A good and fairly short discussion on new player expectations when it comes to slotted full casters, and class baselines.
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Spell Slots & the Evolution of Caster Design in Pathfinder (Spirit Bell Games) -
We played our Pathfinder 2 game yesterday and it was great.Angela said in We played our Pathfinder 2 game yesterday and it was great.:
the fighter got some nice attacks of opportunity which helped out a bunch (I don’t think that’s what they are called in Pathfinder
It was up until last year, when they got renamed to ‘Reactive Strikes’. Most people I know still call them ‘A-Ops’.
These session recaps are really great, by the way. I’ve found myself quite invested in the party’s trials and tribulations! Especially after one of y’all got ate.
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We played our Pathfinder 2 game on Saturday and it was a mixed bag.Well, that was a twist I didn’t see coming! Sounds like the Orc had a pretty good death, narratively speaking. I know players sometimes get disappointing when death doesn’t come as part of a ‘character’ moment, but the tension in the fight must have really shot up when the plants ate him.
It sounds like a real Wash moment.
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How to handle stealth & detection without bogging it down?Yeah. At least for my sessions, the biggest sources of stealth play tend to be things like bushes (which I scribble on my play mat like I’m 4 years old), or things like furniture, so I hear you. It’s easy to say “here are all the ways stealth could happen”, but the reality is that most spaces that people will actually spend time in will not have an abundance of hiding places, and trying to create them can feel very contrived. Feint gets used so much more often than Hide/Sneak.
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How to handle stealth & detection without bogging it down?taaz@biglemmowski.win said in How to handle stealth & detection without bogging it down?:
I should try the offloading though that is good tip, my players are bit meta/gamey
Be judicious in what you off-load to them, then. Maybe don’t let them track which NPCs can see which PCs, but let them track which NPCs the PCs can see. Make sure they’re all tracking their own HP, and not leaving that to you. Let one of them handle calling out initiative, telling everyone who’s up and who’s “on deck”. These all work towards treating you more as the player of the NPCs and less as the person who’s organizing/running the game.
One thing you can do with stealth and initiative, when the NPCs are the ones hiding, is just be transparent about how many enemies there are. Say something like “You think you can hear three distinct sets of sounds.” This makes it so that NPCs are never Unnoticed (which is how the designers seemingly wants you to treat it, anyway). This lets you roll initiative for all of the hidden NPCs openly, and incentivises the players to start looking for them. This keeps it so the players can keep track of the initiative order, even when there are hidden enemies.
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There's only so many times I can listen to folks optimize the fun out of #Pathfinder2e before I get grouchy.Scary Moondog! Privilege There is no community on the Internet that more firmly treats Water Finds a Crack as a play guide, rather than a warning to designers.
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There's only so many times I can listen to folks optimize the fun out of #Pathfinder2e before I get grouchy.that ordinal person Aww man, I’m late to the subreddit dogpile party. I routinely get downvoted to the comment-collapse threshold because I think the game is a system of tools to empower roleplay, and not just Foundry Fantasy XCom.
And heaven forbid you point out that the books literally and directly tell you to modify the rules to suit your purposes.
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We played our Pathfinder 2 game today and I had a good time.Angela I need closure on this encounter! Did you have words with these elken menaces? Have they been put in their place? Is it safe to go outdoors yet?
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I am curious about something in #pathfinder2e .Going to second everyone else saying “it’s not your friend’s character”. Roleplaying games have this nasty effect of attracting people that are focused on doing things “the best way” – they see the games as puzzles to solve – but what the best way of playing is is not a singular thing. And people have this weird tendency to also conflate things that seem similar.
Here, I suspect your friend is telling you that you “need” to target all of the different DCs: Fortitude, Reflex, Will, and AC. This provides you with the most flexibility as a caster, and the highest chances of actually getting the maximum effect out of your spells. Because of this, a lot of the online discussion around magic users in the game has actually focused on optimizing your ability to target all of these – because, again, the discussions are dominated by people who want to “solve” the game. But if you’re OK with partial successes and playing the character in a way that feels the most organic to you, you should do that. The game is designed so that you don’t need to be hyper-focused on optimizing your choices.
But if your friend isn’t ok with you doing that, then you should start asking them why they want to play your character for you.
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Guardian vs paladin and commander vs bard.Sure, but the Champion gives resistances, and even the ability to just move for free. Plus, it has a significantly higher offensive output, which means it can both protect their ally and punish the attacker.
The Guardian inserts itself between the ally and the attacker and says “you’re wasting your time attacking them”. The Champion sees the attacker targeting the ally and says “I’m going to make you wish you didn’t do that”.