Wandering Adventure Party

One of my favourite things about Pathfinder 2e is its Alternative Initiative Skills rule. It’s a simple and intuitive guideline for making character skills more valuable and pulling in “exploration”/non-combat mode activities and behaviours into combat initialization. For those who haven’t played the game before, while there’s a default initiative roll that everyone can use at the start of combat based off of your Perception modifier, you can also use whatever skill modifier maps onto the task you were doing at the time of initiative if you, or your GM, chooses. So, if you’re a Barbarian busting down a door, you can roll Athlethics for initiative, or if you’re a Cleric pre-casting Shield, you can roll Religion. This is all pretty simple, straight-forward, and elegant until you get to someone who is sneaking at initiative, because Avoid Notice – PF2’s formal name for the ‘sneaking around’ Action in exploration mode – interacts with everyone else’s Perception DC (PF2’s proxy for Passive Perception). Checks, attacks, and skill rolls in PF2 are always done against a DC; the system never does contested rolls for these. This means trying to avoid being detected by someone is always done by rolling a Stealth check against the Perception DCs of anyone around who might be able to reasonably notice them. So, if you roll Stealth for initiative, and you beat all of the enemies’ Perception DCs, none of them should notice you. None of them should know you exist. But initiative is a contested roll. It’s the only contested roll in the game, RAW. And, as mentioned, the default ability for rolling initiative in PF2 is Perception. Why? Because it’s supposed to represent you noticing that the other creatures in the room are about to throw hands. And now we have a Perception roll contesting a Stealth roll. This is where things fall apart. This opens the door to the hiding character beating their opponent’s Perception DC – and so, being unnoticed – while the opponent rolls higher on initiative. What are you supposed to do in this case, where the hider has successfully hidden, but the perceiver succeeds in noticing? Much to my perpetual bemusement and frustration, GM Core suggests that the opponent just… knows someone is out there. GM Core pg. 25: To determine whether someone is undetected by other participants in the encounter, you still compare their Stealth check for initiative to the Perception DC of their enemies. They’re undetected by anyone whose DC they meet or exceed. So what do you do if someone rolls better than everyone else on initiative, but all their foes beat their Perception DC? Well, all the enemies are undetected, but not unnoticed. That means the participant who rolled high still knows someone is around and can start moving about, Seeking, and otherwise preparing to fight. So, why does it do this? Well, biggest reason is probably that PF2 doesn’t have surprise rounds. Instead, it uses its regular stealth system to handle this. The in-text reason is subtle, and likely won’t be picked up by someone who isn’t familiar with the game’s stealth rules. Pathfinder 2e has five different awareness/perception states for creatures: Noticed, Concealed, Hidden, Undetected, and Unnoticed. These states are relative to the viewer+viewed pair. The first three are fairly straight forward and intuitive: Noticed creatures are in plain sight, unobscured, and viewed by the viewer; Concealed creatures are seen, and their location is known, but there is something obscuring the viewer’s view, making their position seem a little “fuzzy”; and Hidden creatures are not seen by the viewer, but their location is known. The Undetected and Unnoticed states, though, are often a bit of a stumbling block, because, by name, they appear to be synonymous. They’re actually significantly different, though. An Undetected creature is one that the viewer knows to exist, but that they do not know the location of, while an Unnoticed creature is one that they don’t know exists at all. If you review the quoted block of text above, you’ll probably pick up on the fact that the authors are very careful to say that the character that succeeds on their Stealth roll is undetected, is careful about the use of unnoticed, and goes out of their way to avoid other synonyms. Beating the enemy’s Perception DC on initiative rolls makes you Undetected, and not Unnoticed. But that’s not how people use it anywhere else in the game. Outside of initiative, if you roll Stealth and beat the other creature’s Perception DC, you’re usually going to be Unnoticed. If you beat the guard’s Perception DC, you’re going to be allowed to sneak on by without them paying you any attention. So, why does it work this way with initiative? The books don’t say definitively, but I’m pretty sure it’s because if you tell your players to roll initiative when you haven’t told them that there’s anything around, they will assume there’s something hiding in the shadows. Most GMs don’t just randomly throw players into initiative, and most players don’t want to be thrown into initiative with no payoff. Hidden enemies are Undetected by default, because players can’t ignore the metacontext of the encounter (nor should they). But GM Core presents this as a symmetrical situation, and it shouldn’t be. The stealth initiative rules are set up this way for good meta reasons, but the GM should be working to a higher standard vis-a-vis metagaming. There are no in-fiction reasons why these Stealth rolls should have different outcomes from any others. So, how should this play out? First of all, in the majority of cases, at least one player is going to either fail their Stealth roll and be perceived, or they’re going to opt to roll with some other skill or ability, so it’ll be a moot case. The NPCs will have a reason to investigate the shadows. But if the whole party rolls Stealth for initiative, and the whole party beats the first NPC’s Perception DC, but fails to beat their initiative roll, I think that NPC should pass on its turn. I will generally roleplay whatever it is that they were doing for 3 Actions, and then pass the baton off to the next character. Eventually, we’ll either get to an NPC whose Perception DC was high enough to actually notice that something’s afoot, or we’ll reach a PC, who will probably make sure all of the NPCs are in the know. This provides opportunities for the players to passively observe their targets for a moment without being in the reactive state of “Oh Shit, It’s My Turn”, and also rewards players with a little extra reward for having tried something as a unit and unanimously succeeding. Plus, it side-steps the invalidating and disappointing feeling of having a ‘win’ stolen away, which is what succeeding on your Stealth roll but having your enemy know you’re there anyway does.

Over on Reddit the other day, u/MeanMeanFun asked the PF2 subreddit what they can do about a player at their table who isn’t as engaged with the game as the rest of the players. This player is newer to the game than the rest of the table, but has been playing for a year now and still struggles to remember things like what all of their items do, and isn’t engaging in optimal tactical play. Some form of this discussion comes up somewhat frequently, and the responses people get are often jarring to me. Consider these replies: If they cannot grasp the basics after 12+ months it is possible that pf2e isn’t their game. Some people’s brains aren’t wired for this game. At this point I think you have to come to terms with the fact that they’re not gonna get any better, and then start thinking and discussing with your other players how to go forward. There’s almost a kind of literacy that ttrpgs require in general and PF demands a lot of in particular. Even if someone is really committed to memorizing stuff, there’s a bringing-it-all-togetherness that’s a unique skill that’s still required to actually apply that knowledge. All of which is to say that it’s possible this isn’t really their fault while this game still not really being for them. If someone just doesn’t get basketball and is constantly double dribbling, carrying, making fouls, and shooting in the wrong basket despite a lot of practice, they’re probably not going to be very welcome in the local pickup game, even if they practice a lot and try really hard. Responses like this are common on any post where someone is either struggling to internalize all of the rules of the game, or doesn’t want to engaged deeply and directly with the game’s engine. There’s a chauvinism on display here which often goes unacknowledged and unchallenged, and not only is it deeply unhelpful to people who are specifically looking for help, but it also creates a sense that the game itself, and the community that surrounds it, is actually openly hostile to them and their play. And my experience with the largest online spaces focused on the game is that they are hostile to players who aren’t looking to engage with the game in a narrow range of ways. There is constant background chatter around what “the game expects” or “the game demands”, and that chatter ultimately always paints a picture of a very rigid game with a very narrow focus on tactical combat with a narrow range of parameters. Meanwhile, the game includes rules that supports almost everything under the sun, including a significant list of feats, spells, and other player options that people regularly complain are too niche to even look at, many of which are explicitly focused on exploration, survival, or social engagement – you know, all of the things you’d want to include in your game if you were trying to release a general purpose fantasy roleplaying game. So, it all raises the question: Just who is this game actually for? While there doesn’t seem to be a consensus among the game’s audience – or, at least the part of it that is active on Reddit and the Paizo forums – about who Pathfinder 2e is for, there does seem to be relatively strong agreement about who it is not for: Everyone. And I’m not really sure I get it. I mean, ok, sure, nothing is truly for everybody all of the time. Even water isn’t going to do much for someone who’s not thirsty. PF2’s not going to be a great fit if you’re looking for early 20th century psychological horror, say, or if you’re in the mood to play a cozy game about contemporary hobby farming. But the line is not “this game isn’t necessarily the best fit for the type of thing the player wants to do right now”, it’s “this game isn’t for them”. And I know someone’s going to tell me I’m reading too much into that wording, but I don’t believe that I am. I think there’s a vocal group of people who like very particular things that PF2 enables, and who simultaneously do not care about other things that PF2 also enables, and who want to totally discount the latter while enshrining the former as the default – if not only – legitimate way to play the game. And that’s unfortunate, because Pathfinder 2e is an incredibly flexible and robust fantasy RPG with so many bits and pieces that you can lean into or remove as your table sees fit. Is it a one pager? No, of course not – there are a lot of rules to skim over and decide what you like and want to keep, and what you maybe can trim away – but you can pare it down very far and have something that supports your play (just look at Pathwarden, and its genre-neutral follow-up Warden, both of which are based off of the PF2 engine). Or consider Hellfinder, another pared down ‘hack’ of PF2 focused on modern horror, developed by Jason Bulmahn, lead designer of both Pathfinder 1e and 2e. The game is designed to be modular. It can be extended or stripped down almost as much as you want. This was the designers intent for the system. And I say with much confidence, the game feels really good played loosely. It’s a great engine for wacky nonsense, and light play. It’s great for a roleplay focused table, just as it is for a hardcore tactical combat focused group. It supports fiction-foreward play so much better than it’s given credit for. A response to the original post by u/SleepylaReef really hit something home for me. I don’t know that it’s fair to the OP, but it definitely holds a bit of a mirror up to this toxic vein: Lots of players never learn the game, period. So you decide if this person is a friend you like to spend time with and you accept their foillibles, or if they’re just tools you use to game with and you kick them out for not being good enough for you. For some people, the others sitting around the table are just tools to enable their own particular type of fun. For some people, there being others in the player pool who aren’t good tools for them is a waste of their time. This has become abundantly clear over time.

https://www.simplypf2e.com/post/recall-knowledge

Something lost a bit in the amazing images released earlier: Vera Rubin Observatory is a steely-eyed asteroid hunter! It's already found thousands of new ones in just a few nights, and is predicted to find *3.7 MILLION* more.THREE POINT SEVEN MILLIONhttps://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/vera-rubin-observatory-will-find-millions-of-asteroids-millions-513f

I give you a momentary reprieve from the madness:The Vera Rubin Observatory has taken its first images of the sky, and they are *extraordinary*. Mind blowing detail, jaw dropping beauty. https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/rubin-opens-its-eye-and-what-it-sees-is-the-universe-8203

i got to run some games again, finally!gm vacation was way too long xDwe continued our campaings of #SeasonOfGhosts and #QuestForTheFrozenFlame respectively, and they're both going well very different vibes, but in a way, they are both about keeping your loved ones safe ^^ or at least that's what we're focusing on gosh, it feels so good to be back! #Pathfinder2e #pf2e

I'm having a hard time understanding what the new #pathfinder2e class "Exemplar" actually is. "A combatant who channels divine power into sacred items called ikons to perform supernatural deeds" sounds so vague to me. I can't visualize them.

A huge cultural difference between Canada and U.S. is this:Americans start conversations with strangers. Every time an American starts a conversation with me, I’m flabbergasted. That simply doesn’t happen in Vancouver—unless they’re hitting on me or trying to assess whether I’m a threat. But in the U.S. random strangers start talking to me—someone they’ve never met—about the wildest things.

Oran becomes a Summoner, from season 3 of Rotgrind! https://youtu.be/W0IX9_AMvSs

Eldritch Osiris Games has posted a free archetype (plus a child archetype!) on their patreon: The Terror Knight, and the Knight Terror. Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/terror-knight-v1-131087852 Reddit Post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/1l7dc3v/nightmare_v_15_terror_knight_revisited_rebalanced/

This is a post by Reddit user u/FarDeskFree who, during the Battlecry! playtest defended the Guardian as Good, Actually. Reproducing here in its entirely, for posterity. https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/1chem84/hot_take_guardian_is_actually_pretty_good_how_are/ I’m seeing a lot of hate for Guardian on this sub and it honestly kind of baffles me. I don’t think the class is perfect or complete but for a playlets I think it is in remarkably good shape. I am actually far more excited about playing one than I am the Commander. I have played a lot of tanks in this game. It is probably my most common party role and I’ve gotten to do it at level low and high levels, (or at least as high as 16 and counting anyway). Champion has long been one off my favorite classes in the game, but I’ve played just about every tank build imaginable including: Champion, Barbarian, Armor Inventor, Mountain Stance Monk, Earthen-Armored Kineticist, I even played a mostly tanky Fighter for a little while. In all of those the one thing I never did was optimize to deal damage. Well…. The fighter might be an exception but that’s Fighter, that’s his thing. It feels like when issues of balance between classes is brought up on this sub, or when people try to talk about how good or bad a class is so much off the conversation is focused around damage output. I have a whole separate soap-box around how good of a class I think Summoner can be if you stop focusing on trying to do damage with your Eidolon and actually play like a caster. My Angelic Summoner with a divine sorcerer archetype might be the best pf2e healer/support I’ve ever seen, but all that is beside the point. Back to Gaurdian. People seem to be pretty disappointed in Taunt, and I really don’t get it. The hardest part of playing tank is that once a creature figures out you’re hard to hit, they stop targeting you and aim for your backline. Taunt is the best remedy for this I’ve seen. People keep comparing it to Barbarian (especially Giant Barb) but I really don’t think it’s a fair comparison. Yes, you take a -2 to that creature, so it looks similar on paper, but lets also keep proficiency in mind. Barbarian get’s expert AC at 13th level and never even hits Master. Fighter gets Expert AC at 11th level and Master at 17th. Champion (the previous AC champ) goes Expert at 7th, Master at 13th, and Legend at 17th. Prior to this playlets, Champ and and Monk were the only classes in the game to get Legendary AC. Guardian picks up expert at 5th level, Master at 11th, and Legendary at 15th! So looking back at comparing this to a Barb’s rage feature, By the time the Barbarian even gets Expert in AC, Guardian is two levels shy of Legendary. -2 AC might look similar on paper, but prof has the Guard ahead by somewhere between +2 and +4 depending on what level we make the comparison. Not only that, but the Barbarian has a penalty to their AC against everybody, and Taunt only gives a single enemy that buff, and we haven’t touched on the buff that Taunt gives to your whole team. You effectively increase all of their ACs by 1-3 depending on a roll, and that’s 1 on a monster rolling a success, they have to crit your class DC in order for your team not to get the benefit. So let’s look at how that DC scales. Turn out it actually scales identically to Champion with Expert at 9th, and Master at 17th. This is about 2 levels after the full spell casters get their increased to Spell DC. You will not that I said “Effectively” increases, and that is a very important distinction. In actuallity the emery is taking a penalty to their attack roll, which is actually a huge difference because that means that it stacks with all kinds of other AC buffs that your buddies could have. It stacks with the Protection/Circle of Protection spells, it stakes with shields, it stacks with Rallying Anthem, it stacks with weapons that have the parry trait, it stacks with the Dueling Parry feat line. It really can’t be overstated how good this is. It is very difficult to find stackable AC buffs in this game. A Guardian and Bard together could in theory buff their whole party’s AC by +6 in addition to whatever Shields and other things they’ve got going on between a crit fail on Taunt and a Critical success Fortissimo Composition of Rallying Anthem. That turns a severe boss encounter into a big wet noodle! So to sum up, you have the best AC in the freaking game, which you can choose to lower down to EVERYONE ELSE’S AC in order increase your whole party by 1-3 and you can just keep doping this every damn turn. The baddie is defending with a Will save, which is typically a low save for big bruisers who it hard. Let’s also mention here that Taunt gives you a circumstance penalty to AC, which doesn’t stack with Off-Guard so if you were already flanked, it isn’t even a penalty. All this is really only talking on that one mechanic though, there are so many other cool little things in there. Here’s a non-exhaustive list: You get armor spec. out the gate, compared to Champion who has to wait until 7th level, and fighter at 11th. You then get greater armor spec, which doubles your resistance from the previous ability as of 13th level. The Mitigate Harm Threat technique is awesome! The worst part of lowering your AC to your Taunt target is not getting hit more, it’s getting crit more, which this gives a specific resistance to that scales overtime. The Raise Haft feat lets you parry with a 2 handed weapon, and if the weapon already had the parry trait (such as a Bow Staff, or fucking Mithral Tree) it increases the parry from +1 to +3. For those keeping track at home, that more than offsets your penalty from Taunt and is better than a shield, albeit you don’t get to mitigate damage with Shield Block with a Parry weapon, but that also competes with Intercept Strike for your reaction. So… shrug I guess. There are so many other really cool and narratively dynamic feats for soaking damage and pushing people around and protecting your allies. TL;DR: this class looks effin’ great and y’all crazy.

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