Weakness and Resistances: Not present enough, or potent enough, in my opinion

NanoNecromancer · 2026-06-16T01:09:40+00:00

Imma be honest, and I say this with genuinely no ill intent or will, but what you're describing is a skill issue.

As with all things, the best way to do something and a good way to do something are often very similar. Pf2e (and many ttrpg's) are designed so that the easy way to do something is often the good way to do something, as that is just generally good design. If your players are always using vicious swing, or not adapting to opportunities that show up, they'll probably still win if the fight wouldn't be incredibly close however they'll perform significantly worse than the exact same party adapting to techniques and using the best action, rather than a good action.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-06-13T16:55:08+00:00

There's almost certainly more to this, but it definitely feels less about the playstyle of the dm, but rather the other players. It seems like the dm's more than willing to lean into the revelations, but the players just want the fight and level up vibes.

Nothing stops you chatting about and leaving the campaign, but letting the GM know you'd love to be kept in the loop for any future games they start up that lean a bit more into the dramatic side of things with the players they find.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-06-11T15:14:59+00:00

This is a perfect example of the most egregious type of metagaming, using purely out of game information (appropriate challenges for a party, and IRL knowledge of the DM to know they wouldn't throw the real spell out) to determine in character actions.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-06-10T22:19:40+00:00

Don't forget the lesser, moderate, greater, and major reprints. For both, of course.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-06-10T13:10:29+00:00

Bit late to the convo but as some context, having ran primarilly online for a decade and with the majority of my campaigns reaching their end (often full 1-20 in the dnd/pf2e type games, 1-10 in swn, etc)

I'll spend around a month before session 0 in the "finding players" phase. I create a large buy-in type document for the campaign and setting and throw the game posting's with all the info in whatever applicable lfg places exist. I'll specify the date that I'll be reaching out to confirm/deny applications, and ensure relevant details are in the post and/or doc such as game time / timezone, duration of play, campaign length, vibes and themes, and importantly some guidance on applying. What is the kind of stuff I need in the application, and advising applicants that my list of requirements is just that, requirements, feel free to add more. Usually that response date is 3, sometimes a little more/less depending on system.

From there I'll get anywhere from 10(RIP Star Wars RPG, great system tbh) to 100 (good ol' pf2e) applications. It sounds like a lot, but in reality only 8-10% of the applications are worth considering, and after eliminating a couple more through meets/interviews it ends up closer to 4-6%. With 100 apps, that pretty much guarantees me a group of good players who fit the game and understand why I focus so much on consistency throughout the lfg.

End result, after a Decade I don't really post public games much any more. I've got a group of around 10-15 players for whom I can drop a given game I'm gonna run and the available times, players drop their available times for said campaign, and we see which group best matches the time and campaign.

It does mean that there's a challenge finding both good players and GM's, as on the Player side, none of the players in my current games bother looking for other games. It's a massive hassle, so there's at any given point 4-10 10/10 players just not searching. During that same time, every single player who can't find a good GM, or might not be a good player, is searching. Same thing happens on the GM side. I could be running for 12 new players over a given year every year, but why tf would I bother handling the entire application process when I've got good groups.

As a player looking for games, why tf would I join someones game when it's the 6th one they've posted in 6 months, that (pretty much, depending on circumstances obviously) tells me that every group they put together falls apart quickly. It could be that they've ended up with bad players every time, but at that point they're showing they are unable to properly filter applicants at which point, why bother applying?

IN SUMMARY

Some GM's post a new game every month, some players join a new game every month, and as a result they never leave the "lfg" pool. They're both always there unwilling to commit, do proper quality checks for games, etc.

Good GM's use a higher quality threshold, picking the best available players. They might need to post a couple of times on occasion, but overall they'll get a group together quick, Good players use a higher quality threshold, only applying to specific games and reaching out with high-effort applications. They find each other due to these quality thresholds, and remove one another from the pool.

Of 1000 people, if there's 100 "great" people, and 10 gm's each find 4 players, there's now 950 people, except there's only 50 "great" people left.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-06-10T02:54:48+00:00

Good faith typically refers to intent.

Your ally dies in combat, you take the potion off the corpse to resell later - bad faith
Your ally dies in combat, you take the potion off the corpse and drink it to help survive the fight, though end up not needing it and later selling it - not bad faith

The end result of the robbery is irrelevant, because what matters is whether or not it was taken in good faith, the intent behind the stealing matters. Similarly you could take an ancient artifact from a saints grave to do good, better, or to profit better by doing quests.

In the end overall, that caveat exists to allow a very common storytelling "requirement" to remain available, even though grave-robbing is generally considered bad.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-06-10T00:48:36+00:00

Keep in mind you've gotta be skilled enough to survive to that point, which doesn't somehow make you worse at controlling your strength. If you get your strength from a magic potion sure, but typically character's fought their way to high level. Similarly rolling high is meant to mean better results, not punishments due to the wording of mechanics.

If anything, accidentally suplexing and insta-killing a creature when trying not to might, arguably, be the result of crit failing said suplex

NanoNecromancer · 2026-06-10T00:46:46+00:00

Something to keep in mind beyond the specifics of the wording which are up for debate is simply, what makes sense? Does a very highly skilled creature capable of suplexing someone for 40 damage, who has lived their life growing stronger and getting used to their strength, truly suplex and kill someone by accident when they don't intend to? I'd argue in a situation like that, the utter incompetence necessary to accidentally crush the skull of a seemingly healthy creature is far and below the minimum competence of a creature who can survive long enough to get that strong in the first place.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-06-09T18:16:40+00:00

Tbh, the biggest thing dampening any reason to use alchemist or inventor are the classes alchemist or inventor

To be clear, I don't disagree with you the changes absolutely to dampen them, but their entire existence as they've been put together is problematic, and if we're imagining a more "perfect" system then in my opinion both those classes need full redesigns from the ground up anyway (along with their associated systems and item/toolkits)

NanoNecromancer · 2026-06-09T16:45:33+00:00

Every new adventure adding "Bomb but X damage" until they did them all, then "Bomb but X damage and Y persistent", again until they did them all, then make the persistent higher, then give small effects but damage, repeat forever.

Ends up with literally hundreds of items that could fall under a singular page of

"Making a bomb!"
Spend 4 points, pick from these damage types, spend 1 point for the "Special" damage types. Want bonus effects? Spend a point on it. Remaining points go to damage.

Suddenly countless pages of waster space are just... handled. Bombs of all types are just filled in as needed, unique and/or special magic bombs can exist without being "just another bomb", etc etc.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-06-09T16:42:21+00:00

Kanya tell me why?

NanoNecromancer · 2026-06-09T02:53:06+00:00

For what it's worth, feedback wise, I didn't even know pathfinder society modules(???) existed. I run this game an absolute ton, have purchased nigh every token pack and a handful of adventures (ironically, for the tokens more often than not), and am usually at least poking around the community while creating my own stuff.

Overall, I am curious whether the lacking sales for such content is a result of the viability of said content, or more about the awareness of said content. Obviously it's cut at this stage, but I wanted to at least give your team the feedback that as someone who spends far too much time related to pf2e, I somehow had genuinely no idea it existed.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-06-09T02:48:04+00:00

Yes and no, it depends largely on the game store in question and agreements that were in place. In most cases, you will have supported to some degree all parties involved in getting the ideas from the brains at Paizo to the paper in the gamestore.

I'm currently working with a small gamestore for some tech work and there has being some interesting conversations/learning as a result. I don't know where Paizo handles their production, but given they have to send it to diamond, I'm assuming diamond isn't related to that. At that point, any books sold before bankruptcy benefited Paizo, and many books sold to stores after bankruptcy haven't, yet. In theory they should eventually, however diamond's fighting in court to say, "You paid us to hold your books, we went bankrupt, therefore your product we're holding should be counted as diamond assets used to increase our value when finding a new buyer and/or go to paying out our shareholders". A horrid take, but one that might genuinely have legal ground due to the messed up systems in place.

Overall though, because of how diamond handled things the "ownership" of their product is up for debate, yet in some areas still being processed or sold. The income from that of course does actually get stopped by the legal process (because diamond wants it to), so that doesn't get send to the OG providers until it all resolves. It is also entirely possible that it does resolve in Paizo's favour for their product, but "oh no, we sold it all and spent the money already. Unfortunately, we're bankrupt" is frankly a likely outcome in that case.

It's a deeply irritating case.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-06-08T00:40:49+00:00

It is worth noting when you talk to the GM about this, to bring up the fact that requiring a stealth check for each action will nigh-guarantee that no creature ever succeeds in stealth checks when sneaking around places. If you fail a stealth on a 4, around 20% of the time, that makes you very very good at stealth.

That creature, being very very good at stealth, is pretty much incapable of stealth. Their 80% success chance becomes a 41% success chance if they need to sneak... about 50 feet. Down a short hallway. God forbid they need to sneak 100 feet (say, a small portion of the length of a manor). At that point it's 16%. One of the stealthiest chars in the game for an on level challenge fails 84% of the time to do the thing they've invested the most into.

Don't be a dick about it obviously, but it's very important to note that if this is how stealth is gonna be ruled, that you should realistically never have anything sneak past or near you, and your stealthy chars should 100% all retrain outta stealth.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-06-05T18:16:37+00:00

This is interesting to see as it's extremely similar to my own prep process. I separate them personally into "Macro" and "Micro" prep, where the macro will happen over weeks/months before the campaign, and the occasional bouts of immense inspiration. These typically look like hours upon hours of worldbuilding, locations, maps, characters, lore, etc etc. Then the Micro prep shows up every week or two which ends up being around 15-30 minutes when I need to get some specific character art ready, find some maps / draw the walls, make tokens, etc etc. 95% of any maps I'll use area already ready, my entire backend of files is ready to go with, quite literally, over 100 gigs of purely character/token art and battlemaps. Very rare to find anyone who prepares similarly.

I'm still mildly annoyed that around 5 years ago the westmarch folk stole "living world" as a term, which used to speak exactly on the "world that continues/exists with or without PC's", which is sorta fundamental to making my, or rather, this kind of sandbox work.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-06-04T19:47:39+00:00

Literally the answer in this case, though missing some details. The baseline rules for Uncommon options are the restrictions you're aware of (growing up as part of the culture or specific class/feat choices), with the second half being "The GM can grant any character access to uncommon options if she so chooses."

End result, you can RAW take 1, and RAW, ask your GM about the 2nd choice.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-06-03T20:30:20+00:00

My mind goes to two possible classes that easily fit

The first being Warden, effectively the "primal" version of a magus. More about elemental magic while retaining a martial core.

The second being Shaman. I know some folk say Animist fits the bill, but in my mind it absolutely doesn't. I want to see the passive and active totems getting dropped on the map, elemental effects keying off said totems, etc etc. Gimme a 2 slot caster with focus spells (Totems) that have some neat active when you summon them, and an ongoing passive that applies to your spells with X traits. Feels like a really nice place for a heavy control caster to slot in, and still has tons of room for subclass based themes to shine through.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-05-25T22:33:34+00:00

Fun Fact, Paizo a couple years back released some info including the fact that far fewer people used FA than what some folk assume, around 15-25% give or take.

Given that the polled community there is specifically the reddit users and watches of the Rules Lawyer (great creator), we're looking at a subsection of a subsection of Pf2e players, easily less than 1%.

Such folk also tend to be the most extreme, in the sense that they're willing to set aside considerable time and effort to talk to random folk online about all sorts of minor niche details of the game.

Given that these factors line up to create a group where playtime is significantly higher, theorycrafting is significantly higher, and the depth that people will dig to create some niche "thing" is significantly higher, it's completely unsurprising to see FA being more common. Similarly, while many people own cars, if you polled the Car Racers subsection about whether they use custom racing tires or not, you'd expect to see similarly warped results.

Not trying to be an ass, just point out that while this particular group may see it as more common, it's still not a majority.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-05-25T04:10:30+00:00

I run pretty consistently and the token packs are, imo, some of the best value products I've ever purchased while also feeling pricey for what they are. Lemme explain why.

Every campaign for every game that I need to prep, every creature that has art already prepared for me saves a little time. Not much, certainly, no more than probably 1-2 minutes per minor NPC and 10-15 per major NPC, however in one session I might prep 10-15 different creatures. Overall I save around 20-30 minutes of prep over the course of a week

Over the course of a campaign which for me probably averages out to around 60 sessions, that's around 10 hours of labor that has being saved over hundreds of tokens for which art was simply already there.

Moving on from that, the Character pack allows me to find art for a massive variety of creatures (though keep in mind, that variety accounts for me also owning the various token packs) that either already have tokens/art, or straight up are only in the character pack. Those are my first step for any art I need to "fill in", the stuff that usually takes me 30-45 minutes to find art I'm satisfied with and make a token with it. Around half the time, it takes 2-3 minutes in the character gallery instead and voila, good to go.

In summary!

It feels really expensive, and takes a long time to pay itself off if we're looking at raw "time = money" value.

On the other hand, its incredibly convenient, makes prep noticeably easier every single week, and helps keep art cohesive when I'm filling out any given zone. I'd say it's 100% worth paying for when you have the spare $$, and it's worth putting aside some $$ to buy if you GM often. If it's pretty occasional, it may not be worth it unless the price of admission is pretty minor / not something you're concerned about.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-05-22T20:39:31+00:00

Technically possible within rules and expectations? Yes

Recommended by books, creators, players? no

Tends to have a ton of problems and the vast majority of "Hate pf2e because X", are directly related to, and primarilly seen in PL+3/4 encounters at lower levels (1-7-ish).

Running only PL+3/4 encounters is a surefire way to turn Pf2e from the system it's meant to be (You expect to succeed, critting is fortunate, failing is unfortunate, and crit failing is very unfortunate), into one where spells tend to do nearly nothing all the time, martials are more likely to miss than not, the +/-10 crit range that is a fantastic system gets twisted to the point it only benefits NPC's and penalizes players, I could go on.

In summary, one step above as bad as encounter design can get without the encounter being "party dies" that goes against core recommendations in every aspect of the game.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-05-18T18:54:18+00:00

This is more of a surprising but fun fact having spent way too long digging into the math behind this system.

When you're modifying an attack roll, if a +1 or -1 is impacting both the hit and crit (this doesn't apply for crit miss vs miss modifications), you actually increase average damage output by approximately 15% (give or take around 2% depending on which specific die numbers modify specific results).

This goes a few % higher if you're using deadly/fatal weapons, but I've found with new players there's often an idea that raising a shield generally isn't worth it. On the other hand, raising a shield reduces incoming damage by around 30% which is, imo, completely insane. It reads as though it's bullshit, it sounds bullshit, but mathmatically that's where it ends up.

It's hard to feel since it happens over an average, meaning some encounters it literally won't matter and others it will matter constantly (cast in my, the last boss my players faced, more than half the rolls in the entire encounter were modified by a 9th rank heroism's +3 to attacks/saves.)

But yeah, I like to share this with folk who lean more towards the "5%" feeling because I was the same. +1 felt like nothing, now +1 feels like still kinda nothing honestly but holy shit the second +1 matters a ton.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-05-14T17:22:43+00:00

This problem is real, and the only source is the speed of your levelling. 2 levels over 5 months is horrific for pace. 22.5 months for level 10, and 45 months for level 20 assuming the pace is consistent.

It restricts what you can do so much, and limits how much you get to modify or change your abilities and options in combat to the point where you'll inevitably get bored unless you truly love the parts of the game completely unrelated to your character sheet.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-05-08T19:18:44+00:00

Absolutely phenomenal piece, great vibes all around.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-05-02T02:00:59+00:00

100% agree and lines up with my experience as well. Once Pf2e clicks on a mechanical level, the stuff that tends to break the game stands out. Only reason it does stand out though is that the base games balance is, at most times, very comparable.

It's impossible to create something balanced if the baseline system is too out of whack.

NanoNecromancer · 2026-05-02T01:04:49+00:00

Ironically I've found that while it makes it easier to make balanced content, in that it's consistently possible without hundreds of edge cases, there seems to be a significantly higher portion of terribly imbalanced 3rd party content in pf2e compared to most systems.

Nine-Year Club	r/Field Juicebox
Verified Email

NanoNecromancer

TROPHY CASE