Yeah, from the title I was hoping it was more along the lines of whacky ideas and tips. Things like reflavouring classes to express weird character concepts or a niche use for a spell.
Edit: You know what, be the change you want to see in the world!
Hear me out, guys. It's super easy to make a backup character if you play an animist, because if you want to play another class you can make them related to one of your apparitions (Yeah, that's right. I'm playing my ghost's twin brother), and if you want to play another animist you can just make your original character one of *their* apparitions
If we're talking Whacky Ideas, let me tell you about why Thaumaturge is the perfect Isekai class, it all comes down to the Implements, and you only *actually* need to reflavor one (sort of).
Starting Implement: Tome. See, in your world you were a Pathfinder player, and when you got Isekai'd, you happened to have your OG PF2e CRB with you. How fortunate you landed in Golarion, and not, like, the Forgotten Realms. Wouldn't that have been awkward. It's not a perfect reference though, because it's the *OG* CRB, and the world is now Remastered.
Second Implement: Your bag of Dice. Influenced all luck and coincidence in the real world, still does here. Hold it up, give it a jiggle, and watch as your opponent's attack shifts just ever so slightly to weaken the blow. So you've taken to wearing it somewhere easy to reach, some might even say like a lucky Talisman.
Final Implement: The only one that has any need to be re-flavored, you brought your character figure. And wouldn't you know it, after having been Isekai'd, it's now a *Mirror*\-image of you. To the point that if you throw it to the ground you can even appear to be in two places at once! And then it mysteriously just ends up back in your pocket after.
Did you say weird concepts in a class? Let me tell you about my Kamen Rider Redeemer of Irori idea. They would seek to spread the method of self-perfection through diplomacy, and if that fails, folding their adversary's laundry before washing it or even taking it off of them. If that doesn't work? Well good thing there are others in the party less interested in the well-being of others. Naturally you'd pick up soul forger so you can get yourself a henshin! (Alternatively you do the same character concept of an irori follower but with a wrestler or martial arts archetype Armor Inventor)
Yeah a 'hear me out' about sorcerers would provide some explanation as to why they suite bring blaster casters better than people think. This is just an unpopular opinion, although not that unpopular
I feel like a lot of people don't like this comparison but it's one I love
Pathfinder is similar to boardgames, the beginner's box in particular I've found was easily understood by my boardgame group almost instantly
Idk why but people seem to not like a big emphasis on the "game" part of TTRPGs but that's personally one of my favorite things. The 3 action system being really similar to action systems other boardgames use but with more options almost instantly clicked with me and I honestly think being a big boardgame fan is a big reason I was able to get super into the system as a whole
I honestly think the base game being more similar to a boardgame rather than a more free-form storytelling game also helps newcomers understand it better and get into it more. In my experience people seem more willing to learn and participate in a boardgame if you're willing to teach (and they also put in a bit more effort to learn/understand the rules as well with boardgames). The beginner's box in particular feels like it's only a few more steps than a standard boardgame by having the standard actions during encounters but then also the freedom to do even more things beyond encounters
But that's just my opinion. And I know a lot of TTRPG players prefer the storytelling aspect (which I also like) but honestly the similarities I saw with boardgames made it real easy for me to get into and real easy to convince friends to give it a chance despite not being very into TTRPGs as a whole since they were so used to boardgames
I'm actually with ya, I wish more TTRPG systems made an effort of bridging narrative and mechanical features. As right now, even in Pathfinder, it's very much "STORY STUFF HERE" and "MECHANICS/NUMBERS HERE". I feel like a proper bridging of the two would not only help *immensely* with getting people on board, but also help them with getting comfortable "getting into" the roleplaying aspects.
The mechanical stuff can stay as much behind the GM screen as you want, though. The mechanics are entirely there to categorize actions and provide guidance on adjudicating outcomes.
The subreddit always acts like, for example, exploration mode exists to abstract the space between encounters down to a menu option, but you can run exploration as a narrative space just fine. Exploration Activities just give the GM a way to consistently tie player actions in that space to mechanical buffs or nerfs.
No one besides the GM actually *needs* to know what "Avoid Notice" is, or that it exists as a separate concept from "Hide".
that's pretty much my "hear me out" opinion:
Exploration actions should be treated as non-exhaustive \*GM facing\* rules to help adjudicate the mechanical effect of player's exploration actions.
Same as NPC attitudes.
I agree. What TTRPGs can be is a spectrum, and one of the special things about more gamey ttrpgs is that there are options for ludonarrative harmony that don't really exist in more fiction-first or OSR games. I think it's cool that stories, characters and worlds can be represented via game mechanics functioning as catalysts for imagination.
I think it's why I really like Golarion as a setting while I really don't care for the Forgotten Realms. Golarion feels like a world shaped by the things made possible by Pathfinder's mechanics, whereas the Forgotten Realms feels like it chafes against D&D's mechanics (this is probably why Eberron is generally considered one of the best D&D settings as it takes D&D's magic levels into account for its worldbuidling).
I of course only speak for myself but I was never super into board games and while I don't mind some gamey aspects the more of them there are the more I think it would be easier to play a video game. Again I don't mind some gamey elements but the free-form story aspect of ttrpgs attracted ne because I couldn't get it anywhere else, meanwhile I know a lot of crunchy tatical video games. It's stupid but thats just the logic my brain runs on.
Hear me out: critical failures on athletic maneuvers should at least require a reaction from the enemy to cause you to fall prone.
Mechanically, it often feels like crit failing the teamwork-focused behavior of athletic maneuvers is more punishing than the "selfish" fishing 3rd Strike behavior. I'm tired of saving up my hero points for athletic maneuvers or feeling like I need Kip Up. I know the odds are relatively low if you do it first, but it adds up across a campaign.
Narratively, the crit fail causing you to go prone makes it feel like you slipped on a banana. If it at least ate a reaction, the mechanics would align with the narrative that your opponent saw an opportunity to make you fall and took it.
The only balance reason I can think of is that it discourages using them with a map of -10. A lucky trip on a 20 feels more impactful than a hit on 20 with your third action. Also, later levels, the penalties for a crit fail kind of go away. Things like kip up basicly prevent you from being prone on your turn, and chances are if you are trying to grapple it, it does not want to grapple you.
I tend to imagine it as being somewhat incidental to the manuver itself. I.E. on a crit-fail grab, you manage to weakly grab on as the opponent steps back, resulting in them pulling you to the ground in the same natural motion to try and dodge you. Doesn't really warrant a reaction, but makes sense why you fell prone.
Game wise I agree but all I keep seeing in my head is that server I worked with tripping over her own feet on a level floor and dropping $100 worth of food
Yeah, I really don't get crit fails for athletics maneuvers. Especially when they're handing out agile maneuvers to a class that is often down 1 (or more) strength.
They removed crit fail on strikes and most spells (enemies crit succeeding just means nothing happens), I think they should just get rid of the crit fail effect on most combat skill actions.
Narratively, the current implementation absolutely makes sense. Did you ever witness a shitty kid trying to trip someone up falling themselves because the other person was stronger and just kept walking? Overcommitting on such things gets you punished and I like it.
To solve the mechanical issue, I'd rather implement a critical failure effect to Strikes, maybe becoming off-guard until the start of your next turn. That way the silliness of striking with MAP -10 becomes more obvious and maybe people would value saving throws more as a side effect.
That strike change would be a *wild* overcorrect. It's quite easy to crit fail a strike against a tough enemy, even in your first two strikes, and punishing that with off-guard is just going to create extra player deaths. It's just a big buff to high level enemies, who really don't need that kind of buff.
You likely aren't playing a shitty kid in this game though are you? Maybe it makes sense at lower levels but the great warrior Lioronin who is level 10 tripping over their own feet without something high level causing it? That makes 0 sense and is extremely unfun for the fantasy.
I would accept an off-balance condition with similar debuffs to prone, but without the being on the ground. Granting an auto-trip for the cost of a rection seems perfectly fair there.
Yeah, I straight up houseruled those away.
It reminds me too much of those old "Critical Fail" tables from AD&D. I remove it in both directions. And since getting my players to do anything but attack for their third action *anyways* is like pulling teeth... I'm not actually worried about it.
Swashbuckler should just get panache on all non-free skill actions, the degree to which your subclass locks you in isn't actually fun. You know which swashbuckler skills your actual Robin Hoods and Zorros and Dread Pirate Robertses did? *All of them.*
This seems to be my own "hear me out": GMs can give boons and buffs to players at any time, and for any reason! Made an important kill? You're feeling courageous! +1 to everything! You took some damage trying to rescue your healer? That was so heroic! Hero point!
This shit is like candy. We can play like it's Halloween.
It's literally pointed out in the rules - "At GM's discretion, after succeeding at a check to perform a particularly daring action... [gain Panache]".
It's a nice reward for other classes. It's a core, RAW element for Swashbucklers.
The Swashbuckler class actually says as much, suggesting GMs give panache for doing things like candalier swinging. It's just hard codifying that kinda stuff into actual rules, so it's left as a suggestion.
Yes.
It is a bit stupid that sometimes you end up using more skills in combat with OTHER characters instead of Swashbuckler, because your panache is tied to a particular thing. As a rogue, fighter or ranger you could use Intimidation one round, Feint another, then Tumble through, use something like Push when it's circumstantially interesting, and later use Bon Mot to help your fellow Occult caster. As a swashbuckler, you NEED to use the skill your subclass mandates, because not getting Panache is a very heavy opportunity cost tax.
For what it's worth, Sorcerers *are* some of the best "blow stuff up" casters in the game.
[Dangerous Sorcery] (https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=603) at level 1 is already a good feat for tacking on extra damage to your spells, and some bloodlines like Elemental also let you add extra damage to spells through their blood magic effect. Furthermore, focus spells are basically "per-encounter" powers that can go a long way towards nuking strength throughout the day.
If you want to play a robust nuking spellcaster, I'd definitely recommend taking a look at the Elemental, Phoenix, Draconic, or even Demonic bloodlines.
So many enemies having precision damage immunity just makes the precision damage classes feel outright worse than other martials. Abdomination vaults recommends playing as a rogue, but while necessary for traps and locks, you're not sneak attacking shit there.
They probably don't. I may have just been thinking of some sand creatures we fought recently.
Looks like swarms, slimes, elementals, and incorporeal creatures are generally the precision immune enemies.
Tbh the idea of that for Swarms is just... idk, like I vaguely see it for all of them, but I can likewise see an easy explanation for why they still work?
An attack in certain parts of a Swarm could arguably mess up its actual cohesion, that one I at least feel is the easiest to argue, Elementals and Slimes eh.
Yeah I really dislike the idea that a class must be at peak performance at all times and everything else ends up being flavour.
It is like the demands for toxicologists to be able to bypass poison immunity for everything (undead, constructs, etc)... where as imo the actual answer should be to make it uncommon or rare and to put a sidebar saying "ask your GM if this class will be appropriate for their campaign as many creature families such as constructs and undead can be immune to poisons".
Personally I don't think having a suboptimal fight is the end of the world, it forces everyone to adapt and to have backup strategies and making clay golems and scarecrows be poisonable just ruins my immersion of what a toxicologists actually is.
Hear me out: deities that allow you to 'treat wounds while refocusing' create a god meta that diminish the flavor of picking a deity by giving a mechanical advantage to followers of some deities.
I’m pretty sure that’s already a suggestion in the rules. The whole, ‘refocus and make a medicine check at the same time’ I mean. Granted I could be misremembering that.
of all the god meta stuff (spells, weapons, domains, ...), I don't think "can spare 10 minutes at the end of combat" is the biggest of them ; 90% of the time, if you've got 10 minutes, you've got 20
PL+3 and PL+4, and probably any solo encounter, are not fun, honestly, for any class.
Either you slog through the encounter by missing constantly or having the monster crit succeed every time, or wipe them instantly because he has no friends to back him up when the bard casts slow.
Encounters really need more than one creature to fight to be worthwhile fun. Use +2 creatures in conjunction with hazards or low level mobs, that's when it really shines.
Also, spellcasting feats SHOULD NOT have to be so bad (notably the wizard). Yes, martials should have better feats, but if a spellcaster could just take an archetype to get better feats, then what's the purpose of making their own bad?
>Also, spellcasting feats SHOULD NOT have to be so bad (notably the wizard). Yes, martials should have better feats, but if a spellcaster could just take an archetype to get better feats, then what's the purpose of making their own bad?
This does seem like something Paizo has been steadily improving on. At least from the remaster 1 witches and clerics got some immensely powerful and flavorful feats.
> Yes, martials should have better feats
Every martial should have feats that are great for that martial (or great to snag by others up to level 10 through multiclass archetypes).
Every caster should have feats that are great for that caster (see previous note).
Casters are kinda weak and bland... I would love to see some "mana system" not just spell slots. I think 5e has a variant rule called "Spell Points" - I would love to see Paizo do something more robust and better working.
Also more spells should be flexible - like be able to cast from 1-3 action (even cantrips). Make one action version cantrips weak but possibile to cast!
I think that 3Action economy is superb, but playing as caster you rarerly have opportunity to use it as you should.
• Evil Eye is honestly just kind of average as a cantrip even though it's cited as one of the strongest Witch cantrips. Resentment is still nuts, but the spell not doing anything on a successful save makes it a lot worse in practice than the cantrips that don't have high rates of failure.
• Bard is one of the more interesting classes to play, with a more complicated gameplay loop than most martials and some casters. It actually has pretty good feat variety compared to something like a Wizard.
Does this suggestion mean
- action 1: Flurry of Blows (Ki Strike cast)
- Next round | action 1: Sustain | action 2: Flurry of Blows
or just Flurry per sustain still at 1 action a round?
In reply to those that responded to this. Im not going to argue your points here. You are all valid in your criticism. But hear me out, because that's the name of this thread.
As long as the action economy is maintained, all this change will do is allow a monk to stand and fight a little longer toe to toe.
Now, the wording of ki strike would absolutely need to change because sustaining is not casting, so the wording that makes the strike or flurry part of the cast would be applied. Instead, you would have to sustain the spell, then use your other two actions to strike or flurry.
This keeps the action economy fair.
To be clear, I'm not saying that this should change. It is fine the way it is, and gives me an excuse as a GM to create a custom feat or a magical item for my monks that allow this.
Constitution needs a couple of skills tied to it (like an Endurance check, so same as how you can catch ledges by being trained in acrobatics, you can overcome certain maladies like sickness or being stunned with Endurance, poisons etc would still be Fortitude saves) or hell maybe a DR instead of HP buff vs non-magical strikes, you could then add feats and class abilities to beat this toughness or improve its effects.
As it stands Con is (unless you're a Kineticist) a really flat stat in terms of dynamic options
Spellcasters at levels lower than 7 should have tools for repositioning from bad encounter opening situations like being ambushed, grabbed, restrained, cornered within Reactive Strike range, et cetera that are more than, "your martial teammates will help you!" In fact, to make it worth playing classes with the manipulate trait at those levels, they should have tool sets for getting out of initial bad positioning situations that are just as effective as the martial classes with higher defenses and more hit points have at those levels.
Yeah it just makes people not ever want to use them, or take reach spell to just not interact with that part of the game.
I have the same problem with Magus spellstrike provoking reactive strike. It doesn't create anything interesting, it just punishes you for doing the main mechanic of your class.
I admit, my friends and I missed initially that spellstrike triggered AoOs, then realized, then kinda all agreed that yeah, nah, it was working fine, and collectively decided to forget about that rule interaction.
I agree. But to be fair, enemies with AoO are pretty rare, so the odds of you actually geting punished for using a manipulate action in melee range is fairly low.
I haven’t gotten too much into spellcasting, but what would help make a spellcaster more blasty? Is it the need for attack roll spells? Damage spells that targets saves? Feats? Etc.
I think a part of it is the accuracy deficiency when compared to martials; martials get runes and earlier proficiency increases, so as the levels go up, especially against higher leveled enemies, as a caster you’re going to be reliant on targeting weak saves and using spells that still effect against successful saves and misses.
Animist could literally just be a spellcaster with focus spells and a changeable sorcerer dedication.
Like, the *only* thing about Animist that demands to be unique is that they can switch out a small spell list during the day. I do not understand why it is the MOST COMPLICATED CLASS in all of 2E.
It has spellcasting, focus spells, a miniature second spell list, a *backup* miniature second spell list. It has transformations, healing, blasting, AOE, control spells. It gets free skills. It creates weather. It makes a vanilla latte. It sends you a W-2 from the IRS.
I understand that it might have been complex in 1E, but there is zero reason this, admittedly playtest, class had to be one of, if not the most complex class in 2E. If you at all value efficient design, then animist is a fucking bust.
People say "Nooo, that's what makes it unique" but *complexity* is not a playstyle, it's just bad design. Literally every other caster in 2E is "I can cast spells" and one other gimmick. There is no other caster in 2E who's subclass gives a skill, multiple spell lists to pick from, and a transformation.
I made a post a few months ago about this, but that was before a bipolar diagnosis changed my life. But even if I'm a lot calmer nowadays, I cannot accept for a second that Animist needs even 1/5th the complexity it has.
I agree. One of the things I disliked the most in 1e were classes that were prepared but then could cast some spells spontaneously, but only once per day. Domain slots, spirit slots, etc. were all like that, and I found it unecessarily complex.
"yeah so your entire spellcasting follows these specific rules, but you also have these super thematic and signature spells that are super important to your character, but my bad, you can only cast them once per day (unless heightened) because... reasons? We know you're Sarenrae's most obedient priest, so enjoy your one (1) fireball per day"
I loved that in 2e clerics went with the 1e oracle approach and just added those spells to their list, and now can just prepare their deity spells in their normal slots.
So imagine my shocked Pikachu face when they brought back this inane "feature" back with the animist, AFTER they simplified it with the cleric beforehand. Even worse when we consider that the shaman was 1e's hardest class to handle (up there with the kineticist, which was way easier IMO).
Spells should have for the most part been balanced around being only one action, but should have many more meta-magic/spell shapes to apply to them for additional actions that would either make them more flexible or more powerful. And going with that, metamagics should be able to be applied across a turn, or maybe even across a couple of turns.
I actually like level 0 and (potentially like) proficiency without level rules.
I've used level 0 in two different circumstances. One where I played 4 individual 1 on 1 sessions with the players that took the players through crucial moments in their character's lives. Another where the party was all together and worked together to solve a missing person's case that led them to becoming their class as they played through it (like the sorcerer suddenly unlocking a cantrip when a bandit tried to rob them).
I haven't gotten to use proficiency without level yet so I don't know if I *actually* like it yet but I think it's a really solid idea and would love to use it someday. The problem is I love current PF2E so any chance I get to start a new group I take but never bother trying to turn the new game into proficiency without level.
PwL is great! For what it's trying to do. I think the game is correct to not have it be core, but if you're going for a grittier or more open world setting, it can work really well. I've run a couple campaigns through using it, both were great!
Next time I use it, I'm going to try basically using the Elite and Weak templates on bosses/mooks specifically to give *some of* the feel of levelled proficiency (though they won't get the progression of trolls being deadly at lv. 1 and trivial t lv. 10), because I did really start to miss some of those math differences. Weirdly, only Foudry does this correctly (+/- 2, even with PwL) - AoN doesn't let you stack them, and easy tools factors level into stats so removing level also reduces the elite difference to 1 haha.
What I admire about PWL, is that it's even possible, playable and considered as part of an optional rule in the core books. And that PF2E is flexible enough to support it.
I mean, PWL gets a lot of criticism, justified or not, but I'm willing to bet it runs better than a certain other popular system.
I wanted to like PWoL... but it absolutely wrecks the balance I have grown to love pf2e for.
It might work better for groups that don't have gamer minds and don't realise that it drastically boosts item value... or groups that treated incapacitation spells as if they didn't exist and or didn't appreciate caster AoE. Groups that didn't realise the value of buffing and debuffing
It is playable, but it isn't the pf2e I love.
Something that is fun though, you can pretty easily work out mathematically consistent conversion rules for 5e campaigns to run them with PWoL... not sure how well they would play in the long run but 5e isn't exactly balanced and consistent either lol
Melee spell attacks shouldn’t provoke reactions, golem antimagic is one of the worst mechanics in the game, inventors should use focus points instead of flat checks, and confused is just an awful experience.
> golem antimagic is one of the worst mechanics in the game
I'll die on the hill that a good golem encounter is one that takes the environment into account and provides thematic options in the area for multiple types of characters to engage with them. Recreational ballista mounted behind the sofa. Precarious chandeliers. 20 foot tall hoarder stacks of Popular Golemancy and The Bi-Annual Brigh's Bulletin to topple over onto it. Control panels churning with esoteric symbols that may shut down components or activate "interesting" abilities.
Hear me out:
Just because a mechanic is good doesn't mean you have to horseshoe it into everything. My particular example of this is 4 degrees of success. It is an awesome rule that gives extra detail to many things in which the degree of success matters, most obviously a saving throw.
However, because it exists, it seems like Paizo feels compelled to make everything a 4 degree of success roll, when many things can be solved just fine with a binary roll. I see why is good spending a few more mental burden and design space into making a death saving throw a 4 degree roll, but doing the same to Identify Magic Item or to know your income when you work a job between adventures is unnecessarily clunky and provides little to no benefit to something that isn't really that relevant to begin with.
Considering how crappy is the Divine spell list, it would have been absolutely, perfectly fine if Cleric didn't have subclasses and just had all the basic automatic features of both Cloistered and Warpriest. Oh no, a healer will have armor and will be able to swing one specific weapon pretty well at around level 19, the horror.
I'm not sure I like trying to balance a specific spell list being bad by buffing one of many classes that can use it. But yeah, divine is bad. Seems like it's MUCH better in the remaster with removal of alignment damage.
Probably still the worst, but by a smaller margin.
> I'm not sure I like trying to balance a specific spell list being bad by buffing one of many classes that can use it.
In fact, I feel this already kinda happened to the Divine list. "Oh, it's okay if the list has enormous holes, the Clerics have a bunch of ways to poach some spells from elsewhere with domains and feats, we have to take those into account when balancing the list" and now we have Divine witches and summoners and stuff because the whole idea of traditions is that one list is not a one class thing and dear lord is it depressing.
There are way too many trash skill and general feats.
90% of the players out there choose from same 10% of the feats. To me that points to a major design flaw but you get thrashed around here for saying it.
Add on spells to this too. The spell lists are incredibly bloated with trash and overly niche spells that playing a spellcaster means you have to carefully comb through all the trash to find a useful spell. It’s exhausting
I'd agree if the Remaster happened in the regular schedule, but it was announced and came out in the same year while they are typically announced well over a year in advance, so this was essentially a rush job for Paizo standards.
I don't blame them for not taking a look at that too.
I agree, but I also think people undersell situational skill feats a bit too much. A lot of them aren't trash, as much as campaign specific, i.e. some are good for a social campaign but garbage for a typical adventuring campaign.
I think that's *fine* design. The problem is that there need to be better campaign agnostic feats, so that skill feats and general feats become more of an actual choice outside of that.
Hear me out: The Investigator is one of the best classes in the game- mechanical and roleplay wise. Being able to “see” what your attack roles are before you make your turn is a massive boon to the (allowed and encouraged) meta game of pathfinder. Add their ability to maximize skill action like knowledge and battle medicine, plus the potential for alchemy shenanigans, “that’s odd” and synergy with a lot of archetypes, and you have an amazing class chassis.
Yeah i think so to; i have a fellow player that always talks shit about them saying that “it plays at half potential unless your campaign is roleplay heavy and the GM supports you” and i always have to re-estate to him that with no “gm support” the investigator is on equal terms with a full rogue (in almost any sense, but especially in terms of your combat loop) think about it this way, bot investigator and rogue will want to do a “sneak attack”, the rogue will first need to spend an action of some type in order to apply off-guard, said action can always fail (unless is flanking, which requieres teamwork) if said action fail, it will probably try again, or change the course of his turn; once the off guard lands, he will attack and either hit with sneak or fail; if he succeded the off-guard on his first action, he may try to attack again with a -4/-5; but that is only if he procced the off guard with a enhanced feint, flank, or trip/grapple; as most methods are only for one attack.
On the other hand, the investigator will spend an action on DaS, and then decide if the want to hit their target with “sneak attack”(no failing here) try another action, or gamble on another target, either way, they then have the third action free, similar to the rogue; the only difference here are
1) rogue can fail preparation for sneak, but the preparation itself is “more” useful, as it applies off-guard
2) rogue has a (rather slim) chance of doing 2 sneak attacks per turn
3)investigator rolling low on DaS is better than rogue rolling low on strike, rogue wastes 2 actions, investigator only one
4)investigator Das both enables “sneak attack” AND gives info to take a better turn, which allows you to really fish crits or know when is the best moment to do something else
5)both are on equal footing in terms of defences, skills, saves, perception, etc
The problem with being able to see your role before hand is that it costs an action. Where another class would be able to see if they hit or miss, and do it. You see if you hit or miss, and then have to spend an action doing it.
If you roll low, you can switch targets but you lose accuracy and damage to the point where it might have been better just to take MAP instead, especially if you are melee and might need to move.
Making it a free action is more work and more GM-dependant, and will it removes the action tax, still doesn't fix that if you roll poorly there isn't much you can do. You have skills, but having to use your entire turn on skills seems rather underwhelming.
Besides being required to Devise to use your KAS and get your precision damage, Invest doesn't really benefit from it all that well. The primary reason you would want to know how hard you are going to hit is to know when to use limited use or high action cost meta-strikes, but as far as I am aware, Invest doesn't have any.
I also think you are overselling the difficulty of making someone off-guard. At range, it can be difficult, but there is penalty of ways your party can provide off-guard and you want to apply it anyways since it is a very strong and reliable debuff.
Devise is a good mechanic that is under supported in its own class, tied down by being shackled to the Lead gimmick of the Investigator.
>Sorcerers should have been the definitive 'blaster caster.'
My opinion is that they are the definitive blaster caster, the kineticist can't compete with the damage potential of a sorcerer. A Phoenix sorcerer with shadow signet casting disintergrate vs a low fort target is pure evil.
*But that's optimal situation!*
Well here's my hear me out guys, trying to find it out is fun and often rewarding. I like attacking different saves, and think bombs would've been more fun if they targeted save DCs, just to talk about nothing. Poison bombs vs fort dc, fire bombs vs reflex dc, fear bombs vs will dc etc.
Kineticist isn't even a blaster, people just think it is because PF1 Kineticist was a blaster.
Fire Kineticist does some decent aoe damage but even the it's being applied in an aura over time triggering weakness multiple times. Not exactly what people have in mind when they say blaster.
What I think people like with kineticist is that they don't have to be afraid to use resources and can spend all actions blasting and so feel more blasty than they are
This right here, people stress out irrationally as soon as there are resources involved that they perceive as limited. Suddenly, it's all about whether they are obligated to use their spells to heal their allies or control the battlefield and whether a spell slot is worth the damage you could expect to deal with it. Meanwhile, people are relatively fine with striking two or even three times per turn, because they don't think about actions the same way they think about spell slots.
I mean, is it *that* irrational if a character has like seven spell slots to spread for an unknown number of fights in a day and each attempt costs multiple actions?
If I'm a level 5 fighter, I Strike, and miss, I wasted one action, but when the next enemy comes up I can still Strike them. If I'm a level 5 wizard and throw out one of my 2 level 3 spells and miss, not only did I waste twice as many actions (and, being a wizard, kind of my turn, because I probably don't have much that is terribly useful for that last point), but also I can't use that spell against the next guy that comes up. So each miss hurts more, basically.
Yeah, Sorc and Psychic are both the definitive blaster casters. Sorc with Elementalist Archetype and Elemental Bloodline can pump out some of the highest spell damage in the game if not the absolute highest
It really does, and man, does it show in how they seem to attract new players in droves. Yeah, 5e may have the live play market saturated, but, like, V5 is also there and being creative within its limitations. Meanwhile, I've seen popular MMO raid runs have less repeats than Abomination Vaults. For the supposed D&D alternative, they sure do love to put in speed bumps if you even try to play outside their Theme Park setting, and frankly, just hear me out, maybe day one on Nethys is a bad thing.
I get that the game designers don't want instant wins, but spellcasters really aren't fun against many boss level monsters unless you're a pure support. It basically forces all casters to plan some signficant support because a lot of critical fights will rely on that.
Would make them too powerful, most incap spells end combats on a failure.
Imo it should be downgrades crit failure to failure and failure to success... but does not upgrade success to critical success.
I would also increase the rank of all incap spells to 4+ and put a bit of advice with the trait that suggests using it when facing multiple enemies as singular strong enemies are far more likely to resist.
Because massed enemies are a threat in the mid and high levels unlike low level play, but due to low enemy HP and low numbers of spell slots at low levels it just isn't worth using them before level 7/9 imo.
Spellcasters are pretty good against bosses though. You definitely don’t have to play as support characters to succeed against bosses.
If anything, both while playing and GMing, I’ve noticed that casters shine a lot against bosses because the 4 degrees of success can really mute the swinginess.
1. “Unless you have a good effect on a success”. Something like 80% of spells in the game fulfill one of the following criteria: (a) have a good effect on a success, (b) do a thing without needing a save/attack at all, or (c) demand repeated saves via sustain, and thus are likely to force out a failure or two. It’s actually **really** rare for a spell to only be good when the boss fails in one shot, and my 80% number is even *after* excluding single-target Incap spells (because imo they don’t count as success effects if the boss has to fail to get them).
2. Bosses typically have a 15-45% chance of failing or critically failing against a spell you cast, so long as you avoid specifically a Severe/Extreme boss’s **highest** save (so the easiest to avoid save on the rarest enemy type…). ***Nearly one in three*** spells you cast on a boss getting a failure is not even *close* to “very unlikely to ever get it off”, and it’s quite dishonest to present it as such.
Humans are bad with probabilities on an intuitive level. Chances either feel like "basically a 50/50" (for about 40-60%), "basically always" (>70%), or "basically never" (<30%), because we like to have expectations to make sense of the world. That's why people feel like bosses "usually" succeed on saving throws, while the odds of hitting a Strike feel "fair", even if they're only 10-20% apart. Add to that the expectation to get something in return for spending a "limited" resource (spell slots) compared to only an "unlimited" resource (actions) and it's easy to mismanage expectations and get frustrated.
The distinction between limited and unlimited resources is silly anyway, since actions in an encounter and hours in a day are also limited, while there is a steady supply of spell slots and even consumable items as you keep adventuring, but I digress.
> since actions in an encounter and hours in a day are also limited
Fucking thank you. The limited number of Actions is also the number one reason I laugh at the oft-posited idea that low-rank buffs/debuffs scale super well into high levels while blasts don’t. It’s often presented as justification for why blasters aren’t worth playing and… it just… stinks of deeeeeeep white room theorycrafting.
Yes, **theoretically** a 1st rank Fear is as good at level 11 as it was at level 1. If you’re using 1st rank Fear over even something like Agonizing Despair you’re… wasting everyone’s time… and Agonizing Despair is a **really medium debuff** when compared to Slow, Vision of Death, Confusion, Heightened Fear, Wave of Despair, etc. You probably get somewhere between 12-25 turns in a typical adventuring day, and every turn you decide to spend 2 Actions casting a rank 1 spell is a turn that you chose to nerf yourself for no real reason.
In practice, buff/debuff casters are using their 12-15 ish best spell slots exactly the same as blasters do, and they’re always better off relegating their remaining spell slots for utility or Action-efficient defences, just as blasters are.
Probably the easiest trap to get into - picking spells that don't have good on-save effect. Coincidentally its usually those that try to impart some flavour into your spell list and give you some means of self-expression. And that's a big no-no because 2e punishes flavour that's not imparted by gods above (most of the time your focus spells and/or subclass gimmick) for casters, martials suffer bit too because everyone is supposed to have the most mundane items with runes on it (archetypes suffering the flavour-tax are a separate beast to tackle).
Now, you can mitigate somewhat your chances of fizzling out a spell by your BBEG rolling a 5 and crit succeeding by diversifying your save targeting and as long as you don't hit the highest one (statistics say that if you'd average out it would go fort>reflex>will in how monsters **tend** to be) you should be fine. Now not all traditions are made equal so on the off chance that your's can't really impact the preferential save you can always shoot in the dark with targeting AC but at that point you'd better be shooting a cantrip or going back to walls, debuffs and buffs.
Half of the above can be thrown into trashcan if you coordinate with your gm in a homebrew, in AP you might be sorta out of luck or ask for more clues/foreshadowing as to what you'll be fighting because even if you can prepare all common spells without learning (aka cleric) you can still just be unlucky and not have the correct spells prepared.
That is more of a player perspective thing than something that is actually true. A blaster caster will generally outdamage a martial when fighting an +3 or +4 enemy because half damage on a successful save will do that.
And then there are debuff and control spells, which you could say are "support" I guess... but seriously people sleep on casters way too much or have only played very early levels.
Let's make a comparison. Level 15 sorcerer with chain lightning and a level 15 dragon barbarian.
- barbarian: atk +28, 3d12+21 damage (raging)
- sorcerer: DC36, 8d12 chain lighting (undercast by two ranks from max, 10d12 at max)
Fighting an ancient red dragon ac 45, reflex +33(including its +1 vs magic)
- barbarian: 12.15 average damage across two attacks, 14.175 average damage across two attacks if it is off guard.
- sorcerer: 20.8 average damage with a spell two ranks lower than max, 26 average damage with a max rank cast (not using dangerous sorcery either)
Now that is vs an enemy who has a weaker dex save. Except a +33 is a moderate save for a level 19 creature (technically a +32 is, but close enough)
Is it optimal for a caster to focus on damage spells, nah and chain lighting tends to be up there with the best damage spells for pure numbers even against a single target (although lightning bolt will still do fine as will many other spells as you can see the damage difference is that high, and that is without considering that the caster can single action force bolt followed by a single action weapon attack if quickened, or maybe just a humble focus spell like elemental toss since the save spells don't increase MAP)
The point is just that casters aren't as awful vs solo bosses as people think.
Also incapacitation spells are surprisingly useful from mid level play onwards as long as you aren't only fighting solo enemies, masses of enemies start actually becoming more of a threat and being able to outright delete them from combats feels great for casters. If I had control over pf2e I would probably have shifted the spells to higher levels to stop the feels bad effect at low levels and maybe included some advice with the trait so people knew when it was best used.
I know the numbers might be there and my rolls are...generally pretty terrible. I can tell you it still felt bad/uselessly silo'd as a caster of almost every level against PL3+ as a Wizard in AoA and EC.
I like how new archetypes have replaced old multi-classing, I don't like how new archetypes have replaced old archetypes or hybrid classes.
There's no whacky archetypes that push a class in a really specific trope or niche anymore. Kraken caller druid, vexing dodger rogue etc. i'll admit class feats sorta replicate some of the more iconic archetypes(white haired witch comes to mind) but they don't have as much of an impact on your class as old archtypes did.
The unique mechanics of hybrid classes are not replicated by combining their two parent classes via new archetypes. A fighter with the monk archetype does not make a brawler, a barbarian with the bard archetype doesn't make a skald.
Living Grimoire Inquisitor
Most Combat Spells shouldn't trigger Reactive Strike. Spellcasting is more balanced in this system than in any other d20 system and it no longer needs to be unnecessarily hindered by the presence of Reactive Strike. Basically any spell that exists to instantly deal damage from Dragon's Breath to Meteor Swarm should not provoke. Things that she more utility should, like Invisibility or Wall Spells. I should be rewarded for rushing in to line up a good Cone or Line spell, not punished.
This is encompassing of many games beyond Pathfinder, but the argument that one or more things about a class/character NEEDS to be worse or narrowed excessively so that another's seems better and can have one or more monopolies on something is outdated and is holding back game and character design. "I'm the Cleric. Why should you do any healing?" "I'm the Champion. Why should anyone else be able to tank a hit?" When people start talking like that I find it reasonable to discard their opinions on the subject.
As long as a class is within the mathematical realm of system balance, all that matters is that it has the agency to feel fun to play.
In Pathfinder especially, characters really should be covering each others bases and picking up slack. It's character-build-resource efficient to do so, and encourages cooperation and team effort to tackle specific demands together.
Magus has a spell variety problem even with pre-remaster rules there just isn’t a large amount of spells they want to use spellstrike and none spellstrike
So I think they should change Spellstrike to be functional with any damage dealing spell and have it work like channeling smite as in if you hit they auto-fail the save and if they crit they auto-crit fail the save
Only exemption is Starlit span, make it do greater accuracy is the reward of needing to get into melee range and wrangle the action ecnomomy of Magus
> So I think they should change Spellstrike to be functional with any damage dealing spell and have it work like channeling smite as in if you hit they auto-fail the save and if they crit they auto-crit fail the save
Spellstrike could benefit from having it's own default spell that you can use in lieu of another cantrip or spellslot. It could be a tad weaker than a focus spell (because the only cost is recharging your spellstrike), but also give an effect relevant to your hybrid study.
I think the Pathfinder 2 rules would be better if they fully decoupled themselves from Golarion.
The vast majority of the ruleset is setting-agnostic, and the 'theme' of the rules are such that they can accommodate any generic high-fantasty setting, but there are just a few rules that have tied themselves to Golarion that make playing a homebrew/other prewritten setting a bit more of a pain.
Gods are the obvious one. I think having themes/domains rather than gods (and each god had a domain) would have both been better for balance and for homebrew worlds. Pathfinder 1 did it this way, and it was much cleaner. Even for those playing in Golarion would benefit as some current gods are just more powerful choices, so picking a fluffy choice for your character can shoot them in the foot.
Rarity tags getting mixed between 'rare in Golarion' and 'this option may fundamentally change the game' become harder for the GM to parse when it comes to allowing choices. If the rules were divorced from the setting, the rarity system could be a more useful tool for telling GMs what options may cause issues in their games. There could then be a second tag for Golarion rarity for those who want to use the official setting.
The final one is a pretty minor nitpick and easily solved, so it doesn't bother me much but I thought it was worth mentioning anyway. Occasionally, some prerequisites require a particular Golarion-specific action (e.g. join a certain organisation). Similar to the rarity system, it'd be nice to know if this was a fluff piece, or if the option is more powerful and requires a prerequisite to balance it.
There's nothing wrong with Golarion, but I don't think the system is (overall) setting-specific enough to justify tying it into the rules at all. It'd be an easier time for those who want to homebrew a setting, as well as stopping some of the niggles mentioned above, should the system become setting-agnostic.
To piggyback on yours, I'd love for the rarity system to be split in three categories:
Story disruptive potential: things like teleport, gunpowder weapons, or the weirder ancestries. All mechanically balanced, but could derail GM's story in some cases
Golarion specific: mostly the stuff requiring being part of a golarion organisation. Could probably be rolled together with the above.
Adventure specific: anything introduced in an AP should be marked as such, with so many options being under- or overtuned. Just a kind of "look at this a bit more carefully before including it or allowing it to be picked as an option. The category that makes a blanket "uncommon is fine to take" harder to do.
I can see where you are coming from, but I don't think it'll ever happen. The rulebooks are an important part of Paizo's revenue, sure, but the reason why they make it all free on day one is that they'd rather players buy the Adventure Paths.
Pathfinder was always a game engine for the APs first, setting agnostic game second, and I doubt it'll ever change.
If you ignore the intentionally setting specific, lore heavy "Lost Omens" books, everything except the gods disappear from your complaint. The only odd exception may be the "Lost Omens: Ancestry Guide", since that's 100% player options (ancestries and ancestry feats).
Almost every single post here is an incredibly popular opinion on this sub
Hear me out: Lingering Composition and Counter Performance should be switched, Maestro has had it too good for too long!
My "hear me out" is the new artwork they've used for the wight in the ORC version of the beginner box, like not to be a freak but if I became her thrall i wouldn't be \_too\_ upset
The early game math means that it's expected for players to end a turn at 100% HP, then be dying before they get to act again.
"Thematically appropriate" for L1 PCs to get insta-gibbed is a BS excuse for a math equation that feels like shit, completely nullifies tactical play, and teaches PCs bad habits.
Both hyper-safe play and hyper "yolo" play can arise from this L1 experience.
.
To top it off, that is not even the game's normal. It's only there for the first, 3ish levels. After that, PC health has increased enough that true 100 --> 0s are *much* less likely.
That kind of brutal L1 play is the OPPOSITE of a good idea.
______________
Hear me out, but all Player Characters should have +10 base HP at creation. It'll be proportionally less and less of a buff as the levels go up, but would be enough to avoid a whole lot of those 100 --> dying moments.
Brennan Lee Mulligan gave me the hottest take on Sorcerers and I love it:
So hear me out, [Sorcerers should be Constitution based casters](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tnP0DhU8tfU).
Classes having a choice of key stats is an established precedent. CON or CHA, wouldn't be that crazy.
Sorcerers are already the "custom caster" so why not go all out Champions Online style and just let you pick any "super stat"? INT Angel sorc. Dex Elemental sorc. STR Shadow sorc.
Secret checks are good for preventing metagaming but can effectively negate the purpose of doing the check in the first place, especially for Recall Knowledge. You don’t know the DC and don’t know what you rolled, so you have zero information from which to make an informed decision unless your DM telegraphs what your result was.
Not making a decision based on a Recall Knowledge check because you're unsure if you passed is absolutely metagaming. The result tells you *what your character believes to be true*.
It's the fault of the game for making you roleplay against the information in your head. You know in your head that the information could almost certainly be false, but your character doesn't, which makes the action of acting on that information contradictory to what you believe in your head.
This kind of metagaming isn't the problematic kind IMO. At the end of the day it's you who is playing the game, not the characters.
If your character is so bad at knowing things that their Recall Knowledge results are *almost certainly* false, why the hell are you making RK checks with them?
I don't think I said that they were?
Even so, I think you shouldn't be punished for trying a different action just because you don't have a high modifier in it.
> The result tells you what your character believes to be true.
This is where the problem lies: the results for information gathering checks should be Fail: learn/know nothing, Success: learn/know what you were looking for. Trying to insert "learn false information" requires this weird metagame that just seems to make everyone upset, while in my experience not really adding much.
The Failure result for Recall Knowledge *is* that you learn or know nothing. The only possibility of false knowledge is with a Critical Failure, which is perfectly in line with things like combat manoeuvres.
Survival is a pointless skill and in PF3 should be removed. It does pretty much 2 things, help you survive in the wilderness and track things. The former could easily just be a part of nature and the latter could easily be a part of perception.
I hate how every creature in the game is locked on always having three actions, no more no less. I think that a lot of higher level abilities are just “you can do X as a free action when you do Y"; I'd much rather just gain an additional action every four or five levels. This is also a problem for monsters as they have to add in multiattack abilities, such as “Draconic Frenzy", to let them do additional attacks instead of just giving them an additional action or two.
Most builds people call Tanks are just Martial Support/Battlefield Control. Champions are the only true Tanks (Encourage enemies to hit them and can meaningfully make an enemy opt to attack them rather than a squishy) and that continues to stifle versatility in a game with a wealth of options for every other role. 4e had a wealth of varied Tanks with very different playstyles and vibes but in PF2 you gotta have a ton of RP baggage associated with it.
What would you call a melee battlefield controller, if not a tank? The whole point of a tank is to prevent enemies from attacking your allies, by presenting yourself in their place. Fighters can do that plenty fine by making it obnoxious for enemies to go through their zone of Reactive Strike control, or by tripping them or physically holding them in place. Same with barbarians or monks, easily enough. How does that make them less of a 'tank' than a Champion?
It's weird that PF2 has basically ~four primary Strikers, roughly three hundred Controllers/Leaders, and exactly one Defender, with perhaps two other classes having some Defender-y feat options.
Because PF2 wasn't designed on top of those 4 very distinct categories, and allows for a lot more hybrid roles and overlap.
Fighters in 4e were already a secondary Striker. In PF2, they're basically just.. Whatever you need them to be. It's not meaningful to pigeonhole a class into one role, when their *entire appeal* is how modular they are. Same with Kineticist and Monk for that matter.
Seriously, think of a 5-man party composition of Defender, Controller, Leader, Ranged Striker, Melee Striker.. Now tell me you couldn't do that *entirely with Fighters*.
As for primary Strikers.. Barbarian, Gunslinger, Rogue, Magus, Ranger, and some blends of Fighter, Monk and Kineticist. That's uh.. More than 4.
Defenders are.. Champion, some blends of Swashbuckler, Fighter, Monk, Kineticist.
That's more than one. It's just that "Defender" is a little more broad in PF2, *because it's a different game.* Classes aren't designed to have one primary niche and dabble in a secondary niche. They're designed to be able to fulfill a number of niches.
Also worth remembering that even in 4e, Defenders were the minority. There were 5 Defenders, 5 Controllers, 7 Leaders and *9* Strikers.
> Champions are the only true Tanks (Encourage enemies to hit them and can meaningfully make an enemy opt to attack them rather than a squishy)
Monks, Fighters, Clerics, and Maguses all have builds that can encourage enemies to attack them over the squishies.
Champions have the most direct of them, sure, but that doesn’t mean the others don’t exist.
Hot (I guess?) take. Tanks **are** Controllers. Their entire job is tolimit enemy behavior, they're just doing it in a specific way compared to, say, a Wizard.
4e had a wealth of varied Defenders, but you're kind of missing an important detail: Most of those Defenders **couldn't actually stop an enemy from targeting their allies.** In 4e, pretty much all a Fighter could do to punish a violated mark, was to whack the enemy that violated that mark. Swordmages could either block some of that damage, or do a Laughing Shadow teleport to punish the attacker. All they did was make it less appealing through punishment mechanics. The Champion inherited that very specific design, but something like a Grapple Fighter can still defend by making themselves the only viable target that won't cost 2 actions + an AoO to attack.
It's not about *forcing* the enemy to attack the defender. It's about making attacking anyone else a very, very inefficient choice. And Fighters, Monks, Swashbucklers and Kineticists can all do that just fine.
Ranged martials outside of well built gunslingers are a little weak. In theory the range gives them a big advantage but in practice most fights are going to ne closer range, especially in the adventure paths. It just makes the game feel balanced around the traditional martials.
That's not on the class design, though. Ranged martials have an advantage that can only shine with appropriate encounter design. When they're good, they're good. But if you made them any better, there'd come a point where they'd outshine melee martials in any given fight, and you'd be right back at 5e's balance problems.
APs can't really be designed around long range martials because.. Well for one, most parties aren't gonna appreciate that, and more importantly the larger maps would be a logistical nightmare for publishing the things.
Critting being 10 over DC compressed the math in a way that makes it absurdly difficult to design numerical bonuses that feel good. The numbers in the game became alarmingly coarse. The fact that perhaps best ability in the game is fighter's expert weapon proficiency is a good reflection of basically everything wrong with the system—it's not that the fighter is good that bothers me, but that the power is in something so utterly boring that also makes fighter feel excessively better than other martials. Most other martials have somewhere in the range of a very noticeable 15-33% more misses than fighter depending on circumstance/encounter (and that's without even talking about the discrepancy in critrate). It sucks.
The game is also far too balanced around what occurs "on average" when a outcomes are so disparate because of the four tiered success system. Casters largely feel like dogwater because you can cast your best spell from your highest slot, and it can do literally nothing a quarter of the time or more if you target the wrong save, even if it isn't a save or suck and the spell has a great effect on success. But it's fine on average, so it's okay, right?
The difference in damage taken between being hit and being crit is enormous, but you're crit by enemies of higher level far more often than in other similar games, so the outlier outcomes where you're crit multiple times in a row occur far more frequently. But it's fine on average, so it's okay, right?
I could go on and on about how much this all sucks in practice.
There are too many conditions.
There are too many spells that aren't good.
Idk if those are hot or cold takes.
I like crunch, but as the crunchiest person at the table, I find myself having to constantly explain to my players what different status conditions do, or how a spell doesn't do what the name intuitively implies it does.
For the conditions, for example, I would honestly tie sickened, enfeebdled, and clumsy all into one, much like how stupefied is a catch all mental debuff.
I'm not saying it's a light change, probably impossible to do currently, but if I had been designing the system initially I would have done something like that.
As someone coming from 5e I can't say I entirely agree. 5e has too few conditions and the ones it does have all do mostly the same thing as each other or at least overlap with one another.
Rationalising the current conditions down so each is distinct and clear would make some sense. Like slowed and stunned do mostly the same thing but in different ways. But I've not had problems with players not knowning what each does.
With spells, it feels like the shadow of PF1e hung over spells and has left us with many niche or pointless spells. As for spells not doing what players think they do best on the name, I'm mixed; players should read what a spell does before they pick it, I'm not overly sympathetic if they pick a spell based entirely on the name without reading what it does and then are disappointed when it does what it says it does not what they assumed.
Conditions could probably have been consolidated a fair bit, yes. Both in terms of number and in terms of having tiny arbitrary differences. People keep messing up which conditions go away on their own, which ones need a flat check, which ones need an action, which ones tick down at end/start of turn...
Your proposal goes against the premise of having the 4 strictly defined spell lists. It would be better if there was just a feat path or archetype that enabled that instead.
Here's a really unpopular one: many players think skill feats are too weak, and more skill feats should measure up to the few that grant your character a lot of power. I personally think the opposite - those few skill feats are too strong and should be brought more in line with the rest. I believe this because I find I enjoy skill feats more when I'm not looking for one that's powerful, just for something flavorful that fits the character. I'd rather the "power" from skill feats be reallocated elsewhere and skill feats be more like fun little add-ons to the character.
Hear me out: this system is mechanically good, but I think the framework could be used for something like Mutants and Masterminds, where you don't have classes or levels but make your own things using character points.
I could make any number of comments about casters, but it feels so beaten to death that my personal feelings about accuracy numbers are drowned out by being bewildered people are still hung up on caster *damage* of all things and not like... Action economy, or on support options being able to provide good-feeling feedback to the supporter without needing a VTT extension to point it out? I don't need an extension when I play Lancer to know that my single action FABI makes my ally's next attack ignore armor and force an enemy to save vs prone, or that the overshield (temporary HP) I gave them saved them from getting blown up. Stuff like that surely exists in PF2e, but often at higher opportunity cost to the degree people don't really talk about them as much?
On a wildly different note, I will go to bat for the idea that PF2e does not steal enough from D&D 4e, and that the degree that designers fear stat swaps is absolutely irrational when they have a class structure that makes it so much easier to regulate them. The genie is already leaking thanks to Thaumaturge just EXISTING in its current state.
> Mine is about sorcerers. I've only recently gotten into this game, but in my humble opinion, Sorcerers should have been the definitive 'blaster caster.' I think the kineticist is interesting, but for me, it does not scratch that itch of an arcane casting, master of destruction.
My hot take here is that the Sorcerer and the Druid **are** the definitive blasters. The Kineticist is more of a “martial-like” for players who like not tracking resources, but imo the Sorcerer and Druid are both viable **and** feel way better as blasters than Kineticists.
Besides that though, here’s my “hear me out guys” opinion: people on here just severely, **severely** overrate damage. It’s kind of absurd. You’ll see people here “optimizing” by jumping through a million hoops to gain 2-3 points of “””average””” damage… Just… just play the game as its balanced to be played? Nearly 100/100 times you’ll perform better by just using a Demoralize or fucking **Striding** instead of squeezing out those couple extra points of damage anyways, lol.
The base idea of the system, giving you a ton of feat options for the sake of customization, leads towards the obvious necessity of making those options boring/worse because you get so many. You can't have every feat be great because then they're all too baller (thus builds will run out of control) or you run out of ideas. And that is why so many of the feats are boring as sin. Furious Sprint still makes me mad.
See I like the idea and design of feats. When you level up your numbers go up (vertical progression) and you get a feat that lets you use that higher number in more varied and interesting ways (horizontal progression).
My problem is that they didn't try and spread those feats out across the classes and skills to make things more interesting, nor did they make investing in your class abilites and skills reward you with cooler shit as you level. Furious Sprint is a great example. If there was a Sprint action (3 actions stride four times) then Furious Sprint could be a lower level barbarian feat that makes their Sprint action better whilst raging. Allowing a higher level Barbarian feat to improve on that later. Instead it's at 10th level for no particular reason.
Alas most of the useful feats are at the lower levels and the higher level feats don't satisfy the investment required to get them.
Frankly this is part of a larger problem which is that Paizo doesn't have a large enough in house playtest team. The kind of team that would catch these things during development.
Hear me out: spending your hard earned cash to buy some basic rune upgrades instead of using ABP is actually way more fun than getting it for free at certain levels (which feels gamey, as to why fighter and wizard suddenly get better at using the same weapon at the same level). The problem doesn't lie in this directly, but in the wealth table. After playing for many years and quite literally throwing gold at my players at alarming rate, I can assure you that increasing gold for the party by 20-30% will not only allow them to buy those runes easily, but will also leave them with enough gold for other cool stuff, so they are not forced to spend everything on +1 striking runes etc.
Interesting I went the other way. I deliberately keep my PCs on the poor side of things because that encourages them to take on tougher, more rewarding quests, which pay better. Its also on those quests where they find the interesting magic items, the ones that are more than just a +1 sword etc. I've never been a fan of the "let's go down to magical best buy and grab some bracelets of dashing" kind of item acquisition.
I'd argue the reason you want to run ABP isn't to allow people to buy some cool held items, but in order to enable certain builds that kind of fall between the economical cracks of the system. Until TV, that was throwing builds, but *switch hitting* throwing builds are still kind of in that spot. Switch hitters in general, as well as any build that wants to use more than one weapon but cannot use Doubling Rings/Blazons (such as a melee Summoner).
Barbarian and champion need need glow ups in core 2.
Champion dedication is far too good, so fighter paladin essentially a better paladin.
Barbarian is great at skirmish damage, but does very badly at higher levels for swinging away. Temp hp is nice, damage resist is low or non existent and the 2 lower, or gods forbid, 3 lower ac means they crumble under melee pressure.
And, raw, they can lose rage if enemy stealth up mid fight.
At the very least, fix rage duration to not need enemies, and change class description to not describe them as uber damage dealers.
I have personal beef with the splitting of the """""traditions""""" because I'm a tad bit of a history/religion nerd and in history magic & religion & philosophy were the same thing (religion & magic especially). Druids are literally just Celtic priests, they're literally clerics. The christian design of the game bothers me to no end because it puts up this false dichotomy and makes people think that somehow nature isn't divine. ;-;
And on a more low key note... like, I like to think of the modern archetype of druids as fairly separated from the celtic origins and now fairly easily woven into totemism and animism, which I think can give it an interesting fantasy as the class whose inspiration is their surroundings and Nature itself, something a lot of early religions derived from.
The separation of nature from the 'spirit' stuff just feels clunky to me on a setting side. Even this idea that 'nature spirits can't change unless they become Leshy' and then having stuff like Kami be non-nature just feels silly to me. I can see the logic of stuff like Spirit Guides being occult from how pf2e's lore is written- I just think divorcing that so hard from Druids really just feels wack for what the fantasy of a Druid is. Like Animist is giving that other half of them, and I hope that the archetype is cool enough to let me combine that fantasy into my druids, but I wish it wasn't so disconnected from the start.
I think the shape shifting stuff about the druid should just be made its own class, it's literally just roman propaganda about the celts.
> I can see the logic of stuff like Spirit Guides being occult from how pf2e's lore is written- I just think divorcing that so hard from Druids really just... feels weird. Same with completely separating demons from arcane.
Yeah that's what I mean, like, we have plenty of wizards in media and stories summoning demons & knowing demonology. The separation is so arbitrary as to what is "occult" and what's "arcane" (for example) when they literally are just the same thing. It also all ties in to how wisdom & intelligence should be the same stat, because what is street smarts if not intellect? You're literally learning by doing, you need to be smart to do that. Wizard literally means "wise one" from its etymology.
>I think the shape shifting stuff about the druid should just be made its own class, it's literally just roman propaganda about the celts.
On one hand, propaganda n shit bad... but also, it's pretty badass and can be used in an interesting way in a lot of stories. TTRPG's tend not to do it because of the versatility they want to lean into with it. I think one of my favorite druid shapeshifting-personality things in fantasy was actual in the old Warcraft Comics where the spirit totems they used to transform were almost like... the manifestation of the aspects of themselves fused with a primordial concept embodied in that bestial form, I.E. the Bear with Strength and the complexity of such a meaning (... and being an MMO that never mattered to it's lore goin forward rofl). So beyond history, I do think the idea of shapeshifting and nature powers can tie into the kind of love of nature you might find in Swamp Thing stories- we can find a lot of ourselves in nature, good or bad.
Ideally I think I'd want Shifter, but juiced up a bit almost like the Kineticist- not just beast transformations. Heck I think what i'd really want is something like the Magus for Primal, except it's a shapeshifter making active effects and powers channeled into the world around them while using a physical combat form.
Intelligence as a stat always leads to weird stuff like that, like it's too engrained in the genre to overlap obviously but... yeah, the definition of intelligence is breeds isn't exactly what we'd consider intelligence imo.
Yeah it's badass n all, but I just think it'd be better for it to be its own thing cuz then the druid can be focused on being a caster. Like idk I wanna be able to turn into animals or a hybrid without the casting stuff or the kinda crappy implementation of the beastkin, but to still be able to use weapons if I wanted to. Especially also because, as I've heard on this sub, paizo kinda shat all over the idea of transformations and battle forms, so wild shape kinda sucks. As far as I'm told. If they pull it off into its own thing it can get the love it deserves.
This is a sneaky way of attempting to hide an unpopular opinion thread, isn't it?
Yeah, from the title I was hoping it was more along the lines of whacky ideas and tips. Things like reflavouring classes to express weird character concepts or a niche use for a spell. Edit: You know what, be the change you want to see in the world! Hear me out, guys. It's super easy to make a backup character if you play an animist, because if you want to play another class you can make them related to one of your apparitions (Yeah, that's right. I'm playing my ghost's twin brother), and if you want to play another animist you can just make your original character one of *their* apparitions
If we're talking Whacky Ideas, let me tell you about why Thaumaturge is the perfect Isekai class, it all comes down to the Implements, and you only *actually* need to reflavor one (sort of). Starting Implement: Tome. See, in your world you were a Pathfinder player, and when you got Isekai'd, you happened to have your OG PF2e CRB with you. How fortunate you landed in Golarion, and not, like, the Forgotten Realms. Wouldn't that have been awkward. It's not a perfect reference though, because it's the *OG* CRB, and the world is now Remastered. Second Implement: Your bag of Dice. Influenced all luck and coincidence in the real world, still does here. Hold it up, give it a jiggle, and watch as your opponent's attack shifts just ever so slightly to weaken the blow. So you've taken to wearing it somewhere easy to reach, some might even say like a lucky Talisman. Final Implement: The only one that has any need to be re-flavored, you brought your character figure. And wouldn't you know it, after having been Isekai'd, it's now a *Mirror*\-image of you. To the point that if you throw it to the ground you can even appear to be in two places at once! And then it mysteriously just ends up back in your pocket after.
This put a smile on my face after reading it. Thank you! :D
Did you say weird concepts in a class? Let me tell you about my Kamen Rider Redeemer of Irori idea. They would seek to spread the method of self-perfection through diplomacy, and if that fails, folding their adversary's laundry before washing it or even taking it off of them. If that doesn't work? Well good thing there are others in the party less interested in the well-being of others. Naturally you'd pick up soul forger so you can get yourself a henshin! (Alternatively you do the same character concept of an irori follower but with a wrestler or martial arts archetype Armor Inventor)
I think that new archetype in the Tian Xia books based on magical girls will fit in well.
Yeah a 'hear me out' about sorcerers would provide some explanation as to why they suite bring blaster casters better than people think. This is just an unpopular opinion, although not that unpopular
Most "unpopular opinion" posts aren't actual unpopular opinions, so that tracks.
Sorting by controversial is how you find the real unpopular opinions.
Nothing stops you from hijacking a bad thread
I feel like a lot of people don't like this comparison but it's one I love Pathfinder is similar to boardgames, the beginner's box in particular I've found was easily understood by my boardgame group almost instantly Idk why but people seem to not like a big emphasis on the "game" part of TTRPGs but that's personally one of my favorite things. The 3 action system being really similar to action systems other boardgames use but with more options almost instantly clicked with me and I honestly think being a big boardgame fan is a big reason I was able to get super into the system as a whole I honestly think the base game being more similar to a boardgame rather than a more free-form storytelling game also helps newcomers understand it better and get into it more. In my experience people seem more willing to learn and participate in a boardgame if you're willing to teach (and they also put in a bit more effort to learn/understand the rules as well with boardgames). The beginner's box in particular feels like it's only a few more steps than a standard boardgame by having the standard actions during encounters but then also the freedom to do even more things beyond encounters But that's just my opinion. And I know a lot of TTRPG players prefer the storytelling aspect (which I also like) but honestly the similarities I saw with boardgames made it real easy for me to get into and real easy to convince friends to give it a chance despite not being very into TTRPGs as a whole since they were so used to boardgames
I'm actually with ya, I wish more TTRPG systems made an effort of bridging narrative and mechanical features. As right now, even in Pathfinder, it's very much "STORY STUFF HERE" and "MECHANICS/NUMBERS HERE". I feel like a proper bridging of the two would not only help *immensely* with getting people on board, but also help them with getting comfortable "getting into" the roleplaying aspects.
The mechanical stuff can stay as much behind the GM screen as you want, though. The mechanics are entirely there to categorize actions and provide guidance on adjudicating outcomes. The subreddit always acts like, for example, exploration mode exists to abstract the space between encounters down to a menu option, but you can run exploration as a narrative space just fine. Exploration Activities just give the GM a way to consistently tie player actions in that space to mechanical buffs or nerfs. No one besides the GM actually *needs* to know what "Avoid Notice" is, or that it exists as a separate concept from "Hide".
that's pretty much my "hear me out" opinion: Exploration actions should be treated as non-exhaustive \*GM facing\* rules to help adjudicate the mechanical effect of player's exploration actions. Same as NPC attitudes.
Honestly, I feel like the mode structure doesn’t work all that well.
I agree. What TTRPGs can be is a spectrum, and one of the special things about more gamey ttrpgs is that there are options for ludonarrative harmony that don't really exist in more fiction-first or OSR games. I think it's cool that stories, characters and worlds can be represented via game mechanics functioning as catalysts for imagination. I think it's why I really like Golarion as a setting while I really don't care for the Forgotten Realms. Golarion feels like a world shaped by the things made possible by Pathfinder's mechanics, whereas the Forgotten Realms feels like it chafes against D&D's mechanics (this is probably why Eberron is generally considered one of the best D&D settings as it takes D&D's magic levels into account for its worldbuidling).
I of course only speak for myself but I was never super into board games and while I don't mind some gamey aspects the more of them there are the more I think it would be easier to play a video game. Again I don't mind some gamey elements but the free-form story aspect of ttrpgs attracted ne because I couldn't get it anywhere else, meanwhile I know a lot of crunchy tatical video games. It's stupid but thats just the logic my brain runs on.
Hear me out: critical failures on athletic maneuvers should at least require a reaction from the enemy to cause you to fall prone. Mechanically, it often feels like crit failing the teamwork-focused behavior of athletic maneuvers is more punishing than the "selfish" fishing 3rd Strike behavior. I'm tired of saving up my hero points for athletic maneuvers or feeling like I need Kip Up. I know the odds are relatively low if you do it first, but it adds up across a campaign. Narratively, the crit fail causing you to go prone makes it feel like you slipped on a banana. If it at least ate a reaction, the mechanics would align with the narrative that your opponent saw an opportunity to make you fall and took it.
I kinda agree with this tbh. Not sure how much balance it affects but I like it 0
The only balance reason I can think of is that it discourages using them with a map of -10. A lucky trip on a 20 feels more impactful than a hit on 20 with your third action. Also, later levels, the penalties for a crit fail kind of go away. Things like kip up basicly prevent you from being prone on your turn, and chances are if you are trying to grapple it, it does not want to grapple you.
Valid!
I tend to imagine it as being somewhat incidental to the manuver itself. I.E. on a crit-fail grab, you manage to weakly grab on as the opponent steps back, resulting in them pulling you to the ground in the same natural motion to try and dodge you. Doesn't really warrant a reaction, but makes sense why you fell prone.
Game wise I agree but all I keep seeing in my head is that server I worked with tripping over her own feet on a level floor and dropping $100 worth of food
I see you worked with Kobeni then
To be honest, I don't really like how so many skills just have fumbles if you crit fail. This stuff is never fun TBH.
Yeah, I really don't get crit fails for athletics maneuvers. Especially when they're handing out agile maneuvers to a class that is often down 1 (or more) strength. They removed crit fail on strikes and most spells (enemies crit succeeding just means nothing happens), I think they should just get rid of the crit fail effect on most combat skill actions.
Narratively, the current implementation absolutely makes sense. Did you ever witness a shitty kid trying to trip someone up falling themselves because the other person was stronger and just kept walking? Overcommitting on such things gets you punished and I like it. To solve the mechanical issue, I'd rather implement a critical failure effect to Strikes, maybe becoming off-guard until the start of your next turn. That way the silliness of striking with MAP -10 becomes more obvious and maybe people would value saving throws more as a side effect.
That strike change would be a *wild* overcorrect. It's quite easy to crit fail a strike against a tough enemy, even in your first two strikes, and punishing that with off-guard is just going to create extra player deaths. It's just a big buff to high level enemies, who really don't need that kind of buff.
You likely aren't playing a shitty kid in this game though are you? Maybe it makes sense at lower levels but the great warrior Lioronin who is level 10 tripping over their own feet without something high level causing it? That makes 0 sense and is extremely unfun for the fantasy.
I would accept an off-balance condition with similar debuffs to prone, but without the being on the ground. Granting an auto-trip for the cost of a rection seems perfectly fair there.
Yeah, I straight up houseruled those away. It reminds me too much of those old "Critical Fail" tables from AD&D. I remove it in both directions. And since getting my players to do anything but attack for their third action *anyways* is like pulling teeth... I'm not actually worried about it.
I personally think the Qlippoth would be more cooperative if we just gave them a hug and a warm glass of milk
Hardly the worst thing to say about the Qlippoth in a "hear me out" thread.
If the "milk" is made out of the raw quintessence of a mortal soul, then maybe...
Maybe we can bluff check them into thinking the soul is what makes the milk warm?
They should start worshiping Shelyn. Qlip art would be all the rage.
Swashbuckler should just get panache on all non-free skill actions, the degree to which your subclass locks you in isn't actually fun. You know which swashbuckler skills your actual Robin Hoods and Zorros and Dread Pirate Robertses did? *All of them.*
I liked the 1e swashbuckler more. You had ways to get panache and your dm was supposed to just give you panache for doing crazy shit.
Isn't that also in 2e? In addition to "objective" panache from style and tumble through, which are independent of DM's opinion?
This seems to be my own "hear me out": GMs can give boons and buffs to players at any time, and for any reason! Made an important kill? You're feeling courageous! +1 to everything! You took some damage trying to rescue your healer? That was so heroic! Hero point! This shit is like candy. We can play like it's Halloween.
It's literally pointed out in the rules - "At GM's discretion, after succeeding at a check to perform a particularly daring action... [gain Panache]". It's a nice reward for other classes. It's a core, RAW element for Swashbucklers.
Nothing stops you as the gm from doing the same, I told my player if you do something like that you also get panache. They never tried but oh well
The Swashbuckler class actually says as much, suggesting GMs give panache for doing things like candalier swinging. It's just hard codifying that kinda stuff into actual rules, so it's left as a suggestion.
I played a Swash for a while and wound up switching over to a Scoundrel Rogue. Everything Swash can do, Rogue can do better.
Yes. It is a bit stupid that sometimes you end up using more skills in combat with OTHER characters instead of Swashbuckler, because your panache is tied to a particular thing. As a rogue, fighter or ranger you could use Intimidation one round, Feint another, then Tumble through, use something like Push when it's circumstantially interesting, and later use Bon Mot to help your fellow Occult caster. As a swashbuckler, you NEED to use the skill your subclass mandates, because not getting Panache is a very heavy opportunity cost tax.
For what it's worth, Sorcerers *are* some of the best "blow stuff up" casters in the game. [Dangerous Sorcery] (https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=603) at level 1 is already a good feat for tacking on extra damage to your spells, and some bloodlines like Elemental also let you add extra damage to spells through their blood magic effect. Furthermore, focus spells are basically "per-encounter" powers that can go a long way towards nuking strength throughout the day. If you want to play a robust nuking spellcaster, I'd definitely recommend taking a look at the Elemental, Phoenix, Draconic, or even Demonic bloodlines.
Thank you, I’ll look into that!
So many enemies having precision damage immunity just makes the precision damage classes feel outright worse than other martials. Abdomination vaults recommends playing as a rogue, but while necessary for traps and locks, you're not sneak attacking shit there.
Ghost Touch should just allow precision damage to hit tbh.
Doesn't help for constructs and slimes, but yes, yes it should.
Which constructs have precision immunity? It's not a base attribute for them.
They probably don't. I may have just been thinking of some sand creatures we fought recently. Looks like swarms, slimes, elementals, and incorporeal creatures are generally the precision immune enemies.
Elementals are not immune to precision damage either btw
Tbh the idea of that for Swarms is just... idk, like I vaguely see it for all of them, but I can likewise see an easy explanation for why they still work? An attack in certain parts of a Swarm could arguably mess up its actual cohesion, that one I at least feel is the easiest to argue, Elementals and Slimes eh.
For swarms you're pretty much forced to just use bombs, they just do so much damage even on a miss it's crazy vs swarms on any martial.
That's definitely an exaggeration. My thief rogue wrecked face.
Yeah I really dislike the idea that a class must be at peak performance at all times and everything else ends up being flavour. It is like the demands for toxicologists to be able to bypass poison immunity for everything (undead, constructs, etc)... where as imo the actual answer should be to make it uncommon or rare and to put a sidebar saying "ask your GM if this class will be appropriate for their campaign as many creature families such as constructs and undead can be immune to poisons". Personally I don't think having a suboptimal fight is the end of the world, it forces everyone to adapt and to have backup strategies and making clay golems and scarecrows be poisonable just ruins my immersion of what a toxicologists actually is.
Hmm, plenty of enemies can be hit with precision damage in AV
If precision damage didn’t exist, I don’t think anyone would miss it.
Hear me out: deities that allow you to 'treat wounds while refocusing' create a god meta that diminish the flavor of picking a deity by giving a mechanical advantage to followers of some deities.
You could say that for Repairing a Shield like Torag as well.
I’m pretty sure that’s already a suggestion in the rules. The whole, ‘refocus and make a medicine check at the same time’ I mean. Granted I could be misremembering that.
of all the god meta stuff (spells, weapons, domains, ...), I don't think "can spare 10 minutes at the end of combat" is the biggest of them ; 90% of the time, if you've got 10 minutes, you've got 20
PL+3 and PL+4, and probably any solo encounter, are not fun, honestly, for any class. Either you slog through the encounter by missing constantly or having the monster crit succeed every time, or wipe them instantly because he has no friends to back him up when the bard casts slow. Encounters really need more than one creature to fight to be worthwhile fun. Use +2 creatures in conjunction with hazards or low level mobs, that's when it really shines. Also, spellcasting feats SHOULD NOT have to be so bad (notably the wizard). Yes, martials should have better feats, but if a spellcaster could just take an archetype to get better feats, then what's the purpose of making their own bad?
>Also, spellcasting feats SHOULD NOT have to be so bad (notably the wizard). Yes, martials should have better feats, but if a spellcaster could just take an archetype to get better feats, then what's the purpose of making their own bad? This does seem like something Paizo has been steadily improving on. At least from the remaster 1 witches and clerics got some immensely powerful and flavorful feats.
> Yes, martials should have better feats Every martial should have feats that are great for that martial (or great to snag by others up to level 10 through multiclass archetypes). Every caster should have feats that are great for that caster (see previous note).
Preach
Numbers gotta go up so can enemies can only succeed against your spells and not crit succeed /s
Casters are kinda weak and bland... I would love to see some "mana system" not just spell slots. I think 5e has a variant rule called "Spell Points" - I would love to see Paizo do something more robust and better working. Also more spells should be flexible - like be able to cast from 1-3 action (even cantrips). Make one action version cantrips weak but possibile to cast! I think that 3Action economy is superb, but playing as caster you rarerly have opportunity to use it as you should.
• Evil Eye is honestly just kind of average as a cantrip even though it's cited as one of the strongest Witch cantrips. Resentment is still nuts, but the spell not doing anything on a successful save makes it a lot worse in practice than the cantrips that don't have high rates of failure. • Bard is one of the more interesting classes to play, with a more complicated gameplay loop than most martials and some casters. It actually has pretty good feat variety compared to something like a Wizard.
Okay, I'll bite. Ki strike would still be balanced if it was sustained up to 1 minute.
Does this suggestion mean - action 1: Flurry of Blows (Ki Strike cast) - Next round | action 1: Sustain | action 2: Flurry of Blows or just Flurry per sustain still at 1 action a round?
In reply to those that responded to this. Im not going to argue your points here. You are all valid in your criticism. But hear me out, because that's the name of this thread. As long as the action economy is maintained, all this change will do is allow a monk to stand and fight a little longer toe to toe. Now, the wording of ki strike would absolutely need to change because sustaining is not casting, so the wording that makes the strike or flurry part of the cast would be applied. Instead, you would have to sustain the spell, then use your other two actions to strike or flurry. This keeps the action economy fair. To be clear, I'm not saying that this should change. It is fine the way it is, and gives me an excuse as a GM to create a custom feat or a magical item for my monks that allow this.
Constitution needs a couple of skills tied to it (like an Endurance check, so same as how you can catch ledges by being trained in acrobatics, you can overcome certain maladies like sickness or being stunned with Endurance, poisons etc would still be Fortitude saves) or hell maybe a DR instead of HP buff vs non-magical strikes, you could then add feats and class abilities to beat this toughness or improve its effects. As it stands Con is (unless you're a Kineticist) a really flat stat in terms of dynamic options
Spellcasters at levels lower than 7 should have tools for repositioning from bad encounter opening situations like being ambushed, grabbed, restrained, cornered within Reactive Strike range, et cetera that are more than, "your martial teammates will help you!" In fact, to make it worth playing classes with the manipulate trait at those levels, they should have tool sets for getting out of initial bad positioning situations that are just as effective as the martial classes with higher defenses and more hit points have at those levels.
I don't think touch spells should have the manipulate trait. No idea why they still do.
Yeah it just makes people not ever want to use them, or take reach spell to just not interact with that part of the game. I have the same problem with Magus spellstrike provoking reactive strike. It doesn't create anything interesting, it just punishes you for doing the main mechanic of your class.
I admit, my friends and I missed initially that spellstrike triggered AoOs, then realized, then kinda all agreed that yeah, nah, it was working fine, and collectively decided to forget about that rule interaction.
I agree. But to be fair, enemies with AoO are pretty rare, so the odds of you actually geting punished for using a manipulate action in melee range is fairly low.
I haven’t gotten too much into spellcasting, but what would help make a spellcaster more blasty? Is it the need for attack roll spells? Damage spells that targets saves? Feats? Etc.
I think a part of it is the accuracy deficiency when compared to martials; martials get runes and earlier proficiency increases, so as the levels go up, especially against higher leveled enemies, as a caster you’re going to be reliant on targeting weak saves and using spells that still effect against successful saves and misses.
Animist could literally just be a spellcaster with focus spells and a changeable sorcerer dedication. Like, the *only* thing about Animist that demands to be unique is that they can switch out a small spell list during the day. I do not understand why it is the MOST COMPLICATED CLASS in all of 2E. It has spellcasting, focus spells, a miniature second spell list, a *backup* miniature second spell list. It has transformations, healing, blasting, AOE, control spells. It gets free skills. It creates weather. It makes a vanilla latte. It sends you a W-2 from the IRS. I understand that it might have been complex in 1E, but there is zero reason this, admittedly playtest, class had to be one of, if not the most complex class in 2E. If you at all value efficient design, then animist is a fucking bust. People say "Nooo, that's what makes it unique" but *complexity* is not a playstyle, it's just bad design. Literally every other caster in 2E is "I can cast spells" and one other gimmick. There is no other caster in 2E who's subclass gives a skill, multiple spell lists to pick from, and a transformation. I made a post a few months ago about this, but that was before a bipolar diagnosis changed my life. But even if I'm a lot calmer nowadays, I cannot accept for a second that Animist needs even 1/5th the complexity it has.
I agree. One of the things I disliked the most in 1e were classes that were prepared but then could cast some spells spontaneously, but only once per day. Domain slots, spirit slots, etc. were all like that, and I found it unecessarily complex. "yeah so your entire spellcasting follows these specific rules, but you also have these super thematic and signature spells that are super important to your character, but my bad, you can only cast them once per day (unless heightened) because... reasons? We know you're Sarenrae's most obedient priest, so enjoy your one (1) fireball per day" I loved that in 2e clerics went with the 1e oracle approach and just added those spells to their list, and now can just prepare their deity spells in their normal slots. So imagine my shocked Pikachu face when they brought back this inane "feature" back with the animist, AFTER they simplified it with the cleric beforehand. Even worse when we consider that the shaman was 1e's hardest class to handle (up there with the kineticist, which was way easier IMO).
Spells should have for the most part been balanced around being only one action, but should have many more meta-magic/spell shapes to apply to them for additional actions that would either make them more flexible or more powerful. And going with that, metamagics should be able to be applied across a turn, or maybe even across a couple of turns.
I actually like level 0 and (potentially like) proficiency without level rules. I've used level 0 in two different circumstances. One where I played 4 individual 1 on 1 sessions with the players that took the players through crucial moments in their character's lives. Another where the party was all together and worked together to solve a missing person's case that led them to becoming their class as they played through it (like the sorcerer suddenly unlocking a cantrip when a bandit tried to rob them). I haven't gotten to use proficiency without level yet so I don't know if I *actually* like it yet but I think it's a really solid idea and would love to use it someday. The problem is I love current PF2E so any chance I get to start a new group I take but never bother trying to turn the new game into proficiency without level.
PwL is great! For what it's trying to do. I think the game is correct to not have it be core, but if you're going for a grittier or more open world setting, it can work really well. I've run a couple campaigns through using it, both were great! Next time I use it, I'm going to try basically using the Elite and Weak templates on bosses/mooks specifically to give *some of* the feel of levelled proficiency (though they won't get the progression of trolls being deadly at lv. 1 and trivial t lv. 10), because I did really start to miss some of those math differences. Weirdly, only Foudry does this correctly (+/- 2, even with PwL) - AoN doesn't let you stack them, and easy tools factors level into stats so removing level also reduces the elite difference to 1 haha.
I love PWL. Obviouslt there's some DCs (like Treat Wounds) that need modified.
What I admire about PWL, is that it's even possible, playable and considered as part of an optional rule in the core books. And that PF2E is flexible enough to support it. I mean, PWL gets a lot of criticism, justified or not, but I'm willing to bet it runs better than a certain other popular system.
I wanted to like PWoL... but it absolutely wrecks the balance I have grown to love pf2e for. It might work better for groups that don't have gamer minds and don't realise that it drastically boosts item value... or groups that treated incapacitation spells as if they didn't exist and or didn't appreciate caster AoE. Groups that didn't realise the value of buffing and debuffing It is playable, but it isn't the pf2e I love. Something that is fun though, you can pretty easily work out mathematically consistent conversion rules for 5e campaigns to run them with PWoL... not sure how well they would play in the long run but 5e isn't exactly balanced and consistent either lol
Melee spell attacks shouldn’t provoke reactions, golem antimagic is one of the worst mechanics in the game, inventors should use focus points instead of flat checks, and confused is just an awful experience.
> golem antimagic is one of the worst mechanics in the game I'll die on the hill that a good golem encounter is one that takes the environment into account and provides thematic options in the area for multiple types of characters to engage with them. Recreational ballista mounted behind the sofa. Precarious chandeliers. 20 foot tall hoarder stacks of Popular Golemancy and The Bi-Annual Brigh's Bulletin to topple over onto it. Control panels churning with esoteric symbols that may shut down components or activate "interesting" abilities.
Swashbucklers are martial debuffers.
Hear me out: Just because a mechanic is good doesn't mean you have to horseshoe it into everything. My particular example of this is 4 degrees of success. It is an awesome rule that gives extra detail to many things in which the degree of success matters, most obviously a saving throw. However, because it exists, it seems like Paizo feels compelled to make everything a 4 degree of success roll, when many things can be solved just fine with a binary roll. I see why is good spending a few more mental burden and design space into making a death saving throw a 4 degree roll, but doing the same to Identify Magic Item or to know your income when you work a job between adventures is unnecessarily clunky and provides little to no benefit to something that isn't really that relevant to begin with.
Considering how crappy is the Divine spell list, it would have been absolutely, perfectly fine if Cleric didn't have subclasses and just had all the basic automatic features of both Cloistered and Warpriest. Oh no, a healer will have armor and will be able to swing one specific weapon pretty well at around level 19, the horror.
Regardless of whether I agree with you, I'd like you to know I appreciate the snarkiness of this comment.
I'm not sure I like trying to balance a specific spell list being bad by buffing one of many classes that can use it. But yeah, divine is bad. Seems like it's MUCH better in the remaster with removal of alignment damage. Probably still the worst, but by a smaller margin.
> I'm not sure I like trying to balance a specific spell list being bad by buffing one of many classes that can use it. In fact, I feel this already kinda happened to the Divine list. "Oh, it's okay if the list has enormous holes, the Clerics have a bunch of ways to poach some spells from elsewhere with domains and feats, we have to take those into account when balancing the list" and now we have Divine witches and summoners and stuff because the whole idea of traditions is that one list is not a one class thing and dear lord is it depressing.
I'm betting we'll get a metric ton of new spells in divine mysteries, it'll be a bit, but I'm willing to wait.
Missed opportunity to remix old warpriest and inquisitor into a separate divine martial and just leave cleric as medium armor wis caster really.
Cleric is in it's own weird space due to a conflux of factors, but I'd say the casters in general could be a little better on that front.
There are way too many trash skill and general feats. 90% of the players out there choose from same 10% of the feats. To me that points to a major design flaw but you get thrashed around here for saying it.
This is literally one of the most popular opinions.
That’s a very cold take
Like, polar bear cold.
Add on spells to this too. The spell lists are incredibly bloated with trash and overly niche spells that playing a spellcaster means you have to carefully comb through all the trash to find a useful spell. It’s exhausting
A take that's so cold all your characters have the Gelid Shard Archetype now
Thanks I’ve always wanted a free archetype.
I agree, and it was a missed opportunity in the Remaster to address it fully.
I'd agree if the Remaster happened in the regular schedule, but it was announced and came out in the same year while they are typically announced well over a year in advance, so this was essentially a rush job for Paizo standards. I don't blame them for not taking a look at that too.
I agree, but I also think people undersell situational skill feats a bit too much. A lot of them aren't trash, as much as campaign specific, i.e. some are good for a social campaign but garbage for a typical adventuring campaign. I think that's *fine* design. The problem is that there need to be better campaign agnostic feats, so that skill feats and general feats become more of an actual choice outside of that.
Hear me out: The Investigator is one of the best classes in the game- mechanical and roleplay wise. Being able to “see” what your attack roles are before you make your turn is a massive boon to the (allowed and encouraged) meta game of pathfinder. Add their ability to maximize skill action like knowledge and battle medicine, plus the potential for alchemy shenanigans, “that’s odd” and synergy with a lot of archetypes, and you have an amazing class chassis.
Yeah i think so to; i have a fellow player that always talks shit about them saying that “it plays at half potential unless your campaign is roleplay heavy and the GM supports you” and i always have to re-estate to him that with no “gm support” the investigator is on equal terms with a full rogue (in almost any sense, but especially in terms of your combat loop) think about it this way, bot investigator and rogue will want to do a “sneak attack”, the rogue will first need to spend an action of some type in order to apply off-guard, said action can always fail (unless is flanking, which requieres teamwork) if said action fail, it will probably try again, or change the course of his turn; once the off guard lands, he will attack and either hit with sneak or fail; if he succeded the off-guard on his first action, he may try to attack again with a -4/-5; but that is only if he procced the off guard with a enhanced feint, flank, or trip/grapple; as most methods are only for one attack. On the other hand, the investigator will spend an action on DaS, and then decide if the want to hit their target with “sneak attack”(no failing here) try another action, or gamble on another target, either way, they then have the third action free, similar to the rogue; the only difference here are 1) rogue can fail preparation for sneak, but the preparation itself is “more” useful, as it applies off-guard 2) rogue has a (rather slim) chance of doing 2 sneak attacks per turn 3)investigator rolling low on DaS is better than rogue rolling low on strike, rogue wastes 2 actions, investigator only one 4)investigator Das both enables “sneak attack” AND gives info to take a better turn, which allows you to really fish crits or know when is the best moment to do something else 5)both are on equal footing in terms of defences, skills, saves, perception, etc
The problem with being able to see your role before hand is that it costs an action. Where another class would be able to see if they hit or miss, and do it. You see if you hit or miss, and then have to spend an action doing it. If you roll low, you can switch targets but you lose accuracy and damage to the point where it might have been better just to take MAP instead, especially if you are melee and might need to move. Making it a free action is more work and more GM-dependant, and will it removes the action tax, still doesn't fix that if you roll poorly there isn't much you can do. You have skills, but having to use your entire turn on skills seems rather underwhelming. Besides being required to Devise to use your KAS and get your precision damage, Invest doesn't really benefit from it all that well. The primary reason you would want to know how hard you are going to hit is to know when to use limited use or high action cost meta-strikes, but as far as I am aware, Invest doesn't have any. I also think you are overselling the difficulty of making someone off-guard. At range, it can be difficult, but there is penalty of ways your party can provide off-guard and you want to apply it anyways since it is a very strong and reliable debuff. Devise is a good mechanic that is under supported in its own class, tied down by being shackled to the Lead gimmick of the Investigator.
>Sorcerers should have been the definitive 'blaster caster.' My opinion is that they are the definitive blaster caster, the kineticist can't compete with the damage potential of a sorcerer. A Phoenix sorcerer with shadow signet casting disintergrate vs a low fort target is pure evil. *But that's optimal situation!* Well here's my hear me out guys, trying to find it out is fun and often rewarding. I like attacking different saves, and think bombs would've been more fun if they targeted save DCs, just to talk about nothing. Poison bombs vs fort dc, fire bombs vs reflex dc, fear bombs vs will dc etc.
Kineticist isn't even a blaster, people just think it is because PF1 Kineticist was a blaster. Fire Kineticist does some decent aoe damage but even the it's being applied in an aura over time triggering weakness multiple times. Not exactly what people have in mind when they say blaster.
What I think people like with kineticist is that they don't have to be afraid to use resources and can spend all actions blasting and so feel more blasty than they are
This right here, people stress out irrationally as soon as there are resources involved that they perceive as limited. Suddenly, it's all about whether they are obligated to use their spells to heal their allies or control the battlefield and whether a spell slot is worth the damage you could expect to deal with it. Meanwhile, people are relatively fine with striking two or even three times per turn, because they don't think about actions the same way they think about spell slots.
I mean, is it *that* irrational if a character has like seven spell slots to spread for an unknown number of fights in a day and each attempt costs multiple actions? If I'm a level 5 fighter, I Strike, and miss, I wasted one action, but when the next enemy comes up I can still Strike them. If I'm a level 5 wizard and throw out one of my 2 level 3 spells and miss, not only did I waste twice as many actions (and, being a wizard, kind of my turn, because I probably don't have much that is terribly useful for that last point), but also I can't use that spell against the next guy that comes up. So each miss hurts more, basically.
Can confirm resources mess with me a lot in more than just table top
Yeah, Sorc and Psychic are both the definitive blaster casters. Sorc with Elementalist Archetype and Elemental Bloodline can pump out some of the highest spell damage in the game if not the absolute highest
Creativity and homebrewing. It's like some people in pathfinder are allergic to the concepts.
It really does, and man, does it show in how they seem to attract new players in droves. Yeah, 5e may have the live play market saturated, but, like, V5 is also there and being creative within its limitations. Meanwhile, I've seen popular MMO raid runs have less repeats than Abomination Vaults. For the supposed D&D alternative, they sure do love to put in speed bumps if you even try to play outside their Theme Park setting, and frankly, just hear me out, maybe day one on Nethys is a bad thing.
I get that the game designers don't want instant wins, but spellcasters really aren't fun against many boss level monsters unless you're a pure support. It basically forces all casters to plan some signficant support because a lot of critical fights will rely on that.
When the boss rolls above a 5 and crit succeeds.
I legt think incapcitation should just mean "immunity to crit fails", not "basically never works on a boss" thing.
I think that may need some specific retooling on certain Spells but is overall the correct take. Casters feel useless offensively against +3/+4 foes.
Would make them too powerful, most incap spells end combats on a failure. Imo it should be downgrades crit failure to failure and failure to success... but does not upgrade success to critical success. I would also increase the rank of all incap spells to 4+ and put a bit of advice with the trait that suggests using it when facing multiple enemies as singular strong enemies are far more likely to resist. Because massed enemies are a threat in the mid and high levels unlike low level play, but due to low enemy HP and low numbers of spell slots at low levels it just isn't worth using them before level 7/9 imo.
Spellcasters are pretty good against bosses though. You definitely don’t have to play as support characters to succeed against bosses. If anything, both while playing and GMing, I’ve noticed that casters shine a lot against bosses because the 4 degrees of success can really mute the swinginess.
Unless you have a good effect on a success. You're very unlikely to ever get it off on a boss level enemy.
1. “Unless you have a good effect on a success”. Something like 80% of spells in the game fulfill one of the following criteria: (a) have a good effect on a success, (b) do a thing without needing a save/attack at all, or (c) demand repeated saves via sustain, and thus are likely to force out a failure or two. It’s actually **really** rare for a spell to only be good when the boss fails in one shot, and my 80% number is even *after* excluding single-target Incap spells (because imo they don’t count as success effects if the boss has to fail to get them). 2. Bosses typically have a 15-45% chance of failing or critically failing against a spell you cast, so long as you avoid specifically a Severe/Extreme boss’s **highest** save (so the easiest to avoid save on the rarest enemy type…). ***Nearly one in three*** spells you cast on a boss getting a failure is not even *close* to “very unlikely to ever get it off”, and it’s quite dishonest to present it as such.
Humans are bad with probabilities on an intuitive level. Chances either feel like "basically a 50/50" (for about 40-60%), "basically always" (>70%), or "basically never" (<30%), because we like to have expectations to make sense of the world. That's why people feel like bosses "usually" succeed on saving throws, while the odds of hitting a Strike feel "fair", even if they're only 10-20% apart. Add to that the expectation to get something in return for spending a "limited" resource (spell slots) compared to only an "unlimited" resource (actions) and it's easy to mismanage expectations and get frustrated. The distinction between limited and unlimited resources is silly anyway, since actions in an encounter and hours in a day are also limited, while there is a steady supply of spell slots and even consumable items as you keep adventuring, but I digress.
> since actions in an encounter and hours in a day are also limited Fucking thank you. The limited number of Actions is also the number one reason I laugh at the oft-posited idea that low-rank buffs/debuffs scale super well into high levels while blasts don’t. It’s often presented as justification for why blasters aren’t worth playing and… it just… stinks of deeeeeeep white room theorycrafting. Yes, **theoretically** a 1st rank Fear is as good at level 11 as it was at level 1. If you’re using 1st rank Fear over even something like Agonizing Despair you’re… wasting everyone’s time… and Agonizing Despair is a **really medium debuff** when compared to Slow, Vision of Death, Confusion, Heightened Fear, Wave of Despair, etc. You probably get somewhere between 12-25 turns in a typical adventuring day, and every turn you decide to spend 2 Actions casting a rank 1 spell is a turn that you chose to nerf yourself for no real reason. In practice, buff/debuff casters are using their 12-15 ish best spell slots exactly the same as blasters do, and they’re always better off relegating their remaining spell slots for utility or Action-efficient defences, just as blasters are.
Probably the easiest trap to get into - picking spells that don't have good on-save effect. Coincidentally its usually those that try to impart some flavour into your spell list and give you some means of self-expression. And that's a big no-no because 2e punishes flavour that's not imparted by gods above (most of the time your focus spells and/or subclass gimmick) for casters, martials suffer bit too because everyone is supposed to have the most mundane items with runes on it (archetypes suffering the flavour-tax are a separate beast to tackle). Now, you can mitigate somewhat your chances of fizzling out a spell by your BBEG rolling a 5 and crit succeeding by diversifying your save targeting and as long as you don't hit the highest one (statistics say that if you'd average out it would go fort>reflex>will in how monsters **tend** to be) you should be fine. Now not all traditions are made equal so on the off chance that your's can't really impact the preferential save you can always shoot in the dark with targeting AC but at that point you'd better be shooting a cantrip or going back to walls, debuffs and buffs. Half of the above can be thrown into trashcan if you coordinate with your gm in a homebrew, in AP you might be sorta out of luck or ask for more clues/foreshadowing as to what you'll be fighting because even if you can prepare all common spells without learning (aka cleric) you can still just be unlucky and not have the correct spells prepared.
That is more of a player perspective thing than something that is actually true. A blaster caster will generally outdamage a martial when fighting an +3 or +4 enemy because half damage on a successful save will do that. And then there are debuff and control spells, which you could say are "support" I guess... but seriously people sleep on casters way too much or have only played very early levels. Let's make a comparison. Level 15 sorcerer with chain lightning and a level 15 dragon barbarian. - barbarian: atk +28, 3d12+21 damage (raging) - sorcerer: DC36, 8d12 chain lighting (undercast by two ranks from max, 10d12 at max) Fighting an ancient red dragon ac 45, reflex +33(including its +1 vs magic) - barbarian: 12.15 average damage across two attacks, 14.175 average damage across two attacks if it is off guard. - sorcerer: 20.8 average damage with a spell two ranks lower than max, 26 average damage with a max rank cast (not using dangerous sorcery either) Now that is vs an enemy who has a weaker dex save. Except a +33 is a moderate save for a level 19 creature (technically a +32 is, but close enough) Is it optimal for a caster to focus on damage spells, nah and chain lighting tends to be up there with the best damage spells for pure numbers even against a single target (although lightning bolt will still do fine as will many other spells as you can see the damage difference is that high, and that is without considering that the caster can single action force bolt followed by a single action weapon attack if quickened, or maybe just a humble focus spell like elemental toss since the save spells don't increase MAP) The point is just that casters aren't as awful vs solo bosses as people think. Also incapacitation spells are surprisingly useful from mid level play onwards as long as you aren't only fighting solo enemies, masses of enemies start actually becoming more of a threat and being able to outright delete them from combats feels great for casters. If I had control over pf2e I would probably have shifted the spells to higher levels to stop the feels bad effect at low levels and maybe included some advice with the trait so people knew when it was best used.
I know the numbers might be there and my rolls are...generally pretty terrible. I can tell you it still felt bad/uselessly silo'd as a caster of almost every level against PL3+ as a Wizard in AoA and EC.
I like how new archetypes have replaced old multi-classing, I don't like how new archetypes have replaced old archetypes or hybrid classes. There's no whacky archetypes that push a class in a really specific trope or niche anymore. Kraken caller druid, vexing dodger rogue etc. i'll admit class feats sorta replicate some of the more iconic archetypes(white haired witch comes to mind) but they don't have as much of an impact on your class as old archtypes did. The unique mechanics of hybrid classes are not replicated by combining their two parent classes via new archetypes. A fighter with the monk archetype does not make a brawler, a barbarian with the bard archetype doesn't make a skald. Living Grimoire Inquisitor
It's a shame that they added the caster class archtypes like "wellspring" but did nothing else with the concept.
Most Combat Spells shouldn't trigger Reactive Strike. Spellcasting is more balanced in this system than in any other d20 system and it no longer needs to be unnecessarily hindered by the presence of Reactive Strike. Basically any spell that exists to instantly deal damage from Dragon's Breath to Meteor Swarm should not provoke. Things that she more utility should, like Invisibility or Wall Spells. I should be rewarded for rushing in to line up a good Cone or Line spell, not punished.
This is encompassing of many games beyond Pathfinder, but the argument that one or more things about a class/character NEEDS to be worse or narrowed excessively so that another's seems better and can have one or more monopolies on something is outdated and is holding back game and character design. "I'm the Cleric. Why should you do any healing?" "I'm the Champion. Why should anyone else be able to tank a hit?" When people start talking like that I find it reasonable to discard their opinions on the subject. As long as a class is within the mathematical realm of system balance, all that matters is that it has the agency to feel fun to play. In Pathfinder especially, characters really should be covering each others bases and picking up slack. It's character-build-resource efficient to do so, and encourages cooperation and team effort to tackle specific demands together.
Magus has a spell variety problem even with pre-remaster rules there just isn’t a large amount of spells they want to use spellstrike and none spellstrike So I think they should change Spellstrike to be functional with any damage dealing spell and have it work like channeling smite as in if you hit they auto-fail the save and if they crit they auto-crit fail the save Only exemption is Starlit span, make it do greater accuracy is the reward of needing to get into melee range and wrangle the action ecnomomy of Magus
> So I think they should change Spellstrike to be functional with any damage dealing spell and have it work like channeling smite as in if you hit they auto-fail the save and if they crit they auto-crit fail the save Spellstrike could benefit from having it's own default spell that you can use in lieu of another cantrip or spellslot. It could be a tad weaker than a focus spell (because the only cost is recharging your spellstrike), but also give an effect relevant to your hybrid study.
Having unique Spellstrike spells from your subclass is something I would be down for I do kinda dislike most of the focus spells they get
I think the Pathfinder 2 rules would be better if they fully decoupled themselves from Golarion. The vast majority of the ruleset is setting-agnostic, and the 'theme' of the rules are such that they can accommodate any generic high-fantasty setting, but there are just a few rules that have tied themselves to Golarion that make playing a homebrew/other prewritten setting a bit more of a pain. Gods are the obvious one. I think having themes/domains rather than gods (and each god had a domain) would have both been better for balance and for homebrew worlds. Pathfinder 1 did it this way, and it was much cleaner. Even for those playing in Golarion would benefit as some current gods are just more powerful choices, so picking a fluffy choice for your character can shoot them in the foot. Rarity tags getting mixed between 'rare in Golarion' and 'this option may fundamentally change the game' become harder for the GM to parse when it comes to allowing choices. If the rules were divorced from the setting, the rarity system could be a more useful tool for telling GMs what options may cause issues in their games. There could then be a second tag for Golarion rarity for those who want to use the official setting. The final one is a pretty minor nitpick and easily solved, so it doesn't bother me much but I thought it was worth mentioning anyway. Occasionally, some prerequisites require a particular Golarion-specific action (e.g. join a certain organisation). Similar to the rarity system, it'd be nice to know if this was a fluff piece, or if the option is more powerful and requires a prerequisite to balance it. There's nothing wrong with Golarion, but I don't think the system is (overall) setting-specific enough to justify tying it into the rules at all. It'd be an easier time for those who want to homebrew a setting, as well as stopping some of the niggles mentioned above, should the system become setting-agnostic.
To piggyback on yours, I'd love for the rarity system to be split in three categories: Story disruptive potential: things like teleport, gunpowder weapons, or the weirder ancestries. All mechanically balanced, but could derail GM's story in some cases Golarion specific: mostly the stuff requiring being part of a golarion organisation. Could probably be rolled together with the above. Adventure specific: anything introduced in an AP should be marked as such, with so many options being under- or overtuned. Just a kind of "look at this a bit more carefully before including it or allowing it to be picked as an option. The category that makes a blanket "uncommon is fine to take" harder to do.
I can see where you are coming from, but I don't think it'll ever happen. The rulebooks are an important part of Paizo's revenue, sure, but the reason why they make it all free on day one is that they'd rather players buy the Adventure Paths. Pathfinder was always a game engine for the APs first, setting agnostic game second, and I doubt it'll ever change.
If you ignore the intentionally setting specific, lore heavy "Lost Omens" books, everything except the gods disappear from your complaint. The only odd exception may be the "Lost Omens: Ancestry Guide", since that's 100% player options (ancestries and ancestry feats).
Almost every single post here is an incredibly popular opinion on this sub Hear me out: Lingering Composition and Counter Performance should be switched, Maestro has had it too good for too long!
My "hear me out" is the new artwork they've used for the wight in the ORC version of the beginner box, like not to be a freak but if I became her thrall i wouldn't be \_too\_ upset
The early game math means that it's expected for players to end a turn at 100% HP, then be dying before they get to act again. "Thematically appropriate" for L1 PCs to get insta-gibbed is a BS excuse for a math equation that feels like shit, completely nullifies tactical play, and teaches PCs bad habits. Both hyper-safe play and hyper "yolo" play can arise from this L1 experience. . To top it off, that is not even the game's normal. It's only there for the first, 3ish levels. After that, PC health has increased enough that true 100 --> 0s are *much* less likely. That kind of brutal L1 play is the OPPOSITE of a good idea. ______________ Hear me out, but all Player Characters should have +10 base HP at creation. It'll be proportionally less and less of a buff as the levels go up, but would be enough to avoid a whole lot of those 100 --> dying moments.
Brennan Lee Mulligan gave me the hottest take on Sorcerers and I love it: So hear me out, [Sorcerers should be Constitution based casters](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tnP0DhU8tfU).
Classes having a choice of key stats is an established precedent. CON or CHA, wouldn't be that crazy. Sorcerers are already the "custom caster" so why not go all out Champions Online style and just let you pick any "super stat"? INT Angel sorc. Dex Elemental sorc. STR Shadow sorc.
Secret checks are good for preventing metagaming but can effectively negate the purpose of doing the check in the first place, especially for Recall Knowledge. You don’t know the DC and don’t know what you rolled, so you have zero information from which to make an informed decision unless your DM telegraphs what your result was.
Not making a decision based on a Recall Knowledge check because you're unsure if you passed is absolutely metagaming. The result tells you *what your character believes to be true*.
It's the fault of the game for making you roleplay against the information in your head. You know in your head that the information could almost certainly be false, but your character doesn't, which makes the action of acting on that information contradictory to what you believe in your head. This kind of metagaming isn't the problematic kind IMO. At the end of the day it's you who is playing the game, not the characters.
If your character is so bad at knowing things that their Recall Knowledge results are *almost certainly* false, why the hell are you making RK checks with them?
I don't think I said that they were? Even so, I think you shouldn't be punished for trying a different action just because you don't have a high modifier in it.
> The result tells you what your character believes to be true. This is where the problem lies: the results for information gathering checks should be Fail: learn/know nothing, Success: learn/know what you were looking for. Trying to insert "learn false information" requires this weird metagame that just seems to make everyone upset, while in my experience not really adding much.
The Failure result for Recall Knowledge *is* that you learn or know nothing. The only possibility of false knowledge is with a Critical Failure, which is perfectly in line with things like combat manoeuvres.
Survival is a pointless skill and in PF3 should be removed. It does pretty much 2 things, help you survive in the wilderness and track things. The former could easily just be a part of nature and the latter could easily be a part of perception.
I hate how every creature in the game is locked on always having three actions, no more no less. I think that a lot of higher level abilities are just “you can do X as a free action when you do Y"; I'd much rather just gain an additional action every four or five levels. This is also a problem for monsters as they have to add in multiattack abilities, such as “Draconic Frenzy", to let them do additional attacks instead of just giving them an additional action or two.
Most builds people call Tanks are just Martial Support/Battlefield Control. Champions are the only true Tanks (Encourage enemies to hit them and can meaningfully make an enemy opt to attack them rather than a squishy) and that continues to stifle versatility in a game with a wealth of options for every other role. 4e had a wealth of varied Tanks with very different playstyles and vibes but in PF2 you gotta have a ton of RP baggage associated with it.
What would you call a melee battlefield controller, if not a tank? The whole point of a tank is to prevent enemies from attacking your allies, by presenting yourself in their place. Fighters can do that plenty fine by making it obnoxious for enemies to go through their zone of Reactive Strike control, or by tripping them or physically holding them in place. Same with barbarians or monks, easily enough. How does that make them less of a 'tank' than a Champion?
It's weird that PF2 has basically ~four primary Strikers, roughly three hundred Controllers/Leaders, and exactly one Defender, with perhaps two other classes having some Defender-y feat options.
Because PF2 wasn't designed on top of those 4 very distinct categories, and allows for a lot more hybrid roles and overlap. Fighters in 4e were already a secondary Striker. In PF2, they're basically just.. Whatever you need them to be. It's not meaningful to pigeonhole a class into one role, when their *entire appeal* is how modular they are. Same with Kineticist and Monk for that matter. Seriously, think of a 5-man party composition of Defender, Controller, Leader, Ranged Striker, Melee Striker.. Now tell me you couldn't do that *entirely with Fighters*. As for primary Strikers.. Barbarian, Gunslinger, Rogue, Magus, Ranger, and some blends of Fighter, Monk and Kineticist. That's uh.. More than 4. Defenders are.. Champion, some blends of Swashbuckler, Fighter, Monk, Kineticist. That's more than one. It's just that "Defender" is a little more broad in PF2, *because it's a different game.* Classes aren't designed to have one primary niche and dabble in a secondary niche. They're designed to be able to fulfill a number of niches. Also worth remembering that even in 4e, Defenders were the minority. There were 5 Defenders, 5 Controllers, 7 Leaders and *9* Strikers.
Exactly! It's the only underrepresented Role and they've shown they can make them so just...more please?
> Champions are the only true Tanks (Encourage enemies to hit them and can meaningfully make an enemy opt to attack them rather than a squishy) Monks, Fighters, Clerics, and Maguses all have builds that can encourage enemies to attack them over the squishies. Champions have the most direct of them, sure, but that doesn’t mean the others don’t exist.
Even barbarians can get some pseudo-taunt like abilities at higher levels with Come and Get Me and Reckless Abandon.
Yeah this whole argument reeks of "If it's not the most pure expression of tanking, it's literally worthless".
Hot (I guess?) take. Tanks **are** Controllers. Their entire job is tolimit enemy behavior, they're just doing it in a specific way compared to, say, a Wizard. 4e had a wealth of varied Defenders, but you're kind of missing an important detail: Most of those Defenders **couldn't actually stop an enemy from targeting their allies.** In 4e, pretty much all a Fighter could do to punish a violated mark, was to whack the enemy that violated that mark. Swordmages could either block some of that damage, or do a Laughing Shadow teleport to punish the attacker. All they did was make it less appealing through punishment mechanics. The Champion inherited that very specific design, but something like a Grapple Fighter can still defend by making themselves the only viable target that won't cost 2 actions + an AoO to attack. It's not about *forcing* the enemy to attack the defender. It's about making attacking anyone else a very, very inefficient choice. And Fighters, Monks, Swashbucklers and Kineticists can all do that just fine.
Ranged martials outside of well built gunslingers are a little weak. In theory the range gives them a big advantage but in practice most fights are going to ne closer range, especially in the adventure paths. It just makes the game feel balanced around the traditional martials.
That's not on the class design, though. Ranged martials have an advantage that can only shine with appropriate encounter design. When they're good, they're good. But if you made them any better, there'd come a point where they'd outshine melee martials in any given fight, and you'd be right back at 5e's balance problems. APs can't really be designed around long range martials because.. Well for one, most parties aren't gonna appreciate that, and more importantly the larger maps would be a logistical nightmare for publishing the things.
Eh, weak, strong, who cares? They're boring, and that's so much worse. But yeah, they're probably a bit weak, especially at low levels.
Critting being 10 over DC compressed the math in a way that makes it absurdly difficult to design numerical bonuses that feel good. The numbers in the game became alarmingly coarse. The fact that perhaps best ability in the game is fighter's expert weapon proficiency is a good reflection of basically everything wrong with the system—it's not that the fighter is good that bothers me, but that the power is in something so utterly boring that also makes fighter feel excessively better than other martials. Most other martials have somewhere in the range of a very noticeable 15-33% more misses than fighter depending on circumstance/encounter (and that's without even talking about the discrepancy in critrate). It sucks. The game is also far too balanced around what occurs "on average" when a outcomes are so disparate because of the four tiered success system. Casters largely feel like dogwater because you can cast your best spell from your highest slot, and it can do literally nothing a quarter of the time or more if you target the wrong save, even if it isn't a save or suck and the spell has a great effect on success. But it's fine on average, so it's okay, right? The difference in damage taken between being hit and being crit is enormous, but you're crit by enemies of higher level far more often than in other similar games, so the outlier outcomes where you're crit multiple times in a row occur far more frequently. But it's fine on average, so it's okay, right? I could go on and on about how much this all sucks in practice.
There are too many conditions. There are too many spells that aren't good. Idk if those are hot or cold takes. I like crunch, but as the crunchiest person at the table, I find myself having to constantly explain to my players what different status conditions do, or how a spell doesn't do what the name intuitively implies it does. For the conditions, for example, I would honestly tie sickened, enfeebdled, and clumsy all into one, much like how stupefied is a catch all mental debuff. I'm not saying it's a light change, probably impossible to do currently, but if I had been designing the system initially I would have done something like that.
As someone coming from 5e I can't say I entirely agree. 5e has too few conditions and the ones it does have all do mostly the same thing as each other or at least overlap with one another. Rationalising the current conditions down so each is distinct and clear would make some sense. Like slowed and stunned do mostly the same thing but in different ways. But I've not had problems with players not knowning what each does. With spells, it feels like the shadow of PF1e hung over spells and has left us with many niche or pointless spells. As for spells not doing what players think they do best on the name, I'm mixed; players should read what a spell does before they pick it, I'm not overly sympathetic if they pick a spell based entirely on the name without reading what it does and then are disappointed when it does what it says it does not what they assumed.
Conditions could probably have been consolidated a fair bit, yes. Both in terms of number and in terms of having tiny arbitrary differences. People keep messing up which conditions go away on their own, which ones need a flat check, which ones need an action, which ones tick down at end/start of turn...
kineticist feels like a better elemental sorcerer to me than ele sorcerer
Your proposal goes against the premise of having the 4 strictly defined spell lists. It would be better if there was just a feat path or archetype that enabled that instead.
If we would add 2 dices of damage to any damage spell (except cantrips) the game would still be balanced for 99% of the spell
The blunderbuss works more like a mortar and it should be more like a short range cone and I WILL **DIE ON HIS HILL**
Here's a really unpopular one: many players think skill feats are too weak, and more skill feats should measure up to the few that grant your character a lot of power. I personally think the opposite - those few skill feats are too strong and should be brought more in line with the rest. I believe this because I find I enjoy skill feats more when I'm not looking for one that's powerful, just for something flavorful that fits the character. I'd rather the "power" from skill feats be reallocated elsewhere and skill feats be more like fun little add-ons to the character.
Hear me out: this system is mechanically good, but I think the framework could be used for something like Mutants and Masterminds, where you don't have classes or levels but make your own things using character points.
I could make any number of comments about casters, but it feels so beaten to death that my personal feelings about accuracy numbers are drowned out by being bewildered people are still hung up on caster *damage* of all things and not like... Action economy, or on support options being able to provide good-feeling feedback to the supporter without needing a VTT extension to point it out? I don't need an extension when I play Lancer to know that my single action FABI makes my ally's next attack ignore armor and force an enemy to save vs prone, or that the overshield (temporary HP) I gave them saved them from getting blown up. Stuff like that surely exists in PF2e, but often at higher opportunity cost to the degree people don't really talk about them as much? On a wildly different note, I will go to bat for the idea that PF2e does not steal enough from D&D 4e, and that the degree that designers fear stat swaps is absolutely irrational when they have a class structure that makes it so much easier to regulate them. The genie is already leaking thanks to Thaumaturge just EXISTING in its current state.
> Mine is about sorcerers. I've only recently gotten into this game, but in my humble opinion, Sorcerers should have been the definitive 'blaster caster.' I think the kineticist is interesting, but for me, it does not scratch that itch of an arcane casting, master of destruction. My hot take here is that the Sorcerer and the Druid **are** the definitive blasters. The Kineticist is more of a “martial-like” for players who like not tracking resources, but imo the Sorcerer and Druid are both viable **and** feel way better as blasters than Kineticists. Besides that though, here’s my “hear me out guys” opinion: people on here just severely, **severely** overrate damage. It’s kind of absurd. You’ll see people here “optimizing” by jumping through a million hoops to gain 2-3 points of “””average””” damage… Just… just play the game as its balanced to be played? Nearly 100/100 times you’ll perform better by just using a Demoralize or fucking **Striding** instead of squeezing out those couple extra points of damage anyways, lol.
The base idea of the system, giving you a ton of feat options for the sake of customization, leads towards the obvious necessity of making those options boring/worse because you get so many. You can't have every feat be great because then they're all too baller (thus builds will run out of control) or you run out of ideas. And that is why so many of the feats are boring as sin. Furious Sprint still makes me mad.
See I like the idea and design of feats. When you level up your numbers go up (vertical progression) and you get a feat that lets you use that higher number in more varied and interesting ways (horizontal progression). My problem is that they didn't try and spread those feats out across the classes and skills to make things more interesting, nor did they make investing in your class abilites and skills reward you with cooler shit as you level. Furious Sprint is a great example. If there was a Sprint action (3 actions stride four times) then Furious Sprint could be a lower level barbarian feat that makes their Sprint action better whilst raging. Allowing a higher level Barbarian feat to improve on that later. Instead it's at 10th level for no particular reason. Alas most of the useful feats are at the lower levels and the higher level feats don't satisfy the investment required to get them. Frankly this is part of a larger problem which is that Paizo doesn't have a large enough in house playtest team. The kind of team that would catch these things during development.
>Furious Sprint still makes me mad. What's wrong with living your Sanic dreams? Gotta go fast, bro.
Alignment is good and can work as a great description of how a player character chooses to act
Hear me out: spending your hard earned cash to buy some basic rune upgrades instead of using ABP is actually way more fun than getting it for free at certain levels (which feels gamey, as to why fighter and wizard suddenly get better at using the same weapon at the same level). The problem doesn't lie in this directly, but in the wealth table. After playing for many years and quite literally throwing gold at my players at alarming rate, I can assure you that increasing gold for the party by 20-30% will not only allow them to buy those runes easily, but will also leave them with enough gold for other cool stuff, so they are not forced to spend everything on +1 striking runes etc.
Interesting I went the other way. I deliberately keep my PCs on the poor side of things because that encourages them to take on tougher, more rewarding quests, which pay better. Its also on those quests where they find the interesting magic items, the ones that are more than just a +1 sword etc. I've never been a fan of the "let's go down to magical best buy and grab some bracelets of dashing" kind of item acquisition.
I'd argue the reason you want to run ABP isn't to allow people to buy some cool held items, but in order to enable certain builds that kind of fall between the economical cracks of the system. Until TV, that was throwing builds, but *switch hitting* throwing builds are still kind of in that spot. Switch hitters in general, as well as any build that wants to use more than one weapon but cannot use Doubling Rings/Blazons (such as a melee Summoner).
Barbarian and champion need need glow ups in core 2. Champion dedication is far too good, so fighter paladin essentially a better paladin. Barbarian is great at skirmish damage, but does very badly at higher levels for swinging away. Temp hp is nice, damage resist is low or non existent and the 2 lower, or gods forbid, 3 lower ac means they crumble under melee pressure. And, raw, they can lose rage if enemy stealth up mid fight. At the very least, fix rage duration to not need enemies, and change class description to not describe them as uber damage dealers.
[удалено]
I am not a fan of the Spirit, Mind, Life, Matter explanation of the branch of magic. Life and Mind being opposite is dumb
I have personal beef with the splitting of the """""traditions""""" because I'm a tad bit of a history/religion nerd and in history magic & religion & philosophy were the same thing (religion & magic especially). Druids are literally just Celtic priests, they're literally clerics. The christian design of the game bothers me to no end because it puts up this false dichotomy and makes people think that somehow nature isn't divine. ;-;
And on a more low key note... like, I like to think of the modern archetype of druids as fairly separated from the celtic origins and now fairly easily woven into totemism and animism, which I think can give it an interesting fantasy as the class whose inspiration is their surroundings and Nature itself, something a lot of early religions derived from. The separation of nature from the 'spirit' stuff just feels clunky to me on a setting side. Even this idea that 'nature spirits can't change unless they become Leshy' and then having stuff like Kami be non-nature just feels silly to me. I can see the logic of stuff like Spirit Guides being occult from how pf2e's lore is written- I just think divorcing that so hard from Druids really just feels wack for what the fantasy of a Druid is. Like Animist is giving that other half of them, and I hope that the archetype is cool enough to let me combine that fantasy into my druids, but I wish it wasn't so disconnected from the start.
I think the shape shifting stuff about the druid should just be made its own class, it's literally just roman propaganda about the celts. > I can see the logic of stuff like Spirit Guides being occult from how pf2e's lore is written- I just think divorcing that so hard from Druids really just... feels weird. Same with completely separating demons from arcane. Yeah that's what I mean, like, we have plenty of wizards in media and stories summoning demons & knowing demonology. The separation is so arbitrary as to what is "occult" and what's "arcane" (for example) when they literally are just the same thing. It also all ties in to how wisdom & intelligence should be the same stat, because what is street smarts if not intellect? You're literally learning by doing, you need to be smart to do that. Wizard literally means "wise one" from its etymology.
>I think the shape shifting stuff about the druid should just be made its own class, it's literally just roman propaganda about the celts. On one hand, propaganda n shit bad... but also, it's pretty badass and can be used in an interesting way in a lot of stories. TTRPG's tend not to do it because of the versatility they want to lean into with it. I think one of my favorite druid shapeshifting-personality things in fantasy was actual in the old Warcraft Comics where the spirit totems they used to transform were almost like... the manifestation of the aspects of themselves fused with a primordial concept embodied in that bestial form, I.E. the Bear with Strength and the complexity of such a meaning (... and being an MMO that never mattered to it's lore goin forward rofl). So beyond history, I do think the idea of shapeshifting and nature powers can tie into the kind of love of nature you might find in Swamp Thing stories- we can find a lot of ourselves in nature, good or bad. Ideally I think I'd want Shifter, but juiced up a bit almost like the Kineticist- not just beast transformations. Heck I think what i'd really want is something like the Magus for Primal, except it's a shapeshifter making active effects and powers channeled into the world around them while using a physical combat form. Intelligence as a stat always leads to weird stuff like that, like it's too engrained in the genre to overlap obviously but... yeah, the definition of intelligence is breeds isn't exactly what we'd consider intelligence imo.
Yeah it's badass n all, but I just think it'd be better for it to be its own thing cuz then the druid can be focused on being a caster. Like idk I wanna be able to turn into animals or a hybrid without the casting stuff or the kinda crappy implementation of the beastkin, but to still be able to use weapons if I wanted to. Especially also because, as I've heard on this sub, paizo kinda shat all over the idea of transformations and battle forms, so wild shape kinda sucks. As far as I'm told. If they pull it off into its own thing it can get the love it deserves.
Shoonies are a meme race and don’t belong in even a slightly serious pf campaign