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sugar free jazz posted:“Crafting materials” is honestly such a lazy, insulting and garbage bandaid for a terrible crafting system lmao I've never seen someone who actuality gave a poo poo about crafting and didn't just want free power. The original posted complaint was exactly this. I know coming from other systems people immediately gravitate towards wizards and crafting because it is how you break those other games and I'm glad they end up disappointed.
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Feb 5, 2023 17:40
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KPC_Mammon posted:The alkenstar campaign hands out several hundred gold in crafting materials. You can either sell them for half value or make them into discounted stuff. I also don't really like crafting as a thing. Even if you hand out materials, it's hard to keep all the players busy over an extended down time. Out of 4 players, you probably won't have more than 1 who can participate in crafting, and since it takes months to get any significant benefit, what are the rest of the players doing? In strength of thousands you have extended down time, but then you have things you're supposed to do during them, and the person who decides to craft gives up the pre-written downtime activities to do that, so instead of feeling like they get a benefit for investing into crafting it somehow still manages to feel like a punishment where they don't get to participate in the school-based downtime activities if they want to craft. Anyway, all fine for me, if you want a thing where you run a magic item store or are a magical blacksmith, probably play a different game than pathfinder 2e. The battlezoo monster parts rules summary I read has making items from monster parts take 0 checks and they set overnight, so it's trivial once you have the parts and everyone can do it to make their custom tyrannosaurus tooth weapon or whatever, which seems cool. They have different rules depending on if you want only monster part loot or a hybrid of shopping + monster parts etc.
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Feb 5, 2023 17:54
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KPC_Mammon posted:I've never seen someone who actuality gave a poo poo about crafting and didn't just want free power. The original posted complaint was exactly this. Uh sorry that you play with people who are or are yourself a dick about crafting in other systems, maybe don’t do that? What a terrible attitude. Crafting should be good and worthwhile to do and not mechanically equivalent to panhandling but being really good at panhandling. It sucks to have to homebrew a crafting system or go third party because my players want to make cool poo poo from giant mantises. People like making cool things and there’s nothing in the system itself to support that and it’s a bad thing that it’s missing
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Feb 5, 2023 18:04
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sugar free jazz posted:Uh sorry that you play with people who are or are yourself a dick about crafting in other systems, maybe don’t do that? What a terrible attitude. Crafting should be good and worthwhile to do and not mechanically equivalent to panhandling but being really good at panhandling. Yeah, I recently played with a crafting wizard who was a huge dick in and out of the game. It sucks. How is that related to your strange need for crafting to be better at making money than being a legendary performer called upon by the heavens themselves to arrange and perform in a brand new opera? Each skill having an equivalent way to make money is a feature, not a bug.
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Feb 5, 2023 18:13
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Crafting is supposed to be a major part of the system, to the point where two classes are supposedly heavily focused on making items (Alchemist and Inventor), and to make them work they basically just entirely ignore the crafting system and make poo poo for free instantly. Also the making money system is pretty pointless and shouldn't be a consideration in anything, everyone has effectively the same results anyway so it's boring and pointless busywork that doesn't interact with anything. People take crafting skill increases and feats because they want to be able to craft things, and it's basically pointless when you can just use your Athletics or a Lore skill instead and not have to waste picks on something that has basically no effect 90%+ of the time Piell fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Feb 5, 2023 |
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Feb 5, 2023 18:13
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Piell posted:Crafting is supposed to be a major part of the system, to the point where two classes are supposedly heavily focused on making items (Alchemist and Inventor), and to make them work they basically just entirely ignore the crafting system and make poo poo for free instantly. It would be cool if the new treasure vault could somehow make everyone happy in that regard. I think the first step if you need better crafting would be making all downtime actions better. You'd also need to either give xp during downtime or standardize downtime per level (the later could be terrible depending on the campaign). Otherwise, you'll break the tight math and make encounter building a headache.
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Feb 5, 2023 18:18
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Piell posted:Also the making money system is pretty pointless and shouldn't be a consideration in anything, everyone has effectively the same results anyway so it's boring and pointless busywork that doesn't interact with anything. People take crafting skill increases and feats because they want to be able to craft things, and it's basically pointless when you can just use your Athletics or a Lore skill instead and not have to waste picks on something that has basically no effect 90%+ of the time Alchemist class feats should give you enough of a bonus to impact your character's capabilities, I'll readily agree with that. Alchemist feats in general are terrible though, mostly just a bunch of math fixes and garbage. Skill feats range from extremely niche to gamechanging. I wish the mechanically worse, flavorful ones didn't take such a limited resource. I agree it is a problem but I don't think the source of that problem is the crafting rules. Don't forget you have to find a relevant job in other skills and you aren't guaranteed to get a job at the level you'd like. Crafting gives control over your own income. You can't just panhandle a level appropriate living.
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Feb 5, 2023 18:30
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I think ultimately what me and my players want is a system that just lets you craft cool stuff because it's cool and fulfills a type of heroic fantasy of being a skilled smith, inventor, alchemist, etc. I understand people's worry about it becoming a broken system that makes trillions of GP that ruins the economy entirely, or makes your players ignore the adventure to just play math simulator and get rich in fake money. But my players wouldn't do that anyway. They want to defeat the evil villains, and if they can spend some of their downtime to make a cool weapon or armor on their own, saving money compared to buying it in a shop, that's awesome. It puts a little personal touch on the stuff they are wearing and using. The easiest and simplest way would be to give them unique formulas, so that the stuff they are making is stuff you can't just buy in a shop anyway, so they have to craft it if they want it. But I think it would be cool if beyond unique stuff, someone trained and specialized in crafting could make the needed rune or 100 fire arrows during downtime, and save some money in the process. I think the system needs some fixing to make that a viable alternative to just buying it, and spending the downtime you would have spent crafting it earning money instead. Ultimately adventuring and questing will make you far more money than any Downtime activity anyway (rightfully so), so I'm not too worried about how they are balanced against each other for how much money you make.
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Feb 5, 2023 18:33
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We only really use crafting for the alchemist to learn how to craft awesome poo poo like dragon's breath potions, for someone to fix a shield, or to affix store bought runes, etc. Although if there's an overland/over water trip of 4+ days the party usually crafts some common consumables to have around. I just charge them a discounted amount in gold instead of requiring they have specific materials. I didn't know about the Battlezoo book having new crafting rules, I thought it was just a bestiary. Definitely need to check it out now.
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Feb 5, 2023 18:55
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Speaking of crafting things, something I always overthink about: The Seasoned feat, gives you +1 to craft food&drink, including potions if you know how to potion. What about Lore(Cooking) or something similar though? Like, my monk has zero crafting, but his Baking lore is always maxed out as far as I can get it because he's a PFS character and I like money. Fortunately, the folks who run PFS in my area let Seasoned apply to the Lore check because it seems pretty obvious, I just always end up wondering if there's an "official" ruling somewhere I keep overlooking.
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Feb 5, 2023 18:59
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KPC_Mammon posted:Yeah, I recently played with a crafting wizard who was a huge dick in and out of the game. It sucks. What part of “I want my players to make cool poo poo from mantis parts” sounds like I want this to be about making money. The current system, which is dogshit, is explicitly in those terms and it is in fact ridiculous that all day jobs are mechanically equivalent it’s dumb as hell. It’s just the PFS system which was also totally worthless The idea of a virtuoso musician and a legendary artisan just rolling the same check for the same result is also horrible. let them do different things, doing different things is good. sugar free jazz fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Feb 5, 2023 |
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Feb 5, 2023 19:06
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Anyone have any good recs for how best to approximate a Reaper from FF14? A melee dps job that fights with a scythe, has made a pact with a demon for power and the being they made a pact with shows up in some of their attacks (I don't really expect to have this pet). Lots of spooky dark magic. Speaking in old 3.5 terms it would probably be something like a melee warlock as the closest approximation but I don't have enough familiarity with pf2e to know what all the options are.
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Feb 5, 2023 19:28
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Failboattootoot posted:Anyone have any good recs for how best to approximate a Reaper from FF14? A melee dps job that fights with a scythe, has made a pact with a demon for power and the being they made a pact with shows up in some of their attacks (I don't really expect to have this pet). Lots of spooky dark magic. Speaking in old 3.5 terms it would probably be something like a melee warlock as the closest approximation but I don't have enough familiarity with pf2e to know what all the options are. Warpriest cleric with scythe favored weapon
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Feb 5, 2023 19:45
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My players are interested in Thaumaturge but we play on foundry and are spoiled by automation. Are there any macros or modules to speed up applying their unique method of dealing damage? Alternatively, any cool stories about them to push us to try one regardless?
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Feb 5, 2023 19:49
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sugar free jazz posted:“Crafting materials” is honestly such a lazy, insulting and garbage bandaid for a terrible crafting system lmao In a way it makes sense. Imagine you slay a dragon and wind up with 5,000 gp worth of dragon hide. You could sell it for 2,500 gp to a merchant, or use it and put the full 5,000 of value toward crafting your dragon hide armor. That's where the financial saving in crafting it yourself comes from. It is disappointing to hear that crafting sucks, when the alchemist and inventor flavor text are all about inventing and crafting poo poo. A rogue could also pick up a few crafting feats without much trouble.
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Feb 5, 2023 20:29
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Facebook Aunt posted:In a way it makes sense. Imagine you slay a dragon and wind up with 5,000 gp worth of dragon hide. You could sell it for 2,500 gp to a merchant, or use it and put the full 5,000 of value toward crafting your dragon hide armor. That's where the financial saving in crafting it yourself comes from. "You can take it to a vendor and get the full 5k towards the cost of armor.". Problem solved. Delete crafting.
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Feb 5, 2023 20:32
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"Delete crafting" does not solve the problem.
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Feb 5, 2023 20:50
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It entirely depends on what the problem is.
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Feb 5, 2023 21:01
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Failboattootoot posted:Anyone have any good recs for how best to approximate a Reaper from FF14? A melee dps job that fights with a scythe, has made a pact with a demon for power and the being they made a pact with shows up in some of their attacks (I don't really expect to have this pet). Lots of spooky dark magic. Speaking in old 3.5 terms it would probably be something like a melee warlock as the closest approximation but I don't have enough familiarity with pf2e to know what all the options are. Summoner and take multiclass feats for Fighter or some other sort of Martial class would probably be the best bet. I only say take Summoner first so that you can use the Tandem actions like Act Together, which would give you that Reaper flavor of both of you swinging at once like they do in game.
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Feb 5, 2023 21:25
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Failboattootoot posted:Anyone have any good recs for how best to approximate a Reaper from FF14? A melee dps job that fights with a scythe, has made a pact with a demon for power and the being they made a pact with shows up in some of their attacks (I don't really expect to have this pet). Lots of spooky dark magic. Speaking in old 3.5 terms it would probably be something like a melee warlock as the closest approximation but I don't have enough familiarity with pf2e to know what all the options are. Whenever someone mentions a melee warlock, I always feel inclined to mention the Soulforger archetype which gives you a bonded weapon (or shield or armor) you can manifest out of thin air, and once per day you can grant the item a spooky power of your choice for the whole fight when you summon it. There's no spectral entity popping up with your attacks beyond strong reflavoring (that would certainly be a good fit for the essence power that inflicts negative damage on hit), but classes like the Summoner that actually give you a bonded entity of some sort makes you more of a full support spellcaster for your summon rather than the summon being an accessory to your own actions. You can always pick up some support spells and stuff from archetypes, but archetypes will never actually raise your level of proficiency with weapons or armor beyond extending your existing level of proficiency across more groups, so you really need to be a martial class to be decent at martial fighting. Animal companions and undead companions can be acquired through archetypes alone, so you could play as a full martial character like a Magus or something and still have a ghost via Undead Master following you around to flank with you, slap people for negative damage, or literally spook people when you hit them via its Support action. Vanguard Warden fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Feb 5, 2023 |
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Feb 5, 2023 23:25
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If you want to have a 'dark echo' of yourself then playing a Thaumaturge with the Mirror implement is also appropriate. Flavour the mirror as some kind of focus and flavour your one-handed weapon as whatever kind of thing is closest to a scythe (to get the most out of thaum you really need to be using a one-handed weapon or else pulling awkward hand-changing shenanigans).
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Feb 5, 2023 23:28
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Juggle thaum
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Feb 6, 2023 00:02
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Vanguard Warden posted:Whenever someone mentions a melee warlock, I always feel inclined to mention the Soulforger archetype which gives you a bonded weapon (or shield or armor) you can manifest out of thin air, and once per day you can grant the item a spooky power of your choice for the whole fight when you summon it. There's no spectral entity popping up with your attacks beyond strong reflavoring (that would certainly be a good fit for the essence power that inflicts negative damage on hit), but classes like the Summoner that actually give you a bonded entity of some sort makes you more of a full support spellcaster for your summon rather than the summon being an accessory to your own actions. You can always pick up some support spells and stuff from archetypes, but archetypes will never actually raise your level of proficiency with weapons or armor beyond extending your existing level of proficiency across more groups, so you really need to be a martial class to be decent at martial fighting. I'm mildly curious to see how a Thaumaturge with Summoner Dedication would feel.
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Feb 6, 2023 03:27
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Cyouni posted:I'm mildly curious to see how a Thaumaturge with Summoner Dedication would feel. Not good. The Summoner archetype doesn't give you Act Together, so the three actions your character gets per turn have to be split between you and your eidolon rather than getting an extra action between the two of you as you normally would. Animal/undead/construct companions and even summoned creatures from spells give you two actions from the minion for only one of yours, at a minimum. This isn't even a means to work around MAP, as eidolons always share their master's penalty. On top of all that the Summoner archetype only lets you get up to expert proficiency with your eidolon's attacks and armor class, so it's not going to be much better than your party's wizard at trying to punch someone or take a hit when you do give up an action for it to do so. Summoner is a cool class, but a terrible archetype.
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Feb 6, 2023 05:43
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Facebook Aunt posted:In a way it makes sense. Imagine you slay a dragon and wind up with 5,000 gp worth of dragon hide. You could sell it for 2,500 gp to a merchant, or use it and put the full 5,000 of value toward crafting your dragon hide armor. That's where the financial saving in crafting it yourself comes from. It really doesn’t make sense. If that’s your approach just delete crafting, take it out back and put it out of its misery because it’s already basically dead. It adds nothing but a little extra stupid bookkeeping. If you’re that intensely freaked out about game economy for some reason and at the same time totally unable to talk to each other about the game you want to play, just remove it and move on. Personally, I vote for a cool and good and useful crafting system vOv
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Feb 6, 2023 07:15
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2e crafting is fine in concept. The character investment isn't about giving you more money (and thereby more power), it's about giving you access to stuff without having to go find it first. Considering all the APs where you're outlaws hiding from the law, you're out in the boonies where the nearest city is an extended travel sequence away, you're a bunch of migratory cavemen, etc, there's plenty of room for that. The subsystem's problems are pretty much all in (a) fine execution (the whole 4 day thing and other fiddly stuff), (b) the fiddly bookkeeping stuff you're never going to get away from with a system that delineates character-power-through-magic-items in individual gp tracking, and (c) not making it clear that the point of the subsystem is that it's about getting access to stuff without having to go find it first.
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Feb 6, 2023 10:20
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Apologies in advance, I searched for a Starfinder thread and the only one I found was archived from 2018. Which might actually answer my question: Is Starfinder any good? I have the big rear end rulebook, and I've kinda gone through it, but it's dense. Opinions around the Internet seem mixed, but almost universally negative on space combat. I don't know if that's fixed in later sourcebooks or not. I was hoping for something more universal, butt he lore is kind of neat.
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Feb 6, 2023 12:51
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Roadie posted:2e crafting is fine in concept. The character investment isn't about giving you more money (and thereby more power), it's about giving you access to stuff without having to go find it first. Considering all the APs where you're outlaws hiding from the law, you're out in the boonies where the nearest city is an extended travel sequence away, you're a bunch of migratory cavemen, etc, there's plenty of room for that. The subsystem's problems are pretty much all in (a) fine execution (the whole 4 day thing and other fiddly stuff), (b) the fiddly bookkeeping stuff you're never going to get away from with a system that delineates character-power-through-magic-items in individual gp tracking, and (c) not making it clear that the point of the subsystem is that it's about getting access to stuff without having to go find it first. Right, the problem is that it doesn’t even fulfill that goal of “this is a system that provides players with access to the specific items they want instead of the ones the GM gives them” because of the specific requirement for tons of downtime which other players don’t have anything useful to do with. Setting aside for a moment the “crafting isn’t cool enough I want to make a weapon out of the trophies of my fallen foes” crowd for a moment, because, 1) they have a solution it’s called battlezoo, and 2) the fist party system we do have was never meant for them, the primary goal of the crafting system is obviously “get the items you want, rather than more items. That’s fine, and it tracks with the overall system balance goals. But if that’s the design intent of the system, then disconnect it from the earn income rules and let it be usable without literally weeks of downtime. As it is, we have no choice but to engage with the “balanced against earn income” portion of the ruleset when all a lot of players really want is being able to use the whole item list in AoN as a shopping list, rather than being told by the GM “there’s nobody in this podunk town who will sell you a Wounding rune” or whatever.
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Feb 6, 2023 14:33
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Anarcho-Commissar posted:
Butt he lore. Heh. Starfinder is cool. The rule system often feels like the first tentative steps away from 3.5 towards what 2e became, but it’s definitely way more rooted in that old PF1e design ethos so your patience with that may vary. The lore is in fact extremely neat. Space combat rules do, in fact, absolutely suck. You can grab the main lore sourcebook for starfinder (Pact Worlds, the SF equivalent of the Lost Omens World Guide for PF) for free on Paizo dot com rn w/ code OPENGAMING; https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6si8g
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Feb 6, 2023 14:36
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Chevy Slyme posted:Butt he lore. Fun typos! And thanks, free books are always nice. Is there some kind of alternate space combat system? I'm not sure if I even care, if I'd use it for that or not, but I figured if there are enough complaints about it, someone may have fixed it.
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Feb 6, 2023 14:42
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Chevy Slyme posted:Right, the problem is that it doesn’t even fulfill that goal of “this is a system that provides players with access to the specific items they want instead of the ones the GM gives them” because of the specific requirement for tons of downtime which other players don’t have anything useful to do with. Setting aside for a moment the “crafting isn’t cool enough I want to make a weapon out of the trophies of my fallen foes” crowd for a moment, because, 1) they have a solution it’s called battlezoo, and 2) the fist party system we do have was never meant for them, the primary goal of the crafting system is obviously “get the items you want, rather than more items. That’s fine, and it tracks with the overall system balance goals. But if that’s the design intent of the system, then disconnect it from the earn income rules and let it be usable without literally weeks of downtime. As it is, we have no choice but to engage with the “balanced against earn income” portion of the ruleset when all a lot of players really want is being able to use the whole item list in AoN as a shopping list, rather than being told by the GM “there’s nobody in this podunk town who will sell you a Wounding rune” or whatever. Battlezoo is 3rd party and if they should be making actual functional systems as first party material. You need a formula to make items. They do not sell those in the podunk towns. So the crafting system is designed around a level 7 feat and edge case campaigns where you can’t get to a city? That’s ridiculous lol
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Feb 6, 2023 14:56
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Get the Crafter to go with non-sleeping ancestry and you can kind of fudge the rest
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Feb 6, 2023 15:02
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sugar free jazz posted:Battlezoo is 3rd party and if they should be making actual functional systems as first party material. Not to defend the crafting system since I'm in the "just delete crafting, actually" camp, but can you name any system that does the monster hunter thing where you kill a monster and then make stuff from its parts as part of the core rules? I tried to kickstart one a while back but it never got made.
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Feb 6, 2023 15:13
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The problem with making crafting A Thing is the same issue with Wizards and their spell books: it gives 1 player and the GM a private minigame to dance through while everyone else just plays on their phones or whatever. Codified downtime with specified tasks is really one of the things that only works in specific campaigns, for specific groups. Otherwise, you wind up with one player doing their required homework, one player smashing the Advance Plot task, and the rest going "I guess I'll Earn Income. Mother may I?". Which is all kinds crap and not worth the hassle.
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Feb 6, 2023 15:21
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M. Night Skymall posted:Not to defend the crafting system since I'm in the "just delete crafting, actually" camp, but can you name any system that does the monster hunter thing where you kill a monster and then make stuff from its parts as part of the core rules? I tried to kickstart one a while back but it never got made. OSR systems 
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Feb 6, 2023 15:27
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sugar free jazz posted:OSR systems That's not a name of a set of rules? Just being like actually my DM just lets me do it with no hard rules is not a rulebook.
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Feb 6, 2023 15:30
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M. Night Skymall posted:That's not a name of a set of rules? Just being like actually my DM just lets me do it with no hard rules is not a rulebook. hey thanks for explaining the joke
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Feb 6, 2023 15:48
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I was hoping you were going to give me a system, I backed this poo poo by Jim McClure 4 years ago and I'm hoping it's going to come out someday. Anyway, I guess good job arguing in bad faith as a "joke" for pages and pages there. Being fine with a DM's monster part homebrew but not OK with the guy whose name is on the core rulebook's rules for monster parts because it's "3rd party" is certainly a take.
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Feb 6, 2023 15:53
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iirc the discrepancy between crafting being like earn income but with extra steps was explained in some pfs footnote somewhere that you're supposed to be able to get earn income at your level minus two easily, but are intended to have to seek out specific opportunities to get earn income at level (whereas with crafting you can do it at level by default). It still feels weird and very half baked, though.
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Feb 6, 2023 16:31
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M. Night Skymall posted:Not to defend the crafting system since I'm in the "just delete crafting, actually" camp, but can you name any system that does the monster hunter thing where you kill a monster and then make stuff from its parts as part of the core rules? I tried to kickstart one a while back but it never got made. Isn't that Battlezoo's whole thing?
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Feb 6, 2023 16:33
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