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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[Morrus]

I have a question here, because I have been wondering if this is actually a problem in Pathfinder or not. Are people actually complaining about the Christmas Tree effect in Pathfinder? Or is this a perceived problem that is being carried over from other d20 games and there's an assumption that there's a problem?

I ask because I can't believe that gamers are uniform in their hatred of the 3e Magical Item Christmas Tree effect. There have to be a portion of gamers who actually like it because there isn't anything in D&D that gets 100% uniformity of opinion. Maybe they're a tiny group, but I expect them to exist.

And if they exist I'd expect that they might have migrated to Pathfinder. Because that's the system that supports that style of play. So I'd be curious to know if it's actually perceived as a problem at the table for Pathfinder groups, or if it's a feature, or if it's not something anyone thinks about because it's just "how the game is played" and they work around it.

I've always found it to be problematic for me. Can't speak for anybody else.

 

[Blue]

I have a question here, because I have been wondering if this is actually a problem in Pathfinder or not. Are people actually complaining about the Christmas Tree effect in Pathfinder? Or is this a perceived problem that is being carried over from other d20 games and there's an assumption that there's a problem?

I ask because I can't believe that gamers are uniform in their hatred of the 3e Magical Item Christmas Tree effect. There have to be a portion of gamers who actually like it because there isn't anything in D&D that gets 100% uniformity of opinion. Maybe they're a tiny group, but I expect them to exist.

And if they exist I'd expect that they might have migrated to Pathfinder. Because that's the system that supports that style of play. So I'd be curious to know if it's actually perceived as a problem at the table for Pathfinder groups, or if it's a feature, or if it's not something anyone thinks about because it's just "how the game is played" and they work around it.

All I can say is that the designers of Pathfinder thought it was a big enough problem to address. On the other hand, they keep stressing that characters rarely ran out of Resonance unless they were intentionally spamming Cure Light Wound wands or other abuse, so it looks like they calibrated it at a more permissive level than 13th Age or 5e.

But don't focus too much on that - this was just an example of how addressing the same sorts of problems in similar contexts can give you solutions that resemble each other without having been taken from each other.

 

[Charlaquin]

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."

Interesting. So the implication here is that Resonance is a replacement for individual limitations on item usage, not in addition to it. So, for example, a wand of CLW could actually be used unlimited times in one day, but each person it’s used on can only benefit from so many uses of it? That is indeed less fiddly. I had assumed items would still have limited charges and that this would be yet another number to track. If I’m interpreting this tweet correctly, then I am much more interested in this mechanic than I was before.

 

[Aldarc]

The nice thing about Resonance is that it incentivizes the use of more powerful items (e.g., Wand of CSW) rather than the spamming of lower-powered ones (e.g., Wand of CLW), as the former will count less against your Resonance than spamming the latter.

 

[RevTurkey]

Resonance sounds like rules for the sake of it. Puts me off the system to be honest.

 

[Morrus]

Resonance sounds like rules for the sake of it. Puts me off the system to be honest.

You've just identified the point of a playtest.

 

[Philippe Marcil]

Resonance seems like a great idea to me.

It put the magic items resources into a single pool which would simplify the management of all the items slot and maximum use.

It have so much potential in term of gameplay - magic item could be far more potent by having a high resonance cost. The use of an item won`t be limited by it inherent limits but by your own resonance which is great. That allow you to spam use of an item that you need right now in exchange for not using another item today.

I think the framing of the argument as a way to avoid a problem make people resist the idea. If it is framed as a positive - think about the flexibility, versality and combo potential of this new resources - it make the statement far more interesting and enticing.

 

[Charlaquin]

Resonance sounds like rules for the sake of it. Puts me off the system to be honest.

I thought the same thing until that tweet, because I thought Resonance would be layering on top of the standard system of magic item charges. After having it (indirectly) clarified that the intent is for Resonance to replace that system, it no longer sounds like rules for the sake of rules to me. It sounds like rules for the sake of consolidating how many counters you have to keep track of. Instead of tracking how many charges each of your magic items have left, you only need to track how many magic item uses you have left. Much easier.

I’m still not sold on Resonance, but now I see what they were going for with it. I’ll need to try it out in the playtest before I pass judgment.

 

[RevTurkey]

You've just identified the point of a playtest.

Well...quite, lol

It just sounds a bit naff...items stopping working because you’ve overdosed on your magic quota for the day.

 

[Dire Bare]

For a company that claims they are not inspired by 5e, pf2 sure have a lot of mechanics that sounds very 5e...

Considering Paizo's long history of being dishonest with their fans, I think it's safe to assume that PF2 is essentially an adaptation of the D&D 5E ruleset . . . . sure they are saying it isn't, but . . .

OR . . . .

Considering Paizo's long history of being straightforward with their fans, I think it's safe to assume PF2 is not heavily based on the D&D 5E ruleset. Because, well, that's what they have told us, and there is no rational reason not to take them at their word.