Pathfinder 2E's New Death & Dying Rules; More on Resonance

kenmarable · Mar 17, 2018

Lanefan said:
Actually I've always seen Wizard as being very much a learned skill - sure you've got some built-in aptitude but it's irrelevant until you do the years of study required to learn how to channel it.

Sorcerers just come by it naturally...which is the one aspect of Sorcerers I've never quite grabbed on to.

Again, I see picking pockets as something a Rogue might work for years to learn how to do.

It's just that by the time we start playing them our characters have already done all this stuff, and so we ignore it.

Exactly, plus beyond the “Intuitive/Self Taught/Trained” starting age modifiers, there’s no rules around it at all, so it’s completely up to the campaign world fluff. An Int caster who studies a spell book each day vs. a Cha caster who uses the magic in their blood might lend itself to certain ideas but you could just as easily say wizards in your world master magic quickly because they just follow pre-written rules and sorcerers spend years in specialized training to find and control the magic within without harming themselves. Other than the easily ignored or modified starting age table, there is zero mechanical difference. So whatever fluff people want works.

Shasarak said:
So what happens when the 4th level Fighter picks up a level of Wizard? In my games they did not need to spend years learning how to cast spells, I am guessing that it was different in your games.

FWIW, in my campaign in that situation, the player nearly always leads up to it story-wise rather than just picking it up. Actually most multiclassing in my campaigns are more like a blending concept that requires more than one class rather than a “career-change” sort of multiclassing. But when that happens, players in my campaigns have naturally included some pre-learning prior to the change. Of course, there’s also a healthy dose of on-the-job training working much faster. Sitting in a classroom might take years to learn the basics, but having monsters trying to kill you every day accelerates training just a bit.

Charlaquin · Mar 17, 2018

Shasarak said:
So what happens when the 4th level Fighter picks up a level of Wizard? In my games they did not need to spend years learning how to cast spells, I am guessing that it was different in your games.

A lot of DMs will require players to get some kind of specialized training in order to multiclass. You want your next level to be in wizard? You’ll need to find yourself a mentor to teach you the basics. You want a level in rogue? Hang out with some underworld types and get them to show you some tricks of the trade. Want a level in Monk? Go to your local monestary and start practicing katas. Etc.

The Crimson Binome · Mar 17, 2018

Shasarak said:
So what happens when the 4th level Fighter picks up a level of Wizard? In my games they did not need to spend years learning how to cast spells, I am guessing that it was different in your games.

In fifth edition, you need extraordinary mental aptitude in order to pick up wizardry without having gone through the normal years of schooling. That is literally the explanation for pre-requisite ability scores to multi-class, is that you need natural talent in order to learn things so quickly.

In third edition, wizards had a higher starting age than sorcerers, to reflect their years of study. It took humans ~7 years to become a level 1 wizard (or druid or monk), compared to ~2 years for a sorcerer (or rogue or barbarian). If you multi-classed, then you had to stop for a while and train, and possibly pay someone to teach you; training rules were in the DMG, but mostly ignored.

In AD&D, multi-classing was something you did before the campaign started, and dual-classing was something that humans could do between adventures. Going from fighter to wizard required you to have Intelligence 17, again because you need extraordinary mental aptitude in order to learn a new class so quickly. (You also needed Strength 15, in order to maintain your fighter level while you worked on your wizardry.)

The idea that you could just pick up a level of wizard, and it was no big deal, was something born out of laziness in third edition, by players who didn't actually care about how the world was supposed to work. Fourth edition made it worse, with its easy retraining rules, but fourth edition never even pretended to care about how the world worked.

Lanefan · Mar 17, 2018

Shasarak said:
So what happens when the 4th level Fighter picks up a level of Wizard? In my games they did not need to spend years learning how to cast spells, I am guessing that it was different in your games.

I've got houserules in my game for if someone wants to pick up a class they didn't have before. Let's just say it's not an overnight process.

MichaelSomething · Mar 18, 2018

Shasarak said:
So what happens when the 4th level Fighter picks up a level of Wizard? In my games they did not need to spend years learning how to cast spells, I am guessing that it was different in your games.

There's an OOTS comic for that...

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0126.html

Shasarak · Mar 18, 2018

Saelorn said:
In fifth edition, you need extraordinary mental aptitude in order to pick up wizardry without having gone through the normal years of schooling. That is literally the explanation for pre-requisite ability scores to multi-class, is that you need natural talent in order to learn things so quickly.

In third edition, wizards had a higher starting age than sorcerers, to reflect their years of study. It took humans ~7 years to become a level 1 wizard (or druid or monk), compared to ~2 years for a sorcerer (or rogue or barbarian). If you multi-classed, then you had to stop for a while and train, and possibly pay someone to teach you; training rules were in the DMG, but mostly ignored.

In AD&D, multi-classing was something you did before the campaign started, and dual-classing was something that humans could do between adventures. Going from fighter to wizard required you to have Intelligence 17, again because you need extraordinary mental aptitude in order to learn a new class so quickly. (You also needed Strength 15, in order to maintain your fighter level while you worked on your wizardry.)

The idea that you could just pick up a level of wizard, and it was no big deal, was something born out of laziness in third edition, by players who didn't actually care about how the world was supposed to work. Fourth edition made it worse, with its easy retraining rules, but fourth edition never even pretended to care about how the world worked.

In Pathfinder you go up a level as soon as you have enough XP to do so. Actually since 2e really unless you were using the optional training rules.

It sounds like [MENTION=51168]MichaelSomething[/MENTION] really gets it.

houser2112 · Mar 20, 2018

Saelorn said:
I think there's been a miscommunication on this point. I actually argued that Charisma-based Resonance is entirely consistent with what we know about how the game world is supposed to work, and my only real objection is in the unusual complexity which it adds to the model. They could be more efficient with their rules if they used something like a Magic stat instead of splitting effects between Int and Charisma.

For me, if there's going to be a stat to determine how often you can use magic items, Charisma is the one to use, for sorcerer reasons. My only real objection is that such a rule is stupid in the first place and violates verisimilitude hard.

Arakasius · Mar 20, 2018

Any more so than 5e only allowing 3 attuned items?

CapnZapp · Mar 20, 2018

Re Resonance: I think they're killing the wonderful idiosyncrasies about magic items.

Streamlining that is actually a negative.

Nobody complained having to keep track of uses per day was a problem.

Resonance is solving what isn't a problem.

Morrus · Mar 20, 2018

CapnZapp said:
Nobody complained having to keep track of uses per day was a problem.

Are you sure about that?

Pathfinder 2E's New Death & Dying Rules; More on Resonance

kenmarable

Hero

Charlaquin

Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)

The Crimson Binome

Hero

Lanefan

Victoria Rules

MichaelSomething

Legend

Shasarak

Banned

houser2112

Explorer

Arakasius

First Post

CapnZapp

Legend

Morrus

Well, that was fun

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