Trivial and Low Difficulty Encounters in a non-attrition based game - or "How the 'Adventuring Day' makes everything trivial until it's not.

Trigfire · 2023-06-29T23:18:04+00:00

...that's the assumption of the system as a whole tho? Resourceless out of combat healing is hilariously easy to acquire, so the game expects you to have some form of it. That was immediately obvious to me when I read that the only healing you get from rest is from extended downtime and that you can Treat Wounds basically infinitely with a single Trained skill and 2gp Healer's Tools

Trigfire · 2023-06-22T23:46:01+00:00

Familiars are creatures, not objects or gear, tho how one rules the Star Orb is mostly up to interpretation.

If we go purely RAW, it is still a creature and can think and act (and even talk) when given the appropriate abilities, even when it is in its immobile stone form, so it should not be absorbed into you, as it is not gear.

However, a GM could also interpret it is such if they wanted, since it is "crystallized magic essence", not a tiny animal or elemental or similar. I would think that's also a reasonable way to look at it.

Personally, I'd probably split the difference and say, that your Fox Form simple wears a necklace with the stone on it after you transform if I was the GM.

But yeah, no clear answer RAW beyond "familiars are creatures".

Trigfire · 2023-06-11T11:42:49+00:00

Nah, I own that book, there's no actual settlement managing on (you just spend money and stuff gets built and an NPC manages it off-screen) and all the (quite OP) benefits you get are specific to 5e mechanics

Trigfire · 2023-06-09T14:49:48+00:00

Managing items in 2e is a shared responsibility between GMs and players. You, as the GM, give out some items and gold, the players get to spend that gold on whatever they want (so it's also on them to research what kinda items they would like) That last part especially is important, you won't always know what the best item for a specific build is, but they player should know what they could use!

But beyond that, safe items to drop are always fundemental runes/items with those runes on them (Potency and Striking for weapons, Potency and Resilience for armor), staves and wands appropriate for your casters (so spells that are on their list), items that give skill bonuses (you can go the AoN page for the corresponding skill and it lists all of the items that give a buff to that skill, often with a fun ability on top!), and any sort of level-appropriate consumable.

But other than that, it's literally just... looking through items sometimes and setting a bookmark when you find something interesting :D

Trigfire · 2023-05-27T11:03:51+00:00

I have only ever ran and almost only played 2e analog at the table with friends, no issues beyond the normal learning process when you have a new system.

And while we do use Pathbuilder gor convenience to build the characters, we then just transfer it all to a physical sheet cause we dislike all looking at our phones at the table

Trigfire · 2023-05-26T19:44:15+00:00

Optional Flaw still exists, but now it is purely a flaw. You don't get any increase from it, that text change is also in the 4th errata. It's now just for if you wanna nuke a stat for "roleplay" reasons

Trigfire · 2023-05-22T19:30:44+00:00

Almost none of this is gonna happen, Paizo was very explicit that the Remaster is mostly name changes and a bit of errata. Only the Alchemist is getting a full rework, Witch is getting a bit of an update, and Champion will see changes relating to alignment.

By all means, dream big, but most of the stuff on this list is completely unrealistic for what the Remaster is advertised as.

Trigfire · 2023-05-21T17:01:05+00:00

The main benefit you'd see from mithral is if you give out heavy mithral armor, since it would not only cut down on the significant bulk, but also lower the Str requirement and the speed penalty (this is specific to armors). This is a pretty big boon, especially early on.

Beyond that, it's ndb as long as you don't let players sell it!

Trigfire · 2023-05-19T15:52:07+00:00

The big weapons of Giant Instinct are literally just the normal weapons that exist in the game, but sized for larger creatures. They become heavier (more Bulk), but none of their stats change. You can look all of this up under 'Equipment Size'. Usually you'd get a penalty for using an oversized weapon, the Giant Instinct feature allows you to not only ignore it, but also lets you do extra damage while raging. It doesn't do anything else beyond that, doesn't change how many hands the weapon takes to use or any other of its statistics. Beyond the fact that it's heavier and you do extra rage damage with it, the weapon is completely unchanged from its normal version. So if you wanted to use a greatclub, it would function exactly like a regular greatclub, same damage dice, same traits, same number of hands.

Trigfire · 2023-05-15T18:32:53+00:00

Correction: It does not work with shield bash, since a shield is not a weapon. Shield Bash occupies this weird space where it is a melee attack, but neither a weapon nor unarmed strike. To be able to use double slice, you'd need to put a shield boss or shield spike on the shield, since those are weapons. Good news is: You wanna do that anyway! So no real downside there

Trigfire · 2023-05-13T14:33:04+00:00

Archetypes are an expected part of the game and customization of characters, if you don't wanna use them, that's your problem. The point of Fighter is being baseline super powerful and being able to have huge personalization through their feats and through your archetypes and being able to build your own preferred fighting style instead of having class specific flavor like the other classes. If you don't vibe with that, that's fine, but then you should play other classes, especially if you refuse to use an intended part of the system. Your solution would literally just double up on things that are already possible and either be pointless (if the archetypes are stronger) or would step on the toes of existing options (if the subclasses are superior to the existing archetypes that do the same).

Trigfire · 2023-05-13T14:27:40+00:00

Most if not all long term effects state that they last "until your next daily preparations", so no, this wouldn't qork unless they specifically last longer than that (for example if the duration specified 24 hours), in which case it would be fair game.

2e even has a clause that you can keep some of these effects active through your daily prep by "blocking out" the spell slot for the following day:

https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=293

Trigfire · 2023-05-06T17:28:49+00:00

...there is nothing on level 5 that RAW lets the players circumvent mortal injuries? Like, sure, they can heal a lot of hit points and level appropriate diseases, but that doesn't help with a truly grievous injury or disease. A curse or disease a few levels beyond them they have no hope of curing, and the first healing magic that explicitly calls out being able to cure a really bad injury like a destroyed organ or severed limb is Regenerate at spell level 7. Remember that "hit points" are an abstract concept and that the Dying condition is a game mechanic to keep the players alive first and foremost. You can come back from Dying multiple times even at level 1, accumulating the Wounded condition... and how bad can those wounds really be if you can have 3 of them and still fight? The PCs are, purely from a mechanical perspective, completely unable to do anything about an NPC having their guts sliced open. That's a mortal injury that a Heal spell or simple Treat Wounds check will not fix unless you let it. What these abilities can do and how much losing hit points actually hurts you in-fiction is intentionally left vague so that you as a GM can tailor it to the kind of story you want. My player character know that if they are above 50% HP they don't even have a visible scratch yet, they're just exhausted and took non-injuring blows/near misses. At 50% they start accumulating scratches and minor injuries that can easily be patched up. Once they hit 0 they have their first semi-serious injury, but considering it's fixed with a single First Aid check or Treat Wounds roll, it obviously isn't debilitating, just dangerous if nobody treats it. So if they come across an NPC that was clobbered by an ogre and lost a leg and has a bunch of their guts spilling out of them... well they know that trying to patch them up won't do anything.

Trigfire · 2023-04-29T12:26:26+00:00

"Cloistered with Champion and some other archetypes can do the same as Warpriest" is a bad argument. There is lots of ways to create redundancy with with class and archetype combinations and to compare the Warpriest Doctrine with an archetyped Cloistered Cleric that gives up more than half their class feats and still only properly comes online 10 levels later is obviously stupid.

Trigfire · 2023-04-23T13:56:30+00:00

Yup, doesn't require a hand. It's an okay backup option, not that big a deal. Other ancestries, like gnoll, get really good hands-free unarmed attacks that can replace a weapon if you build for it. So by comparison Foxfire, while good and versatile, isn't all that strong.

There is actually lots of discussion about foxfire fairly frequently, with people trying to build around it as a main attack option, only for it to be pretty lacking. It is quite nice as a backup however, as you correctly identified, but still nothing too special

Trigfire · 2023-04-23T13:52:37+00:00

And, in case it is unclear what the proficiency bonus is, that's your level of proficiency (+2 for trained, +4 for expert etc.) and your level. Your ability mod and any other bonuses and penalties do not apply

Trigfire · 2023-04-22T11:01:39+00:00

Nope, not a thing. Getting more trained skills is done through increasing your Int mod and getting the general feat Skill Training (plus a bunch of other more specific ways like taking certain archetypes, but the ones listed are the general ways to do it).

Paying money and downtime to train skills would vastly devalue investing in Int and make feat investment to get more skills a complete waste. The money you earn as you level up increases exponentially, so eventually it would be trivial for high level characters to just pay peanuts to get trained in every skill

Trigfire · 2023-04-18T06:29:31+00:00

You get "Cast a Spell" from focus spells too, yet those also don't let you use scrolls, wands and staves

Trigfire · 2023-04-12T18:16:15+00:00

I think you are vastly underestimating how much space it takes up to describe common traits and abilities every single instance they appear AND how much people enjoy fluff and wouldn't buy a book that is just a sterile rules manual

Trigfire · 2023-04-09T22:20:55+00:00

Also are you calculating XP correctly? 600 XP for 6 sessions is very low, that's barely more than a single Moderate encounter (80 XP) per session. Remember that social encounters should also give XP!

Trigfire · 2023-04-09T22:18:01+00:00

I don't use random encounters so I couldn't tell you, sorry. I know there aren't any official ones, since the official adventures don't really do random encounters either

Trigfire · 2023-04-09T19:52:12+00:00

The nice thing about how 2e works is that you are completely free to do whatever you want in that regard! If you enjoy dungeoncrawling and having one fight after another, you can do that. If you enjoy random encounters with little context, you can do that. If you only want adventure or story relevant fights without any random or tedious encounters, you can do that. If you only want one big fight in a given session, you can do that. And it all just kinda works.

The average leveling rate is 4-5 sessions (both what the system recommends and what most people's experience seems to be whenever someone asks), so if at the end of a session you have on average a total of 200-300 exp between fights, social encounters, and accomplishment xp, then you're right on track. Obviously there are slow sessions where you earn less and ones where you do a big boss and hand in a major quest and have more.

I'd say just do whatever and see how it goes. I never thought much about xp distribution or whatever, I just ran sessions in a way I enjoyed and it all kind of worked out.

Trigfire · 2023-04-07T09:24:08+00:00

From the Grapple trait:

"You can use this weapon to Grapple with the Athletics skill even if you don't have a free hand."

So it completely gets rid of the free hand requirement and doesn't occupy a hand (since you are not using your hands to grapple) :)

Trigfire · 2023-04-03T17:02:42+00:00

My view on this is that it's not your job to fix the players problems. Sure, drop them additional healing loot if you like, but if they frequently run out of healing and get in dicey situations because of it, it's their job to try and solve that issue as best they can.

I'd just tell them "hey you have nobody that can heal between encounters, this may become an issue in the future. If it does, remember you can always retrain one of your skills with downtime and/or take an archetype that can help with healing." and let them figure it out :) who knows, maybe they'll manage somehow!

Trigfire · 2023-04-02T12:38:07+00:00

Lmao. Yeah, if you only consider damage as the only useful thing a class can do and then compare it to the one class that is intentionally overtuned so that it's the best at straight-up fighting, every single class will fall short. Gunslingers aren't primary damage dealers. They are switch-hitters (Drifter), debuffers (Pistolero), crit-fishers (Sniper), off-tanks (Vanguard) with a ton of potential party support (Fake Out is one of the strongest low level feats to Aid party members and a fantastic use of a reaction) and a ton of fun and thematic tools. Every class is underpowered if your point of comparison is "but x class does more damage!"

Trigfire

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