Pathfinder 2e

[maglag]

The adventure went fine for the most part, with the PCs pretty readily waltzing through most of the encounters with minimal resource expenditures

The game plays smoothly for the most part

Water and Earth Elementals are fun to fight and have some neat stuff they can do.

So since fine and smoothly and fun now don't count as positive, what would? That somebody reports that playing the adventure made them orgasm at the table and jizz all over the miniatures? That they want to marry PF2? That's some pretty high standards man.

[radthemad4]

You realize that one regular den member is actually offering quite positive review of the 2nd adventure, right?

The playtester is Deadmanwalking. The denner is deaddmwalking. If deaddmwalking has a paizo profile, I think it's likely this one.

[GâtFromKI]

You realize that one regular den member is actually offering quite positive review of the 2nd adventure, right?

The adventure went fine for the most part, with the PCs pretty readily waltzing through most of the encounters with minimal resource expenditures

The game plays smoothly for the most part

dafuk? O_O

Those quotes comes from his report of the first adventure. How does it prove anything about the second one?

Water and Earth Elementals are fun to fight and have some neat stuff they can do.

Or "Quicksand is terrible. [...] I'm pretty sure that, mathematically, her odds of death were fairly low. But getting out was just a huge slog. That fits what quicksand is actually like, but is not fun at all to play."

"[about the bard] More importantly, the range on Telekinetic Projectile (and thus presumably most other Cantrips) is terrible. It's 30 feet and then flatly fails to work. [...] In the Manticore fight, the Bard, who took the Cantrip over a ranged weapon, was mostly simply unable to use it. That's not fun, and a situation spellcasters may well get into a fair bit."

"[about the monk] Utter lack of ranged attacks. During the Manticore fight he borrowed bombs from the Alchemist and threw them untrained, which worked adequately (since they hit Touch AC)...but in a party with no Alchemist he, like the Bard, would've been unable to attack, and he had no buffs to provide (which is what the Bard fell back on)."

"The Elite Gnoll Warriors have absurd Perception. [...] even assuming a -1 Perception due to math error [...] sneaking up on them is a crapshoot at best and completely impossible at worst."

I wouldn't qualify this as "positive". I'd qualify his whole report of the second adventure as "non-negative", but far from "positive". Not to mention, the day after this report, he created a subject about how the game assumes every PC is "asbolutely optimal". In this thread, he mentions that the problem isn't only skills, the melee capabilities of monsters are also balanced against optimized fighters.

Anyway, what do I learn in his report of the second adventure?

... More or less, the stuff I've already here written in this thread 6 days before his report. The only exception is: "The Alchemist feels pretty powerful at this level".

Other than that, Monks are useless (I don't know how the monk may have survived while suffering two or three times more damages than the Fighter suffered; and I think DMW forgot the range penalty with bombs, otherwise there's no way he could contribute against the manticore) (to deal as much damages as a fighter, except with low AC and no ranged capability, doesn't make a class "good". It makes it a "why-aren't-you-playing-fighter-you-bumdass" class), monsters have too much Per and their skills are too high, Bards and Fighter are good classes, no cleric means 15-minutes-workday, spell range is crap and spells can't be used against an enemy like the manticore, lingering composition is crap due to the absurd DCs...

Thank you for showing me a thread pointing the same flaws as me - but I already knew I was right.

[deaddmwalking]

You realize that one regular den member is actually offering quite positive review of the 2nd adventure, right?

The playtester is Deadmanwalking. The denner is deaddmwalking. If deaddmwalking has a paizo profile, I think it's likely this one.

DeadMANWalking is not deadDMwalking.

I don't (generally) play Pathfinder* and I am not participating in the playtest.

I am in a long-running play-by-post game that updated from 3.5 to Pathfinder a few years ago, and I basically chose 'as close to 3.x as I can' for options for my Ranger character.

Edit - And yes, the deadDMwalking profile is mine - it doesn't look like I've used it in almost 10 years.

[Username17]

I just want to say that posting a drive-by "gotcha" where it turns out that he confused two posters with a similar name and also linked to a discussion about the wrong adventure module is the most perfectly maglag thing. I literally cannot imagine something more maglag than that.

-Username17

[Ghremdal]

So I played a couple of encounters worth of the beta and these are my thoughts.

I like the three action thing. I do not like most stuff is hidden behind class feats and features.

The bullshit bonuses zerged all over the place. A lot of fixing could be done by just doubling or tripling any modifier. Spending a spell and several actions to give someone -1 to hit and saves for several rounds is just plain sad. If I hear the word "bounded accuracy" about any RPG I assume it is complete shit.

I am not a fan of the critical success and critical failure part...it slows down the game for no real benefit.

Skills feats and skills are super lame. Just include skill feats in the relevant ranks for free and increase the fucking bonuses. DC 20 to jump 15 ft when a lvl 4 18 STR expert atheltics character has a +9 is even more sad.

Its nice that all abilities are nice and clear, its just that many of them are so crappy that its better to basic attack.

On the whole it may have some potential if the devs listen to feedback, but right now its a dumpster fire. Not as smelly and big as 5e, but still a dumpster fire.

[Previn]

I like the three action thing. I do not like most stuff is hidden behind class feats and features.

I hate this. It's one of those ideas that seems cool, but in practice it's just needless tracking, and deciding what is and is not 1-3 actions. I think they should have just stuck with the existing action scheme, especially when they have things that take multiple actions, because then it's really just an added layer of obfusification to actions that doesn't serve a purpose.

The bullshit bonuses zerged all over the place. A lot of fixing could be done by just doubling or tripling any modifier. Spending a spell and several actions to give someone -1 to hit and saves for several rounds is just plain sad. If I hear the word "bounded accuracy" about any RPG I assume it is complete shit.

The balance in every 'feat' is crazy all over the place. There is no way they can fix all of it even if they really were going to make an effort. I mean, it's not even remotely close on a lot of these, they're just clear traps, and on top of all of that character creation is a god damned nightmare of comparisons, references and planning between like 40 different feats, that are sort-of-not-really compartmentalized.

I am not a fan of the critical success and critical failure part...it slows down the game for no real benefit.

It's made the game utter lethal in my experience. I ran the playtest, and I had to specifically avoid wiping characters out, even knowing this was a thing from the experiences of other groups.

Skills feats and skills are super lame. Just include skill feats in the relevant ranks for free and increase the fucking bonuses. DC 20 to jump 15 ft when a lvl 4 18 STR expert atheltics character has a +9 is even more sad.

TEML is a blight how they've implemented it, and there was no reason for the WORTHLESS bonuses after trained, taking hundreds of rolls before you'll notice the difference between any 2 steps.

Tying advancement to it is ok-ish, but pointless when you have a level based system to use for that, and frankly it's dick-ish to not have the actual modifier on the sheet, because what I totally want for people who already take a couple minutes to calculate the results of a roll, is for them to figure out what bonus they're getting from TEML for EVERY SINGLE ROLL.

Skill feats are attempts to give non-casters nice things, but fail on almost every level at it, especially with taking away options from skills, or giving stupid 'things' that no-one wants (looking at you diehard, thanks for being a COMPLETE WASTE until things are so bad that it's game over anyways). I say 'things' because I wouldn't even call a lot of the skill feats bonuses since you don't really get anything for having them. I can search a room in half the time, which won't really matter if we have the time to search a room anyways, oooooor... I can have a +1 (expert bonus) to a save all the time. HMMM.

Cavate : That bonus to saves could easily become a wasted feat when your class abilities increase your TEML instead, so just be aware of that rabbit hole when choosing feats.

Its nice that all abilities are nice and clear, its just that many of them are so crappy that its better to basic attack.

Both groups I've played with have noted that it looks like they followed the 4e method of everything is a power, and then decided that the 4e powers were too good and watered them down. I can't say I disagree with that assessment on any level.

On the whole it may have some potential if the devs listen to feedback, but right now its a dumpster fire. Not as smelly and big as 5e, but still a dumpster fire.

That's far better praise that I would ever give it. It's a mess on pretty much every level and I won't be touching it with the exception of running for players so they understand why we will never / they should never play it again.

I honestly expect that this will drag Pathfinder out of being a real D&D competitor anymore.

[GâtFromKI]

There's a new Pathfinder Society scenario, for level 5 Path 2 characters. It begins with a small investigation and a warm-up fight against a level 7 monster.

There are two reports of this adventure. In both, they investigates, they get false informations when they crit fail the rolls (which are damn hard) and false informations when they succeed because the book provides false informations. Then the fight starts, one PC drops dead at first round, another one drops quickly after, the survivors flee in terror (or continue the fight and die), everyone goes play Smash Bros and the game ends.

Best. Scenario. Ever.


For the record, a NPC gives to the PCs a non-magical/non-expert sword able to bypass the DR of the monster. This DR is 5. A magical sword deals 2d8 damage (with +1 to hit), a non-magical one deals 1d8. Why would anyone use the NPC's sword?

[WiserOdin032402]

Well, the +1 to hit is great, all things considered, but is the material obtainable by the players? Because if so you should just get the weapon as magical in that material.

[Username17]

I honestly expect that this will drag Pathfinder out of being a real D&D competitor anymore.

That's my feeling. The entire system of critical success and failure marked off every 10 points is the kind of thing you'd expect some dude to drunk post on a gaming forum and have people pick it apart for a few days and then have everyone give up on the idea because it's obviously a bad idea.

Making there be 2-3 critical points on the d20 means that small bonuses are always noticeable, which in turn means that players will only get small bonuses, which in turn means that people will fail at basic tasks all the time. That's just obviously how that works. Which means it's a bad idea because constantly failing at basic tasks is fucking bullshit.

Having Paizo drag this dumb idea along this long is just kind of embarrassing. I don't know why they haven't scrapped this and moved on. It's genuinely puzzling to me that they'd keep "working on" something this bad. And I don't see how Pathfinder continues to be a major game we pretend to take seriously after this.

-Username17

[WiserOdin032402]

Granted, this isn't 4e where basic tasks scale. The wall you climbed earlier doesn't ever level up. The guards don't level up. However, your ranks in all your skills level up with your level, and given dex is the current god stat, fighters are a whole lot sneakier in this edition.

[GâtFromKI]

Well, the +1 to hit is great, all things considered, but is the material obtainable by the players? Because if so you should just get the weapon as magical in that material.

Errr...

1/ Short answer: i don't think so. If I remember correctly, the special material is only usable on a master-quality weapon, PCs can't have this at level 5. The NPC uses an oil on a trash weapon. He doesn't give the oil to the PCs because the author of the scenario is an asshole.

2/ Long answer: NullReferenceException.

No one knows how PCs can get special material. Maybe it's free, and a level 9 PC can chose either a +2 sword or a +2 ghost touch wounding adamantium sword (of master-quality) as his level 8 item, depending on his preference. Maybe it's not free and no one knows how the PCs can get special material.

The game throws a lot of Exceptions like this one, but there are erratas! The last errata is "Bards now have a level 20 feat to cast level 10 spells". Dafuk?

[Pedantic]

Granted, this isn't 4e where basic tasks scale. The wall you climbed earlier doesn't ever level up. The guards don't level up. However, your ranks in all your skills level up with your level, and given dex is the current god stat, fighters are a whole lot sneakier in this edition.

Is it not? If there's a table for it (and there is) then some idiot DM is going to do it.

[WiserOdin032402]

Interesting, basic tasks aren't supposed to scale. When a DC gets higher in PF2, the output is supposed to get higher. For example an intimidation focused character at level 15 can, with the intimidation skill feat for level 15 [Scare to Death] force a fortitude save on a critical intimidation role vs instant death. This being PF2, it's actually rather easy to intimidate things for a crit success, and beats that third attack at a -10.

[GâtFromKI]

That's not how the Path 2 works.

At level 15 your max intimidation is 24+~3 (15 level +3 legendary +6 Cha + you can dive into items to find some +Intimidate item). If Cha isn't one of your main stats, you won't have 22 Cha (I don't think a martial can afford for more than 18 with his needs in Str and Dex and Saves).

Every level 15+ monster has more than 20 Will and Fort, with one of the two being 5 point higher than the other one. eg the ancien white dragon has Will +21 Fort +26 while the demi-lich has Will +27 Fort +20. So you have to roll 4X on your intimidate check to crit. succeed (1/3 to 1/20 chance), and then the monster has to fail its Fort check against your Intimidation+10 (1/2 to 4/5 canche). Best case scenario, it has ~1/6 chance of killing an equal-level creature. And then the creature is immune.

A bard is probably better at jump scaring monsters to death than casting spells, but the problem comes from spells.

[WiserOdin032402]

Then someone lied to me about that success rate to make himself look better. I'll go have a talk with them later. Can you quadruple check the idea that a level 16 Rogue with Wall Jump, Powerful Leap, and Legendary Survivalist (meaning a Legendary Survival and Athletics Skill) could scale the Planescape spire?

[Lago PARANOIA]

Having Paizo drag this dumb idea along this long is just kind of embarrassing. I don't know why they haven't scrapped this and moved on. It's genuinely puzzling to me that they'd keep "working on" something this bad.

Don't overthink this one. The hallmark of an inadequate rules designer, whether we're talking about FATAL or Call of Cthulhu or Shadowrun 5E, is an obsession with making the basic die roll an 'event'.

It's not enough for the RNG to model a range of results that the adventure can use as infinitely branching narrative points. No, the physical act of throwing the dice must engage the players. That way, hitting an orc with a maul for the 40th time could still be as exciting as the first time you've done it. Because you never know if that's the die roll you're going to slip in a pile of rat feces or unlock some new jammer technique or even decapitate the orc's head like a golf ball.

[GâtFromKI]

Then someone lied to me about that success rate to make himself look better. I'll go have a talk with them later. Can you quadruple check the idea that a level 16 Rogue with Wall Jump, Powerful Leap, and Legendary Survivalist (meaning a Legendary Survival and Athletics Skill) could scale the Planescape spire?

Wall jump doesn't extent its effect round after round. In other words: vertical leap -> wall jump -> wall jump -> fall because you don't have any action left.

Legendary Survivalist throws a NullReferenceException.

If you assume it improves the Survive in the wild action (ie, you assume the character still needs food and water, but he can find it anywhere), it does basically nothing: Survive in the wild is a downtime activity - and while you're climbing the Planescape Spire, obviously you're in an adventure and it's not downtime.

If you assume it does just what it says, ie you don't need to eat or drink anymore, it should help you during your infinite climb.

I'd use the latter interpretation, because it is awesome (not very useful in normal play, but awesome nonetheless); but it's not on par with other "legendary" feats which are stuff any skilled professional should be able to do (eg "legendary" stealth allows you to be stealthy while searching for traps, while "legendary" linguist allows you to use simplified esperanto).


tl; dr: it doesn't work thanks to how Wall Jump works. Maybe Legendary Climber would work.

[GâtFromKI]

So they created resonance to limit the use of CLW wands because BADWRONGFUN. In the last update, they added a new use of medicine to heal each character to full HP for free between each combat.

Wait; what?

... I don't think they have an actual vision of how the game should play. They are just running full circle, randomly throwing shit and detergent on the walls.


There's only one constant in all their modification: they don't want the players to have any agency.

Spells are nerfed to remove any agency from casters; some spells still allow a bit of agency after the nerf, but those spell are uncommon - ie, submitted to GM's approval.
"The king wants you to protect his treasure room, because he fears...
- OK, first I search for a dimensional lock scroll in town; we should protect the room from telep...
- There isn't any. Now shut up and listen to my story."

There's a thread about how the GM should play the monsters sub-optimally, because otherwise he will kill the PCs. Put it the other way, the monsters are balanced to wipe the PCs, but the GM may allow the PCs to win by playing them poorly. In the other hand, if his railroad requires the PCs to be beaten, he can just play the monsters at full power.

Exploration mode is extremely restrictive and punitive. You can't be stealthy and search for traps at the same time; you can't even see the writings on the wall and read them at the same time: to see it is the result of the search tactic while to read it is the result of the investigation tactic, you can't do both at the same time. None of this makes any sense, but it allows the GM to decide exactly what clues the party discovers without having to listen to what the PCs actually do. Even in less extreme case, the exploration mode resumes to "you looks for traps? since you're not stealthy, monsters hear you, roll init"/"you're stealthy? you fall in some noisy trap, monsters hear you, roll init".

Monsters' skill are far higher than PCs skills, this allows the GM to decide what works and what doesn't. eg, if you try to deceive a monster, if the GM is OK with it he can decide it works, but if he wants a fight, he can roll the Perception of the monsters in front of the players, have the monster auto-succeed, and say "he discover your lie and attack. It's not a railroad, it's the rule, you've all seen the dice". Bonus point: he doesn't have to roll init for the monster since the deception vs perception roll can be used as init.

PF2 is just a 430 pages railroad engine, where the GM decides what the players discover out of combat, when and how a combat starts, and who win combats. And then the fanboys are arguing on whether a cantrip should inflict 7 damages or 14 damages, while they should just move away and play an actual RPG.

[Blicero]

So they created resonance to limit the use of CLW wands because BADWRONGFUN. In the last update, they added a new use of medicine to heal each character to full HP for free between each combat.

Wait; what?

I'm not trying to disagree with the overall thrust of your argument. But I think that this is not the best example. A lot of people find glo-sticking yourself to full with CLW wands after each battle to be kind of silly. Saying that the Medicine skill lets you heal up to full is (I think) a better thematic fit.

Also, it can be viewed as a bit of ivory tower game design: Whether or not inter-battle HP depletion is meant to be a thing has a huge impact on how a game's systems should work, and it's probably not something that should be hidden from the player. Having a PC skill be responsible for inter-battle healing is more transparent than having it come from wands. It's also more compatible with MCs who want to run low-magic campaigns.

[Kaelik]

So they created resonance to limit the use of CLW wands because BADWRONGFUN. In the last update, they added a new use of medicine to heal each character to full HP for free between each combat.

Wait; what?

I'm not trying to disagree with the overall thrust of your argument. But I think that this is not the best example. A lot of people find glo-sticking yourself to full with CLW wands after each battle to be kind of silly. Saying that the Medicine skill lets you heal up to full is (I think) a better thematic fit.

Also, it can be viewed as a bit of ivory tower game design: Whether or not inter-battle HP depletion is meant to be a thing has a huge impact on how a game's systems should work, and it's probably not something that should be hidden from the player. Having a PC skill be responsible for inter-battle healing is more transparent than having it come from wands. It's also more compatible with MCs who want to run low-magic campaigns.

That is.... incredibly stupid. "I can't imagine magical fucking powers healing people to full. I can however imagine that bandages instantly heal broken bones and bloodloss."

[Koumei]

To be fair, if video games have taught me anything it's that we don't need doctors, you can just eat a first aid kit and you'll recover from anything.

[angelfromanotherpin]

To be fair, if video games have taught me anything it's that we don't need doctors, you can just eat a first aid kit and you'll recover from anything.

Or step on a roast turkey.

[Axebird]

They're backing off on Resonance. They've said they're removing its interaction with consumable items, and rethinking whether they want to use the system at all. The Medicine effect is intended as an alternative to carrying wands, apparently.

[Omegonthesane]

"Medicine in D&D Land is explicitly a reusable magic ritual that isn't subject to mortal limits of how much you can heal how quickly" would be convenient for gameplay and allow for parties without a cleric or "person able to use CLW dildos". Doubt they're intentionally going that far though.