My "favorite" dumb rule is that parrying provokes attacks of opportunity. In the first printing, activating the Parry trait on a weapon to get +1 AC is an Interact action. Interact has the Manipulate trait, and Manipulate actions provoke. So because you are defending yourself, your opponent (if trained) gets to take a free swing. Fortunately this got fixed in the second printing.

I actually love how nitpicky these are, really shows that Pathfinder is an incredibly well written system. You really have to dig deep into the wording to find flaws like this. Any system has flaws, but pf2e's flaws are so much more reasonable than any other system I've come across.

For things that allow a Stride action, I've always ruled that because it says you can "move up to your Speed", this includes other types of movement, such as flying, when a character has a non-land Speed. More specific actions, such as the Fly action are thus iterations of the Stride action and therefore qualify. I admit this interpretation is somewhat liberal, but it seems to make the most sense. As for having to command animal companions to keep them aloft, the minion trait says "if given no commands, minions use no actions except to defend themselves or to ESCAPE OBVIOUS HARM. If left unattended for long enough, typically 1 minute, mindless minions usually don’t act, animals follow their instincts, and sapient minions act how they please." I believe this can be interpreted as keeping themselves in flight, since falling to their death seems like 'obvious harm'.

Aid is definitely true. DC 20 is harder at level 1 than any actual DC at that level, which trains players not to help. Later it becomes trivial. With an inspire competence Bard it gets silly because they rapidly critically succeed on aid every time and give out a +3 or +4. Scale it up (with an easy or very easy DC of same level as the check itself as aiding is easier than doing the task) and you'll promote teamwork at every level without trivializing it.

For your consideration: Flail: Reflex vs. Prone. Hammer: Fortitude vs. Prone.

Re: Crit Spec: I think I would probably make it a Fortitude saving throw with Hammers (as I imagine it being similar to shoving) and keep it at Reflex for Flails. Then the weapons have a slightly different niche, too.

Thanks so much for mentioning the aid action!! I was under the impression that it was set to a DC of 20 possibly to help make the rules easier to remember, rather than intentionally hard for new characters. Also, the bird wouldn't perilously fall out of the sky, even when it doesn't have its own action yet when un-commanded from feats, because of this line from the minion trait: "If given no commands, minions use no actions except to defend themselves or to *escape obvious harm*."

For Aid, I never require any roll from the aiding person. They are already expending 2 actions and 1 reaction to perform one task. I just give them that +1 bonus and +2 if the aiding person uses 2 actions of prepare aid. It reduces rolling and makes it more viable at low levels where its actually needed Encounter xp I give exactly as you suggested and been doing so since I started. I only needed to look at the charts and as veteran GM I know higher level solo monsters are way tougher than one might think

I agree with all these ideas. My idea for Disarm was basically: when you get a basic success, the -2 penalty stays until they spend an action to reassert their grip, rather than automatically recovering at the start of their next turn. Like wish prone, it's basically at worst a "spend an action to try and eat up an opponent's action" kinda ordeal. In either case, I'd probably wanna come up with another benefit for Swashbuckler's one trait, however. It's worth remembering as well that NPCs can use all these actions players can, so all ideas go both ways. I think they made it so hard to use because of this, but considering players usually have more action economy than monsters, making disarm eat up actions winds up compensating for the typically higher modifiers monsters have for the same check.

"Aid needs to be more powerful at higher levels because it is competing against more-powerful high-level abilities for that action+reaction." I've seen this argument several times here and on Reddit. But I have yet to be convinced what high-level abilities truly make the guaranteed +4 circumstance bonus from Aid necessary to make it desirable. I've only seen 1 put forward: Rogue's Opportune Backstab... which is in danger of never triggering, if the ally doesn't hit without the +4 assistance. Even if high-level abilities comparable to a high-level near-guaranteed +4 to an ally were found, the implementation of assuming a near-guaranteed crit success is crude and has no precedent in PF2e. So I think this argument both (1) underestimates "the power of +4" in PF2e and the importance of foregoing your own action to set up an ally's attack which the situation calls for (you're not all isolated individuals in PF2e, and sometimes you REALLY want X attack to land) and (2) at the low levels underestimates the power of alternate actions that don't require feats, such as Demoralize, Raise Shield, which I think many would agree are almost always better than setting up an Aid at low levels.

I’m not one who would have complained about the music, but since you asked - yes, it was probably a bit distracting. Maybe loud? Maybe just the choice of a driving beat? I’m not sure. Loved your content, though.

When making the Disarming Flair feat the core way Disarm works, make sure to include the part where Gymnast Swashbucklers gain Panache on a disarm. No reason to take that option away from them, especially when it helps fulfill the classic fencing swashbuckler trope.

I'm new to Pathfinder (jumping off the sinking D&D ship) but in my D&D games, I have a thing called a Mythic XP Bonus, which is pretty much what Ruleslawer suggested, of rewarding more xp for battles the party struggle with. The flavour reason is that, through a combination of unexpected threat level and poor luck, the party find themselves at a disadvantage against their opponent(s), making their ultimate victory against them all the more heroic in the eyes of the people! (Xp in my settings is sort of the quantified concept of renown and heroic praise/confidence the party has earned from the people, which is a magical, empowering force in and of itself. The more faith people have in your abilities, the more you can do.)

First want to say love the content! A little modification I have made to your disarm rule. I have homeruled that the -2 to attacks (and +2 to other attempts to disarm) last until the end of the enemies next turn. It makes it less powerful that Disarming Flair but still more useful than the current RAW. I also like the fact that this makes Disarming flair a useful feat to take and not make that particular selection totally useless.

You mentioned the subreddit being mad at you about the crit specialization one. I have found that the subreddit is... not very good at critically examining PF2e. It seems like any suggestion that the rules might not be perfect is a fast way to land you in hot water. And granted, I mostly run the game RAW as well because the rules DO work as written in like 95%+ of cases. I recently asked on there about Recall Knowledge (which you responded to, which was really cool!) and I got people saying all kinds of weird stuff. Like that RK on it's own in combat was equivalent to a +2-+5 bonus, or that actually you should need two actions (one to Identify and one to get further info on the topic) to get any kind of mechanical info. I think next time I am gonna question the rules I might go to the forums instead.

Absolutely love the "disarm" house rule. It's much more how you'd expect the disarm action to function.

My only interaction with Disarm so far was from my Gymnast Swashbuckler /Acrobat. It seemed strong, but only because one of the abilities said "until the end of my character's next turn" which meant that i could keep pressure on the enemy and eventually knock the weapon free. I never even thought about it being weak, it was one of the abilities i started with. But i guess you are right, lol

Another great video. Here are my comments for the algorithm: 1) Aid Checks. I actually don't have a problem with this. As characters gain experience exploring and fighting, they become better at things and working together as a team. Helping someone climb a rope and you don't really know them should be a little more difficult than after the team has explored together. 2) Solo Monsters. It's odd because I've had the exact opposite experience. Solo monsters seem weaker against players in my games due to action economy. But multiple enemies have given my players more of a challenge. 3) hammers and flails. I actually never noticed this. I have to agree with your assessment. 4) disarm. I totally agree and run my games in the way that you suggest. 5) stride. I've always ruled that if you have a Speed (such as a Fly Speed or Swim Speed) this movement can count as a Stride. I've actually never thought about the flying animal companion having to maintain flight.

I think Aid DCs would make more sense as a scale depending on how well the characters know each other, have similar training... etc. That still accounts for them getting better as they get more leveled, but I think it makes sense if certain low level characters (e.g. villagers from the same community, rank and file soldiers trained to work as units) have a lower DC than 20 in those circumstances. So, using the low level soldier example, aiding another member of the same military would have a lower DC than the soldier trying to aid a farmer repairing a cart.

its funny coming back to this video and seeing 3/5 things fixed

Love this video Rules Lawyer you rule, I mean I like your ruling!

It's nice to see how remastered actually adressed some of this. Aid is now DC15 instead of 20 - not ideal, but it's a start. Hammer and flail Crit Spec got a save. And Disarm success now lasts until the creature spends an action to adjust grip.

The first character I built was a human with the Helpful feature. Brought it to a PFS game (level 1) and tried to Aid someone. Immediately everyone including the GM said, "No, don't!" And that's when I was like, "ah, so I effed up on character creation."

Excellent video. You’re arguments are always so well founded. Must be all that lawyer training. I’m actually ok with disarm being week. As a player who loves martial characters, I’m glad it is hardly ever used. I did fight an Omox once that disarmed me and absorbed my weapon. I had to disarm him to get it back. It made the fight extremely difficult. Unarmed characters don’t have to deal with that unless you think you can disarm handwraps of mighty blows.

Hmm...for Haste, the way I'd fix it would be a 5th level heighten that lets it give one of any movement bonus rather than just Stride (so basically what you suggested), then an 9th level version that does the same thing but for up to five targets. That would give heighten effects on levels 5, 7, and 9, meaning more choices for prepared casters to make and it becoming a candidate for Signature Spell for spontaneous casters. (Right now, spontaneous casters would either just stick it on a wand or learn it at spell level 7 and trade out the level 3 version for something else.)

I home rule that a hasted action granted by the quickened condition that allows you to stride allows you instead to move using any type of movement you have speed with but that it does not allow you to make tactical movements like stepping, standing, or jumping. There's also an Archetype feat called Ackhowledge Fan that I had to heavily nerf as it is very VERY strong for what it does. I added the incapacitation trait and added text to the failure effect that allows the target to be immune for 1 minute. If it's still too problematic I'm planning on making it two actions instead of 1. For those who don't know it's basically a 1 action Paralyze spell (SL 3) with no resource or frequency limits. If target succeeds the save they are stunned 1 and immune for a while. Failure is stunned 2, Crit failure is paralyzed.... For 1 action and because it's a single action you can ready it to completely interrupt a target's turn, at least once, even if they succeed (but not critically)

What i did for Aid is it the DC of whatever it is they are trying to Aid on (hit an AC or whatever) +5. I also make it only a reaction instead, as long as they still are within 5ft to be able to Aid. Finally, if you are at least master in whatever action you are doing (so a master in stealth if you said stealth) you provide a +2 on a success and +3 on a critical success. This buffs it meaningfully, but still costs your one and only reaction. If out of combat you can Aid as an "action" and this removes the increase to Aid DC as you are taking the time to Aid them properly, not react in an instant to assist.

Nice video. Thanks! The music was distracting, though.

Picking up Pathfinder 2e after a long hiatus from the Pathfinder world, and love this video. There have always been these little quirks that bugged me, and the changes you suggest sound solid. One small nitpick: At 9:30'ish you have text saying that the AOO can knock the target prone again. I suggest giving that a closer look, as that has been a misconception since 3.0. As you are interrupting the action, the target isn't standing yet, so can't be knocked prone again. You cannot "prone-lock" a target through AOOs. You can ready an action to trip them once they have stood up, but that is a ready action, not a reaction. Of course, I say this knowing my understanding is dated to previous versions, but I suspect the interpretation is similar. Either way, good times.

flails have always been quite powerful in Pathfinder. Back in 1e, the big issue was you could easily disarm someone using a great flail with greater disarm feat and have an extremely good chance at disarming an enemy each and every turn. now the issue is knocking someone prone.

Woah the quality of your videos and confidence while speaking have vastly improved. I haven't watched in awhile but I'm really glad I did.

Excellent video. I noticed the "Haste doesn't let you Fly or Swim" dilemma too when my players hit levels where they could fly and just allowed it. They're now 18 level, about to become 19, and nothing broken or game-breaking has happened in the AP. As you said, cool moments sometimes came out of those extra actions.

I’d love to know your takes on most of these in the remaster. ❤

1) agreed! 2) agreed, however, the difficulty of facing a solo boss is not uniform when you take into account groups w/ more than 4 players. In those cases the encounter is easier because the boss has too few actions with respect to the players, so maybe no adjustment is needed in those cases. 3) agreed (I did not know that)! 4) super agreed, I would go further, as even the critical success result is not that powerful in my opinion. 5) agreed, wow I didn't even think about that. I would say Stride = Fly for the purposes of haste, commanding a companion, etc. Thanks!

It's fine to give disarming Flair as a core rule, but what you do with Disarming Flair? A +2 circunstancial bonus to Disarm action?

Not sure if this video is from before a relevant errata, but the minion trait states that if you don't use an action to command the minion, the minion can still take actions, but only to defend itself or escape obvious harm. The Fly action certainly qualifies, as not taking it results in falling. The Mature Animal Companion feat seems to expand the capabilities of a companion lacking commands by allowing the creature to Strike or Stride even when not in self-defense. The companion presumably has not forgotten how to Fly.

Please help me with this problem: music and sound levels! I've gotten compliments AND complaints here. And the rule of the internet is that it's the unhappy people who speak most often, so please answer this question: Music too loud? Y or N Music choice? Good, Neutral, or Evil Feel free to elaborate as well :) And did nobody get my homage in the first 5 seconds?

Of course if Disarming Flair becomes 'core' it removes it from the Swashbucklers armoury, do you then increase the bonuses/penalties when this feat is used, thus still maintaining the Swashbuckler's advantage in Duel situations?

Great job ty

Imagine having a pet bird deciding to unalive itself the moment you stop shouting at it to flap its wings.

One good homebrew rule for Aid, as I understand it, is as follows: To determine the success of Aid, roll a d20, add the relevant ability modifier, and subtract the target level from a difficulty class (DC) of 20. With this rule, a high-level character can Aid another high-level character, but the outcome is uncertain. A low-level character can only successfully Aid a high-level character on a natural roll of 20 (i.e., rolling a 20 on the d20). On the other hand, a high-level character can easily Aid a low-level character. This rule serves as a balancing mechanism and adds a dramatic context to the game.

huh, this shows that I straight up didn't read the rules for Stride close enough, because I've always just thought of it as a "move action" type deal that is just movement, but they wanted all the main actions to start with S for some reason (step, stride, strike). Will continue to happily ignore that rule, lol

sounds like Aid checks would be best supported by a DC set by the player they are helping. I would set it to their skill bonus. so at low levels, it's 7, like you said, but higher up, you need to be legendary or at least have a massive modifier, to help the legendary. it's the "everyone can do it vs this is a legendary trick" idea.

In a system that I was trying to build, I wanted bludgeoning weapons to behaving differently when making a critical attack. I was aiming to have them damage armor. In pathfinder there is a concept of damaging items, but only if you hit them directly, and it gives you a negative modifier to try to do so. However, this negative modifier is smaller than 10 and flat-footed gives a temporary AC debuff. I would think bludgeoning weapons would reduce armor or movement. Slashing would cause additional to unarmored areas, and piercing damage would cause a bleeding (DOT) effect.

This has been killing me: Is the music from the intro part of the video from Final Fantasy IX?

i like using the Standard DC for aid. The same one they use for downtime money earning.

As someone who just started GMing for this system recently, Aid has thus far only been attempted in relation to treating wounds. The problem being, both characters in that interaction suck at the skills being used and are rolling low. I will definitely make that Aid check easier for them next time it comes up.

I think disarm should work as written for 2 handed weapons, and should extend until the end of the affected creature's turn for 1 handed weapons and shields on success.

These are great house rules

I think flying and raising shield should be a concentration action, where you make a save check each round, if you succeed a specific DC you don’t need to use an action to keep flying or keep the shield raised. If you fail you have to use an action to keep the action going

for Aid, depending on the action, there's a whole table of standard DC's for a particular level, so would that not be the DC one would use for something like Aiding a distraction or a Trip? Assuming you do that, then it would only get a little bit stronger as your proficiency level increases, given you crit. so obviously you want it to be more likely to crit as you level higher (because you have better things to do with your reaction and action than a +1), but still make it accessible to lower levels. a small adjustment to the standard DC table (ie., just increase the DC by 1 each level, only accounting for ability score increases at levels 5, 10, 15, and 20).

6:10 I think what that means is a party level +2 creature can serve as a severe threat boss if accompanied by 40 XP worth of minions.

The disarm is still a good option because you can get the weapon out of the opponents (friend of foe) hands, then another player can magic that weapon away. This is just one option for disarm as you can also use it versus non-weapons. In my games it has been used many times with great creative success. Looking at Min-max combat however, yes it is weak.

A good table for aid is: Helping an untrained character: 10 Trained: 15 Expert: 20 Master: 30 Legendary: 40 And you can only aid someone with the same or lower training. Makes sense and balances out over stacking.

Can't wait for PF3. Then we'll be happy. (Honestly a PF2.5 would be awesome)

I have a question, I'm very new to Pathfinder and I like combat that's dangerous and fast paced, I think it's really interesting, but what do you think would happen if I halved the health of all of the monsters and the players. Is that a bad idea? I know it will make weaknesses and resistances even more impactful, but are there other negative unforeseen consequences that I wouldn't know?

Could aid DC equal to the Suggested DC According to level? Because I had an encounter where a boss offered the Party a chance to change his mind. With a Will save of 11 (DC21) none of the players could even aid or improve the enemies mood towards the party more then 1 step it was something like a 10% chance for each 4 players; there was no way for them to make the check once let alone twice as suggested by the module.

Thinking of giving this a trial run for Disarm / Disarming Flare: Critical Success: You knock the item out of the target's grasp. It falls to the ground 1d4-1 squares from the target's space in a random direction. Success: You weaken your target's grasp on the item. They must spend an action to regrip the item before they can use it again Critical Failure: You become vulnerable to the target and they receive a +2 Circumstance bonus to attacks against you until the start of your next turn. Disarming Flare (Swashbuckler) On Disarm Success, the target is also Stunned 1.

Stride just says "You move up to your Speed." with a move trait that says "An action with this trait involves moving from one space to another.". Why is it limited to land movement only? am I missing something?

As the Rules Lawyer stands proud, he suddenly unleshes his domain Malevolent GM core, the player responds with a simple domain and says "Are you the rules lawyer because you follow the rules or do you follow the rules because you are the rules lawyer".

Totally agree with points 1,3,4 and 5. Some of these i've already house ruled for my games. And think i'll start using the rest. Everyone says solo monster of 2 to 3 levels are harder then advertised, but my players never seem to have issues with them. Maybe i just have bad luck rolling with my monsters, or my players are super lucky. XD

Probably already mentioned, but there are so many comments already... Did you also want to add the "only up to one creature size larger" clause to the Critical Specialization rule change?

On your assertion that crits happen more often in pf2e, while this is technically true, I think it's important to note that this only really applies when attacking lower level creatures, where imposing that prone status is less impactful. Against most bosses you're only critting on a 20, you're often only making a single attack, and advantage is rare. Not that I necessarily disagree that the trip should follow the normal rules, perhaps even acting as a MAPless free trip action similar to the remaster grab on hit stuff. I generally don't like things that allow you to control a creature by hitting them (really, the legendary athletics giant instinct barb is easy to grab on hit?), I just think it's important to note that in the situations this would be most impactful, the crits are much more rare.

100% agree. Hasbro just got sneakier, not better.

I really like, what three of these problems was fixed in Remaster

I actually agree with every point you make. My first reaction to the Hammer/Flail change was a hard no, but that's because I've come to enjoy abusing it myself, so that definitely corroborates with the need of tuning it down. I think Flails and Hammers crit specs are taken into account when considering weapon balancing, as in, the only 2H Reach Hammers/Flails have a d8 dice, but Paizo definitely screwed the pot on the Flickmace. Regarding Disarm, my only reticence in modifying it is that I think the system as a whole expects the action to be quite weak, and I consider the ability to interact to remove the penalty somewhat of a nerf. The way I see it, Disarm as it is, is meant to be used outside of a player's turn, either by readying it or having a special action like Disarming Block. IMO, a character with Disarming Block becomes worse if they also have Disarming Flair, since they alread spent their reaction to block.

Turns out I already use your house rules. Stride for me has always been simply a move action based on available movement types. I've never tied it to just ground movement.

So interesting that single monsters feel more difficult than multiple monsters that add up to the same xp. It makes sense with pf2e's scaling but it's the exact opposite of 5e.

Totaly agree

I felt a big problem with 1st Edition was how badly the GM's adversaries were handicapped by specialized attacks that disarm and trip. It looks as if they fucked up with regard to the flail and hammmer critical hit. Frankly, I really like how Disarm has much lesser functionality. Characters that specialize in trip and disarm tend to be game-breaking to Paizo's adventure design.

for disarm I just make it go until the end of the target's next turn instead of start

4:26 But Paizo ISN'T ignoring their own rule, that's a particularly easy check so the "gm" decided to low the Aid DC to the same as the actual check. Something that low I might even just let them auto-succeed, unless the party was being chased by enemies. Why make players role something so low(even at low levels) if they have time to prep and take all precautions, it's just going to take more time than it would normally when rolling.

I also think if you use a free hand to disarm rather than a weapon with the DIsarm trait, and you get that crit, you should have the option to have that object in hand rather than having it fall in the target's space. As partial balance to this, I'd say if you do you have the same weakened grip as the target of a non-crit Disarm Success (+2 to attempts to Disarm you of the object, -2 to your attacks with it if it's a weapon, lasts until the end of the disarmed opponent's next turn or until you spend an Interact action to regrip). Does this make monks really good at grabbing the evil archmage's macguffin out of his hands and running away? Yes! And it should!

Thanks to the level system, a solo monster is a considerably more dangerous threat than 4 monsters of 'equal challenge's.

Totally agree with you on #1. The way I always play Aid as well as checks where the party is "willing" (say you're going to shove an ally who wants to be pushed out of the way) is that you lower the DC by 10, or effectively use the result that's 1 better than what they would have gotten.

Great video! I've always disliked the dc 20 aid - I think your solution is a great one and what I've finally found myself defaulting to recently - it definitely feels better and more in line with the rest of the system. Love the idea of a heightened haste - curious about people's ideas of what level that should be

Question about the Hammer & Flail thing. What about Weapon Groups that absolutely suck like Darts & Knives? 1d6+Potency Bleed is a joke compared to enemy HP. Club's Weapon Spec is actually pretty terrible once enemies have Reach and you don't. I actually dislike weapons with a Save DC because Martials have significantly worse DCs then casters and it's already hard for them to get monsters to consistently fail their saves, because monsters have really high saves. My fix for "Stride" not including other movement types. My house rule is it always works. If you can Stride you can use alt movement.

I hadn't realized how terrible shove and prone was (coming from 5e) it is basically requiring them to waste an action ...

Among rules to ignore, our table has spent exactly 0 consideration in adjudicating movement speeds during the Exploration phase. It's just so much extra keeping tabs when you already have four party members who each want to do something different while moving through a dungeon space, and in terms of timekeeping, who cares if you're moving at 150ft per minute or 75ft per minute? We just exercise intuition about time passage, and of course Exploration abilities tend to take 10 minutes or an hour to do. If something is especially time-sensitive, then it's not exploration, it's an encounter. Maybe I don't know what I'm missing, but I've never sensed the game would be enhanced by keeping track of this feet/minute movement.

Please set me right if I'm wrong here, I looked into PF2e a couple years back when trying to decide between that and 5e - I've been playing TTRPGs for over a decade but somehow missed out on these two titans of the industry. The thing that put me off PF2e was the chapter on Actions (non-combat actions that is) I remember a huge chapter that was just an enormous list of actions that players could take, with pre-determined outcomes based on what they rolled. The "lift yourself up a ledge" action would have set consequences based on whether you rolled x amount above or below the target number for example - again, this is from memory. I hated this when I first read it and it's the reason I went to 5e. I remember thinking "what exactly is the point of the DM if every action the players can take are laid out on these pages, with pre-determined outcomes? I'm not being a referee at this point, I'm just regurgitating what the book is saying should happen." So my questions are: Is my understanding/memory of this chapter correct? And if so, is this a chapter I could completely ignore and handle skills in more of a 5e way by flying by the seat of my pants and going off my personal judgement and intuition? I'm considering giving PF2e another go, but if my understanding of the way actions works is correct, and it's fundamentally game-breaking to change them, then it's not for me.

My GM uses DC20 aid, does not want to change it and it's horrible :(

1 - DC IMO should be 10 + (2x required profeciency) as standard, so if something requires legendary, it will be DC 26

1. Yes, RAW Aid is mostly broken. I generally use the same DC as the actual check, though depending on how Aid is described, I might use level DCs or even auto succeed (ie automatic +1, but nothing more). 2. I use milestone. 3. I don't mind how strong hammers are, but I consider it a free action auto success Trip, so you can't trigger anything else and the same restrictions as regular Trip apply. As a side note, I do the same for Improved Knockdown for monsters. 4. Instead of giving everyone Disarming Flair, I just extend the effects of Disarm to the end of the target's turn, instead of the beginning, also adding the possibility to spend an action to remove the effects. That makes successes actually useful, while still keeping Disarming Flair as a feat. Of course it's not as crucial for Swashbucklers who want to disarm, but it's still useful especially when alone, because you can give yourself a disarming bonus, whereas without the feat you couldn't. 5. Great point, nothing to add.

@11:29 Yeah, general players. Players of Pathfinder, the "Wait, I think I have a bonus for that." system do not. That's half the fun of the system, 1e or 2e. It's putting together a cool set of features and mechanics that make your character concept a reality (I'm making a dwarf rogue, her last name is "Sky-Dancer" by the end of her career, if things go right, she'll be able to do just that, without magic. It's a hell of a system.) In other systems, I'm more likely to just go, "Oh that's cool." In Pathfinder 2e, I hadn't looked at hammers, but I sure as hell am now. It's too easy to get destroyed not to take advantage of the benefits.

As my group is soon to try this rule set, I'll consider these. Aid ) So, this is kind of like the 'help' action in a certain other system... one character assisting another, but the game mechanics are handled differently. So... have to spend an action and reaction to give a +1. Are there no other options for providing a +1 or better? I often find that I don't care about doing something that only gets me +1. Yes, in theory +8 is better than +7 on a roll... but 1HP has mattered more often to me than coming up one short on a skill check. Basically, I'll only use Aid when I don't have another option to assist... and probably never in combat (where the action + reaction cost matters). I understand the logic, but it feels a bit much to spend action, reaction, and make a check... to at best give +1 but also maybe get unlucky and instead give -1. XP ) With XP only coming from combat, it discourages have social encounters or other activities... as the only way to level up is fight. Now, that can be mitigated by rewarding XP for 'social combat'... but that means you have to 'win'... even if your character is wrong. Really, it's hard to make a good XP system. Even a system that skips XP and rewards for completing 'major quests' can be trouble... since it may take a long time to complete one task and almost none for another task... so either level timing is a roller coaster, or some events don't get level rewards for being 'too soon'. Critical Special Effect ) Why is this a thing? I guess it is a power scale thing... get stronger, feel stronger. Oh... that description, it sounds very powerful. I can see why it would be a problem... and having played the Kingmaker game, I know how brutal being knocked prone can be. RIP my party. Disarm ) I'll keep in mind to not use that. I'm pretty sure in real life it is also a waste of time... it is difficult to achieve and faster to just defeat the opponent directly. I guess they needed to describe the mechanic to show that it shouldn't generally be tried. Stride ) Wait... it is restricted to the ground? Well, normally that isn't an issue... it would only be situations involving swimming or flying. The offered solution seems reasonable... though I haven't yet actually played the system, so don't know if that still feels restrictive to me.

Also animal companions will just quietly sit there as a kolbold slowly beats them to death with a stick, if their master gets knocked out. The animal also cannot to run and get help if the master falls down a well, because Lassie was just too damn OP and needed heavy nerfs

I think the intention of aid isn't to make it harder for low level characters, but to make it so that if you're aiding, you have to be good at the thing too. If you're helping me with computer repair, I'd hope you didn't suck at it.

Haste should give you an extra action (spendable on anything) and also increase your movement speed by 30feet

I'm not a big fan of Aid being tied to a skill, even the skill being used. Imagine that the Rogue is Disabling the Trap. The Cleric might be on lookout, the Wizard is hiding for fear of taking lethal Hard Work damage, and the barbarian is helping the Rogue. How? "Hold this. Put your finger there. Wipe my brow." There might be specific Aid checks like "lift this 2 inches, i need to get my hand under it." That uses strength. But the Barbarian doesn't need the Disable Device skill, he isn't the cook in the kitchen, he's juststirring the pot. For that reason, i heavily edit the Aid system to make co-operation fun. Sometimes i let them use the Rogue's bonus if they are just an extra pair of hands being given thourough instructions, sometimes there is no roll if they are just holding something

To anyone out there, is there a way to decrease the number inflation in P2e (aside from just removing level from proficiency)? I think it's ridiculous that mid to high level players can become completely immune to lower level monsters, even if they crit, simply because their AC is so high.

They gotta fix the flail/hammer thing in the revision. That seems like an obvious oversight

I feel like the polearm critical needs a buff.

If you want to do 3 action activity, have a ranger, druid, etc with animal companion 🐎. They can move you, in their turns two times, at cost of 1 action. In that way the game is more co-op that just casting Haste. Still the bird part is just ridiculous xD

Hey there! Great video, and can't say I disagree with any of your points as a player/GM/game design dabbler. As a fencer (foil, hema, and kendo) of over 20 years, there's a ludonarrative element of disarm I can advocate for. Disarming someone is actually REALLY hard. I think I've only managed to do so about twice by initiating a disarm offensively. Defensively it's much easier, parrying, using the opponent's momentum, and executing the disarm as a defense. It's probably no surprise that fencer swashbuckler is my favorite class, and I use disarm the same way. Either with an Opportune Riposte to disrupt their turn entirely, either making MAP that much worse for them, or disrupting their whole turn by requiring they pick their weapon back up. Alternatively, I use the Ready action to disarm them if I don't have Riposte on other characters. It comes as a worthy surprise to players and GMs alike. Especially because if, as a swashbuckler, I use a finisher, I can use my next two actions to Ready said disarm. I hope you find this useful! 😊

Why not just make Aid automatic? or is this too powerful?

I actually think I just figured out what the thinking might be on the design side (or at least what the original thinking was, since they seem to have dropped it for Beginners Box). What if the intention was for Aid to reflect party growth over time? So, the DC is high to start because you are likely a new party that has not had a history together and you are just learning how to be a team. Then, as you go through levels, both your characters and the players are learning to work together as a unit. So by high levels the aid check is easy because you have synergy, you know each other's moves and you can call out plays on the field and you are getting really really good at aiding each other. Does that make sense?

"If you tinker with one thing you might unintentionally effect the whole system PF2E is really well put together but everything is so interconnected compared to other rules systems even 5E that make it hard to homebrew for, and people love to homebrew. when systems are open for easy homebrew your games become so fun, if a homebrew screws up the system... then thats no fun, its why I advocate for the simpler systems.

I don't see disarm as being as bad as people say it is, and I believe that it fits into the overall design of the system. First of all, as another commenter has stated, disarming people is realistically difficult. Secondly, any consecutive attempts by other players are going to be easier by a whole 10%, which is rather high. Finally, it is going to be really difficult to properly balance disarming someone because of just how strong actually disarming someone is.

I'm curious. Have you seen Disarm used more on martial targets or soellcasters? I have seen more spellcasters targeted to Disarm that staff or powerful artifact they are using.

If the base disarm get the disarming flair effect, what effect disarming flair should get ? To not make swashbucklers have 1 less feat choice