Pathfinder 2e

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I know that person; they do optimization work and math hammering on /tg/ while posting Touhou images.

E: She is legit on the spectrum, so her playing hyperrigid isn't to prove a point. That's just how she is.

Oh, that's touhoufag? The only thing I knew about her is that one guy that shits the thread whenever anyone mentions her.

[tussock]

the goblin war chanters accompanying the marilith

Goblin War Chanter. CR 1. Ref +5. HP 18. Level 3 fireball scroll, cost ~0gp. But you know what, fine, you shifted the goal posts, now you want a CR 11, was it? Oh, that's right, you didn't say, you want a nubulous anything monster to be defeated by a nebulous anything party where you get to choose both after the fact.

Welcome to D&D, yes, you can defeat the party, that is a thing.

But, like, what? Maybe you want a fucking line-itemised exact high-level full-party build out of a brand new 430 page book? Guess what, every feat and every item and every thing everyone in the party chooses or finds or even recent encounters, it all changes the numbers, just slightly. There are no exact answers for a decision tree with that many combinations, there are only examples based on theory.

You said fighters can't do that much damage. I corrected my error and found they would normally do more than than I initially posted, plus example weapons and hit rates.

You said there's no such thing as 9 dice weapons. I pointed out there is and how that works.

You said fighters couldn't hit that often, impossible you said. I showed an example of some options of how they could. They're even different to some options to ones I mentioned earlier in the thread, and there's more too! I found they can hit 3 points better than a first take even, you don't need everything to land for that!

You picked at some of the options as not working, by mis-reading the rules. I posted how you had misread them and you obviously didn't read my correction because you're repeating the same error. So fuck you, go read it.

You lastly said I was doing it wrong and you wouldn't play in a game where people optimised that way, because, uh, um, butthurt? I pointed out you seemed butthurt.

Now you're on about how Clerics can optimise to produce a lot of healing, as if it's a disagreement with me. But that is what I said.

There's obviously lots of characters work, and just like 3e you put an 18 in your primary class stat so yours does to. They even tell you which stat to put it in. The game clearly supports niche specialisation, and the use of an array of support abilities for characters operating outside their own niche. Because combat is common and dangerous, you want to make sure you can support the combat specialists so you are contributing.

The fact that a Cleric can put out a lot of healing and also buff his allies in the same fucking round, and also throw out some half decent "I am an avatar" single attacks in the same round, to contribute, that's niche specialisation. No one does what the Cleric does as well as the Cleric does it. But they can do a bit of it, especially in combination, if there is no Cleric. This is all a good design point, it means people's choices matter!

Other characters do different things, and the Cleric cannot do those other things as well as the other characters do. This is also excellent. Niche protection. Maybe not enough of it, but at least they tried.

Clerics generate such an amount of HP without even trying, a party without one can't keep up.

Parties without a Cleric obviously use different tactics, rather than just punching the monsters claws with their faces until they go away. They focus on different outcomes, I cannot compare them in general because building high level PCs only produces examples of specific theories and not a general solution. Your specific example is, yes, Clerics are best at things Clerics are best at, as are Fighters, as probably is everyone.

I'm not convinced the thing every class is doing well is equally worthy, of course, that's a long game, takes years of examples to really prove that stuff as strategies develop and new rules come along to boost the weakest options. Hell, it's still in playtest and they won't get far in the time they have left but lots of detail will change.

a level 17 fighter may deal 40 damage per action

You are still completely missing what Fighters do. Just handwaved away Voltron because, no reason, something, something, arbitrary postfacto "that wouldn't work against everything and I wouldn't do that anyway". Which, yeah, again, you can kill the PCs, and you can be a dick as a player too, welcome to D&D.

But also, get fucked, I answered all your questions and you didn't read the answers and just argued I was doing it wrong instead, because Clerics can heal, or something.

[GâtFromKI]

the goblin war chanters accompanying the marilith

Goblin War Chanter. CR 1. Ref +5. HP 18. Level 3 fireball scroll, cost ~0gp. But you know what, fine, you shifted the goal posts, now you want a CR 11, was it? Oh, that's right, you didn't say, you want a nubulous anything monster to be defeated by a nebulous anything party where you get to choose both after the fact.

OK, stupid.

I took the goblin war chanter because it was the first thing that comes into mind to give a +1 bonus to the marilith.

You see, this whole piece of shit is 550 pages long, and i have better thing to read. Homotopy type theory is shorter and easier to read for non-retarded people - non-retarded people reading Path 2 lose a lot of time trying to understand how this work, since every single part contradicts another part.

So i took the first monster I could think of who can buff the marilith. Weren't you retarded, you would have understand the underlying message: the buff you're talking about are available to monsters as well. You work under the assumption the players search in this 430-page piece of shit to find every possible relevant bonus, while the DM plays dumb and throw random trivial encounter at them. OK, you can optimize your party to beat a trivial encounter. Only retarded people like you think it's an impressive feat.

But OK, I won't "move the goalpost". I admit: a fully-optimized party may beat a trivial encounter. So what's your point, retard?

i'll ask you not to move your goalpost: we're talking about a fully-buffed party beating a trivial encounter, that's the example you've bring to the table and and you're trying to make some unknown point using that example.

But, like, what? Maybe you want a fucking line-itemised exact high-level full-party build out of a brand new 430 page book?

Yes. You're the one saying it works.

And the math is simple, the whole game engine turns out to be designed to generate simple math without moving part. i've already made most of the maths anyway - indicating the max bonus a character may get at level 17. All you have to do is to search though the magic item section to find the max item bonus.

You said fighters can't do that much damage.

No I didn't, you retard.

You said there's no such thing as 9 dice weapons.

No I didn't, you retard.

... Anyway, I guess you're talking about your assertion that "+5 fire/cold/acid on also maul//dorfaxe is doing 9d12. They all just add weapon dice each, I think that was the three of them, is there a 4th for 10d12? A 5th? " ?

+5 weapon aren't available before level 19. and even at level 19, it requires cocksucking - players have no agency on the level 20 items they get at level 19.

There's no way anyone can have a +5 weapon at level 17. You'd know that if you were able to read the wbl rules.

Flaming, corrosive and frost each deal 1d6 - as do shock. I'd know that if you weren't a retard.

At level 17, your weapon deals at best 5d12 + 4d6. That's not 9d12, you retard.

...Even when you're not answering to me, you're full of shit. You're not even able to read the rules you're using, retard. English isn't my native language, and i have a better reading skill than you. Did you consider going back to high school?

You picked at some of the options as not working, by mis-reading the rules. I posted how you had misread them and you obviously didn't read my correction because you're repeating the same error. So fuck you, go read it.

Since you're now just inventing what I said, since I can't even understand what is your problem with my use of assist, and since you can't even understand the (very simple) wbl rules, I'll assume you're plain wrong and unable to read the rules.

Now you're on about how Clerics can optimise to produce a lot of healing, as if it's a disagreement with me. But that is what I said.

lol

Now writing "cleric" on your sheet is "optimizing".

How can you be so stupid? Did you take a feat? Did you use the option p 19 to lower your Int?

The fact that a Cleric can put out a lot of healing and also buff his allies in the same fucking round, and also throw out some half decent "I am an avatar" single attacks in the same round, to contribute, that's niche specialisation. No one does what the Cleric does as well as the Cleric does it. But they can do a bit of it, especially in combination, if there is no Cleric.

A level 17 cleric can cast 7-9 level 9 heal without even using a single slot. It's something they can do because they wrote "cleric" on their sheet. each of those spell heals 76 HP + bullshit bonus per action - that's far more than the damages per action of any monster or PC.

No one can keep up with that. non-magical healing is shitty, alchemist is made of shit (and their healing costs resonance), sorcerer is better than alchemist but still made of shit, and Druids would have to sacrifice all their level 7, 8 and 9 slots to do that.

A Cleric generate more HP than any non-cleric healing-specialist for 0 investment. You'd know that if you weren't a retard. A party with a dedicated non-cleric healbot can't generate as much HP as a random 18 Str cleric.

Then the cleric may fill his slots with heal since it's efficient action-wise. And there's no way a party without a cleric can keep up with that. He didn't use any feat or anything - he can be at max Str and multiclass as a fighter and he still generate more HP than a dedicated non-cleric healbot.

This is all a good design point, it means people's choices matter!

Yes, their choice matter. eg If they try to heal while not writting "cleric" on their sheet, they suck at life. If they write "alchemist" or "ranger" or "angelic sorcerer" or "paladin" they suck at life - and it's probably the same if they write "monk" or "barbarian" or "druid" or "rogue", but i'm not totally sure since I didn't read exhaustively every page of this piece of shit.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I'm just going to drop this here

https://youtu.be/7LVy9sTWpBQ?t=242

Starts at 4:02 in case it doesn't start at that time.

[Username17]

Dick waving matches about how hypothetical parties match up to high level monsters at 20th level don't especially matter. Long before any groups actually organically rise in level to the point where a Maralith would be a vaguely reasonable encounter there will be some amount of expansion material, which in turn will presumably change the math realities significantly. Further, no one gets to levels like that without tiger amulets and artifact swords, so the official rules aren't going to be the final word for fucking anybody.

The lower end of the math is where things matter. In the sense that if anyone tries to play this piece of junk, that is where they will start. And also in the sense that people will play at these levels for some non-zero amount of time before they start getting non-standard story-related powerups that deviate from the book-defined projections.

Now there are some kinds of broken that expansion material and non-standard awards will not fix or change. If Clerics have repeatable healing that the listed monsters can't keep up with at high levels or the Fighters cleave through level appropriate enemies in a single round, that isn't likely to change. But if you tell me that combats take 3 rounds or 23 rounds at 17th level, all I can say is "That is to be decided."

At low levels, the RNG is incredibly swingy. Specialists fail at tasks in their wheelhouse constantly, and critical success is extremely common. It's not even weird to have a situation where critical success happens a quarter of the time but actual failure happens a quarter of the time as well. That is how fucking swingy the RNG is for low level characters.

-Username17

[tussock]

At low levels, the RNG is incredibly swingy. Specialists fail at tasks in their wheelhouse constantly, and critical success is extremely common. It's not even weird to have a situation where critical success happens a quarter of the time but actual failure happens a quarter of the time as well. That is how fucking swingy the RNG is for low level characters.

That's obviously intentional, and persists for the entire game. Think of it as ...

Works: Critical Success.
Half Works: Regular Success.
Doesn't Really Work: Regular Failure.
Possibly Backfires Badly: Critical Failure.

That's the PF2 RNG.

So it's not weird at all to have things work just a quarter of the time, and therefore also not really work a quarter of the time, with half working between them. If it works as much as half the time it always at least half works, you see.

Trouble is unbuffed specialists might only have 10% chance of things Working at "equal level". Buffing is huge, team effort on everything. Bards seem a good idea, but also the Aid action, and gear and everything else you can find. Get that 50% success going, it's only +8!

Hmm, giving the monsters effectively +4 to hit for less than full armour and not seeing them, that is also a terrible idea. It's important the PCs can succeed and the monsters can't. Bonuses work both ways.

--

Ooh, I got weapon runes very wrong, cheers for the heads up Gat. 5d6 worth of Corrosive Flaming Frost Holy Shock weapon, that can sometimes break armour, add more damage, slow opponent, and holy weapons are a bit vampiric so yay.

So 5d12+5d6+7 or so 57 damage, don't double the 5d6 but do add 1d10+1d6 persistent, slow 1, dent armour, and double CR healing on a crit. Can add more damage for money, but eh, that'll do.

Damage around 17th level, 57 normal, +48.5 on a crit (+9 persistent), using Furious Focus and someone providing Quick ...

9+ to hit, 93/round
7+ to hit, 117/round
5+ to hit, 142/round
3+ to hit, 175/round

That's back to my first check, after mistakes both ways. Might not get that Assist after all.

Hmm, a 2nd hitter in the party looks a good idea, really. Closes up the small weapons with the big ones a bit, but single hand or two weapon agile is still basically -2 to hit for +2 AC compared to a big weapon, so Fighter Class Feat selection is still just pick a weapon and make it work properly with Feat choices.

Yeah, more options are basically the same in the long run, as long as you buy into them fully. Though maintaining (or using by default) a ranged weapon later seems like a nightmare, they're so low damage and short range you never really want to use them, but then one day you can't reach the enemy and have to, not a new problem to D&D of course. Flying for all mens.

At starting levels, all that matters is finding a +1 weapon. +50% damage or better right there, not a lot you can do better than support whoever claims it until you get one of your own. Buffs are smaller, last less time, likely get some use of the condition-causing feats, but that Ogre still has a lot of HPs at 3rd level.

At 1st level, class stat, con, dex, wis. Covers all attacks, defenses, saves, and initiative.

[Axebird]

Seriously, just stop. Every time you claim you have something figured out you're more wrong than before. It's literally impossible to have 5 properties on a weapon, and you can only get up to 3 with a legendary weapon.

[GâtFromKI]

The lower end of the math is where things matter. In the sense that if anyone tries to play this piece of junk, that is where they will start. And also in the sense that people will play at these levels for some non-zero amount of time before they start getting non-standard story-related powerups that deviate from the book-defined projections.

It's the same at low level: every single monster has better Perception than the maximum optimized Stealth and Deception score of the PCs, every monster is better at Athletism and Acrobatics... Many of them have their untrained skills at the level of a good (but unoptimized) skill for PC.

As you explained somewhere else, you don't even care if your skill compete with an equivalent-level monster. Those monsters are balanced to be killed. It's too hard to sneak the guard? kill him. It's too hard to deceive the chambellan? kill him. It's too hard to cover your track against wolves? kill them. Who cares.

What you want for your skills is to compete with higher level monster. You want to sneak past the dragon because he's too strong in a fight. You want to prevent him from tracking you from the same reason - or you want to track him to ambush it and gain an advantage.

... Of course, if your skill are too weak against equal level monster, they are far too weal against higher level monsters. Engaging in another interaction than "i stab it with my sword" is a losing proposition.

Hence, Path 2 shouldn't be compare with other RPGs, but with combat boardgames like Descent. Spoiler alert: It doesn't compare well with those games.

Aside from the byzantine and clunky rules and subsystems (like "you have to spent two action and roll each round to move a mount"), every monster is fucking the same. It's a faceless blob with a few special abilities.

Want a level 6 melee bruiser ? The Ettin has Per +14, AC 20, HP 105, Att +14 for 2d6+5. Want a level 6 arcane caster? The drider has Per +13, AC 21, HP 92, Att +15 for 2d6+4. Want a level 6 trickster? The succubus has Per +13, AC 20, HP 84, Att +15 for 2d8+4. Want a level 6 debuffer? The mummy retainer has Per +13, AC 20, HP 90, Att +15 for 3d6+5. Want a level 6 ranged harasser? The manticore has Per +13, AC 20, HP 95, Att (melee) +15 for 2d6+5, Att (ranged) +12 for 1d10+5.

Every monster is fucking the same. You don't have a reason to send the tank on the melee bruiser while the monk goes for the caster, because the melee bruiser and the caster have the same melee capability and the same defenses. The reason you want to close the gap with the ranged harasser isn't because he will be less efficient in melee, but because your own ranged weapons are shit.

In Descent at least every monster feels different, you have a reason to avoid melee with some and close the distance with others. D&D 4 is shit, but at least they tried to define monster roles and the the corresponding stat array.

There are some outiers. They are rare, and they aren't interesting.

At level 1, there's the sewer ooze: it has 40 HP, AC 5, he's immune to critical hits and to almost everything except a stab in the face. So it's literally a bag of HP that you have to attack with your sword, you touch it automatically but you can't get double damage with a crit.

That's also the first monster the players encounter in the playtest adventure book. Because someone though the best way to introduce players with the new system and its possibilities is a blob that you stab until it doesn't move without any possible tactic.

I guess this first encounter is as an allegory of the whole game.

[CapnTthePirateG]

You guys are arguing over the PF2 rules and all I see is pointless, additional Paizo complexity for no real benefit to the players or DMs.

[tussock]

Isn't that what PF1 was all about though? Pointless, additional, Paizo complexity for no real benefit? They've got to have something to fill 30 future books up with. The benefit they're aiming for seems to be having a reason for non-casters to exist.

--

@Axebird, true enough, catch up the missing 2d6 with the level 14 shock, which is persistent too. Bit more money, same numbers.

--

@Gat, those monsters are pretty different.

Ettin has 2x +14 and x2 +9 attacks per round, and reach with 2x AoO.
Drider has +15 for 2d8+ ranged attack with invis and immobilisation attacks.
Succubus is an actual rape monster who will rape you with special rape powers.
Mummy Retainer is very slow with a persistent damage melee attack.
Manticore is flying with a twin-attack missile weapon.

You don't have a reason to send the tank on the melee bruiser while the monk goes for the caster, because the melee bruiser and the caster have the same melee capability and the same defenses. The reason you want to close the gap with the ranged harasser isn't because he will be less efficient in melee, but because your own ranged weapons are shit.

You tank the Ettin to soak up his AoO and multiple good attacks, you have the monk chasing the Drider because he quite often locks down your tank and forces someone fast to stop him kiting. The mummy you want to kite, the Manticore you want cover and concealment until it closes, where it's attacks are +15/+11/+7 compared to the Ettin's +14/+14/+9/+9.

That sort of exception design isn't greatly different in result to having different numbers on each one, and I agree in general that it can often be done more elegantly with changing the numbers up a bit, but they do fulfil their classic roles and you should probably be trying to fight them in different ways.

Not that the characters will have many options loaded up, because specialising is very powerful and your 2nd option is gunna suck by comparison.

[Orca]

Seriously, just stop. Every time you claim you have something figured out you're more wrong than before. It's literally impossible to have 5 properties on a weapon, and you can only get up to 3 with a legendary weapon.

4 with an orichalcum weapon, BTW.

[Axebird]

Seriously, just stop. Every time you claim you have something figured out you're more wrong than before. It's literally impossible to have 5 properties on a weapon, and you can only get up to 3 with a legendary weapon.

4 with an orichalcum weapon, BTW.

Orichalcum is Ultra Super Secret GM Only rarity. You don't get access to it unless your GM pities you, and even then it's ludicrously expensive.

[GâtFromKI]

OK, I stand corrected on the Ettin: his independent brains ability has a strange effect on his Damage Per Round.

Anyway, I'm still not very convinced. Let look at the average DPR against the "standard PC AC at level 6". A level 6 PC has an AC of 24: 10 + 6 (trained proficiency) + 7 (armor + Dex) (every armor grants an AC bonus of 7 counting armor and Dex) + 1 (potency rune). (I don't think anyone can be expert on armor at level 6 - except monk who are expert in unarmored defense but their AC sucks nontheless) (actually I don't think a monk nor a rogue may achieve 24 AC without multiclassing).

This is why you absolutely need a shield: you need the +2 AC to prevent every monsters and their dog to crit on a 19. And you want a Level +1 or Level +2 monster not to crit too much. "Not being TPK-ed" isn't a function of how you handle trivial encounters, but a function of how you perform during the hard encounter at the end of every dungeon.

So let's consider a level 6 character with 24 AC and 86 HP (human fighter with 16 Con), fighting an Ettin and a Manticore.

The Ettin sequence is: flail +14 2d6+5 (av. 12), flail +9 2d6+5, fist +14 2d4+5 (av. 10), fist +10 2d4+5 (note: the independent brain ability doesn't allow him to attack 4 time with the flail : one head uses the flail and the other one uses the fist).
Average Ettin damages: 21.4 (0.6*12+0.35*12+0.6*10+0.4*10).

The manticore melee sequence is: jaws +15 2d8+7 (av. 16), claw +11 2d6+7 (av. 14), claw +7 2d6+7. (note: the manticore would gain 0.1 DPR with a sequence of jaws, jaws, claw, but let's assume the DM doesn't optimize everything every round and just goes for jaws, claw, claw).
Average Manticore damages: 21 (0.7*16 + 0.45*14 + 0.45*14).

... The difference is very low. That's a 2% difference. And anyway, the manticore's damage are more affected by an AC boost, and those damages are more swingy (there's always that 10% chance the first attack crits for 32 damages) (the human Fighter with his 86 HP may survive a good round from the manticore, the elf rogue with his 66 HP... not so much): the tank should definitely goes for the ranged harasser while the monk goes for the melee bruiser.


---
Anyway, mean damages values isn't everything. As i said, the swingyness also is a thing - if the Ettin deal more damage in average, but the manticore has 10% chance of one-shot the rogue while the Ettin can't do that, the rogue should attack the Ettin and shouldn't approach the Manticore - the party has to fight 25 level 6 monster before level up, if the rogue has 10% chance of dying every round of every fight, he will never see the next level.

If you want more than average values and you understand French, you can play with my barbare à gros kiki. It's a DPR calculator I've made for D&D 3/Path, I've never really finished it. Instead of computing the average damage, it computes the whole density probability function of every possible damage output - hence it can answer "you have a 45% probability of killing your opponent at round 3" instead of "your DPR is 20, his hp are 60, I guess you kill it at round 3, maybe ?". Unfortunately, it seems I didn't even make a english version at the time (and I won't do it in the near future).

Given it's a DPR calculator created for D&D 3.5 and given the specificity of Path 2, you have to compute the crit chance yourself and you have to check the box "automatically confirm critical hits" ("confirmation auto" since it's in french). Other than that, it seems to work for Path 2.

Let's enter the numbers for the manticore. First observation: the average damages is 21 while the standard deviation is 15.5. Hence the average damages don't convey any useful information: it's too swingy.

I made this DPR calculator for D&D3.5/Path because I knew the average value may be useless when the thing is too swingy, and because I didn't find any such calculator on the net; nonetheless, average damages is usually a useful information in D&D3.5/Path, and my calculator is usually uselessly overkill - case where you need it are strange corner cases where a large amount of the DPR is due to a *4 crit with other effects.

In Path 2, anyone who try to compute damages without this kind of calculator is dumb.

The manticore has 20% chance of not hitting at all, 1/3 chance of dealing 28+ damages, and 10% chance of dealing 43+ damages - so there's a 10% chance she deals more than twice the expected damages. She has 5% chance of dealing 49+ damages. Normally, any D&D player knows what a 5% chance represents: it's the same as rolling a 20 on a d20; the probability is low, but it happens all the time given a sufficient amount of fight. A good model of a manticore's full attack is: roll 1d20, 1-4 she doesn't hit, other result you suffer damages equal to (dice result*2 + 1). It's too swingy to make any sense in term of game desing, and it's still less swingy than the actual Path 2 manticore.

After two rounds of full-attack, the manticore has 5% chance of dealing 80+ damages. Only a max-HP fighter/Pal/whatever may survive that. Let me remind you the party has to fight 25 manticore to level up from 6 to 7, no character consistently one-turn a manticore, the manticore is usually not alone (she's a trivial encounter when she's alone; two manticores at the same time are "unlikely to overpower [the PCs] completely", according to the rules) so the party can't simply gank every manticore in a 4 vs 1 fight, and every other level 6 monster has basically the same damage output.

Now, let's look at the Ettin: he's a bit less swingy with an average DPR of 21.4 and a standard deviation of 13.1. He has only 10% chance of not hitting you at all, but he also has less chance of doing huge damages: 1/3 chance of dealing 26+, 10% of dealing 39+, 5% of dealing 45+. The chance he deals more than twice his expected damages is 6.8%. The chance the fighter dies before the end of round 2 is half the one he had got against the manticore (1.7% vs 3.3%). So I confirm my intuition: if I'm not a tank, I'd rather go for the Ettin because he has a lower chance to kill me with a few lucky rolls.


Now let's tweak the numbers a bit; let's consider the manticore, and let's say you're an elf rogue with 23 AC (10+6 prof+2 studded leather +4 Dex +1 potency) and 66 HP (14 Con). Now the average DPR is 24, with a standart deviation of 16.1. The manticore has 1/3 chance of dealing 31+ damages - there's a 21.6% probability you'll drop dead before the end of round 2. She has 10% chance of dealing 46+ damages, 5% chance of dealing 52+ damage: hopefully you entered the fight with full HP.

Let's tweak a bit more: in the playtest, the PCs encounter a manticore when they're level 4. Her tactic is to stay away from the party, and the party has one single fly scroll. I guess the fighter is supposed to fly and solo-melee the manticore? Let's see how good it can go: let's consider a level 4 fighter with 22 AC (the max without shield) (if the fighter raises his shield while approaching, he never closes the distance thanks to the manticore's speed) and 56 HP (14 Con, since he doesn't get the level 5 ability boost - I don't think he can have Str 18, Con 16 and AC 22 without a shield). After one full-attack, he has 50% chance of having lost more than half his HP. He has 5% chance being dead before the end of the first melee round. That's if he's at full hp when melee starts - except it's not the case, since the manticore kites him while he's trying to approach.

The other tactic is to stay on the ground, wait while she throws her 12 spikes, heal the damages (so you need a cleric, or someone in the party dies before the actual combat begins), and hope she will land and try to butcher the party instead of simply turn away and come back the next day (or grab some boulders to throw at the party) - and even if the 4 PC gank the manticore on the ground, the manticore has 25% chance of one-turn-kill the AC 21/HP 42 optimized elf rogue with full HP. I guess "wait until the manticore runs out of ammo" is the best tactic anyway, and the fly scroll is some kind of bad joke created by a vicious game-designer to teach the lesson "you shouldn't use the cool stuff you get, you dumbass". Path 2 's wbl isn't about getting cool toys, it's about getting your mandatory weapon, your mandatory armor, your mandatory +Per item, and your mandatory +skill item.

This is a high-threat encounter, the bread-and-butter of what you should face (they are "unlikely to overpower [the PCs] completely" and the real stake is to be "ready to continue on to face a harder challenge without resting" after the fight).


Conclusion:

• Everyone and his dog has a shield - or a similar way to get +2 AC. Everything you can say about two-handed weapon or other fancy option is bullshit, there's no way a character without that +2 AC may survive from level 1 to 5. The rogue has the choice between several feat at level 2, but any choice other than nimble dodge is a way to say "oh please kill me, I don't want to play the whole campaign".
• You have to enter every fight with full HP. There's no way you can go from level 1 to 5 if you have 5-10% chance of being killed at the first round of every single trivial fight because you had only 80% of your HP. Did I mention somewhere that not having a cleric is basically a game over?
• There's only One True Build:[/i] you have to optimize to max AC, max to hit, etc. It's not hard since there is very few moving parts, but if you take a fancy level 3 item instead of a +1 armor, your survivability drops quickly. The level 3 item of the One True Build is a +1 armor, every other level 3 item in the book is a trap option. If you write "monk" on your sheet, you won't see the level 5: the One True Build doesn't accept monks. etc. This is to the point I'm convinced the game should simply give the stats of an optimized fighter, cleric, bard and wizard (? I'm not even sure the wizard is useful or viable ; I'd go for Figther-Cleric-Cleric-Bard or Figther-Cleric-Cleric-Cleric) with a predefined progression, and propose the 289 pages of character creation as an optional rule - and it should state clearly there's a high risk of obtaining a non-viable PC using this option.

Edit: my computations are wrong. I used a stat array of Str 18 Dex 16 Con 14 for the fighter (upgraded to Str 19 Dex 18 Con 16 at level 5), I don't think any race can do that. A dwarf, a goblin or a human may have a physical stat array of 18-16-12 or 18-14-14 or 16-16-14, that's the best you can get. Actual optimized PCs die even more quickly than I though.

[MisterDee]

So I'm way too busy to go fuck around in Paizo's mess of a message board right now.

Is the actual playtest feedback similar to what we're discussing here, or is it just a giant circlejerk of "this feels incredibly new/nostalgic/erotic" with one or two discordant voices?

[GâtFromKI]

Right now the messageboard is down (since saturday); you can read, but no one can post. There's a GitP poster who explain that a skilled website programer is a ROLLplayer but Paizo hires only ROLEplayers.

It seems opinion goes both ways: some people say it was fun, some people say it's too hard.

... That's until you notice: there are almost 0 review of the second playtest adventure. I don't think I've seen 1 positive review of this adventure.

The first adventure is winnable; you need a bit of luck: if the DM rolls too much critical (or plays dirty) you die. So I guess this is the result you can expect from individual tests: 75% of "we won and it was fun", 25% of "we were TPKed" (and sometime "it was fun nonetheless", sometime "it was frustrating"). Most of the people who won the first adventure needed 1 or 2 long rest before they could complete the dungeon; 1 or 2 days while the end boss simply wait in his room and doesn't notice his goblins die one after another: this is an auto-"I don't want to play this" for me (I largely prefer when the dungeons are conceived to be completed in one day - and the occasional two-day completion, with the MC having to think about how the BBEG reacts while not making the adventure an auto-lose, is the exception), but I guess it's a matter of taste.

I guess someone could create a parodic horror game where you play the goblins: "we don't have any news of the goblins in the next room since 18 hours, I guess they weren't out to pick some mushrooms after all... What has happened to them?"

The second adventure is the one containing the auto-lose encounter with a manticore. If you manage to win it somehow, there are two other auto-lose encounters after that. I guess people play it, get TPKed, see there's no way to prevent the TPK, and don't bother to report or continue the playtest - they just play another non-shitty RPG.

This second adventure also forces the players to use the shitty exploration mode (and see it doesn't work at all and MTP is a better system), and the PCs get camels as mount so they see how clunky and unsuable the mount subsystem is (again, MTP is better - it's an accomplishment when you consider that most games, including D&D 3, manage to have mount subsystem better than MTP) and they see some rules are missing (the DC to handle a mount - the rules say you have to Handle animal each round, but don't even bother to indicate the DC). Long story short: this is the adventure where people discover it's not a beta-version of Path 2, but a pre-alpha-version. So they don't bother continuing.

[magnuskn]

To be fair, Paizo put forward actual playtest dates when they wanted people to play the individual parts. The second scenario is supposed to be played from August 23rd to September 6th (although you can of course play it at a later date, the surveys will remain open for a long time). I think only Colette already did make a few tries at it. If many others would have tried and failed, there'd be many playtest reports of people screaming bloody murder.

Here's a link to where someone posted the timeline: Link

My group is going to play it this Saturday. Let's see what they come up with, so far they field a druid, a barbarian, a ranger and... another ranger. Maybe they do will have the ranged firepower to combat the manticore. But I fear healing will be a big problem to their survival, since not having a cleric sucks hard.

I also already did the first adventure and it went really well, probably because the players chose the most traditional party possible, the Fighter/Wizard/Rogue/Cleric combination, rolled really well, found all secret doors, opened all secret doors and the enemies rolled mostly average. The cleric definitely was the MVP of the session, since his healing kept the party going from start to finish in one run. Another healing class would have done only half as well.

As for the general reaction, very much not as positive as Paizo probably would have hoped. I had an extremely negative reaction to my first look and have since then tried to find a ray of light. So far I'm failing. But since I think spellcasting was vastly overnerfed, I probably am not in tune with the majority of The Gaming Den, either. There are quite a lot of people who also are very unhappy, some in the middle and a few who immediately loved it and, of course, have started an immediate inquisition against people who are skeptical.

I am not very hopeful that there will be major changes to pull this playtest back from what I perceive to be major missteps. So far what you hear most from the devs themselves is that the GenCon crowd had an incredibly positive reception. That's not what happened on the messageboards, though.

[tussock]

OK, I stand corrected on the Ettin: his independent brains ability has a strange effect on his Damage Per Round.

Yeah, there might be a few of those about, anything that changes up the action economy is a big deal.

If you want more than average values and you understand French, you can play with my barbare à gros kiki. It's a DPR calculator I've made for D&D 3/Path, I've never really finished it.

Very nice. Google translate got me far enough to plug in the right numbers.

It's noticeable in your calculations that the -1 to hit the Ettin has completely covers his extra good attacks. That's why they've all got such similar base numbers.

A way to find an approximation is to count hits to kill, then simplifying the estimated hits for tougher opponents (and PCs) can be done by treating them as having N+1 attacks at -5 to their real primary with no crits. The results are almost identical (slightly under with 2 attacks and slightly over with 3), so long as that still hits on a 15+ or so. (N = number of attacks they'll make, +1 for the crits on the first attack).

Variability in hits to kill is small, generally +/- 1 hit needed, or +2/-1, then you find the minimum and maximum average rounds to do that, add another +1/+1 to the result, that's your spread.

So as an approximation, Ettin gets a L6 fighter in 7-9 hits, making 6 attempts at 15+, means normally 3-6 rounds, and Manticore gets him in 5-8 hits, making 4 attempts at 13+ (+1 agile) and 2-6 rounds.

Which matches your exact numbers pretty well. Depends if you can manage the approximation in your head. That demonstrates how the bonuses matter, like the shield, the monsters effectively have a tonne of attacks that miss quite a lot, so any bonus is relatively big.

Same deal for a Fighter attacking them, same approximation works, it's just like lots of attacks that aren't hitting very often, so every bonus to hit is a big deal, especially if it only costs you 1/4 or 1/2 of the output of a lower damage character to give it.

In TGD terms

• It's like a dice pool with lots of d10 and 8+ for a hit. The variability is all at the high end, and the most common result is quite a bit below the average.
• Or it's like income distribution. The average income hides a lot about both how much the rich earn and how many poor people there are.

Conclusion:

• Everyone and his dog has a shield - or a similar way to get +2 AC. Everything you can say about two-handed weapon or other fancy option is bullshit, there's no way a character without that +2 AC may survive from level 1 to 5. The rogue has the choice between several feat at level 2, but any choice other than nimble dodge is a way to say "oh please kill me, I don't want to play the whole campaign".
• You have to enter every fight with full HP. There's no way you can go from level 1 to 5 if you have 5-10% chance of being killed at the first round of every single trivial fight because you had only 80% of your HP. Did I mention somewhere that not having a cleric is basically a game over?
• There's only One True Build:[/i] you have to optimize to max AC, max to hit, etc. It's not hard since there is very few moving parts, but if you take a fancy level 3 item instead of a +1 armor, your survivability drops quickly. The level 3 item of the One True Build is a +1 armor, every other level 3 item in the book is a trap option. If you write "monk" on your sheet, you won't see the level 5: the One True Build doesn't accept monks. etc. This is to the point I'm convinced the game should simply give the stats of an optimized fighter, cleric, bard and wizard (? I'm not even sure the wizard is useful or viable ; I'd go for Figther-Cleric-Cleric-Bard or Figther-Cleric-Cleric-Cleric) with a predefined progression, and propose the 289 pages of character creation as an optional rule - and it should state clearly there's a high risk of obtaining a non-viable PC using this option.

Not bad.

• A shield reduces you actions, and so your movement, and your damage, on top of reducing your damage from the smaller weapon. As much as the monsters can rarely drop a fighter in 2 rounds, the fighter will normally drop them in 2 rounds. Hell, there's also reach to consider, it's a big deal for the action the Step costs..
• You have always had to enter D&D fights at full HP. It has always been a trap to not heal up to full. As much as one monster here is like six attacks at poor chances of hitting, that used to be every single D&D encounter for the first 25 years, six monsters that couldn't hit often but sometimes did, and in 3e there were closet trolls!
• Agreed, you need to basically stay on the rails with whatever it is you're doing to avoid that round 1 crit. More variation in the monsters would help, but for now they're all right on that point where bonuses are huge. Thus, PCs need to buff, get ahead of the curve, and stealth still seems extremely good if you have concealment from anything.
• Though I disagree that there are only 2 valid classes, everyone basically works for what they do, it's just finding a way to use what they do.

And the Mounts are surprisingly bad, even with Ride. I can sort of see why, the old bonuses they gave would be crazy good in this, but they could be neutral instead, sitting on a pile of hit points for a bit of cash seems reasonable.

[GâtFromKI]

My group is going to play it this Saturday. Let's see what they come up with, so far they field a druid, a barbarian, a ranger and... another ranger. Maybe they do will have the ranged firepower to combat the manticore. But I fear healing will be a big problem to their survival, since not having a cleric sucks hard.

Actually, a renged ranger performs quite well - and may force the manticore to fly away before melee. This is one of those few encounter that makes Hunt Target with a composite shortbow shines - even a melee ranger with a composite shortbaw performs well.

And... Maybe I overlooked the difficulty of the encounter.

Actually, I'm still convinced it is far too hard to play as intended by Paizo's suckers - non-optimized party is quickly wiped, no amount of strategy change that (thank to the spells' nerfs: the manticore is out-of-range for any spell, there's no way to force her to land, the fly scroll is a complex way to commit suicide...) (don't talk about buffs, their duration is shit, the manticore has enough Religion and Nature to understand what a bless spell is, and she's mobile enough to fly away a few minutes. The only usable buff is Inspire courage). But thank to the One True Build, every one and his dog has max Dex; hence every one has an OK ranged damages and can inflict some damages to the manticore at range.


---
About the One True Build: let's compare a Sucking-Paizo-Barbarian and a One-True-Builded-Barbarian at level 4, versus the manticore.

Sucking-Paizo-Barbarian: Str 18 Dex 12 Con 16. At level 4, HP 68 (4*(12+3) + 8 because human) (+7 temp. HP when raging), AC 20 (10 +4 trained +4 breastplate +1 Dex +1 potency) (19 while raging).

One-True-Builded-Barbarian: Str 18 Dex 16 Con 12. At level 4, HP 60 (4*(12+1) + 8 because human) (+5 temp. HP when raging), AC 22 (10 +4 trained +4 breastplate +3 Dex +1 potency) (21 while raging).

The Sucking Barb has 50% of being dead after two round of full-attack from the manticore, 90% after the third round. The OTB-Barb drops this to 40% of being dead at the end of the second round, 80% of being dead at the end of the third round: that's not great but he has twice more chance of surviving 3 round than the Sucking Barb, and he consumes less heal. At the end of round 1, the Sucking Barb has 2/3 chance of having lost 30+ HP and 1/3 chance of having lost 45+ HP; the OTB-Barb has 2/3 chance of having lost 22+ HP, 1/3 chance of having lost 35+ HP. What's the point in having 10 more HP when they are all lost in the first round?

Just for fun, let's consider a ROLEplayer-not-ROLLplayer-barbarian: let's use the Sucking Barb chassis, call her Arimi and give her the giant totem. Her AC drops to 18. She has 62% chance of dying before the end of round 2, 95% chance of dying before the end of round 3.

I'm quite sure my Arimi doesn't suck as much as the actual Arimi: my only mistakes are I use a stat array that looks OK and I choose a cool-looking totem, but I have the best possible armor. I wouldn't be surprised if one of the droolplayer from Paizo was using an expert hide armor instead of the mandatory +1 Breastplate.

... OK; so Con does nothing for your survivability (and nothing for your damage output). So you use an OTB-barbarian, and when a manticore shows up, your attack with a shortbow is 2 points higher than a Sucking Barb. Your damage output isn't great, but if three character are doing that while the last one heals, the fight isn't an auto-lose.

The Con doing basically nothing is something we could have expected given the new awesome maths of the game. In D&D3/Path, a +1 Con bonus is almost always at least +10% HP; this is balanced with the +1 AC the Dex would give (reducing the incoming DPR by ~10%) (if your opponent has 50% chance to hit, a +1 AC reduce his DPR by 10%). In Path 2, a +1 Con bonus is never going to give +10% (except for a high level wizard maybe?) while Dex significantly mitigates damages.

---
About the barbarian: why does the class exists at all?

The class has low-accuracy (he dosen't even get expert proficiency, his rage does nothing at all), low survivability, and no spellcasting. What is it supposed to do? It has a damage boost, but without any accuracy...

I compared the damages of a level 4 barbarian and a fighter and a rogue against the manticore. I counted sneak attack on the rogue, but only two attack per round (I don't know how to model the fact he doesn't always get his sneak attack).

After 3 round of full attacking: the two handed fighter beats the barbarian in average damages and in reliability. The fighter has 1.2% chance of not hitting at all, otherwise he gets a nice Gaussian curve with mean value 39 and standard deviation 19; the barbarian has an average damages of 36, with a standard deviation of 20 and 4.5% chance of not hitting at all (during 3 rounds of full attack!). The shortsword rogue has a strange distribution (with several modes at the multiple of 11), but a Gaussian with average 33 damages and a standard deviation 16 is an OK approximation (so he deals good damages quite reliably... Assuming the sneak attack).

Note: the fighter and the rogue are actually able to attack at round 4.

The comparison is unfair: i didn't take feats into account. Most of the fighter's level 1 feat improve his DPR, while the level 1 barbarian feats... Don't. At level 2, the barbarian has a feat with prerequisite Low-light-vision and Darkvision, no character can have both. At level 4, the barbarian gets a DPR-improving feat... if he attacks different targets, which is a sub-optimal tactic. At level 6, an unarmored barbarian may get a natural armor weaker than the weakest armor of the game - his natural armor even has a low Dex cap. Dafuk? I stopped looking barbarian's feat here, if there's nothing worth the time you take to write it on your sheet until level 6, there won't be anything good after.

If we compare a level 4 Barbarian with an actual level 4 Fighter like a two-longswords fighter with the level 4 feat giving +2 AC... The fighter has 3 more AC than the barb, average damages 31 (quite reliable with a standard deviation of 13) over 3 rounds, is able to actually deal damages during the 4th round...

I don't know what the barbarian is supposed to achieve.

For fun: the probability distribution of the damage output of a Giant Totem Barb after 3 rounds:

If I had to describe it in one sentence, I'd say "7.6% of not doing anything, then it's flat between 10 and 60 and then it has a very long tail". I could give the mean value and the standard deviation, except it doesn't convey any information since for any intent or purpose it's a fucking flat distribution.

Now you can try to create a tactic using such a Barb, knowing he has the same probability of doing 18- damages or 60+ during his whole rage. "Can you kill this target while we handle another one ? - I dunno, it's hard to say, may I'll kill it in two round or maybe I won't do any damage".

If you really want to know, he has the same average damages than any other barb. He isn't exchanging reliability for a better average, he's exchanging reliability for nothing because lolrandom. And he loses AC in the process because why not?

Though I disagree that there are only 2 valid classes, everyone basically works for what they do, it's just finding a way to use what they do.

Alchemist sucks so much, even Paizils say he sucks. Barbarian sucks, monk sucks, Paladin is unplayable thanks to the code (you need a feat to be allowed to go in Hell and kill Demon. Dafuk?), Ranger doesn't seem very good compared to Fighter and Rogue (except in the occasional fight against a manticore where Hunt Target is actually useful - although a ranged fighter would do better), Divine/Occult/Primal sorcerer sucks (and probably the Arcane sorcerer sucks as well), animal companions suck. I'm not even sure a Wizard can compare with a Druid or a Bard.

The actual playable classes are the OTB-Bard (always-on area +1/+1 buff; plus spellcasting and everything) (Bards don't stack: if another player plays a bard, you shouldn't play a Bard), the Cleric (they strangely differ from the OTB, since their Cha is their most important stat), maybe the non-animal-companion-OTB-Druid (can't replace a cleric as a healer though), the OTB-Fighter (able to actually deal damages without buffs), maybe the OTB-Rogue (OK accuracy, damages and defenses). OTB-Fighters and OTB-Rogues can't do anything outside of fights, they are boring as a 3e fighter (and more boring than a 3e rogue), but at least they bring more damages than a Cleric. I guess a 4-Cleric-party is viable (replacing DPR by insane healing to win fights), a party without any cleric is forced to play only 1 encounter per day.

That's maybe 10 archetypes, not counting clerics (since any archetype can be played as a cleric. I'm sure there's a god of non-believe-in-gods somewhere).

Edit: as a variant, I guess a four-paladins-party is playable. This avoid the problem of "my code doesn't allow to participate in this adventure so I'm going home and play Smash Bros", they get a good healing ability at level 4, and their retributive strike becomes usable.

You have always had to enter D&D fights at full HP. It has always been a trap to not heal up to full. As much as one monster here is like six attacks at poor chances of hitting, that used to be every single D&D encounter for the first 25 years, six monsters that couldn't hit often but sometimes did, and in 3e there were closet trolls!

You had wand of CLW to enter each fight with full HP.

And I don't think an APL+2 creature had 50% chance of killing a max-HP barb in two round.

And you could actually win Init.

And it wasn't that hard to prevent full-attack. All you can do in Path 2 in prevent the last attack - the one with a very low damage output.

And you were able to stealth or deceive or use skill if a fight was too hard. Let's face it: the manticore has Perception +13. At level 4 your max stealth/perception/deception is +9 (1 point more if you can find an item for those skills at level 4). Most level 4 character should have ~+5 Per: less than the Stealth of the manticore or any random level 6 monster untrained in stealth or many random level 4 monster untrained in stealth. Monsters can avoid you using stealth, the opposite isn't true.

And fighting an APL +2 monster was actually rewarding in terme of xp - it was 1/6 of a level. It felt like an accomplishment. Now you have to farm 12.5 APL+2 monsters or 25 APL+0 monsters before you level up.

[GâtFromKI]

There's an errata! Bag of holding doesn't cost resonance anymore!

Of course, resonance is still a pile of shit, a lot of fun/marginal items still cost resonance (eg immovable rod), a lot of item cost resonance and have a per day limitation at the same time for no reason (eg Knapsack of halfling), but there was a thread about the bag of holding so this case is solved. All the Paizils have to do now is to inspect every single magic item and create several hundred of threads, one for every problem in the magic items. That is, basically, all they have to do is the job of the designers.

Did I mention somewhere I think sincerely it requires less work to create a new system from scratch than houserule Path 2 into something enjoyable?

[MisterDee]

Stumbled upon this little gem...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/c ... hanics_to/

tl;dr: "Oh, by the way, our playtest that was supposedly about making sure our well-thought-out, intensely tested new system worked as awesome as we designed? Well, actually, it's trying out new things to see if they work."

[tussock]

Most of the new stuff appeared in, whatsit, Pathfinder Unchained, so they've at least been spit-balling this since ... that was advertised from mid-2014 published mid-2015, so 3+ years.

But it wasn't really developed there to the point you could play it to give them any feedback. Like, three actions was there but until you answer questions like "but spells" and "haste and slow", it's not even usable, and everyone that does use it is therefore trying different things and can't give you usable feedback.

So sure, it's both a full system they have worked on getting up to speed for years with internal testing and the first chance to ask their market if it's working like they think it is. It's totally got new ideas in it compared to PF1.

[GâtFromKI]

Right now the "usable feedbacks" are "we played the second adventure of the playtest, it was too hard and not fun, no player want to continue, kkthxbye". (I haven't seen 1 positive review of the second adventure - even among people who won it)

I've seen 1 review of the 5th adventure: "in the second encounter, the two monsters can cast confusion at-will and use Intimidation with their third action, so that's what I did. PCs have 30%-40% chance to Save against Confusion (50% for Druids/Cleric) and Intimidation has 40% chance of making them fly in terror (and 50% to reduce their Will save by 1). It was a quick TPK where the PCs weren't able to act at all". FYA, according to the "building encounters" guidelines, the fight is supposed to be one of the "hardest encounters most groups of characters can consistently defeat"; the PCs aren't supposed to be roflstomped helplessly. "It's hard but I can consistently defeat this" != "I'm been roflstomped".

The feedback would "usable" if the designers were able to do simple additions. Because that's the only reason monsters aren't balanced: because the designers are so dumb, they can't add 4 numbers (level + proficiency + ability modifier + item bonus); the numbers they have asspulled for the monsters are far too high (the DC-by-level chart is already off, the monster are even more off than that). This shouldn't require a playtest to get the right numbers for the monsters and DC.


Anyway, the Paizo's board is kind of fascinating right now. It's like looking at an accident in slow motion, you know what will happen, you can't do anything about it, but you can't look elsewhere.

[RelentlessImp]

Soon all the negative posts will disappear in the night and the system will go out unchanged. History repeats itself again.

[maglag]

You realize that one regular den member is actually offering quite positive review of the 2nd adventure, right?

[GâtFromKI]

I realize he has the same opinion as me on Path 2: Optimization Hell isn't fun. Playable, but not fun.

Now I've seen one non-negative review of the second second adventure. i have yet to see a positive review.