Pathfinder 2 Playtest 2nd Edition: If it ain't broke, still fix it.

[Zman]

Hey, the devs are paying attention and trying to sort through all of the feedback to make reasonable responsible changes. That should make all of us happy.

I support the goal of resonance, just not quite its application. The "best" method of healing shouldn't be spamming a low level resource that due to WBL costs nothing. I support the idea of giving players choices of opportunity cost for what items they wear and use etc. But, resonance as it is has some issues. I'm glad the devs are paying attention and listening. Respectful constructive feedback seems to be more productive than constant negativity.

Look at signature skills. Player feedback was pretty negative towards them, and for good reason: they were legacy idea throwback of shoehorning players intso specific skill choices that limited customization. So, listening to the player feedback, what did the devs do? They have removed signatures kills and opened skills up to everyone. It will be in the Monday? errata.

The devs are aware of the problems with monster perception, monster skills, and the 10-2 skill table. They know about the problem, they understand the problems' causes(mainly skill items and the assumptions around them, some obsoleted tables), and they are actively working on solutions for them. What I've seen from the devs so far is that they are listening to people and they are working hard to make the best product they can. We may not always agree with them about what is best, but they are working harder and listening more than a lot of people give them credit for.

[Faily]

I am just concerned since reading people playing through the playtest stuff, damage spikes are pretty high due to the new way of critical hits, which means more healing is required... and I personally find it a very frustrating situation if the fighter needs to choose to spend what little Resonance they have on drinking a potion. It's kind of like having that "if you adventure without a healer, you're going to have a bad time"-meme become even more of a reality than I like it to be.

A lot of the adventuring parties we've had lately in my group that plays published APs have been without a "standard healer" and much of the job has been done with magic items. One party only had 1 caster, and it was a Witch. In War For The Crown, I'm the "main healer" as an Eldritch Poisoner Alchemist (I *can* heal, but I'm not particularly great at it), but mostly we're making due with Use Magic Device from the other caster in the group (a Mesmerist).

With PF2, we'd be long dead because of Resonance-rules.

[Rynjin]

It's just typical Paizo logic. "This thing is good and overshadows this other thing. Instead of making the latter worthwhile, let's make the former useless so the latter looks better by comparison".

See Also: Animal Companions, Scarred Witch Doctor

[Alexvrahr]

Over on the Paizo boards I asked people what the selling point of PF2 was, and besides 'I like it!' and 'It'll make writing adventure paths easier' the main point raised was 'It's designed to compete with/beat D&D 5e'. Is there anyone on this thread who likes D&D 5e & who could say whether it would be good at that?

[Rynjin]

I dislike 5e and don't see it stealing ANY significant portion of the market. The appeal of 5e is clear, and executed well (if not to my taste), not so for PF2e.

[Rhedyn]

Over on the Paizo boards I asked people what the selling point of PF2 was, and besides 'I like it!' and 'It'll make writing adventure paths easier' the main point raised was 'It's designed to compete with/beat D&D 5e'. Is there anyone on this thread who likes D&D 5e & who could say whether it would be good at that?

I don't like 5e, 5e is better designed than PF2e. But if I was forced to play one, I would play PF2e.

[DeadMech]

I picked up the playtest pdf a short while ago. Haven't finished reading it yet, busy with other stuff, and it's already outdated. I find that a bit humorous but it's fine. I'm also going to preface what I say with mentioning I have not played pathfinder before. Though I do greatly prefer 3.5 to 5e dnd. I never played 4e. I never heard good things about it and no one I knew was playing it so I never looked at it.

I can't tell you how happy I was reading the pdf when I saw it state something more akin to point buy was the default method of stat gen as opposed to rolling which they suggest as an option. Thank you so very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I have never understood people's resistance to point buy. Why would I ever want to play a game where one player is almost certain to get shafted because of luck and someone else will overshadow everyone else because of luck. It's a tabletop game. Bad dice rolls happen. But bad stat gen dice don't just screw you for one turn, or one encounter, or even just one adventure. It screws you for the entirety of the time you spend playing that character in that game. Oh and happy day. The pdf is telling me you don't roll for hp. Really? Is it christmas? You mean I wont ever have a game ruined by playing a melee character and rolling 1 or 2 multiple times across early levels? I don't want to spend a week preparing for a game, writing a backstory, researching a character build or spells or abilities, planning a few levels of advancement ahead of time, hyping myself up... only to get rng screwed and ponder Leeroy Jenkins'ing myself at the earliest opportunity because none of my planning is ever going to come to fruition. I came to the table expecting to play a hero not the bumbling sidekick lackey.

The only thing that could have made this better was if they abandoned the d20 and moved to a bell curve 3d6 dice pool. I'm not a fan of random chance overpowering skill and planning. Certainly not on a consistent basis. Few things in 5e make me quite so angry as how much more important a d20 roll is compared to any other factor. I've skimmed this discussion. Bounded accuracy comes up occasionally. I haven't read enough of the pf2 pdf to say. But on it's face it doesn't look nearly as awful as 5e in that regard. Ability scores aren't capped at 20 for the vast majority of the play. I get the feeling that the granular skill point system of 3.5 isn't present but I'm not that far in yet. But the proficiency bonus scaling looks larger than 5e. That's a good thing. Even in 3.5 there were times I felt the d20 was too important and players access to skills was too limited. I like that eventually heroes reach points where things that used to challenge them are now trivial.

Speaking of power scaling. I haven't gotten much into the crit and crit fail rules. Entities that massively out level their opponents are increasingly likely to crush them. the +10 over DC is an interesting way to do that. Interesting is a word I use in specific contexts. I'm still reserving judgement on if it's good or bad. But it's certainly... interesting.

Going way back to stat generation. It's a small detail but I really really like how the game forces you to increase more than just a single primary stat. Even in 3.5 I get this mild annoyance at how invariably people put all their eggs in one basket while ignoring anything else. It's something I'm guilty of too most of the time. The game only lets you increase ability scores so often and it only really makes sense to do certain things with those opportunities. But each time you gain multiple ability score increases from a source you have to put them into separate stats. So yeah, you may well have a dump stat but you certainly aren't going to have 1 primary stat and everything else looking like dump stats in comparison. It's not the biggest deal... just my own really weird hangups.

[upho]

The only thing that could have made this better was if they abandoned the d20 and moved to a bell curve 3d6 dice pool.

That could've at least reduced the current issues with player agency and PC investments having quite significantly reduced relative impact on the result in comparison to the RNG.

I'm not a fan of random chance overpowering skill and planning. Certainly not on a consistent basis. Few things in 5e make me quite so angry as how much more important a d20 roll is compared to any other factor.

I absolutely agree. But unfortunately PF2 takes huge steps in that direction.

I've skimmed this discussion. Bounded accuracy comes up occasionally. I haven't read enough of the pf2 pdf to say. But on it's face it doesn't look nearly as awful as 5e in that regard. Ability scores aren't capped at 20 for the vast majority of the play. I get the feeling that the granular skill point system of 3.5 isn't present but I'm not that far in yet. But the proficiency bonus scaling looks larger than 5e. That's a good thing. Even in 3.5 there were times I felt the d20 was too important and players access to skills was too limited. I like that eventually heroes reach points where things that used to challenge them are now trivial.

I'd say it's definitely better than 5e, but on the whole also worse than PF1. PCs simply don't get nearly enough tools to meaningfully impact the outcome of skill checks. IOW, I think the current system would've been much better if you had added a d10 rather than a d20 roll.

I have no problems with automatic level scaling per se, and I think the implementation of it could end up great in PF2 provided the impact of PC investments vs die rolls is increased.

Speaking of power scaling. I haven't gotten much into the crit and crit fail rules. Entities that massively out level their opponents are increasingly likely to crush them. the +10 over DC is an interesting way to do that. Interesting is a word I use in specific contexts. I'm still reserving judgement on if it's good or bad. But it's certainly... interesting.

This is actually one of the things I find the most interesting in PF2, and it's also one of the most novel in the history of D&D. The fluke nature of "low probability/massive effect"-type of crits in standard d20 and earlier D&D editions were generally just annoying IME, having way too much potential impact on the story and decreasing the value of the work a party puts into coming up with sound combat plans and tactics. And introducing a bit more granularity than the earlier standard binary result of more important rolls is great IMO.

I never played 4e. I never heard good things about it and no one I knew was playing it so I never looked at it.

Heh, I can't help but noticing that judging by what you've said here, maybe you should have looked at 4e:

I can't tell you how happy I was reading the pdf when I saw it state something more akin to point buy was the default method of stat gen as opposed to rolling which they suggest as an option. Thank you so very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

FYI, 4e was the first edition to do this (finally catching up to the many systems which had established the method decades ago).

The pdf is telling me you don't roll for hp. Really? Is it christmas? You mean I wont ever have a game ruined by playing a melee character and rolling 1 or 2 multiple times across early levels? I don't want to spend a week preparing for a game, writing a backstory, researching a character build or spells or abilities, planning a few levels of advancement ahead of time, hyping myself up... only to get rng screwed and ponder Leeroy Jenkins'ing myself at the earliest opportunity because none of my planning is ever going to come to fruition.

And 4e did this as well.

But each time you gain multiple ability score increases from a source you have to put them into separate stats. So yeah, you may well have a dump stat but you certainly aren't going to have 1 primary stat and everything else looking like dump stats in comparison.

Guess what? Yeah, 4e yet again!

[Cosi]

Yeah, that's right. I'm going there.

What's with the per formative bravery around talking about the mechanics of a game they're playtesting? Isn't that the actual and entire point of these blog posts?

First, they're meant to address the economy of lower-level consumable magic items as you level up. ... as you go up in level and your ability to purchase and craft (or find) lower-level consumable magic items increases, they actually become the most economical use of resources. When you are limited only by what you have on hand, the amount of bang per buck makes higher-level magic items nearly pointless.

This is the idea that's causing them problems. The notion of "low level magic items" is an inherently problematic one. There's simply no support for them anywhere in the genre. Seriously, how many instances of a character upgrading their healing item can you name (not counting games)? Because I can't name one. They should just figure out how much healing they want people to get, then set the system up so that people get that much healing. Resonance is just adding epicycles on a broken system.

In general, magic items shouldn't be leveled. Having a "level one magic sword" and a "level two magic sword" and a "level three magic sword" just adds a pointless level treadmill that doesn't produce engaging mechanics and breaks genre emulation. If you have an appropriately plussed sword, it doesn't feel like anything because the game assumes you have one. If you don't have it, it feels bad because you're under performing. And it's not representative of the source material, unless you define that material exclusively as "earlier editions of D&D" (and probably not even then). There's no scene in the Knights of the Round Table where King Arthur trades Excalibur for another magic sword with a slightly bigger bonus. At no point in The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings do Bilbo or Frodo replace their magical ring with another magical-er ring.

The solution for magic items is to ensure that characters are level appropriate without them, then allow them to be what they are in fantasy -- totally arbitrary upgrades with totally arbitrary powers. Then you can use random magic items over WBL (a huge improvement, and one of the AD&D-ism people should be calling for to come back), you can decouple magic items from the economy (allowing people to have castles and kingdoms without wanting to sell them off for better magic swords), and you get a built-in mechanism for DMs to address in-play balance issues (by giving loot that helps whoever is underperforming). And while your system should mostly generate items that are vaguely level appropriate, it should also occasionally (on the order of once every few campaigns) spit out something absurdly overleveled. Because that's the plot of The Hobbit, and it generates some really memorable stories.

None of that requires or benefits from resonance.

Another problem Resonance Points are trying to address is what is often called the "Christmas Tree" effect of games that impose limits based solely on magic item slots.

That's ... not what the Magic Item Christmas Tree refers to.

So basically they want to shoe-horn in the need of a Healer (Cleric, Paladin, or Druid or whatever that can cast healing spells) in an adventuring group, since no group can get on by potions, wands, and other magical items of healing...

I think what they're doing probably ends up having that effect, but the way they think about it is probably more like "Players should feel rewarded for playing a Cleric", and they just don't see a role for Clerics other than Healbot (which is deeply disappointing).

Heh, I can't help but noticing that judging by what you've said here, maybe you should have looked at 4e:FYI, 4e was the first edition to do this (finally catching up to the many systems which had established the method decades ago).

And 4e did this as well.

Guess what? Yeah, 4e yet again!

It feels a little disingenuous to suggest 4e on the basis that it makes those changes. I mean, yes it does, but those are basically houserules (indeed, most 3e campaigns I've seen use most or all of them).

Definitely. And I can actually give them a bit of a pass for doing that back when making PF1, as well as for being hesitant on bringing them back later due to their dependence on PFS. But for PF2, there really are no such excuses IMO.

I don't see why they couldn't have used the notion of "Backwards Compatibility" they were pushing at the beginning to grandfather in PFS characters.

I think I actually got the Terrence and Philips reference though...

Can you explain that one? Because I have no idea what he's talking about.

[Storyteller_Arc]

Ya know, I’m quite glad to have come across this thread.

Whilst... some people are just here in order to bitch about how much they hate P2E, and how its the evilest thing that ever existed and that Paizo deserve to burn in hell because of it, blah-blah-blah. There’s also quite a bit of good, solid discussion about the pro’s and cons of the P2E system, what its done good with its change, what isn’t working out so well, and what needs to be reworked and improved, and what needs to be dropped entirely.

Plus, honestly? The discussion about 4th edition, its faults and flaws, as well as what it did well, as been endlessly fascinating. Considering the fact that I myself am quite the fan of 4th edition, even through my experience in actually playing it is rather limited, I’m grateful to see the fact people are willing to take a more nuanced approach to it, even if they aren’t fans of it.

I’ll probably be leaving me own 2 bits on the 4e Class Discussion, as well as my thoughts on the playtest overall when I have the time. For now, I’m just noting down how much I’m enjoying this thread.

[Rhedyn]

The announcement of PF2e got us to look at 4e.

After playing some of it, it's a fine game. Characters are meaty right out of the gate, all the essential roleplaying bits are there, and I felt like we already knew 90% of the rules because we played 5e (which is basically just a stripped down 4e with some 1-3e paint).

If you want a tactical game with mechanical depth that's easy to play, 4e already exists in a complete form and does everything PF2e wants to do but better.

If you want an immersive crunch heavy game
with characters so customizable that it'll make your head spin and that's simpler than you might think after character creation, GURPS 4e Basic Set exist and is still supported (with actual content, not the same supported as GURPS 3e like PF1e will be regulated to).

I guess if you want a D&D 4e with more clunk and less content, then PF2e is your jam. PF2e is no more immersive than D&D 4e, so your decision comes down to whether or not you want to play a game wearing 3.5s corpse even though they both have the same skeleton.

[Zman]

Over on the Paizo boards I asked people what the selling point of PF2 was, and besides 'I like it!' and 'It'll make writing adventure paths easier' the main point raised was 'It's designed to compete with/beat D&D 5e'. Is there anyone on this thread who likes D&D 5e & who could say whether it would be good at that?

I played but disliked 3.P, liked 5e despite its shortcomings. Houseruled both. I overall like P2 and once it gets some of the kinds worked out that I mentioned above it will be solid. It sits between 3.P and 5e right now, and with a Variant rule for removing +lvl it plays very similar to 5e, but is a superior bound system IMO. From where I'm coming from, P2 would have far fewer houserules to get the kind of game I want.

I know at least one dev thinks that the "Bound" variant rule is a "no-brainer" and will have a home in a Gamemaster Guide type supplement. So, I have hope for that.

[Storyteller_Arc]

Also I seriously need to read Starfinder, as it seems there is a lot of changes between it and Pathfinder.

[Pex]

This is the idea that's causing them problems. The notion of "low level magic items" is an inherently problematic one. There's simply no support for them anywhere in the genre. Seriously, how many instances of a character upgrading their healing item can you name (not counting games)? Because I can't name one. They should just figure out how much healing they want people to get, then set the system up so that people get that much healing. Resonance is just adding epicycles on a broken system.

In general, magic items shouldn't be leveled. Having a "level one magic sword" and a "level two magic sword" and a "level three magic sword" just adds a pointless level treadmill that doesn't produce engaging mechanics and breaks genre emulation. If you have an appropriately plussed sword, it doesn't feel like anything because the game assumes you have one. If you don't have it, it feels bad because you're under performing. And it's not representative of the source material, unless you define that material exclusively as "earlier editions of D&D" (and probably not even then). There's no scene in the Knights of the Round Table where King Arthur trades Excalibur for another magic sword with a slightly bigger bonus. At no point in The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings do Bilbo or Frodo replace their magical ring with another magical-er ring.

The solution for magic items is to ensure that characters are level appropriate without them, then allow them to be what they are in fantasy -- totally arbitrary upgrades with totally arbitrary powers. Then you can use random magic items over WBL (a huge improvement, and one of the AD&D-ism people should be calling for to come back), you can decouple magic items from the economy (allowing people to have castles and kingdoms without wanting to sell them off for better magic swords), and you get a built-in mechanism for DMs to address in-play balance issues (by giving loot that helps whoever is underperforming). And while your system should mostly generate items that are vaguely level appropriate, it should also occasionally (on the order of once every few campaigns) spit out something absurdly overleveled. Because that's the plot of The Hobbit, and it generates some really memorable stories.

None of that requires or benefits from resonance.

That is what 5E does. I have no problem with that. What I do have a problem with is that some DMs take this idea and use it as an excuse to not giving out magic items at all. If they do give out magic items they are one time use consumables of little power. If it's potent it's meant for the BBEG fight, but then the PCs won't have it any more for further adventures. 5E has magic items. 5E does not forbid magic items. 5E does not fall apart into an unplayable mess because PCs have permanent magic items that are effective in combat. It's a DM thing, not 5E's fault. I'm not demanding a return to PCs being Christmas Trees, but I don't want PCs to be North Korea at night either which these DMs crave.

If P2 manages to achieve this idea I hope it does a better job at teaching DMs that even though PCs don't need any particular magic item to function they should still get a few for the fun, some admitted potency, for story potential, and not just trinkets like clothing that never gets dirty which is a nice touch but does nothing.

[Serafina]

The announcement of PF2e got us to look at 4e.

After playing some of it, it's a fine game. Characters are meaty right out of the gate, all the essential roleplaying bits are there, and I felt like we already knew 90% of the rules because we played 5e (which is basically just a stripped down 4e with some 1-3e paint).

If you want a tactical game with mechanical depth that's easy to play, 4e already exists in a complete form and does everything PF2e wants to do but better.

If you want an immersive crunch heavy game
with characters so customizable that it'll make your head spin and that's simpler than you might think after character creation, GURPS 4e Basic Set exist and is still supported (with actual content, not the same supported as GURPS 3e like PF1e will be regulated to).

I guess if you want a D&D 4e with more clunk and less content, then PF2e is your jam. PF2e is no more immersive than D&D 4e, so your decision comes down to whether or not you want to play a game wearing 3.5s corpse even though they both have the same skeleton.

If you enjoy 4E, and want a ton more customization, definetly do take a look at hybrid characters. It's easily the best implementation of getting a good combination of two classes right from 1st level I've seen so far, and it effectively massively expands what concepts you can represent. Essentials characters can also help a lot as well, basically being entirely new classes that often combine a lot better with others than you'd expect.

And of course 4E multiclassing basically works like it does in PF2E - you crib a couple of class features. Though that does bring something up for me:
I wish multiclassing "Dedication" was more rewarding.

Right now, the Dedication-mechanic is basically meaningless unless you want to get two archetypes for some reason. But imagine if it did something else instead: the more Dedication-feats you take, thus making your commitment to that class stronger, the better abilities from that class you can get:
- for the Fighter, this could be what limits or increases what level Fighter feat you can take. With good dedication (say, 50:50 class/fighter feats), you could just grab feats at the same level as the Fighter.
- same for the Rogue
- same for Clerics and Wizards, but it could also be what limits your access to truly high-level spells, so that it's not quite as cheap to get those. Alternatively, you could could get extra spell slots from high dedication.

If done well, such a system could almost turn a character into a true Hybrid between two classes - you'd spend your class feats half and half on each class.

[Storyteller_Arc]

Question. Would people be alright if I throw out some questions about some of the changes that 4th Edition did make, and how they feel about them? This is primarily about Pathfinder 2nd Edition, sure, and I’ll try to focus on that. But at the same time, the people posting here are very passionate about D&D and game mechanics in general, so I would love to be able to get some input as I’m quite curious.

Anyway, my thoughts on Fourth Edition’s Class Feel

Spoiler

Show

So, first a preface, talking about my interaction with 4th Edition. When it comes to actually playing 4th edition, my experience is zilch. Zero. Nada. The only experience I’ve had with playing 4th Edition comes from the DM. Of a single session. Where I TPKed my ‘party’ (read: Parents & Elder brother), on the very first combat, and the campaign pretty much died there.

When it comes to 4th Edition. My experience is restricted almost entirely to one avenue of the game: Character creation. First through the official D&D Insider character generator, and than Hero Lab’s 4th Edition character generator. Both of which I have spent money on. Simply because I enjoy the character creation of 4th Edition that much. A fact, which probably spells out my own sense of the character creation

I enjoyed it. A lot. Even from the very first book, when I opened it up, I loved how each of the classes were different and distinct! Sure, they all that AEDU systems which people talk about, but pretty much instantly saw the differences, both from the class features of the characters, and the at-will powers themselves. Rangers where badass two-weapon fighters whilst warlocks tended to snipe from range. Paladins had a combination of divine punishment and healing, whilst fighters were more focused on opportunity attacks and melee combat. Then you have the different Paragon Paths, which better define the classes from each other, on top of the different Epic Destinies...

Honestly, whilst I can see, to a degree, where people are coming from when they declared that all of the classes felt the same. I just can’t agree: Even from the very start, the base class features of each class felt distinct and strong, and the base class features were simply further supported by their powers. I just can’t see them being at all similar to one another.

[Recherché]

I have some experience playing with 4e and I vastly prefer 3rd/PF but less because everything felt samey and more because it didn't feel like there were enough opportunities to build super weird things and use abilities in ways that the designers never intended. In PF I have characters building structures mid battle via use of walls of stone and spying on enemies via invisible summoned imps. I avoid fights via divination and teleporting past them. I pull off Ocean's 11-esque heists with invisibility and improbably bluffing skills. In one of the more infamous incidents in our group we dealt with a challenge via surrendering to the police and then suing the (Lawful Good) government for police brutality. And while you can do some of these things in 4e, it just doesn't come as naturally to the system in my experience. Instead everything is pushed towards tactical grid based combat which tends to be a less interesting and creative way to solve a problem IMO.

Coming back to the question of samey-ness, what makes 4e feel somewhat samey to me is that it's rare in my experience for characters to have those really odd unexpected abilities that you can combine like legos to create something that goes about defeating challenges in an truly unusual way. There's rarely a moment of "How do I turn pulling infinite chickens out of a bag into a viable means of attack" or to bring up something that happened in actual play "How do I make a monkey familiar equipped with syringes full of drugs into an important part of this character." Sure you can refluff things but that's a bit different than me finding these strange possibilities inherently in the game to turn into something fun.

[Storyteller_Arc]

Nope, you just raise whichever ones you like! Also, fighters, monks, and their other friends with fewer signature skills will now start at a total of 5 skills trained at 1st level before Intelligence modifier.

Direct quote from one of the game designers. So hopefully stuff like this will put the naysayers to bed... or at least have them concede that for this playlist, the Pathfinder devs are much, much more willing to actually listen to the general feedback from the game. After all, not only are they removing signature skills, but their adding more trained skills to everyone before Int and stuff.

[MrSandman]

Spoiler: Player feedback and Resonance

Show

Over the past few weeks, I've been spending some time talking to folks on the unofficial 2nd Ed Pathfinder Playtest group on Facebook. Mostly I've been listening to people's thoughts and anecdotes about the playtest, but I've also been answering a few rules questions and conversing about various subjects. Something that's come up a couple of times in that group and in other forums is how we, the folks at Paizo and especially the design team, respond to criticism.

We are no stranger to playtests. Each time we launch a playtest, we get a pile of feedback, both positive and negative. Both are important. Of course, we all love hearing what you like, and in a perfect world we would bask in the glory of your adoration... but we only create worlds of fantasy, we don't live in one. We playtest to hear what you think about the rules and to get your take on what is sound, exciting, and fun. Sometimes you might not care for our initial design. Sometimes you'll spot problems with the initial design. We want you to tell us. No, we need you to tell us. We're making this game not for ourselves, but for all of us to play!

Case in point—let's talk about Resonance Points.

Yeah, that's right. I'm going there.

Let's talk about exactly what design challenges Resonance Points were designed to solve, as that seems to be a point of some confusion.

First, they're meant to address the economy of lower-level consumable magic items as you level up. This is colloquially referred to as the wand of cure light wounds issue in Pathfinder First Edition, but it's more systemic than that. In short, as you go up in level and your ability to purchase and craft (or find) lower-level consumable magic items increases, they actually become the most economical use of resources. When you are limited only by what you have on hand, the amount of bang per buck makes higher-level magic items nearly pointless.

This problem and the Pathfinder First Edition method of item pricing also played havoc with lower-level items with limited uses per day. Designers, by nature, want you to use the items they created in actual play. But adventure designers are often under budgetary constraints to make not the best item for the story, but the one that does the trick while still conforming to the amount of treasure output in the design guides. These factors often created a race to the bottom, design-wise, spawning tons of these little X-per-day buggers that characters could afford, featuring relatively powerful (and always useful) effects that often became more useful as you gained levels. All of this creates a sort of mini-nova during climactic encounters, as characters spend a handful of swift and immediate actions ramping up to their optimal tactics. This is especially true for classes in the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook, since they typically have fewer class-based options competing for the use of swift and immediate actions.

Another problem Resonance Points are trying to address is what is often called the "Christmas Tree" effect of games that impose limits based solely on magic item slots. This goes hand in hand with the cheap consumable (or X-uses-per-day items), as many players rush to fill their slots with items featuring charges or uses per day. While slots still exist in the Pathfinder Playtest, they are the exception rather than the rule, and their primary goal is simply reducing redundancies (like wearing two pairs of boots at the same time and similar nonsense).

Lastly, the Resonance Point system is intended to eliminate or at least severely limit the bookkeeping involved in those X-uses-per-day and X-rounds-per-day items. Instead of tracking a bunch of little point pools, Resonance Points can do the job in most, if not all, cases, with the rest limited to once per day. Admittedly, this aspect was not as thoroughly implemented as it could have been in the playtest rules.

Those are the main issues that the Resonance Point system is trying to confront. Are there problems with the current implementation? You bet. The most glaring one is that it's currently not doing a good job of reducing the number of magic item use-per-day pools at higher levels. We're going to need to pound the system into shape a little more to achieve that goal.

A big issue is that a lot of folks just plain don't like Resonance Points. There are many reasons for that. It's new and different from what people are used to. Other folks don't see the challenges this system is trying to tackle, or they don't see them as problematic. More telling is that even many who do understand the issues have some misgivings, feel that this solution is too artificial, or see it as just plain punitive. We anticipated that. But even with all of the issues, we knew that the current design of Resonance Points would give us valuable information about play patterns and consumable use throughout the playtest, and it has done that in spades already and continues to do so.

Better still, it has given us valuable information on how to solve the issues that the Resonance Point system confronts in a better and more pleasing way for the final game. In short, your use of the current incarnation of Resonance Points throughout the playtest helps us come up with better mechanics to use in Pathfinder Second Edition. You've done a great job in providing us that information already, and as we move into higher-level play, that useful data will become more abundant.

So, in the case of Resonance Points, positivity of play and critical comments have guided us in the right direction. We already have a few options on how to either fix or replace the mechanic, and we are going to keep on kicking ideas around as the playtest data keeps flowing in. So keep on filling out those surveys and sharing your opinions. Getting your thoughts on the game and how it plays, no matter how you express them, is what the Pathfinder Playtest is all about.

Stephen Radney-MacFarland
Senior Designer

So, basically, part of the issue we're trying to solve is that high-level characters use wands of CLW instead of wands of CMW because they have a better price/quality ratio. So instead of making wands of CMW worth their price, we'll just limit the amount of consummables that characters can use.

[upho]

This is the idea that's causing them problems. The notion of "low level magic items" is an inherently problematic one. There's simply no support for them anywhere in the genre. Seriously, how many instances of a character upgrading their healing item can you name (not counting games)? Because I can't name one. They should just figure out how much healing they want people to get, then set the system up so that people get that much healing. Resonance is just adding epicycles on a broken system.

So much this. To me, it very much appears the problem is that the PDT have seemingly never actually continued the chain of thought far enough to reach its logical conclusion, but instead stopped as soon as they bumped into a proverbial holy cow ordained by previous editions, without questioning the holiness of said cow.

In general, magic items shouldn't be leveled. Having a "level one magic sword" and a "level two magic sword" and a "level three magic sword" just adds a pointless level treadmill that doesn't produce engaging mechanics and breaks genre emulation. If you have an appropriately plussed sword, it doesn't feel like anything because the game assumes you have one. If you don't have it, it feels bad because you're under performing. And it's not representative of the source material, unless you define that material exclusively as "earlier editions of D&D" (and probably not even then). There's no scene in the Knights of the Round Table where King Arthur trades Excalibur for another magic sword with a slightly bigger bonus. At no point in The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings do Bilbo or Frodo replace their magical ring with another magical-er ring.

The solution for magic items is to ensure that characters are level appropriate without them, then allow them to be what they are in fantasy -- totally arbitrary upgrades with totally arbitrary powers. Then you can use random magic items over WBL (a huge improvement, and one of the AD&D-ism people should be calling for to come back), you can decouple magic items from the economy (allowing people to have castles and kingdoms without wanting to sell them off for better magic swords), and you get a built-in mechanism for DMs to address in-play balance issues (by giving loot that helps whoever is underperforming). And while your system should mostly generate items that are vaguely level appropriate, it should also occasionally (on the order of once every few campaigns) spit out something absurdly overleveled. Because that's the plot of The Hobbit, and it generates some really memorable stories.

Yes indeed. Especially if the goal is to avoid the "Radney-MacFarland X-mas Tree"-effect (as far as I've understood it), it does seem pretty counter-productive to include a general design which allocates significant percentages of a PC's "expected numbers" to bonuses from various magic items.

That's ... not what the Magic Item Christmas Tree refers to.

Maybe the definition has been greatly widened over the years in some crowds? But yeah, he's not talking about any Magic Item X-mas Tree I'm familiar with.

I think what they're doing probably ends up having that effect, but the way they think about it is probably more like "Players should feel rewarded for playing a Cleric", and they just don't see a role for Clerics other than Healbot (which is deeply disappointing).

Yep. And it may unfortunately end up worse than that, with the Cleric not just being forced into a healbot role, but the niche protection also making it acceptable if the healing proves insufficient for combat use. Basically saying "the Cleric's main schtick may be useless in combat, but it's still powerful because nobody else can do it". And then we'll yet again end up with stuff like "fast healing 5" being largely treated as if it was some kind of epic ability reserved for high level PCs, when the truth is it's barely anything but a minor discount on out-of-combat healing expenditure in higher levels, and most certainly nothing which notably increases your chances of surviving combat.

It feels a little disingenuous to suggest 4e on the basis that it makes those changes. I mean, yes it does, but those are basically houserules (indeed, most 3e campaigns I've seen use most or all of them).

It was a bit disingenuous, in a quite deliberate and not very serious tongue-in-cheek way. And yeah, my regular group had completely abandoned rolling for stats and HP by the time 3e was released. But nevertheless, it is true that 4e was the first edition to make this the explicit default, which was what DeadMech said he liked about PF2.

I don't see why they couldn't have used the notion of "Backwards Compatibility" they were pushing at the beginning to grandfather in PFS characters.

I don't think so, because by the time PFS had grown to become Paizo's main marketing and sales channel, I'm pretty certain a large majority of their buyers weren't people who used to play 3e. Which I assume is also why the alternative rules system they did release which at least attempted to address some of the issues in the core system were explicitly not core.

Can you explain that one? Because I have no idea what he's talking about.

I assume you're familiar with the South Park "show-in-show" Terence and Philips? If you are, you also know how that show's "fart-based" humor is about as dumbed down an immature as it gets, even more so than South Park itself (which is why it's so damn fun). Which is also a rather vicious but nevertheless also a pretty fun and accurate description of Essentials relation to the rest of the game, and by extension 4e as a whole.

(If you're actually not familiar with T & P, here's a taster. Beware of foul language and other foul noises!)

[upho]

So, basically, part of the issue we're trying to solve is that high-level characters use wands of CLW instead of wands of CMW because they have a better price/quality ratio. So instead of making wands of CMW worth their price, we'll just limit the amount of consummables that characters can use.

Nice to see you popping in! To the matter at hand, the important question here is why.

Or more precisely, what exactly is wrong with wands of CLW providing cheap healing for high-level characters?

I honestly cannot see any major problems with this, but quite a few potentially major positive effects, including for example increased class/role flexibility and party setup flexibility. In other words, especially when it comes to low-rate healing, there are significant game design benefits to be gained by providing it through easily accessible cheap consumables in higher levels, not to mention there's probably savings to be made in terms of less required design work. And while I don't necessarily think the resonance system concept is bad per se, I definitely believe deliberately designing it to prevent a higher level party without a dedicated healbot from cost-efficient out-of-combat HP healing is.

What am I missing here?

[RedWarlock]

The bigger issue with upgrading magic items is that, for things like healing that are linear progressive, but costed in a square progression, since (by 3.x/PF magic item costs) you pay for both the spell level and the caster level.

Now, I could think of a few different ways of making you want to use higher-level healing items, amongst them the idea of HP damage resolving into lasting “injury” conditions once combat is over, making you want to recover fast, not slow. Or maybe cure effects fade in effectiveness with repeat use. (One technique I use in my games is actually flipping the script. Instead of characters gaining HP with levels, “Support” classes provide protection in the form of temporary hit points that scale based on THEIR level, which don’t stack from different sources. The Healer/Buffer doesn’t get you to normal, they boost you to excellence. Potions and wands can’t keep up.)

Resonance isn’t that far off from a system I use in my own homebrew, but mine actually spends for powering permanent/daily-recharge items rather than one-time-use-limited stuff. (You get 3x your character level in permanent gear you can use. That cost effectively equals the caster level of the item, so you can choose to focus into, let’s say, 3 full-power items, or choose to split down into numerous smaller effects. “Artifacts” auto-scale to the amount invested into them, making them useable from low to high levels, ala legacy weapons.)

[T.G. Oskar]

Over on the Paizo boards I asked people what the selling point of PF2 was, and besides 'I like it!' and 'It'll make writing adventure paths easier' the main point raised was 'It's designed to compete with/beat D&D 5e'. Is there anyone on this thread who likes D&D 5e & who could say whether it would be good at that?

I like 5e. I also like 3.5. Not a fan of Pathfinder 1e (I think I've stated that before), though I'd give it a chance if someone were to invite me. My gaming group has pretty much switched to it because it's simple to play, and also simple to DM. One of the players is running a Curse of Strahd campaign now, and is doing wonderfully he's a natural, even though he was overwhelmed a bit. I've done mostly an extended one-shot, winging it a lot, and it has worked so far.

Is PF2e meant to compete with 5e? I'd say yes, because it's the bigger target right now. 5e is pretty popular, after all. Is it meant to "beat" 5e? Can't confirm nor deny it - 5e is still pretty hot despite having its time, and PF is still popular despite nearing the end of its run. Both brands are pretty strong, stronger than other brands; consider whether any of the games of the Storyteller/Storytelling System, aka Vampire/Mage/Werewolf/Exalted, are more popular than 5e or PF1e right now. Or, say, Shadowrun 5e. Or Savage Worlds.

People WILL buy PF2e, people will probably ENJOY PF2e, and it'll definitely compete with D&D 5e for the wallets of gamers, but I consider they'll most likely co-exist. One will not overcome the other, though it'll depend on marketing - and 5e has it cornered between Acquisitions Inc., Critical Role and other streamed games. That said, Pathfinder DOES have a streamed game.

Huh? I think your expectations and/or reading of the DM guidelines must've been quite a bit off in that case. One of the more commonly voiced critiques of the game among those who played it according to guidelines and official adventures as written was that the challenges were too easy. Also, keep in mind that while Litigation's pally guide (which I assume was the one you used) was indeed very complete and masterfully put together, it was very much an optimization guide. That means the options that got highly rated were mostly stuff you needed in order to perform far above the baseline expectations set by the DM guidelines. If you didn't actually play the game, I can see how it may be difficult to understand just how much stronger an optimized pally is in comparison to its casually built counterpart which the game largely expected.

True, it's an optimization guide. I didn't use it with the idea of creating the strongest character ever, but to figure out which options were traps. I deliberately chose some trap options (again, Knight of Celestia) because they were thematically fitting, and I liked the idea behind the Paragon Path, and as I saw it, I could actually make it work for the build and not act as a trap option. I used the optimization guide less to optimize and more as a guide, using someone else's system mastery to help me understand the system.

So far, I still don't find much fun in something that I do for fun when speaking about 4e. I spent days working on the build, and I felt it was a chore, and I love doing full builds, 1-20 (or in 4e's case, 1-30), with my progression fully developed. This is a big part of my fun. I can do this with 5e pretty easily, and I don't feel like the apparent lack of options is limiting. I love doing this with 3.x, even to this point. I've done this with PF1e, with mixed results (I feel I need to revise my Paladin build, but if I had the chance, I'd love to play with the Inquisitor I built, because it feels awesome and something I couldn't do in 3.5). In 4e...I don't feel comfortable playing with that build, which I spent hours working and tweaking, choosing the right powers and the right magic items and painstakingly jotting down every number I should care about.

Maybe my Paladin build could be a powerhouse, but I didn't have fun building it, compared to other builds I've made. This is the game that should feel rewarding to such purpose, but it didn't.

And, to refer to PF2e - making a character took me some time, but I feel just as uneasy with it as with the 4e and PF1e builds. Not because I don't think I could master PF2e's system, but because I feel that, despite all the options it has, it does so little. My Warrior build in Dragon Age RPG feels more fun to build and play, and feels like it has more options, even though I'm 100% sure the PF2e build has more options.

This. So much this.

As I've said before, 4e's arguably greatest problem was its presentation, and I think everything you're saying here are effects of that. And most of those who played the game noticed that what began as nuances pretty soon turned into major differences between classes - and often class builds - in terms of combined mechanics and play styles. Still, in comparison to 3e, while this difference was huge when it came to 4e's martial class counterparts, it really was mostly the opposite for most of the other classes.

Again, I refer to what I said above. 4e should have felt like the system catered to me, someone who loves doing builds just because I'm bored. It felt like a chore, and presentation is only the tip of the iceberg.

Sure, I could notice there were some differences between the classes, but I can't really explain which. I went with a concept I like a lot (Damage Redirection), and most of the powers I chose focused on that (Utility powers, some of the Guardian theme powers, eventually getting stuff like Benign Transposition), and I mixed it with a reliable source of damage (boosts to Radiant damage), with attacks that could hit all four defenses. Explaining the gist might seem fairly easy, but I just can't explain the intricacies and why it should be a fun and strong build unless whoever else I speak understands the system. I used the optimization guide to pinpoint those options, and catch a few of the nicer tricks to make the build a lot more robust.

Now, having said that, what are the chances that a Paladin/Swordmage Hybrid build would have done a much better work on that? Surely, the concept of teleportation makes it different to the Fighter, but...how different from the Swordmage, who relies a lot more on teleportation than the Paladin does to enforce its Defender role? Furthermore, how the Swordmage differs from the Paladin on the secondary aspects I chose (Paladin has a focus on Radiance, sure, but if I were to say, focus on Lightning, how different would be the power suites in terms of the effects? Or would both be the same but differing only on elemental damage focus?). At a glance, I can see in 3.x how the Fighter and the Paladin differ - the Fighter has a ton of feats and depends on how well you know all your feats, Paladins get spells and supernatural abilities and get a larger access to feats, but cannot rely as much in feats as the Fighter does, so it has to specialize to make ends meet. This is at a glance, because you can see the class tables and notice that. Same thing in 5e - Fighter gets a handful of abilities but relies greatly on their Martial Archetypes, whereas the Paladin depends greatly on its spell selection and has the choice of Oath influence it slightly lesser. In 4e, figuring out which feats were focused for a specific aspect of the Paladin that I wanted to improve went beyond what I consider "fun" and more towards the aspect of "homework", and some of the feats simply seemed and worked as trash.

LOL! Yes, very succinctly summarized indeed.

Was trying to be funny on that one, but again, don't want to push into politics. It does reflect on why PF became so popular - it took the people that liked 3.x and gave them an extension, and used the same things that made WotC snatch the leadership by the latter parts of 3.5. 4e was, to those who play PF1e and those who embraced 5e, alien; in my case, I insist that 4e could have been better received if it didn't had the baggage of the "Dungeons & Dragons" brand behind it. Have the Nentir Vale and the "Points of Light" campaign be stripped down from the D&D baggage, and the same for races and classes, and people might have focused on AEDU with different eyes.

That doesn't mean the system doesn't feel to me like a video game anymore. I don't play World of Warcraft, and when I saw how the class progression worked, I felt like I was seeing a WoW character. That said, most games nowadays are embracing that design; look at Dragon Age 2 and how a ton of its abilities are essentially "character does X% physical/magical damage and impose an effect", though it also has a ton of passive abilities which are most definitely NOT in 4e, unless you consider feats.

[Rhedyn]

Funny thing about 4e. It's flavored like D&D which is cool. The abilities have the same names and basically do the same things.

Aside from bias, it's only real problem is that the rules are less immersive than 3e while still being a rules heavy game unlike 5e which nets being a mid-crunch game.

It's basically the same problem PF2e has. PF2e will test just how much "is D&D" was actually important to 4e's fall. Because it's characters are still the same feat+spell slot combo as 3e/5e

[Morty]

As far as wands of CLW go, I feel like it is a problem and not something that should happen. Paizo just seems to be taking the wrong conclusions from it. People want efficient healing and they don't want one member of the party to constantly devote resources to keeping everyone on their feet. So they'll use the most cost-effective option to keep the healing coming. To me, this illustrates that D&D's health and healing model is fundamentally flawed, but the designers aren't willing to depart from the "cleric throws HP at people" imagery.

As is often the case with D&D, what works doesn't really matter. What really matters is whether or not it feels familiar and "how D&D should be". Form over function.

That doesn't mean the system doesn't feel to me like a video game anymore. I don't play World of Warcraft, and when I saw how the class progression worked, I felt like I was seeing a WoW character. That said, most games nowadays are embracing that design; look at Dragon Age 2 and how a ton of its abilities are essentially "character does X% physical/magical damage and impose an effect", though it also has a ton of passive abilities which are most definitely NOT in 4e, unless you consider feats.

I would like you to re-examine those two statements from the point of view of logical consistency.

[NomGarret]

Alright, here’s hoping the continued talk about 4e has meta enough lessons to be relevant.

I never felt that 4e was a game made for full progression builds. Yes there’s lots of choice candy, but they don’t build off each other the way they do in other versions. My experience was one of shortlists. Jot down the options I’m considering on the back of the sheet. Pick one and revisit the pool the next go-around. It let me be more responsive to the ebb and flow of the campaign. Theorycrafting that choice order to a greater degree doesn’t sound like a lot of fun, I agree.

[Storyteller_Arc]

Have to admit, it's strange talking with people who said they found D&D 4th Edition character gen a chore, that they didn’t see how the different abilities and feats built off each other, what they different builds were and how the different parts could interact with each other. Whenever I have 11 different full level 30 builds on HeroLab. 2 of which were more focused on optimization than anything else, but the other 9 were all character-specific builds that combined flavour with optimization.

I do admit, that maybe this was because I read quite a few guides, that I had the tricks and combos revealed to me, without looking for them myself... but at the same time, I know that not all of it came from the D&D 4th edition. Heck, I was excited enough about the character builds that I went over four, varying, different, optimization avenues, and whilst some of the tricks and combos I discuss in them came from the guides, some of them I peaced together myself.

Which, bringing me back to Pathfinder 2E. For the playtest, I can see some neat combos and abilities that would synergize well together, how these different abilities and additions would build off one another and grow in time. Which is pretty neat. But on the other hand, sometimes I feel like I can see them because their so freaking obviously, and that if your going for a certain build, your likely going to be pressured into picking up that feat because it's such a damn obvious choice that your gonna HAVE to go and pick it up. Otherwise your not really doing your build any favours.

I mean, I’ll need to actually play it to make sure, but we’ll see.

[Recherché]

It's not that I wasn't using optimization guides when trying to make 4e characters. I was. It just felt like the system was fighting me every step of the way in trying to make the kind of character I want with all the focus on defeating challenges without resorting to slugging things out in an extended close quarters hp pool vs hp pool fight.

[Storyteller_Arc]

Okay, that I fully admit is an issue for of 4th Edition: Heavy, heavy focused on combat on a local, tactical level.

Honestly, OOTS has a strip showing the strengths and weaknesses of the two editions quite well.

[Kish]

You mean a print-only story, in Snips, Snails, and Dragon Tales?

It's hilarious. "Less emphasis on system mastery!" "Less emphasis on system mastery!"