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Plutonis posted:Maya never got to be possessed by anyone other than Mia though play spirit of justice
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Feb 15, 2022 10:38
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My Lovely Horse posted:I agree with that but I also think it easily leads to players saying "Bob uses Diplomacy on this guy to persuade him to back off" or "Alice tries to get on the roof using Athletics" all the time, as in just picking options from a list, and that's bad enough when it's "Bob uses Whirlwind Slash, Alice casts Fireblast" but at least those would both presumably be pre-codified actions that imply what an in-fiction observable event would look like, and they're also things that naturally repeat all the time. Whereas in unique situations I'd like players to describe at least whether it's "Bob appeals to common goals to defuse the situation" or "Bob tries to pass off Alice's insult to the guy as a joke", or "Alice carefully climbs up the drainpipe" vs. "Alice braces herself between the alley walls to get up" just to get an idea of what's going on in-fiction (and these both strike me as things whose description depend a lot on the unique situation you have invoked i.e. not as suitable to catch-all combat-like maneuvers like Common Sense Appeal or Drainpipe Climb). I can't remember where I read this particular bit of GMing advice, but it's served me well in situations like that: ask players "What does that look like?" I think there's a strain of player who doesn't want to describe their actions because they feel like doing so will give the GM an excuse to shut them down before the roll -- and I don't even think that's an unfair or inaccurate feeling, since there definitely are GMs who will do that -- but if you let them get the success in the bag then ask them to describe what's going on they can feel a lot freer to get into the details. A drawback of this system is that it does involve a lot of 'spontaneous generation of setting' including retroactively adding details to scenes, so if you're looking for immersion or the feel that you're exploring a pre-constructed landscape it's not going to fly, but I don't mind that sort of thing.
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Feb 15, 2022 11:03
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Red Metal posted:play spirit of justice Ohhhh man been a while so I thought the Kurain just looked at the past I forgot it was the last moments of the victim
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Feb 15, 2022 11:17
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GimpInBlack posted:There are plenty of reasons speak with dead might not be a reliable tool in a mystery plot. First and most obvious, a mystery doesn't have to be a murder mystery--if nobody's dead, speaking to the dead is of limited usefulness. I don't know the exact specifics of the system you're using and its particular flavor of speak with dead, but it's reasonably common for the spell to require the body of the dead person in question, so proper corpse disposal can add a layer of challenge. Likewise, if the spell limits the number of questions you can ask the dead, you might still be missing vital context if all you get is the name of the person who killed them. Then, of course, the dead might not be omniscient--if the victim was koshed on the back of the head, drank poisoned wine, or died in a "tragic hunting accident," they might not know who killed them. If the PCs are acting as agents of a justice system and thus have to care about due process, maybe there's a reason postmortem witness statements are inadmissible in court. And, of course, unless the spell in question obligates the shade to tell the truth, the dead might lie to you, just like any character involved in a mystery story. Maybe the victim was actually killed by their brother, for example, but the ghost cares less about justice than ruining their hated business rival, and sees a bunch of well-armed spellthugs poking around into their death as the perfect opportunity. also: 'it was dark, i couldn't see the killer' or, for preference, the killer was polymorphed into someone else, like the guy casting 'speak with dead'
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Feb 15, 2022 11:18
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hyphz posted:No, I just think it's stupid to make a chase subsystem which doesn't allow for the pursuer shooting at the person they're chasing.
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Feb 15, 2022 11:29
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Andrast posted:I think having a lot of variety and options is fun. Hell, having an option for charop is fun and making a mechanically synergistic character/party is satisfying. Not everything needs to be 100% super balanced as long as the core mechanics are good and stuff doesn't get too out of hand. I mean, even if you want "variety and options," at some point there's a limit. You've added all the options that actually add variety without obviating other options or being over/underpowered by a considerable degree or synergizing with some other ability in a way that's unfun. It's good to have options, but options by themselves are not good. At some point you're adding options that just subtract from the ones you've already added. I'm also not saying that every game needs to have a laser focus and only be able to handle one subsystem, but at the same time every game needs to know what it is and what it wants to do. You can't have a game that does everything well, that usually just leads to a system that does nothing well.
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Feb 15, 2022 11:40
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PurpleXVI posted:I mean, even if you want "variety and options," at some point there's a limit. You've added all the options that actually add variety without obviating other options or being over/underpowered by a considerable degree or synergizing with some other ability in a way that's unfun. It's good to have options, but options by themselves are not good. At some point you're adding options that just subtract from the ones you've already added. Sure but I think there's a long way to go still before there's just too much stuff. I'll happily take a few more years of extra stuff for PF2. Also if I don't like something, I can just not use those supplements.
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Feb 15, 2022 11:58
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My Lovely Horse posted:Not even D&D 4E survived being expanded into multiple splatbooks, Dragon magazines and campaign settings, let alone a whole passive-aggressive reboot
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Feb 15, 2022 12:07
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My Lovely Horse posted:Not even D&D 4E survived being expanded into multiple splatbooks, Dragon magazines and campaign settings, let alone a whole passive-aggressive reboot (For the layman: the Essentials Thief has a stance that lets you knock people prone with every attack. If you take an unlikely chain of Fighter feats, you can get an ability that gives you a free attack on everyone you knock prone.)
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Feb 15, 2022 16:37
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PurpleXVI posted:I mean, even if you want "variety and options," at some point there's a limit. You've added all the options that actually add variety without obviating other options or being over/underpowered by a considerable degree or synergizing with some other ability in a way that's unfun. It's good to have options, but options by themselves are not good. At some point you're adding options that just subtract from the ones you've already added. I'm not saying I necessarily disagree with this, but it's kind of funny coming from a Dominions player.
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Feb 15, 2022 16:42
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Splicer posted:It does though It doesn't.You have to gain a certain number of Chase points to overcome each obstacle while the NPC you're chasing gains Chase points at a fixed rate, and if you tie with them, you catch them. There's no mapping of chase points to physical distance, and the range of obstacles used in the APs is huge - some actually stop you moving, some are just difficult to move through, some break LOS and some don't, etc. So there's no rules to help you judge what range you have to a target and whether or not you have line of effect to them. And that's especially bad because some of the standard ranges are extremely high - I have no idea why they gave Fireball a 500 foot range but they did. There's a ton of other issues with it being divorced from the standard systems too - for example, casting Haste on someone in a chase makes no difference per RAW! Compare that to SWADE, where the mapping of chase cards to physical distance is literally the first table in the chase section, and breaking LOS to escape the chase is a particular manuever that requires a certain level of lead. I did try to see if AW had chase rules, but the nearest seems to be to decide if a confrontation happens at your choice of location or the others, which makes a certain amount of sense from the point of view of moving the story forward. My Lovely Horse posted:(and these both strike me as things whose description depend a lot on the unique situation you have invoked i.e. not as suitable to catch-all combat-like maneuvers like Common Sense Appeal or Drainpipe Climb). Sadly, Paizo seem to be working the opposite way, especially in the setting books. The worst case is that shifting a log you are standing on back and forth in order to cause someone else to fall off it is an Archetype Feat. So to be able to do it, you have to take a feat, and that feat requires you to be a lumberjack trained by a very specific group of lumberjacks. (Actually, the feat works on any uneven surface which is a bit better for a feat, but it does mean that if you're on a tightrope and want to shake the tightrope to make someone else fall off, you have to be a lumberjack. No amount of circus experience will allow you to do this, which since there is an AP about running a circus, is a bigger omission than you might think.) hyphz fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Feb 15, 2022 |
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Feb 15, 2022 17:52
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hyphz posted:Sadly, Paizo seem to be working the opposite way, especially in the setting books. The worst case is that shifting a log you are standing on back and forth in order to cause someone else to fall off it is an Archetype Feat. So to be able to do it, you have to take a feat, and that feat requires you to be a lumberjack trained by a very specific group of lumberjacks. (Actually, the feat works on any uneven surface which is a bit better for a feat, but it does mean that if you're on a tightrope and want to shake the tightrope to make someone else fall off, you have to be a lumberjack. No amount of circus experience will allow you to do this, which since there is an AP about running a circus, is a bigger omission than you might think.) Something being a feat doesn't mean that a character without the feat can't do a similar thing. It means that the feat haver will always be able to do it no questions asked. Andrast fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Feb 15, 2022 |
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Feb 15, 2022 17:59
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Andrast posted:Something being a feat doesn't mean that a character without the feat can't do a similar thing. It means that the feat haver will always be able to do it no questions asked.
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Feb 15, 2022 18:05
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Andrast posted:Something being a feat doesn't mean that a character without the feat can't do a similar thing. It means that the feat haver will always be able to do it no questions asked.
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Feb 15, 2022 18:15
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It's probably a more relevant feat in a campaign where you might pick up the "Turpin Rowe Lumberjack" archetype but it does seem pretty narrow
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Feb 15, 2022 18:19
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hyphz posted:It doesn't.You have to gain a certain number of Chase points to overcome each obstacle while the NPC you're chasing gains Chase points at a fixed rate, and if you tie with them, you catch them.
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Feb 15, 2022 18:52
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sebmojo posted:also: 'it was dark, i couldn't see the killer' The one time I had a murder mystery where this came up the victims didn't even really comprehend that they were dead. They could provide some useful Intel but not any smoking gun. Alternative more fun option, the victim lies. A murdered B, but B hates C so much that even in death they'll testify against C
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Feb 15, 2022 19:23
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The Vlad Taltos novels by Steven Brust has an interesting take on the subject: it's a world where resurrection is inexpensive and reliable (...up to a point), so assassinating someone is a way to send them a warning (the implication being that the next time your dead body will be chopped up and deposited in scattered place, making resurrection impossible). Thus, really good assassins make a point not to be seen by their victims so that even when they're resurrected they have nothing to trace back or take revenge on. Speak With Dead doesn't help you solve a mystery when all the dead person can tell you is "I was sitting there, I thought I was alone, and then someone threw a hood over my head and then grabbed me and cut my throat."
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Feb 15, 2022 19:34
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OpenlyEvilJello posted:I'm not saying I necessarily disagree with this, but it's kind of funny coming from a Dominions player. I'll note that I'm a Dominions player who dislikes Dominions Enhanced, which does just this, adds a shitload more options on top that in nine cases out of ten completely gently caress the balance.  Also Dominions is a perfectly* balanced** experience. Andrast posted:Something being a feat doesn't mean that a character without the feat can't do a similar thing. It means that the feat haver will always be able to do it no questions asked. I mean, if the feat specifically lets you do it, then it would seem to imply that lacking the feat, by RAW, means you can't do it, unless there's a subtext elsewhere that goes: "you can do the same thing as this feat but with a -X penalty."
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Feb 15, 2022 19:50
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hyphz posted:Sadly, Paizo seem to be working the opposite way, especially in the setting books. The worst case is that shifting a log you are standing on back and forth in order to cause someone else to fall off it is an Archetype Feat. So to be able to do it, you have to take a feat, and that feat requires you to be a lumberjack trained by a very specific group of lumberjacks. (Actually, the feat works on any uneven surface which is a bit better for a feat, but it does mean that if you're on a tightrope and want to shake the tightrope to make someone else fall off, you have to be a lumberjack. No amount of circus experience will allow you to do this, which since there is an AP about running a circus, is a bigger omission than you might think.) Personally, I feel like Paizo could solve my issues with this approach with two pieces of GM advice. 1) Establish that anyone can try to do the same basic thing, it'd just be a regular-rear end trip attempt. Maybe give them a +1 bonus for doing something cool the first time they do it, GM's discretion. Non-attack maneuvers are already something Pathfinder 2e encourages, just make sure people know that feats like this aren't intended to be limiting that way. 2) Write a long example of a GM deciding what archetypes to actively recommend their players take in their campaign, and have it include them deciding to take this archetype for an adventure path's local logging company and reflavor it for their local logging company. Heck, maybe they can even reflavor it enough to fit a local mining company. Something that lets GMs feel like they're allowed to take these mechanics that are technically tied to very specific locations in Golarion and reuse them if they see a spot for them that feels appropriate in their home games. As is it feeds into some of Pathfinder's worse tendencies, but I feel like you can still make it work.
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Feb 15, 2022 19:55
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PurpleXVI posted:I mean, if the feat specifically lets you do it, then it would seem to imply that lacking the feat, by RAW, means you can't do it, unless there's a subtext elsewhere that goes: "you can do the same thing as this feat but with a -X penalty." Well, mechanically the feat is kind of just a trip or a shove with acrobatics instead of athletics and some additional restrictions. Nothing is stopping people from doing a trip on a log. edit: also I extremely disagree with this kind of stuff implying you can't do similar stuff at all because of a feat, mostly because it would be incredibly dumb Andrast fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Feb 15, 2022 |
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Feb 15, 2022 20:01
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Andrast posted:Well, mechanically the feat is kind of just a trip or a shove with acrobatics instead of athletics and some additional restrictions. Nothing is stopping people from doing a trip on a log. It's dumb, but it's how people's brains work. Which is why you need to explicitly say it doesn't and foster a different approach to looking at rules in your game and so on.
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Feb 15, 2022 20:12
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Andrast posted:Well, mechanically the feat is kind of just a trip or a shove with acrobatics instead of athletics and some additional restrictions. Nothing is stopping people from doing a trip on a log. But if you can already do it (with sufficient ease to be viable), then what’s the point of the feat? Because the feat is in competition with a bunch of others.
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Feb 15, 2022 20:13
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Xiahou Dun posted:But if you can already do it (with sufficient ease to be viable), then what’s the point of the feat? Because the feat is in competition with a bunch of others. The feat does let you do it with acrobatics instead of athletics, making it quite a lot stronger for people are specialized in that. It doesn't seem like a very strong feat though since it is very niche. Lurks With Wolves posted:It's dumb, but it's how people's brains work. Which is why you need to explicitly say it doesn't and foster a different approach to looking at rules in your game and so on. Yeah, I agree. They should probably write it out explicitly.
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Feb 15, 2022 20:16
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hyphz posted:It doesn't.You have to gain a certain number of Chase points to overcome each obstacle while the NPC you're chasing gains Chase points at a fixed rate, and if you tie with them, you catch them. There's no mapping of chase points to physical distance, and the range of obstacles used in the APs is huge - some actually stop you moving, some are just difficult to move through, some break LOS and some don't, etc. So there's no rules to help you judge what range you have to a target and whether or not you have line of effect to them. And that's especially bad because some of the standard ranges are extremely high - I have no idea why they gave Fireball a 500 foot range but they did. There's a ton of other issues with it being divorced from the standard systems too - for example, casting Haste on someone in a chase makes no difference per RAW! Again, as others have pointed out, it seems like the big problem you're grappling with is assuming that the usual rules of engagement for combat apply during a chase - When you pull out the chase system you're essentially plopping the characters down into a separate little subsystem and all actions they could take need to be adjudicated in that subsystem. If a player wants to burn a spell slot to cast fireball during the chase then they can do that, but the results will be adjudicated within the chase subsystem (ie, the fireball will result in either the players gaining additional chase points or the enemy gaining fewer chase points). (Again, I'm not at all versed in the larger system of PF2e and am going off the system as I understand it, so if my explanation is off-base, someone who's better versed in the system should feel free to correct me) hyphz posted:Sadly, Paizo seem to be working the opposite way, especially in the setting books. The worst case is that shifting a log you are standing on back and forth in order to cause someone else to fall off it is an Archetype Feat. So to be able to do it, you have to take a feat, and that feat requires you to be a lumberjack trained by a very specific group of lumberjacks. (Actually, the feat works on any uneven surface which is a bit better for a feat, but it does mean that if you're on a tightrope and want to shake the tightrope to make someone else fall off, you have to be a lumberjack. No amount of circus experience will allow you to do this, which since there is an AP about running a circus, is a bigger omission than you might think.) Oh no, not the lumberjack feat again. The last time there was a forum discussion about this it didn't go well...
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Feb 15, 2022 20:17
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KingKalamari posted:Oh no, not the lumberjack feat again. The last time there was a forum discussion about this it didn't go well... This specific feat has come up before? Amazing
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Feb 15, 2022 20:18
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Andrast posted:This specific feat has come up before? Amazing Everyone wants a log! You're gonna love it, log! Come on and get your log! Everyone needs a log! You're gonna love it, log!
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Feb 15, 2022 20:22
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My gold standard for this kind of thing is something System Mastery brought up--there's a feat in XCrawl that lets you dodge a difficult question by just changing the subject. You know, an extremely basic use of the Diplomacy skill.
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Feb 15, 2022 20:23
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Also, this is partially a problem with held-over expectations from PF 1e. Because it did have combat maneuvers that were completely useless without heavy feat investment, and it did release a ton of feats to do incredibly specific things that were necessary to do that specific thing at all in a way that's mechanically viable. So Pathfinder fans are now predisposed to think about feats in that way, and it makes the problem worse. (And as other people mentioned, Pathfinder itself was just continuing a long tradition of feats being limiting this way from earlier d20 RPGs, and so on. It's a problem.) Lurks With Wolves fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Feb 15, 2022 |
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Feb 15, 2022 20:25
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Andrast posted:This specific feat has come up before? Amazing Previous discussion starts here: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?noseen=1&threadid=3849301&pagenumber=606&perpage=40&highlight=lumberjack#post513507381 tl;dr, in PF2E, some feats go on a special "archetype" feat track that you access as part of adventure- (or path-) specific scenarios, and shouldn't be looked at as a thing you consider for your character, outside the domain of that specific adventure path. In an adventure about lumberjacks, characters who get adopted into the lumberjack guild get access to a feat that helps them trip up opponents, by virtue of all that practice rolling logs they're getting. This is an interesting little tidbit that adds flavor to the game. It's not meant to be like D&D, where your GM says "you can take feats from the main books plus supplements A through F" and then you see the lumberjack log rolling trip feat and go "ahah, just what I was looking for" and add it on. It's not competing with more general feats because it's only on the archetype track, and it's not intended to be an option for characters outside that path.
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Feb 15, 2022 20:29
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Leperflesh posted:In an adventure about lumberjacks, characters who get adopted into the lumberjack guild get access to a feat that helps them trip up opponents, by virtue of all that practice rolling logs they're getting. This is an interesting little tidbit that adds flavor to the game. Alas, that would be much better if it was the case, but it isn't. Instead, it's just an obvious result of Paizo apparently mandating that every AP must contain at least a new Archetype (or on one occasion a new Ancestry). The PCs get to visit a festival run by the lumberjack guild. There's nothing in the adventure that suggests the lumberjacks might train the PCs or let them join - in fact, it's more suggested that the PCs might hire some of the lumberjacks to join their circus. The exact same thing happens in one of the Ruby Phoenix adventures - it's mentioned that the local Golden League mafia might try to manipulate betting on the Ruby Phoenix Tournament, and the PCs can have an encounter with some of their goons trying to strong-arm them and then attack them. The adventure also gives the archetype Golden League Enforcer. There's nothing in any part of the adventure that suggests that a PC deciding to join the Golden League would ever be a good idea or even vaguely fit into what's going on.
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Feb 15, 2022 20:41
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Maybe they just like having a bunch of flavorful setting specific archetypes and adventures paths taking place in those areas are a good place to showcase them
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Feb 15, 2022 20:43
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Ah, I see. Well, that's not as interesting of an adventure design, but the base point still holds: it's an error to compare adventure path specific feats, which occupy slots on a special feat track, to the way feats work in D&D, and then criticize them on that basis. I am neutral on whether PF2E's feats implementation is good, I don't know or play the game. I just read that previous conversation and felt like it was worth summarizing.
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Feb 15, 2022 20:49
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Leperflesh posted:Ah, I see. Well, that's not as interesting of an adventure design, but the base point still holds: it's an error to compare adventure path specific feats, which occupy slots on a special feat track, to the way feats work in D&D, and then criticize them on that basis. In a vacuum archetypes do actually compete with class feats since the normal way to get archetype feats is to use your class feat slots for them. "Free Archetype" where everyone gets free archetype progression is very popular though and even Paizo's newest full AP Strength of Thousands implements a version of that and has all the player characters have either druid or wizard archetype feats for free since the campaign is about the party being students in a magic school located in fantasy-africa.
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Feb 15, 2022 20:55
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Yeah I saw someone (maybe you) say exactly that in the other thread, and just elided it for brevity. I presume that a good GM using these feats will take that free option.
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Feb 15, 2022 20:58
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Leperflesh posted:Yeah I saw someone (maybe you) say exactly that in the other thread, and just elided it for brevity. I presume that a good GM using these feats will take that free option. You have to be very careful about which feats you allow them to take. This was what allowed my players to all take Talisman Dabbler Dedication in order to churn out multiple one-shot power-ups for the bard every game day at no cost.
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Feb 15, 2022 22:04
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Splicer posted:And you can attempt to gain a chase point by shooting at them. You don't employ the abstract and arbitrary HP mechanic that only exists for and during combat mode but you can absolutely use the concept of shooting at a guy to help you gain on them. But you can see where that has issues within the context of the broader system, right? As a wizard, the tool I have to use to shoot at him is my fireball spell. But if I expend that, I don't get it back. And I get no advantage by casting a strong spell with a longer range than by casting a weaker spell. Hyphz says that even having had Haste cast on you before the chase doesn't do anything. So you have a problem at the interface between the generic Chase system where many different actions are mechanically equal and the rest of the game where those actions are very much not equal and there are whole resource systems built around them being unequal. I'm having to think hard about this with what I'm working on now, because Tailfeathers has specific spells you can learn with specific effects, but is also based on Strike! so I have to think about things like "this totally seems like a spell someone would cast during or before a chase. How should that work? What do they get in the Chase for having done that?"
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Feb 15, 2022 22:13
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I base all my chase sessions on TMNT Turtles in Time's Sewer Surfin' level. In that they aren't actual skill challenges, they're just setpieces. Mostly because it's a lot easier than writing a story where the enemy might get away and that's just the end of that conflict all of a sudden. So instead you get to use your character tools to blast mooks for a while, then Rat King comes in and you do a fight between people on flying platforms that match speed, which is silly in real life but super cool in a fake fight. Also I play that stage theme because it's really good.
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Feb 15, 2022 23:05
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Jimbozig posted:But you can see where that has issues within the context of the broader system, right? get X points of chase bonus for using an X level spell, fluff it appropriately, if it's a damaging spell then when they catch him he's down some HP.
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Feb 15, 2022 23:13
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theironjef posted:I base all my chase sessions on TMNT Turtles in Time's Sewer Surfin' level. In that they aren't actual skill challenges, they're just setpieces. Mostly because it's a lot easier than writing a story where the enemy might get away and that's just the end of that conflict all of a sudden. So instead you get to use your character tools to blast mooks for a while, then Rat King comes in and you do a fight between people on flying platforms that match speed, which is silly in real life but super cool in a fake fight. Legit stealing this.
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Feb 15, 2022 23:15
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