Pathfinder 2: Fighters, Skills, & Counterspells

Today's Pathfinder 2nd Edition roundup is an eclectic collection of bits and pieces and little hints. A bit on the fighter, a bit on skills, and hints at a new Counterspell.

• GeekDad has posted a "first impressions" article about Pathfinder 2nd Edition.
• Courtesy of Jason Bulmahn -- "Just found the text for the very first 2nd edition adventure I wrote here in the office over a year ago. Too spoiler filled and out of date to share just yet... but there were some good times had in Etran's Folly".

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• Jason Bulmahn on the fighter's focus on weapons -- "He does still have armor proficiency, and it does improve a bit for him, but for the fighter, we decided that weapons were his prime focus. This leaves a focus on armor for another class..."
  • Reactive Shield -- "It occurs to me that I forgot to include a mention of Reactive Shield in this blog, which is a bit of an oversight. The preview version we ran all weekend had this ability, which allows you to spend your reaction to raise your shield. You can't block with it if you use this ability (since you've already spent your reaction), unless you get the extra reaction to block. I may try and get an edit in there to add a note about this." (Bulmahn)
  • Determination -- "Determination... Your fighter training just lets you shrug off a spell or condition entirely." (Seifter)
  • Mark Seifter on Sudden Charge during a chase -- "We had a crazy chase/fight up a spiral staircase in my Shattered Star playtest game where the Sudden Charging fighter was chasing a rat-form wererat, kicking off the walls and over her ratty-form to block her off while the wererat would squeeze through the fighter and continue upward (the rat was faster but was slowed down by not always succeeding to squeeze through the fighter). They eventually dropped her low enough to cry mercy just at the top of the stairs. The fighter mentioned that it was one of the craziest and coolest action scenes he had seen in a long time, and I was thinking it seems like the kind of fight scene they would choreograph in a kung fu movie."
  • Fighter vs. flying foes -- "This particular aerial combo [jump up and smash flying oppo to the ground] is an ability available exclusively to fighters, and it is available in the level range of master (pre-legendary), but that doesn't mean you can have the whole thing going at a particular level. You'll at least get some anti-aerial options around the time the wizard is first able to fly." (Seifter)
  • How many skills does the fighter start with? "That hasn't been revealed yet. It will definitely be more than 2 trained skills at 1st level for pretty much any fighter you build, potentially quite a few more, and we have fewer overall skills (with Athletics covering Climb, Swim, Jumping, combat maneuvers, and more, for example) so that's worth even more than it seems." (Seifter)
  • Agile or powerful fighter? "You can make a character with lots of smaller but fairly accurate attacks (agile based), or a character with fewer enormous attacks (Power Attack), or something in between. I really like my agile build especially whenever I can get some haste, but I mostly just think it's cool that we can finally have something different but also cool for the lighter weapons to do that works out to good damage in a different way than the heavy ones do." (Seifter)
• Bulmahn talks about the breadth of character options -- "One thing that I think we could explain a bit better is the fact that every character has a breadth of options open to them when it comes to social and out of combat abilities. Some come from classes whose theme and purpose aligns closely with those parts of the game. For those classes, they usually get some additional choices so that they do not feel that they are lacking in combat ability (sacrificing social for combat, or vice versa). That said, everyone has access to skills, skill feats, and general feats that allow you to tune your character to perform in the way that you want outside of combat (exploration mode and downtime mode). We will be looking at the modes of play on Friday and I am going to sneak in some information on this topic then to give you a sense of what's out there."
• Bulmahn on design goals -- "As for the issues at hand, we have been working hard to shift some balances around a bit. Making an attack more accurate over the levels of play, while adding some variability and scaling to damage. This gives us more "levers" for design, and will result in a better play experience. The math of the old system, and the way some feats interacted with it caused serious balance issues over the life of the system. We hope to have corrected them, but only a full playtest will give us any indication as to whether or not we have succeeded. We hope you will hold off on judgement until then."
• Attacks of Opportunity are more commonly triggered -- "In my playtests, I've found that both monsters and PCs trigger way more AoOs than before because they get down to the cost/benefit analysis of the action they really want to cast and sometimes decide "Well it might not have an AoO" or "Well it might miss me and I'll get my spell." In PF1, PCs always had AoOs, and martial PCs eventually pretty much always hit with them because they weren't at an iterative penalty, so you would cast on the defensive and auto-succeed (or nearly auto-succeed) at that check because it didn't scale quickly enough and there would be no AoO." (Seifter)
• There's a new Counterspell -- "Yeah, counterspelling is weird in PF1. As you say, it's incredibly situational and overly complicated. On top of that, it feels really unexciting to do it too. But if you actually do it against an encounter where most of the challenge rests in a caster boss? You can wreck that encounter even without any feats or abilities taken to make counterspelling better, particularly if you have a caster level boost (karma prayer bead on my oracle, I'm looking at you; I accidentally turned one of the most notorious PFS scenarios into a cakewalk readying dispel over and over again). So it was the worst of several worlds: super situational, complicated, felt weak, and was actually too strong when its situation came up but in a boring way. Anyway, I can't wait until you guys can check out PF2's counterspell!" (Seifter)
• How many skill ranks will a level 20 rogue have? "Oh, you can get 40-50 increases on the right rogue hellbent on getting skill rank increases instead of other skill options, not counting your starting trained skill picks. The range represents how increasingly unlikely you would be to put that many resources into it for diminishing returns on the sorts of skills you can pick. A more realistic rogue will be in the 30s at level 20 counting starting trained skill picks." (Seifter)

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[Votan]

If your DM chooses to hide the spell level, then that introduces inefficiencies due to random guessing, which still benefit the NPC since they have more spell slots to burn during this encounter.

There is a very fine line with counterspell between making it too effective and useless. If a random guessing game is required to counterspell then it will just be used a lot less often. What I think makes things the most interesting is a way to make countering magic both worthwhile and fun. I wonder if they might use a partial mitigation approach, where it grants a bonus on saves or something if it goes well.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

There is a very fine line with counterspell between making it too effective and useless. If a random guessing game is required to counterspell then it will just be used a lot less often. What I think makes things the most interesting is a way to make countering magic both worthwhile and fun. I wonder if they might use a partial mitigation approach, where it grants a bonus on saves or something if it goes well.

Now that you mention it, I do recall hearing something about a "degrees of success" system, so that may well be where they take it. If you can partially counter a spell, maybe you can turn their fireball from a critical hit into a regular hit, or turn a stun into a stagger or something.

 

[CubicsRube]

There is a very fine line with counterspell between making it too effective and useless. If a random guessing game is required to counterspell then it will just be used a lot less often. What I think makes things the most interesting is a way to make countering magic both worthwhile and fun. I wonder if they might use a partial mitigation approach, where it grants a bonus on saves or something if it goes well.

I actually love the idea of that and i must chastise myself that i never thought about it!

You could half or reduce damage from an enemy spell as it is dampened, or lower the dc of a save vs spell as you are interfering with the potency of a spell. It turns a spellcaster into a party wide spell defence system!

 

[Votan]

I actually love the idea of that and i must chastise myself that i never thought about it!

You could half or reduce damage from an enemy spell as it is dampened, or lower the dc of a save vs spell as you are interfering with the potency of a spell. It turns a spellcaster into a party wide spell defence system!

Exactly.

Otherwise counterspell being all or nothing makes it terribly vulnerable to being a boring mechanic.

 

[CubicsRube]

A lot of save or suck spells should be staged or tiered in my view to make them more interesting. Maybe sleep takes a round to take effect where foes are slowed first but get 1 round ti act before droppoing off to snooze land.

 

[Kobold Boots]

Eh, I'm probably not expressing the majority opinion with this position, but I'm not in favor of counterspell being in the game in an active combat sense.

If you're going to have something that counters spells active, it should be prepared ahead of time.

Be well
KB

 

[Charlaquin]

A lot of save or suck spells should be staged or tiered in my view to make them more interesting. Maybe sleep takes a round to take effect where foes are slowed first but get 1 round ti act before droppoing off to snooze land.

It worked well in 4e, I don't see why it wouldn't work in PF2. In fact, the Conditions system actually seems pretty well poised to accomplish that. Instead of Save or Die, you could have Save or gain Dying 1, or whatever.

 

[Henry]

Enemy spellcasters almost always have far more spell slots than an adventuring wizard, and are at zero risk of running out. They only have 2-3 rounds of combat per day, at most. You have five more encounters to get through today.
If you're dressed like a wizard, in this world where classes are very strongly codified and wizards have a distinct appearance, then it's a fairly safe assumption. You're the one who isn't wearing armor, and also isn't doing kung fu. Maybe you can try to fake them out, by pretending that you know it if you don't, but that just means their spell goes through unimpeded without them needing to spend their reaction, and they can counter anything you cast with impunity.
It's not meta-gaming if the world actually works that way. It's not like you need to find spells before you can learn them. This isn't AD&D world.
Honestly, I seriously can't imagine a professional smart person being that foolish. Maybe if they're just a sorcerer, and they've just gained access to third-level spells. Otherwise, it's absolutely mandatory if you want to fight with spells in a world where countering spells is so trivial.

A spellcaster who doesn't have counterspell will be completely useless against an enemy who does, and spellcasters on both sides should be entirely aware of this fact.

I’m just going to disagree, because I still think it’s as metagamey as heck. Then again, I also don’t use the “five encounters a day” silliness, and think it’s a part of the expectations of the system that seriously needs rework.

As to professional smart people not being that foolish, I’ve seen too many real-world examples to agree with you.