# Resonance, Potency, & Potions: A Look At Magic Items in Pathfinder 2



## Imaculata (Jul 2, 2018)

Morrus said:


> Activating an item costs 1 RP, and your RP total is your level plus your Charisma modifier.




People sure are going to love Paladins now.


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## fjw70 (Jul 2, 2018)

I like the scaling of weapon damage but would like to see it as a class feature and not through magic weapons.


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## Jacob Lewis (Jul 2, 2018)

It definitely favors classes dependent on Charisma, as well as races (ancestries) with inherent bonuses in that characteristic. 

On the other hand, classes with less reliance on Charisma as a primary stat, like rogues and fighters, tend to have less use for magical items except weapons and armor. So maybe Paizo knows what they're doing. Best way to find out is to join the playtest and let them know about your experience.


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## Ghal Maraz (Jul 2, 2018)

Strength gives bonus to Athletics skill, to-hit and to-damage and determines carrying capacity; Dexterity gives bonus to a bunch of Skills, to AC, to Reflex Saves, ranged (or Finesse weapons) to-hit and to Initiative; Constitution gives bonus to Hit Points and to Fortitude Saves; Intelligence gives bonus to initial Skill proficiency points and to a bunch of skills; Wisdom gives bonus to a bunch of Skills and to Will Saves; Charisma gives bonus to a bunch of skills and to the number of Resonance Points. 

While I find the use of Resonance and the magic items rules the part of the playtest I'm liking less, I  still consider it interesting that there will be a real disincentive for every class in dropping any one skill without thought. Ok, perhaps Wizards and Sorcerers will probably keep Strength quite low and Alchemists won't invest so much in Charisma, but that's still a good idea.


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## MechaTarrasque (Jul 2, 2018)

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Imaculata said:


> People sure are going to love Paladins now.




And with Righteous Ally, they have one less thing to have to spend RP's on.


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## Jer (Jul 2, 2018)

Jacob Lewis said:


> It definitely favors classes dependent on Charisma, as well as races (ancestries) with inherent bonuses in that characteristic.




Well, in the sense that a character with a high Charisma will have 2-3 more resonance points per day than everyone else, I guess.  But since you're adding the level of the character to the bonus, it seems like it would mostly be a problem at low levels and wash out once you hit mid levels unless you have a lot of magic items in your games (though the fact that healing potions cost resonance to use means that you might hit that limit even if you don't have a Christmas Tree of magic items that cost resonance on you, if your table is used to chugging healing potions to keep your adventuring day going).

I'm still not quite sure on what problem Resonance is trying to solve though.  The four bullet points on the Resonance blog don't really make much of a case for something this complex - it doesn't really seem to simplify things all that much (especially with the new action economy that PF2 proposes), and while you may have "less to track" in the overarching sense of individual pools for individual items, you now have one big pool where spending a point to activate a vorpal weapon on a crit now might impact whether you can heal after the battle - leading to some complex tradeoffs at the table that might make option paralysis worse.  

The one piece where I can see it solving a problem is bullet point 3 - having adventurers stockpile a cord of wands of healing because it's cheaper and more effective to do that than to buy one high level wand seems like the kind of meta-gaming move you might want a rules fix for, but this seems like a heavy handed fix for something like that (and outside of healing I don't see that kind of magic item tradeoff as usually being worthwhile, so maybe it's a problem with the healing rules and not so much with the magic item rules?)

(I will say that this continues to cement for me the idea that PF2 wants to be the version of D&D that caters to people who really like the resource management subgame.  Have they previewed any encumbrance rules yet?)


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## Lord Mhoram (Jul 2, 2018)

The thing I found nice were Runes. Can just be special abilities for weapons you already own for treasure. Made me think of Bladerunes from Rolemaster 2nd, and Materia from FF.
I made my peace with resonance a while ago.


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## Kurviak (Jul 2, 2018)

Jer said:


> ... Have they previewed any encumbrance rules yet?)




It's based on strength via encumbrance points. Just like Starfinder's encumbrance


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## mellored (Jul 2, 2018)

Jer said:


> I'm still not quite sure on what problem Resonance is trying to solve though.



It allows a DM to throw out hundreds of magical items or dump tons of gold, and not have to worry about overpowered characters.



> Have they previewed any encumbrance rules yet?



I don't think so, but that's basicly just resonance with Str instead, and a lot easier to get around (horses, wagons, etc...)


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## The Crimson Binome (Jul 2, 2018)

Jer said:


> I'm still not quite sure on what problem Resonance is trying to solve though.



In Pathfinder 1E, and supposedly in D&D 3E before it, healing wands trivialized any amount of HP damage (as long as you survived the fight). D&D had long been a game of resource management and attrition, which was inadvertently obviated through the combination of linear HP-growth with exponential wealth rewards.

Resonance is specifically trying to fix that problem. If you use a cheap wand of Cure Light Wounds to try and heal a mid-level character, then they'll run out of Resonance before they're half-way back. In order to keep a mid-level character up and going, you'll need to use a (vastly more expensive) wand of Cure Serious Wounds.


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## Grimstaff (Jul 2, 2018)

At least two of the staffs pictured are disconcertingly top-heavy, and should impose a -4 Dex pen tally to the characters wielding them.


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## Tony Vargas (Jul 2, 2018)

Morrus said:


> *Resonance *is measured in Resonance Points (RP). Activating an item costs 1 RP, and your RP total is your level plus your Charisma modifier. Paizo points out that "We expect Resonance Points to be a contentious topic, and we're really curious to see how it plays at your tables. It's one of the more experimental changes to the game, and the playtest process gives us a chance to see it in the wild before committing to it."



 Hope it doesn't get shouted down, it sounds like a decent, even flavorful magic-feeling, way to keep a few extra magic item drops or systematic item creation or the like from breaking things too easily.

 weapons have a "potency" value, which is roughly equivalent to its "plus" -- it gives you a bonus to attack, increases damage by a whole damage die per potency point (i.e. a +1 longsword gives +1 to hit and +1d8 damage).[/quote] Sounds like we're going to have some serious damage scaling, like in 13A.



> *Amor *similarly has potency and properties. Potency affects AC, TAC, and saving throws. Some properties include_ invisibility_ and_ fortification_.



 Magic armor boosting Touch AC is an idea who's time has come...  

...18 years too late for a lot of characters... 


Seriously, though, definitely a good idea.



> This takes us on to *potions*. Potions can now have high level effects, and they don't have to be tied to the spell lists. Examples including _healing potions, invisibility potions, dragon's breath potions_, and _oil of mending_.[/LEFT]



 "Can *now* have?"  How 'bout "high-level potion effects return..."


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## Kaodi (Jul 3, 2018)

I fear our new 2nd Edition overlords may have jumped the astral shark on this one. Some of these effects which require a whole RP to activate seem _incredibly_ weak. Opportunity cost is going to define this system hard.


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## The Crimson Binome (Jul 3, 2018)

Kaodi said:


> I fear our new 2nd Edition overlords may have jumped the astral shark on this one. Some of these effects which require a whole RP to activate seem _incredibly_ weak. Opportunity cost is going to define this system hard.



To be fair, ninety percent of the magical items in PF 1E were also vendor trash that nobody in their right mind would ever create, though I guess some of them saw use if they happened to show up somewhere.


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## Kurviak (Jul 3, 2018)

Kaodi said:


> I fear our new 2nd Edition overlords may have jumped the astral shark on this one. Some of these effects which require a whole RP to activate seem _incredibly_ weak. Opportunity cost is going to define this system hard.




But we have the opportunity to play test it and share our findings with the development team, so if enough people find the resonance system lacking it’ll be modified


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## mellored (Jul 3, 2018)

Tony Vargas said:


> Sounds like we're going to have some serious damage scaling, like in 13A.



You don't get multi-attack scaling, so damage it is.



> Magic armor boosting Touch AC is an idea who's time has come...
> 
> ...18 years too late for a lot of characters...
> 
> ...



I'd rather not have touch AC at all.  There's enough defenses without it.

So either make it a Dex save or give spells the appropriate attack bonus to hit regular AC.


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## Sunseeker (Jul 3, 2018)

Of all the things I have issue with in PF2, this isn't one of them.  This is probably one of the _best_ elements I've seen.


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## Koloth (Jul 3, 2018)

Yet another reason for parties to rest after EVERY encounter.  Bad enough that many magic types feel that entering any combat with less then a full spell load just can't be allowed to happen, now ALL classes have a RP pool to manage and worry if any amount less then 100% means they need to stop and rest for the day.


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## Jhaelen (Jul 3, 2018)

Imaculata said:


> People sure are going to love Paladins now.



Which is kind of funny, given that Paladins in D&D traditionally were limited to a small amount of belongings (and magic items).


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## Shasarak (Jul 3, 2018)

> We expect Resonance Points to be a contentious topic, and we're really curious to see how it plays at your tables. It's one of the more experimental changes to the game, and the playtest process gives us a chance to see it in the wild before committing to it. Here are the advantages we see from a design perspective:
> 
> Using items is clear and consistent. Spend the required actions and 1 RP, and you activate or invest your item. If someone else wants to use the same item, you can remove it and let them put it on and invest it themselves.
> You have less to track. We get to remove some of the sub-pools that individual items have (such as "10 rounds per day which need not be consecutive" or "5 charges") because we know you have an overall limited resource. There are still some items that can't be used without limit, but they get to be special exceptions rather than being common out of necessity.
> ...




There are a couple of contradicitons that obviously spring to mind when I read through the "advantages" to resonace that Logan suggested:

Using items is clear and consistant:  Except that some of the items Logan gave as examples did use resonance and some did not.

You have less to track: Except that some of the items like the Luck Blade can only be used once per day and others have charges that not only need to be tracked but then also use your resonance to cast your own spells.

Investiture limits what you can wear:  Except that he then specifies that you can not use two cloaks but can use two amulets.  So in other words we still have the old body slot limitation but as an extra benefit get to add another extra Resonance tax on top of it.  Unless your item does not actually use resonance because it may or may not.

And of course that is not even mentioning that Charisma powers Resonance unless it does not issue that we have known about for a while.  Because Alchemists are the ones who create magic items now.

But at least we still have Resonance forcing us to focus on the strongest items we have instead of well any other option that we wanted to.  So I guess one out of four is not a bad success rate.


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## The Crimson Binome (Jul 3, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> You have less to track: Except that some of the items like the Luck Blade can only be used once per day and others have charges that not only need to be tracked but then also use your resonance to cast your own spells.



That's a big one for me. When I thought that Resonance was going to replace charges on wands and staves, I was all on-board. The way it's presented, though, things are far more complicated than they need to be.


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## Erdric Dragin (Jul 4, 2018)

Let's make magic item suuuuuuper complicated. Yay....this edition continues to sound worse. 

I don't understand why the need for all these levels of complexity? It should simply be "Put on item, item does this. Always or limited. The End."

Now it's this resonance garbage.


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## Kurviak (Jul 4, 2018)

Erdric Dragin said:


> Let's make magic item suuuuuuper complicated. Yay....this edition continues to sound worse.
> 
> I don't understand why the need for all these levels of complexity? It should simply be "Put on item, item does this. Always or limited. The End."
> 
> Now it's this resonance garbage.




It’s a play test and the developers said resonance is one of their riskier changes that the want to be tested to be adjusted or dropped for something different, they said they went for the most extreme version of the changes for the play test to be able to cut off if they don’t work.


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## MichaelSomething (Jul 4, 2018)

I think a more interesting way to stop wand spam is to give them a one percent chance per use to explode and deal 1d6 per charge aoe damage.


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## Pokelefi (Jul 4, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> That's a big one for me. When I thought that Resonance was going to replace charges on wands and staves, I was all on-board. The way it's presented, though, things are far more complicated than they need to be.




as soem how looks in from the outside having never played pathfidner 1 this all seam very overly complicated and a big turn off for me to check out a new edition since the overwhelming factor would be in place even at the start

not hsure why i still keep checking out the posts


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## Sunseeker (Jul 4, 2018)

I just passed by and misread this title as "Romance, poetry and pottery."  

For a moment I thought there was a really cool thread going on about the history of culture, writing and the arts and how to include it in games.

Then my brain restarted and I was very disappointed.


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## ssvegeta555 (Jul 4, 2018)

What's to stop a player from hiring a dozen clerics and let the clerics use their RP for wands of CLW to top off the party? 

Almost sounds like wands just need to be axed for good, an idea I'm not opposed to. And I'm onboard for resonance but keeping charges and X/day abilities seems fiddly and redundant. Why have resonance at that point?


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## The Crimson Binome (Jul 4, 2018)

Pokelefi said:


> as soem how looks in from the outside having never played pathfidner 1 this all seam very overly complicated and a big turn off for me to check out a new edition since the overwhelming factor would be in place even at the start



Pathfinder is already the most complicated version of D&D in history, and the Law of Editional Escalation means that every new edition of a game must be more complicated than the previous edition. If you were hoping for something that was fast and easy to play, then Pathfinder 2 is not the game for you.


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## Shasarak (Jul 4, 2018)

Kurviak said:


> It’s a play test and the developers said resonance is one of their riskier changes that the want to be tested to be adjusted or dropped for something different, they said they went for the most extreme version of the changes for the play test to be able to cut off if they don’t work.




The problem is that Resonance already does not meet 3 out of the 4 goals that the designers had for it and the goal it does meet is kind of nonsensical anyway.  You should naturally want to use a more powerful item (if given a choice).

I heard an interesting quote today which seems appropriate:  Resonance is like trying to get rid of a Gopher hole using dynamite.


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## Jer (Jul 4, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> In Pathfinder 1E, and supposedly in D&D 3E before it, healing wands trivialized any amount of HP damage (as long as you survived the fight). D&D had long been a game of resource management and attrition, which was inadvertently obviated through the combination of linear HP-growth with exponential wealth rewards.
> 
> Resonance is specifically trying to fix that problem. If you use a cheap wand of Cure Light Wounds to try and heal a mid-level character, then they'll run out of Resonance before they're half-way back. In order to keep a mid-level character up and going, you'll need to use a (vastly more expensive) wand of Cure Serious Wounds.




Are there any other examples other than healing where this problem appears? Because this still sounds like a problem with the rules for healing to me rather than a problem with magic items in general.  It seems like they're trying to kill a fly with a bazooka.

Though I will admit - it's a tough nut to crack.  You've got a game that is balanced on daily resource refreshes, but you also have a long tradition of healing spells and items that get around the refresh rate that you expect PCs to use.  You want your magic items to scale with level and for lower-level items to be truly less useful than higher-level ones, and you want people to be able to craft/buy magic items.

I'm sure I'm missing something, but why isn't the solution to have proper pricing on higher level healing items?  In the preview they have a level 1 healing potion for 3 gp and a level 16 potion for 1200 gp.  That's 400x the cost, but the level 19 potion only provides a little less than 16x the healing power of a level 1 potion (on average).  If you priced the level 19 potion at around 45 gp or so (or increased the cost for a level 1 potion and scaled the rest accordingly) it would be comparable in price to the healing you actually get and there would be no reason to carry around a bag of healing potions instead of just one higher level potion. 

(I personally prefer the idea of tying hp recovered to the character level rather than the item level, but I know that's a controversial stance that a lot of people hated in 4e, so I guess I can see why for PF2 they want to try something different.)


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## Sunseeker (Jul 4, 2018)

ssvegeta555 said:


> What's to stop a player from hiring a dozen clerics and let the clerics use their RP for wands of CLW to top off the party?
> 
> Almost sounds like wands just need to be axed for good, an idea I'm not opposed to. And I'm onboard for resonance but keeping charges and X/day abilities seems fiddly and redundant. Why have resonance at that point?




Or you could just not hand out wands.


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## Emerikol (Jul 4, 2018)

I am fine with the concept but I really don't like it being a positive pool that goes down.  I'd prefer it be a taint that goes up. It kind of makes magic something the wears you down, stretches your lifeforce, etc...  Kind of like the one ring in Lord of the Rings.  I know I can reflavor it easily.  Still this is a playtest.  Anybody with me on that?


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## MechaTarrasque (Jul 4, 2018)

It occurs to me that even if the playtest results cause resonance to be dropped, there is no evidence that they will go back to WBL and body part slots as their solution to PC's getting too many magic items.  Which means that they will do something else.  I suspect this could easily be a 'better the devil you know' type situation.


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## The Crimson Binome (Jul 5, 2018)

Jer said:


> Are there any other examples other than healing where this problem appears? Because this still sounds like a problem with the rules for healing to me rather than a problem with magic items in general.  It seems like they're trying to kill a fly with a bazooka.



As far as I can tell, cheap healing wands were the one big issue. A lesser issue was that high-level characters could festoon themselves with dozens of low-level magic items, at virtually no cost to themselves (because of exponential wealth growth). Resonance is attempting to kill two birds with one stone, in a semi-organic way. An absolute limit on how many magic items you can use at once (or in a day) is relatively _less_ silly than placing a level cap on items that would prevent high-level characters from using them.

It's honestly not the _worst_ idea in the world, especially if they could use it to also make tracking wand charges unnecessary. Wand charges added a lot of bookkeeping in 3E/PF1, and still do in 5E.


Jer said:


> I'm sure I'm missing something, but why isn't the solution to have proper pricing on higher level healing items?  In the preview they have a level 1 healing potion for 3 gp and a level 16 potion for 1200 gp.  That's 400x the cost, but the level 19 potion only provides a little less than 16x the healing power of a level 1 potion (on average).  If you priced the level 19 potion at around 45 gp or so (or increased the cost for a level 1 potion and scaled the rest accordingly) it would be comparable in price to the healing you actually get and there would be no reason to carry around a bag of healing potions instead of just one higher level potion.



I'm not quite following your exact numbers, but the reason you can't have a high-level potion that is as cost-efficient as a low-level potion is because of the action economy. High-level cure spells and high-level potions are action-balanced against other things that a high-level character can do, so letting a low-level character use a high-level item would be giving them an action that's over-powered compared to other actions they might take. If you have a drag-out back-and-forth fight that goes on for several rounds, and then someone drinks a potion that brings them back to full, then they just win.

High-level consumables need to be exponentially more expensive than low-level consumables in order to prevent low-level characters from buying them. Video games get around that problem by simply gating access to good shops behind story progression, but you can't always do that in tabletop. You're going to go to the big city, sometimes, and the big city should have the best shops with the best items. Price is the only reliable barrier available, in that situation.

It gets worse when there are high-level offensive items that you can use, but the designers were aware of that issue, which is why they capped potions at level 3 spell effects, and made high-level scrolls likely to fail when used by low-level characters.

The underlying issue is just one of pricing consumables relative to always-on items. Either consumables are too cheap, and you end up with bags full of them, or they're too expensive and you just ignore them (in favor of getting a better weapon). Most video games solve the issue by applying other limits. WoW limits you to using one potion per fight. The Tales series uses the same healing item at every level (Apple Gel, which restores 30% of your max HP), but limits you to carrying 15 at a time. Those limits are both pretty arbitrary, though, and I don't think they would translate well to tabletop.


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## Imaculata (Jul 5, 2018)

Sunseeker said:


> Or you could just not hand out wands.




This seems like a far more elegant solution. Or they could simply change the way wands work. Instead of having them contain spammable spells, they could enhance any spells cast with it of a specific school.

Their current idea just adds more things to track, which goes against what made 3.5 so good to begin with (in comparison to 2nd edition).


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## AbdulAlhazred (Jul 5, 2018)

ssvegeta555 said:


> What's to stop a player from hiring a dozen clerics and let the clerics use their RP for wands of CLW to top off the party?
> 
> Almost sounds like wands just need to be axed for good, an idea I'm not opposed to. And I'm onboard for resonance but keeping charges and X/day abilities seems fiddly and redundant. Why have resonance at that point?




Well, I gotta agree that the ROOT cause of the issue seems to be the existing of healing wands AT ALL. AD&D worked perfectly well without all this 'put any spell in a magic item' stuff. In fact it was close to impossible to make most items, unless the GM was very kind (especially in 2e). This worked perfectly fine for 20+ years until 3e had a 'better' idea, which apparently is now so sacrosanct that it has to keep borking up games for another 20 years. People, 3e was BROKEN, it was FILLED with bad ideas, lose them!


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## Imaculata (Jul 5, 2018)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> People, 3e was BROKEN, it was FILLED with bad ideas, lose them!




It was also filled with plenty of good ideas.

Every version of D&D has its flaws, and this was definitely one of 3rd edition's. So yes, they should discard things that didn't work, but they should also build further on what made it good.

Third edition removed all of the pointless saves from 2nd edition, and simplified it down to just three. Armor class was no longer negative, attack rolls were more straight forward (no more convoluted Thac0 system). So why are they coming up with ideas for PF2 that make it more convoluted? If healing wands are the issue, just remove them entirely.


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## Jer (Jul 5, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> High-level cure spells and high-level potions are action-balanced against other things that a high-level character can do, so letting a low-level character use a high-level item would be giving them an action that's over-powered compared to other actions they might take. If you have a drag-out back-and-forth fight that goes on for several rounds, and then someone drinks a potion that brings them back to full, then they just win.




Ah yes - I wasn't thinking about low-level characters getting access to high-level magic items too early.  I was thinking of it the other way - with high level characters creating/buying tons of low level items because it's cheaper to do that than to buy/make the high level item.  When I have merchants the sell magic items in my games I typically restrict their wares to lower level items and higher level items aren't even available.  But that's a personal choice of how my players and I like our campaigns, so I can see how others would have a problem with it.

Although if you've already added item levels to the game there's a fix for that, which is to say that high level magic items are too powerful for low level characters to use.  Or you could even let them use them but have them cause damage when they do because of the raw power of the item in question.  It certainly would solve the problem of low level characters using higher level healing items if you took more damage from using it than you were able to heal with it


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## Sunseeker (Jul 5, 2018)

Imaculata said:


> This seems like a far more elegant solution. Or they could simply change the way wands work. Instead of having them contain spammable spells, they could enhance any spells cast with it of a specific school.
> 
> Their current idea just adds more things to track, which goes against what made 3.5 so good to begin with (in comparison to 2nd edition).




I really wish "wands" worked more like you see in Harry Potter or other magical lore: they either enhance your casting (like a +1 weapon), or add special effects (Fire spells can harm ghosts, or something).  Because you NEVER see in ANY of the source fantasy materials wands working like they do in D&D.

To add: I think it would also differentiate the Wizard more from the Sorcerer if they were required to use a wand (even a basic wooden stick).


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## AbdulAlhazred (Jul 6, 2018)

Imaculata said:


> It was also filled with plenty of good ideas.
> 
> Every version of D&D has its flaws, and this was definitely one of 3rd edition's. So yes, they should discard things that didn't work, but they should also build further on what made it good.
> 
> Third edition removed all of the pointless saves from 2nd edition, and simplified it down to just three. Armor class was no longer negative, attack rolls were more straight forward (no more convoluted Thac0 system). So why are they coming up with ideas for PF2 that make it more convoluted? If healing wands are the issue, just remove them entirely.




I think it isn't REALLY just healing wands. As other people have pointed out, there's a whole issue with the price curve for items in general. I would solve the problem in a different way. Maybe, for example, making the effectiveness based on the level of the person USING the item. That would create a different problem, but it COULD be solved. 

Another option is to simply abandon the notion of easy construction of items. I think its kinda clear 3e made that WAY WAY too easy. If the process for making stuff is inherently limited, requiring rare ingredients which simply cannot be purchased on the open market except perhaps in tiny quantities, making the process of creating items long and tedious, and perhaps requiring a significant up-front expense (IE a whole laboratory to make potions). These are actually all things 1e and 2e did. I feel like those editions were TOO parsimonious (particularly 2e, which was a bit ridiculous) but at the same time they had some good ideas that seem to have gone by the wayside.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Jul 6, 2018)

Sunseeker said:


> I really wish "wands" worked more like you see in Harry Potter or other magical lore: they either enhance your casting (like a +1 weapon), or add special effects (Fire spells can harm ghosts, or something).  Because you NEVER see in ANY of the source fantasy materials wands working like they do in D&D.
> 
> To add: I think it would also differentiate the Wizard more from the Sorcerer if they were required to use a wand (even a basic wooden stick).




In other words, just like 4e wands!


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## Shasarak (Jul 6, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> As far as I can tell, cheap healing wands were the one big issue.




If that is the case then maybe Paizo should try a more targeted treatment like not having wands of healing for example.  It is a simple and elegant solution.



> A lesser issue was that high-level characters could festoon themselves with dozens of low-level magic items, at virtually no cost to themselves (because of exponential wealth growth). Resonance is attempting to kill two birds with one stone, in a semi-organic way. An absolute limit on how many magic items you can use at once (or in a day) is relatively _less_ silly than placing a level cap on items that would prevent high-level characters from using them.




Starfinder has a much better restriction where you can not buy items higher then your level but you can still use items higher then your level meaning that the DM can give them out as treasure.  Gives your character incentive to go out adventuring to get that brand new high level item.



> It's honestly not the _worst_ idea in the world, especially if they could use it to also make tracking wand charges unnecessary. Wand charges added a lot of bookkeeping in 3E/PF1, and still do in 5E.




I must admit that I would be hardly thrilled if the best praise my idea gets is that it is "not the worst idea in the world".



> I'm not quite following your exact numbers, but the reason you can't have a high-level potion that is as cost-efficient as a low-level potion is because of the action economy. High-level cure spells and high-level potions are action-balanced against other things that a high-level character can do, so letting a low-level character use a high-level item would be giving them an action that's over-powered compared to other actions they might take. If you have a drag-out back-and-forth fight that goes on for several rounds, and then someone drinks a potion that brings them back to full, then they just win.
> 
> High-level consumables need to be exponentially more expensive than low-level consumables in order to prevent low-level characters from buying them. Video games get around that problem by simply gating access to good shops behind story progression, but you can't always do that in tabletop. You're going to go to the big city, sometimes, and the big city should have the best shops with the best items. Price is the only reliable barrier available, in that situation.
> 
> ...




I think that making high-level consumables exponentially more expensive than low-level consumables just ruins your whole game economy.  You can take 4e as an example to the extreme that the designers had to go to introduce more and more expensive coinage just to keep up with the escalation.  I know that game designers are not economics majors and on the other hand they could think through the logic of a 20th level character having to lug around a million gp just to buy a 20th level potion of healing.


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## Shasarak (Jul 6, 2018)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, I gotta agree that the ROOT cause of the issue seems to be the existing of healing wands AT ALL. AD&D worked perfectly well without all this 'put any spell in a magic item' stuff. In fact it was close to impossible to make most items, unless the GM was very kind (especially in 2e). This worked perfectly fine for 20+ years until 3e had a 'better' idea, which apparently is now so sacrosanct that it has to keep borking up games for another 20 years. People, 3e was BROKEN, it was FILLED with bad ideas, lose them!




This reminds me of a quote from Winston Churchill which I will paraphrase:

"Many forms of DnD have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that 3e is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that 3e is the worst form of DnD except for all those other systems that have been tried from time to time."


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## Charlaquin (Jul 6, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> This reminds me of a quote from Winston Churchill which I will paraphrase:
> 
> "Many forms of DnD have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that 3e is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that 3e is the worst form of DnD except for all those other systems that have been tried from time to time."




That only works if you agree all those other systems that have been tried from time to time are indeed worse than 3e.


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## The Crimson Binome (Jul 6, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> I must admit that I would be hardly thrilled if the best praise my idea gets is that it is "not the worst idea in the world".



It's a figure of speech. As far as potential solutions go, this one is somewhere between "serviceable, but awkward" and "functional". You could probably figure out a more elegant solution to these three problems, but it's not a trivial task.


Shasarak said:


> I think that making high-level consumables exponentially more expensive than low-level consumables just ruins your whole game economy.  You can take 4e as an example to the extreme that the designers had to go to introduce more and more expensive coinage just to keep up with the escalation.  I know that game designers are not economics majors and on the other hand they could think through the logic of a 20th level character having to lug around a million gp just to buy a 20th level potion of healing.



I definitely recall carrying around hundreds of pounds of gold in order to commission a magic sword, as a mid-level character in Pathfinder. The system works mechanically, as long as you don't think about it, but I have honestly never seen a level-based system with an economy that makes sense. The two options are "magic swords are not for sale" and "that magic sword costs 65000gp". The price of a potion is only important in relation to what else you could be doing with that money.


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## Shasarak (Jul 6, 2018)

Charlaquin said:


> That only works if you agree all those other systems that have been tried from time to time are indeed worse than 3e.




Sorry man, I just paraphrase the quotes, nothing I can do about people who disagree.


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## Shasarak (Jul 6, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> It's a figure of speech.




That is true.  Not a particularly positive figure of speech.



> As far as potential solutions go, this one is somewhere between "serviceable, but awkward" and "functional". You could probably figure out a more elegant solution to these three problems, but it's not a trivial task.




Is serviceable but awkward the bar you should be shooting for?  We have a list of four goals that the designers say they want to achieve and Resonance meets just one of those four goals which puts in firmly in the "could be worse" category above all of the other solutions that meet none of the goals.



> I definitely recall carrying around hundreds of pounds of gold in order to commission a magic sword, as a mid-level character in Pathfinder. The system works mechanically, as long as you don't think about it, but I have honestly never seen a level-based system with an economy that makes sense. The two options are "magic swords are not for sale" and "that magic sword costs 65000gp". The price of a potion is only important in relation to what else you could be doing with that money.




Exactly so is a potion that for example heals an extra 10% and costs 10x more worth buying in relation to anything else you could get with that money?  Is healing an extra 100% worth it?  If the cost benefit fails and then the only way you get people to buy them is by imposing some kind of magical item tax or another artificial gimmick then is that worth the distortion of the game?


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## Charlaquin (Jul 6, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> I definitely recall carrying around hundreds of pounds of gold in order to commission a magic sword, as a mid-level character in Pathfinder. The system works mechanically, as long as you don't think about it, but I have honestly never seen a level-based system with an economy that makes sense. The two options are "magic swords are not for sale" and "that magic sword costs 65000gp". The price of a potion is only important in relation to what else you could be doing with that money.



Honestly, option 2 works just fine as long as you’re not physically exchanging 65000 coins. Letters of credit are more likely what the kinds of people who are buying and selling magic swords are going to be trading with. Or if the setting doesn’t have a banking system developed enough to exchange credit, then at least high-value trade goods like ingots, gems, or works of art.


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## The Crimson Binome (Jul 6, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> Exactly so is a potion that for example heals an extra 10% and costs 10x more worth buying in relation to anything else you could get with that money?  Is healing an extra 100% worth it?  If the cost benefit fails and then the only way you get people to buy them is by imposing some kind of magical item tax or another artificial gimmick then is that worth the distortion of the game?



It's hard to say which gimmicks are artificial, and which are a logical extension of a believable economy, especially when you're talking about how a magic item is supposed to work.

As far as I'm concerned, Resonance makes sense as an inherent limitation of magic items in a hyper-magical setting like Golarion (or Forgotten Realms, for that matter). Resonance, alone, would not distort the game to me. Sitting down to chug twenty potions after a fight would be a distortion. Just to get that out of the way.

My understanding of their approach to pricing consumables is that a single-use item should be roughly 2% the cost of a durable item of the same level. That is to say, they're supposed to be chump change, and the fighter isn't supposed to complain about spending 1000gp on a potion after they just spent 50,000gp on a new sword. Assuming that Resonance is working as intended, the fighter will have enough points left in a day that they can use the expensive potions to recover up to full before their next fight, but using the cheap potions would leave them dangerously low and there's no point in even carrying them. In that case, if that situation works out they way they plan it, then the price absolutely makes sense.

It seems like an awfully narrow gap for them to try and hit, though. I mean, I've always treated expendable items as unnecessary, because I can succeed perfectly fine without them; it just gives me slightly less room for error. When I'm comparing a potion that I don't really need, against a _literal_ twenty pounds of gold which can feed a family for ten years, it's hard for me to think of that as chump change.

So what's the alternative, then? How do you price potions such that they don't wreck the HP-economy _or_ the GP-economy, across a wide range of levels?


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## Ted Serious (Jul 6, 2018)

Charlaquin said:


> That only works if you agree all those other systems that have been tried from time to time are indeed worse than 3e.



Worst except for all the others could imply just as bad.
Or unacceptable in other ways.

1e and 2e were just primitive. 
5e tries too hard to be like them.
4e is not enough like them.

3.5 is still where D&D left off.  Pathfinder is still carrying on from there.


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## Turiann (Jul 6, 2018)

One thing I didn't like so much in D&D or Pfd, was that items were slotted. While that could have made sense for some slots, I found it annoying that could not carry 3, 4 or even 10 magical rings, if you wanted. Or why not a magical earrings, a magical tooth. Nope, didn't happen, those weren't even legitimate "slots".
On the other hand, this slot-based limit probably had the intention to avoid having characters severly overpowered by way of an arsenal of wearable, activatable items.
I found the RP idea not bad for solving the issue in a half way elegant manner. Now a 10th level character can wear and use 7 rings, a magical earring  and any two other items of any kind, but not more (barring high Charisma). 
You don't want to wear a cloak but want a resistance item, hell yes, now it's possible? Have a resistance ring. No need to pay extra.
You want to combine several effects in one item? No problem, no need to artificially create complex item-cost rules for combo-items, you won't trick your way to a higher number of effects because each requires a seperate RP, one way or the other.

I think this is a great rule, as far as the basic idea goes. And now we can hope that all of us come up with ways to ensure that this rule is not abused either.

The only thing I am not sure at this time, is whether an ability (Charisma) should influence the number of RPs a character gets. This will definitely give an advantage to classes such as bard, paladin, sorcerer, swashbuckler. Even if probably a small one.

I have thought about 2 options:
I would either remove the ability based RP-point adjustment all-together. That makes sure everyone is on the same base. That keeps things simple, simpler, and that is usually a good criterion to go by.

Alternatively, if you want to make ability choices count, I would do it in a way that yields the greatest equality, regardless of racial & class choices.  I would tie the RP-modifier to the lowest stat a character has, whatever that stat is. That will make some people think twice about getting their usual 7 in the least useful ability score to get 4 freebee points somewhere else, which has become a very annoying standard boosting the class main stat. Rather than rewarding a character with more RP because he can make use of Charisma for his class, I prefer rewarding characters who decide to go for balanced abilities scores sets. Of course not all classes require as many high ability scores to operate fully, but usually those classes with more ability requirements have higher versatility. 

For additional mechanics, I would used the "Extra" feat, similar to "Extra Rage/Ki/Grit/Channel" from 1st edition, to add an option for players wanting to build characters with  RP-points.


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## Kurviak (Jul 6, 2018)

Turiann said:


> One thing I didn't like so much in D&D or Pfd, was that items were slotted. While that could have made sense for some slots, I found it annoying that could not carry 3, 4 or even 10 magical rings, if you wanted. Or why not a magical earrings, a magical tooth. Nope, didn't happen, those weren't even legitimate "slots".
> On the other hand, this slot-based limit probably had the intention to avoid having characters severly overpowered by way of an arsenal of wearable, activatable items.
> I found the RP idea not bad for solving the issue in a half way elegant manner. Now a 10th level character can wear and use 7 rings, a magical earring  and any two other items of any kind, but not more (barring high Charisma).
> You don't want to wear a cloak but want a resistance item, hell yes, now it's possible? Have a resistance ring. No need to pay extra.
> ...




They want to be charisma based because they want the concept of characters specialized in using magic items.

About the dropping stats to get extra points, that is not possible in the playtest


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## Sunseeker (Jul 6, 2018)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> In other words, just like 4e wands!




Hmmmm....that could be one reason I liked 4E!


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## AbdulAlhazred (Jul 7, 2018)

Charlaquin said:


> That only works if you agree all those other systems that have been tried from time to time are indeed worse than 3e.




Exactly. I think 'worst period' is a fine description! 3e had a lot of ideas, but whomever it was who designed it did NOT sit down and think through, and realistically playtest, whatever those ideas entailed. Its a game of largely unintended consequences and thus rather 'artless' in terms of how it plays.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Jul 7, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> It's a figure of speech. As far as potential solutions go, this one is somewhere between "serviceable, but awkward" and "functional". You could probably figure out a more elegant solution to these three problems, but it's not a trivial task.
> I definitely recall carrying around hundreds of pounds of gold in order to commission a magic sword, as a mid-level character in Pathfinder. The system works mechanically, as long as you don't think about it, but I have honestly never seen a level-based system with an economy that makes sense. The two options are "magic swords are not for sale" and "that magic sword costs 65000gp". The price of a potion is only important in relation to what else you could be doing with that money.




Certain problems confront FRPG game designers (and maybe to different degrees other genres as well). The first is the need to keep giving out treasures, and for those treasures to increase in value as the game progresses. Otherwise there's really little meaning to character progression. This is then coupled with the 'dragon horde problem', which is basically that fantastical hordes of wealth, of preposterous size, are a part of the fantasy genre, and thus it must be possible for at least some sort of high powered PCs to acquire them.

The next problem is economics. Even the most ignorant game designer understands the basic concept of the value of money. No matter how precious or rare something is there is SOME price at which its owners will part with that thing. If not, then there is certainly some price at which some 3rd party will part the owners from said thing violently and sell it to you, which amounts to the same thing. Thus that character who has the dragon horde, he can get whatever he wants, pretty much. At least his money COULD get him most anything.

Because treasures in RPGs are generally fundamentally structured as rewards for play, any attempts to part PCs from said rewards is, in effect, dickish and unsporting. Thus, at least within the paradigms of play which D&D and its ilk generally work within, there simply is no general solution for the 'treasure problem', and if magic items exist, then the treasure problem is also a magic item problem. 

Use rates, and simply making treasure 100% GM controlled and thus at least fantastically expensive, have been the standard solutions. They sort of work, but they always add some annoying subsystem to the game which is arbitrary and requires bookkeeping. Even 4e never REALLY solved this, and the attempts of its authors were in some ways quite embarrassing.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Jul 7, 2018)

Ted Serious said:


> Worst except for all the others could imply just as bad.
> Or unacceptable in other ways.
> 
> 1e and 2e were just primitive.
> ...




I disagree that AD&D's solution is 'primitive'. I think it could be tweaked slightly but it did work quite well. Items had a 'sale value', but since it was impossible to make most items this was really a SALE value, which is basically quite high, but something like what a player might actually agree to part with an item for. Purchase of items is left more as an exercise, but in practice the sums quoted in the 1e DMG are large enough that the most likely scenario is barter, trading one item for another. Items are VERY difficult to make. This precludes magic item manufacture as either a business proposition, or as a way to achieving some huge stockpile of items. 

Some things are notable:

Scrolls are not cheap, but PCs can pen spell scrolls at costs which make them worthwhile, and this is by far the most common type of item PCs produce. 

Potions are also feasible. There's a high up front cost for a lab, but the most difficult aspect is ingredients. Still, there are scenarios where a PC might have access to one or a few specific ingredients in quantity sufficient to make the option feasible. 

Non-permanent items are unfortunately ALL level-gated to 14th or higher level by the Enchant An Item spell (or similar restrictions on clerics). This could probably be fixed such that non-permanent items could be produced using a family of spells which gated on XP value or something like that. 3e DID try this, but they simply didn't set the values correctly here. Note also that in AD&D there is a big difference in that you can't simply endow ANY arbitrary spell into any arbitrary form of item. Components are of course the GM's mechanism for creating a restriction, which 3e also failed to adhere to (at least in practice).

Permanent items universally force the maker to sacrifice a point of CON (for wizards anyway, clerics are a bit fuzzier, but they don't get to make a wide variety of these items to start with). This is OK, except there's no reason why a level 14+ wizard would sac a CON point to make an item unless it was a VERY powerful item! In effect things like +1 daggers are never going to be produced at all. Again, some gating could be put in place, so your level 7 guy could make a +1 item. It would still be a bit painful, but at least the option would exist. There should also probably be some way to reacquire the CON point. 3e went for an XP sacrifice, but this was problematic, too low and at the same time disruptive of play. 

I think AD&D had the right idea, they just should have level gated weaker items to allow them to be fashioned by somewhat lower level PCs, and maybe provided some guidelines to make it clear that these weaker items should have less ridiculously obscure components (especially in 2e where this was not at all made clear). 

I'd also note that AD&D totally eschewed the concept of a 'range of levels' of an item. Every item in AD&D is unique and exists in only one form (there are a few exceptions though). This tends to mitigate the whole issue somewhat.


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## Ted Serious (Jul 8, 2018)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> In other words, just like 4e wands!



 4e made spells into attacks.  It made wands into magic weapons.


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## Caliburn101 (Jul 9, 2018)

Charisma bonus?<br>
<br>
So a bookish awkward and yet genius-savant Wizard cannot activate an arcane-based magical item as much as a charming Rogue of the same level?<br><br>Can you imagine the metagaming conversations everywhere as the high Charisma PC gets the best magic items purely because they are better at smalltalk with NPCs.<br>
<br>
Ugh - what rubbish - it should be level based alone, at low level especially this is going to be horrible where there is a real difference between one PCs Cha stat and another.


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## MichaelSomething (Jul 11, 2018)

What do people want magic items to be??


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## AbdulAlhazred (Jul 11, 2018)

MichaelSomething said:


> What do people want magic items to be??




ha! You are asking the unanswerable question. They want them to be (from experience):

1. simple and providing basically static benefits that can be incorporated into basic numbers on your sheet.
2. amazing and unique and not boring math benefits.
3. not something you must have.
4. not too common.
5. interesting items that everyone can get some of.

Beginning to see the problem... ? 

There's absolutely no way to satisfy the D&D playing public with magic items. They need to be both snazzy and cool and amazing, and at the same time available to everyone and with little complexity so you don't have to keep remembering you have them.

Really, the best option for someone designing a game is to pick a specific milieu that you want, some specific tone and genre logic you want to follow, and just not worry about anything except creating THAT with your items. You can make them incredibly rare, quirky, and dangerous, or just ubiquitous and unremarkable as a cell phone, or whatever you want.


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## houser2112 (Jul 11, 2018)

MichaelSomething said:


> What do people want magic items to be??




The way they used to be, because it was not a problem that needed fixing (at least with respect to consumables).


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## Jer (Jul 11, 2018)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> There's absolutely no way to satisfy the D&D playing public with magic items. They need to be both snazzy and cool and amazing, and at the same time available to everyone and with little complexity so you don't have to keep remembering you have them.




And also from a DM's perspective they need to be something that doesn't break the game if players have them, but also aren't built-into the game on the assumption that players will get them because what if we want to run a low magic campaign?  (Or are just bad at remembering to include magic items in our player's treasure hauls?).

Also they should be something that wizards should be able to make because some people like to have crafting as part of their character.  But they should be special things that nobody remembers how to make because letting PCs build things makes it all too common and not magical enough.

And there should never be prices on magic items because that encourages players to think that there should be magic shops.  Except there should be prices on items for DMs who want to have merchants who buy and sell magic items in their worlds.

And there should be some kind of rule in place that prevents players from hoarding up items and decorating themselves like Christmas trees.  But also having magic items strewn around your high level character like a Christmas Tree and being able to pull the right item out at the right time to save your bacon is absolutely an "old school" way of playing that needs to be preserved and the game needs to handle it.

I don't envy designers who work on D&D and its variants that are supposed to have a wide audience.  Because everyone has an opinion on how all of these things "should" work and you're never going to make them all happy.


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## Tony Vargas (Jul 12, 2018)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, I gotta agree that the ROOT cause of the issue seems to be the existing of healing wands AT ALL. AD&D worked perfectly well



... no, much as I loved it, and still appreciate the great times we had... just, no, without continuous DM intervention, it worked not even a teeny bit, let alone well, let alone perfectly.... 







> ...  20+ years until 3e had a 'better' idea, which apparently is now so sacrosanct that it has to keep borking up games for another 20 years. People, 3e was BROKEN, it was FILLED with bad ideas, lose them!



 So was 1e.  4e & 5e both fixed the low-level spell wand (or scroll) spamming issues of 3e.  4e by making wands implements, and magic items casting spells milestone-limited item dailies (and scrolls rituals).  5e by taking some more pages from 1e, removing systematic make/buy & it's hyperbolic pricing scheme, and dropping all responsibility for magic items squarely on the DM.

I guess, if you squint a bit, resonance is closer to the 4e solution, since it limits item uses, but should still allow make/buy.



Sunseeker said:


> I really wish "wands" worked more like you see in Harry Potter or other magical lore: they either enhance your casting (like a +1 weapon), or add special effects (Fire spells can harm ghosts, or something).  Because you NEVER see in ANY of the source fantasy materials wands working like they do in D&D.



 Except 4e, where wands were implements that worked a bit too much like +1 weapons, of course, another way in which it was 'not D&D.' ...nevermind...







AbdulAlhazred said:


> In other words, just like 4e wands!







Sunseeker said:


> To add: I think it would also differentiate the Wizard more from the Sorcerer if they were required to use a wand (even a basic wooden stick).



Or staff or rod or something, sure



AbdulAlhazred said:


> I disagree that AD&D's solution is 'primitive'.



"Rudimentary"
"Primordial?"  
"Less evolved?"



> I think AD&D had the right idea, they just should have level gated weaker items to allow them to be fashioned by somewhat lower level PCs, and maybe provided some guidelines to make it clear that these weaker items should have less ridiculously obscure components (especially in 2e where this was not at all made clear).



 I actually did that with my AD&D variants.  I added weaker versions of Enchant An Item as 1st (Charm Item, created little items with very minor effects) & 4th (Enspell items for ceating potions, scrolls and other 'hold a spell' expendables) level spells.

I also added "Spell Focusing Items," which, in retrospect, were a lot like Implements, but the main point of them was to make casting easier (if you were casting with a wand, for instance, you could use spells of certain schools while moving, riding, crouching behind cover, etc... the casting rules were /really/ restrictive back then)


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## houser2112 (Jul 13, 2018)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, I gotta agree that the ROOT cause of the issue seems to be the existing of healing wands AT ALL. AD&D worked perfectly well without all this 'put any spell in a magic item' stuff. In fact it was close to impossible to make most items, unless the GM was very kind (especially in 2e). This worked perfectly fine for 20+ years until 3e had a 'better' idea, which apparently is now so sacrosanct that it has to keep borking up games for another 20 years. People, 3e was BROKEN, it was FILLED with bad ideas, lose them!




While the merits of allowing characters to craft their own equipment is debatable, I don't feel the notion of "spells on a stick" is debatable, at least in the context of healing. No, AD&D didn't work "perfectly well" in this regard, because healing was only accessible through potions and two of the least popular classes (in my experience). Playing the cleric was the "hot potato" in my group and I'm struggling to remember anyone ever playing the druid.



Tony Vargas said:


> I actually did that with my AD&D variants.  I added weaker versions of Enchant An Item as 1st (Charm Item, created little items with very minor effects) & 4th (Enspell items for ceating potions, scrolls and other 'hold a spell' expendables) level spells.




Great ideas.

Aside: It always boggled the mind to think of how something like a +1 mace (an item wizards can't use) ever got made when the very hefty investment of a permanent Con loss was part of casting Enchant An Item (or was it Permanency?).


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## Tony Vargas (Jul 13, 2018)

houser2112 said:


> While the merits of allowing characters to craft their own equipment is debatable, I don't feel the notion of "spells on a stick" is debatable, at least in the context of healing. No, AD&D didn't work "perfectly well" in this regard, because healing was only accessible through potions and two of the least popular classes (in my experience). Playing the cleric was the "hot potato" in my group and I'm struggling to remember anyone ever playing the druid.



 I did play Druids and quite liked them, but you still needed a Cleric in the party.  AD&D adventures assumed one, so if there were any undead, there were way too many undead to tackle without Turn Undead, and you needed Cure Light Wounds /desperately/ at 1st level, but the Druid didn't get it until 2nd.

I think "first one who dies rolls a Cleric" was a pretty common pact back in the day.



> Great ideas.
> Aside: It always boggled the mind to think of how something like a +1 mace (an item wizards can't use) ever got made when the very hefty investment of a permanent Con loss was part of casting Enchant An Item (or was it Permanency?).



 My young mind boggled at it, too.  Why were there so many magic weapons floating around when it took a high priest or arch-mage and a point of con to make any of them?  Of course, in retrospect, mechanics don't have to dictate worldbuilding like that, but at the time, it was how I thought.  What I came up with was the conciet that there had been a major magical arms race in an ancient war, and that lost techiques let them essentially mass-produce magical weapons & armor, some fraction of which survived to be found by adventures millenia later.

But that wasn't quite enough, so I also had some work-arounds with those lower-level item creation spells.  Charms, for instance (since it's the one I remember), gave limited-circumstance +1 bonuses or the like, and weren't charged or single-use, but each time they made a difference you rolled a d6 and on a 1 they burned out - so they weren't technically permanent.


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## Jer (Jul 13, 2018)

Tony Vargas said:


> I did play Druids and quite liked them, but you still needed a Cleric in the party.  AD&D adventures assumed one, so if there were any undead, there were way too many undead to tackle without Turn Undead, and you needed Cure Light Wounds /desperately/ at 1st level, but the Druid didn't get it until 2nd.
> 
> I think "first one who dies rolls a Cleric" was a pretty common pact back in the day.




I always liked playing the cleric.  Still do (when I get to play instead of DM).  You get to cast spells and hit things with a blunt instrument - what more can you ask for 

(It is funny that I ended up in the DM role given that tho - you'd think there would be people clamoring to be the DM so that they'd have a cleric.  But it turns out that, at least when I was younger, the character class that was less popular to play than "cleric" was "Dungeon Master"...)



Tony Vargas said:


> My young mind boggled at it, too.  Why were there so many magic weapons floating around when it took a high priest or arch-mage and a point of con to make any of them?  Of course, in retrospect, mechanics don't have to dictate worldbuilding like that, but at the time, it was how I thought.  What I came up with was the conciet that there had been a major magical arms race in an ancient war, and that lost techiques let them essentially mass-produce magical weapons & armor, some fraction of which survived to be found by adventures millenia later.




In the old days I would also always have a magical apocalypse in my world's back story too.  It just made sense - why else would there be all of these dank holes in the ground full of magical treasure unless at some point in the past there was a whole lot more magic floating around the world?

Heck even now the worlds I run all have that - in fact, it may be something I consider a "core trope" of D&D to have at least one previous age where magic was more plentiful that ended in some kind of cataclysm.  I can't even think of a published setting where it isn't true, now that I think about it.  (I'm sure they must exist - I just can't think of any.)


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## The Crimson Binome (Jul 13, 2018)

houser2112 said:


> No, AD&D didn't work "perfectly well" in this regard, because healing was only accessible through potions and two of the least popular classes (in my experience).



AD&D worked perfectly well in this regard, from my perspective. We never had a cleric, or magic healing items, but we usually had a week or two between combat encounters. It's all relative.


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## houser2112 (Jul 13, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> AD&D worked perfectly well in this regard, from my perspective. We never had a cleric, or magic healing items, but we usually had a week or two between combat encounters. It's all relative.




I feel sorry for the kings' daughters in that world.


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## The Crimson Binome (Jul 13, 2018)

houser2112 said:


> I feel sorry for the kings' daughters in that world.



Why? They get to be held captive for weeks at a time, before they are sacrificed at the next full moon. Time constraints, in general, are a bit more relaxed.

Alternatively, the warlock's castle is indeed fortified with seven layers of minions which must be overcome before midnight, but they're the sort of minion which the party can manage to get through seven layers of without needing to heal. In the exact same way that 4E assumes enough combat in a day for the party to run through their healing surges, so too does AD&D assume enough combat in a day to challenge the party's resources. Objective damage sustained is irrelevant, in either case. The only important thing is that you have enough HP to do what you need to do.


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## AbdulAlhazred (Jul 15, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> Why? They get to be held captive for weeks at a time, before they are sacrificed at the next full moon. Time constraints, in general, are a bit more relaxed.
> 
> Alternatively, the warlock's castle is indeed fortified with seven layers of minions which must be overcome before midnight, but they're the sort of minion which the party can manage to get through seven layers of without needing to heal. In the exact same way that 4E assumes enough combat in a day for the party to run through their healing surges, so too does AD&D assume enough combat in a day to challenge the party's resources. Objective damage sustained is irrelevant, in either case. The only important thing is that you have enough HP to do what you need to do.




Right, though with AD&D the fly in the ointment was the fairly scattershot nature of the results of any given encounter. It was quite easy, absent even the slightest mistake, to get the tar beat out of you by something or other, and then you're basically done for day. It worked best at between 4th and 9th levels where the fighter-types were pretty solid, the wizards weren't out of control, and everyone had enough hit points to probably not be insta-ganked by most monsters (and the ones that COULD do it were generally pretty obvious and you could avoid going toe-to-toe with them). Poison and a few scattered SODs were the fly in the ointment even then. Ghouls and Ghasts were the usual culprits in any total debacle, ridiculously nasty SOD on a 4hd creature.


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## The Crimson Binome (Jul 16, 2018)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Right, though with AD&D the fly in the ointment was the fairly scattershot nature of the results of any given encounter. It was quite easy, absent even the slightest mistake, to get the tar beat out of you by something or other, and then you're basically done for day.



In AD&D, fights had longer-lasting consequences, which meant that a fight going poorly could wreck your whole month even if it didn't kill you. In later editions, it's either TPK or nothing.

You could get around the additional uncertainty by playing it more conservatively with encounter difficulty, and not engaging with anything that could really challenge you, but AD&D also didn't have a defined "expected encounter by character level" formula. There's no level at which two ogres and a wyvern are an appropriate encounter, so it might be an easy encounter for a level 5 party, or a difficult encounter for a level 10 party, depending on which other variables you had in effect. If the DM was trying to create an interesting game, then they would design the world such that the party wouldn't need to overcome many difficult combats in order to get things done.


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## Aldarc (Jul 16, 2018)

Caliburn101 said:


> Charisma bonus?
> 
> So a bookish awkward and yet genius-savant Wizard cannot activate an arcane-based magical item as much as a charming Rogue of the same level? Can you imagine the metagaming conversations everywhere as the high Charisma PC gets the best magic items purely because they are better at smalltalk with NPCs.
> 
> Ugh - what rubbish - it should be level based alone, at low level especially this is going to be horrible where there is a real difference between one PCs Cha stat and another.



I don't see the issue. In fact, this seems like this mechanic works better with a number of D&D's assumptions. 

As several points of comparison, there are people who study/know sports and there are people who play sports. I may grasp the mechanics of play from a studious perspective, but someone else may be better suited, whether by body or mind, for grasping the game through play. Likewise, I may study languages or learn languages as part of my study, but there are people for whom learning new languages comes easier, though they may put far less effort into dedicated study of understanding the mechanics, features, and nature of the language. Same with music, which may be the most apt comparison. 

In the case of D&D, the wizard, for example, approaches magic from an intellectual level. They dedicated themselves to its study. They understand its metaphysics and power. They learn to perform magic, and they can eventually manipulate the fabric of reality on a cosmic scale. They have tremendous breadth of magical power through their spellbook and knowledge, but I don't think that this means that these are the people who possesses the greatest knack for magic or that it comes easily to them. Wizards may not be that _naturally_ attuned to magic, though they may have ways to learn how to increase their resonance. They are music theorists attempting to write and perform music. Sure, it may sound impressive, but maybe there are other people who have a natural knack for music who can do other musical things better. 

But what stat is natural magic associated with? As it turns out, Charisma. We could speculate why that is the case or the implications thereof, but does it matter? It is what it is, and this association is not new within the inner workings of the 3e framework. Use Magic Device keys off Charisma. The "pure" magic of dragons is also associated with Charisma. Same with Sorcerers and Bards. 

I think that this adds an interesting depth to the dynamics between classes and characters. I appreciate that this means that wizards aren't necessarily the best at everything magical. It may annoy wizards (and their hardcore players) that a charismatic rogue has a better knack for using magical items than they do. That's natural. Even the smartest people can be frustrated by being out-shined by the natural gifts and talents of others.


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## houser2112 (Jul 16, 2018)

Aldarc said:


> I don't see the issue. In fact, this seems like this mechanic works better with a number of D&D's assumptions.
> 
> As several points of comparison, there are people who study/know sports and there are people who play sports. I may grasp the mechanics of play from a studious perspective, but someone else may be better suited, whether by body or mind, for grasping the game through play. Likewise, I may study languages or learn languages as part of my study, but there are people for whom learning new languages comes easier, though they may put far less effort into dedicated study of understanding the mechanics, features, and nature of the language. Same with music, which may be the most apt comparison.
> 
> ...




This post is great at answering the question of "Why was Charisma chosen as the stat that influences Resonance?". I happen to agree with the premise "If we're going to saddle the game with the concept of Resonance, then Charisma is a good stat to influence it", but I vehemently disagree that "Should we saddle the game with the concept of Resonance" is True.


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## Aldarc (Jul 16, 2018)

houser2112 said:


> This post is great at answering the question of "Why was Charisma chosen as the stat that influences Resonance?". I happen to agree with the premise "If we're going to saddle the game with the concept of Resonance, then Charisma is a good stat to influence it", but I vehemently disagree that "Should we saddle the game with the concept of Resonance" is True.



I don't think that the latter needs to be true. It is a balancing mechanism and aesthetic. Tastes and preferences will naturally vary. 

I'm fairly neutral on resonance. I'm mostly curious how it will play out. I am fascinated by the in-game implications regarding the infusion of magic in "non-magical" people. It seems reasonable from the simulationist framework that D&D often presents about magic and the like.


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## Charlaquin (Jul 16, 2018)

I’m actually liking Resonance more and more the longer I have to stew on it. Both mechanically and lore-wise, it has a big impact, so I can see why it’s so controversial. Personally, I love what it does mechanically, and am neutral on the lore implications, but could see myself having fun with them. My only grievances with it are that I don’t like the Alchemist getting Int-based Resonance (if that’s possible, why don’t Wizards have it?) and some items still having charges even though part of the selling point of Resonance is supposed to be that it replaces the need to track item charges.


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## houser2112 (Jul 16, 2018)

Charlaquin said:


> I’m actually liking Resonance more and more the longer I have to stew on it. Both mechanically and lore-wise, it has a big impact, so I can see why it’s so controversial. Personally, I love what it does mechanically, and am neutral on the lore implications, but could see myself having fun with them. My only grievances with it are that I don’t like the Alchemist getting Int-based Resonance (if that’s possible, why don’t Wizards have it?) and some items still having charges even though part of the selling point of Resonance is supposed to be that it replaces the need to track item charges.




I think the bookkeeping argument they're using to sell Resonance is just a smoke screen for "we really just don't like CLW wand spam". I like tracking item charges, in the sense that this item has a certain amount of juice in it, and when its gone, the item no longer works. It makes sense. It _simulates_ reality, to use a dirty word. Resonance doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense that you can't drink the potion because you read a scroll earlier in the day (or whatever). It takes what used to be an outside-the-character resource and brings it inside. I see consumables as something to use when you run out of your own resources (or didn't have in-character means suitable to the task at hand), and now they're both inside-and outside-the-character resources.


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## Charlaquin (Jul 16, 2018)

houser2112 said:


> I think the bookkeeping argument they're using to sell Resonance is just a smoke screen for "we really just don't like CLW wand spam".



It seems rather silly to use a smokescreen for something you’re not trying to hide. They’ve been pretty explicit about CLW spam being one of the problems Resonance was designed to fix. It also keeps bookkeeping to a minimum, so...



houser2112 said:


> I like tracking item charges,



That’s fine for you. I don’t.



houser2112 said:


> in the sense that this item has a certain amount of juice in it, and when its gone, the item no longer works. It makes sense. It _simulates_ reality, to use a dirty word.



“Makes sense” is just a keyword for “fits with my biases.” Magic item charges don’t simulate reality because magic items don’t exist in reality. They resemble something you are familiar with (batteries), so they fit with your biases, as a person who lives in a world where we power lots of things with batteries. It doesn’t actually make any more or less sense than any other way you could write magic working, because magic is fictional, it can work any way the writer wants it to, as long as it’s internally consistent.



houser2112 said:


> Resonance doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense that you can't drink the potion because you read a scroll earlier in the day (or whatever).



It makes sense if you buy into the fiction. In this universe, potions and scrolls don’t have an internal power source. The ink on the page and the reagents in the vial are innert until catalyzed by the magical energy of a living being. And a living being can only produce so much of this energy in one day. Essentially, instead of magic items having their own batteries, you have to serve as the battery. The same way a wizard serves as the battery for her spells. If anything, it’s more internally consistent with how magic works in a setting where spellcasters are limited in the number of spells they can cast per day.



houser2112 said:


> It takes what used to be an outside-the-character resource and brings it inside. I see consumables as something to use when you run out of your own resources (or didn't have in-character means suitable to the task at hand), and now they're both inside-and outside-the-character resources.



If anything, consumable resources being both internal and external is a closer simulation of reality. When you eat food, your body has to spend energy to digest it, so food is both an  internal and external resource.

My point is “magic working this way doesn’t make sense” is not a strong argument against a mechanic. Magic isn’t real, whether or not it makes sense is only a question of whether or not you’re willing to buy into the logic of the fiction. There’s nothing wrong with disliking the fictional logic of Resonance, but it doesn’t objectively make any more or less sense than charges.


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## Tony Vargas (Jul 16, 2018)

Charlaquin said:


> My point is “magic working this way doesn’t make sense” is not a strong argument against a mechanic. Magic isn’t real, whether or not it makes sense is only a question of whether or not you’re willing to buy into the logic of the fiction. There’s nothing wrong with disliking the fictional logic of Resonance, but it doesn’t objectively make any more or less sense than charges.



 Magic isn't real, but there are RL traditions & beliefs about magic and how it works, and they do make (internal) sense, after a fashion (viewed from an outsider/scientific perspective, they make sense only in psychological/anthropological terms).  
D&D magic - whether neo- or paleo- Vancian casting; charged wands; resonance; or whatever - bears very little resemblance those traditions or beliefs.


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## The Crimson Binome (Jul 16, 2018)

houser2112 said:


> I like tracking item charges, in the sense that this item has a certain amount of juice in it, and when its gone, the item no longer works. It makes sense. It _simulates_ reality, to use a dirty word. Resonance doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense that you can't drink the potion because you read a scroll earlier in the day (or whatever). It takes what used to be an outside-the-character resource and brings it inside. I see consumables as something to use when you run out of your own resources (or didn't have in-character means suitable to the task at hand), and now they're both inside-and outside-the-character resources.



Charges make sense, if you draw a parallel to a gun or a battery-powered radio. Of course, when the battery dies in your radio, you usually don't throw out the whole device as worthless. You don't throw away the gun, when you're out of bullets (unless you're fighting Superman). Charges would make more sense, intuitively, if wands could also be re-charged (as in 5E).

Resonance makes sense if you think of the wand as something like a lense, for shaping your own internal energies. Wands are a re-usable lense, and potions or scrolls are a one-time use lense, but you still have a finite amount of internal energy either way. I can't really think of a good real-world analogy, unless you wanted to go with what Charlaquin said about food, but it still makes just as much sense as a potential way that magic _could_ work.


Charlaquin said:


> If anything, consumable resources being both internal and external is a closer simulation of reality. When you eat food, your body has to spend energy to digest it, so food is both an  internal and external resource.



The degree by which I'm tempted to replace Cure potions with enchanted apples hidden behind candlesticks, and magic roasted turkey in chandeliers, is significant.


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## Ancalagon (Jul 16, 2018)

The wand spam is not there in 5e because of the lack of cheap clw wands... but there are plenty of healing potions.  Why aren't people spamming those? They aren't that much more expensive.  

The answer is short rests.


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## Charlaquin (Jul 16, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> The degree by which I'm tempted to replace Cure potions with enchanted apples hidden behind candlesticks, and magic roasted turkey in chandeliers, is significant.



Nothing cures a stab wound like wall chicken.


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## houser2112 (Jul 17, 2018)

Charlaquin said:


> Saelorn said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Stop reminding me that I can't find my copy of Castlevania SOTN after my recent move.


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## houser2112 (Jul 17, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> Charges make sense, if you draw a parallel to a gun or a battery-powered radio. Of course, when the battery dies in your radio, you usually don't throw out the whole device as worthless. You don't throw away the gun, when you're out of bullets (unless you're fighting Superman). Charges would make more sense, intuitively, if wands could also be re-charged (as in 5E).
> 
> Resonance makes sense if you think of the wand as something like a lense, for shaping your own internal energies. Wands are a re-usable lense, and potions or scrolls are a one-time use lense, but you still have a finite amount of internal energy either way. I can't really think of a good real-world analogy, unless you wanted to go with what Charlaquin said about food, but it still makes just as much sense as a potential way that magic _could_ work.
> The degree by which I'm tempted to replace Cure potions with enchanted apples hidden behind candlesticks, and magic roasted turkey in chandeliers, is significant.




I'm sure that no matter what rule is proposed, that a justification in the lore/mechanics could be pulled from one's posterior. In PF2's lineage, magic item use has never worked this way, so slaughter of this sacred cow needs to be justified for me to endorse it, and the justifications I've seen are so far very thin. If the traditional way has to be abandoned, I think 5E's charged item mechanics are more realistic than Resonance. Attunement can go die in a fire, though, for the same reason Resonance is bad (character-based resource for using magic items).


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## The Crimson Binome (Jul 17, 2018)

houser2112 said:


> I'm sure that no matter what rule is proposed, that a justification in the lore/mechanics could be pulled



It's a question of how hard you need to reach for it, though. Maybe it's from my background with Shadowrun, or maybe it's from some video game that I can't even remember, but Resonance (or Attunement) makes a lot of sense to me. The idea of a charged wand, that has a finite number of shots and then breaks, seems way less intuitive (as far as magic items go).

Granted, the vast majority of my experience with charged wands is with Cure Light Wounds spam in Pathfinder, and I distinctly remember thinking at the time that it was ridiculous. Any rule to get rid of that exploit is welcome in my book.


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## houser2112 (Jul 17, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> It's a question of how hard you need to reach for it, though. Maybe it's from my background with Shadowrun, or maybe it's from some video game that I can't even remember, but Resonance (or Attunement) makes a lot of sense to me. The idea of a charged wand, that has a finite number of shots and then breaks, seems way less intuitive (as far as magic items go).
> 
> Granted, the vast majority of my experience with charged wands is with Cure Light Wounds spam in Pathfinder, and I distinctly remember thinking at the time that it was ridiculous. Any rule to get rid of that exploit is welcome in my book.




Really? Spells-on-a-stick-with-limited-charges have been around IIRC since at least 2E. Wands of _lightning bolt_, _fireball_, and _magic missile_ in particular. Why would wands of _cure light wounds_ be an exploit? Is it niche protection for the cleric?


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## The Crimson Binome (Jul 17, 2018)

houser2112 said:


> Really? Spells-on-a-stick-with-limited-charges have been around IIRC since at least 2E. Wands of _lightning bolt_, _fireball_, and _magic missile_ in particular. Why would wands of _cure light wounds_ be an exploit? Is it niche protection for the cleric?



When I played AD&D, we didn't play in high magic settings where you were likely to find those kinds of items. Magic items were rare, and powerful. (The AD&D experience was also expected to vary widely between tables, of course.)

Cure Light Wounds, in wand form, is an exploit because it trivializes all of the other healing mechanics. Hit Points are supposed to be a finite resource which you conserve and manage over time, and any class features which you can devote to countering that is supposed to be a meaningful choice. The wand changes that into a trivial GP cost, which restores you to full HP between every encounter. The game is more far more interesting if that wand doesn't exist, just as it was not available in earlier editions.


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## houser2112 (Jul 17, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> When I played AD&D, we didn't play in high magic settings where you were likely to find those kinds of items. Magic items were rare, and powerful. (The AD&D experience was also expected to vary widely between tables, of course.)




Most of my AD&D experience was homebrew, high danger, and high magic Monty Haul, but strangely didn't include much cure spells on a stick. That DM liked handing out custom healing items in potion form, potions of super healing (heals to max for imbibing character) and ultra healing (heals to max all party members).



> Cure Light Wounds, in wand form, is an exploit because it trivializes all of the other healing mechanics.




Sounds like niche protection. Do you feel the same way about the Staff Of Healing?



> Hit Points are supposed to be a finite resource which you conserve and manage over time, and any class features which you can devote to countering that is supposed to be a meaningful choice. The wand changes that into a trivial GP cost, which restores you to full HP between every encounter. The game is more far more interesting if that wand doesn't exist, just as it was not available in earlier editions.




Cost of cure wands and the number of charges contained therein are details that are easy to tweak and don't require the introduction of a whole new controversial dissociated mechanic .


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## The Crimson Binome (Jul 17, 2018)

houser2112 said:


> Sounds like niche protection. Do you feel the same way about the Staff Of Healing?



No, because the Staff was never cheap. It's thirty thousand gold for ten charges of Cure Serious Wounds, or ~135gp per HP. A wand of Cure Light Wounds gives you _more_ healing (~250 compared to ~220) and only cost 750gp.

It's not niche protection, because a cleric isn't the only source of healing. There are all sort of feats, magic items, and class features which can let you recover HP; each of which is balanced against the others, and against other feats and magic items and class features. The wand trivializes all of them.


houser2112 said:


> Cost of cure wands and the number of charges contained therein are details that are easy to tweak and don't require the introduction of a whole new controversial dissociated mechanic .



Changing those numbers is not as easy as you might think, because GP cost is the only real limiting factor on item availability, and HP-by-level does not scale the same way that wealth-by-level does. (Making it so that they _did_ scale similarly would be infeasible, for other design reasons.) As an additional wrinkle, the general audience for Pathfinder _hates_ the idea of house rules, which means the designers have _one_ chance to get the math right before it becomes permanent for the rest of the edition.


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## Tony Vargas (Jul 17, 2018)

houser2112 said:


> I think 5E's charged item mechanics are more realistic than Resonance. Attunement can go die in a fire, though, for the same reason Resonance is bad (character-based resource for using magic items).



 Actually, a character based resource for using magic items is /more/ realistic than charges.  Charges are a very modernist idea.  Traditions that believed in magic /might/ get an idea like having three wishes or some other counting attribute, but it won't be because there's only so much juice in a wand, but because that's a condition of the spell or curse or whatever.  Magical thinking tends to be cause-and-effect, but highly conditional to the point of arbitrary.  The house of a rival you vocally cursed burns down. Wow, the curse worked.  Why didn't it work the other times you cussed him out?  Well, maybe the stars were right, or an evil spirit was listening, or ...    
Perform the steps of a ritual at the right time, with the right (hard-to-impossible-to-obtain) materials, in the right sequence, with perfect pronunciation, and if some supernatural being approves, you might get what you want.  With a magical item, it might be more about knowing how to use it.  A wand could turn people into a frogs, but it would be by touching them & saying a rhyming couplet or stirring their wine with it before they drink it or something - not shooting rays at them until the battery ran out.

D&D magic is just goofy, even for magic.  Better playable goofy than broken goofy.



houser2112 said:


> Really? Spells-on-a-stick-with-limited-charges have been around IIRC since at least 2E. Wands of _lightning bolt_, _fireball_, and _magic missile_ in particular.



 All the way back, AFAIK.  Just not /every spell/, and not make/buy at affordable prices like in 3e.  Fireball for instance, but not Cure..Wounds... there was a Staff of Healing back in the day (heck there was a Rod of Resurrection), though, but rare & few charges... 



> Why would wands of _cure light wounds_ be an exploit? Is it niche protection for the cleric?



 Considering they'd be making/using the Wand, and it leaves them plenty of slots to CoDzilla out with?  I doubt it.  ;P



houser2112 said:


> Cost of cure wands and the number of charges contained therein are details that are easy to tweak and don't require the introduction of a whole new controversial dissociated mechanic .



 Not as easy to tweak as you might think.  3e make/buy was pretty nifty in a lot of ways, the ballooning costs made low-level items, like low-level slots easily affordable utility, while high level items (& spells) remained limited-availability & high-impact -  but when a low-level spell could have a cumulative effect equal to a much higher level one, and the time to apply it repeatedly wasn't an issue, well, it could be 'exploited.' 

To just solve the CLW problem, for instance, you could make healing non-cumulative.  Say, by tracking wounds, and requiring each be healed by its own Cure..Wound spell, with only the highest result to a give wound counting (you take 40, 8, 8, 16, 4, & 4 - sure, that's 80 damage, but it's 7 wounds - you can't just blow 10 CLWs and probably call it a day, CLW will cure the 4-hp wounds, maybe the 8-hp ones if you roll well, but the 16 will take Cure Moderate at least and the 40 some serious mojo... if all you had was CLW, you could keep at each wound until you rolled a 9, but you'd still be down 38 hps, @ one 40-9 wound & one 16-9, each needing 10+ hp of healing magic to make at better...).  Of course, that'd be a PitA.


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## Shasarak (Jul 17, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> When I played AD&D, we didn't play in high magic settings where you were likely to find those kinds of items. Magic items were rare, and powerful. (The AD&D experience was also expected to vary widely between tables, of course.)
> 
> Cure Light Wounds, in wand form, is an exploit because it trivializes all of the other healing mechanics. Hit Points are supposed to be a finite resource which you conserve and manage over time, and any class features which you can devote to countering that is supposed to be a meaningful choice. The wand changes that into a trivial GP cost, which restores you to full HP between every encounter. The game is more far more interesting if that wand doesn't exist, just as it was not available in earlier editions.




Eh, it is really not an exploit to be able to heal.

The only real difference between being able to heal easily and not is how long you can spend adventuring before retreating back to a safe area to heal.  So really it is just a choice to either spend money or spend time.

Or is camping for a few days to heal considered an exploit as well?


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## The Crimson Binome (Jul 17, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> Or is camping for a few days to heal considered an exploit as well?



It is widely considered to break the game, yes. Look up "five-minute workday" and "quadratic wizard" for the full details.


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## Shasarak (Jul 17, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> It is widely considered to break the game, yes. Look up "five-minute workday" and "quadratic wizard" for the full details.




The game does not break because the party is at full hp.

But it does bring up an interesting question.  In your party if you can not use wands to heal and you can not go away to heal then do you just keep going until either death or victory?


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## The Crimson Binome (Jul 17, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> The game does not break because the party is at full hp.



The game doesn't become unplayable, but it is fundamentally changed. The resource management game breaks, as play shifts toward overcoming individual encounters.

It's just a matter of preference. Even 4E had its fans.


Shasarak said:


> But it does bring up an interesting question.  In your party if you can not use wands to heal and you can not go away to heal then do you just keep going until either death or victory?



You either play the resource game and learn to manage your resources more efficiently - avoid unnecessary combat, fight conservatively, etc - or you give up. If you get halfway through the dungeon, then you _can_ usually leave to heal, but doing so means that you fail - the loot gets plundered before you can get there, the bad guy gets away, or whatever other goal you had becomes unreachable. (Usually the second one.)

Pathfinder doesn't automatically assume that you'll be at full HP before every fight, the way that 4E does. It assumes that you'll get worn down over the course of the day, which is why the encounter guidelines are so generous. One side effect of the wand is that players can breeze through at-level encounters, and the GM is forced to bring out higher-level enemies in order to challenge them. If you don't have easy healing, and the party isn't at full HP for every fight, then you can have a whole dungeon full of lower-level enemies that still challenge a higher-level party.


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## Shasarak (Jul 18, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> The game doesn't become unplayable, but it is fundamentally changed. The resource management game breaks, as play shifts toward overcoming individual encounters.
> 
> It's just a matter of preference. Even 4E had its fans.




I would break it down to a difference between Combat as War or Combat as Sport.



> You either play the resource game and learn to manage your resources more efficiently - avoid unnecessary combat, fight conservatively, etc - or you give up. If you get halfway through the dungeon, then you _can_ usually leave to heal, but doing so means that you fail - the loot gets plundered before you can get there, the bad guy gets away, or whatever other goal you had becomes unreachable. (Usually the second one.)




Personally I have no problem with failing a mission and living to fight again another day.  There are plenty of Princesses to rescue, Orcs to kill and Gold to loot for another day.



> Pathfinder doesn't automatically assume that you'll be at full HP before every fight, the way that 4E does. It assumes that you'll get worn down over the course of the day, which is why the encounter guidelines are so generous. One side effect of the wand is that players can breeze through at-level encounters, and the GM is forced to bring out higher-level enemies in order to challenge them. If you don't have easy healing, and the party isn't at full HP for every fight, then you can have a whole dungeon full of lower-level enemies that still challenge a higher-level party.




I dont see that Pathfinder is based around using low level enemies, that seems more like a 5e design standard to me.  

It does not seem like it makes much difference in your scenario between the Party failing to complete a Dungeon (and the DM having to reduce the difficulty of his encounters and the Party stomping the Dungeon (and the DM having to increase the difficulty of his encounters).  In either case the DM has to change his encounters based on feedback from the game which seems like a pretty normal thing for the DM to do.  It seems like a pretty dumb DM who can not work out that his encounters are too tough for the Players (or vice versa).


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## The Crimson Binome (Jul 18, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> I would break it down to a difference between Combat as War or Combat as Sport.



That is entirely fair.


Shasarak said:


> Personally I have no problem with failing a mission and living to fight again another day.  There are plenty of Princesses to rescue, Orcs to kill and Gold to loot for another day.



It is possible that failure means the end of the world.  If you're playing a hero, and a princess dies because you failed, then the guilt might make you wish you were dead. You're not necessarily just plundering some tomb because you're bored.


Shasarak said:


> I dont see that Pathfinder is based around using low level enemies, that seems more like a 5e design standard to me.



Fifth Edition is (nominally) based on the idea that a high-level party can fight low-level enemies, even if they're ten levels lower than you, and it should still be interesting. Pathfinder was (theoretically) based around a party encountering enemies within a few levels above or below their own; if you face a level-2 encounter, then it might still do some significant damage to you, and you'll need to spend valuable resources to recover from that (if you aren't careful).

In practice, if the Pathfinder GM contrives for the party to be challenged, then they need to constantly face encounters that are at least a few levels above their own. There's no sense in throwing a level-2 encounter at them, because it will still take a while to resolve, and any damage will be healed right away. You don't really have attrition, when you have access to easy healing.


----------



## Shasarak (Jul 18, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> It is possible that failure means the end of the world.  If you're playing a hero, and a princess dies because you failed, then the guilt might make you wish you were dead. You're not necessarily just plundering some tomb because you're bored.




I am pretty sure that you would have figured out if it was an "end of the world" mission or not.  Or is it Goblins are attacking Sandpoint, if we dont stop them it will be the "end of the world" situation?

Besides I am just playing my character, he is no Hero just an adventurer looking to make a sweet score.



> Fifth Edition is (nominally) based on the idea that a high-level party can fight low-level enemies, even if they're ten levels lower than you, and it should still be interesting. Pathfinder was (theoretically) based around a party encountering enemies within a few levels above or below their own; if you face a level-2 encounter, then it might still do some significant damage to you, and you'll need to spend valuable resources to recover from that (if you aren't careful).
> 
> In practice, if the Pathfinder GM contrives for the party to be challenged, then they need to constantly face encounters that are at least a few levels above their own. There's no sense in throwing a level-2 encounter at them, because it will still take a while to resolve, and any damage will be healed right away. You don't really have attrition, when you have access to easy healing.




You still get attrition with your equipment and spells etc.  Besides maybe you dont want to play an attrition based game when you can just stomp some fools, high five and level up.  Having different forms of healing allows you to play the game you want and also does not require Jim to play the Healer which sounds like a win-win.


----------



## The Crimson Binome (Jul 18, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> You still get attrition with your equipment and spells etc.  Besides maybe you dont want to play an attrition based game when you can just stomp some fools, high five and level up.  Having different forms of healing allows you to play the game you want and also does not require Jim to play the Healer which sounds like a win-win.



Is your position that PF2 shouldn't include Resonance as a feature, because Resonance means someone has to play a healer, and that would be boring?


----------



## Shasarak (Jul 18, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> Is your position that PF2 shouldn't include Resonance as a feature, because Resonance means someone has to play a healer, and that would be boring?




No, my position is that Resonance: 1) does not meet the goals set out by the designers and b) is an arbitrary meta-gamist construct that does not map to any type of fiction (including all DnD and Pathfinder fiction).

It is like how you can only "attune" three items in 5e except that many items dont even need attunement.

Myt impression is that it is solving a problem that no one has.  I mean has anyone really come out and said "Man I wish that I could only use my Vorpal sword a few times a day because it just seems overpowered?"  or "Hey I have used my Ring of Invisibility quite often today so logically my Healing Potion should have stopped working".


----------



## mellored (Jul 18, 2018)

> No, my position is that Resonance: 1) does not meet the goals set out by the designers



I'm not sure what goals they had, but I don't mind resonance. It's 1 number to keep track of, rather than 20 different wand and item charges, let's a DM give out a few or many items without affecting overall power much, and helps reduce low level wand spam. (Though you can still spam all your ressonance on a single item.)

What I do mind is having both resonance AND items that have charges. Pick one or the other.



> b) is an arbitrary meta-gamist construct that does not map to any type of fiction (including all DnD and Pathfinder fiction).



I don't see who this is any more meta-gamist than any of the other x/day things. Which are ubiquitous is D&D and PF.

"Magic item's draw their power from the user.". Easy.


That said, I wouldn't mind if items and spell points were the same pool. That way it's more about adding versatility rather than extra power.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred (Jul 18, 2018)

houser2112 said:


> Really? Spells-on-a-stick-with-limited-charges have been around IIRC since at least 2E. Wands of _lightning bolt_, _fireball_, and _magic missile_ in particular. Why would wands of _cure light wounds_ be an exploit? Is it niche protection for the cleric?




They were around in 1e as well. In both editions they required use of the Enchant An Item spell, a level 6 spell that required a level 12 caster to use. They also required some entirely GM-determined additional materials and other constraints/costs. 1e had modestly permissive guidelines in the DMG which made creating some items like maybe a Wand of Fireballs reasonably attainable, if not cheap enough to be done routinely. 2e has extremely punitive guidelines, at least potentially. One possibility being that items require absurd and normally non-existent components (IE the legs of a snake or a good man's spirit, or something like that). 

So, in 1e these charged items were feasible but rare, in 2e they were, at best, feasible but rare, and at worst non-existent. As for CLW wands, it isn't niche protection, it is simply that a fundamental conceit of the game is that healing has fairly strict per-day limits. There's also the tone argument, turning physical damage into something you trivially stock up on 'heal sticks' to overcome undermines a lot of the genre space of D&D.


----------



## Shasarak (Jul 18, 2018)

mellored said:


> I'm not sure what goals they had, but I don't mind resonance. It's 1 number to keep track of, rather than 20 different wand and item charges, let's a DM give out a few or many items without affecting overall power much, and helps reduce low level wand spam. (Though you can still spam all your ressonance on a single item.)
> 
> What I do mind is having both resonance AND items that have charges. Pick one or the other.




If you really want to know about the design goals then you could have a look at the OP.

But in any case, yes in the examples given we now have Resonance, Charges and x times/day restrictions.  So it is not remembering one number it is one more number.



> I don't see who this is any more meta-gamist than any of the other x/day things. Which are ubiquitous is D&D and PF.
> 
> "Magic item's draw their power from the user.". Easy.
> 
> That said, I wouldn't mind if items and spell points were the same pool. That way it's more about adding versatility rather than extra power.




Sure you can say that.  I mean no other edition of DnD nor literature works like that but sure in this one items run off your quick wit and sunny personality, why not.


----------



## Tony Vargas (Jul 18, 2018)

AbdulAlhazred said:


> . There's also the tone argument, turning physical damage into something you trivially stock up on 'heal sticks' to overcome undermines a lot of the genre space of D&D.



 Cheap & easy between combat healing let certain characters do cool stuff other than just heal all the time (to the point of CoDzilla, since they were given enough resources to heal, too).

And, it's not like D&D has ever occupied much of the genre - it's prettymuch been clinging to Raskolnikov's "square yard of space" the whole time.


----------



## The Crimson Binome (Jul 18, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> Sure you can say that.  I mean no other edition of DnD nor literature works like that but sure in this one items run off your quick wit and sunny personality, why not.



No, they run off of your internal magical strength, which is what Charisma has meant for nearly twenty years.

And there is plenty of literature where wands are tools for shaping the internal magical energy of whoever is wielding it. It's also how items work in the default magic system for GURPS (although you can also build a wand with its own power source, it's just a lot more complicated).


----------



## Shasarak (Jul 18, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> No, they run off of your internal magical strength, which is what Charisma has meant for nearly twenty years.




If internal magical strength was important then the two most magical classes in the game would use it.



> And there is plenty of literature where wands are tools for shaping the internal magical energy of whoever is wielding it. It's also how items work in the default magic system for GURPS (although you can also build a wand with its own power source, it's just a lot more complicated).




So now GURPS is the basis of magic use?


----------



## Aldarc (Jul 18, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> If internal magical strength was important then the two most magical classes in the game would use it.



I would say "natural magical knack" instead. And as I said before, I don't think that a wizard's magical power level would necessarily be a metric for their magical knack, just what they can achieve through their training. Some people may simply have a greater reservoir of magical knack than others, and I honestly don't think that it should necessarily be a wizard. It comes across as typical wizard supremacy entitlement.


----------



## mellored (Jul 18, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> Sure you can say that.  I mean no other edition of DnD nor literature works like that but sure in this one items run off your quick wit and sunny personality, why not.



sorcerer, paladin, and bard magic run off quick wit and sunny personality, so i'm not seeing much of stretch to include item magic.

But a flat number would also work.


----------



## Kurviak (Jul 18, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> Sure you can say that.  I mean no other edition of DnD nor literature works like that but sure in this one items run off your quick wit and sunny personality, why not.




So according to your interpretation of Charisma, All undeads have quick wit and sunny personality traits


----------



## The Crimson Binome (Jul 18, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> If internal magical strength was important then the two most magical classes in the game would use it.



Only if those classes worked through internal magical strength, rather than channeling energy from the inner or outer planes.

Granted, _that_ explanation is a shaky post-hoc rationalization, but that doesn't make it less true. As ridiculous as it may be, the designers worked themselves into a corner in their attempt to make Charisma into less of a dump stat, but they _have_ been pretty consistent about it since then. As it stands, Charisma is your internal magical strength.

If you think that's dumb, then you may be right, but correcting it would involve drastic changes to the Sorcerer, Bard, and Paladin; and the end result is that Charisma would be even more of a dump stat than it already is. Tread carefully.


Shasarak said:


> So now GURPS is the basis of magic use?



It's certainly an authority on what makes sense in terms of internally-consistent systems that impact the real world. It is more widely-used as a common reference points between various fictional worlds and the real world than it is used as a game.


----------



## Shasarak (Jul 18, 2018)

Kurviak said:


> So according to your interpretation of Charisma, All undeads have quick wit and sunny personality traits




You have heard of Vampire the Gathering, yes?


----------



## Shasarak (Jul 18, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> Only if those classes worked through internal magical strength, rather than channeling energy from the inner or outer planes.
> 
> Granted, _that_ explanation is a shaky post-hoc rationalization, but that doesn't make it less true. As ridiculous as it may be, the designers worked themselves into a corner in their attempt to make Charisma into less of a dump stat, but they _have_ been pretty consistent about it since then. As it stands, Charisma is your internal magical strength.
> 
> If you think that's dumb, then you may be right, but correcting it would involve drastic changes to the Sorcerer, Bard, and Paladin; and the end result is that Charisma would be even more of a dump stat than it already is. Tread carefully.




Even if your idea that Charisma is some kind of internal magical strength was correct the question remains, why would that affect say Magical Armour?  By definition that is external.  And the Elven Cloak again external magic.  They already have given Weapons a free pass well except if you actually want to use a power from the weapon because somehow the sharpness of your vorpal sword is directly tied to your internal magical strength.

The power in Wands and Staves is pretty much the definition of external, potions are external forms of magic.  I dont know of any magical item that relies on the users internal magical strength.



> It's certainly an authority on what makes sense in terms of internally-consistent systems that impact the real world. It is more widely-used as a common reference points between various fictional worlds and the real world than it is used as a game.




I dont know of anyone that uses GURPS.  I would imagine that almost any other system would be more widely used as a common reference point.


----------



## Ghal Maraz (Jul 18, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> You have heard of Vampire the Gathering, yes?




Yeah. Vampire the Gathering. The game where emo, goth, power- hungry Cainetes battle between them using a collectible card game.


----------



## Kurviak (Jul 18, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> You have heard of Vampire the Gathering, yes?




I'm not talking about vampires.

From PF1 bestiaries:

Skeleton & Zombie: Cha 10
Ghoul: Cha 14
Shadow, Spectre & Wight: Cha 15
Ghast: Cha 16
Ghul: Cha 18
Geist & Wraith: Cha 21


----------



## Shasarak (Jul 18, 2018)

Kurviak said:


> I'm not talking about vampires.




Oh, sorry I thought you were talking about Undead.  My mistake.


----------



## Kurviak (Jul 18, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> Oh, sorry I thought you were talking about Undead.  My mistake.




vampires are of course also undead, but I was talking about undead that lack social skills.  BTW vampires' charisma is 26 according to PF1 bestiaries


----------



## Shasarak (Jul 18, 2018)

Kurviak said:


> vampires are of course also undead, but I was talking about undead that lack social skills.  BTW vampires' charisma is 26 according to PF1 bestiaries




Yep, because Vampires are super sexy.


----------



## Ghal Maraz (Jul 18, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> Yep, because Vampires are super sexy.




Murnau world like to have a talk with you. 

Sorry, but... How many examples you need to discard, before convincing yourself that Charisma is not the same as Commliness? Plenty of horrible monsters have exceptional Charisma in PF1.

Charisma is force of personality, artistic expression, savoir-faire, and... spontaneous magic, too. In PF2, it will also be natural predisposition to external source of magic.


----------



## The Crimson Binome (Jul 18, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> Even if your idea that Charisma is some kind of internal magical strength was correct the question remains, why would that affect say Magical Armour?  By definition that is external.



The effect is external, but the power source is internal. You are a living magical battery, your Charisma score is a measure of the magical charge you hold, and magic items are like gadgets which are plugged into you.

The only real plot-hole here is why the magical charge used for Resonance is distinct from the magical charge going into your Sorcerer spell slots.


Shasarak said:


> I dont know of anyone that uses GURPS. I would imagine that almost any other system would be more widely used as a common reference point.



I don't know anyone who _plays_ GURPS. I know several people who use it as reference material. (GURPS is kind of like the Esperanto of games systems, in that a lot of people can understand it, even if they would never want to use it.)


----------



## Shasarak (Jul 18, 2018)

Ghal Maraz said:


> Murnau world like to have a talk with you.




Sure I will talk with Mumu.



> Sorry, but... How many examples you need to discard, before convincing yourself that Charisma is not the same as Commliness? Plenty of horrible monsters have exceptional Charisma in PF1.




I really dont know what to tell you.  If Pathfinder 1 was so perfect then we would not need to have a Pathfinder 2.  

Do you need me to go through and pick out each individual mistake in the system?


----------



## Shasarak (Jul 18, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> The effect is external, but the power source is internal. You are a living magical battery, your Charisma score is a measure of the magical charge you hold, and magic items are like gadgets which are plugged into you.




Well no, the power source is external.  It literally is enchanted into the item.  It would be like my car stopped working because I was using my Ipad too much then blaming it on my internal device charging battery running out. 



> The only real plot-hole here is why the magical charge used for Resonance is distinct from the magical charge going into your Sorcerer spell slots.




Thats the plot hole?



> I don't know anyone who _plays_ GURPS. I know several people who use it as reference material. (GURPS is kind of like the Esperanto of games systems, in that a lot of people can understand it, even if they would never want to use it.)




So I guess it would be like wanting to make a new word in English but having to check what the rules of Esperanto say first.


----------



## The Crimson Binome (Jul 19, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> Well no, the power source is external.  It literally is enchanted into the item.



It's magic. It can work however the designer wants it to work. My explanation is exactly as realistic as your explanation (i.e. zero percent).

The only _possible_ issue is if it was first established within canon that it worked one way, and then later on _in the same continuity_ it works differently. If you have a story that starts in Pathfinder 1, and the same story is continued in Pathfinder 2, then you would need to address why the functionality is changed. It isn't something that Golarion has had to deal with before, as far as I know, but they always come up with a sufficient explanation when it happens in Faerun.


Shasarak said:


> So I guess it would be like wanting to make a new word in English but having to check what the rules of Esperanto say first.



It would be like wanting to write a novel in English, except you don't have internet access, and your computer has cached the entirety of TV Tropes, but it's in Esperanto. You can still get the information you want, and it's still perfectly relevant to your situation, but it's going to take a little work.


----------



## Shasarak (Jul 19, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> It's magic. It can work however the designer wants it to work. My explanation is exactly as realistic as your explanation (i.e. zero percent).




I agree of course it can work how ever the designer wants it to work.  It does not have to be logical at all.  It does not have to be internally consistent.  It does not even have to make narrative sense.  



> The only _possible_ issue is if it was first established within canon that it worked one way, and then later on _in the same continuity_ it works differently. If you have a story that starts in Pathfinder 1, and the same story is continued in Pathfinder 2, then you would need to address why the functionality is changed. It isn't something that Golarion has had to deal with before, as far as I know, but they always come up with a sufficient explanation when it happens in Faerun.




They did say that there were not going to be any "Realms Shaking Events" for Golarion but could be just PR spin.



> It would be like wanting to write a novel in English, except you don't have internet access, and your computer has cached the entirety of TV Tropes, but it's in Esperanto. You can still get the information you want, and it's still perfectly relevant to your situation, but it's going to take a little work.




Using the internet to write a novel?  I am not sure where to go using that analogy.


----------



## The Crimson Binome (Jul 19, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> I agree of course it can work how ever the designer wants it to work.  It does not have to be logical at all.  It does not have to be internally consistent.  It does not even have to make narrative sense..



Okay, so I guess the underlying question is, why don't you like the user-as-battery model of magic-item-design? It makes sense to me. There are plenty of examples of magic items working that way, elsewhere in games and fiction. There is a logic to it. It's internally consistent to itself, from what we've seen.

Is it just that it's different?


----------



## Shasarak (Jul 19, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> Okay, so I guess the underlying question is, why don't you like the user-as-battery model of magic-item-design? It makes sense to me. There are plenty of examples of magic items working that way, elsewhere in games and fiction. There is a logic to it. It's internally consistent to itself, from what we've seen.
> 
> Is it just that it's different?




I have gone over and over my problems with this new magical item limitation system.  

If I was going to summarise the problem in a nut shell it is:

Resonance is a solution to a problem I dont have.


----------



## The Crimson Binome (Jul 19, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> I have gone over and over my problems with this new magical item limitation system.
> 
> If I was going to summarise the problem in a nut shell it is:
> 
> Resonance is a solution to a problem I dont have.



Great! If you didn't have that problem under the old system, and you definitely won't have that problem under the new system, then why would you object? The new solution which works for everyone should be better than the old solution which only worked for some people.

I mean, aside from the failures in implementation (like extra bookkeeping in tracking both charges and Resonance), of course. The _idea_ shouldn't be controversial at all, though.


----------



## Shasarak (Jul 19, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> Great! If you didn't have that problem under the old system, and you definitely won't have that problem under the new system, then why would you object? The new solution which works for everyone should be better than the old solution which only worked for some people.
> 
> I mean, aside from the failures in implementation (like extra bookkeeping in tracking both charges and Resonance), of course. The _idea_ shouldn't be controversial at all, though.




Ok, so Resonance allows me to use 20 charges from my wand as well as 10 potions and then still be able to use my Elven cloak?

No?  So then I do have a problem under the new system that I did not before.


----------



## The Crimson Binome (Jul 19, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> Ok, so Resonance allows me to use 20 charges from my wand as well as 10 potions and then still be able to use my Elven cloak?



Ah, I see! So you did experience the issue, but you experienced it as a feature rather than a bug. And now they're patching out the whole issue, which may adversely affect your play experience.

That's very similar to how I felt, after playing Pathfinder for a little while, back in the day. I was always a big fan of the healing-resource-management game, and I enjoyed giving every character a little bit of healing so that they could be back to full within a few days, but then the Cure wands showed up and ruined my fun. There was no way to house rule the wands out of the community zeitgeist, so I was just left playing a game that wasn't as much fun as it could have been. I eventually came to the conclusion that Pathfinder just wasn't the right game for me, but I did have some fun along the way.

I guess that means Pathfinder 2 may not be the right game for you? I mean, you should definitely test it to be sure, and give feedback. It's hard to guess how many other testers might agree with you on this point. There's no reason to give up the fight just yet.


----------



## Shasarak (Jul 19, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> Ah, I see! So you did experience the issue, but you experienced it as a feature rather than a bug. And now they're patching out the whole issue, which may adversely affect your play experience.




No I did not experience "the issue".  There was no issue.  My character has magic items and he uses his magic items the way that magic items are supposed to be used.

If there was an issue then I am sure there must be some evidence of it somewhere?  Anywhere?  Hello?

Yeah, thats what I thought.



> That's very similar to how I felt, after playing Pathfinder for a little while, back in the day. I was always a big fan of the healing-resource-management game, and I enjoyed giving every character a little bit of healing so that they could be back to full within a few days, but then the Cure wands showed up and ruined my fun. There was no way to house rule the wands out of the community zeitgeist, so I was just left playing a game that wasn't as much fun as it could have been. I eventually came to the conclusion that Pathfinder just wasn't the right game for me, but I did have some fun along the way.




What can I say man, if you dont like Wands of Healing then dont use Wands of Healing.  You have to act like your forced to use them.  I thought that you told me that Pathfinder was not balanced around being healed up to full after each fight?



> I guess that means Pathfinder 2 may not be the right game for you? I mean, you should definitely test it to be sure, and give feedback. It's hard to guess how many other testers might agree with you on this point. There's no reason to give up the fight just yet.




Too early to say without all the facts.  Maybe Resonance has just been really really badly explained, who knows.


----------



## The Crimson Binome (Jul 19, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> No I did not experience "the issue".  There was no issue.  My character has magic items and he uses his magic items the way that magic items are supposed to be used.



The issue is that you were loaded down with magical items as though your were some sort of holiday tree, and zapping wands like they were going out of style. It's an issue, whether or not you see it as a problematic one. Wands weren't _intended_ to be used in such a capacity, which is why they're introducing this rule to change that.


Shasarak said:


> What can I say man, if you dont like Wands of Healing then dont use Wands of Healing.  You have to act like your forced to use them.  I thought that you told me that Pathfinder was not balanced around being healed up to full after each fight?



It wasn't balanced around easy healing. That's just how everyone ended up playing, because the magic item rules were at odds with the encounter balance, and there was no use attempting to convince players _not_ to exploit that. Pathfinder players are (generally speaking) unwilling to accept house rules, and if you don't like that, then the alternative is to not play.


----------



## Shasarak (Jul 19, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> The issue is that you were loaded down with magical items as though your were some sort of holiday tree, and zapping wands like they were going out of style. It's an issue, whether or not you see it as a problematic one. Wands weren't _intended_ to be used in such a capacity, which is why they're introducing this rule to change that.
> It wasn't balanced around easy healing. That's just how everyone ended up playing, because the magic item rules were at odds with the encounter balance, and there was no use attempting to convince players _not_ to exploit that. Pathfinder players are (generally speaking) unwilling to accept house rules, and if you don't like that, then the alternative is to not play.




I think we have a pretty genial relationship on these forums, we agree on some stuff and disagree on other stuff but in general its all good.  So in respect of that relationship I think that I will just have to agree to disagree at this point.  I dont want to come off in a harsher tone then you deserve especially over something that neither of us has the full facts about.

I know that the Pathfinder developers have the best interests of the game at heart and am sure that they will take the playtest feedback seriously.


----------



## mellored (Jul 19, 2018)

Saelorn said:


> The only real plot-hole here is why the magical charge used for Resonance is distinct from the magical charge going into your Sorcerer spell slots.



I can agree with this.

Not that the current way is bad, but it would make more sense from an in-world perspective if everyone had a store of magical energy, then let them spend it on spells or items.

Though with something to reduce spamming.


----------



## Sunseeker (Jul 19, 2018)

mellored said:


> I can agree with this.
> 
> Not that the current way is bad, but it would make more sense from an in-world perspective if everyone had a store of magical energy, then let them spend it on spells or items.
> 
> Though with something to reduce spamming.




That would be terrible.

Lets say your number is your CHA mod, like now.

So Fighters essentially get free spell points, while Magic classes have to choose between using cool magical gear and using their class features?

Unless you're going to buff their class features (which would blow balance out of whack in games where the DM doesn't hand out magic items useful to the non-magic characters) you're basically saying they can either have nice things or _their normal class features_.


----------



## mellored (Jul 19, 2018)

Sunseeker said:


> That would be terrible.
> 
> Lets say your number is your CHA mod, like now.



Not what I was suggesting. You still want the classes to be different.

It could be something like fighters and rogues get 1/level, rangers and paladin's get 2/level, and casters get 3/level.

And all sorts of ways to play the number as well.  Like life clerics casting healing spells cheaper, and illusionist can cast illusion spells cheaper, and alchemists can use bombs cheaper.

Items would be included as well, a wands might let you cast a spell, or if you already have the spell, you can cast it for less.

And maybe different ways to regain points.  A warlock get's 1 point when they kill something.

Or any number of other combinations.


----------



## Sunseeker (Jul 19, 2018)

mellored said:


> Not what I was suggesting. You still want the classes to be different.
> 
> It could be something like fighters and rogues get 1/level, rangers and paladin's get 2/level, and casters get 3/level.
> 
> ...




If you're giving magic users extra points for simply being magic, why do they have to be the same _type_ of points?  Different points for different tasks.

Also: wands need to be removed from the game.  PERIOD.


----------



## mellored (Jul 19, 2018)

Sunseeker said:


> Different points for different tasks.



that's just more numbers to keep track of, and reduces flexibility.

I.e.
3 actions vs action, move, and minor.

Though it does help prevent spamming.


----------



## Sunseeker (Jul 19, 2018)

mellored said:


> that's just more numbers to keep track of, and reduces flexibility.
> 
> I.e.
> 3 actions vs action, move, and minor.
> ...




There are a lot of things that could be done to increase flexibility.  But with flexibility comes power.  And casters need less of that.


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## mellored (Jul 19, 2018)

Sunseeker said:


> There are a lot of things that could be done to increase flexibility.  But with flexibility comes power.  And casters need less of that.



You just said that universal magic points would make fighter stronger and mages weaker.  Now you're saying that it makes mages are too strong?

Either way, numbers are easy to adjust.  Fighters can get 2/level, or spells cost an extra point, or whatever balances out.


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## Ghal Maraz (Jul 19, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> Sure I will talk with Mumu.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




No. You just need to accept that Charisma has never been Good Looks. You don't like that Resonance works on Charisma?

Fine, but don't pretend that you're right on things about which you're obviously wrong, please.


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## Shasarak (Jul 19, 2018)

Ghal Maraz said:


> No. You just need to accept that Charisma has never been Good Looks. You don't like that Resonance works on Charisma?
> 
> Fine, but don't pretend that you're right on things about which you're obviously wrong, please.




So some dude has made a mistake with a Ghouls Charisma and that makes me wrong?

Hey great, thanks for the tip!


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## Kurviak (Jul 19, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> So some dude has made a mistake with a Ghouls Charisma and that makes me wrong?
> 
> Hey great, thanks for the tip!




Some dude made a mistake with Ghouls Charisma?

What are you talking about? From PF1’s bestiaries we have:
* Shadows, Spectres & Wights with charisma  15
* Ghasts with charisma 16
* Ghuls with charisma 18
* Geists & Wraiths with charisma 21

And the list goes on


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## Charlaquin (Jul 19, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> So some dude has made a mistake with a Ghouls Charisma and that makes me wrong?
> 
> Hey great, thanks for the tip!




Ghouls are just one example. Charisma aint Comliness, my dude.


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## Shasarak (Jul 19, 2018)

Kurviak said:


> Some dude made a mistake with Ghouls Charisma?
> 
> What are you talking about? From PF1’s bestiaries we have:
> * Shadows, Spectres & Wights with charisma  15
> ...




At least they were consistently wrong.


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## Shasarak (Jul 19, 2018)

Charlaquin said:


> Ghouls are just one example. Charisma aint Comliness, my dude.




I could have sworn that we have done the Attribute dance before?


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## Kurviak (Jul 19, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> At least they were consistently wrong.




So you know more about what charisma means to pathfinder than it’s design team...


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## Shasarak (Jul 19, 2018)

Kurviak said:


> So you know more about what charisma means to pathfinder than it’s design team...




Its not their fault, they just copied it straight from 3e.


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## Charlaquin (Jul 19, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> I could have sworn that we have done the Attribute dance before?




We have. And Charisma _still_ doesn’t represent good looks.


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## Shasarak (Jul 19, 2018)

Charlaquin said:


> We have. And Charisma _still_ doesn’t represent good looks.




Remind me again, you were arguing for Strength right?


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## Kurviak (Jul 19, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> Its not their fault, they just copied it straight from 3e.




That’s not true, in 3.x zombies and skeletons has charisma 1, and the other undead have lower charisma than pathfinder’s ones


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## Charlaquin (Jul 19, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> Remind me again, you were arguing for Strength right?



Hard to remember, I’ve had quite a few arguments about attributes since the PF2 previews started. It was probably either about Goblins’ ancestral ability modifiers or Resonance keying off Charisma. Quite possibly both. Pretty sure Strength and Dexterity came up at some point. But my opinions about Attributes in general are pretty against the grain, and not particularly relevant to _this_ discussion. However you or I may feel about what Charisma actually means, there’s no denying that Pathfinder presents it as being about social magnetism (which, granted, appearance plays a role in, but does not completely define), leadership, and inherent magical ability.


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## Shasarak (Jul 19, 2018)

Kurviak said:


> That’s not true, in 3.x zombies and skeletons has charisma 1, and the other undead have lower charisma than pathfinder’s ones




Ah, you are right.  I just checked Ghouls and Ghasts.

So looks like the Pathfinder devs mistake then.


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## Charlaquin (Jul 19, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> Ah, you are right.  I just checked Ghouls and Ghasts.
> 
> So looks like the Pathfinder devs mistake then.




It was definitely intentional, as Charisma ostensibly means something different in Pathfinder than it does in 3e.


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## Shasarak (Jul 19, 2018)

Charlaquin said:


> Hard to remember, I’ve had quite a few arguments about attributes since the PF2 previews started. It was probably either about Goblins’ ancestral ability modifiers or Resonance keying off Charisma. Quite possibly both. But my opinions about Attributes in general are pretty against the grain, and not particularly relevant to _this_ discussion. However you or I may feel about what Charisma actually means, there’s no denying that Pathfinder presents it as being about social magnetism (which, granted, appearance plays a role in, but does not completely define), leadership, and inherent magical ability.




Well either way when a Dwarven skeleton has more social magnetism then a Dwarf does then you know something has gone wrong.


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## Kurviak (Jul 19, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> Well either way when a Dwarven skeleton has more social magnetism then a Dwarf does then you know something has gone wrong.




Yeah, your interpretation of charisma in pathfinder...


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## MichaelSomething (Jul 19, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> Well either way when a Dwarven skeleton has more social magnetism then a Dwarf does then you know something has gone wrong.




Well a skeleton is far more likely to stick out of a crowd then a Dwarf.


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## Aldarc (Jul 19, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> At least they were consistently wrong.





Shasarak said:


> Its not their fault, they just copied it straight from 3e.



Oh, come off it, man! You are sounding absolutely ridiculous and petulant, and your own Charisma score - regardless of whether that represents comeliness or persuasion - is taking a massive hit through your own posting right now. It does not reflect well on you. Sorry.


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## houser2112 (Jul 19, 2018)

Shasarak said:


> I know that the Pathfinder developers have the best interests of the game at heart and am sure that they will take the playtest feedback seriously.




I believe this to be true as well, I just don't think they'll make major changes to the game if they conflict too much with their vision of the game (See their treatment of psionics. People were clamoring for 3.5 psionics, and they said "no way, we don't like 3.5 psionics" and gave us slot-based psychic magic instead). This is a playtest, not distributed development. Regarding Resonance, I believe they'll take feedback into account for how it's calculated or other minor details, but I don't think they'll dike it out completely, no matter how loud the clamor against it may be. I think it's too entrenched in the system to do that easily or timely enough for the release schedule they have in mind.


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## houser2112 (Jul 19, 2018)

Aldarc said:


> Oh, come off it, man! You are sounding absolutely ridiculous and petulant, and your own Charisma score - *regardless of whether that represents comeliness or persuasion* - is taking a massive hit through your own posting right now. It does not reflect well on you. Sorry.




It's bad/geeky enough that you're talking to him in metagame terms as if he were a PC, but to suggest that he's literally growing warts on his face or something for every word you disagree with him over is hilarious.


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## Aldarc (Jul 19, 2018)

houser2112 said:


> It's bad/geeky enough that you're talking to him in metagame terms as if he were a PC, but to suggest that he's literally growing warts on his face or something for every word you disagree with him over is hilarious.



Um, I know. That was intentional.


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## Ghal Maraz (Jul 19, 2018)

houser2112 said:


> It's bad/geeky enough that you're talking to him in metagame terms as if he were a PC, but to suggest that he's literally growing warts on his face or something for every word you disagree with him over is hilarious.




I guess that that could help with his (i.e. Shasarak's) trolling.

Because there's no other explanation for his behaviour,  at this point.


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## Shasarak (Jul 19, 2018)

Ghal Maraz said:


> I guess that that could help with his (i.e. Shasarak's) trolling.
> 
> Because there's no other explanation for his behaviour,  at this point.




Sorry I dont talk with trolls.  Goodbye.


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