr2077]

Albatoonoe wrote:

Yeah, I got that dying only gets bigger when you recover. Some people were saying it the other way.

... You're saying it the wrong way. Wounded is the one that gets bigger with every recovery.

Albatoonoe wrote:

And as far as wounded, it all makes sense to me. It is more lethal, but only if your character is yo-yoing. Being knocked unconscious and waking up multiple times in a fight is really rather silly.

It doesn't make much difference to someone getting up multiple times. It is most relevant when someone goes down, tries to heroically get back into the fight and save the day, and goes down a second time. Specifically the second, because that's the one where the rule changes the outcome that doesn't involve lots of improbable rolls.

Albatoonoe wrote:

And to be clear, I love the Monk class and embracing other cultures. I specifically don't like the monk trait on weapons because it others eastern weapons for know real reason. Martial artists exist all around the world. The name comes from a specific group (Shaolin Monks), but the class shouldn't be narrowed down to their weapons. There are Indian martial artists that use the urumi or Filipino martial artists that use escrima sticks.

The monk trait is largely used on specifically Chinese (and occasionally Japanese) weapons. Nixing the monk trait and tackling weapon monks in other ways would be better in my opinion.

The Monk is not meant to encompass all Eastern martial arts, armed or unarmed. There are lots of other martial classes you could take to use armed martial arts. You can make Fighters in Tian Xia too. The Monk represents a mystic martial arts fantasy that has been popular for many, many centuries in the East. Does it capture that particular fantasy well? Not really, and some consideration to expanding the weapons list would improve that, for sure. If you want the Monk to encompass Shaolin monks, neglecting their signature weapon, the monk spade, seems just ridiculous. I would actually like to see much improved rules for weapon styles for a Monk. I just don't think that veiled accusations of racism are productive or fair.

[The Raven Black]

I hope we will get some clarification on the Dying/Wounded topic. I do not expect we'll get it before street date at the earliest.

Concerning new players, well we already had higher lethality compared to other games when PF2 came out. People came to the internet at that time looking to see if this lethality was intended and received good advice on how to take it into account.

It will be the same here.

[Jader7777]

I had a group start with the beginner box and another group learn the game because I gave them all photocopies of the GM screen and it feels very surreal to see what feels like the majority of players not playing the game as written.

But there's also a lot more about the rule set that that has terrible presentation and organization, mostly because the system seems absolutely terrified of tersely explaining things within a single action or topic. For example the Stunned condition could just say "you can't use reactions" but instead you have to read an entire other section of the book (I'm not going to tell you where, go find it like I did), not referenced in the Stunned condition to figure out what the intended rule is.

This is terrible design. But I'm also excited to see who or what else people have been doing wrong for the past 4 years. I bet the Perception rules are a hot bed of completely different takes, did you know being invisible and in a Silence spell adds no bonus to stealth checks, but being behind a waist high wall adds +2?

I wish the Remaster was an actual complete rewrite of the rules from the ground up; instead it feels like a Repost.

[SuperBidi]

Jader7777 wrote:

I bet the Perception rules are a hot bed of completely different takes, did you know being invisible and in a Silence spell adds no bonus to stealth checks, but being behind a waist high wall adds +2?

The Perception rules are among the best things in PF2. In previous editions, they were so bad they turned so many fights into slugfests.

[pH unbalanced]

Unicore wrote:

I have a question, has anyone ever had a party TPK because one or more characters died too quickly, instead of just staying unconscious?

Yes. The cleric (and only healer) was killed from full hp by massive damage on turn 1. Retreat was not an option for terrain reasons.

[Unicore]

pH unbalanced wrote:

Unicore wrote:

I have a question, has anyone ever had a party TPK because one or more characters died too quickly, instead of just staying unconscious?

Yes. The cleric (and only healer) was killed from full hp by massive damage on turn 1. Retreat was not an option for terrain reasons.

So if the cleric had just been knocked out, you don’t think the party would have TPK’d?

[Fumarole]

Conditions not stacking is a general rule. Adding your wounded value when failing a recovery check is a specific rule. Specific overrides general.

[Darksol the Painbringer]

Unicore wrote:

I have a question, has anyone ever had a party TPK because one or more characters died too quickly, instead of just staying unconscious?

Every TPK I have seen as a player or GM involved multiple rounds of multiple characters spending actions trying to get another character back up and into the fight. I won’t say I fully know how the rule is exactly supposed to work until I get to read all the context stuff together for myself, or if it gets Errata’d or FAQed. But either way, I am strongly inclined to run my games “the more lethal way” from now on. TPKs are exhausting to the whole table and have ended more than one campaign for me. The occasional Individual character death usually results in the players getting more invested in the story, naming items/places/teams after a fallen hero.

I totally get that some players respond very badly to their character’s dying, but those players don’t respond more positively to TPKs in my experience. It’s not what happens to downed PCs that demoralizes players about PF2. It is a mismatch of player expectation and encounter difficulty, or a sense that the GM /game is punishing the chosen character’s playstyle or tactics. Tables and adventure writers are much better off trying to dial that in than in trying to worrying about the severity of what happens after a character falls, gets up, and the falls again.

Our TPKs almost always happen because of AoOs; that is, doing the "right" thing for your party/party members (bringing them up and getting them back into the fight) is punishing, to the point of both ruining actions as well as your own character.

Not only do AoOs ruin the concept of bringing fallen party members back, it also ruins the ability to keep them alive to prevent them from falling in the first place.

When you got a half-dozen Large+ sized creatures with reach and surrounding your party, one trigger means 6+ attacks coming at you simultaneously. Even if you're only facing a couple at any given time, that is two free attacks you're taking just to keep yourself up.

It doesn't matter if you're trying to heal yourself to prevent going down or to heal someone else who is about to go down or is already down. When you introduce a mechanic that makes doing the "proper" thing a punishing activity to do, it reinforces the idea of "you need to stay and fight until you can't anymore, because doing anything else just makes the fight worse for you."

[Unicore]

There is a lot to unpack there, but it doesn’t seem like having downed characters stay unconscious longer in encounters helps parties survive, it sounds like you are agreeing that it gets the whole party killed faster, which is what I am noticing about PF2 as well, and is the point Superbidi has been making as well. People are getting upset about a tree that (maybe) has been trimmed, that might actually be a contributing blight of hard feelings about PF2 lethality to the forest of player enjoyment of PF2.

If a developer looking at stories of TPKs that resulted in hard feelings about the game noticed a consistent thread of player actions being thrown at yo-yoing a fallen comrade up and down, this potential change to the death and dying rules addresses that problem.

It sounds like a lot of tables should be having more conversations about encounter difficulty and how to dial in whether the encounter difficulty is matching what the players want and are tactically prepared for. There are many, many better ways to make the game “less lethal” for parties that get discouraged by individual player death than trying to fiddle with the death and dying rules to let characters sit around unconscious more.

[Trip.H]

Kaspyr2077 wrote:

I have never once seen an encounter that was so deadly that a PC got downed early, yet so easy that the party didn't need the help. I'm not even sure how that could work.

I have been that PC more than once. Alchemist behind everyone else, the +L enemy goes ahead of me in initiative, Strides/ floats past the rest of the party, rolls a crit, and I'm 100 --> 0 without ever taking an action.

If an encounter is 4 PCs versus 2, or even 3 creatures, you can expect them to be at +level, meaning crits are extremely common. The way HP growth outpaces damage growth is a well known pain point of the system. If you've been playing at >L8 for a long time, it's easy to forget just how badly the math shakes out a low levels. One example being when an enemy is doing 2 dmg dice, gets a crit, and you have to survive 2 * (2d~8 + X) as a L2 PC.

My GM gave me a freebie Belt of Good Health at L1 or 2 because of how, honestly kinda f*$!ed, the HP balance is at low levels.

Once I hit L5ish, a combination of the HP scaling and investment in Battle Medicine, Elixirs, ect, reversed the trend so much so, that I've only ever hit 0 on one other occasion (which of course was a 4 PC vs 1 big foe that could do a single crit for most of my HP)

--------

In contrast, the only time we've had a "TPK" was during the Corpselight fight on the surface level of Abm Vlts. Story-wise, Wrin showed up after seeing our doom in the stars, and cast 3-action Heal right after the last of us went down.

-------

Literally last night, we had a big climatic fight and one PC was killed rather early by a Vampiric Touch, before even the minor minions. No chance to get her back up at all, death effect. It was dicey, but the 3 survivors stood our ground and won the fight, and we spent most of remaining session dealing with the fallout and riding to Absalom for a resurrection.

[Bluemagetim]

You can run dying and wounded properly with no confusion by using the entry's for dying on page 443 and wounded on page 447 while treating wounded as a condition with values
If you look at 411 and tour read is not consistent with 443 and 447 then its due to misinterpretation and misapplying conditions.
Honestly 411 doesn't tell you anything new but the reminder that doesn't exist on these other pages that also contain the rules for dying.
The game hasn't changed when it comes to dying, the rules are the same in both preremaster and remaster. The taking damage while dying had the reminder text pre as well. The only difference is the recovery check entry on 411 and 411 only has in parens a statement about plus wounded value if any. Some have taken this to mean you now treat wounded as if you could stack its effect. Thats not how conditions in pathfinder work to my understanding and in applying conditions with values or their effects which no where have ever been applied in a stacking fashion. Wounded is a condition like any other and has a way of gaining it and removing and increasing it. Asside from the actual value increasing it would never apply its effect higher than the value and never stacking. We all know conditions to be that way in this game. Unless developers say thier intent was to change wounded to be a condition that works didferently than other conditions and can apply its effect stacking its probably too soon to believe it can. I believe dying and wounded are not different from before.

[Driftbourne]

The worst yo-yo encounter I've ever seen we had 2 healers 3 marital classes, and a wizard. Only the wizard went down once, everyone else was down to 0, paralyzed, or both 2 or 3 times each. 2 of the party was down or paralyzed the first round, and 2 more the next round. After that, we were lucky if we even had 2 players able to act per round, and never more than 1 healer at a time. Somehow we survived but it was long and drawn out. But without the yo-yo going on it would have been a TPK by the end of round 3. I don't think anyone really had fun with that encounter because most rounds most players were unable to act.

I think the most fun I had in Pathfinder 2e so far was the time we had to travel someplace by dog sled, and the goblins in the party on hearing the word dog almost started a fight with the person we were renting the dog sled from and slaughter his dogs. But goblin logic kicked in and the goblins decided they would be willing to ride on the sled only if they had bags over their heads so they couldn't see the dogs. Needless to say, we failed lots of perception checks during that trip. The whole trip one goblins kept casting Time Sense and asking. "Are we there yet?"

[thejeff]

Bluemagetim wrote:

You can run dying and wounded properly with no confusion by using the entry's for dying on page 443 and wounded on page 447 while treating wounded as a condition with values

If you look at 411 and tour read is not consistent with 443 and 447 then its due to misinterpretation and misapplying conditions.
Honestly 411 doesn't tell you anything new but the reminder that doesn't exist on these other pages that also contain the rules for dying.
The game hasn't changed when it comes to dying, the rules are the same in both preremaster and remaster. The taking damage while dying had the reminder text pre as well. The only difference is the recovery check entry on 411 and 411 only has in parens a statement about plus wounded value if any. Some have taken this to mean you now treat wounded as if you could stack its effect. Thats not how conditions in pathfinder work to my understanding and in applying conditions with values or their effects which no where have ever been applied in a stacking fashion. Wounded is a condition like any other and has a way of gaining it and removing and increasing it. Asside from the actual value increasing it would never apply its effect higher than the value and never stacking. We all know conditions to be that way in this game. Unless developers say thier intent was to change wounded to be a condition that works didferently than other conditions and can apply its effect stacking its probably too soon to believe it can. I believe dying and wounded are not different from before.

The "stacking" argument makes no sense to me. There's no sense in which Wounded is stacking. You add your Wounded value when you gain Dying and every time it increases (failed recovery check or taking damage). That's not stacking any more than adding a damage bonus every time you damage someone is.

I don't like the rule and I'm not sure it's presented clearly, but the problems have nothing to do with stacking.

[Bluemagetim]

Thats stacking to apply the effect to dying in a way that results in a modifier that is net higher than the value of the condition with a value whos effect is being applied.

[Bluemagetim]

Wounded is a condition that treats your dying as though it is higher than it would be without it. Like doomed is a condition that treats your death threshold as lower than the default generally 4.
They have a value that tells us the amount it modifies by. We wouldn't treat that value like damage. We would treat it like a condition with a value. Those go by the highest value. Yes the recovery section has a note on failure in parens but its no different from the reminder in the taking damage section which was there pre remaster and not seen as applying the condition effect in a stacking manner.

Even pre remaster you weren't supposed to increase your dying more than 1 for normal damage or 2 for crit damage. That hasn't changed in the remaster.
This is also something you can see in the entry for the dying condition itself.

[Karys]

Bluemagetim wrote:

Wounded is a condition that treats your dying as though it is higher than it would be without it. Like doomed is a condition that treats your death threshold as lower than the default generally 4.

They have a value that tells us the amount it modifies by. We wouldn't treat that value like damage. We would treat it like a condition with a value. Those go by the highest value. Yes the recovery section has a note on failure in parens but its no different from the reminder in the taking damage section which was there pre remaster and not seen as applying the condition effect in a stacking manner.

Even pre remaster you weren't supposed to increase your dying more than 1 for normal damage or 2 for crit damage. That hasn't changed in the remaster.
This is also something you can see in the entry for the dying condition itself.

There's no problem of stacking as the Wounded condition applies to instances of gaining Dying, it's not a flat modifier to your Dying value. Otherwise you could never effectively reach Dying 0 and stabilize without outside assistance, unless I'm misunderstanding what you're suggesting.

[Bluemagetim]

Karys wrote:

Bluemagetim wrote:

Wounded is a condition that treats your dying as though it is higher than it would be without it. Like doomed is a condition that treats your death threshold as lower than the default generally 4.

They have a value that tells us the amount it modifies by. We wouldn't treat that value like damage. We would treat it like a condition with a value. Those go by the highest value. Yes the recovery section has a note on failure in parens but its no different from the reminder in the taking damage section which was there pre remaster and not seen as applying the condition effect in a stacking manner.

Even pre remaster you weren't supposed to increase your dying more than 1 for normal damage or 2 for crit damage. That hasn't changed in the remaster.
This is also something you can see in the entry for the dying condition itself.

There's no problem of stacking as the Wounded condition applies to instances of gaining Dying, it's not a flat modifier to your Dying value. Otherwise you could never effectively reach Dying 0 and stabilize without outside assistance, unless I'm misunderstanding what you're suggesting.

It is its just applied once when you gain dying. The way they wrote the rules allows it to effect as a condition since there is no other time where they say wounded increases dying ither than when you drop to 0.

[Bluemagetim]

I do see a problem with applying a condition with a values effect in a stacking manner. Why write a rule that tells us conditions with a value only apply the highest value no matter how many applications and then write a condition with a value that acts in a manner that is inconstant with that rule and not tell us to treat that condition differently or say it is exempt?

[Kaspyr2077]

There is an awful lot wrong with this.

Bluemagetim wrote:

Wounded is a condition that treats your dying as though it is higher than it would be without it. Like doomed is a condition that treats your death threshold as lower than the default generally 4.

They have a value that tells us the amount it modifies by. We wouldn't treat that value like damage. We would treat it like a condition with a value. Those go by the highest value. Yes the recovery section has a note on failure in parens but its no different from the reminder in the taking damage section which was there pre remaster and not seen as applying the condition effect in a stacking manner.

No. This is just wildly incorrect. Your Dying value is your Dying value. It is CALCULATED using your Wounded value. It isn't a constant modifier.

The new Recovery Check section rules aren't reminding us, on a failure, to consider why our Dying value is what it is. It is clearly telling us to add (1+W) to Dying on a failure, and (2+W) on a Criticial Failure. It's not in the least bit ambiguous. It is a terrible idea, but it is as clear as can be.

It is the Taking Damage While Dying section that invites us to reflect on a rule that isn't. You are correct that the definitions of Wounded and Dying spell out a completely different process than the Taking Damage While Dying section suggests we "remember." That isn't at all what's happening in the section in Recovery checks.

[Bluemagetim]

Consider this then why does it not say increase your dying by your wounded value in the parens? It just says plus which is such a casual term to use for a highly technical game?l that is trys to be consistant in terminology that is actionable.

[TOZ]

Do y'all want to take this to a different thread so people can talk about their other dislikes besides the dying rules?

[Bluemagetim]

Thats probably for the best. I apologize for pushing this discussion so much in the last few pages.
Do i just start a new thread or is there another way to do it?

[Squiggit]

TOZ wrote:

Do y'all want to take this to a different thread so people can talk about their other dislikes besides the dying rules?

I don't think there's anyone stopping you if you have something else you want to bring up.

[medtec28]

TOZ wrote:

Do y'all want to take this to a different thread so people can talk about their other dislikes besides the dying rules?

this was attempted, thread was closed

[TOZ]

Squiggit wrote:

I don't think there's anyone stopping you if you have something else you want to bring up.

Just the signal getting lost in the noise.

medtec28 wrote:

this was attempted, thread was closed

Then maybe this one needs to be closed too.

[Bluemagetim]

I created a new thread under rules discussion named Remaster Dying with Wounded

[Bluemagetim]

I think it was closed due to disrespectful posts not the topic

[Ed Reppert]

Sy Kerraduess wrote:

It's a very common scenario for someone to come over from 5e and think 5e's assumptions still apply.

That doesn't seem like a very smart thing for folks to do.

[Bluemagetim]

I went over character creation with a friend the other day who always only played Dnd. There was a lot of assumed things because he thought this game was just a copy, and of course magic spells gave him the biggest shock.

[Ed Reppert]

Bluemagetim wrote:

he thought this game was just a copy

Why would anyone bother producing a ttrpg that is "just a copy" of another one? Even aside from Intellectual Property theft considerations?

[Bluemagetim]

People make assumptions about a lot of things theyve never experienced. They dont have to be logical.

[Deriven Firelion]

Karys wrote:

Bluemagetim wrote:

Wounded is a condition that treats your dying as though it is higher than it would be without it. Like doomed is a condition that treats your death threshold as lower than the default generally 4.

They have a value that tells us the amount it modifies by. We wouldn't treat that value like damage. We would treat it like a condition with a value. Those go by the highest value. Yes the recovery section has a note on failure in parens but its no different from the reminder in the taking damage section which was there pre remaster and not seen as applying the condition effect in a stacking manner.

Even pre remaster you weren't supposed to increase your dying more than 1 for normal damage or 2 for crit damage. That hasn't changed in the remaster.
This is also something you can see in the entry for the dying condition itself.

There's no problem of stacking as the Wounded condition applies to instances of gaining Dying, it's not a flat modifier to your Dying value. Otherwise you could never effectively reach Dying 0 and stabilize without outside assistance, unless I'm misunderstanding what you're suggesting.

It is stacking. You are adding it more than once every time you increase the dying condition. That is stacking.

It would be like someone being Frightened 1, then someone demoralizes them for Frightened 1, then you add in Frightened 2.

You all are basically saying you drop to Dying 1 then add wounded 1 to Dying for Dying 2.

Then failed recovery check, you go to Dying 3, then added wounded 1 again stacking it for Dying 4. That is in essence what you are saying to do.

That is stacking.

[LandSwordBear]

Bluemagetim wrote:

I created a new thread under rules discussion named Remaster Dying with Wounded

Link to Remaster Dying with Wounded

Now off with you all, you’re killing me. Really slaying. You’re…dead to me. Don’t look at me like that, all…wounded.

[The-Magic-Sword]

I do have one dislike: We're back to rules text discussing trait inheritance, although to be clear, I like this ruling as far as it's suggestion that you just break the ability down into pieces as far as trait immunity goes.

I just... really wish we had a one stop shop explicit set of game rules telling us how to adjudicate traits, they should be the clearest part of the system because they're supposed to exist for the sake of clarity, but it feels like we only half-committed to them which means they're only half functional.

Like, a strike with a flaming weapon SHOULD have the flaming trait, it's a fiery attack just like the Balisse's attacks do, but as per the FAQ they don't, but then the remaster has an example where it definitely indicates that it does. Then you look at the Elemental Inferno which doesn't have the fire trait on it's attacks which literally manifested fire that does fire damage.

This example doesn't even matter much in the grand scheme of things (especially since the ruling here discusses it just becomes a fire damage immunity if there's damage that wouldn't be associated with the trait) and the people downvoting and arguing with me in that thread could be right about the intent that nothing's changed on that front, but damn.

[Perpdepog]

The-Magic-Sword wrote:

I do have one dislike: We're back to rules text discussing trait inheritance, although to be clear, I like this ruling as far as it's suggestion that you just break the ability down into pieces as far as trait immunity goes.

I just... really wish we had a one stop shop explicit set of game rules telling us how to adjudicate traits, they should be the clearest part of the system because they're supposed to exist for the sake of clarity, but it feels like we only half-committed to them which means they're only half functional.

Like, a strike with a flaming weapon SHOULD have the flaming trait, it's a fiery attack just like the Balisse's attacks do, but as per the FAQ they don't, but then the remaster has an example where it definitely indicates that it does. Then you look at the Elemental Inferno which doesn't have the fire trait on it's attacks which literally manifested fire that does fire damage.

This example doesn't even matter much in the grand scheme of things (especially since the ruling here discusses it just becomes a fire damage immunity if there's damage that wouldn't be associated with the trait) and the people downvoting and arguing with me in that thread could be right about the intent that nothing's changed on that front, but damn.

It always felt to me that it was another of those casual language things that PF2E is trying to inculcate in its rules. The creature has the Fire trait, it's doing fire damage, so you'd assume its strikes would have the Fire trait ... but that kind of bites them when you look at the exploding aura thing and realize it's got the Fire trait for some reason.

It might also be a sort of future proofing issue? Implying traits so they haven't got to be written down each time?

I'd rather have more explicit traits on things as well, that's just the rationale I could come up with. Or, you know, they just forgot in the flurry of putting these books out.

[Gortle]

The-Magic-Sword wrote:

I just... really wish we had a one stop shop explicit set of game rules telling us how to adjudicate traits, they should be the clearest part of the system because they're supposed to exist for the sake of clarity, but it feels like we only half-committed to them which means they're only half functional.

Traits only sometimes applying is a messy solution.

I'm going to have to see the full context myself to get a good grip on this.

[Jerdane]

Ed Reppert wrote:

Bluemagetim wrote:

he thought this game was just a copy

Why would anyone bother producing a ttrpg that is "just a copy" of another one? Even aside from Intellectual Property theft considerations?

I don't think such an assumption is too unreasonable. Pathfinder 1e was a modestly-patched replica of D&D 3.5, after all, so maybe they figured that Pathfinder 2e was a modestly-patched replica of D&D 5e?

[Darksol the Painbringer]

Deriven Firelion wrote:

Karys wrote:

Bluemagetim wrote:

Wounded is a condition that treats your dying as though it is higher than it would be without it. Like doomed is a condition that treats your death threshold as lower than the default generally 4.

They have a value that tells us the amount it modifies by. We wouldn't treat that value like damage. We would treat it like a condition with a value. Those go by the highest value. Yes the recovery section has a note on failure in parens but its no different from the reminder in the taking damage section which was there pre remaster and not seen as applying the condition effect in a stacking manner.

Even pre remaster you weren't supposed to increase your dying more than 1 for normal damage or 2 for crit damage. That hasn't changed in the remaster.
This is also something you can see in the entry for the dying condition itself.

There's no problem of stacking as the Wounded condition applies to instances of gaining Dying, it's not a flat modifier to your Dying value. Otherwise you could never effectively reach Dying 0 and stabilize without outside assistance, unless I'm misunderstanding what you're suggesting.

It is stacking. You are adding it more than once every time you increase the dying condition. That is stacking.

It would be like someone being Frightened 1, then someone demoralizes them for Frightened 1, then you add in Frightened 2.

You all are basically saying you drop to Dying 1 then add wounded 1 to Dying for Dying 2.

Then failed recovery check, you go to Dying 3, then added wounded 1 again stacking it for Dying 4. That is in essence what you are saying to do.

That is stacking.

Well, the rules expressly say that you do this, and it specifically trumps the general rule for stacking, not unlike abilities inflicting conditions expressly saying they increase an existing condition by a given value so I don't understand why there is a hangup here besides "I don't like this ruling," which has no basis for it being technically incorrect.

[Squiggit]

I mean it's not really stacking in the same way taking a penalty to AC twice or persistent damage multiple times is 'stacking'

You take a penalty and that penalty applies every time, as you'd expect it to.

It just so happens the penalty makes being wounded much scarier.

[pH unbalanced]

Unicore wrote:

pH unbalanced wrote:

Unicore wrote:

I have a question, has anyone ever had a party TPK because one or more characters died too quickly, instead of just staying unconscious?

Yes. The cleric (and only healer) was killed from full hp by massive damage on turn 1. Retreat was not an option for terrain reasons.

So if the cleric had just been knocked out, you don’t think the party would have TPK’d?

Hmmm. That's a hard question. There was so much that was wrong in that fight. But yes, I think if the sorceror had picked up the Cleric instead of going YOLO and meleeing with Gouging Claw (the only spell he had which could affect this enemy), we would have had a better chance.

[Omega Metroid]

A bit late, but a few replies to other people.

Friendly role discussion with SuperBidi.:

SuperBidi wrote:

Omega Metroid wrote:

Out of curiosity, what would a party that doesn't cover the four roles look like?

It'll look like any party. Your roles are either not really important or non existent at all.

For example, you have the "Frontliner/Tank" role. Let's take a party of Champion, Wizard, Sorcerer, Witch. The "Frontliner/Tank" role is covered by the Champion. Still, the party is fragile as hell and will surely get TPKed quickly because of a lack of tankyness. How is that possible? Because tankyness is not a role, it's a party characteristic. It's the sum of all the party member tankyness that makes the party tankyness, not the tankyness of a dedicated "Frontliner/Tank".

Skill Monkey is no role. It's very easy to be maxed in a skill and very hard to push beyond that. The only important thing is: Does your party cover all skills? If yes, then you don't need to think about skill monkeyness. And a 4-man party can cover all skills fine.

Support looks like healing to me. It's a bad role. Dedicated healers are a burden, it's better to have a few emergency healers. And emergency healing is cheap so multiple characters should have it in your party.

Nuker/Mage is not necessary. Martial oriented parties fare well without much AoE damage.

PF2 is not an MMO where roles are super strong. In WoW, if I was yawning for 3 seconds with my healer or tank we were all back to spawn point. That's not the case at all in PF2 where characters are all supposed to cover a lot of different abilities. If the Fighter is incapacitated, someone else will take the "Frontliner/Tank" role, including casters who can be quite tanky.

Eh, not really. A party without frontliners has a grand total of zero people on the front line, by definition. No Fighters, no Barbarians, no Champions, no Monks, no Swashbucklers, no nothin'. ;P It lacks both tankiness and martial damage output. This role is admittedly PF2's favourite by a wide margin; it blends basically everything with martials when it thinks it can get away with it, and kinda ends up just marrying the front line with anything else you can think of. But the role still exists, and is even stronger than ever!

The skillmonkey is an evolution of the "specialist" character type, translated into TTRPGs; it is a bit redundant in PF2, specifically, but the role still exists in a sense. In PF2, it mainly takes the form of a character who has enough free space to grab all the unusual skill feats the party might want, specialise in the skills most people don't have a particular need to bother with, or just plain fill in party skill coverage gaps in general; as such, it typically gets blended into secondary damage characters, Cha specialists, or Int specialists (for knowledge monkeying specifically). (That said, this is the weakest of the four archetypal roles in and of itself, so it tends to get folded into other classes. The most popular iterations are the Rogue, who showcases their technical prowess by hitting pressure points for massive damage and slipping around the battlefield unnoticed, and the Bard, on the grounds of picking up a smattering of weird "unrelated" skills to support their minstrel performances.) This role... honestly mainly exists as a testament to 3.5e/PF1's popularity, mainly, since it exists more because of them than because of any need in more recent systems; even then, though, it lives on because it's bolted onto the ever-popular Rogue by cultural osmosis.

Support includes healing, but saying it's just healing would undersell it by a significant margin. It includes healing, buffing (remember, the Bard is so potent because of its support), and more generally, any ability that's meant to aid your party in some way. This can even include certain martial builds; notably, Trip specialists like the Reflective Ripple Stance Monk are a blend of frontline and support, on the grounds of supplying flat-footed/off-guard to help their allies land hits.

The nuker/mage is an interesting one in PF2, I'll give you that, and one the game is kinda unfriendly to at that. They're most archetypally a wizard specifically, to the point where it's sometimes hard to tell whether the role is "caster with wizard clothing" or "nuker/AoE/mezzer/debuffer/etc.", but this isn't a hard requirement; it's an association caused by most versions of D&D (and PF1) operating on a magic-can-do-everything paradigm. The term "nuker" refers to a heavy-hitting DPS character that lives on the back lines and depends on the frontline for defense, and the term "mage" is a catch-all for AoEs, anti-support, mezzing, a bit of support, and even actual mages (in general). (It usually refers specifically to blaster mages or crowd control specifically, but it's a weirdly flexible role, especially with PF2 putting a lot of its crowd control options in skill feats. Heck, there are even Swashbuckler builds that fit it. xD)

For your example party specifically, the Champion is a frontliner, so it definitely covers one of the four roles. But, to sum up your description, the party covers one role and ignores the others, and also falls apart because it's a bad composition. That kinda doesn't prove that the roles are bad or non-existent; it proves that not using them causes problems. ;P (For reference, adding a support would increase the party's overall tankiness with buffs, and use heals to keep the Champion up. Having one of the casters act as an archetypal "mage" would allow them to supply debuffs, decreasing the opposition's offensive output and making the party tankier by extension. And adding a dedicated skillmonkey wouldn't help out directly, but it would mean another burst damager to pick off enemies (if Rogue/Investigator) or support to make everyone else better at fighting (if Bard), which would indirectly increase the party's survival.) Your Champion/Wizard/Sorcerer/Witch party isn't super-fragile because of the archetypal roles; it's super-fragile because it ignores them.

Also, as a reminder, they're not "my" roles; they're extremely popular in gaming as a whole, in large part thanks to D&D. They're not a thing that I came up with out of nowhere, they're not a thing Kaspyr came up with out of nowhere, they're not some new invention in general; they've been around since at least 3e, probably even as far back as 1e, and are easily at least 20-30 years old by this point. They're also not non-existent, even if PF2 shuffles them up a bit: They're a part of gaming culture as a whole (and players bring them to PF2 as a result of that), and multiple PF2 classes are built with those roles in mind. Most relevantly, the Fighter (and Champion), Rogue (and Investigator), Cleric (and Bard), and Wizard (and Witch) are explicitly built with the four archetypal roles in mind: The fighter is built to live on the front line, the Rogue gets skill increases & feats at every level specifically because Paizo knows people will build them as skill specialists, the Cleric gets free healing so they can spend their spells on actually interesting support, and the Wizard is meant to be flexible enough to cover whichver of the typical "mage" tasks you build for. (Sorry, Wizard.)

The roles may not be as crucial in PF2 as they are in some other games, but that's a testament to its design; most classes blend at least two roles inherently and/or can pivot into other roles depending on how you build them, so it can support more flexible party compositions by splitting the roles up among them. (The most notable example being how PF2 was designed to split the skillmonkey role among all four party members, so your party adds up to a Frankenstein's Skillmoney instead of needing a single dedicated skill specialist; if everyone does a quarter of the monkeying around, then everyone can engage in non-combat gameplay. And even then, they still went out of their way to make the Rogue chassis an explicit skillmonkey.)

Thanks for the correction, Karneios.:

Karneios wrote:

Omega Metroid wrote:

Bluemagetim wrote:

Wounded tells you here when you will actually add your wounded value to your dying value. It happens when you gain the dying condition.

It doesn't happen any other time. So when you increase your already existing dying condition you are not gaining it.

That's the old rule, yes. From what I understand, though, the Remastered version of that same rule (the Wounded entry, in the conditions list) actually stated that you add your Wounded value when you "gain or increase" the Dying condition, not just when you "gain" it like we're used to. This specific text change is the reason people are talking about adding Wounded again every time you get Dying from any source (hitting 0 HP, being damaged at 0 HP, failing a recovery check, etc.), not the wonky text in the Recovery Check section.

They did not update the wounded trait to say gain or increase, it said that in the playtest and that's it, player core wounded still just says gain

Ah, I see, my mistake. I don't have a copy of the Remaster yet, so I was probably thinking of what Seifter said the rules were supposedly always intended to be, and the supposed (yet never errata'd) "mistake" of it being "gain" when it was supposed to be "gain or increase". Must've mixed that up with what people said the actual text is, thanks for the clarification.

[I'm of the personal belief that this is some sort of intended dispute, and that some of the people who worked on the rules intended for "gain", while others intended for "gain or increase". I guess only time will tell, eh?]

Laclale♪'s favoured frontline supports? ;3:

Laclale♪ wrote:

Omega Metroid wrote:

• Frontliner/Tank: Barbarian, Champion, Fighter, Gunslinger, Inventor, Magus, Monk, Ranger, Summoner, Swashbuckler.
• Skillmonkey: Alchemist, Bard, Investigator, Rogue.
• Support: Cleric, Druid, Oracle, any Medicine specialist builds.
• Nuker/Mage: Sorcerer, Wizard, Witch.
• Unplaced/Unknown: Kineticist, Psychic, Thaumaturge

[Note: In case of multi-role classes, I placed them in the first role that applies. We're mainly concerned with determining which classes cannot be placed within any of these roles, after all. Medicine skill specifically is worth calling out, since any character that specialises in it fits the support/healer role. I'm not familiar enough with the last three to know where they fit, though I believe Kineticist can fit in (at minimum) the frontliner and support roles?]

If we omit the big four, then a party is going to look really weird, with or without letting an emergency healer (healer/support role) sneak in. I'm actually really curious what sort of playstyle your group would have, have you tried it in any actual campaigns yet?...

Why Bard and Battle Oracle not in Tank role?

Because I forgot about Warrior Bard, and don't have much experience with Battle Oracles, more than anything else. My bad.

Discussions collapsed to minimise thread disruption. Sorry for the delayed replies.

[25speedforseaweedleshy]

wizard thesis still suck

spiral of horror are nice but most wizard focus spell still awful

[The Raven Black]

Perpdepog wrote:

The-Magic-Sword wrote:

I do have one dislike: We're back to rules text discussing trait inheritance, although to be clear, I like this ruling as far as it's suggestion that you just break the ability down into pieces as far as trait immunity goes.

I just... really wish we had a one stop shop explicit set of game rules telling us how to adjudicate traits, they should be the clearest part of the system because they're supposed to exist for the sake of clarity, but it feels like we only half-committed to them which means they're only half functional.

Like, a strike with a flaming weapon SHOULD have the flaming trait, it's a fiery attack just like the Balisse's attacks do, but as per the FAQ they don't, but then the remaster has an example where it definitely indicates that it does. Then you look at the Elemental Inferno which doesn't have the fire trait on it's attacks which literally manifested fire that does fire damage.

This example doesn't even matter much in the grand scheme of things (especially since the ruling here discusses it just becomes a fire damage immunity if there's damage that wouldn't be associated with the trait) and the people downvoting and arguing with me in that thread could be right about the intent that nothing's changed on that front, but damn.

It always felt to me that it was another of those casual language things that PF2E is trying to inculcate in its rules. The creature has the Fire trait, it's doing fire damage, so you'd assume its strikes would have the Fire trait ... but that kind of bites them when you look at the exploding aura thing and realize it's got the Fire trait for some reason.

It might also be a sort of future proofing issue? Implying traits so they haven't got to be written down each time?

I'd rather have more explicit traits on things as well, that's just the rationale I could come up with. Or, you know, they just forgot in the flurry of...

IIRC some effects, though clearly Fire, lack the Fire trait because of the rules for aquatic combat.

[SuperBidi]

Friendly role discussion with Omega Metroid:

I vastly disagree with your analysis.

First, on the definition of role. As you say, roles are inherited from D&D. In D&D, only the Rogue was able to disarm a trap. Skill monkeyness was basically defined as the ability to roll some checks. If you were a skill monkey you were able to roll those checks and non-skill monkeys were unable to roll them.

In PF2, every character can disarm a trap if they want. Every character has skills and skill monkeys just have more of them. As such, it's not a role but a characteristic like total hp. As a matter of fact, you can define quite well skill monkeyness by the number of skill increases you get over your career (9 by default, 19 for Rogues/Investigators, 12 for Inventor/Chirurgeon + the ones from feats).

Second, on the characteristic themselves. You inherit concepts from other games and apply them to PF2. For example, debuffing is nearly non-existent in other games when it's extremely strong in PF2. Similarly, healing is very important in a lot of games when it's secondary in PF2 (past the first 4 levels). So you have to completely review your 4 "roles" (and you even admit it yourself).

Third, your roles are badly defining parties. For example, a party of Ranger, Bard, Oracle and Witch is supposed to cover all your roles despite being absolutely non functional. So you can't use your roles to build parties, which should be their main use.

Roles work in games where specialization is the default assumption. In WoW, only a healer can heal. And when you enter a party no one cares if your healer can tank or deal damage, the only useful metric is how good of a healer they are. Similarly, the challenges are all calculated with a specialized healer in mind: You can't succeed at a dungeon if your healer is half of a healer. The game values specialization and as such there are roles, roles that are set in stone by the game designers (tank, healer and DPS in WoW, even if the game technically has many more aspects like buffing/debuffing but these aspects are no roles).

PF2 doesn't value specialization. There's a clear ceiling preventing one-dimensional characters to perform better than others and every character is forced to invest in many different areas. As such you can't assign a role to a character. Characters all participate differently in multiple areas of the game. Similarly, the challenges you'll face are very varied and the only thing you need to be able to participate is to have someone who can "roll the dice". PF2 values versatility, not specialization, it's not a game that can be properly defined by roles.

Now, and obviously, you can analyze the game and determine a few areas that are near necessary to cover if you want to succeed. But for each area you'll have a different way of calculating if a party covers it or not:
- For skills, you need at least someone Trained in each skill and it's preferable to cover all 4 important skill attributes (Charisma, Intelligence, Wisdom and Dexterity).
- Buff and debuff are not necessary but are rather important. But there are strong diminishing returns as they don't stack easily. So you need just the right amount of buff/debuff and not more.
- There's no tank in PF2 but the party needs a certain level of tankyness which is best approximated by summing the tankyness of all party members.
- Healing is near mandatory but it's better to split it among few characters and there's no need to have a lot of it past the first 4 levels.
- Damage is supposed to be covered by default as all characters can deal damage. Still, it's important for all characters to be able to participate in damage and to deal different types of damage to cover different situations (sustained or resource-based, melee or ranged, single target or AoE, physical or energy, etc...).
- Etc...

With this type of analysis, you can look at the Ranger, Bard, Oracle and Witch party and clearly see that it has a strong issue with tankyness and that it lacks sustained damage while having far too much buff, debuff and healing. This method of analysis can tell a functional party from a dysfunctional one, it's more appropriate than your role analysis.

I'll add a last point: Your role analysis prevents your from seeing a lot of very functional parties. If you stick to it, you build nearly always the same parties with always the same party dynamics when the game allows you to build much more parties than that with very interesting dynamics. Have you ever tried a full ranged party? I haven't, unfortunately (but PFS allowed me to try a lot of very weird party compositions), but it's completely functional if properly played.

[Staffan Johansson]

Omega Metroid wrote:

Eh, not really. A party without frontliners has a grand total of zero people on the front line, by definition.

I would object to that. I would say that a party without a proper frontliner has four people on the front line, and that's generally four people who don't want to be on the front line.

[Trixleby]

arcady wrote:

SatiricalBard wrote:

I like a ton of things in the Remaster, but some things I dislike:

1. The change to the dying & wounded interaction rules. I also dislike that there has been no advance discussion, no player surveys, and no explanations about why they have done this.

Everything about the Remaster was great to 'sure fine' for me. Mostly great. Until I hit this change.

It's totally unexpected.

Previously we had a lot of talk of it being in the old playtest from 2018 but it's not - I happen to have a print copy of that I bought in a store back in 2018, and also have a print copy of the first and second printings of 2.0 (bought it a second time on accident during the pandemic, didn't realize I already had it until I found the first printing sitting under a pile of books and discovered I'd bought it a year prior on Amazon).

Also: It's NOT in the beginner box - checked that last night.

This new rule apparently DID come from the GM Screen. I lack this so it's something I cannot verify.

But the idea that it was a copy-paste error as we were floating last night appears to be incorrect.

That noted...

This change has a severe impact on game survivability. Folks running the numbers over on reddit seem to come back with a near doubling at each level of dying in the chance of PC death after going down.

Dying 3 seems to be more or less skipped. You're usually dying 1, 2 if you go down a second time, or jump straight to 4.

I find this a very bad change. One of the worst tRPG game design moves I've seen since the first version of GURPS Super's. Granted I missed most of the D&D 4E/5E eras so maybe there are things others experienced I didn't...

But this single untested and unannounced change has so severe an impact on gameplay that's its currently "taken the wind out" of my enthusiasm over remaster. While I don't have to use it myself, it makes 'Society' a non-option for me.

I just don't understand how this got in there without comment.

It maybe be one tiny change in...

It's toxic for monsters to want to kill you? Change in GM Style? All the stories I heard of early D&D was "make 20 characters, you'll run through 19 of them til you get one that manages to survive." And now literally Dungeon Crawl Classics does that too. Oldschool is a billion times more deadly.

[pH unbalanced]

Trixleby wrote:

All the stories I heard of early D&D was "make 20 characters, you'll run through 19 of them til you get one that manages to survive."

Yeah, we literally never named our characters until they hit level 2 -- and then they would be named after some cool thing they did in play.

[graystone]

pH unbalanced wrote:

Trixleby wrote:

All the stories I heard of early D&D was "make 20 characters, you'll run through 19 of them til you get one that manages to survive."

Yeah, we literally never named our characters until they hit level 2 -- and then they would be named after some cool thing they did in play.

That where the illustrious Magic-Using-Guy family came from in one of our games.

[Trixleby]

Jerdane wrote:

Ed Reppert wrote:

Bluemagetim wrote:

he thought this game was just a copy

Why would anyone bother producing a ttrpg that is "just a copy" of another one? Even aside from Intellectual Property theft considerations?

I don't think such an assumption is too unreasonable. Pathfinder 1e was a modestly-patched replica of D&D 3.5, after all, so maybe they figured that Pathfinder 2e was a modestly-patched replica of D&D 5e?

I would argue more of a modest spiritual successor to 4th edition D&D personally. I find way more 4E DNA than I find 5e. It feels like this game has very little in common with 5e aside from commonly named Classes and uses a d20.

[Silver2195]

Trixleby wrote:

Jerdane wrote:

Ed Reppert wrote:

Bluemagetim wrote:

he thought this game was just a copy

Why would anyone bother producing a ttrpg that is "just a copy" of another one? Even aside from Intellectual Property theft considerations?

I don't think such an assumption is too unreasonable. Pathfinder 1e was a modestly-patched replica of D&D 3.5, after all, so maybe they figured that Pathfinder 2e was a modestly-patched replica of D&D 5e?

I would argue more of a modest spiritual successor to 4th edition D&D personally. I find way more 4E DNA than I find 5e. It feels like this game has very little in common with 5e aside from commonly named Classes and uses a d20.

Mostly agreed. It's interesting to note that PF2 and D&D5 both have full-caster Bards and at-will cantrips. But this is coincidental; PF1 and D&D4 also had at-will cantrips, and PF2 made Bards full casters to give all four traditions a full caster class in the core rulebook. (I have no idea what D&D5's reasoning for making Bards full casters was. Bards were the only "Tier 3" core class in D&D3.5; they didn't need "fixing"!)