Lance845 wrote:
I don't disagree that pazio appears to lack the mechanical and creative chops as is. They are a company. Game developers are surprisingly abundant. Hire some developers to take it in a new direction.

Voss wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
I don't disagree that pazio appears to lack the mechanical and creative chops as is. They are a company. Game developers are surprisingly abundant. Hire some developers to take it in a new direction.

In reality developers are rather thin on the ground. Lots of amateurs who say they can, until they realize how badly it pays (and that they aren't that talented).

Moreover, the RPG industry is very, very cliquish with a high degree of nepotism. Folks generally don't get hired unless they have a buddy that already works there. Or do a lot of freelancing for peanuts.

For example, Mearls got his WotC spot because of Monte Cook. Jeremy Crawford got his spot because he games with Chris Perkins.

squidhills wrote:
So they are launching in August? Is that enough time to completely re-work the beta test game from the ground up and turn it into something enjoyable?

Voss wrote:

For the 1.5 update, Increasing damage numbers (for spells) is... a little baffling. They should have a good idea of how many rounds they want a combat to last, and any decent math person or program will take your average and extreme damage values vs PC and Monster hit points and give you solid numbers. And if its too long or too short based on what they're aiming for, THEY can change the numbers, since they make all of them up.

From the start of the Playtest it was really, painfully obvious that they'd increased hit point bloat, even beyond 3rd edition norms (where it first started to become a problem). Going from 1d6+ con mod to 1d12+con mod based on class to just 6, 8, 10 or 12 + con mod is a huge jump. (A level 10 fighter with a 14 con goes from an average of 75 hp to 120 hp, with no other factors, and PF2 has other factors)

The paladin Seelah ran up to face the newly arisen serpentfolk skeleton. It had already knocked out the rogue Merisiel, who was bleeding out on the ground in front of it. Navigating the narrow confines of the top of the step pyramid where the skeleton had been buried, Seelah stepped past the fighter Valeros and was met with a nasty surprise. The skeleton was also a trained fighter, capable of attacking Seelah when she moved within his reach.

“What’s your AC?” Paizo’s organized play lead developer John Compton asked me. “18,” I reported. “You don’t have your shield up?” I sighed. “No, I was hoping to attack and then heal Merisiel.” “Well that’s going to be a critical hit,” he said. When the dice were rolled, Seelah was in just as bad shape as Merisiel. Luckily it was about to be the cleric Kyra’s turn. Standing in place, she was able to devote all her focus to healing everyone in the fight and getting us back in the action while also dealing some holy damage to the monster.

The combat was my first look at the final rules set of Pathfinder Second Edition, which will be officially released on Aug. 1 at GenCon in Indianapolis. While I was dubious about Second Edition going into the demo, I found the new rules produced a highly dynamic and fast-moving battle even at level 1.

The session pit our six-person party, comprised of some of Pathfinder’s iconic characters, against a group of venomous snakes and the skeleton. Looking over our character sheets before we rolled initiative I found many familiar elements had been changed. For instance, the paladin healing ability Lay on Hands is now a spell that is cast by expending focus, which is recovered by taking 10 minutes to rest and recharge between fights. When another player asked what a focus power was, I explained to them it was like the encounter powers from 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons, which can be used again after five minutes of rest. My friend nodded but Compton winced.

“I think one of the reasons you saw me wince was it can be both a complement but kind of a backhand,” he said in an interview following the demo. “They can say you’re just redesigning 4th Edition or you just remade 5th Edition. We learned a lot from what those games did, and you will see these connections, but there’s so much in there that is new as well. The combination is something completely different to be excited about.”

I didn’t mean it as an insult. As maligned as 4th Edition often is, I think it really succeeded at some things like encouraging adventurers to face multiple fights in a row and not requiring every party to have a healer whose whole job is to keep everyone from dying. Both of those problems have also been addressed in second edition.

“The healing has been rebalanced including between encounter healing,” Compton said. “You can spend 10 minutes and use the treat wounds action to recover hit points without casting spells. You can do this enough that you can get by without some sort of significant healing force.”

In combat, every player character and monster has three actions per turn, which can be used to move, attack, cast spells, or use skills. If you attack more than once, you’re hitting at a -5 and then -10 penalty. When I first read these rules in the Pathfinder Second Edition Playtest, a trial run of the new game released last year, I thought that it would just worse the game’s existing problem with fights taking too long and involving too much math. But at level 1, those penalties proved so bad that it was often better for players to find better ways to use their actions like getting into a flanking position to give an ally a bonus to hit. Compton said the system also reduces the spike in complexity that comes from higher level play.

“By and large you won’t be doing dramatically more attacks at a higher level,” he said. “That was one of the things about first edition. We’d go from ‘It’s my turn, I roll my d20, I miss I’m done’ to at level 20 ‘I’m going to roll dice for a day and I’m going to tell you at some point what I did.’”

The three actions also expands the versatility of spells. For one action, a cleric can cast a healing spell to cure damage on someone next to you, two actions lets you heal someone across the fight, and three lets you really unleash by healing everyone in the area and also damaging any undead. Similarly my paladin could use Lay on Hands as a single action which would leave me free to also move and attack. But that’s still trading off with things like raising your shield, which gives you a bonus to your AC until your next turn which I really could have used when fighting that skeleton.

Most creatures in Pathfinder’s first edition can attack when you move through spaces they threaten, but that abilities is now mostly reserved for fighters. That meant we could walk around the snakes with relative impunity to get into better combat position, but the skeleton punished me for the same tactic. I’m still not sure how I feel about this. Opportunity attacks can definitely lock fights down and force players to resort to standing in one place and swinging at the enemy rather than taking actions that could be more fun, but I also enjoy the tactics required to navigate a crowded field of monsters. Luckily not only fighters have the ability to hurt monsters outside of their turn. In another similarity to 4th Edition, my paladin could attack enemies that hit her allies while also providing them with a holy shield that reduced some of the damage they took.

The fact that the skeleton’s critical hit could have been mitigated by my shield is indicative of another rules change. Critical hits, which do significantly more damage than regular ones, have traditionally just been triggered by rolling exceptionally high on a die, but now you have a critical success any time you roll 10 more than your opponent’s defense score. That means big spikes in damage are a lot more common when fighting lower level opponents. On the other hand, you can also critically succeed when defending, with a good enough saving throw allowing you to ignore all of a negative effect instead of just taking half damage. I found the change built tension and excitement throughout the playtest and I’m particularly curious to see how it works at higher levels.

Lucky for me and Merisiel, it’s now easier to get back into the fight after being knocked out. Like with 4th and 5th Edition D&D, Pathfinder Second Edition has done away with negative hit points so unconscious characters who receive any magical healing can jump back in. But Pathfinder has also learned from a problem those games had where it was often efficient for healers to devote the minimum amount of resources to healing rather than trying to ensure that their allies stayed up. Now every time a character goes down they gain a dying token and if they get three of them within the encounter they’re gone for good.

As much fun as the fight was, Compton said what he’s most excited for people to experience about Second Edition is the different modes of play. A version of the exploration system that Paizo invented for their popular Kingmaker adventure has been integrated into the base game to allow players to select a job they are doing rather than being forced to meticulously search a dungeon for traps five-foot-square by five-foot-square. There’s also a formalized downtime system when characters can make money, recover from injuries, research spells, and craft items. He’s particularly excited about being able to use downtime as an alternate reward for successful adventures in the Pathfinder Society, Paizo’s organized play program.

“Second Edition has been an opportunity for us to take all the lessons we learned in First Edition,” he said. “Pretty much the whole team came up through the company playing Pathfinder Society. We saw the wonderful things that did work, and we lived through all the things that did not. This has been a good chance to change up some of those. It’s a chance to start back from level one and create cool new storylines that not only appeal to our experienced players but are things that new players can jump in on.”

I’ll be back sharing more thoughts and my experiences with Pathfinder Second Edition following GenCon.

Still, I may actually check this system out if the actual changes are interesting enough.

Lance845 wrote:It might factor into cleaves and power attacks. Instead of loose x bab to gain x damage it might be spend 2 actions for +dx damage or 3 actions for +dy damage.

You then have the choice of risking degrading chances to hit with more damage potential or a single swing with bonus damage potential up front.

Voss wrote:Playtest version of power attack was simply two actions for +1 damage die, +2 dice at 10th or 14th level. Mathematically, people worked it out, and it wasn't a good option, even assuming you were using a weapon with good damage dice.
The one nice thing is apparently the rules will all be up (barring possibly setting specific stuff) as a web version on August 1st. So it should be easy to dig in and see if the system is any good.

 Lance845 wrote:
I don't like requiring a grid. Theater of the mind. The less materials i need at the table to play the better.

What is Pathfinder all about?
At its heart, Pathfinder Second Edition is the same type of game as first edition. You take on the role of a sword & sorcery adventurer of your own design, going on daring adventures for a chance at fame and fortune. One player takes on the role of Game Master, helping to adjudicate the actions of player characters, nonplayer characters, and monsters, weaving all of them together to form a compelling story—one that everyone at the table helped to create!

Of course, as a game, Pathfinder is a lot more than just telling stories. It is a system of rules that defines how the world works, and for Second Edition we wanted to make sure that this game “engine” was easy to understand and interpret, both for players and Game Masters! And while we made sure that creating and advancing your character was a clean and intuitive as it could be, we also ensured that the game allowed your choices—your vision for your character—to truly matter. The decisions you make in Pathfinder define your character, expressed not just in the story but in the rules as well.

Core Mechanic
Pathfinder is a narrative roleplaying game, meaning that you describe what your character is attempting to do while the Game Master describes how the story and world unfolds around you. Whenever there is doubt or uncertainty in actions, you will be called upon to make a check, which requires you to roll a d20 and add a modifier based on your character’s proficiency at that particular challenge. These checks come in many forms, from swinging a sword to climbing a cliff to dodging a roaring fireball. The result of your check, as interpreted by the GM, determines whether or not you succeed at your task, and might even decide whether or not your character survives!

In Pathfinder Second Edition, proficiency determines nearly every important statistic used by your character during play. How skilled are you with a longbow? How good are you at Stealth? What is your aptitude for casting illusion magic? All of these statistics, and many more, are defined by your proficiency in the statistic.

Proficiency is gained through the choices you make in building your character. If you are untrained, you get no bonus at all, but you can still add a modifier from a relevant ability score to represent your raw talent. If you are trained, you add your level plus 2, along with any other relevant modifiers. If you are an expert, you add 4 instead. Masters add 6, and characters with legendary proficiency add 8. This basic formula applies to nearly everything in Pathfinder Second Edition, making it easy for you to see where you stand and understand what your chances are at overcoming the challenges the game puts in front of you.

Facing Danger
The world of Pathfinder is a dangerous place. Vampires lurk in forgotten tombs, trolls prowl in the mountains, and deadly dragons await atop mounds of priceless treasure. These threats—and many more—await your character as they explore the story, and more often than not, such encounters will end with a thrilling combat.

Combat in Pathfinder is much more structured than the freeform narrative play of the rest of the game. During combat, participants take turns, during which the number of things that can be accomplished is limited. On your turn, your character will get to take three actions. Many of these will be what are called basic actions, like moving, drawing a weapon, opening a door, or making an attack. Some might be special actions that only your character can take, based on the choices you made during character creation. Casting spells, performing amazing martial stunts, or utilizing special class features like rage are all examples of special actions.

Just because your turn is over does not mean that you do not have an opportunity to participate in the combat. Some characters can take special reactions that allow them to interrupt the flow of play on other characters’ turns. You might dodge an incoming attack, block with your shield, or even attempt to counter an enemy’s spell. Each character can only take one reaction between turns though, so you have to make it count!

Combat continues until one side is defeated, gives up, or retreats, but these deadly encounters are just one way that you might resolve conflict. You might use skills or magic to sneak past foes, or you could try to talk your way out of a fight, relying on guile and charm to win the day. Ultimately, the way you approach danger in Pathfinder is up to you, and your chance at success depends on the choices you make for your character!

Creating Your Story
Pathfinder Second Edition empowers you to tell your own story, no matter what side of the table you occupy. Players have a wide variety of choices in making their character, giving them the tools to bring their idea to life. Your choice of ancestry, background, and class define the major parts of your character, but they are just the beginning. Your choice of skills, feats, and gear say a lot about the player character you are portraying and as you gain power, the new choices you get to make speak to your hero’s journey. You can come up with a plan for your character’s growth, or you can let their adventures influence your decisions. It’s up to you!

Taking on the role of Game Master brings a whole different kind of flexibility to your role at the table. As GM, you get to shape the overall narrative, defining the actions of villains, monsters, and all of the nonplayer characters that make up the world. You provide the adversaries that the PCs must face if they hope to succeed, and your narrative forms the backdrop that allows the characters to grow and triumph. Pathfinder provides a wide range of tools to help you in this vital task, from guidelines on how to build balanced encounters to narrative advice, and guidance on how to create a welcoming play environment. Within the pages of the Core Rulebook you will also find a wealth of treasure to award to your PCs when they succeed and a bunch of devious traps to guard the treasure. Most importantly, the Bestiary contains over 400 monsters waiting to face off against your PCs, from shambling undead to fiendish demons.
What's Next
In the coming weeks, we are going to be looking at various aspects of Pathfinder Second Edition to give you a better idea about how each part of the game works. Next week, we are going to go over the steps you take when making and leveling up a character, but make sure to come back every week as we take a deep look at the new combat system, explore creating your own adventures, and provide a bunch of tips and tricks for using Pathfinder to tell your stories!

Jason Bulmahn
Director of Game Design

 Lance845 wrote:
Cool. So a nightmare system I will never use that directly counters the point of these types of games.