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Foundry does it all for you, as soon as you level up it'll add the appropriate spots on your feats tab to drop in whatever you need.
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Aug 19, 2022 13:04
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Tempest_56 posted:So I'm delving into Pathfinder for the first time as I've got a game coming up for it. Most of it seems relatively understandable (or at least close enough that I'll figure it out from play) but there's a few of the classes I'm having trouble wrapping my head around. With the caveats that Alchemists are kinda bad, here's the basics: You start with a formula book, and 6 common first level formulas from this list: https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?Category=6, along with specific ones from your research field (Bomber (huck bombs at things), toxicologist (poisoner), mutagenicist (Drink mutagens to make you better at things), or Chirurgeon (healer). Every time you level up you also add two formulas to your book from the list, along with any you can buy or invent via feat. Every day you get infused reagents that are basically the alchemy equivalent of Wizard spell slots: You can make your level + int mod worth of alchemical items from your book, for free. They only last until your next daily preparations though. You don't have to make all of them ahead of time though, you have the quick alchemy action to whip one up on the fly, as well. On top of that, you can do crafting with reagents you purchased, to make permanent items that won't go away in 24 hours. That's the gist. You're essentially a potion wizard, handing out things to the party. You can make a direct combatant out of it, but it's just straight not as good as an equivalent martial class or caster. e: As a kinda example of why alchemists are not really that great compared to an equivalent caster, their class feature that gives them unlimited uses per day of some of their items (Think cantrips) doesn't come until level 7. And even that only lets you create the level 1 versions as often as you want. Gwaihir fucked around with this message at 19:10 on Sep 2, 2022 |
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Sep 2, 2022 19:03
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They're really good outside of combat and in a lot of RP situations at least. It just costs a lot of feats to get that.
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Sep 3, 2022 00:24
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They have a ton of abilities that are clearly defined, so it's not just a matter of DM fiat. If you want, you can get abilities from familiars that are solely buffs to yourself- Extra cantrips, the ability to "courier" a touch based spell in to melee for you, the ability to aid you in skill checks, etc.
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Sep 3, 2022 23:39
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Also there's a general level one feat that anyone can take with appropriate skill training for using magic items regardless of class: https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=857 I think in general it's not entirely that casters are weaker (though they are) as much as other classes having a lot more combat options in terms of either applying their own debuffs, grapples/grabs/trips/shoves, or other archetype based things. I think martials in general have better choices for picking up a cool free archetype that works with their stats more than most casters do. A second casting free archetype doesn't really do much for you as a sorceror, and you aren't going to want to take something that puts you in melee, but there are far more options you can feasibly take as a rogue or fighter to pick up some specific utility you like for your character.
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Oct 6, 2022 18:09
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I'm running outlaws of Alkenstar for an oversized (6 instead of 4) player group, and I've gone with a mix of more enemies and stronger enemies for adjusting to scaling stuff correctly. For single big monsters just hitting elite isn't really enough, I think it is more enjoyable all around to directly give it a 50% HP increase without buffing AC enough to put it under a 50% hit rate for the players on average. Depending on the type of enemy, potentially reducing some of their actions from 2 to 1 or adding a free reaction might be appropriate as well, but it just depends on what you want to do with the encounter. A couple of minions might make more sense than a boss with extra actions, etc. Overleveling is definitely dangerous to swingy dice because of the +10 roll = crit interaction, while bonus HP just means more time for cool interactions to play out/more time for you to RP a boss using all their moves and so on. Gwaihir fucked around with this message at 18:55 on Oct 20, 2022 |
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Oct 20, 2022 18:48
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My Lovely Horse posted:Hey, I'm looking for a new system for my group and I'm kinda liking what I've seen on a very cursory reading of PF2! Have to look into it more but I've got a quick question to start off with: are raw ability scores ever used or referred to anywhere, or could I just cut them out entirely and present this to my folks as "your abilities range from -1 to +5, ability boosts give you a +1" and so on? (Feat prerequisites and such seem to always go off of even numbers which are easily modified, and I've already noticed that boosts give only +1 after you hit 18 in an ability score, but there I could easily just say "you need two boosts to go from +4 to +5".) I play pretty exclusively on foundry but functionality wise there's no reason to ever need to refer to stats as "20 strength" instead of the modifier. The only case where you need to see the raw stat numbers is when applying your boosts at level 5/10/15/20, since you get smaller increments when increasing a stat over 18.
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Jan 9, 2023 19:48
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If you're running stuff in foundry as well, tuning levels is as easy as having the toolbox module installed and right clicking an actor and hitting "Scale to level." That's if you need to change by more than one level either direction, at least, the base version with no mods at all supports an elite or weak NPC template that is +/- 1 level either way. Combined with the tools sites (Like https://mimic-fight-club.github.io/) that tell you exactly what qualifies as a severe encounter for your exact party size and levels, it's easy to tune things as needed for the DM.
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Jan 17, 2023 02:39
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If you really want to roll physical dice you can do that and just type in the exact number you get in foundry to apply damage or whatnot. I wouldn't do it because it'll be way slower, but there's no technical reason you can't. Just install the 3d dice module and call it a day imo.
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Jan 20, 2023 03:15
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Yeah one of the things that REALLY amped up how much I enjoy combats in foundry was fully integrating this very excellent animation pack (https://www.patreon.com/JB2A/about) combined with the automated animations module. When you have sounds and very cool effects for every spell or weapon strike on top of the big 3d dice (Make sure and turn on special sounds for crit successes/failures) it's really just a much better experience than a dry "click button->apply damage." There are free versions of this stuff too, you don't have to jump in with a patreon, I just did because I enjoyed it and thought it was worth a couple bucks. e: This also includes effects for statuses and debuffs, so stuff like rage, inventor's overclock, frightened, grappled etc all get good persistent token effects.
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Jan 20, 2023 15:44
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The PDF importer was updated to work with the most current version of foundry, fwiw: https://gitlab.com/fryguy1013/pdftofoundry. I have not used it for the adventure imports, just the bestiary, but as far as I know while it will set up maps, tokens, journals, and scenes it won't do advanced functions like applying walls or doors on maps. I think with how much official content there is, and the rate that they're releasing at, you already have right now full years+ worth of play time unless you're meeting multiple times per week for 3+ hours.
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Jan 23, 2023 18:17
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Nice, that owns. Looks like with the V10 update hitting last night that's a great tool back available to let everyone enjoy the back catalog of stuff. e: There are also a lot of modules that vastly help out at doing ad hoc encounter building in Foundry fwiw. PF2e toolbench has tools for automatically generating NPCs based on the GM guide stat block suggestions, along with another tool to automatically scale existing NPCs up or down in level, adjusting every relevant stat in the process for you. The most difficult thing overall is probably just getting used to the various UI quirks in terms of foundry's controls, but there's quite a good selection of youtube tutorial type stuff that helps out there.
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Jan 23, 2023 18:28
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Ah, yup. Toolbox was an older version and workbench incorporated lots of the features it had to continue development when Toolbox fell out of use.
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Jan 23, 2023 20:08
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Saxophone posted:Alright, so I have a definite uptick in Pathfinder interest. One of the things D&D 5e killed me with though is how sloggy combat would get and also there didn’t often seem to be interesting choices. To add to what Chevy Slyme mentioned, depending on how much your players are in to it, there's a lot of potential for tactics in terms of building synergized characters. You can adjust builds around what other people are doing to take advantage of it pretty well-If one player is consistently demoralizing or casting fear on enemies, then you as a Rogue probably want to take the feat that makes any frightened enemy flat footed to your attacks, to give you an easier time hitting and enabling your sneak attack damage. Even as the most basic fighter, from level 3 on ish you're virtually never just going to spend an action on making a basic attack, because there's enough other options that are quite useful.
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Jan 23, 2023 22:56
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I'm playing a monk in a game right now and the Ki spells are honestly all pretty drat lame. I did take Ki strike, since that's good at least, but otherwise just invested in stances, stand still, and took wrestler as a free archetype for maximum grapple/punch throwdown ability. The wrastlemonk build is legit extremely fun, especially with stuff like Stoked flame stance giving you a crazy 45 foot movespeed.
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Jan 25, 2023 21:55
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the_steve posted:Her words, not mine. ...Also it's not really THAT much more complex than that lol.
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Jan 31, 2023 15:34
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It's the first system I GMed as well, and it's been fine for us. I did play as a player for a year or so first, but I'm hardly a fully authoritative expert. If you start out with I've of the first party adventure modules, you'll be totally fine imo.
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Feb 2, 2023 22:32
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Most often the other version will be something like: "Make two strikes. These both increase your MAP, but it doesn't apply until your next attack."
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Feb 12, 2023 19:26
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The crux of the problem with "I'm going to make a character who's really bad at things for (reasons)" is that pf2e is a team/communal experience, and signing up lug around a character who's can't contribute is a huge ask to the other people at the table, as well as the GM because the encounter math needs to be fudged if one of the characters has 10% less chance to hit and crit on any debuf or attack, along with being much less good at any out of combat things you'd expect from a bard: diplomacy, performance, deception, all the crucial social skills. Pf2e also really doesn't allow for characters to realistically do things that aren't in their mechanical wheelhouse, because it's just not possible math wise.
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Feb 19, 2023 03:24
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I think moving expert/master/legendary spellcasting training a few levels earlier would go a long way to making casters feel better without making them the overwhelmingly dominating force they were in 5e. It's already a relatively larger amount of work to optimize your spell selection so that you have things that can be effective against all 3 saves, and your proficiency making your spells less likely to land vs a fighter's hits along with also doing much less damage is just blah. Yes, yes, I know spells generally all still have some effect on a successful saving throw, but that's poor recompense when you hit a 200hp boss for 7 damage. I think wizards getting faster proficiencies to make them the fighters of spellcasters in exchange for the clumsy spell selection system is reasonable.
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Feb 21, 2023 16:22
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Chevy Slyme posted:If we want to make them “the fighters of spellcasters”, Expert at 5, Master at 13, would be it. I think there’s also maybe merit to giving them + 1 proficiency bracket with a single school (so, Illusionists become Master w/ Illusions when they are expert in everything else), at, say, 9 and 15, would make sense but you need to do something for universalists to match that. Yeah that's real good imo. For universalist maybe give their drain bonded item cast the +1 boost to attack/DC. They can get the same bonus a specialist does, but only once per day instead of with every spell in a specific school. Those two boosts along with maybe a feat tweak or two feel like they go a hell of a long way towards making the class feel like it's better at really contributing in a group rather than just being sorta along for the ride. I think I'd probably also alter a few of the more niche utility spells to be single actions, since a big part of wizard being blah is not having anything to do with a third action that isn't "I cast shield".
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Feb 21, 2023 17:14
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If you have the foundry modules, then there's really not much more you might need to do other than read through the journals for the scenes you're going to get to. I'd definitely join the pf2e foundry discord (https://discord.gg/pf2e ) too though, they have a good thread for all the current adventure paths that frequently brings up common issues or stuff to look out for. This guy does decent if long videos about GMing the different adventure paths, so it's handy if you have time to burn on watching stuff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0dCLPKqLew
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Feb 21, 2023 19:29
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You should be able to just import AV in to your existing game, it'll just add everything you need in to a new folder for scenes, actors, etc.
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Mar 17, 2023 14:10
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I can't remember all that many situations in outlaws where dispel would come in very handy. I'm only 2/3 of the way through the whole AP, but in general enemies applying magic effects don't seem that common. I think calm emotions would be FAR more useful. Even with as many mindless clockworks as there are in the outlaws campaign, there's more than enough living NPCs you'd be able to use it in to good effect.
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Mar 20, 2023 04:46
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sometimes you just wanna wrastle mans and then spin them in many circles before yeeting them off in to the distance.
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Mar 20, 2023 20:12
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Uh.. Other than you listing feats from multiple archetypes, which would need about level 10 I think, doesn't look like there's any conflicts? e: wait that's really a ton of archetype feats, you're not gonna be able to do that until pretty high level. What's your actual base class and build goal here? Gwaihir fucked around with this message at 17:07 on Mar 28, 2023 |
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Mar 28, 2023 17:05
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OK, looking at pathbuilder, looks like you can have all those feats by level 8, but, like, unless you just completely cripple your character there's no way to also make investigator work. You'd need dex and str to do any damage, cha to make bon mot and all the other general charisma stuff work, and that doesn't really leave anything for int or wis unless you're ok taking literally zero constitution which uh. Is a choice you can make, I guess. At level 10 you'd have 16/20/12/16/10/18 STR/DEX/CON/INT/WIS/CHA which mostly works? Gwaihir fucked around with this message at 17:40 on Mar 28, 2023 |
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Mar 28, 2023 17:38
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I guess investigator dedication doesn't actually let you use int for Devise a strategem, so there's no reason to boost it above 14, yeah. I don't really see the point of picking of investigator like that though.
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Mar 28, 2023 17:44
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I think with recall knowledge specifically it's important for things to be secret. There's interactions there with feats like dubious knowledge that kinda depend on the players not knowing whether the information they're getting is accurate or not. For stuff like stealth I think there's not really much of a difference either way, you fail the stealth roll, the DM immediately goes "You stumble and hit a rock with your foot, alerting the guard around the corner" etc.
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Apr 3, 2023 18:27
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I do wish there was more guidance for DMs about recall knowledge on monsters, since often times you're just kinda left giving obvious fluff lore that doesn't really help the players out or inform their decisions either way.
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Apr 3, 2023 18:43
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I use the roll tracker mod to keep a log of who's dice suck or not, and obviously a collection of 150 rolls is only so statistically significant, but the worst I've seen is an average of +-2 from 10.
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May 17, 2023 19:19
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Yeah, a wizard or sorc can dump a sudden bolt or lightning bolt for the same number of damage dice as a fighter or barb power attack, but they're less likely to crit (generally at least 15% ish depending on the enemy), and can only do it ~3-4 times per day vs "as many times as I get turns" Your consolation prize is still doing half damage when an enemy saves, I guess. I've played both fighter and sorc many times and both feel fantastic to me tbh. Damage powerhouse with extremely good enemy control if you pick up something like wrestler for fighter (grappling/tripping/whirling throw are super strong), or "totally fine" damage with all the good utility spells like invisibility, dimension door, charm, illusionary object/monster etc for sorc.
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May 21, 2023 06:59
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Arivia posted:For people who are running Pathfinder 2e on Foundry, what modules would you recommend for gameplay/quality of life improvements? (ie: I don't need maps or adventures) Automated Animations+Sequencer and JB2A (https://www.patreon.com/JB2A/posts ): Automatic animation mapping of spell and attack effects for everything in the game, from swinging axes and swords to fireballs and lightning bolts. Also covers statuses like raging for barbs, overdrive for inventors, etc. Huge bonus to immersion/gameplay fun when you see the effects of your big crits. Health Estimate: Nice way to show players general condition of enemies without having to let them see and metagame around exact HP bars. Drag ruler: Automatically measure potential movement and color code divide in to number of actions needed, based on the selected unit's move speed. HUGE qol bonus when planning out moves. Dice so nice/Dice Tray: Cool chunky 3d dice, as mentioned, makes it feel good when you roll a zillion dice for your big aoe or whatnot. Dice tray adds a UI click button way to easily roll dice combos in place of typing out /roll etc in chat. PF2e Exploit Vulnerability: Essential if you have a player playing thaumaturge. Automates all the vulnerability checking, application, etc portion of the class. PopOut!: Lets you pop various windows out of the main foundry browser tab, so you can keep your character sheet or a GM Journal page always open on a second monitor without covering up the play field. Roll Tracker: Tracks dice so your players can laugh at the guy that rolls way more nat 1s than the others. PF2e workbench: Excellent GM tools for automatically scaling monsters to different levels, other widgets and bobs. Token Action HUD: Lets you roll all the common actions for the selected token without having a sheet open, huge QOL buff
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May 23, 2023 18:59
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boxen posted:If there's a way to change where the breakpoints are instead of just every 20% (or whatever), it'd be pretty perfect. Yeah, it's fully configurable as far as what percentages apply to what labels: 
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May 23, 2023 20:34
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https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTqdJYzQLsQ1UCw4kg-u52FfAYHPeSTF9tH8hWkH9dvYiWtYaSe9eSglSwz884nQPln8xR3iMuOqk-J/pub is the monk guide I've generally referenced. It's hard to go wrong if you take: stance with damage, stunning fist, stand still, and train athletics. You can punch trip and grapple people, and if they try and stand up or move away, you get free attacks on them. The monk ki spells other than ki strike are pretty much poop, and if you want to use weapons, uhhh, pick a different class that's actually good at it?
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May 25, 2023 22:54
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Let me re-phrase, ki strike, the spell, is great, I love it. The other ki stuff, wholeness of body or w/e the bad heal is, etc, not so great. Stunning fist is great in any mook fight, but it's totally fine and good to take crushing grab or brawler focus too imo. I grapple pretty much everything I get in to melee with on my monk because I took wrestler dedication, so it's nice and reliable.
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May 26, 2023 00:49
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Go for 18 str, you'll want it for the athletics checks and melee damage bonus for sure.
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May 31, 2023 21:14
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Looks like a literal case of throwing the dice and losing. Playing around with Foundry, an Elite 3 enemy has something like +12 to hit in melee, and a level 2 fighter with basic half plate and a steel shield has 20 ac, 22 with a shield up. So it needed a 20 to crit, and then 34 damage is pretty much a max roll for a melee bruiser type elite, with a 1d12+6 strike. So you got deleted by a .4% chance of rolls. (Also, if you had your shield raised, you should have been able to block a portion of the damage, at least enough to let you squeak by. My generic human test fighter had 34 max hp, so the shield block would have let him live even if there was no healing available.) Most of the time, you'd have been fine. I think the answer really is just "Don't walk in to boss fights without at least some contingency." Gwaihir fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Jul 27, 2023 |
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Jul 27, 2023 19:25
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Oh yeah if it's a level 3 bumped to level 4 via Elite mod, that's much more dangerous.
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Jul 27, 2023 19:29
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I've been through 5 starting at level one campaigns so far and never found them all that deadly. The max damage rolled crits are so vanishingly rare, statistically, that it's almost not worth remarking on. Even if you do get chunked there's so many options for healing and recovery with ample time allowance to do so. Single enemy encounters especially just don't have enough actions to reliably knock anyone out for good unless you're in a party actively avoiding every method of defense and healing.
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Jul 28, 2023 23:02
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