So a Ring With 5 Resist to Acid / Cold / Electric / Fire Can Prevent Four Times the Damage Than a Ring with 5 Resist to All?

[Balkoth]

Previously, 5 resist to all meant you ignored the first 5 damage of each type of damage and was mostly seen on incorporeals or Champion reactions.

Now, it means you only ignore 5 damage of one damage type, period.

Which means a ring giving 5 resist to elemental damage types (acid/cold/electric/fire) similar to a Dragonscale Amulet could reduce 20 damage from a Cataclysm spell while a ring with 5 resist all only reduces 5 damage.

This seems very odd.

[Easl]

That's a rare item, it's a campaign-specific item, and it's L15 in a campaign that goes 1-20. The only time it's ever going to be available to PCs is if they're playing that campaign or if the GM explicitly wants them to have it.

I'm totally okay with errata making it even more MacGuffiny than it already is, because it's already pretty MacGuffiny.

[Finoan]

This is from the new errata, yes?

The errata that says:

FAQ wrote:

Resistance to all damage or to a wide array of damage (such as physical damage) also applies only once. This is a big change to the status quo!

So yes. The devs are aware that this is something that is going to change up the balance of various abilities.

Champion reaction and Thaumaturge Amulet reaction are both drinking themselves under the table tonight because they are now both on equal footing of effectiveness with Flamekeeper Witch's Restored Spirit temp HP instead of being strictly better like they used to be.

Edit: Against one attack. Resistance is still better than temp HP if you get attacked more than once.

[Bust-R-Up]

This change suggests that Paizo had no idea how damage worked in their own game and is now just winging it after their first attempt at errata was so poorly received.

[Easl]

Bust-R-Up wrote:

This change suggests that Paizo had no idea how damage worked in their own game and is now just winging it after their first attempt at errata was so poorly received.

They had an idea how they wanted it to work. But after the last errata they are clearly trying to find a new way, and maybe this change is setting us up for that new way. [shrug] But...I don't think your example supports "no idea", because it's such a rare edge case it's not something any game designer would create a general rule to cover.

[Balkoth]

Easl wrote:

That's a rare item, it's a campaign-specific item, and it's L15 in a campaign that goes 1-20. The only time it's ever going to be available to PCs is if they're playing that campaign or if the GM explicitly wants them to have it.

It's also very similar to a lot of items I've seen in various RPG video games (though normally those don't have the dragon breath component, it's just resistance to several types of elements), so it's hardly some groundbreaking idea.

Finoan wrote:

So yes. The devs are aware that this is something that is going to change up the balance of various abilities.

It just feels like they didn't make clear about some of those examples. Or didn't consider them, like how they didn't the first round of errata.

For example, a spell that gives you resist 10 to elemental damage can be worse than multiple individual spells that are lower rank giving resist to multiple specific elements, which again feels weird.

Finoan wrote:

Champion reaction and Thaumaturge Amulet reaction are both drinking themselves under the table tonight because they are now both on equal footing of effectiveness with Flamekeeper Witch's Restored Spirit temp HP instead of being strictly better like they used to be.

The resistance can actually be worse. If you get hit by 10 fire and 10 cold damage with resist 20, you take 10 damage. If you get hit by 10 fire and 10 cold damage with 20 temp HP, you take 0 damage.

[HenshinFanatic]

Or, counterpoint: Resist 20 All vs 10 Fire + 10 Cold = 20 damage - 20 resistance = 0 damage dealt. It literally applies against all (the sum total) damage instead of against a specific type of damage.

Edit: Ah, just looked over the actual entry instead of the summary here and seems they didn't go with the IMO more logical option for the errata of grouping applicable damage if it falls under a wide resistance like physical, spells, or all.

[Balkoth]

Yeah, what you're describing is how Hardness works.

And if they made Resist All work like Hardness that's...a decision (why even have both?) but at least it would be better than this new situation.

[Bust-R-Up]

Easl wrote:

Bust-R-Up wrote:

This change suggests that Paizo had no idea how damage worked in their own game and is now just winging it after their first attempt at errata was so poorly received.

They had an idea how they wanted it to work. But after the last errata they are clearly trying to find a new way, and maybe this change is setting us up for that new way. [shrug] But...I don't think your example supports "no idea", because it's such a rare edge case it's not something any game designer would create a general rule to cover.

What an instance of damage is, and exactly how hardness, weakness, and resistance work in a system featuring such, should have been hammered out during early combat testing. This isn't some edge case; it's fundamental to how dealing damage works.

[KlampK]

Bust-R-Up wrote:

What an instance of damage is, and exactly how hardness, weakness, and resistance work in a system featuring such, should have been hammered out during early combat testing. This isn't some edge case; it's fundamental to how dealing damage works.

I think it was, at least internally, and everyone knew what it was so noone wrote it down. Then people either forgot, or were brought in and didn't "know" so worked off their own definition.

Then they wrote down what it was but there were things that were broken under that definition, causing everyone to freak out and here we are.

[Bust-R-Up]

KlampK wrote:

I think it was, at least internally, and everyone knew what it was so noone wrote it down. Then people either forgot, or were brought in and didn't "know" so worked off their own definition.

Then they wrote down what it was but there were things that were broken under that definition, causing everyone to freak out and here we are.

I find that to be problematic. It might just be a me thing, but the people working on an RPG should probably know how it works. Instances of damage and how they interact with damage modifiers (weakness, resistance, etc.) should have been clearly defined from the start of PF2, yet here we are years into the remaster, and we're seeing it demonstrated that they have no idea how their own game works.

This is just another look into how Paizo works, showing that everything is always working under a serious time and manpower crunch and that the technical debt of working this way is now piling up on the current team.

[HenshinFanatic]

Balkoth wrote:

Yeah, what you're describing is how Hardness works.

And if they made Resist All work like Hardness that's...a decision (why even have both?) but at least it would be better than this new situation.

1: I can say the same for errata'd Stunned N.

2: Narrative distinction. Creatures generally don't have hardness.

[yellowpete]

Finoan wrote:

Champion reaction and Thaumaturge Amulet reaction are both drinking themselves under the table tonight because they are now both on equal footing of effectiveness with Flamekeeper Witch's Restored Spirit temp HP instead of being strictly better like they used to be.

Edit: Against one attack. Resistance is still better than temp HP if you get attacked more than once.

Restored Spirit is only 2+half level vs the 2+level from both of those resistance abilities. Also, you never waste those resistances on a target that ends up not getting damaged that round.

It's not an insignificant change to those reactions, but I have the feeling those classes will be just fine. Mainly because the change only lowers the ceiling of the abilities' effectiveness, but not their floor.

As for the original post, one reason this might feel odd is simply that it has been different for so long. Had resistance to all damage always meant what it means now, then it probably wouldn't feel odd to have this specialized multi-resistance tool be more effective in the situations it is designed to address (Energy Aegis being another example).

[Easl]

KlampK wrote:

Bust-R-Up wrote:

What an instance of damage is, and exactly how hardness, weakness, and resistance work in a system featuring such, should have been hammered out during early combat testing. This isn't some edge case; it's fundamental to how dealing damage works.

I think it was, at least internally, and everyone knew what it was so noone wrote it down. Then people either forgot, or were brought in and didn't "know" so worked off their own definition.

I expect playtesting dealt with common situations, like flaming rune vs. fire resistance. Not "fully loaded" cases like silver+holy+flaming+fire spell enchantment on sword + precision damage + fire kineticist stance vs. resist all+hardness+slashing immune+holy weakness+fire resistance+elemental betrayal hex + etc.

There is certainly value in a rules set that is 'set complete' in terms of addressing every possible hypothetical scenario in a way that remains fun and fair. But is it necessary that every edge case be dealt with effectivelly? Maybe not. To use this thread as an example, 99% of actual table play will not suffer at all from the 'new issue' of Dragonscale Amulet now being much more powerful than Resist All, because Dragonscale Amulet is a rare, campaign-specific L15 item. It can only come up in a game if you're playing that AP or if the GM actively, consciously decides to have it in their game.

[siegfriedliner]

I am happy with the aim of not making resist all so masively detrimental to multitype attacks and for the most part are happy with how it will play out, the physical element will be the largest that gets reduced and everything is fine.

But the edge cases where damage is a lot of low elemental ticks and you have some resistance already feels like it would be a pain to adjudicate.

They went with the choice of it replacing a single resistance to make it work with other resistance but that means that if you have have resist all 10 and take 5 fire and 5 cold you take 5 damage which seems a wrong outcome.

[Bust-R-Up]

Easl wrote:

I expect playtesting dealt with common situations, like flaming rune vs. fire resistance. Not "fully loaded" cases like silver+holy+flaming+fire spell enchantment on sword + precision damage + fire kineticist stance vs. resist all+hardness+slashing immune+holy weakness+fire resistance+elemental betrayal hex + etc.

There is certainly value in a rules set that is 'set complete' in terms of addressing every possible hypothetical scenario in a way that remains fun and fair. But is it necessary that every edge case be dealt with effectivelly? Maybe not. To use this thread as an example, 99% of actual table play will not suffer at all from the 'new issue' of Dragonscale Amulet now being much more powerful than Resist All, because Dragonscale Amulet is a rare, campaign-specific L15 item. It can only come up in a game if you're playing that AP or if the GM actively, consciously decides to have it in their game.

We have hundreds of pages of rules for this game. I think it's fair to ask that these rules be written unambiguously, if not in the main rulebooks, then in a separate technical document that can be looked up to resolve specific cases. You can play MtG 95% correctly without ever looking at the full comprehensive rules, but if you ever have a question, those rules are there and, if correctly applied, work 100% without ambiguity. This is what I want for PF2R.

[Easl]

Bust-R-Up wrote:

We have hundreds of pages of rules for this game. I think it's fair to ask that these rules be written unambiguously,

Oh it's definitely fair to ask. But as with any human endeavor, what you will get is going to constrained by cost, schedule, and ability. None of this is coming free or easy.

[yellowpete]

Easl wrote:

To use this thread as an example, 99% of actual table play will not suffer at all from the 'new issue' of Dragonscale Amulet now being much more powerful than Resist All, because Dragonscale Amulet is a rare, campaign-specific L15 item. It can only come up in a game if you're playing that AP or if the GM actively, consciously decides to have it in their game.

There are common alternatives that one could make the same argument about, like Energy Aegis, no GM permission needed there in most games.

It's just not clear at all that the perceived 'oddness' of this comparison is a function of the new mechanics in a vacuum rather than of the fact that there was a change in mechanics. Would we see this thread if the definition of resist all had always been like it is now? Highly questionable, imo

[Tridus]

Bust-R-Up wrote:

This change suggests that Paizo had no idea how damage worked in their own game and is now just winging it after their first attempt at errata was so poorly received.

Since they stated explicitly that they were changing it, they know pretty clearly how it works.

It's a surprising change since Resist all has worked this way since the original CRB and was the one case that was perfectly clear.

But it's got nothing to do with them not understanding it. It's them making a decision to change the balance on those abilities significantly. Of course, this also applies to enemies: Incorporeal enemies won't resist every damage type on a strike now either.

[Balkoth]

yellowpete wrote:

There are common alternatives that one could make the same argument about, like Energy Aegis, no GM permission needed there in most games.

Energy Aegis is an excellent example.

"You protect the target with a powerful, long-lasting energy barrier. The target gains resistance 5 to acid, cold, electricity, fire, force, sonic, vitality, and void damage."

If that instead said

"You protect the target with a powerful, long-lasting energy barrier. The target gains resistance 5 to damage (except physical, poison, and mental)."

it would be a straight up nerf now.

If you're thinking "Where would you even see language like that with resist all and exceptions for specific damage?" then look at incorporeals as an easy example:

"Resistances: all damage 10 (except force, ghost touch, spirit, or vitality; double resistance vs. non-magical) "

[Bust-R-Up]

Tridus wrote:

Since they stated explicitly that they were changing it, they know pretty clearly how it works.

It's a surprising change since Resist all has worked this way since the original CRB and was the one case that was perfectly clear.

But it's got nothing to do with them not understanding it. It's them making a decision to change the balance on those abilities significantly. Of course, this also applies to enemies: Incorporeal enemies won't resist every damage type on a strike now either.

If they knew, why did it take years and a remaster for them to clarify it, only to find out that the first clarification broke the game entirely when we called them out on it? The only sensible option is that they didn't know how damage worked. They may have had an idea of how they thought it worked, but they clearly hadn't ever tested whether their assumptions actually worked.

You can see this with pre-master shields, where they aren't durable enough to work as written. You can see this with early AP design. The release version of the alchemist, before even the day one errata, the release witch, etc. This is a company that, at best, guesses at how its game works while having no idea what is going on at real tables.

[Tridus]

Bust-R-Up wrote:

If they knew, why did it take years and a remaster for them to clarify it, only to find out that the first clarification broke the game entirely when we called them out on it? The only sensible option is that they didn't know how damage worked. They may have had an idea of how they thought it worked, but they clearly hadn't ever tested whether their assumptions actually worked.

For several of those years it was different people who felt it should work a certain way. We also just didn't get errata for this kind of stuff for years.

The first stab at it was bad, yeah. But they listened to that and changed it, and the new version is good. That's the process working.

Since we want them to listen to feedback and they did, we should be applauding that this ended up in a good place rather than complaining about the first version. Like: they did what we asked them to and the end result is a massive improvement along with one surprising change. But overall this is a great update and it really doesn't deserve the vitriol you're throwing at it especially when you're mostly complaining about the first version that isn't even a thing anymore.

I don't know what prompted this change, but the new folks in charge apparently feel its too powerful with how the rest of the rules changed. That has nothing to do with not understanding it.

Quote:

You can see this with pre-master shields, where they aren't durable enough to work as written.

The fact that the remaster specifically added runes to account for this says the opposite your assertion: they understood the problem and addressed it.

Quote:

You can see this with early AP design.

Early AP design was literally being done in parallel with the game design, so it was made with the playtest rules and a system that wasn't done yet.

Are you seriously surprised that as they've gotten more experience with the system, AP design has gotten more consistent? Because that's literally how everything works.

I don't get what the point of this post even is. Are you complaining about this change, or are you complaining about stuff from 8 years ago that isn't a problem anymore and is entirely normal early in the lifecycle of a game?

Quote:

The release version of the alchemist, before even the day one errata, the release witch, etc. This is a company that, at best, guesses at how its game works while having no idea what is going on at real tables.

This is just trolling. You sound upset, and I get it, but yeesh. It's a big, complex game, with an overly tight production schedule due to market reality. Mistakes will get made. The fact that stuff is being addressed is a good thing, not a bad thing, and the fact that everything you're using as examples is so old is really undermining whatever point you're trying to make.

[Claxon]

Not a fan of the new errata on damage resistance either (and by either I me the old new errata on resistance).

At this point I'm probably just going to completely ignore anything Paizo has to say on the matter and run as I see fit.

[NorrKnekten]

As to adress the main subject. It being able to resist more damage does not mean it will resist more damage, Nor does it mean that it is strictly better.

You will still get more milage out of the new resist all 5 over the course of a campaign than you would with the resist 5 to 4 different kinds of energy damage, simply because majority of creatures deal physical damage.

The difference is that resist all is weaker but can now be combined with other resistances for more coverage.

[Balkoth]

Another fun example I thought of!

Say you have 5 resist slashing from Stoneskin and then get 10 resist all for something.

You take 12 slashing damage and 5 fire damage. If you resist the slashing, you take 2 slashing and 5 fire for 7 damage. If you resist the fire, you take 7 slashing damage and 0 fire damage for 7 damage. Identical.

But if it's 12 slashing and 6 fire, then resisting the slashing is 2 slashing and 6 fire for 8 damage while resisting fire is 7 slashing and 0 fire, so you want to resist the slashing.

And if it's 12 slashing and 4 fire, resisting slashing yields 2 slashing/4 fire for 6 vs 7 slashing/0 fire for 7, so you want to resist the fire.

And you'll need to figure out this math on every hit. Which is not impossible or even super hard, but it is an extra complication.

Also if you have like weakness 10 to fire or something like regeneration that's de-activated by fire then you basically always want to block the fire, so stuff like that is also a factor.

Claxon wrote:

At this point I'm probably just going to completely ignore anything Paizo has to say on the matter and run as I see fit.

Alas, this is trickier for people who play at least one game with a VTT like Fantasy Grounds or Foundry.

NorrKnekten wrote:

You will still get more milage out of the new resist all 5 over the course of a campaign than you would with the resist 5 to 4 different kinds of energy damage, simply because majority of creatures deal physical damage.

If the items were equivalent, sure, but something like resist 5 all would be priced massively more expensively and higher level than resist 5 to 4 energy types of damage because it's using the original rules for resist all.

Same when it comes to defensive "budgets" for creatures or character abilities.

[nephandys]

Where are Mark Seifter and Michael Sayre when you need them?

[Lonesomechunk]

if we're going to rework how resist all works, even with their admission that its a massive balance change, I feel like effects relying on it should have also been reworked. Don't get me wrong, Champion is incredibly good so this is hardly going to ruin them, but you have stuff like Monk's ironblood stance which has taken a pretty massive hit and is now just, way worse. I feel like if you're going to make a massive fundamental change to how the rules of your game work, its probably worth tweaking some of the effects tied to it as well. Its also just not really worth getting ghost touch runes now either, so maybe it could use a buff to make it worth keeping

[Easl]

Balkoth wrote:

Say you have 5 resist slashing from Stoneskin and then get 10 resist all for something.

You take 12 slashing damage and 5 fire damage. If you resist the slashing, you take 2 slashing and 5 fire for 7 damage. If you resist the fire, you take 7 slashing damage and 0 fire damage for 7 damage. Identical.

But if it's 12 slashing and 6 fire, then resisting the slashing is 2 slashing and 6 fire for 8 damage while resisting fire is 7 slashing and 0 fire, so you want to resist the slashing.

The errata says "a multi-type resistance can be applied to the most beneficial damage type if it could apply more than one."

So if resistances can apply in more than one, the PC victim gets to pick the way to apply it. On the con side, this also means that GMs should be picking the optimal resistance choices for monsters.

Lonesomechunk wrote:

if we're going to rework how resist all works, even with their admission that its a massive balance change, I feel like effects relying on it should have also been reworked.

That is an enormous ask for the publishing company to go back over every AP and released product and alter the stats of things that were built with Resist All.

They're not going to do that.

What is much more likely is that they put out some statement to the community telling GMs to pay attention/change old published monsters with that trait to keep the challenge about the same. Now sure, GMs can already do that, but some people like to have that sort of express note before they fiddle with an AP, and it's probably useful for PF Society to have a permission like that "on paper."

[NorrKnekten]

nephandys wrote:

Where are Mark Seifter and Michael Sayre when you need them?

Neither are employed by Paizo, having left around 2022 and 2024.

[Tridus]

Balkoth wrote:

Alas, this is trickier for people who play at least one game with a VTT like Fantasy Grounds or Foundry.

In Foundry you can just turn IWR off. You'll be handling it yourself, but the automation won't get in your way and you can do whatever you want.

If you want the automation, you're going to have to deal with cases where it doesn't work the way you want it to and adjust accordingly.

[Balkoth]

Easl wrote:

The errata says "a multi-type resistance can be applied to the most beneficial damage type if it could apply more than one."

So if resistances can apply in more than one, the PC victim gets to pick the way to apply it. On the con side, this also means that GMs should be picking the optimal resistance choices for monsters.

Yes, I know. That's why I said you'd have to do the math every hit to figure out which it should be.

Champion reactions specifically are still quite strong, I'm less worried about that and more about all the other ramifications.

[NorrKnekten]

Tridus wrote:

Balkoth wrote:

Alas, this is trickier for people who play at least one game with a VTT like Fantasy Grounds or Foundry.

In Foundry you can just turn IWR off. You'll be handling it yourself, but the automation won't get in your way and you can do whatever you want.

If you want the automation, you're going to have to deal with cases where it doesn't work the way you want it to and adjust accordingly.

Last time I interacted with the devs in regards to IWR/Shieldblock they explained that some choices of design specifically was that the handling 'choices' like this was typically rough as it had edge cases with nuance. It would be easy to automate assigning each type for maximum damage reduction but obviously this would not adress situations where one might want to avoid a specific type more than others.

Probably we will see something similar with this change.

[YuriP]

Probably the foundry developers will implement some choice option or/and an auto-select for the highest damage.

[NorrKnekten]

My guess lies on the auto-select for highest damage reduction, Imagine having to do a choice option every time you take damage.

[Tridus]

Yeah I can't imagine them actually building a UI to make people pick this when the choice is obvious the vast majority of the time. People will get it wrong by having to figure out what to pick far more often than it'll actually help.

When the edge case is this rare, they tend to just tell people to deal with it when it happens. The common case is "I want to resist the biggest number" and I suspect they'll do that by default.

[The Raven Black]

I find the suggestion in another thread of reading the new Resist All as Resist Any to be immensely useful.

[Claxon]

The Raven Black wrote:

I find the suggestion in another thread of reading the new Resist All as Resist Any to be immensely useful.

I saw that and thought that it at least helps to understand better (IMO) how it now functions.

Resist Any 1 source of damage by X, instead of actually resisting all.

[HolyFlamingo!]

> we're seeing it demonstrated that they have no idea how their own game works.

The people making the rules changes aren't the same as the people who wrote them in the first place. There has been a lot of turnover in the past few years.

Regardless of who's in charge, though, changes to fundamental mechanics should probably wait for the next edition, imho.

[Easl]

HolyFlamingo! wrote:

Regardless of who's in charge, though, changes to fundamental mechanics should probably wait for the next edition, imho.

I suspect this is tied back into the big 'instance of damage' discussion. Resist All was developed under a system where pretty much every single thing was its own instance of damage. So you could trigger weaknesses a LOT. Now, the weakness rules have been changed so you sort of pool stuff and apply it once. That means the monsters get harder to kill than originally intended. Changing Resist All may kinda compensate for that??? Maybe?? Or maybe that doesn't make sense at all since the monsters in the 'now harder to kill' group may be different from the monsters in the 'haz Resist All' group. But I still have this suspicion it's related in some way.

[NorrKnekten]

Its absolutely tied to the instance of damage, its been a point of contention since the games release where we had a rather barebones example from Seifter who even himself admitted he was unsure if fire damage from different sources triggered weakness, probably because at that point they were going through probably a dozen different ideas for how things could work.

The first errata was an attempt of trying to explain the intent behind original rules... but the first errata was also a means of plays that basically nobody ran with or agreed with so it did show a disconnect that needed to be adressed. I suppose this is the closest thing they could get to a compromise between original writing and player feedback without it being to massive of a change. Even All damage resistance is largely unchanged in practice but any of those high moments from champions reducing damage several times is gone, But so is incorporeals just nerfing the hell out of any class who gains added damage of another typing. Looking at examples like the spellshot, inventor or elemental instinct barbarian.

[Castilliano]

The Raven Black wrote:

I find the suggestion in another thread of reading the new Resist All as Resist Any to be immensely useful.

You're welcome! :-)

[HolyFlamingo!]

I definitely agree that it's tied to the weakness thing--honestly resistance only applying once is much easier to run and how I was doing it at home anyway, so I'm all for it in this specific instance--but I'm side-eyeing these aggressive errata applications in a more general, principled sense. I don't like how hard Paizo seems to be leaning on patch culture, especially considering how badly they apparently want us to buy physical books.

[Bust-R-Up]

Tridus wrote:

The first stab at it was bad, yeah. But they listened to that and changed it, and the new version is good. That's the process working.

Except this new version isn't good and breaks several old monster designs as well as harming existing player-facing options that haven't been adjusted in reaction to this change. This is very similar to how changes to Shield Strapping have broken things that are unlikely to ever be fixed via errata.

If they're taking feedback, my feedback is that any errata should be accompanied by fixes to any rules broken by it.

[qupte]I don't know what prompted this change, but the new folks in charge apparently feel its too powerful with how the rest of the rules changed. That has nothing to do with not understanding it.

I'd have more faith if this new team could be bothered to communicate with us. The old team is beloved because they bothered to interact with us.

Quote:

You can see this with pre-master shields, where they aren't durable enough to work as written.

The fact that the remaster specifically added runes to account for this says the opposite your assertion: they understood the problem and addressed it.

Quote:

Are you seriously surprised that as they've gotten more experience with the system, AP design has gotten more consistent? Because that's literally how everything works.

Kingmaker says hello.

Quote:

It's a big, complex game, with an overly tight production schedule due to market reality. Mistakes will get made. The fact that stuff is being addressed is a good thing, not a bad thing, and the fact that everything you're using as examples is so old is really undermining whatever point you're trying to make.

If you want new examples, what happened with the Mythic rules? Why did Rogue get buffed in the remaster while Wizard is still in a terrible place? Why doesn't the new Commander class properly interact with the Kineticist? Why has this most recent errata still made rules errors, i.e. By RAW DaS still can't benefit from hero points because it isn't a skill check, so what was the point in removing the luck trait from it?

This doesn't point to a team with a great internal idea of how the system works. It points to a team that has less understanding of the game than the community.

[Easl]

HolyFlamingo! wrote:

I don't like how hard Paizo seems to be leaning on patch culture, especially considering how badly they apparently want us to buy physical books.

Culturally I think we're stuck with it. So many tabletop players second-game as videogame rpgers and MMO players that push-updates are the expected norm now. Look across the boards here, you'll see regular comments to the effect of "well now that Paizo has made this change, they should go back and change every past publication to address it. For free. Should be easy!" That's coming from video game expectations, IMO. No pen and paper publisher can do that. Yet, it's the expectation of many players.

On the plus side, Paizo having an active change/update culture says to me that they plan on supporting PF2E for years to come, that this is the game they want people to play. To me, that's good.

[Bust-R-Up]

HolyFlamingo! wrote:

> we're seeing it demonstrated that they have no idea how their own game works.

The people making the rules changes aren't the same as the people who wrote them in the first place. There has been a lot of turnover in the past few years.

Regardless of who's in charge, though, changes to fundamental mechanics should probably wait for the next edition, imho.

If Paizo is going to lean into treating PF2's rules as a living document, and for the record, I very much support this, they should do it right. A living game requires developer feedback; we need to know what they're looking to change and why. The current faceless, silent development team is not a good fit for a team that also makes rules changes via errata.

[Bust-R-Up]

Easl wrote:

Culturally I think we're stuck with it. So many tabletop players second-game as videogame rpgers and MMO players that push-updates are the expected norm now. Look across the boards here, you'll see regular comments to the effect of "well now that Paizo has made this change, they should go back and change every past publication to address it. For free. Should be easy!" That's coming from video game expectations, IMO. No pen and paper publisher can do that. Yet, it's the expectation of many players.

On the plus side, Paizo having an active change/update culture says to me that they plan on supporting PF2E for years to come, that this is the game they want people to play. To me, that's good.

If you're going to have a living game, it doesn't make sense to pick and choose what bits you're willing to fix and which bits you aren't. You either fix things, or you don't. Half-fixing things while also breaking other things is a poor way of approaching a living set of rules. The lack of communication as to the whys of these changes is also a big problem.

[HenshinFanatic]

Bust-R-Up wrote:

Except this new version isn't good and breaks several old monster designs as well as harming existing player-facing options that haven't been adjusted in reaction to this change.

No, it isn't ideal. That's nowhere close to the same as "bad". Home games I run will be using my houserule, but the new official stance is perfectly serviceable in Society play. Just because you don't like it, doesn't make it bad.

[YuriP]

As I said, there's already an overreaction in these forums to the change from Resist All to Resist Any. It will have far less impact than many people imagine, but now we finally have a clear rule that replaces instances of damage that were never defined.

I always thought Resist All was an excessive effect, and creatures with it weren't that much weaker in HP or AC to justify its presence.

My only complaint is that, despite this, it was never a noticeable problem that really made players revolt; it was just stronger than normal, and that's it. Therefore, for me, Paizo kind of messed with something that isn't a real problem, but the solution isn't a real problem either, so it doesn't change much significantly in my opinion.

[Unicore]

I haven’t had time to carefully examine all of the errata yet, but my read on the resist all change is that I wouldn’t have chosen to do it, because I preferred resistances to be meaningful and challenging, but now that it is done it is done.

I do think that there is/needs to be a new meta analysis of how the whole IWR thing affects high level spell casting, as that is where the ability to meaningfully and intentionally target and create multiple weaknesses occurs, but I suspect that that is not going to matter very much for the vast majority of tables.

Overall, maybe some runes will be less valuable, some will be slightly improved. Spells that do multiple damage types can be very slightly optimized around and mostly the game will play largely the same.

Honestly, I hope we get a lot more multi-weakness and resistance creatures now that the rules are universally understood and that is where the game gets most interesting mechanically, at least to me.

[Bust-R-Up]

HenshinFanatic wrote:

Bust-R-Up wrote:

Except this new version isn't good and breaks several old monster designs as well as harming existing player-facing options that haven't been adjusted in reaction to this change.

No, it isn't ideal. That's nowhere close to the same as "bad". Home games I run will be using my houserule, but the new official stance is perfectly serviceable in Society play. Just because you don't like it, doesn't make it bad.

There's no way that the design team didn't know that most of us were using the Foundry implementation; the best and easiest thing to do was to codify that. If they felt that might be unbalanced or otherwise less than ideal, they could print a sidebar that gives an optional rule for resist all as it currently works.