Resonance, Potency, & Potions: A Look At Magic Items in Pathfinder 2

Paizo has been delving into the way magic items work in its latest previews of Pathfinder 2nd Edition. Last week they spoke about Resonance, a resource that characters have for activating magical items; and on Friday they blogged about Potency, which is linked to the power of a magical weapon.

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Resonance is measured in Resonance Points (RP). Activating an item costs 1 RP, and your RP total is your level plus your Charisma modifier. Paizo points out that "We expect Resonance Points to be a contentious topic, and we're really curious to see how it plays at your tables. It's one of the more experimental changes to the game, and the playtest process gives us a chance to see it in the wild before committing to it."

They also preview a few magic items - cloak of elvenkind, floating shield, staff of healing, and some trinkets such as a fear gem, and vanishing coin.

When it comes to weapons, Resonance is not required; weapons have a "potency" value, which is roughly equivalent to its "plus" -- it gives you a bonus to attack, increases damage by a whole damage die per potency point (i.e. a +1 longsword gives +1 to hit and +1d8 damage). Potency and special qualities are limited by a weapon's quality - standard, expert, master, legendary.

Quality	Max Potency	Max Properties
Standard	+0	0
Expert	+2	1
Master	+4	2
Legendary	+5	3

Potency and properties are contained within transferrable magical runes, often found on a runestone. Some examples shown are disrupting, and vorpal.

Amor similarly has potency and properties. Potency affects AC, TAC, and saving throws. Some properties include invisibility and fortification.

This takes us on to potions. Potions can now have high level effects, and they don't have to be tied to the spell lists. Examples including healing potions, invisibility potions, dragon's breath potions, and oil of mending.​

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[Shasarak]

We expect Resonance Points to be a contentious topic, and we're really curious to see how it plays at your tables. It's one of the more experimental changes to the game, and the playtest process gives us a chance to see it in the wild before committing to it. Here are the advantages we see from a design perspective:

Using items is clear and consistent. Spend the required actions and 1 RP, and you activate or invest your item. If someone else wants to use the same item, you can remove it and let them put it on and invest it themselves.
You have less to track. We get to remove some of the sub-pools that individual items have (such as "10 rounds per day which need not be consecutive" or "5 charges") because we know you have an overall limited resource. There are still some items that can't be used without limit, but they get to be special exceptions rather than being common out of necessity.
It puts the focus on the strongest items. Because you can't activate items indefinitely, your best bet is to use the most RP-efficient item, not the most gp-efficient item. You want a high-level healing wand because you get more healing for your Resonance Point rather than getting a bunch of low-level wands because they're cheap.
Investiture limits what you can wear. That means we don't need to rely heavily on an item slot system, creating more flexibility in what kind of worn items are useful. You'll read more about this on the blog on Friday, when we talk about removing the magic item Christmas tree!

There are a couple of contradicitons that obviously spring to mind when I read through the "advantages" to resonace that Logan suggested:

Using items is clear and consistant: Except that some of the items Logan gave as examples did use resonance and some did not.

You have less to track: Except that some of the items like the Luck Blade can only be used once per day and others have charges that not only need to be tracked but then also use your resonance to cast your own spells.

Investiture limits what you can wear: Except that he then specifies that you can not use two cloaks but can use two amulets. So in other words we still have the old body slot limitation but as an extra benefit get to add another extra Resonance tax on top of it. Unless your item does not actually use resonance because it may or may not.

And of course that is not even mentioning that Charisma powers Resonance unless it does not issue that we have known about for a while. Because Alchemists are the ones who create magic items now.

But at least we still have Resonance forcing us to focus on the strongest items we have instead of well any other option that we wanted to. So I guess one out of four is not a bad success rate.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

You have less to track: Except that some of the items like the Luck Blade can only be used once per day and others have charges that not only need to be tracked but then also use your resonance to cast your own spells.

That's a big one for me. When I thought that Resonance was going to replace charges on wands and staves, I was all on-board. The way it's presented, though, things are far more complicated than they need to be.

 

[Erdric Dragin]

Let's make magic item suuuuuuper complicated. Yay....this edition continues to sound worse.

I don't understand why the need for all these levels of complexity? It should simply be "Put on item, item does this. Always or limited. The End."

Now it's this resonance garbage.

 

[Kurviak]

Let's make magic item suuuuuuper complicated. Yay....this edition continues to sound worse.

I don't understand why the need for all these levels of complexity? It should simply be "Put on item, item does this. Always or limited. The End."

Now it's this resonance garbage.

It’s a play test and the developers said resonance is one of their riskier changes that the want to be tested to be adjusted or dropped for something different, they said they went for the most extreme version of the changes for the play test to be able to cut off if they don’t work.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I think a more interesting way to stop wand spam is to give them a one percent chance per use to explode and deal 1d6 per charge aoe damage.

 

[Pokelefi]

That's a big one for me. When I thought that Resonance was going to replace charges on wands and staves, I was all on-board. The way it's presented, though, things are far more complicated than they need to be.

as soem how looks in from the outside having never played pathfidner 1 this all seam very overly complicated and a big turn off for me to check out a new edition since the overwhelming factor would be in place even at the start

not hsure why i still keep checking out the posts

 

[Sunseeker]

I just passed by and misread this title as "Romance, poetry and pottery."

For a moment I thought there was a really cool thread going on about the history of culture, writing and the arts and how to include it in games.

Then my brain restarted and I was very disappointed.

 

[ssvegeta555]

What's to stop a player from hiring a dozen clerics and let the clerics use their RP for wands of CLW to top off the party?

Almost sounds like wands just need to be axed for good, an idea I'm not opposed to. And I'm onboard for resonance but keeping charges and X/day abilities seems fiddly and redundant. Why have resonance at that point?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

as soem how looks in from the outside having never played pathfidner 1 this all seam very overly complicated and a big turn off for me to check out a new edition since the overwhelming factor would be in place even at the start

Pathfinder is already the most complicated version of D&D in history, and the Law of Editional Escalation means that every new edition of a game must be more complicated than the previous edition. If you were hoping for something that was fast and easy to play, then Pathfinder 2 is not the game for you.

 

[Shasarak]

It’s a play test and the developers said resonance is one of their riskier changes that the want to be tested to be adjusted or dropped for something different, they said they went for the most extreme version of the changes for the play test to be able to cut off if they don’t work.

The problem is that Resonance already does not meet 3 out of the 4 goals that the designers had for it and the goal it does meet is kind of nonsensical anyway. You should naturally want to use a more powerful item (if given a choice).

I heard an interesting quote today which seems appropriate: Resonance is like trying to get rid of a Gopher hole using dynamite.