Pathfinder 2's Armor & A Preview of the Paladin!

It was a long bank holiday weekend here in the UK, and I sent most of it in the (rare) sun eating BBQ; there were two big Pathfinder 2 blog posts which went up in the meantime. The first dealt with armour and shields; the other was our first look at the new Paladin class!

It was a long bank holiday weekend here in the UK, and I sent most of it in the (rare) sun eating BBQ; there were two big Pathfinder 2 blog posts which went up in the meantime. The first dealt with armour and shields; the other was our first look at the new Paladin class!


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  • Armor now affects Touch AC; each has a different bonus for AD and TAC.
    • Studded leather +2 AC, +0 TAC
    • Chain shirt +2 AC, +1 TAC, noisy
  • Armor has traits, such as "noisy".
  • Armor has a Dex mod cap to AC, penalties to STR/Dex/Con skill checks, a Speed penalty, and a Bulk value.
  • Potency Runes -- Items can be enhanced with potency runes.
    • Bonuses to attack rolls, increase on number of damage dice (weapons)
    • Bonus to AC, TAC, and saving throws (armor)
    • Example studded leather with +3 armor potency rune gives +5 AC, +3 TAC, and +3 to your saves.
    • Potency runes can be upgraded.
  • Shields -- requires an action to use and gain an AC and TAC bonus for one round.
  • Other gear -- gear has quality levels (poor -2, expert +1, master +2)
  • Interact -- this is a new action, used for grabbing objects, opening doors, drawing weapons, etc.


20180504-Gear.jpg


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  • Paladins! Apparently the most contentious class.
  • Core rules have lawful good paladins only (others may appear in other products)
  • Paladin's Code -- paladins must follow their code, or lose their Spell Point pool and righteous ally class feature.
  • Oaths are feats and include Fiendsbane Oath (constant damage to fiends, block their dimensional travel)
  • Class features and feats --
    • Retributive strike (1st level) -- counterattacks and enfeebles a foe
    • Lay on hands (1st level) -- single action healing spell which also gives a one-round AC bonus
    • Divine Grace (2nd level) -- saving throw boost
    • Righteous ally (3rd level) -- house a holy spirit in a weapon or steed
    • Aura of Courage (4th level) -- reduce the frightened condition
    • Attack of Opportunity (6th level) -- presumably the basic AoO action
    • Second Ally (8th level) -- gain a second righteous ally
    • Aura of Righteousness (14th level) -- resist evil damage
    • Hero's defiance (19th level) -- keep standing at 0 HP
  • Litanies -- single action spells, verbal, last one round.
    • Litany of righteousness -- weakens enemy to your allies' attacks
    • Litany against sloth -- slows the enemy, costing reactions or actions
[FONT=&quot]Save[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Save[/FONT]​
 
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Garthanos

Garthanos

Arcadian Knight
Yaarel said:
On balance, Elric might be True, playing both sides of Lawful and Chaotic. I cant decide if he leans toward Good, Neutral, or Evil. His Evil is heavy, is there enough Good to outweigh it?
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He starts out by breaking with the Norms of his society specifically because of his growing comprehension of Good. And in some sense the theme of the stories are that good is not wrapped up in either law or chaos.

Yaarel said:
Regarding class, I always saw Elric as an archetypal summoner class.
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The plate armor and being the second best swordsman of his world is the kicker to that, it was weapon and face to face where he did most all of his battle with the the other elements being supplemental in spite of Elric Being the best at them. In some sense ritual magic is very classic. With only few legendary/mythic sources for anything like D&Ds over the top blastem now magic.

Blood and souls for my lord Arioch, Elric kills X enemies with his weapon and summons Arioch who appears this time as a cloud full of gaping maws which eat and do acid attacks against everything it touches cleaning up the remainder. Elric was annoyed at how unreliable this Chaos god was.

Yaarel said:
All of his magic comes from his pacts with various kinds of demons. He is the best example of what the word ‘sorcerer’ actually means: binding/bribing supernatural spirits to perform harmful magic.

To be fair, in terms of D&D, some of his demons seem more like fey than fiend.
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He seemed to hate the more daemonic ones and considered Elementals somewhat more palatible if not actually benign

He inherited a lot of magic and Elrics people are themselves really fae.

Arioch is identified as god by Elric's people but admittedly Elric doesn't think of Arioch that way so that right there is potentially greatest argument against both ( Chaotic )Paladin and Priest indicators for the character, in spite my tongue in cheek interpretation.
 
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Shasarak

Shasarak

Banned
Banned
pemerton said:
But this is taking for granted that the relevant facts can change. If, in fact, social organisation is always the best way to promote wellbeing and other valuable things (as the LG contend), then the NG - by casting doubt on this - are simply getting in the way of realising and upholding the good.
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And exactly because social organisation is not always the best way to promote 'goodness' is why LG could never be the best good.

**Just dont tell a LG person that, there is probably a law against pointing out the flaws in the system (for your own good of course)**
 

P

pemerton

Legend
Shasarak said:
And exactly because social organisation is not always the best way to promote 'goodness' is why LG could never be the best good.
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Well, if a campaign is set up on that premise then who would play a (traditional) paladin in it?

In my posts I'm assuming that the truth of the various alignment claims is up for grabs, and that the campaign doesn't start from the premise that the paladin is a fool. (As I also posted, I'm leaving the question - what does "up for grabs" actually mean in the context of play? - unaddressed.)
 

G

Gammadoodler

Hero
Fair enough. This seems a reasonable enough distinction for general play. The chaotic good paladin doesn't care about speed limits and dress codes, got it. It does still seem like at any point a lawful good paladin doesn't like a particular rule, they can just "higher law" their way out of it, but I'm willing to concede that, at that point, perhaps its a player thing more than an alignment thing.
 

H

houser2112

Explorer
barasawa said:
Touch AC was created so mages, who's attacks totally suck, could ignore foes armor and at least have a chance for their touch spells to actually work.
I'm not so sure reversing that, even if not completely, is such a good idea.
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5E does it, and it works, only because it's very difficult to boost your AC much beyond 20. They threw the baby out with the bathwater on that, IMHO. The overlapping (rather than additive) methods of calculating AC were too high a price for getting rid of touch AC.
 

Parmandur

Parmandur

Book-Friend
houser2112 said:
5E does it, and it works, only because it's very difficult to boost your AC much beyond 20. They threw the baby out with the bathwater on that, IMHO. The overlapping (rather than additive) methods of calculating AC were too high a price for getting rid of touch AC.
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You assume that getting rid of additive boni wasn't a feature, rather than a bug. It's hard to get anything over 20, and 30 is a hard cap. That's one of the best parts of 5E.
 

H

houser2112

Explorer
Parmandur said:
You assume that getting rid of additive boni wasn't a feature, rather than a bug. It's hard to get anything over 20, and 30 is a hard cap. That's one of the best parts of 5E.
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Yeah, I admit that was a poor choice of words for what I meant: getting rid of additive boni is too high a price to pay for casters being able to hit with ray spells (for people who like the versimilitude of 3.x).
 

D1Tremere

D1Tremere

Adventurer
TheCosmicKid said:
So you're saying that chaotic characters should not be free to devote themselves to whatever rules they please? That sounds kind of like you're fettering them to me.
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A chaotic character wouldn't want to enslave themselves to a power that both dictates to them how they must act, and holds the cords to their class features as reward/punishment. Thy would obviously be free to follow whoever they like, but to allow another to subsume that much of their personal agency would clash with Pathfinder's definition of the alignment as best I can tell.
 

D1Tremere

D1Tremere

Adventurer
pemerton said:
But this is taking for granted that the relevant facts can change. If, in fact, social organisation is always the best way to promote wellbeing and other valuable things (as the LG contend), then the NG - by casting doubt on this - are simply getting in the way of realising and upholding the good.

My understanding of CG (which admittedly might be 40 years out of date, given that it draws on Gygax's AD&D books) is that CG people think that things worth valuing (rights, flourishing, truth, beauty, etc) are better promoted and secured via self-realisation, than via participation in social structures and collective endeavour.

Because the paladin archetype is connected to service (to a king, a church, etc) a CG "paladin" is necessarily going to depart from that archetype. But I think it is quite easy to envisage something like a CG "paladin" that combines elements of the archetype (devotion, hope, courage, honour) with romantic conceptions of individual achievement and self-realisation which yields quite a playable concept - a certain sort of approach to a knight errant could work, for instance.

Of course, we would then have the question - who is right, the LG paladin (who thinks service and society are necessary conditions of realising and upholding the good) or the CG paladin (who denies that) or the NG paladin (who has a bet each way)? But addressing that question would head into new territory for this thread - namely, how ought alignment conflicts to be framed and resolved in play? - and so I'm not going to go there on my own!
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I think that is reasonable for other classes, but my contention is that Paladin's are a special case. They literally have an objective definition of good (as they see it), provided by whoever provides their power (and can revoke it). A wizard, for example, gets their power from an amoral source. The wizard can question the good of actions or positions all day, and still cast fireball. The Paladin must follow the will of their source, or become something other than a Paladin.
Just look at the alignment restrictions for clerics. A cleric must be somewhat similar (within one axis) with the views of their patron. A Paladin must be LG, because they are meant to serve the will, not contemplate it.
 
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mellored

mellored

Legend
D1Tremere said:
I think that is reasonable for other classes, but my contention is that Paladin's are a special case. They literally have an objective definition of good (as they see it), provided by whoever provides their power (and can revoke it). A wizard, for example, gets their power from an amoral source. The wizard can question the good of actions or positions all day, and still cast fireball. The Paladin must follow the will of their source, or become something other than a Paladin.
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Who exacly is granting or revoking a paladin's powers?
Is it from a god? Or from their own personal conviction?

Either way, I don't see how it need to be lawful or good.
 

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