Pathfinder 2's Armor & A Preview of the Paladin!

It was a long bank holiday weekend here in the UK, and I sent most of it in the (rare) sun eating BBQ; there were two big Pathfinder 2 blog posts which went up in the meantime. The first dealt with armour and shields; the other was our first look at the new Paladin class!

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• Armor now affects Touch AC; each has a different bonus for AD and TAC.
  • Studded leather +2 AC, +0 TAC
  • Chain shirt +2 AC, +1 TAC, noisy
• Armor has traits, such as "noisy".
• Armor has a Dex mod cap to AC, penalties to STR/Dex/Con skill checks, a Speed penalty, and a Bulk value.
• Potency Runes -- Items can be enhanced with potency runes.
  • Bonuses to attack rolls, increase on number of damage dice (weapons)
  • Bonus to AC, TAC, and saving throws (armor)
  • Example studded leather with +3 armor potency rune gives +5 AC, +3 TAC, and +3 to your saves.
  • Potency runes can be upgraded.
• Shields -- requires an action to use and gain an AC and TAC bonus for one round.
• Other gear -- gear has quality levels (poor -2, expert +1, master +2)
• Interact -- this is a new action, used for grabbing objects, opening doors, drawing weapons, etc.

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• Paladins! Apparently the most contentious class.
• Core rules have lawful good paladins only (others may appear in other products)
• Paladin's Code -- paladins must follow their code, or lose their Spell Point pool and righteous ally class feature.
• Oaths are feats and include Fiendsbane Oath (constant damage to fiends, block their dimensional travel)
• Class features and feats --
  • Retributive strike (1st level) -- counterattacks and enfeebles a foe
  • Lay on hands (1st level) -- single action healing spell which also gives a one-round AC bonus
  • Divine Grace (2nd level) -- saving throw boost
  • Righteous ally (3rd level) -- house a holy spirit in a weapon or steed
  • Aura of Courage (4th level) -- reduce the frightened condition
  • Attack of Opportunity (6th level) -- presumably the basic AoO action
  • Second Ally (8th level) -- gain a second righteous ally
  • Aura of Righteousness (14th level) -- resist evil damage
  • Hero's defiance (19th level) -- keep standing at 0 HP
• Litanies -- single action spells, verbal, last one round.
  • Litany of righteousness -- weakens enemy to your allies' attacks
  • Litany against sloth -- slows the enemy, costing reactions or actions

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[pemerton]

Singer says, for example "I must, if I am thinking ethically, imagine myself in the situation of all those affected by my action (with the preferences that they have). I must consider the interests of my enemies as well as my friends, and of strangers as well as family. Only if, after taking fully into account the interests and preferences of all these people, I still think the action is better than any alternative open to me, can I genuinely say that I ought to do it. At the same time I must not ignore the long-term effects of fostering family ties, of establishing and promoting reciprocal relationships, and of allowing wrongdoers to benefit from their wrong doing."

That is a reasonable code, but hardly objective.

Singer doesn't just assert it. He offers reasons.

 

[Gammadoodler]

I don't agree with this - I think that the LG person is concerned about damage to the community, usurpation, etc; whereas the CG person is concerned about damage to individuals, power structures, hierarchy etc.

I see the distinction you are making and it seems reasonable enough. I'm not 100% sure that it's necessary that the whole scope of the CG's concerns is on an individual level - presumably they may have a family or perhaps hometown they care about as groups/places as much as the individuals in them - but I see the direction that your going, and it may just be differing shades of grey.

If these seem small differences - and I can see that they well might - then I think that is a view that the whole lawful/chaotic set-up isn't picking up on anything too profound or important. Which would also be a reasonable view.

I imagine the scale of the differences depends significantly on the comparative scale of communities vs individuals. At sufficiently small scales, the needs are likely to be more or less identical, but as communities get bigger individuals can sort of get lost.

I think this is one of many examples that shows that the general distinction between lawful and chaotic is unstable, and that the details have to be worked out table-by-table, either in play or as part of the prep for play.

Upthread I said that I tend to see NG as CG-lite. A Robin Hood that adheres to the rightfull throne but is rather casual about resisting and robbing the sheriff and his/her friends in the meantime might be an instance of NG, though.

For a really clear example of CG I think you need to find a figure whose repudiation of received social structures in favour of self-realisation is more thorough-going. A certain sort of hermit, or knight-errant, or wild person of the woods, might fit this description. Robin Hood comes close, but (for the reasons you give) probably isn't quite there.

I think that makes sense. In the end it's pretty difficult since character choices drive alignment and not the other way around. As such there is necessarily going to be a gradient where one chaotic character may be slightly more or less chaotic than another and likewise for lawful characters.

Well, what you call "rationalisations" I would call reasons and convictions, revealed by conduct as well as by word. And what else would be indicative of a person's moral outlook?

I see what you're saying here, since there is a certain negative connotation associated with "rationalization". Functionally though it operates in the same way as "reasons" and "convictions" , which is to say, it operates internally unless there is specific effort made to externalize it. That's pretty par for the course for RPG characters and typically wouldn't matter that much beyond table-specific role-playing impacts. It does get sticky, though, when mechanics are married to alignment in such a way that why you do something may matter as much as what you do. Since players and the DM are not deities or cosmic forces that can suss out a character's motivations on their own, a weird space opens up where a paladin has to metacommunicate to aid in evidencing alignment adherence. This is the reason why I'd find using such a system "shaky ground." Of course, when alignment and mechanics are divorced, this is a lot simpler.

 

[Tallifer]

I for one am very glad that paladins must be Lawful Good. Players who want to play other alignments can play another of the countless other classes. I think rectitude is the main point of paladinhood, eg. Galahad, Parsifal, Jeanne d'Arc, Saint Louis, Don Quixote. Of course it would also be interesting to play a fallen paladin who loses his divine powers, such as the adulterous Lancelot who went mad for a time.

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