Ok, so given this is a beta version, I assume feedback is useful? Sorry for the essay :) I've been taking notes while I made a character to figure out the rules.
Overall, I think the ideas here are great. It pulls a lot of the things I like from Pathfinder 2E and gently ignores a lot of the things I find annoying, so it definitely does what it's intending to do, for me at least.
The layout of the book isn't the clearest, though, and there are some assumptions in the text which aren't explicit or are mentioned only in passing. For example, the number of damage dice isn't explicitly stated anywhere except in a brief example ("For example, a Longsword has a base damage of 1d8, meaning you roll 1d8 as its damage die, 2d8 if you’re an Expert and so forth"). It would be good to put things like that in explicitly, and keep all the rules around (for example) number of damage dice and bonus damage together.
There might also need ot be a careful edit by someone other than the main author, to check for things referenced that shouldn't be there - e.g. general feats. I had to do a search through the PDF to work out that there are no general feats, only feats associated with the various paths and boons. Which makes sense, but that was really not clear since the rules refer to geenral feats on p 12.
It would also be useful to put in examples for a lot of things. I know they're a pain to write, but for some of the rules it would make it a _lot_ clearer. For example, reload weapons gain Discharged 1 after firing; the rules say that "Discharged ticks down at the beginning of Rounds and can be removed with an Interact action to reload the weapon" - but does that mean that Discharged ticks down by itself, and you have the option to use an Interact action instead (earlier, say), or that you must use an Interact action to tick Discharge down at the start of the round?
My only other general comment is that it would be great to have a section on translating or using PF2 content with the Pathwarden rules. I know you've said elsewhere that it isn't intended to be properly compatible, but the DCs are about the same, so in reality a lot of adventures and creatures at least should be usable as-is, and most equipment & magical items shouldn't be too hard to transpose. Spells would be hard, but not impossible, probably, and feats might take a bit of work, but... I don't know, it would be nice to have some advice for GMs who want to try.
Specific questions that came up for me:
(1) Do you get the Cantrip associated with a spell imbued into a focus item? Or just the main spell?
(2) If I make a melee strike using a focus item which is a weapon, that uses my magic proficiency rather than my combat proficiency. Does that mean the damage is 2dx P1 if I have an expert rank in Magic, even if my Combat rank is only Trained?
(3) How is Spell Difficulty calculated? It's on the character sheet, but there's no reference in the rules - is it meant to be a straight 10 + Magic Proficiency bonus, or does it depend on the spell rank (Trained / Expert / Master) as well?
(4) The rules state that reload weapons gain an additional damage die. Does that mean that (without any other boons or feats affecting number of damage dice) a crossbow should deal 2d8 damage at Trained, 3d8 at Expert, & 4d8 at Master (without affecting Potency, I assume)?
Hey! This is actually the current final edition, next one I would make would be 2nd edition of the game (that would be closer in rules to WARDEN, the spiritual successor), if I ever get to making it. Thankfully, WARDEN has an editor and has had much more time to brew.
I am aware (and a little ashamed) of the state Pathwarden was left in, but what is done is done.
On the examples, I am not great at writing examples, I must admit, that's why they are so sparse. Discharge, for example, is meant to lower automatically, but you CAN lower it with an interact action, as well.
I'll answer the more exact questions as well:
1) Focus items don't grant the Cantrip, that is the benefit of learning the spell. I think that is implied by the rules.
2) Yes. That simply makes sense, sadly the rules don't imply that.
3) Spell Difficulty is just 10 + Magic Bonus
4) Yup, you got it.
It's honestly kind of ironic how the next game managed to fix basically all of these ambiguities more or less, and I'm releasing the 0.3 version which is pretty close to final, in a few days. It also has a better layout, and editing, and everything. It's very hard for me to recommend Pathwarden again before I make a leaner, cleaner 2nd edition that is closer to the ultimately much more superior mechanics of WARDEN.
Thanks for the answers! <3 I hadn't run across the Warden project before (only discovered Pathwarden because of the Trans Rights Ohio bundle it's in) so I'll watch there for updates.
Hey, I'm trying to wrap my head around the Explore action. Is this just the "move to a new room/area, get a basic description" action, where Search is the "examine already-explored areas" action?
During point-to-point travel, how would you handle travel speed, obstacles, etc.? Would this be done in Exploration turns, Horizon turns, or just skipped over to get to the target location?
Other question- is Aid a reaction you can take anytime an ally makes a check, or do you need to take some action to 'ready' it? It seems oddly free to use.
The Explore action is something I'm definitely updating once I work some updates on the game, it's not well construed. To make it make more sense, imagine your default state in the game just being the adventure map, without actually caring too much about distances. "Explore" means you basically start a scene in the location you choose, and zoom into the game over there, and take any Exploration actions and run through Encounters etc, and then you move back to the map, and Explore a new location and continue.
It's a weird way to construe playing in a TTRPG, but it's what I had in mind when I wrote it. I'm planning on making better travel rules for the Exploration phase once I update the game. Generally, I would say that "Travel" to a location that is within a short distance takes one Exploration action, and to further places (Entire new locales like cities or whatever) takes one Horizon action. That's basically the scale I'm going for.
For the second question, yeah, Aid is supposed to be free and easy. It's a small roleplay opportunity, like throwing an enemy with a small rock to distract them, or giving an ally a boost if they're next to you, anything really goes. Basically, I wanted there to be a "default" Reaction characters can take even if they don't have a Boon or Feat that gives them a powerful reaction like Reactive Strike.
After those have run their course, I'm planning on updating the game a bit and then putting up more Community Copies. However, WARDEN will probably keep me busy for a while.
Fantastic game. Great evolution of game design within the space; the removal of long-past-due D&Disms is visionary. You can just choose what you want your character to be good at, and they'll be good at it. No fighting with Ability Scores and classes to realize character concepts. No unnecessary cruft. You can absorb the entirety of the system within one sitting and get to playing quickly. It has the depth to sustain interest, with fully-featured NPC/enemy creation rules to sustain long-term play past the bounds of its bestiary. While it is a fantasy game, it has enough flexibility to stretch into different fantasy settings with ease - the ability to explore non-Western fantasy settings/genres like wuxia is a big plus.
Stay on the lookout for WARDEN, the upcoming project expanding on this philosophy beyond elfgame fantasy with some extremely promising abilities to plug-and-play modules into a vast array of genres. I'm incredibly excited.
I wanted to ask, how does adding extra damage dice (like Hunt Prey or Stealth attack) work with the potency system? Do you add the dice after you chosen 1 or two from the base weapon damage, Or are the hunt prey/stealth attack dice added to the pool along with the weapon dice to keep 1 or 2? And do the stealth attack and Hunt Prey dice have their own potency?
In the final version I settled on additional damage dice abilities being added to the damage pool, with the same Potency. A rule of thumb is that you always just make a single roll when rolling damage, and unless you have increased potency you always just take the highest die.
Hunt Prey and Stealth Attack are primarily built to make attacks with lighter / ranged weapons noticeably more consistent in high / max damage rather than making them massive damage pumps.
Not my highest priority, but people in the community are bound to make one soon, considering one person made a form-fillable version of a playtest sheet.
I seriously have my hands full right now and don't want to start a new endeavor with new software (I'm so rusty with anything that does 't start with 'Affinity')
This sounds a bit like its taking some of the simpler style Dragonbane has. Is there any chance it includes solo rules like that boxset?
A PF2ed you could use to run all that content by yourself from time to time, and use as a less crunchy enterpoint would be something really spectacular indeed.
Solo rules... I am not expert in making Solo games, so I can't really say, but I might attempt something like that for the adventures I'm planning on making.
I'm planning on dropping a chunk of community copies when I release the game (around next month), and maybe consider an option to buy additional community copies for the game.
The game is in Early Access at the moment, and I have posted the current file on the Discord server, so you can get it from there.
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Ok, so given this is a beta version, I assume feedback is useful? Sorry for the essay :) I've been taking notes while I made a character to figure out the rules.
Overall, I think the ideas here are great. It pulls a lot of the things I like from Pathfinder 2E and gently ignores a lot of the things I find annoying, so it definitely does what it's intending to do, for me at least.
The layout of the book isn't the clearest, though, and there are some assumptions in the text which aren't explicit or are mentioned only in passing. For example, the number of damage dice isn't explicitly stated anywhere except in a brief example ("For example, a Longsword has a base damage of 1d8, meaning you roll 1d8 as its damage die, 2d8 if you’re an Expert and so forth"). It would be good to put things like that in explicitly, and keep all the rules around (for example) number of damage dice and bonus damage together.
There might also need ot be a careful edit by someone other than the main author, to check for things referenced that shouldn't be there - e.g. general feats. I had to do a search through the PDF to work out that there are no general feats, only feats associated with the various paths and boons. Which makes sense, but that was really not clear since the rules refer to geenral feats on p 12.
It would also be useful to put in examples for a lot of things. I know they're a pain to write, but for some of the rules it would make it a _lot_ clearer. For example, reload weapons gain Discharged 1 after firing; the rules say that "Discharged ticks down at the beginning of Rounds and can be removed with an Interact action to reload the weapon" - but does that mean that Discharged ticks down by itself, and you have the option to use an Interact action instead (earlier, say), or that you must use an Interact action to tick Discharge down at the start of the round?
My only other general comment is that it would be great to have a section on translating or using PF2 content with the Pathwarden rules. I know you've said elsewhere that it isn't intended to be properly compatible, but the DCs are about the same, so in reality a lot of adventures and creatures at least should be usable as-is, and most equipment & magical items shouldn't be too hard to transpose. Spells would be hard, but not impossible, probably, and feats might take a bit of work, but... I don't know, it would be nice to have some advice for GMs who want to try.
Specific questions that came up for me:
(1) Do you get the Cantrip associated with a spell imbued into a focus item? Or just the main spell?
(2) If I make a melee strike using a focus item which is a weapon, that uses my magic proficiency rather than my combat proficiency. Does that mean the damage is 2dx P1 if I have an expert rank in Magic, even if my Combat rank is only Trained?
(3) How is Spell Difficulty calculated? It's on the character sheet, but there's no reference in the rules - is it meant to be a straight 10 + Magic Proficiency bonus, or does it depend on the spell rank (Trained / Expert / Master) as well?
(4) The rules state that reload weapons gain an additional damage die. Does that mean that (without any other boons or feats affecting number of damage dice) a crossbow should deal 2d8 damage at Trained, 3d8 at Expert, & 4d8 at Master (without affecting Potency, I assume)?
Hey! This is actually the current final edition, next one I would make would be 2nd edition of the game (that would be closer in rules to WARDEN, the spiritual successor), if I ever get to making it. Thankfully, WARDEN has an editor and has had much more time to brew.
I am aware (and a little ashamed) of the state Pathwarden was left in, but what is done is done.
On the examples, I am not great at writing examples, I must admit, that's why they are so sparse. Discharge, for example, is meant to lower automatically, but you CAN lower it with an interact action, as well.
I'll answer the more exact questions as well:
1) Focus items don't grant the Cantrip, that is the benefit of learning the spell. I think that is implied by the rules.
2) Yes. That simply makes sense, sadly the rules don't imply that.
3) Spell Difficulty is just 10 + Magic Bonus
4) Yup, you got it.
It's honestly kind of ironic how the next game managed to fix basically all of these ambiguities more or less, and I'm releasing the 0.3 version which is pretty close to final, in a few days. It also has a better layout, and editing, and everything. It's very hard for me to recommend Pathwarden again before I make a leaner, cleaner 2nd edition that is closer to the ultimately much more superior mechanics of WARDEN.
Thanks for the answers! <3 I hadn't run across the Warden project before (only discovered Pathwarden because of the Trans Rights Ohio bundle it's in) so I'll watch there for updates.
Hey, I'm trying to wrap my head around the Explore action. Is this just the "move to a new room/area, get a basic description" action, where Search is the "examine already-explored areas" action?
During point-to-point travel, how would you handle travel speed, obstacles, etc.? Would this be done in Exploration turns, Horizon turns, or just skipped over to get to the target location?
Other question- is Aid a reaction you can take anytime an ally makes a check, or do you need to take some action to 'ready' it? It seems oddly free to use.
The Explore action is something I'm definitely updating once I work some updates on the game, it's not well construed. To make it make more sense, imagine your default state in the game just being the adventure map, without actually caring too much about distances. "Explore" means you basically start a scene in the location you choose, and zoom into the game over there, and take any Exploration actions and run through Encounters etc, and then you move back to the map, and Explore a new location and continue.
It's a weird way to construe playing in a TTRPG, but it's what I had in mind when I wrote it. I'm planning on making better travel rules for the Exploration phase once I update the game. Generally, I would say that "Travel" to a location that is within a short distance takes one Exploration action, and to further places (Entire new locales like cities or whatever) takes one Horizon action. That's basically the scale I'm going for.
For the second question, yeah, Aid is supposed to be free and easy. It's a small roleplay opportunity, like throwing an enemy with a small rock to distract them, or giving an ally a boost if they're next to you, anything really goes. Basically, I wanted there to be a "default" Reaction characters can take even if they don't have a Boon or Feat that gives them a powerful reaction like Reactive Strike.
Hi. Do you plan putting up more communities copies?
Eventually, but not right now. The game is currently up for as a freebie in my Backerkit campaign for the follow-up game called WARDEN, and it'll be part of a bundle next month.
After those have run their course, I'm planning on updating the game a bit and then putting up more Community Copies. However, WARDEN will probably keep me busy for a while.
Cool. Can't wait to see WARDEN. I'm a fan of Pathfinder 2e, especially the 3-action and the feat system.
Any chance for community copies?
Sure, I can drop a few for the new year!
Thank you so much! I'll give the game a good rating!
I see the Forceful trait mentioned but, unless my search function is glitching, it's not defined. What exactly is it meant to do?
Oh! Weird. In the follow up game (WARDEN) I actually remembered to put in, and it works like this:
Forceful: Add a +2 universal bonus to damage for your second strike in a round, and a +3 for your third and further strikes in a round.
The context being (when using this weapon) of course.
Thanks for the heads-up! I'll add this to the list of missing things I will ameliorate the next time I update the file!
I presumed it was something like that, thanks for the clarification.
Fantastic game. Great evolution of game design within the space; the removal of long-past-due D&Disms is visionary. You can just choose what you want your character to be good at, and they'll be good at it. No fighting with Ability Scores and classes to realize character concepts. No unnecessary cruft. You can absorb the entirety of the system within one sitting and get to playing quickly. It has the depth to sustain interest, with fully-featured NPC/enemy creation rules to sustain long-term play past the bounds of its bestiary. While it is a fantasy game, it has enough flexibility to stretch into different fantasy settings with ease - the ability to explore non-Western fantasy settings/genres like wuxia is a big plus.
Stay on the lookout for WARDEN, the upcoming project expanding on this philosophy beyond elfgame fantasy with some extremely promising abilities to plug-and-play modules into a vast array of genres. I'm incredibly excited.
I wanted to ask, how does adding extra damage dice (like Hunt Prey or Stealth attack) work with the potency system? Do you add the dice after you chosen 1 or two from the base weapon damage, Or are the hunt prey/stealth attack dice added to the pool along with the weapon dice to keep 1 or 2? And do the stealth attack and Hunt Prey dice have their own potency?
In the final version I settled on additional damage dice abilities being added to the damage pool, with the same Potency. A rule of thumb is that you always just make a single roll when rolling damage, and unless you have increased potency you always just take the highest die.
Hunt Prey and Stealth Attack are primarily built to make attacks with lighter / ranged weapons noticeably more consistent in high / max damage rather than making them massive damage pumps.
Hay! do you ever plan on making a form fillable Character Sheet?
Not my highest priority, but people in the community are bound to make one soon, considering one person made a form-fillable version of a playtest sheet.
I seriously have my hands full right now and don't want to start a new endeavor with new software (I'm so rusty with anything that does 't start with 'Affinity')
This sounds a bit like its taking some of the simpler style Dragonbane has. Is there any chance it includes solo rules like that boxset?
A PF2ed you could use to run all that content by yourself from time to time, and use as a less crunchy enterpoint would be something really spectacular indeed.
Solo rules... I am not expert in making Solo games, so I can't really say, but I might attempt something like that for the adventures I'm planning on making.
Would it be possible to get a community copy? Money is a bit tight at the minute
I'm planning on dropping a chunk of community copies when I release the game (around next month), and maybe consider an option to buy additional community copies for the game.
The game is in Early Access at the moment, and I have posted the current file on the Discord server, so you can get it from there.
That's fantastic, thank you!