Pathfinder 2 Blog: Critical Success and Failure

[upho]

In my years of playing Pathfinder, I have heard others complain of only three things, only one which I empathize.

1) Too much fiddly bits. The player got annoyed trying to remember all the +1s and +2s that got piled on. He hated doing that math. That plus moving more than 5 ft stopped him from doing what he wanted to do. This is where I empathize. I don't mind fiddly bits, but I can see how it becomes nuisance. Agreement on the 5 ft step issue. This is one thing I like about 5E over Pathfinder.

This I can certainly also empathize with.

I completely agree that PF has way too many fiddly bits (as do 3E and 4E) and this clearly turns some players away. 5E either consciously averts this or moves it to the head of the DM, depending on who you ask. It'll be interesting to see what approach P2 takes (but note that 3E/4E have about ten different types of action, 5E still has six, and P2 seems to have only two).

Agreed. Speaking of turning players away, my current game is the first RPG experience ever for one of my five players, and she's the first total RPG noob we've actually ever had in this very old group of grognards. IIRC, it's also been more than 30 years since the last time I played with an absolute RPG rookie in any kind of RPG even remotely as rules-heavy as PF, so this latest addition to the group has also provided me as a GM with some great insights into the "noob perspective". Aside from seeing how her character has grown on her and how her RP has been quickly developing, it's been particularly interesting and refreshing to hear her opinions on the fiddly bits. So far, those are the only cause of any annoyance with the system aside from having "too damned many options" in combat. (She's playing a magus... I'm sorry Kurald, but I've come to see it as a definite sign of early onset Alzheimer's that I didn't react to hearing her decide on that class for her first RPG PC ever.)

But interestingly, she also really appreciates most of the system's complexity and says she wouldn't want it "dumb-ed down" in any way, and she's become increasingly interested in the finer details of combat teamwork tactics.

2) Not enough realism. Even as DM he would go with the rules as they are but complained constantly about lack of facing and was anal about breaking doors and seeing things from a distance. He was playing the numbers, not the game.

Realism is a matter of playstyle; I know several DMs who tend to rule that even if combination-so-and-so makes zero sense, then unless the rules explicitly point out that it doesn't work, then it works normally. To be fair, some players find this very funny. Overall, 3E/PF does a fairly good job of modelling a world that is larger than the PCs, and many players care about that (although I'm well aware that many forum users have their own pet peeve where the worldbuilding breaks and causes it to be RUINED FOREVER in favor of any game that doesn't try to model anything at all).

IME, the wish for RPG mechanics able to simulate RL physics tend to exist for a brief but often intense period during peoples' time in the hobby. Typically, once they've started making up house rules for increased realism in an already complex fantasy game like PF, they quickly reach a point where a) realize the game is so far removed from RL in so many fundamental ways the game would basically need to be rewritten from scratch, b) find the "realistic" rules also make options unbalanced with a few total no-brainers and tons of absolute crap options, and c) their game becomes overloaded with minutia slowing play down to a crawl. And then they give up on the idea and start tweaking for better balance and ease of play instead.

3) Disappointed Fighter doesn't get cool things unlike the Paladin who is Superman. He hopes Pathfinder 2 will improve Fighter to be interesting but has decided he'll never play a Fighter again.

Not surprising, I think. It takes quite a bit of combat rules-fu to bring a fighter up to and above PF pally baseline. And while the PF fighter has surely become far superior to its 3.5 counterpart, it's still one of the most complicated classes to build, and arguably even more difficult to actually optimize than in 3.5 due to its more numerous decent to great options and vastly increased number of viable build focuses.

Interestingly, in my area the fighter is the second most popular class in the game, only behind the druid and slightly ahead of the cleric and rogue (which includes u-rogue). The most popular arcane caster is the alchemist. Anecdotal, sure, but I have data of over a hundred players. I suppose ease of play counts for a lot, and the wide selection of archetypes make the PF fighter much more versatile than its 3.5 counterpart.

Interesting. Especially about the alchemist, I think, as I'd guess it to be less popular due to it's unique rules and that it's much less of a fantasy staple than most of the other arcane casters. And anecdotal or not, this is still a heck of a lot less so than the protected little bubble of veterans gamer friends I usually play with.

No one complained about spells. No one complained about a warrior and a spellcaster in the same party. No one complained about the druid. Players are happy when a spell helps win the battle. Warriors make their Will saves. Monsters make their saves preventing the spellcaster from winning everything. Spellcasters need the warriors and enjoy casting buffs on them. Healing in combat is a viable tactic.

Actually, I would've been a bit surprised if people had complained about C/MD related things the most. Seems to me that in most groups, those complaints usually start popping up hundreds of gaming hours after "monks are TOTALLY broken!"-types of comments, and well after the group has been through the "Fighter sucks while Pally's friggin' Superman!"-phase. That is of course unless someone happens to stumble upon some unusually strong spells and milk them for all their worth, or the group includes someone with a true power gamer mindset who manages to put together a summon-specialized demigod for the third game in their lives (yeah, I've seen that happen).

I seem to recall you used to play 3.5 as well. If that's correct, are your experiences from that game similar in this regard?

[upho]

Someone in the blog too apparently:

"The Best of Your Ability
You'll also amp up several of your ability scores every 5 levels. The process might be familiar to those of you who've been playing Starfinder for the last several months!"

Yeah, that's the one! That's the guy I'm talkin' 'bout! You found 'im Psyren!

Now what the heck does he think he knows that ol' Kurald doesn't? And why is he bein' mean like that, spreadin' lies an' havin' people believe in that crazy Starfinder stuff?

I think he's one o' them, them really bad peoples... You know, one o' them, watchacallem now, Demon Cult Leaders?

No, that's not it, I mean o' them truly EVIL^TM peoples...

Red Fel? No... Close, but not exactly...

Paizo Game Designers! That's what I meant; he's one o' them lyin', cheatin' an' stealin' good-fer-nuthin' Paizo Game Designers!

Removing all of those would just be making 5e but with no chance of competing with 5e's market. PF needs to be the rules-heavy game, and that means multiple modifiers. I agree that there can be less of them, or fewer bonus types, but if PF isn't the game for those who like at least some math then it's likely going to fail. (I view the curse "Mathfinder" as a compliment.)

I find it a bit funny how my group's RPG noob fully agrees with you. As do I, btw.

I find it amusing that a guy who complained about fiddly bits wanted to bring back facing of all things

I think Pex was talking about two different guys, actually. But if not, that is indeed amusing!

P1 has already given Fighter a bunch of neat stuff, it just took a while. I'm hoping P2 starts them off with that stuff right off the bat.

It just took a while? Seriously? It took them more than six long cold, lonely and bitter years before they even started moving! And now when they're giving up, they've still not made it nearly far enough, IMO.

But yeah, I'm hoping for the very same thing. I'm just worried we haven't seen much at all in that direction, IMO. But there's still hope...

[Pex]

I find it amusing that a guy who complained about fiddly bits wanted to bring back facing of all things

Misunderstanding with perhaps my miscommunication. They're three different players.

Edit: As for 3E, never once a complaint. If anything a fighter player got slightly jealous I was doing all sorts of things playing a crusader/master of nine, but the player lacked system mastery. With DM permission and instigation I remade his fighter character entirely and he was quite happy with it then. I utilized the Focus feats from one of the splat books.

[Psyren]

Misunderstanding with perhaps my miscommunication. They're three different players.

Gotcha, my bad.

It just took a while? Seriously? It took them more than six long cold, lonely and bitter years before they even started moving!

Nah, they definitely started moving much earlier - they were giving Fighter nice stuff well before Unchained+WMH, it was just primarily found in archetype land. Mobile Fighter was in their very first splat (the APG), Lore Warden dropped in PFS Field Guide, Mutation Warrior was in ACG, and Eldritch Guardian came out in Familiar Folio, to name a few examples.

[Morty]

Healing in combat is a viable tactic.

PF 2e designers seem to disagree on this score, since apparently clerics will have a separate healing pool that doesn't compete with other spells.

[Pex]

PF 2e designers seem to disagree on this score, since apparently clerics will have a separate healing pool that doesn't compete with other spells.

They have that now with Channel Energy which does well in combat, though you really need Selective Channeling feat. Add in Quick Channel feat to do it as a move action and you can still cast whatever standard action spell you want. Having healing ability that does not compete with spells is a good thing.

If anyone is better than the cleric at healing in combat it's the Life Oracle. I played one. I know. A player did the math. I effectively doubled the party's hit points, tripled on a good day. The rest of the party could concentrate more on offense because I had their backs fully on hit points and defense. The DM needed to increase the difficulty and sometimes outright target me specifically for the bad guys to be any threat. In one round instance of combat I did standard action Channel Energy 6d6, move action Channel Energy 6d6, swift action Mass Cure Light Wounds for 1d8 + 11. I healed everyone in the party essentially nullifying everything the bad guys did.

[Morty]

I should hope bringing a cleric along won't be mandatory if you want healing, but I won't hold my breath. 4e had a good way to make sure everyone didn't run on the leader's schedule, with healing surges. But we won't be getting that in PF 2e.

[Kurald Galain]

Interestingly, in my area the fighter is the second most popular class in the game, only behind the druid and slightly ahead of the cleric and rogue (which includes u-rogue). The most popular arcane caster is the alchemist. Anecdotal, sure, but I have data of over a hundred players. I suppose ease of play counts for a lot, and the wide selection of archetypes make the PF fighter much more versatile than its 3.5 counterpart.

Of course, other people have statistics on this, too.

Turns out the two most popular character classes are, by a wide margin, fighter and rogue. The second most played group of classes is cleric/wizard/sorc. The third group is pally/monk/bard. And the fourth is ranger/barb/alch/oracle/magus.

Also, about 44% of all characters use an archetype; and for each class, the three most popular archetypes account for about half of archetype choices. This suggests that players love archetypes, and there are way too many of them printed that go largely unused.

This says a lot about what Paizo's priorities should be for P2.

[137beth]

New PF2 blog: Big Beards and Pointy Ears. Paizo lays out some vague descriptions about how dwarves and elves will work in the new game.

I don't see anything particularly impressive in here. They confirm that elves and dwarves will use the new ancestry ability score bonuses, and they give a bunch of really vague statements about ancestry feats.

[Morty]

I'm in favour of unique racial abilities, be they feats of something else. They should replace attribute bonuses and penalties entirely, because those do nothing except discourage character concepts. The traits and feats we've seen so far look to be a mix of actually useful and flavourful stuff and things that are going to be niche at best and probably forgotten.

[Remuko]

New PF2 blog: Big Beards and Pointy Ears. Paizo lays out some vague descriptions about how dwarves and elves will work in the new game.

I don't see anything particularly impressive in here. They confirm that elves and dwarves will use the new ancestry ability score bonuses, and they give a bunch of really vague statements about ancestry feats.

I found this bit interesting

Elves can see in dim light, and have the highest speed of all the ancestries at 30 feet. (Going to three actions per round brought the other ancestries that were as fast as elves in Pathfinder First Edition down to 25 feet from 30.)

Wasnt expecting that.

[137beth]

I found this bit interesting



Wasnt expecting that.

Which part weren't you expecting? That the standard speed is getting reduced, or that elves will be the fastest?

[upho]

Of course, other people have statistics on this, too.

Now those statistics are actually coming darn close to being fully representative of real PCs and games, the survey's most noteworthy bias simply being an effect of the sample selection method AFAICT. Even the sample size should be several times greater than the acceptable minimum.

Nothing really surprising in the findings IMO, and IIRC most of them confirm the findings of previous surveys and what people in general seem to have suspected for a long time. But I think a few things stand out as particularly interesting, especially in the light of the recent P2 blogs.

Turns out the two most popular character classes are, by a wide margin, fighter and rogue.

Yeah, the margin is really wide, with more than 31.5% of the sample consisting of the five most popular classes (fighter, rogue, cleric, wizard and sorcerer). As a telling comparison, the fighters and rogues alone outnumber all the bloodragers, druids, gunslingers, inquisitors, swashbucklers and witches put together.

Speaking of, I think the greatest shortcoming of this survey, aside from the selection method, is the lack of complementary statistics on the range of options allowed in the related games. I believe this shortcoming limits the conclusions about player preference one can draw from especially the race and class/archetype statistics. Considering CRB options have a greater share than all the vastly more numerous competing options from other sources put together, I believe there's a large probability the choices made for a significant proportion of the PCs in the sample were heavily influenced by specific game limitations. For example, in reality the Primalist may very well be the most preferred bloodrager archetype by a far wider margin than the numbers suggest, as those don't account for the fact that the archetype is banned from at the very least 8.8% of the games in the sample (those games being PFS).

The second most played group of classes is cleric/wizard/sorc. The third group is pally/monk/bard. And the fourth is ranger/barb/alch/oracle/magus.

Hmm... Any thoughts on why PCs in your area differ so significantly from these findings, with the alchemist (3.8%) being more popular than the wizard (5.9%)?

Personally, I find it a bit surprising that the PF games I've been involved in have all had parties which must be very extreme statistical outliers. I mean, I knew our preferences aren't mainstream, but I never would've guessed they're actually that far off from those of most PF groups.

Also, about 44% of all characters use an archetype; and for each class, the three most popular archetypes account for about half of archetype choices. This suggests that players love archetypes, and there are way too many of them printed that go largely unused.

I think this is especially unsurprising from an optimization POV; very few archetypes offer meaningful mechanical advantages, and a rather large majority are replacing standard features with significantly less powerful and/or widely applicable ones. And judging by the related statistics, they may very well also be an indication of players generally being far less willing to sacrifice mechanical power than the designers have seemingly assumed.

This says a lot about what Paizo's priorities should be for P2.

In certain respects, such as not bloating archetype lists with crap options, I agree this seems wise. But in many other respects, I think this would be a major mistake, as we know little of the reasons for why the statistics are what they are. And without knowing those reasons, making design decisions based on them has a significant risk of throwing away potentially great ideas, and/or keeping bad ones, all for the wrong reasons. As an (unlikely) example to illustrate this, it may be that most players actually prefer the occultist to the wizard, but as it was a relatively recently released class at the time when the survey was made, few players had played in a game in which the class was allowed. Or, say, that a lot more people would actually prefer to play a goblin and love the flavor, but find the P1 version has too significant mechanical drawbacks.

As an aside, according to this reasoning, the race that belongs in the P2 CRB is not the goblin, but the nearly four times as popular tiefling. In this particular case I would certainly not be disappointed if Paizo happened to change their minds in accordance...

[Kurald Galain]

Considering CRB options have a greater share than all the vastly more numerous competing options from other sources put together, I believe there's a large probability the choices made for a significant proportion of the PCs in the sample were heavily influenced by specific game limitations.

As far as I can tell, the default for PF is that all Paizo options are allowed, and this is made possible by the d20pfsrd website listing everything.
This survey indicates that PFS is actually smaller than I thought, meaning the PFS banlist is less influential as well; there's not a lot of options that are popular in the survey and disallowed in PFS.

Hmm... Any thoughts on why PCs in your area differ so significantly from these findings, with the alchemist (3.8%) being more popular than the wizard (5.9%)?

I'd say it's either that this class is more-or-less unique to Pathfinder, or that it's the only non-core class with a name that's meaningful even to non-roleplayers (considering that "witch" is generally synonym to "wizard" per Harry Potter). Of course, P2 is known to include all core classes plus the alchemist, so Paizo appears well aware of what the most popular classes are.

very few archetypes offer meaningful mechanical advantages, and a rather large majority are replacing standard features with significantly less powerful and/or widely applicable ones.

Looking over the archetypes listed does suggest that players know what the strongest archetypes are, yes. I don't think the selection is as bad as you seem to think; there are a lot of archetypes that replace standard features by something of equivalent power (e.g. about one-quarter of the Magus archetypes). Of course these are going to be less popular than straight upgrades (of which the Magus has only four, three of which form the top 3 in the survey).

we know little of the reasons for why the statistics are what they are.

Sure, but absent more detailed data, it seems wise to include the most-played races and classes in the first books, and to check the most popular archetypes for flavor and mechanics to copy. It's certainly better than going blind. Bear in mind that 4E had substantial backlash for not including the gnome and the bard in their first book (WOTC thought that nobody likes gnomes, turns out they were wrong).

[khadgar567]

d20pfsrd has lot of 3rd party content in it if you want true legal paizo content use archive of netys as its much cleaner.

[Starbuck_II]

Sure, but absent more detailed data, it seems wise to include the most-played races and classes in the first books, and to check the most popular archetypes for flavor and mechanics to copy. It's certainly better than going blind. Bear in mind that 4E had substantial backlash for not including the gnome and the bard in their first book (WOTC thought that nobody likes gnomes, turns out they were wrong).

It is interesting that both 4E and Pathfinder turned gnomes Fey though.

[Florian]

It is interesting that both 4E and Pathfinder turned gnomes Fey though.

Sure and why not? If you run a simulation, it´s actually quite hard to even justify Gnomes as a separate race. When using something as the "First World" as a self-justified source, it works out.

[upho]

As far as I can tell, the default for PF is that all Paizo options are allowed, and this is made possible by the d20pfsrd website listing everything.

Well, if there is a default in this regard, my impression is also that it's "all Paizo options allowed". If going by my own faulty memory of posts I've read here and on the Paizo boards, I'd estimate roughly 20% of home games have a range of options at least as limited as PFS, often banning options purely on the basis of publication, as was/is common in many 3.5 games.

Btw, I find it a very good thing that this seems to have become the most common practice, as it really helps players realize their character ideas. Aside from OGL sites like d20pfsrd, it's probably largely thanks to Paizo supporting only one setting, making it much less of a risk unsuitable elements pop up in a game already compatible with Golarion specific stuff.

This survey indicates that PFS is actually smaller than I thought, meaning the PFS banlist is less influential as well; there's not a lot of options that are popular in the survey and disallowed in PFS.

I also would've expected the PFS ratio to be greater than a mere 8.8%, considering the amount of attention it gets in both discussions on the internet and in Paizo errata decisions/FAQ replies. But it may very well be that PFS players primarily use other sites which include Golarion stuff and PFS notes, like Archives of Nethys. Or simply that most PFS players mostly use their own books/PDFs, as they had to buy those in order to use any options found in them anyways.

I'd say it's either that this class is more-or-less unique to Pathfinder, or that it's the only non-core class with a name that's meaningful even to non-roleplayers (considering that "witch" is generally synonym to "wizard" per Harry Potter). Of course, P2 is known to include all core classes plus the alchemist, so Paizo appears well aware of what the most popular classes are.

Heh, now that you mention it, yeah, I can definitely see how the name may be a part of the reason for the alchemist's popularity. Especially among newer players of the Harry Potter generations.

I personally really like the alchemist and regard it and the magus as the best classes wholly designed by Paizo, both of them combining distinct flavor with well-balanced and unique mechanics which allow for a wide variety of different viable builds. So if Paizo considers these classes' greater popularity as a major reason for including either one rather than the witch in the P2 CRB, I guess I may have to thank J.K. Rowling...

Looking over the archetypes listed does suggest that players know what the strongest archetypes are, yes. I don't think the selection is as bad as you seem to think; there are a lot of archetypes that replace standard features by something of equivalent power (e.g. about one-quarter of the Magus archetypes). Of course these are going to be less popular than straight upgrades (of which the Magus has only four, three of which form the top 3 in the survey).

Maybe I should clarify: I believe the average quality of archetypes varies significantly between classes, and that far too many classes have a far too low such average quality.

I also believe the magus is an example of a class with an unusually large proportion of exceptionally strong archetypes, whereas most of the other classes have far smaller proportions of options granting a mechanical power at least equal to that of the vanilla versions. I believe this is also pretty well reflected in the statistics, with most other classes having far larger percentages of the vanilla versions, despite many of those classes having a greater number of archetypes than the magus to choose from. (For example, on average 59% of the CRB classes are vanilla versions, which is 40% greater than the corresponding 42% of magi.)

I also think the magus really stands out in terms of archetypes which are straight upgrades, as these represent nearly 14% of the Paizo options. Compare this to, for example, the 7.4% of the tons of Paizo fighter archetypes which I believe could possibly be regarded as actual upgrades. Not to mention that I'd consider at least 80% of the fighter options as plain downgrades, and several among those as far more considerable than any of the upgrades.

Sure, but absent more detailed data, it seems wise to include the most-played races and classes in the first books, and to check the most popular archetypes for flavor and mechanics to copy. It's certainly better than going blind. Bear in mind that 4E had substantial backlash for not including the gnome and the bard in their first book (WOTC thought that nobody likes gnomes, turns out they were wrong).

As long as we're talking about stuff such as copying both flavor and mechanics of popular archetypes and races wholesale (as far as that is possible), then I agree. And I certainly don't think disregarding the statistics and going blind is a good idea. My concern is primarily with stuff like having a P2 archetype mostly mimicking only the flavor elements of a popular P1 archetype, without also including the key mechanical benefits of that P1 archetype. Similar mistakes born from poorly grounded interpretations of statistics and/or attempts to gloss over poorly designed options have been made numerous times in the TTRPG history, and they're just as bad as completely disregarding the statistics IMO.

d20pfsrd has lot of 3rd party content in it if you want true legal paizo content use archive of netys as its much cleaner.

Yes, which I'd guess PFS players do to a much larger extent than other players.

[Florian]

@upho:

You might actually want to consider how "you", as gm, trained your players in you personal closed loop.

[Remuko]

Which part weren't you expecting? That the standard speed is getting reduced, or that elves will be the fastest?

Them lowering non-elf speed. Its not a lot but people don't normally like having things taken so I'd have expected Elves to go up to 35 rather than non-elves to go down to 25.

[upho]

@upho:

You might actually want to consider how "you", as gm, trained your players in you personal closed loop.

Could you perhaps clarify what you mean by "personal closed loop"? Maybe also include a few examples?

Regardless, it appears your assumptions about me and my group are a bit off. For example, relatively speaking, I'm still a new GM in my group, the previous one kindly serving us expertly for more than 20 years before taking a break as a player. Also, four out of my five players are very experienced, as roleplayers in general and as D&D players in particular. And while I may have the most system mastery when it comes to PF, probably all four the veterans have a greater mastery of other systems (including 3.5) than I do, and two of them work full-time in the game industry and own the pen and paper RPG development and publishing company Järnringen. Also note that we play other RPGs as well, most often one of the Järnringen games designed by people in the group, like Coreolis and now Symbaroum (both highly recommended if you'd like complement your PF sessions with less mechanically complex, very well-designed top-rated games emphasizing story, RP and a unique feel).

If anything, I'd say the other people have "trained" me more than vice versa. But I'm still interested in hearing your thoughts, as it may very well be that I at least should consider the impressions regarding these things which my posts might inadvertently give people. And maybe there's far more truth in what you're saying than I realize.

[lesser_minion]

Them lowering non-elf speed. Its not a lot but people don't normally like having things taken so I'd have expected Elves to go up to 35 rather than non-elves to go down to 25.

The 3 actions thing gives everyone the equivalent of a +50% bonus to their overall movement speeds (in metres per second, at least), since you can take 3 move actions per round instead of just two. That means that your old 30' base land speed is actually the equivalent of a base land speed of 20' in PF2e terms, and 25' is actually a buff.

At 30' base land speed in PF2, assuming that running works essentially the same as in D&D (i.e., run speed = twice your combat speed), you'd be capable of a running speed of 9m/s, which would put you in real-world top athlete territory right out of the gate with no training required -- the men's 400m world record is 9.3m/s, and the women's 100m world record is 9.5m/s.

The four-minute mile is incredibly difficult in D&D/PF (to keep running for four minutes requires a ridiculous number of constitution checks against ever-increasing DCs), but you'd also be able to easily beat the 800m world record if you decent Con or good dice.

And while we are discussing a fantasy game where it's possible to become a larger-than-life hero capable of physical feats that no human alive could ever replicate, all of this would be doable at level 1. That's maybe pushing it a bit.

[zergling.exe]

The 3 actions thing gives everyone the equivalent of a +50% bonus to their overall movement speeds (in metres per second, at least), since you can take 3 move actions per round instead of just two. That means that your old 30' base land speed is actually the equivalent of a base land speed of 20' in PF2e terms, and 25' is actually a buff.

At 30' base land speed in PF2, assuming that running works essentially the same as in D&D (i.e., run speed = twice your combat speed), you'd be capable of a running speed of 9m/s, which would put you in real-world top athlete territory right out of the gate with no training required -- the men's 400m world record is 9.3m/s, and the women's 100m world record is 9.5m/s.

The four-minute mile is incredibly difficult in D&D/PF (to keep running for four minutes requires a ridiculous number of constitution checks against ever-increasing DCs), but you'd also be able to easily beat the 800m world record if you decent Con or good dice.

And while we are discussing a fantasy game where it's possible to become a larger-than-life hero capable of physical feats that no human alive could ever replicate, all of this would be doable at level 1. That's maybe pushing it a bit.

I don't know how the rules work in PF, but in 3.5 there is two different ways of using your full turn to only move: double move, and run. Double move is using both your movement and standard action to move your speed. This doesn't cost you your Dexterity bonus to AC. The run is a full round action that allows you to move 4x (3x in heavy armor) your move speed, but you lose your Dex bonus to AC. So depending on how using all three actions to run works, you would be faster in 3.5/PF than in PF2, albeit at the cost of Dex AC.

[upho]

At 30' base land speed in PF2, assuming that running works essentially the same as in D&D (i.e., run speed = twice your combat speed), you'd be capable of a running speed of 9m/s, which would put you in real-world top athlete territory right out of the gate with no training required -- the men's 400m world record is 9.3m/s, and the women's 100m world record is 9.5m/s.

The four-minute mile is incredibly difficult in D&D/PF (to keep running for four minutes requires a ridiculous number of constitution checks against ever-increasing DCs), but you'd also be able to easily beat the 800m world record if you decent Con or good dice.

And while we are discussing a fantasy game where it's possible to become a larger-than-life hero capable of physical feats that no human alive could ever replicate, all of this would be doable at level 1. That's maybe pushing it a bit.

Is it? Do you mean in comparison to, say, the same level 1 dude being able to throw bog standard darts through masterwork full plate?

[Scowling Dragon]

I see what they are trying to do, but again I feel annoyed that thee previews are marketing.
Because currently what they are marketing isn't even a game yet-its a playtest.
In practice, the previews should be priming people for what kind of playtest feedback they want/ expect to get.
Going over design decisions, and explaining them.
They are raising needless speculation and not organized the discussion.

Like we shouldn't have to be learning about the friggin speed changes as part of guesswork of Race Speeds.

[upho]

I don't know how the rules work in PF, but in 3.5 there is two different ways of using your full turn to only move: double move, and run. Double move is using both your movement and standard action to move your speed. This doesn't cost you your Dexterity bonus to AC. The run is a full round action that allows you to move 4x (3x in heavy armor) your move speed, but you lose your Dex bonus to AC. So depending on how using all three actions to run works, you would be faster in 3.5/PF than in PF2, albeit at the cost of Dex AC.

The rules for the run action are the same in PF1. And I believe this is exactly what lesser_minion wrote, if perhaps in a slightly convoluted way, as it's true the run action effectively means that you double your combat speed for the two move actions you can take during your turn, though they're taken together in the full-round action. This means: run = double speed x (2 move actions x 30' speed), or 4 x 30', for a 120'/round standard full running speed in 3.5/PF1. In PF2, this would end up being: run = double speed x (3 move actions x 25') for a 150'/round standard full running speed in PF2, 25% faster than in 3.5/PF1.

[Remuko]

The 3 actions thing gives everyone the equivalent of a +50% bonus to their overall movement speeds (in metres per second, at least), since you can take 3 move actions per round instead of just two. That means that your old 30' base land speed is actually the equivalent of a base land speed of 20' in PF2e terms, and 25' is actually a buff.

At 30' base land speed in PF2, assuming that running works essentially the same as in D&D (i.e., run speed = twice your combat speed), you'd be capable of a running speed of 9m/s, which would put you in real-world top athlete territory right out of the gate with no training required -- the men's 400m world record is 9.3m/s, and the women's 100m world record is 9.5m/s.

The four-minute mile is incredibly difficult in D&D/PF (to keep running for four minutes requires a ridiculous number of constitution checks against ever-increasing DCs), but you'd also be able to easily beat the 800m world record if you decent Con or good dice.

And while we are discussing a fantasy game where it's possible to become a larger-than-life hero capable of physical feats that no human alive could ever replicate, all of this would be doable at level 1. That's maybe pushing it a bit.

Yeah I get that, but how things are presented is sometimes more important than the facts. Most people will read the number see 25 instead of 30 and be upset or disappointed. They wont bother finding out that mathematically because of the differences 25 is actually on average more move per turn than before.

[137beth]

New blog, this one previewing the alchemist.

[khadgar567]

New blog, this one previewing the alchemist.

Also the first non resonance way to heal via elixirs. also if what i read is correct all classes can get formula book and use alchemy as books give 4 formulas( alchemist gets 8 formulas).

[Kurald Galain]

New blog, this one previewing the alchemist.

The first big takeaway from that is that alchemist bombs are now explicitly the same as alchemist fire, not the same concept with two different names (of course, alchemists can still make them deal more damage); this also means that other PCs can actually use your concoctions. Poisons also count as alchemical items now.

The other is that potions are no longer spells-in-a-can (which they weren't in 2E, but 3E made almost every item the equivalent of a spell).