Pathfinder 2nd Edition Game Trade Media Playtest Video

[CubicsRube]

Thanks. Some of these look quite good. I like the idea of taking an action to take advantage of cover.

I do hope they try to keep numerical fiddliness out of the system in favour of more options in play like blocking and taking cover.

[Nikosandros]

Another thing I forgot to write: healing spells for clerics appear to draw from a separate specific pool so you don't have to choose between bless and heal.

[Ancalagon]

Jason Bulmahn recently shared a YouTube video of a short playtest session played last week with the folks of Gane Trade Media. Some interesting tidbits:

1. t's confirmed that you have to spend an action every round to rasie your shield.
   

Is this to get the damage reduction, or you need to spend an action for the shield to do *anything*?

[Nikosandros]

Is this to get the damage reduction, or you need to spend an action for the shield to do *anything*?

You have to spend an action just to get the AC bonus. With a reaction you can reduce the damage. The fighter (I'm not clear if all fighters) could ude a reaction to "raise" the shield and get the AC bonus.

[Jacob Lewis]

I love the idea of shields as an active component rather than a passive bonus. You *choose* to wield a shield, and decide *how* to use it each round. Raise for defense. React to bash. Defend an ally. All interactive decisions. Brilliant! And how many editions before someone finally figured a way to make shields so appealing and fun?

[Markn]

It was also clarified that you can't split the movement of a single action around other actions. So, if you move 10 feet and then want to open a door and then continue moving another 20 feet, that would require 3 actions instead of 2. I'm a little disappointed to hear this, but its probably easy enough to house rule.

[Charlaquin]

I love the idea of shields as an active component rather than a passive bonus. You *choose* to wield a shield, and decide *how* to use it each round. Raise for defense. React to bash. Defend an ally. All interactive decisions. Brilliant! And how many editions before someone finally figured a way to make shields so appealing and fun?

Continuing along this train of thought, I absolutely love what they’ve done with shields this edition, but I’m feeling really underwhelmed by dual wielding. Now, maybe there will be Feats that make dual wielding awesome if you build for it, but at baseline, it seems pretty much pointless. If you can make three attacks with just one weapon, and can’t make any additional attacks by wielding a second, there seems to be no benefit whatsoever to a paired set of weapons, like say dual shortswords. There is a very, very small advantage to using one Nimble weapon and one regular weapon, so you have the bigger damage die on your first attack and the decreased penalty on subsequent attacks. But having the option to trade down a die size for what amounts to +1 to your second attack and +2 to your third seems really weak compared to what shields can do without any Feat investment. Maybe that’s working as intended? I guess it makes sense that using two weapons is pretty much just worse than a weapon and shield unless you have specialized training. But I’m skeptical. I wouldn’t want dual-wielders to feel like they’re holding the party back for the first few levels until they get the Feats they need to be viable. Especially if sword and board and 2-hander users are spending those Feats getting even better while the dual-wielders are forced to play catch-up their whole careers.

[smetzger]

Do we know how haste interacts with the 3 actions you get?

[Charlaquin]

Do we know how haste interacts with the 3 actions you get?

Not yet, beyond that it fits in very well. My money is on it just giving you one additional action, no strings attached.

[Nikosandros]

Not yet, beyond that it fits in very well. My money is on it just giving you one additional action, no strings attached.

Seems likely. We've already seen a couple of instances of having one less action: zombies and regaining consciousnesses.

[Charlaquin]

Seems likely. We've already seen a couple of instances of having one less action: zombies and regaining consciousnesses.

Also the “Slowed” Condition. And it would make a lot of sense if Haste did exactly the opposite of Slowed.

[Arakasius]

I hope it is just a flat no restriction. They need to take away these effects that do things in a special way. Just give you one more action, would be ideal. No limits on what you can do, just having 4 actions instead of 3.

[smetzger]

Not yet, beyond that it fits in very well. My money is on it just giving you one additional action, no strings attached.

That is what I am thinking as well. But since most spells take 2 actions to cast, that would mean you could cast 2 spells a round. Which was determine (and rightly so IMO) to be too powerful.

So, somehow they need to restrict it from spell casting which of course goes contrary to "do whatever you want with your action".

[Markn]

Also the “Slowed” Condition. And it would make a lot of sense if Haste did exactly the opposite of Slowed.

It was officially talked about somewhere (I can’t recall where) that Slowed 1 would cause you to lose 1 action. Slowed 2 would be two actions lost, etc.

[Charlaquin]

That is what I am thinking as well. But since most spells take 2 actions to cast, that would mean you could cast 2 spells a round. Which was determine (and rightly so IMO) to be too powerful.

So, somehow they need to restrict it from spell casting which of course goes contrary to "do whatever you want with your action".

When and where was this determined and where did they talk about it? I’d be interested to read their thoughts on the matter.

Personally, I think if one two-action spell and one one-action spell is considered fair under normal circumstances, I don’t see why two two-action spells while under the effects of Haste would be unreasonable. That would take up your whole turn, so no movement, no one-action spell, no attack. Seems theoretically fair to me, assuming spells are reasonably balanced within the action economy.

[Arakasius]

Where have they said in PF2 that its too powerful to cast 2 spells in a round? They already showed in the earlier preview that you could cast Shield and a 2 action spell in the same round. I don't see why that wouldn't scale if you got an extra action.

[Ancalagon]

I love the idea of shields as an active component rather than a passive bonus. You *choose* to wield a shield, and decide *how* to use it each round. Raise for defense. React to bash. Defend an ally. All interactive decisions. Brilliant! And how many editions before someone finally figured a way to make shields so appealing and fun?

As someone with some experience* with sword and shield fighting... I don't know how I feel about this. You sacrifice an action to use your shield... but I can tell you that just holding your shield tight to you you already have denied your foe a lot of angles of attack (in fact, using your shield *too much* makes it easier for the foe to knock it out of alignment and creating an opening). (this was a fairly large shield, not a buckler, but not quite a tower shield either). So it's silly to me that you are sacrificing an action to use your shield!

On the other hand... part of learning how to use a shield is not just about learning how to use it for defense - it's learning how to attack while holding a shield. That thing gets in the way! You have to learn how strike without dropping your guard. It *is* a reduction of your offensive potential... but if you know what you are doing, the shield will hinder you far less than it hinders your foe.

And the attack you are sacrificing to hold your shield up is not one with a high chance of striking so it's not too big a sacrifice...

BUT you are already sacrificing offensive potential to use a shield (no 2 handed weapon, no free hand to do stuff, no secondary weapon...). So I guess we'll have to see how balanced it is.

*I did 3-4 years of medieval sword-fighting training but I had to stop because of an injury. By the time I was done, my left arm looked different than my right because of the different muscles used to hold the shield up.

[Charlaquin]

BUT you are already sacrificing offensive potential to use a shield (no 2 handed weapon, no free hand to do stuff, no secondary weapon...)

You don’t seem to lose much by not wielding a secondary weapon, at least not without Feat investment. It doesn’t grant you any extra attacks, and if you want the extra accuracy that comes with using an agile weapon, you can just use an agile weapon with your main hand. It seems like the onliy Advantage to dual wielding is to get a bigger damage die on your first attack. With a two handed weapon you do gain some increased damage potential compared to sword and shield, but not a ton.

For the sake of DPR analysis, let’s assume you hit on a 7 with your first attack (and crit on a 17). 50% chance of a hit and a 20% chance of a critical hit on the first attack. The second attack increases your target number to 12 for a hit, a crit is no longer possible, and you introduce the possibility of a fumble on a 2 or lower. That’s a 45% chance to hit and a 5% chance to fumble, though since a fumble would be a miss anyway and fumbles on attack rolls don’t do anything unless the target has a reaction to take advantage of it, we can discount that possibility from our damage analysis. Your third attack, should you make it, has a target number of 17, giving you only a 20% chance to hit.

If we assume that greatswords still do 2d6 on a hit, and that they do 4d6 on a crit, that gives us an average of 7 damage per hit and 14 on a crit. (7*.5)+(14*.2)=6.3 average damage on your first attack. 7*.45=3.15 on your second attack. 7*.2=1.4 damage on your third attack. So if you make all three attacks every round, you end up doing an expected 10.85 damage per round.

With a 1d8 longsword, we’re looking at 4.5 average damage on a hit and 9 on a crit. (4.5*.5)+(9*.2)=4.05 average damage on your first attack, and 4.5*.45=2.025 average damage on your second. If we assume you spend two actions attacking and one raising your shield, that’s 6.035 average damage per round, plus you increase you AC by 2 and reduce incoming damage by your shield’s hardness every round. 4.815 DPR for +2 AC and some damage reduction doesn’t seem too bad to me.

Just for fun, let’s calculate dual-wielding witn a d8 longsword and d6 shortsword as well. That gives us the same 4.05 average damage on the first attack as the sword and shield. The second attack has a 50% chance to hit (still no chance to crit) for 3.5 damage, giving us an average of 1.75. The third attack has a 30% chance to hit, so our average comes out to 1.05, for a total DPR of 6.8 if we go longsword > shortsword > shortsword every round. That’s not even a full 1 damage per round higher than sword and shield at that accuracy, and this gets more favorable for the sword and shield if the dual wielded ever has to do anything other than attack three times.

All of this of course before considering any Feats or weapon properties like Deadly that might skew the math in favor of a character who has invested in building to take advantage of their preferred fighting style.

[Ancalagon]

that's a 40% difference. And there may be strength bonuses involved, and aren't they multiplied in PF? (edit: I mean when using a two-handed weapon). I don't think we know enough to make a reliable analysis yet... but one day we will.

[Charlaquin]

that's a 40% difference. And there may be strength bonuses involved, and aren't they multiplied in PF? I don't think we know enough to make a reliable analysis yet... but one day we will.

Oh, good point on the strength bonus.

Mostly what I’m trying to say is, without feat support, dual/wielding is all but useless and sword-and-board vs. 2-handed seems to be reasonably balanced, with 2-hander dishing out more damage and sword-and-board offering more defense and versatility.