It's great the way Pathfinder uses a variety of skills in encounters - and when I write adventures, I am always looking to work in those skills that don't crop up much in encounters (Crafting, specific Lores the PCs have, Society, Survival). Great deep dive, particularly on what isn't a skill - a tricky definition for any game system. One tricky thing that comes up a lot in my experience: is shoving a boulder out the way of a cave entrance a Strength Check, or is it an Athletics Check. That fine line when to call for Attribute or a Skill Check is really blurry.

Would love to see Mark and Linda's thoughts on prepping an adventure for PF2E, similiar to Mike Shea from Sly Flourish

Great info ❤🎉

I was sent by the hat of the pointy type. I'm also here ti avoid election news.

Video TLDR: - Don't give players large booklets or big itineraries, you are the main reader as GM. - Players will never care as much about the story, world or what is going as as you or in the same way a majority of the time. - Revealing History is about making it interesting but more importantly RELEVANT to the player most of the time. - Techniques are the various ways to condense or focus on parts of the otherwise large blocks of text that make up history in a fantasy world to again, make it relevant at the time. Not relevant just because it IS History. - Use Flashbacks if something is more particular or you want to get players to care about the opposition. Show them the background that created the villain. Show them the war that happened. ETC. I argue use flashbacks for PLAYERS also at times. "Hey that thing we did a few weeks ago, in a flashback, what else happened there?" - You can absolutely use mystery and should not be giving everybody the entire story and every nook and cranny of a place or scene. Remember to feed the dogs (players) within reason. You don't just give a dog the entire bag of dog food and expect it to figure it out, do you? - Building history is also about 'completing the circle' when players ask questions of "Why is this extra tunnel here, that doesn't make a lot of sense." to 'make up' history based on player questions to make the world feel more real / personal to your table group. This is how you predominantly make a pre-written adventure into your own groups style and add to the story. Completing circles players ask about the content that is only partially covered. - If something is VERY out of the scope of the adventure and somebody asks you something REALLY BIG. Do not be afraid to end session or redirect the session's goal to give yourself the proper time to research it so you can properly explain it and bring it back on course after. Also don't be afraid to tell somebody out of character this is out of scope, but I'll entertain you a little bit here. So you can have fun of exploring it but get back on course after. - If a player doesn't want to know details, respect it. Say the stuff and leave the door open for them to walk through. - You can always just say "You know this." rather than needing to deliver the history entirely organic. - if a player wants MORE details always encourage it and enable it via a roll or otherwise. - Bias is a massive part of history and parts of it are likely to be rewritten by the locale. Not all delivery is full-truth. But must be delivered in perspective truth at the time based on the current locale. Players own characters likely have biases, and you should play into those and know them. Reference them in delivery to make history relevant.

This question in causing havoc in my Pathfinder group: does a magical attack (such as a weapon with a potency rune, a monk with magic attacks) bypass a damage type resistance, such as bludgeoning damage? I can't find any monsters that say - resistant to non-magical bludgeoning damage - so we are confused big time.

Unexpected Mitchel and Webb reference

In old games I was using often distance where the players were seeing or been seen from hundreds of feets. Recent games online use a grid drawn on a really small map and bow range are never an issue because monsters start at a one round distance from you all the time. The vehicle at least make us use that long distance where archer will shine and force players to not only take short range spells.

Given the talk about enemies getting around walls in open environments, I’m curious now: is Wall of Stone intended to be an extremely potent exception to all these caveats? By my interpretation of the spell (though I’ve seen plenty who disagree), the wall lets you enclose someone on all four sides + roof. So Arcane and Primal casters tend to have a much easier time imprisoning enemies.

They aren't much of a rough spot when the rules are designed with vehicular combat in mind. Case in point: BattleTech/MechWarrior.

have been panicking for weeks already

In video games quick time events are often used to split up rounds of regular battle. Something similar could work for vehicle combat

Now that I'm home from my PFS game, I'm watching this video. I had NOT considered the "Kool-Aid Man" factor as it relates to walls you might put up. 😜

Got a mighty redwood Forrest? Hire web lurkers to weave an impassible invisible web...

A higher rank heroism scroll... And haste ... Turns yokels into commandos!

Remember when us Intel set up inflatable tanks, planes, and battalions of cardboard troops? Yep. Illusions can divert enemy forces to distant targets that don't exist!

To quote a song, "oh no! THere goes Tokyo! Go go Godzilla!"

Flight, teleportation, ranged summoning, ...

Two rock walls funnel the enemy into a "killbox" for archers... Or muddy field of very difficult terrain... Or a culvert quicksand pit... Or a mass of summoned giant carnivorous plants... Heck, even a few "scarecrows" in a corn field... Summon an ankhrav to make pit traps... Magic completely devastates infantry, Calvary, and seige. Entirely new tactics have to be invented for fantasy warfare...

Walls work. Bogs work. Alchemical Greek fire that sticks and burns... That works. Clouds of gas... Works. The question for pathfinder players is: who does battlefield control the best? Alchemists, druids, wizards?

First to the post! Haha… I WIN! As going first is the ‘Ultimate TTRPG Tactic!’ 😂

Please publish that class eventually Mark, I need more silly PF2e stuff lol

Hello Mark and Linda, Zarek here from Odin's Key Gaming! This is a really fun topic to discuss, and I think in your discussion that you both make some really great points. I think there is a really good sweet spot of balance between freedom and class being the only (or one of few) choices to make. I'd love to discuss with you our Superhero Roleplaying game Indominant, and how we handle the idea of Classes! For a short explanation we separate the idea of "classes" into what we call Archetypes, and these work similarly to the idea Linda mentioned where the class is "the tank". Each Archetype has a main role they fulfill in the team. Then as the second part of the "class" you choose your Powerset which has a curated list of Powers to choose from. The way we create a lot of customization is with Talents that are a specific list of options based on your chosen Archetype-Powerset combination! If you want to discuss it further or give it a try we'd love to connect with you!

Love ❤ this. I had to catch the VOD couldn’t watch live

Another M&M character converted electromagnetic force into pseudo G (gravity) drawing energy from his nervous system. Fundamental Force Conversion. Enabling flight, deflection shields, and (pseudo-telekinesis) it works because em is 1x10^42nd power stronger than Gravity. The weakness was as overuse, overdoing it, and pushing my limits.

In M&M my paragon was a 16 year old high school graduate. Born with nano-structures all over the cytoskeleton, that harnessed casamir force, (1.5 trillion lbs of kinetic force) for flight, Super strength, and a costume shielding invulnerable aura. Of course, finding crimes to stop became a problem...

It is the differences that make you, you. It is why we roleplay; none of us are perfect, none of us are happy, none of us can go back and re-do our lives with what we know now.

Michael Jordan was an amazing player... But he's not going to fight crime as Batman.

If I am a stock broker, my education and the bulk of my experience is unique to people who share my occupation. I can't go through another door and become a doctor. The training and experience is too different.

Look up "edc" and "grayman"... Plenty of emergency survival kits on the web, are made to fit inside an altoids mints tin.

Weight can feel very anecdotal, I recall some soldiers whining about a 30 lbs bag... While a navy medic assigned to the Marines (corps man) ruck weighed more than 120lbs.

If you're equipment chart has unrealistic weights or arbitrary bulk... That is a problem.

The problem is determining the weight and bulk of an item. If you've got a compass made with a large brass housing and the whole thing is a decorative sculpture of a mermaid encircling the compass that can be difficult to carry (fins, trident, et al.) As well as being heavy... Say 27 pounds. It is a problem for me when I can make a compass using a tea cup, cork, half cup of water and a sewing needle...

57:36 "And so could lead to a lot of angry discussions online from people who assumed that they had a common ground for discussion, but in truth were [in situations] that were so different from each other that they were both correct about things that they were saying while also saying that they thought the others were liars or wrong, and their experiences must not have happened." A good observation, applicable far beyond RPGs.

I have a D&D charactr who is a halfling wizard with strength 8 (i.e. a -1 modifier). He weighs 40lb, and can carry 120lb of gear. The crystal ball he acquired recently is 50lb alone.

I was in a game once where the cleric decided after the first session to switch to bomber alchemist, and my character with -1 Wis was now the only one trained in Medicine. That was... a time.

I think afflictions are a great way to have smaller encounters or hazards matter in PF2e. A random hazard which deals x damage is (gameplay wise irrelevant) because it gets healed anyways. This is a bit different if you have wansering monsters or if time matters in your game. An affliction can be something which gives you a small penalty even if you can outheal everything. For example when you have wild dogs attacking the party while they are traveling to the next town. Normally you would need to have a severe or extrem Encounter for this to matter. But you could also give the dogs a disease which will stick with the party for a few days. Maybe they are now constantly exhausted and need a day longer to get back to town.

Really interesting to hear about how much consideration for errata is based on player perception.

What about niche protection? Like, Mark touched on his example where his spellcaster was a better melee than the devoted melee character. Or in my friend's BG3 game, they just wanted to be an Evocation Wizard and blow stuff up, but they ended up feeling like their character was weak, when the other player's Paladin/Warlock was throwing Fireballs on short rest + tanky + Smites and melee + healing subclass. How much is it acceptable to allow a player to radically change a class's role thanks to gear/multiclassing/feats? And then, how do you prevent these hybrid builds from powercreeping the single-purpose class?

Great info ❤. Missed the live but getting caught up now

Inventories are only "busywork" for people not interested in the simulation part of the game. Its a double edged sword. Blade in the dark works well with no inventory because of the setting and premise. It's a heist movie rpg. It wouldn't work well for a standard exploration and dungeon delve that takes you out of a city for days or weeks. D&D and Pathfinder have done a lot to mitigate the problem by using bulk and premade kits of supplies. Honestly, the biggest issue is the arrow consumption speed. Or any ammunition. Again, they go out of their way to try and make a nonissue with spells that dulicate arrows and cheap low level magic items that hold a lot of arrows. I used to play with a group thats been playing since redbox. And their opinions on the topic was, don't try to carry everything, and track consumables. The additional lesson is, of course, to also USE the consumables, potions are useless if you die. Scrolls will be used as toolet paper by goblins...

Just found your channel, and these sorts of discussions are a gem to me!

Our tabletop system is PF2E but for the setting we are adapting Descent into Avernus, from the mechanical point of view the conversion has not been difficult and everybody has been onboard, on the other hand, the campaign itself has been a pita, the premise is great but the execution is very poor, luckily the community has lots of advice about how to fix it.

hey there i started watching your series but i prop wont ever make it for a stream because timezones, is this a good spot to request a video theme? from the topic of realism and fantasy i kept thinking about classes and their implications. i would really like a deep dive into advantages and disadvantages to "restrict player choice" to these class themes! since pf2e uses a lot of automatic progression for most relevant combat stats (accuracy, hp, perception, weapon and armor proficencies) all classes have a strong image they represent and are rarely unable to do what this image diktates. and if players can choose anything they want (eg a point buy skill tree thing like in path of exile) people still gravitate towards filling a certain fantasy trope, eg one of each healer, fighter, mage, thief. even when pf2e is a big step to give players relevant choices each level, the basic (very visible in 5e) problem that a player can be locked in a certain playstyle still persists. what makes this idea of classes so relevant? in games like blades in the dark your class is basicaly just your equipment, since players can choose abilities from other classes without exp penalties but they still evoke a strong mental image about what that character is supposed to do/be good at. ok now i am just rambling, anyways i would really like to hear both of your oppinions on the topic!

That bit on variance favoring the underdog is a great way of thinking about it!

This was a good GM advise, this is really good suggestions :)

Some super solid points here. I would add that being able to watch play testers is almost always more useful than collecting data after the test.

I'm loving this video series!

Vicious Swing = 1e Vital Strike. When you don't have enough actions for a full attack (because the enemy ran away or you're readying an action) one great hit is better than two good hits.

I love these videos, but all the math really could use some graphs or other visual aid to help me follow along!