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

It's another day, and that means another round of Pathfinder 2nd Edition News! Today's menu includes more discussion on resonance, followed by the main course -- the new rules for death & dying! All added, as ever, to the Pathfinder 2nd Edition Compiled Info Page!

Photo by Paizo

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• There are Pathfinder Playtest pro-order posters at the GAMA trade show. See above! And below...
• Gnome Stew reported on the Future of Pathfinder seminar at Gary Con. Mainly stuff we've heard before, but there are some new tidbits:
  • Shadow of the Demon Lord, white-box D&D, Magic: the Gathering, Tales from the Loop, and Star Trek Adventures were all referenced during development.
  • The item (shield) damage system has a name -- it's called "dented".
  • Some "signature gear" can level up with your character.
  • "Background will grant a specific Lore, which is similar to a specialized knowledge skill, such as Lore—Alcohol being granted to a character with barkeep as a background".
• Resonance proved divisive yesterday.
  • Jason Bulmahn weighed in on the heated discussion -- "Hey there all! Let's all just take a breath here before things get too heated. Resonance is a system that we knew was going to come with some controversy. It's really hard to give you a full sense of what the system allows us to do with the design space without going on a deep dive on magic items. This is a topic we are going to hit soon, so hang in there. I will say this before I go to run more demos at GAMA. Players have rarely run out of resonance in our games, and there is a lot more healing to go around than you might think."
  • Class features don't use Resonance -- "We avoided making class features that use Resonance Points unless they're directly tied to items. Resonance is a resource for items thematically and specifically. If you have abilities from a bloodline, you'll have to pay for those some other way..." (Bonner)
  • "...we've had some delightful occultist-based thought experiments based on some of these ideas as the "kings of resonance."[FONT=&amp] (Seifter)[/FONT]
  • Bulmahn commented -- "Hmm... I keep seeing posts that tracking one pool of points is too fiddly. It's odd, considering that it's meant to replace a system where everything had its own personal system of usage with times per day, total charges, and time based limits. Of course, I have plenty of reservations about this particular mechanic. We're definitely pushing the envelope here, but fiddly is not the complaint I expected to see so frequently."
• New Dying Rules! "RumpinRufus" reported on how they worked in the live streamed game at the GAMA trade show:
  • There are no negative hit points - if you take damage equal or greater than your HP, you go down to 0 HP and get the Dying 1 condition.
  • If a crit knocks you to 0, you gain Dying 2 instead of Dying 1.
  • Each round, you must make a save to stabilize. The save DC is based off the enemy - a boss may have a higher death DC than a mook, so you are more likely to be killed by bosses.
  • If you reach Dying 4, then you are dead.
  • If you make the stabilize check, you gain a hit point, but are still Dying. If you make another save at 1 HP, you are no longer Dying, and you regain consciousness.
  • If an ally heals you while you are Dying, you still have the Dying condition, even though you have positive HP. You still need to make a stabilize check to regain consciousness. But, once your HP is positive, you are no longer at danger of death from failing your checks - failing a stabilize check just means you stay unconscious.
  • The Stabilize cantrip puts you at 1 HP.
  • Mark Seifter further added -- "If you get well and truly annihilated by an attack, you die instantly. Even a 1st PC could probably insta-kill a kobold grandmother, even if the GM chose for full tracking of unconscious and dying NPCs."
• Erik Mona on monster books again, and how self-contained stat blocks will be -- "I don't think we've fully committed one way or the other yet. The playtest monster book is going to be mega stat block dump without a lot of description of what, say, a skeleton looks like or eats. As for special abilities and how they're formatted, while I know the design team has been hard at work on this stuff, I haven't interacted with it too much yet (I just finished going through magic items last night!)."
• Both Erik Mona and James Jacobs feel strongly about the presence of more outsider types on the summoning lists -- "No, actually, James Jacobs and I also feel very strongly about this. Very strongly."
• Logan Bonner comments on complexity, options, and the 'cognitive load' -- "We're keeping it in mind for sure. That's one reason we've rejiggered the number of bonus types, altered the action economy to make choice clearer, and (at least mostly) made it so you have options for static feats instead of only giving options to expand your list of actions. We'll see in the playtest whether that mix is right."
• Logan Bonner informs us that coffee and tea have been added to the Playtest Rulebook.
• Mark Seifter on how corruption could work "...gaining a corruption could unlock a new set of ancestry feats, as your fundamental nature has shifted."

Photo by Paizo
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[Arakasius]

Yeah that's a pretty bold statement to make. Having the christmas tree effect and having to track it all seperately is a pretty big negative for PF1. Like sure I understand people want to have their cute trinkets, but I'd rather have a more streamlined game.

 

[Lanefan]

Yeah that's a pretty bold statement to make. Having the christmas tree effect and having to track it all seperately is a pretty big negative for PF1. Like sure I understand people want to have their cute trinkets, but I'd rather have a more streamlined game.

The same streamlining can be achieved by making more of the items either always-on or one-shot and reducing the number of charged or per-day items given out.

More scrolls, potions, and permanent items; fewer wands and per-day items. Problem solved.

 

[Arakasius]

They like their per day items. They also wand wands to exist, so having “fewer” to fix PFS would mean 0 wands of CLW. I don’t think they want to cut out iconic items to achieve balance. Tons of flavorful items in PF are activatable usage. I don’t think cutting those out is a realistic design decision.

edit: Plus they’re removing a lot of passive bonus items. Those types of items aren’t very fun and tend to screw up math and make differences between characters too vast. I expect the majority of items in PF2 to be cool activatable usages.

 

[CapnZapp]

Are you sure about that?

I guess there's always at least one gamer complaining about each given detail, so technically "no".

Do YOU feel it was a huge problem, Morrus?

Can you see how the "magic" of magic can be considered to go missing (ie my argument) when rationality and tidiness is allowed to take over idiosyncratic exceptions?

 

[houser2112]

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

Attunement is a stupid rule, too.

 

[Arakasius]

Right, neither is a rule that makes sense. But having a game where you carry 20 magic items with all their tracking is dumb. I’m fairly sure most gamers want a more streamlined systems than that. But all rulings like this are going to break “realism” however they justify this. PF2 is trying (like 5e did) to have a game where you make choices on what magic items you want to use. This will allow them to make magic items more powerful and meaningful in their application.

There is a lot of advantages to this over the current status quo:
1. Gets rid of Xmas tree
2. Simplifies tracking to one number
3. Like 5e forces the player to make choices on what they want to keep/use
4. Allows them to keep all the items they want from PF1
5. Fixes spamming of low level spells from items

Does it break verisimilitude a bit? Sure, especially in comparison to trinketland PF1, but it will make for a more enjoyable game. I do expect this is the rule introduced so far most likely to change, but I’m fairly sure there will be some limit on magic items. It’s possible they make resonance only apply to wand/potion/activatable usage and then allow players to equip as many things as they want. They can balance the passive magic item use by not making many of them and making them really niche.

 

[Shasarak]

I have never heard a Player tell me that they had too many magical items.

The Magical Christmas tree is purely an Internet artifact with no basis in reality.

 

[Lanefan]

They like their per day items. They also wand wands to exist, so having “fewer” to fix PFS would mean 0 wands of CLW.

0 wands of CLW sounds like a mighty good start. Keep going...

I don’t think they want to cut out iconic items to achieve balance.

If the wand of CLW has achieved 'iconic' status things have become worse than I thought.

Tons of flavorful items in PF are activatable usage. I don’t think cutting those out is a realistic design decision.

I'm not saying cut them all out, just cut out what they can.

edit: Plus they’re removing a lot of passive bonus items. Those types of items aren’t very fun and tend to screw up math and make differences between characters too vast. I expect the majority of items in PF2 to be cool activatable usages.

Which, if true, will only serve to make Resonance a more scarce resource. My worry here is that as non-casters kinda have to rely on magic items to do anything magical this might swing the pendulum even further in favour of casters...particularly if the static-bonus items warrior-types tend to rely on all become activated-use.

 

[Arakasius]

Shasarak lots of players like low magic games. They like their class features to define them not all the magic items that they carry. It certainly has basis in reality, both in myself and people I play with.

 

[Shasarak]

Shasarak lots of players like low magic games. They like their class features to define them not all the magic items that they carry. It certainly has basis in reality, both in myself and people I play with.

If you like low magic games then you would not collect a magic collection because you like your class features to define your character.

If you collect a magic collection then you do not want a low magic game because otherwise why would you collect a complete set of magic items.

How do you explain this discrepancy?