Talk to Ashiel About Anything Mark II

[Lemmy]

On the PF2e front... I can now say that given the latest patch of changes in the playtest, plus what they announced for the final version... PF2e might actually end up a decent game.

It still feels like a downgrade from PF1e, but it's no longer the complete garbage it was a few weeks ago. It at very least feels more like an evolution/adaptation of PF, rather than "PF for people who hate PF". How good the evolution/adaption will be remains to be seen... But at least there's hope now.

Even so, my main concerns remain: Character abilities still feel bland and somewhat irrelevant, like they Crane Wing'd the whole thing... If they keep up with this design philosophy and/or their old faq/errata policy (which is unethical bordering on downright criminal, IMHO), then they won't get anything from me other than negative publicity.

And of course, there is Exploration Mode... Which is complete **** and bad design all-around... But at least it should be easy to ignore.

[Zilrax]

Yeah pity there wasn't more long term playtesting to figure this stuff out but... Well so it goes. Exploration mode somehow feels a lot like spaceship combat in starfinder. A minigame almost totally divorced from the game itself somehow. I mean I get WHY it's like how it is. Why bother with lasers and Tac Nukes when you can have an android Wizard grav booted to the hull casting Disintegrate across the void. I mean in pathfinder that was always the thing with ship combat. Or well, combat in general I guess. But Like the most terrifying thing ever in ship combat wasn't oh gods look at that massive ship. It was oh god that massive ship has a higher percentage chance to contain a wizard or a druid and destroy us all.

[Lemmy]

Indeed.

One of the main problems with PF2e playtest was the fact that instead of starting out as an evolution of PF1, it was a whole bunch of random subsystems of widely varying quality haphazardly thrown together in a very "throw it all at the wall and see what sticks" fashion.

As a friend of mine said in the past: "PF2e has no idea what it wants to be. It only knows it doesn't want to be PF".

This created a very distinctive feel of "PF for people who hate PF". With the last announced changes, it does finally feel like a new version PF (assuming Paizo doesn't screw it up, which is a big "if").

It doesn't help that Paizo (or at least Jason Buhman)... Well... Kinda sucks at game design. They know how to make flavorful things, but the more comfortable they felt in deviating from 3.5 design philosophy, the clearer it became how bad they actually are at designing the crunch of the game and how intolerant they are of any ideas that don't fit their one true vision of real fantasy.

All in all... I'm still not optimistic about PF2e. I still think it'll be Paizo's very own 4e... But at least it isn't a completely hopeless case like it was just a few days ago.

[Zilrax]

It more bugged me that a lot of their stated goals for pf2e I was all onboard for. Bringing up the chars who don't all in on skills enough to be reasonably competent at skill checks but let the people who invest be amazing at it. I'm all for it!

Give martials the abilities to do super human feats. All for it!

The problem though is that their version of superhuman is... Pretty bad. The numbers were so overtuned that investments still desired, and those investments don't feel special much...

It's like every goal they went out to do was done in the worst way or just outright failed to achieve them. I look forward to seeing the finished product but it's not going to be cus I paid for it now.

It's kinda funny. I was annoyed because Starfinder was used as a test bed for systems for pf2e that were half finished. Now I'm sorta glad they didn't get a lot of the junk in pathfinder 2e heh. Though boy, they sure did drag all the problems starfinder has over to pathfinder 2e.

[Lemmy]

Well... Merry Christmas, everyone! Or Happy Hannukah... Whichever you prefer. I wish you all lots of joy and happiness. May your dice always roll Natural 20s!

[Ashiel]

Merry Christmas! <3
I'll be back tomorrow. ^_^

[Lemmy]

It's kinda funny. I was annoyed because Starfinder was used as a test bed for systems for pf2e that were half finished. Now I'm sorta glad they didn't get a lot of the junk in pathfinder 2e heh. Though boy, they sure did drag all the problems starfinder has over to pathfinder 2e.

Well... We might see more SF, since I doubt PF2e will be able to compete with 5e (and no matter what Paizo says, they will compete).

Then again, AFAIK, SF isn't very popular either... So Paizo is bound to lose a lot of busisness in the coming years. They probably won't shrink back to their pre-PF size, but my prediction is that after a short rise in sales when PF2 is released, Paizo will quickly be back to their current status of dwindling sales and popularity...

It doesn't help that they sanitized and censored their forums to the point where it's the echoest of echo chambers... They got woke... We know what happens next...

[Zilrax]

Yeah... Starfinder has sort of two kinda standing problems. The math breaks down late game. And starship combat.

Starfinder has a sort of issues Pathfinder 2e has, where it weirdly tries to EXPECT you to minmax. And then runs the npc math to be on par with that. This means someone who doesn't all in on something, won't be any good at it, and with very few items that allows one to compensate for lower numbers... And as time passes, dcs can get ridiculous. I'm not kidding I've seen it call for dc 40 checks in the level 6 range. Bad rolls can be hugely crippling to checks. Class based skill boosts helps a bit, but are heavily needed quite often.

The item treadmills a bit awkward too.

I'm not that surprised it's not that popular though. It came out with nearly no fanfare, certainly no group testing because they rushed to dump it out in time for the con season, and the huge problems with starships showed it.

I want to LIKE starfinder if only cus I kinda like sci-fi, but half the time I sorta think I like Hc Svnt Dracones better :p Have to wait til THAT 2ned comes out to see which edition of that I'll stick to.

[TOZ]

I mean, at least in Starfinder you can just say "we're not using starship combat" the same way we said "we're not using the ship-to-ship rules" in Skull and Shackles. I haven't kept up at all with the playtest, as I'm just going to look at the actual release at GenCon and see if it is replacing my play of 1E or if I only go out and run organized play scenarios of 2E.

[Ashiel]

A Bit Off Topic
Does anyone here play Dominions 5 by chance?
Asking 'cause I've been putting together a new civilization for it based on some stuff from my campaigns, and wouldn't mind some playtesters to tell me how grossly OP it is.

[137beth]

Never heard of it before but I just put it on my wishlist

[Zilrax]

Sure, pass it over. I know a few people who play it, some even mod it.

LA Ulm for life.

[Ashiel]

Sure, pass it over. I know a few people who play it, some even mod it.

LA Ulm for life.

[MA] Akaia, Eternal Life Through Death (Google Drive Link)
The Akaians are based on a country from my campaigns. They specialize in necromancy and astrology, and use a workforce of undead for labor (in D&D, mindless creatures have a +0 modifier in most mental skills, putting them on par with your average laborer, and are perfectly capable of common tasks such as "Lay the bricks in this manner, this high, this long...", etc).

Nation Overview
Akaians are a magical civilization that relies on the undead to fight their battles and drive their industry. They have several unique quirks that influence the way that they play.

Commanders
Akaians have no standard commanders. Instead, they have four types of magicians. Each serves a specific purpose.

• Necromancers Sacred Death 2 mages. These can be ordered to produce 10 soulless swordsmen. The necromancers are the primary spellcasters for the Akaians (ideal for casting spells like horde of skeletons, shadow bolt, or invulnerability) and are a staple of any Akaian army.
• Priestesses Sacred Divine 2 priests. These can be ordered to produce 10 skeletal archers. The priestesses of Akaia serve as a supplementary force to armies.
• Artificers Random 1/1/1 mages. Artificers randomly receive 3 points distributed between 5 schools of magic (fire, water, air, earth, or death). They receive a discount when creating magic items and treat their magic paths as 1 higher when creating magic items. They do not summon units, but being present in a province allows the recruitment of Undead Laborers (a very important unit for the Akaians). Their research ability is not affected by magic scales.
• Seers Astral 2 mages. These units reduce the chances of bad events in a province by 10%. Akaia's sacred units are automatically blessed in any battle they enter alongside a seer (similar to entering the battle with your pretender present). Supplemental unit for sacred-heavy armies.
• Dreadnaught The dreadnaught is an immense national commander that cannot be recruited but must be summoned. Summoning a Dreadnaught requires research 5 in Enchantment and costs 15 death gems. They are an ideal unit for thugging and have a natural 20% regeneration (making them heal about 8 HP / turn).
• Others Akaians have no national scouts or regular commanders. Instead, they must rely on local provinces for these, or more likely research Conjuration 1 to summon Black Servants to use as scouts, and Enchantment 2 to summon Mound Kings to use as primary commanders (the mages of Akaia lack the proper leadership to form their armies into formations, and they cannot enter water without magic items, making Mound Kings an ideal basic commander for their undead armies or for exploring oceanic provinces).

Economy
Akaians work very differently from other nations when it comes to their economies.

• Gems Akaians begin the game with sites granting 3 astral and 3 death gems.
• Gold Akaian receive no gold from controlling provinces and are not strongly affected by economy scales.
• Undead Labor As long as an Akaian Artificer is located in a province, once per turn that province can produce an undead laborer. Each undead laborer controlled increases national income by 5 gold, and provides 5 supplies and 5 resources to the province it is located in. They are ill suited for combat and should be escorted away from battle whenever possible.

Units
Akaians field undead soldiers. They are not paid in gold and as such are limited only in province resources and recruitment points. Akaia's undead armies are well armed compared to common long dead.

• Akaian Longdead Akaia has several skeletal units. Swordsmen (sword & shield), Foebreakers (greatsword), Spearmen (spear & shield), Longspearmen (longspear & shield), Archers (short bow & dagger), and Cavalry (lance & shield). All but the archers wear iron hauberks and helms.
• Akaian Soulless Akaian Soulless have natural regeneration, which makes them ideal front-line chaff units to hold lines, even if they aren't likely to score many kills with their combat skills (or lack thereof). They come in two basic flavors: militia (spear & shield, leather armor) and swordsmen (sword & shield, iron hauberk).

Sacred Units
The sacred units of Akaia must be summoned with their national summons.

• Corpse Knights Corpse knights are heavily armored sacred soulless that are sacred and lack the undisciplined quality.
• Knights Akaian Knights are sacred longdead on heavily armored horses that are stronger than normal cavalry.
• Longdead Marksmen Marksmen are sacred longdead archers that wield longbows & broadswords and are armored in iron hauberks and helms.

National Spells
Akaians have a few nation specific spells associated with calling their special units.

• Animate Undead Laborers Enchantment 0; Death 1; 20 death gems; Calls 3+ undead laborers.
• Animate Corpse Knights Enchantment 0; Death 1; 5 death gems; Calls 15+ corpse knights.
• Animate Longdead Marksmen Enchantment 0; Death 1; 5 death gems; Calls 15+ longdead marksmen.
• Animate Longdead Knights Enchantment 0; Death 1; 5 death gems; Calls 6+ corpse knights.
• Call Dreadnaught Enchantment 5; Death 3; 15 death gems; Calls 1 Dreadnaught commander.

Province Defense
Akaian province defense has 1 necromancer + soulless warriors and akaian archers. Advanced province defense adds an assortment of longdead and cavalry. Underwater province defense replaces necromancers with mound kings and archers with spearmen.

Pretender Gods
Akaia is a nation ruled by mages rather than gods. As a result, the only pretender choices they have are mostly rainbow pretenders (master enchanter, crone, frost father, master sorcerer), and undead pretenders (master lich, lich queen, ghost king, vampire queen, and demilich).

Basic Summary of Play
Akaians begin play with a single necromancer with an assortment of soulless warriors, one artificer, and 25 undead laborers (giving them a national income of 100 gold). You'll want to garrison the laborers on your first turn (you do not want them to be destroyed). While you're at it, you will probably want to set recruitment of undead laborers to 1/turn (you can only produce 1/turn per province) and never remove them from the que.

You will use Necromancers and Priestesses to roll over most province defense. Their ability to call up hordes of basic units on the front lines rivals the Ashen Empire of Ermor, and most province defense will route against the undead hordes. Because commanders are initially in short supply (you may only produce 1/turn from your capital until you can build up other provinces with castles, labs, and temples) you'll probably rely heavily on 1-2 necromancers or a necro/priestess combo for taking independent provinces.

However, taking provinces is of little benefit without producing more Artificers. You must have an artificer sitting on a province to be able to produce undead laborers from that province, and without undead laborers, your gold production will not increase (though you will be able to search for gem sites). As a result, it's a good idea early on to have a steady production of artificers and form a trade-line (moving one artificer from your capital to a new province, and continuing this into each new province whenever your forward army is taking a new province).

Your basic undead units do not cost gold (only your commanders who are admittedly pretty expensive) but do require resources to produce (they are better armored than the rusty longdead of freespawn nations), and you will not be able to recruit many of them (especially if you tank your eco-scales) without a large number of undead laborers sitting on the province. With many laborers, you will find you're able to field any unit you want limited only by your recruitment points.

Gold gain is slow at first, and you will be broke early game. However, as you begin producing more and more undead laborers, your gold production will eventually grow to hundreds or even thousands of gold per turn, and you will build castles, labs, and temples en mass by mid to late game, and have enormous hordes of province defense on your lands, making you a very hard nut to crack later on. You can use the Animate Undead Laborers national spell to try to jumpstart your economy early on. It's expensive at 20 death gems per cast, but it's a permanent 15-20 gold per turn increase when you cast it. If you have an awake pretender with very high Death magic you can very quickly snowball due to the extra workers produced by mages with exceptionally high death magic.

General Strategies and Scales
The following are some sample strategies I've been playing around with and using during their development.

Undead Flood The basic strategy that works well vs the AI is produce lots of necromancers, rush Enchantment 5, and just drown everything in undead. You will have an enormous army of soulless swordsmen that you can replenish losses in a turn or two, while your necromancers spam spells like animate dead and horde of skeletons to really bury your enemies with the dead (but not for long). You can include a priestess (probably made a prophet) to provide archers and build temples while you go.

With the above strategy, you can focus less on making your blessings super cool and probably won't use your national summons much. Instead, you might consider pretender blesses that provide passive boosts to your sacred units (walking abilities for moving over odd province types like mountains, inspirational presence, undead command, spirit sight, etc).

You can also pretty much tank your scales like Ermor when playing this way since you won't care much about your population or productivity.

Super Sacreds This strategy is slower to get rolling that the former, but you can with a little foresight lead the former right into this one. Build your pretender with crazy good bless effects and then try to spam your national summons as often as possible to get large hordes of sacred undead and stick a Seer in your army and watch the fun begin.

(Variant) Frightful Marksmen Build your pretender around a ranged attacker bless (lots of +precision and range from Air) and lots of weapon enhancements from other paths (magic weapons from Astral, fire, frost, or shock weapons from the elemental paths, Withering from Death, Poison from Nature, etc). Then spam Animate Longdead Marksmen like it was going out of style and rain super accurate magic doomsday arrows onto your enemies en mass.

(Variant) Warning Explosive Hazard Build your pretender to punish anyone who strikes or kills your sacred units. Good effects include hot and cold auras, charged bodies, death explosion, etc. Add in some elemental resistances or even Reforming Flesh if you have points to spare.

Proceed to spam animate corpse knight and similar national summons and watch the hilarious bloodbath that occurs when your ranks collide. Tank your scales, take a rainbow pretender (such as master sorcerer) and grab Death Explosion (fire), Charged Bodies (Air), Chill Aura (Water), Fire & Shock Resist (Earth), Minor and Major Magic Resist (Astral), and Reforming Flesh (Death).

Your corpse knights will lumber forward relentlessly. Anything that gets near them is overwhelmed by their overlapping cold auras. Anyone that strikes them causes electricity to burst from the horde. Any of them die and they explode for fire damage in an AoE. Their resistances protect them from domino-dying, and reforming flesh mixes with their natural regen to give them a 20% health regen (making them just soak and soak and soak).

Blood for the Blood God
While Akaia isn't really naturally suited to blood magic, you can definitely fake it by grabbing the vampire queen. In this route you actually push your growth scales hard, and give your vampire queen 6 death, 6 nature, 6 blood scales, and choose stygian flesh, barkskin or recuperation, and strong vitae x6 or strength of the flesh and strong vitae x3.

Plays much as you would normally, except your pretender can immediately set out to shoring up the magic paths you don't normally have access to (nature and blood), and you can empower your other units with blood slaves to create new blood mages. Your vampire queen is quite formidable on her own and immortal, and periodically spawns vampire units under her control (which can be given to your other commanders).

I chose Nature because I think it's pretty fun to grab Thaumaturgy 5 and get Gift of Reason, which can allow you to turn your vampire spawn into commanders, and there's even a few easter eggs for those playing around with Gift of Reason with the nation.

Strong Vitae just combos nicely with the natural regeneration possessed by Corpse Knights, as does Recuperation or Barkskin, and Stygian Flesh makes them all but invulnerable to most mundane troops.

[Lemmy]

I have no idea what game is that...

But Happy New Year, everyone... A few hours early, but still counts.

[Ashiel]

I have no idea what game is that...

It's Dominions 5. It's a 4X turn based strategy game that's a lot like a hyper gritty D&D wargame (hyper gritty in that bad stuff happens way easier than good stuff, and folks get dismembered a lot). The premise is the elder god got bored and decided to go explore the multiverse, allowing a bunch of demigods and/or super powerful individuals (like powerful mages or monsters) a chance to rise and become the new elder god.

It has a very wide variety of nations, all heavily influenced by D&D-esque RPGs and real life mythos (nations of elves and unicorns to sunken cities ruled by mind flayers to shamanistic tribes of jungle dudes or lizardmen to ape man nations, aztec blood sacrificers, all sorts of stuff). Naturally, being me, I'm a sucker for anything undead. (^___^)

It's also probably the easiest game I've ever seen to mod. 99%+ of anything you would want to mod can be done with Notepad + Paint.

But Happy New Year, everyone... A few hours early, but still counts.

Happy New Years to you too! Let's do all we can to make it a beautiful new year!

[Zilrax]

It's pretty fun to make ones own dieties and such. There's many strategies. Ermor is a meme though.

This meme in fact.



That and BURDEN OF TIME.

(Burden of time accelerates the aging process of all creatures in the world. Yes, units actually age in this and older they get the more odds they randomly contract Disease. And unlike real life, all diseases are basically Gangrene, as anyone with disease will slowly and inevitably fall apart until they die. It's a mid tier ritual and generally Ermor will rush it, cast it, then if they aren't vs AI, immediatly get gang rushed by everyone before they destroy them all.)

I'll need to go over this but the holiday flu is taking everyone down worldwide it seems so might be a bit before can give proper thoughts. I like the idea of it thus far though it's not quite LA Ulm.

(For those unfamiliar, LA means Late Age. The game can be played in various eras. Early means high magic, low tech advancement, MA is a mix, and LA is advanced medieval equipment but less magic. Ulm is basically Germany, with a focus on heavy armor and earth magic, initially. However by the late age, things have gone horribly wrong. A curse has nuked the region, causing the dead to rise, the inquisition is tearing through to eliminate all magic, while a secret society of mages tries to control it from the background, and most of the nobility have become dormant vampire lords, that you'll be spending a lot of time trying to wake up and cover in magical swag to Thug [powerful single unit to tear through small armies] and use them to exponentially increase blood magic acquirement, eventually ending with vampire armies supporting super heavy infantry. Also ghoul pikemen.)

[Ashiel]

Burden of Time is pretty bad for this nation too, honestly. Humorously, this nation would actually be really nice in a buddy-game with Ermor, as long as Ermor doesn't BoT which murders all your mages.

[tyckspoon]

Burden of Time is pretty bad for this nation too, honestly. Humorously, this nation would actually be really nice in a buddy-game with Ermor, as long as Ermor doesn't BoT which murders all your mages.

Well, you could Twiceborn your Necromancers so they all turn into ageless undead when they die. It'd wreck everybody else, tho.. Death randomed Artificers could potentially be Twiceborn'd as well. Not much to be done for the Seers, maybe an Unaging bless could help keep Priestesses around? Not sure how that interacts with Burden of Time. Would be really really expensive in Death Gems, tho; if you expect to have to deal with that you might be better off just investing heavily in Death-summoned commanders and mages (Banes, Mound Kings, Spectres, Revenants, etc) or make sure you have a few Seers around that can cast Dispel and just stockpile your pearls for taking down the spell when it happens.

[Ashiel]

Well, you could Twiceborn your Necromancers so they all turn into ageless undead when they die. It'd wreck everybody else, tho.. Death randomed Artificers could potentially be Twiceborn'd as well. Not much to be done for the Seers, maybe an Unaging bless could help keep Priestesses around? Not sure how that interacts with Burden of Time. Would be really really expensive in Death Gems, tho; if you expect to have to deal with that you might be better off just investing heavily in Death-summoned commanders and mages (Banes, Mound Kings, Spectres, Revenants, etc) or make sure you have a few Seers around that can cast Dispel and just stockpile your pearls for taking down the spell when it happens.

Honestly, Twiceborn has been one of my favorite spells with these folks, particularly with death randomed artificers. I'll usually just let them pass around a skull staff, cast the spell, and then pass the baton to the next guy, since they tend to start near old age as it is. Necromancers, thankfully, can twiceborn right out of the gate which is convenient.

[Lemmy]

So... Anyone excited for anything from the new anime season?

[Lemmy]

What?! Am I supposed to believe I'm the only weeb around?

Oh, well... I suppose I could ask y'all what are your current gaming habits and plans? Are you staying with PF1? Switching to 5e? Tryng PF2? Something else entirely?

Personally... I think I'll stay with PF1 (and my majestic collection of house rules) and just poach some stuff from PF2. I'm not a fan of 5e, and while the last version of the PF2 playtest document gave me hope that it might... Just might... Turn out to be a decent game, it's still far more restrictive and far less fun than a customized PF1... Specially since it seems Paizo is not only keeping, but actually making worse the old "you can't do anything without a feat" problem. Most skill feats are back gate-locked options that should just be something you can so with that skill.

[Nicos]

It doesn't help that they sanitized and censored their forums to the point where it's the echoest of echo chambers... They got woke... We know what happens next...

can you give a little history class for the people that were not around at that time?

[Lemmy]

Wait... Nicos???!!!! Is that really you???!!!

Holy ****! It's good to see you again, man! We were really worried about you!

[Nicos]

It was not a good, year but noting to worry about. I tried to write something in paizo forum some months ago but I could't acces it, just yesterday I remembered, duh, giant in the playground.

[Nicos]

In any case I would like to know what happened to paizo forum, it seems deserted.

[Lemmy]

In any case I would like to know what happened to paizo forum, it seems deserted.

Between the mods banning anyone and everyone who disagrees with them or their friends... And the overwhelming lack of interest towards the new edition of Pathfinder, it's a surprise the forums even have anyone left at this point.

[Bartmanhomer]

Between the mods banning anyone and everyone who disagrees with them or their friends... And the overwhelming lack of interest towards the new edition of Pathfinder, it's a surprise the forums even have anyone left at this point.

Are you serious? Really? Over a difference of opinion and people get banned for that?! That's ridiculous.

[Nicos]

Between the mods banning anyone and everyone who disagrees with them or their friends... And the overwhelming lack of interest towards the new edition of Pathfinder, it's a surprise the forums even have anyone left at this point.

So I guess the playtest was not very successful.

================

Anything worth mentioning for PF 1e in the last year?

[Lemmy]

Are you serious? Really? Over a difference of opinion and people get banned for that?! That's ridiculous.

While there's some hyperbole in my sentence... It's not much. Paizo mods have consistently used any flimsy excuse to ban (even perma-ban) people they don't like, while simultaneously turning a blind eye to some seriously egregious behavior from posters they like (including stuff like doxxing)... As many posters in this thread can attest.

So I guess the playtest was not very successful.

================

Anything worth mentioning for PF 1e in the last year?

They still have an audience. I'm sure a number of devoted fans will follow them no matter what (there's a reason the "Paizo Defense Force" joke became so prevalent in the forums, to the point where the mods started deleting any mentions to it). But generally speaking, D&D 5e kicked PF's butt HARD. Paizo is releasing a new edition because... Well... It's their only chance of reversing the loss in customers and sales. But it's pretty much a lost cause, IMHO. Best they can hope to achieve is slowing down the player exodus.

[Bartmanhomer]

While there's some hyperbole in my sentence... It's not much. Paizo mods have consistently used any flimsy excuse to ban (even perma-ban) people they don't like, while simultaneously turning a blind eye to some seriously egregious behavior from posters they like (including stuff like doxxing)... As many posters in this thread can attest.

They still have an audience. I'm sure a number of devoted fans will follow them no matter what (there's a reason the "Paizo Defense Force" joke became so prevalent in the forums, to the point where the mods started deleting any mentions to it). But generally speaking, D&D 5e kicked PF's butt HARD. Paizo is releasing a new edition because... Well... It's their only chance of reversing the loss in customers and sales. But it's pretty much a lost cause, IMHO. Best they can hope to achieve is slowing down the player exodus.

No offense but the Paizo mods are a bunch of crybabies.