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What are you attempting to contribute to the conversation here?Are you implying you 'contribute'? Well, I suppose yes, if the aim of the 'conversation' is to make a mountain out of a molehill and shout nonsense as loud as possible.
It's just pathetic how you take some minor issues any sensible GM would fix in a second (because it's literally their job) and try to make it a fatal flaw in an optional system. Which yes, isn't default and should be used by people understanding what they want and why and what would be the consequences. No, it's definitely not advertized by the game and designers as default for new players and GMs either.
I don't think I'm the one making a mountain out of a molehill here. My position has been quite clear: I like ABP very much, and I use it quite often, which is why I'm intimately familiar with its shortcomings. I've suggested a few basic changes to the variant that anyone could apply to their games if they so wish... and that's it. You're the one who decided to throw a hissy fit over this, blow this basic suggestion out of proportion, and try to make me out as a bad person for daring to suggest that there may be a flaw in a thing Paizo did, which in my opinion is, to use your own words, pathetic.
That you would think it's "literally [The GM's] job" to fix rules that don't work is to fundamentally misunderstand the point of 2e's rules, which aim to be complete and well-written from the ground up, and to demonstrate a significant amount of entitlement to boot. It is not in fact the GM's job to fix anything, it's the GM's job to run the game for their players, and if the rules could actually cover what they're supposed to cover, which they do 99% of the time in 2e, that makes everyone's life easier. But let's humor you: I do in fact GM games, and this is the fix I've applied so far for property runes, which I've chosen to share with others. What issue do you take with that?
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Something I think the people saying "you should know this stuff if you're using ABP, you can adjust it yourself" are missing is that ABP is useful as a progression benchmark for all characters, even if you aren't playing with the rule. It gives you a good idea of what levels and times you should have what bonuses. Including property runes, at a minimum, would make it more obvious those are indeed a part of expected progression. They should also absolutely remove the text that says you can "you can ignore as much of the Party Treasure by Level table on page 59 as you want," since that's just an outright lie.
I think staves are a bit messy to include in ABP, as those can progress at different rates depending on your staff choice. But even a clear text reminder of them somewhere in the ABP rules would be good.
Consumables are sort of covered in the treasure tables (between wealth for new characters and party treasure by level). But in practice, I have found these tables more difficult to use than a normal WBL chart with guidance on how a character's wealth should be split. Casters have it especially rough on this count, given how strong scrolls—especially scrolls of lower level spells with unscaling effects—are in this game. I would personally appreciate clearer guidance on this somewhere, as well, though I see it as less of a priority; it is, to some degree, a matter of player preference and choice.
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Just to throw my suggestion for how to handle property runes with ABP into the mix. Shortly past the ABP section there's a small variant rule called High-Quality. I use that as the limiting factor for property runes as a replacement for potency runes. I keep item bonuses, but they are treated as potency bonuses and vice versa, thus do not stack. You simply take the better of the two if you have both.
There's a 'perhaps' and a 'maybe' in there. It sounds like you aren't suggesting 'do all of this at once.' Did you, in your games, do all the things you mention at once, or did you implement different changes in different games? To break down your list:
1. Added new fundamental property runes at 8, 10, 16. +1d6 for each. Okay...what traits did they have? What options did the PCs get?
2. Made current property runes cheaper. What cost did you make them?
For 1 and 2 together, does this mean that at 8th level, a PC in your games could get that +1d6 new new fundamental property rune, and then add a current cheaper property rune on top of it? Or are #1 and #2 different ABP variants you are suggesting? If they are different variants, which did you find worked best in your games? I.e. which would you actually suggest Paizo write in when they revise ABP?
3. Added additional, lower level runes which convert traits rather than add dice. Okay, how much did you make them cost. At what level did you make them available? And again, did you implement #3 in the same game as #1 and #2, in the same game as one of them but not the other, or is this an "either/or" option?
3a. Gave these new runes additional effects. What effects did you give them?
To answer your questions in order:
As a side comment, it seems strange that you would add all these new weapon runes back into a game, given that you view ABP as a replacement for magic items. Your system makes the magical weapons less of a contributor to dpr, sure, but every martial is still going to rune up their weapons. Right? I don't see the number of magic swords carried by your PCs going down under your revised system. They'll just be less powerful magic swords.
You might notice that splitting damage property runes into fundamental runes and property runes works outside of ABP. This gives players more choice even outside of the variant, but with ABP specifically it means your swords will deal the damage you'd expect from swords at your level. Your weapons would still be stronger with a full complement of property runes, but their damage at the very least will be where it needs to be.
Again, 'probably' makes this sound like a suggestion that you haven't tried or are unsure about.
It may make this sound this way to you, because you are demonstrably looking for ways to assume the worst out of the person you are presently interrogating, but there is nothing to open-ended terms like these that implies I haven't tried these changes and found them to my liking. Rather, I try to be open-ended rather than imperious when I make suggestions like these, because people generally like to feel like they have a choice instead of being prescribed something, and I don't consider myself in a position to tell anyone else what to do with my homebrew. Clearly, this was not enough to stop certain people from inventing reasons to be offended and acting like I was forcing them to run my rules, gun to head.
What limitations did you put on access to scrolls, staves, and wands in the games where you implemented this system? Did you remove them altogether? Make them more expensive to buy? Make them harder to craft? Just not give them in loot but allowed the PCs to make/buy them as normal?
In the games where I gave casters an extra spell slot per rank, I simply did not give them those items.
Yes please. I looked at your starfinder homebrew. But it is not at all comparable to what you're arguing here. You made a whole bunch of additional changes to weapons and class feats and powers which means it's hard to tell if the 'ABP alone' changes you're suggesting would be balanced without all the other changes you made.
The core of the changes remains the same in both cases: additional dice of weapon damage are integrated into the weapons themselves (or in PF's case, fundamental runes), and property runes of certain damage types let you convert damage types, but not add bonus damage. The section relevant to what is being discussed takes less than a page and should not require a particularly heroic effort to parse.
But more importantly, your goal with the Starfinder damage changes was to improve them. "I felt ranged weapons needed a slightly earlier boost, particularly when dealing with resistances." So as a model for how you'd change Pathfinder ABP damage, if your intent is to keep ABP damage math the same as core damage math, then your Starfinder homebrew is not a good model - not a good example. I am NOT saying your homebrew is bad for Starfinder. It could very well be great! But I am saying that reading it doesn't tell me anything about how well your revised Pathfinder ABP accomplishes the goal of equivalent dpr without the reliance or magical weapons (or staves etc.)
This is a rather bad-faith argument to make, given that the level progression of damage dice on weapons listed in my brew is not salient to the topic being discussed here of divesting damage dice from property runes. It does not matter whether one uses the Starfinder-specific earlier progression my brew outlines or Pathfinder's progression with more d6s at higher levels; the core mechanism of integrating those damage dice separately from property runes remains the same.
'Sometimes...if I sensed' is not super helpful when proposing a rewrite to page 83 of the GM Core.
It is when the topic is how much to reduce party loot, which ABP says you get to do by as much as you want, and which my proposal in this thread does not touch upon at all. It is you who have inserted this subject into discussion in order to invent a controversy where none exists.
Based on your actual play experience with the revised ABP system you are proposing, what should the Paizo's revised ABP say about loot? Keep it the same? Reduce by a flat gp amount at certain levels? Reduce by a %? Do you suggest a very generic "GMs should think about how this might change loot" statement instead?
Given how my proposal does not propose to change party treasury, the relevant existing wording on ABP can stay as-is. My one caveat would simply be that if you are planning on giving your casters access to wands, scrolls, and staves, you should not give them that extra spell slot per rank, for reasons that should hopefully be obvious. That much would be easy to write in the subsection that covers that additional spell slot.
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Teridax, none of this is happening in PF2, so is this not then a homebrew conversation happening in the wrong the place?
Maybe you could say it is advice, but I think phrasing the OP to be more of a friendly "If you are a GM running APB, these are the things to think about and here are multiple different ways to address them" would probably be a lot more useful, no?
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Yes, this is homebrew and should have been created in, or moved, to that subforum.
This thread appears to have exceeded its life span and is just causing contention. I will remind everyone that the 'hide this thread' option will help to send it to its rest.
Okay, maybe I misunderstood. From your earlier post it sounded like your suggested revision to the ABP system is to create new +1d6 fundamental runes at levels 8, 10, 16. These are things the martial PCs have to buy or acquire as loot. These new runes are things the GM wanting to implement your system would have to read up on, so they could ensure their martial players have access to these runes at the appropriate levels. (As well, the GM has to familiarize themselves with the new L2 runes that change damage types.)
You're going to have to explain to me precisely how you came to understand that I'd want players to loot or etch fundamental runes while using a variant whose specific purpose is to remove those fundamental runes and automatically give their respective bonuses. That is not what the OP states either.
But you also say that you are giving +1d6 bonuses automatically. So PCs can access both? They get +1d6 bonuses in addition to the listed +dice bonuses on the automatic bonus progression chart, AND they have access to +1d6 fundamental damage adding runes?
No, the PCs do not double dip into d6s. Under ABP and the amendment I'm suggesting, you get those bonus d6s automatically at levels 8, 10, and 16, and no longer deal additional damage on a regular hit from property runes, if any (the separate on-crit effects, like the persistent damage from a flaming rune, remain). If your wish is to enable more freedom of choice with property runes, with or without ABP, the suggestion being made is to divest damage property runes from those d6s and make the latter into fundamental runes. You may notice that these two suggestions are independent, yet compatible with one another.
So you created "fundamental d6 damage runes" which PCs can buy. For example, the price of the L8 fundamental d6 damage property rune was 415 gp. Right?
So first of all, your system definitely has runes in it that the PCs buy and etch, because you've described those runes, their level, and their price. I got that understanding from your description of your proposed variant.
But second, what do these "fundamental d6 damage runes" do, if they don't add d6 to damage? Do they simply change the damage type of the PC's ABP-given bonus d6? If that's the case, then I have say, you really need to change the name of the rune, because calling something a "d6 damage" rune very strongly implies that the rune adds d6 to damage.
You might want to read the bit you quoted again, specifically this part:
Depending on the adventure, the PCs still got to buy magic weapons as normal, but also could buy those fundamental runes and adjusted damage property runes (this is outside of ABP). With ABP applied, the party obviously did not have access to those fundamental runes, which were integrated into the variant.
My post makes it patently clear that the fundamental runes are for play outside of ABP, and that ABP integrates those runes as bonuses as part of its progression like any other fundamental rune. Pathfinder Second Edition is a dense, rules-heavy game that demands far better reading comprehension on a regular basis than what is being asked of here, so I really do not understand why this is such a stumbling block.
But second, what do these "fundamental d6 damage runes" do, if they don't add d6 to damage? Do they simply change the damage type of the PC's ABP-given bonus d6? If that's the case, then I have say, you really need to change the name of the rune, because calling something a "d6 damage" rune very strongly implies that the rune adds d6 to damage.
No, the runes do add a d6 to damage. It sounds like you got confused again.
Okay. Then for the sake of us moving this conversation forward, may I please ask that you not include your homebrew changes to the baseline system in future posts? I am focused on understanding your proposed ABP system. When you add in extra information about how you changed the baseline system in other, non-ABP campaigns, that makes it difficult to understand what you did (and what you want to change) to ABP. If you did not add a new 415 gp d6 fundamental damage rune to your ABP variant, then there is no reason to tell me about the new 415 gp d6 fundamental damage rune you added to some completely different non-ABP campaign you GM'd. Sound good?
Certainly, once you stop asking specifically about those exact changes like you did in these posts. The only reason I mentioned those runes is because you. Specifically. Asked. I hope you understand how it would be difficult to comply with mutually contradictory requests, and the option is entirely yours to specifically ask about the topics you want to learn more about (and not others).
I am stumbling, I think, because you described two different variants you tried out in the same paragraph. Which makes it unclear which mechanical suggestion of yours goes with which variant.
The two different variants were outlined as early as the thread OP, and you asked for a full breakdown of how I used all of them, which I provided. I still fail to see where the ambiguity stems from, given how ABP is also known for removing fundamental runes and replacing their benefits with its own bonuses.
Trying to take a step back, it sounds like the ABP system you used does this, and nothing but this:
1. Remove all baseline fundamental and property runes from the game.
2. Instead, there is one L2 rune, 20gp, PCs may add to their weapons. It changes the damage type.*
3. ABP table, page 83, replace the L8 entry "Saving throw potency +1" with "Saving throw potency +1, +1d6 to unarmed and weapon damage".
4. ABP table, page 83, replace the L10 entry "Attack potency +2" with "Attack potency +2, +1d6 additional to unarmed and weapon damage (2d6 total)"
5. ABP table, page 83, replace the L16 entry "Attack potency +3" with "Attack potency +3, +1d6 to unarmed weapon damage (3d6 total)"
[And now the caster rules]
6. Remove all scrolls, wands, and staves from the game.
7. Give all full casters** an extra [Max Rank -1] slot.*No discussion from you, or maybe I missed it, on how many of the dice it changes, or whether PCs can buy apply multiple copies of this rune to the same weapon for different dice.
**No discussion from you, or maybe I missed it, on wave casters.Is that a good summary of the ABP changes you are proposing?
It is not, because you have committed the mistake you are also presently complaining about of conflating runes and ABP. Remove item #2 from the list with regards to what is being proposed specifically for ABP. Both asterisks are false, as the document I shared with you once again outlines how level 2 runes change damage types, and the OP mentions adjusting for wave casters.
I will further comment that your "summary" is inelegant and needlessly overwrought, to the point of harming clarity. The changes outlined are as follows:
1. Take ABP as it exists RAW.
2. At levels 8, 10, and 16, add a new item to the level entry, let's call it "enhanced attacks" for example's sake, causing your weapon to deal an extra 1d6, 2d6, and 3d6 damage on a hit at those respective levels. Specify that this damage is not cumulative with extra damage on a hit from any property runes the Strike may benefit from.
3. At 3rd level and every odd level thereafter, add a new item to the level entry, let's call it "expanded spells" for example's sake, stating that if you have a spellcasting feature you gain an additional spell slot one rank below that of your highest-rank spell slot at that level. Specify that wave casters lose lower-rank spell slots and gain higher-rank versions much like their normal spell slots (I'll be happy to provide detail to this), and also specify that these benefits intend to replace wands, scrolls, and staves, and therefore advise the GM to only grant this bonus if they plan on limiting access to these items.
And that would be it from the suggestions in the OP. There is more that can be done to improve ABP, like specifying that you gain the defense potency bonus only while wearing armor or Explorer's Clothing, but let's stick to the topic of discussion for now.
I first started posting in this thread to agree that I don’t think implementing APB from the GM core works as well as many people want it to, and that my experiences with it as a player have been frustrating because it takes away a lot of the customization that items allow for in PF2.
These homebrewed house rules don’t address my issues with APB and double down on things like forcing casters to take some percentage of the wealth they would get in a standard game and spend it (via bonuses that have to figure into some kind of overall wealth system or we are just talking about increasing the power budget of martials) on bonuses they might not want.
Awarding treasure in RPGs is much more of an art than a science. We have tables and charts that can help us understand the game’s mathematical architecture, but following those charts too closely flattens the game, and the advice around those tables tells us this explicitly, as does reading discussions with adventure writes and noticing how often they break the rules.
Even though I personally don’t like ABP, there are folks that do and implement it in different ways to fit their table’s needs. At the point anyone is using variant rules, those rules need interpretation and integration into your custom game. Getting caught up on “RAW” with variant rules is a really strange concept to me. The advice all over the GM core’s variant rules section warns you off if that. But adding a whole lot of unintuitive complexity to make ABP work to try to remove all math from items doesn’t look that fun or straight forward to me. A flaming sword does less sword damage than a regular sword if you want it to also do fire damage? Why not just give players property runes when you want them to get those damage boosts and let them pick their damage type?
Also, your system just seems to be throwing a lot of extra damage martials way, ignoring how many ways martials have of getting extra attacks that compound their damage dice.
President
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I have removed several posts from this discussion that devolved into name calling, personal attacks, and baiting. I'm going to leave this post up for now, but if the personal attacks continue we'll be forced to close the thread and issue suspensions to those continuing to violate our Community Guidelines.
Please start being awesome to one another.
-Jim
These homebrewed house rules don’t address my issues with APB and double down on things like forcing casters to take some percentage of the wealth they would get in a standard game and spend it (via bonuses that have to figure into some kind of overall wealth system or we are just talking about increasing the power budget of martials) on bonuses they might not want.
I don't think these rules would change the way you'd spend your gold at all. No part of the suggestion is prescriptive; you'd still get to purchase scrolls, staves, and wands as you'd like if they'd be available, you'd just get a backup bonus if you don't have access to that.
A flaming sword does less sword damage than a regular sword if you want it to also do fire damage?
With what's being suggested, the two swords would in fact deal the same amount of damage.
Also, your system just seems to be throwing a lot of extra damage martials way, ignoring how many ways martials have of getting extra attacks that compound their damage dice.
It gives martials the same amount of damage as they normally would with property runes. I'm not seeing how this coheres with the above claim that this also reduces damage.
This is your revised ABP system description we are talking about now. What property runes are in your ABP system, that the GM and players need to be warned about double dipping? Or does this sentence refer to a different variant?
So, to be very clear: the proposals for ABP do not feature property runes. The changed/added runes are outside of ABP, and ABP would automate the bonus damage dice. The two additions proposed to ABP in this thread are adding the d6s from property runes as automatic bonuses at levels 8, 10, and 16, and giving casters an extra spell slot per rank of max rank -1 if they don't get access to scrolls, staves, and wands. Effectively, the intent here is not to make ABP replace magic items, but to have it cover the bases in adventures that do eliminate magic items.
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I don't understand how people are doing such a bad job of understanding what Teridax has done with his idea. It's really simple:
Step 1: Decouple the extra +1d6 damage from runes like flaming. Now, runes which would add +1d6 [element] damage to a weapon merely add that element to the weapon as a damage type it can deal.
Step 2: Give this damage back to martial characters by adding runes that give an extra +1d6 damage decoupled from the need to add an element to the weapon.
Step 3A: Enjoy the fact that builds that used to have to pick between an extra +1d6 damage and a property that enables the build (ie. Returning) don't have to make that sacrifice anymore.
Step 3B: Enjoy the fact that this new damage progression can be easily ported into ABP at set levels.
There, I hope that clarifies things.
Thank you for this, this is exactly what I'm proposing indeed, and it's reassuring to know that it does indeed register as clear to others too. Given how a lot of the commenters who came to this thread with a different notion of the proposal also went in with a lot of unprompted aggression, I suspect the misunderstanding came from a place of bad faith among a handful of hyper-vocal users, and some people who came to the thread later on may have gotten their facts from the disinformation being spread rather than the primary source. I also suspect the combination of game criticism and personal suggestions may have triggered a few people's fight-or-flight response, so I'll set up another thread that discusses the flaws in ABP without any solutionizing in the OP.
To keep single posts from getting too long:
In this proposed home brew, a sword that is flaming inherently does less slashing damage than a standard sword used by the same character. That is a weird narrative conceit to me. I understand that it is a product of prioritizing balance, but I rather like that a long sword with a flaming rune does additional fire damage, and if I was playing APB I would personally rather just get a free rune at x level than decoupling runes from their bonus damage. And I say this as a player who has played a great maul fighter who had a ghost touch rune and a fearsome rune on my maul instead of damage runes, because that weapon didn’t really need the damage boost as my ch as the reliability gained from those two runes, while a hand ax fighter build really needed damage runes to feel competitive. I don’t mind a variant of a variant rule that trivializes item choices existing, but it would not make APB more fun for me personally, or fix my issues with it.
I will save the “no standardization of giving runes can give a caster the same amount of gold to buy consumables without power boosting martials” for a different post later today.
To keep single posts from getting too long:
In this proposed home brew, a sword that is flaming inherently does less slashing damage than a standard sword used by the same character.
This is a very different statement from claiming that one sword does less damage than the other. The two swords, as established, deal the same damage. Furthermore, the specific runes I propose would let you turn your fire damage on and off at-will, allowing you to avoid having your damage mitigated by resistance or immunity. This goes both ways, too, so if a monster is resistant or immune to physical damage, your property rune would let you bypass that.
I don’t mind a variant of a variant rule that trivializes item choices existing, but it would not make APB more fun for me personally, or fix my issues with it.
As RPG-Geek also explains, the proposal increases choices; it does not reduce them. You would have the same choices as you do now, except picking anything other than the damage type runes wouldn't result in an overall reduction to your damage (and as the math in the OP points out, it is in fact significant). You'd get to have the best of both worlds with that ghost touch rune and an extra 1d6 to your damage.
I will save the “no standardization of giving runes can give a caster the same amount of gold to buy consumables without power boosting martials” for a different post later today.
Quite a few people in this thread have explained already that the proposals benefit everyone, including casters, particularly as the suggestion also proposes to give casters an extra spell slot per rank when they can't access their own items in an adventure.
Its a house rule. If it doesn't feel weird to you, that is fine, but it also doesn't seem like a big deal not to separate out the damage from property runes and just give out property runes at certain levels.
I think the damage type plays into what else the property rune is allowed to do/what crit rider it gets. And ones that don't add damage generally do something else worthwhile to players or they eventually get replaced by something a little better (astral basically replacing ghost touch now, for example)
If I were going to go the damage swapping route, I would change the narrative of the whole thing a fair bit and make these special runes change the fundamental nature of the weapon to connect to different planes and thus have the ability to switch to a couple of different damage types (related to the plane) and just kind of exist outside of the damage progression.
I would also make the bonus damage precision damage, since it is about characters getting better at striking with their weapons, and not have that be damage that can be changed. Martials really do not need it to be easier to bypass resistances. That was a big problem with PF1 and with the Paladin in particular. Why even bother having resistances if it is only ever a one action bypass. Being able to target weaknesses is important, but should have a bit of an opportunity cost for martials (it is one of the key boons that casters generally have (divine for certain enemies, primal for others and generally Arcane for most). All it takes to trigger a weakness though is a tiny bit of damage, so it doesn't need to be a full swap.
Precision damage runs into its own resistances and immunities (for example, against oozes), and doesn't strike me as terribly appropriate for attuning your weapon to a different plane or the like. I'd also say astral replacing the much lower-level ghost touch rune is fine, given how the spirit damage would be useful against incorporeal creatures anyway. I don't think giving out mandatory property runes for free really solves the issue so much as papers over it, particularly when the objective is to introduce more choices overall.
My suggestion for precision damage is for the base APB variant you are suggesting, not the planar shifting rune for doing different kinds of damage.
The free damage boost you are suggesting at various levels feels like it should be connected to character skill with a weapon, since it transfers to any weapon they want to use. Precision damage running into resistance s is a good thing. Property runes are expensive and their bonus damage is set with one type. Making that flexible in any way is a power boost. Giving 3 damaging propert runes with the ability to get different things than damage on top of that is a power boost. Scaling the property run bonus damage back to precision damage dials back a little of the raw power boosting your house rule adds.
If you really want to add precision damage to every weapon in your games, go ahead, but that's not how I'm flavoring my proposed runes and I don't see any reason why I should. Extra damage is going to run into the same system of weaknesses, resistances, and immunities as the rest of the weapon, so that in itself is not a power boost, nor is taking on-hit damage away from every damage property rune.
I'm glad you agree that being able to choose your damage type as a single action is a valuable thing to have, though, because that makes my case here really easy: these property runes would be desirable even without the extra 1d6 damage, so they would in fact add more choice to the game. Because they'd be closer in power to other property runes, which grant "a power boost" in their own way, and because you wouldn't be able to stack these damage property runes on top of one another and gain all the benefits at the same time, your optimal choice would no longer be a rainbow damage property rune setup.