Pathfinder

" If you exceeded the target DC by 10 or more, or if you rolled a natural 20 and met or exceeded the target DC, then you critically succeeded"

so while a nat 20 isn't necessarily a critical success, it has a greater chance to be, and vice versa. I'm still not sold on this personally, since for people attempting something risky it penalizes them extra for failure. I can see it for instances like save or dies, but not so much for trying to jump a gap when you're not a master acrobat.

Yeah, I think you got it now.

And yeah, I'm also confused about how it works with skills because I do consider it dumb if there is 5% auto fail and success with all skills, Mark Seifer's reply doesn't really clear matter for me

Like, implication on his comment that I understood was that "Nat 20 on acrobatics doesn't mean you can jump 100 kilometers, because jumping decide is based on total result of the roll", but implication seems to be that GM doesn't make you to roll skill rolls where you can succeed only with nat 20? I don't honestly get what he means, so hopefully blog post on skills will clear that up. Either way, yeah, I'm skeptical about applying 5% auto failure and success on skills because it would be really frustrating to fail diplo roll just because of nat 1(assuming bonuses in 2e do go high enough that you would have succeeded if not for nat 1)

edited 31st Mar '18 10:01:29 AM by SpookyMask

The proficiency system will prevent you from even attempting some stuff if you're not proficient enough (see blog post "Are you proficient?"). And in this blog post, they explain that being proficient enough helps you mitigate the failures (especially the critical ones). As for critical results and natural 1s and 20s, here's how it works:

• If you roll a natural 20, it's an automatic success. If you also meet or exceed the DC, it's a critical success.
• If you roll a natural 1, it's an automatic failure. If you also fail to meet the DC, it's a critical failure.
• If you roll anything else and exceed the DC by 10 or more, it's a critical success.
• If you roll anything else and you fail by 10 or more, it's a critical failure.

There is also that its possible not every skill has critical failure effect. They already stated that regarding attack rolls, you just miss, there is no fumble effect.

Oh thank Aroden.

Looks like Touch AC won't be as uniformly easy to hit as it was in 1e since some armors and all shields seem to improve it. That's a welcome change, especially if guns still hit touch.

I think the fact that spells that required attack rolls almost universally went after touch AC (I think maybe spiritual weapon is the only common one that went after regular AC) was more of a consideration than guns (particularly given how frequently in my experience a GM would say "no guns"). I'm going to guess, in part based on Starfinder, that pulling back on the sheer efficacy of magic is going to be a major factor in revisions to the mechanics.

Paladins are still Lawful Good only, at least at first.

They've also made some changes in their code of conduct to try and prevent lose-lose situations.

And they use spell points for magic rather than spell slots.

I think spell points are only used for class featured that used to be "x times per day" in pathfinder 1e like domain abilities and such. So either new paladin doesn't have spell casting anymore or they just didn't talk about it.

Never played Paly but they always seemed to be lacking casters. The only spells worth using are save-based (which they can't pull off consistently) or just really situational.

Outside of missing out on extra Cures it wouldn't be much of a loss for them to be purely martial.

edited 15th May '18 5:30:31 PM by Karxrida

Paladins in general use spells to buff themselves further rather than attack foes, so whether their spells require saves or not doesn't matter

I'm playing a Paladin right now, and they have a few mins/level buff spells that are really useful, if you know you'll be fighting very shortly (either because you're choosing to attack, or someone realizes enemies are approaching).

That said, I like magic point systems more than spell slots, so I'm all for it.

edited 16th May '18 12:16:54 AM by Cozzer

Yeah, as noted, paladin spell-casting is meant to be a source of backup buffs and backup heals. A pally casting is best with applying bless, bless weapon, lesser restoration, bull's strength, remove curse, break enchantment, death ward.... these spells are a paladin's bread-and-butter. Some of the others on the spell list are situationally useful, which is another way of saying "just buy a wand or scroll; that will let you use it when you need it." That's stuff like restoration and cure light wounds.

Wand of Cure Light Wounds = Cleric on a Stick.

The nice thing about it is it can be used by any character who has CLW on their class spell list, even if they can't actually cast the spell yet. So, it could be used by a Bard, Cleric, Druid, Paladin, or Ranger of any level, without having to roll a Use Magic Device check.

Particularly for rangers and paladins (to a lesser extent bards as well, though as I say from experience, having your main healer being a bard can work), I'm fairly convinced that cure light wounds is on their spell list primarily so that they can use wands of it without rolling anything besides the 1d8 of recovery. The same can be said of cure moderate wounds and cure serious wounds (although wands with those come up way less often).

Oh, also, wands are valuable for alchemist players since they're spell-trigger items, so they'll let the alchemist start throwing around cures without having to take the infusion discovery (yes, I know that most alchemists do take that discovery, but I've had fun playing the selfish caster for all it's worth).

And for the record, my table calls a wand of cure light wounds the "boo boo stick."

It would be nice to have a wand of CLW in my current party. I play a Paladin, and I'm the only one with any healing magic whatsoever. I end up using Lay On Hands a lot, to revive somebody who's dropped to zero hit points, and we have to stock up on healing potions at every opportunity...

Such are the hazards of players not conferring with each other when we roll up characters for a brand-new campaign.

edited 17th May '18 2:57:30 PM by pwiegle

That's your problem. Also, a wand of CLW isn't that expensive: you should be able to find a place to buy one.

Apparently they're moving away from having wands to heal up with in 2.0. Makes sense, since I've always felt wands mostly invalidated potions, Use Magic Device requirement aside.

@2843 In fairness, that really depends on the setting and the GM's whims regarding item availability. Potions also have the bonus of being easier to make (even first-level characters can do it) and have wider availability (two classes, alchemist and witch, potentially get Brew Potion outside of standard feat progression).

@2844 Yeah, even as of 3.0 (let alone the shift to Pathfinder, which removed the XP requirement of item crafting), they did effectively turn potions from "fast healing option" to "emergency carry in case the regular and backup healers can't get over to the fighter or rogue in time." I can see wanting to tweak how those are handled.

That kind of reminds me, while I'm expecting most skills are going to be tweaked at most (and maybe add in the skills introduced in Unchained), I'm predicting that Use Magic Device is going to get a big overhaul. It's got the biggest potential to swing encounters of almost any skill (only Perception probably can make a bigger claim to it, and that's the other skill I expect to get a big overhaul).

There doesn't appear to be a general tabletop games thread and this was in a pathfinder game so I'll just ask here:

has anyone run into any silly meme characters while gaming? By that I mean characters obviously taken after pop culture or jokes and not just expies of someone recontextualized to fit the setting. I'm playing in a game with one and it makes it really hard to take the rest of the game seriously.

I have. Usually the DM (in this case me, or a friend) catch it and the character just so happens to get crit a lot more, and somehow dies fairly quickly.

I think its kind of bad taste to fudge character to death instead of just telling player knock it off

Very much this.

Yeah, but when you've already told the person to knock it off and they still do it?

Open season.

Also: You're talking to the DM who has to consistently fudge rolls for his players to NOT die in combat. It's not that I fudge rolls to bump them off, I just stop fudging so the characters don't die.

edited 15th Jun '18 8:10:56 PM by BlackSunNocturne