A Small Glance at PF2's Equip & Armour

[mach1.9pants]

http://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo5lkro?Gearing-Up#discuss

I think the big contentious stuff is how interactions work - they each take one of your actions, so swapping weapons/shield/one-two handed/spell casting shenanigans are hit hard. Along with taking a fair bit of your offensive power to open doors, etc. No mention on how getting out arrows or loading crossbows work with this that I see. There is also armour now adds to Touch AC, yes wearing a full suit of chain (which is awfully constricting) makes you harder to touch. Game balance trumps realism there I think. Armour +magic also counts for your saves.

 

[Charlaquin]

Can’t say that I love changing your grip on a weapon costing an action, but I very much doubt that will make it through the playtest to the final release.

Armor adding to touch AC makes sense mechanically, but at that point why even have a separate touch AC? They already changed flat-footed to a modifier instead of a separate AC, why not do the same with TAC? Or use 10 + Reflex Save (+equipment) and have armor cap it so you don’t run into the problem of Ref specialists becoming harder to touch than they are to hit.

I like Protency Runes as a way to tie enhancement bonus into the narrative better, but I don’t like that they still add to hit on weapons and to AC (and TAC and all saves) on armor. I thought quality was taking that role on and +X weapons were just going to do more damage dice, and I had hoped +X armor would add DR or something. Flat statistical bonuses are a boring way to improve equipment, and it seemed like Paizo was catching on to that with their removal of rings of protection and the like.

 

[CubicsRube]

I'm not sure the value of them keeping touch ac. It's getting back into fiddly pathfinderness all over again.

My personal taste would be to have the armor have a bonus against certain types of attacks. For example chain might give a moderate ac, but would give a genrous bonus to slashing attacks. Likewise leather armor may not be so effrctive against weapons, but have a great bonus vs elemental attacks such as fire, cold, lightning and acid.

That's the kind of complexity I'd prefer to see.

Because I'm unclear gow a full body of mail should be more effective than a full body of leather armor, or even robes for that matter, at preventing someone from touching you.

 

[Ancalagon]

The Touch AC modifier is... strange. Very strange.

Shields *not* being able to have magical + to AC is huge. That was a key component of some of the very defensive "magic armor + magic shield" builds, so I'm guessing that the bonus a shield gives you will have to be very significant for them to be still worth it...

 

[Kaodi]

Had they mentioned before that PF2 would be using Starfinder's bulk system? I forget.

 

[Charlaquin]

Had they mentioned before that PF2 would be using Starfinder's bulk system? I forget.

Bulk has been mentioned a few times. They have also clarified that it’s similar to Starfinder’s Bulk System, but not exactly the same.

 

[mach1.9pants]

There seems to be a lot of stuff similar to Starfinder but different. I guess that was a bit of a trial in some ways, I'm not really familiar with it tho.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Shields *not* being able to have magical + to AC is huge. That was a key component of some of the very defensive "magic armor + magic shield" builds, so I'm guessing that the bonus a shield gives you will have to be very significant for them to be still worth it...

The enhancement bonus on magical shields was absolutely necessary in order to balance the broken base math. A level 20 attacker gains +20 to hit baseline, even before factoring in their ability score bonus or feats or a magic weapon or anything. In order to get +20 over starting AC to balance that, you need a +5 armor and shield and ring and amulet. It was just nuts, and it ultimately led to AC becoming worthless past a certain point, as no amount of reasonable effort would ever keep your AC relevant.

Hopefully they have fixed the underlying math, such that those measures are no longer necessary. As long as you're adding the same level-based bonus to both attack rolls and AC (as in D&D 4E, for example), that minor +2 bonus from having a shield will remain relevant and meaningful indefinitely.

 

[Sunseeker]

Here we go again, more non-matching numbers...
Weapons go from -1 to +3, but armor "runes" go up to at least +4 from this example?

STREAMLINE PEOPLE! For gods sake it's not that complicated to pick a standard number pattern and run with it! +3/+5/+elelventy billion, who cares, just pick one and run with it. Repetition is key to memorization.

I'm sorta 50/50 on Interact. It codifies what wasn't before, alters what was, and sorta meets in the middle between things that used to require a Standard Action and things that required a Free or Bonus/Swift/Minor action. I'm not sure if this is worth the change.

 

[Charlaquin]

Here we go again, more non-matching numbers...
Weapons go from -1 to +3, but armor "runes" go up to at least +4 from this example?

Where are you getting +4 from? The highest rune bonus mentioned in the article was +3.

I'm sorta 50/50 on Interact. It codifies what wasn't before, alters what was, and sorta meets in the middle between things that used to require a Standard Action and things that required a Free or Bonus/Swift/Minor action. I'm not sure if this is worth the change.

I’d say it’s well worth it. Instead of 7 different action types that you just have to memorize which type everything is and how the different types interact with each other on a turn, you just have one type of action that you get 3 of, and everything takes one of those unless it specifies that it takes more than one or no action. That’s more user-friendly any way you look at it. I think there are a few things that could stand to have the number of actions they take re-thought (for example, I think changing your grip on a weapon should cost zero actions), but the system is a significant improvement.