By "pan-pseudo-signature" I mean that a sole spontaneous spellcaster's entire repertoire working almost like signature spells, except only for heightening and not "downcasting" (such limitations extant as to not completely nullify the "signature spell" rule and that Bard 20 feat in APG).
Would making this default, in tradeoff for making all prepared spellcasters getting a flexible spellcasting w/o the cantrip(s)/even level spell slot loss (spell collection size roughly the same), be fair enough?
----
P.S. This thought was conceived when I thought of 5E's Sorcerer known spells discrimination, and thought of having all Neo-Vancian casters prepare up to half-level + Casting mod spells per day only, in contrast to spontaneous casters getting to know spells equal to at least their current level(s)...
The point is, that I believe the # of spells a flexible caster preps each day must be lower than an equal level spontaneous caster's base repertoire in order for both types to have a niche for being selected.
All other Incarnate spells (if they pass the question below) are castable, yet only Primal Summoners are screwed if they'd love to call Mogaru...
----
2. Is using the extra slots to cast (10th-SL heightened) Incarnate spells RAW in the first place?
The text for the feat only refers "summoning" spells, unlike Master Summoner which also calls out "incarnate" spells too. Is this an oversight?
----
Edit: Upon closer inspection, Summon Kaiju is a Rare spell; no wonder it worked clunky with the Summoner class. Even so, shouldn't it work well thematically, at the very least...?
Specifically, one who rolls to hit with Dex (as fists are finesse), not caring about Str damage that much, while only taking "passive" class feats and no stances which modify AC, that is.
I just want to know if a Str 14 -> 20 & Dex 18 -> 22 stat spread is not awfully crippled compared to the contrary...
This quip runs on the assumption that if you go Dual Class...,
1. You get 1 key ability boost if the only choice(s) for your two classes are one and the same (so no free replacements). This has the benefits of milking the value of your intended Apex item to the maximum.
2. You get 2 key ability boosts if the scores in question are different. This nets you with a higher ability score total in the end, not mentioning various skill bonuses spread doubly. BTW I think this interpretation is also close to officially intended rulings, as since you still only end up with only a single Apex item, starting with two 18's will still end up with a 24 and a 22 by the end of your career.
Given this choice, would you choose a Dual Class combination with only a single ability boost (like Investigator//Wizard), or two (like STR-Fighter//DEX-Monk)?
Well, I get that the 2nd point stayed for balancing purposes (grumbling of acceptance), hence the 3rd point.
Can a limbless person ever become a Psychic? The playtest text seems to suggest that as long as you can at least move your head around you're cool (which makes sense, brain power and all that), so is this RAW intended?
At least 3 out of 4 listed possibilities (Cook, Lift, Tidy) are effects covered by said school, so why is it an Evocation effect of all other schools (other than the now gone "Universal school")?
A repost from this post, with more clarifications;
I myself wrote:
I'd run ABP with the following adjustments so magic items still function in-universe, while not being mandatory for fighting high level foes;
(1) Item and potency bonus are separate, but only the better one applies; this also explains why that sword you looted from the stronger NPC boss suddenly drops in power in a RAW manner.
(2) Base item bonus from armour is now just "armour bonus" to avoid grave errors within (1).
(3) Each devastating attack feature lets you treat your proficient non-magical weapon and unarmed damage as something else for the purpose of overcoming damage resistance; magic, cold iron and silver, then adamantine (Monks get the same upgrades on their appropriate attack methods a few levels earlier, as usual).
While the CRB states the Wizard gaining slots on a 2+1 pace not unlike the other non-Sorcerers (except school specialists of course), the GMG's pg.192 seems to indicate otherwise that they start with 3 slots on a new level even without a specialized school...
Gamemastery Guide pg. 192 wrote:
Dual-class spellcasters get full access to all the spells of any spellcasting classes they have. For instance, a sorcerer/wizard gets five cantrips in their spell repertoire from sorcerer, five prepared cantrips from wizard, three spontaneous 1st-level spell slots from the sorcerer (with three 1st-level spells in their repertoire), and three 1st-level prepared spell slots from wizard (or four, for a specialist). They keep these spells entirely separate and get the full benefits of both spellcasting class features, even if both classes use the same tradition.
Which side is right, here? Isn't this a major FAQ material not covered as of now, or a dev team member already pointed this out?
If you use the 1 action to spread the damaging corona, what's the duration of the extension? Is it until the 1 min total duration of the spell, being some sort of a choice of whether making it unsafe for your allies to fight together?
In an another forum (GitP, to be precise) nearly 7 years ago, a local forumite decided to divide every single 1st party 3.5 character classes' Niches into 17 categories, then ranking them (1~4, lower is better) per class in an attempt to measure their own Tier list.
They were as follows...
1) Battlefield Control: Prevent enemies from taking their normal actions and/or movement.
2) Buffer: Increase the abilities of allies.
3) Curiosity: Rarely used but helpful in some meaningful way. (Examples: Forgery, Tongues, Slow Fall, etc)
4) Debuffer: Reduce the abilities of enemies, usually by inflicting status effects.
5) Dominator: Take functional command of enemies.
6) Game Changer: Can proactively reshape the game (or realty) to suit your goals. (Examples: Wish, Miracle, Gate, Psychic Reformation, anything that completely breaks the action economy, etc)
7) Healer: Can restore hit points and remove harmful status effects for allies in combat.
8) Meat Shield: Can stand in the front line of combat with a reasonable chance of not getting killed.
9) Melee Damage: Deal meaningful damage to enemies within reach.
10) Mobility: Can circumvent battlefield control and barriers, and quickly pursue or retreat from enemies.
11) Party Face: Interacts with NPCs in a way that gets desirable results.
12) Ranged Damage: Deal meaningful damage to enemies at a range.
13) Sage: Knows or can find useful information.
14) Scout: Locates enemies, threats, and other useful things while remaining hidden.
15) Thief: Can take things from an enemy and enemy locations without being discovered.
16) Summoner: Can summon allies (or make them) that fills other niches without putting the character directly in harms way.
17) Trapfinder: Find and disarm or bypass traps.
----
BTW, the 3.5 Core PHB classes' rank totals were wildly distributed between 26(Cleric) and 60(Barbarian).
And of course, the worst possible 68 was of course limited to the Commoner NPC class.
----
If all classes in a class based game are supposed to "be best at Something", using the above guideline alone shows that sooner or later some overlap (= violation of niche protection) is bound to happen.
PF2 alone already has 16 published classes and 2 more scheduled to be added next year, and the latter ones are already stoking conflict due to their apparent clunkiness, which disturbed me enough to write this post while holding off the urge to sleep (it's about 2:00 AM here where I live).
As such, would the concepts of Niche Protection and Spotlight Securement be a folly in the end? Or we the players shouldn't give it up and urge the rules developing team to keep up trying to secure it as best as they can?
As I am constantly baffled why a folk born with innate spellcasting ability would be constrained by a necessity of an artificial language construct and/or specifically shaped appendage(s), I decided to forever use these rules, roughly ported mostly from PF1's Psychic Spellcasting with a few adjustments, as my personal campaign settings' Sorcerer magick theory.
----
1. Verbal is replaced with Emotion (concentrate) (not Thought like PF1)
I visualized the most iconic verbal-only spells, the Power Words, as chock full of strong, brutal emotions, rather than cold calculating thoughts. Hence the swap from PF1.
Emotion based spells now cannot be cast when the caster is fascinated or frightened. However, you may cast such spells while raging, if you pass a DC 16 flat check (and do not waste the spell if you fail).
2. Somatic is replaced with Thought (manipulate) (not Emotion like PF1)
Most spells without a verbal component usually tended to be Illusion spells, which would serve better if carefully crafted with logical thoughts, not bare emotions. Once again, hence the swap.
Thought based spells now cannot be cast when the caster is confused or controlled, or raging.
3. Stupefied Sorcerers still "can but hardly" cast spells.
----
Assuming I keep on using these replacement components for the sake of my personal verisimilitude sensibilities with innate spellcasting, would I have any glaring issues?
I know that some animals in RL have at least human toddler level intellect at adulthood, such as cetaceans (whales, dolphins, etc.), primates (us humans, gorillas, monkeys, etc.), parrots, corvids, and maybe more. Shouldn't those species be the exception to the general trend of -4 or lower INT mod and officially be elevated up to, like -3? Especially for the bigger whales (not present in PF2 as of now, AFAIK) and elephants, I heard they even have primitive vocal languages of their own...
P.S. At first, before this topic I was almost going to have a discussion on Animal pecking order in the form of in-game levels, but upon closer inspection, as other than the fact that marine leviathans like the megalodon seeming a bit lower than expected the general pecking order was well thought of by the dev team, so I dropped that one...
P.P.S. And don't even mention Tyrannosaurus palm directions (hint: not facing the ground IRL, their wrist joints never support that direction). Their Deinonychus art was done right, with all the fluffy feathers...
Just noting, I do already know the heightening will not happen, unless you either know (a) higher level version(s) or designate it as a Signature Spell in case of Sorcerers.
But is just using up higher level slots to cast an unheightened base version of a spell legal/RAW?
On that thread about non-martials having a rough time getting new weapon proficiencies which scales past Trained, had me thinking of the ①titular question, and the following derivative:
②Is having multiple martial classes with strict niche protections on the availability of individual fighting styles worth it for the game?
The fact that when another game, the often ill-spoken 4th Edition of Big D, divided classes into power sources, had a single Martial source manage to cover all classes that weren't Arcane, Divine, Primal, Psionic (4E's probably-equivalent to PF2's Occult), and Shadow, also cements this personal suspicion that weapon based fighting as a whole being divided among classes might be harmful to both the martials themselves and spellcasters.
----
P.S. Just in case, while the question may seem adversarial against martials, I actually prefer them to spellcasters (due to underdogma, I admit though).
1. Is a +3 major resilient orichalcum armor legal to give out as treasure?
2. If so, what is its Item Level and price (or general worth for WBL) treated as?
3. Is there no legal way as of now for gaining a 4th property rune for magical explorer's clothing?
Bonus. Do you treat the free gauntlets included in a magical full/half plate as magical too?
As the title, I'd like to mod the current proficiency rules slightly, by the following two tweaks...
1.Adjust the game's expected DC table to assume a hypothetical (but unexistant) 3/4 level growth on most relevant rolls, instead of full level.
This will allow those who invested on proficiencies of any kind to feel actual improvement, as they have their required natural X value on their d20 dice gradually get smaller (about 5 higher, in this case). The old d20 system's massive bonuses, and especially the even older concept of THAC0, served the same role of reducing required dice result to simulate character growth.
2.Add only half level to untrained checks, rounded down (with that -4 or whatever extra penalty).
This way, those who didn't care on investing proficiencies won't be left out too hard as in PF1, whilst naturally lagging behind somewhat. Although, to prevent lagging too much on the high levels (it's a whopping -9 than expected, if you keep the flat penalty), that -4 untrained penalty should automatically shrink for all creatures on designated levels; I'd prefer 5, 9, 13, and 17, respectively.
----
EXTRA.Change the +2 to ASI levels into 1, 5, 9, 13, and 17.
One extra; this one is just an aesthetic preference. I always thought the old 1, 5, 10, 15, and 20 progress look bizarre thanks to the 1st level increase sticking out like a sore thumb; if they switched that "assumed 0th level feat" into an "actual 1st level feat" on PF1's character level table, why not for Ability Score Improvements?
As the title, they could make critical hits (at least the double damage part) on a Strike as class features exclusive to martial classes and some advanced monsters, not unlike how they treated AoO's in this playtest.
Would this help solve the deadly monsters? If so, how much?
Personally, I prefer the "+Level to everything" policy of PF2's playtest (why not play 5E if your 20th level Fighter can't curb-stomp troll warlords ungeared and sleepwalking). However, I also know well that the fact defense and general DCs scaling too also robbed the "feel" of character improvement, since in the end, your "natural X on the d20" either stays the same, or can't catch up and go up.
So I wondered; "If you want the feel of numerical character development, is Rocket Tag inevitable?"
When both sides of a dice rolling contest in game has level scaling, for the proactive side to feel stronger as they level up, they will eventually require lower natural X's, which means their bonuses towering over the reactive side's respective bonuses, eventually. As the GM's side of the table will eventually get similar bonuses too on their own stat blocks, I can only see the rocket tag phenomenon as inevitable, at least in the numerical statistics part of the game...
What on Golarion (and the d20 system in general) do Fighters represent as something of its own? Just what is the Figher's class identity?
In the current iteration, every core classes other than the Fighter have a solid character by themselves;
----
Alchemist: Who learned alchemy(duh) to unleash (al)chemical reactions upon the world
Barbarian: Who bursts into a berserker state reminiscent of a human-sized killing machine
Bard: Who dug into the arts to gain esoteric knowledge of all kinds, including some high magic
Cleric: Who represents the gods (and hopefully some philosophes) as its divine petitioner (but unfortunately shoehorned to healer roles as an original sin)
Druid: Who is backed up by nature to unleash its primal fury as magic
Monk: Who learned Wuxia-style martial arts for extra oomph (and maybe a safe, traditional way to divine ascension)
Paladin: Who is the forceful fist of goodness (and hopefully other alignments) that supernaturally smite things to oblivion
Ranger: Who is the deadly stalker of the wilderness, shredding horrors via blade and arrows
Rogue: Who specializes on all kinds of skills from the professional to the shady ones
Sorcerer: Who were naturally born with spellcasting (but for some reason still relies on tongues and hands to use it)
Wizard: Who learned magic academically for cosmic-scale power
----
So what should the fighter be? At least, it must never be "that class which represents all other martial arts and fighting styles not yet specialized by other new classes," ever.
Like, Cavaliers took riding and field commander things (and ruined them with bad practice), Gunslingers took all guns (obviously), Magi (plus Inquisitors and other 2/3 casters) took gishing, and Vigilantes combined the Fighter and Rogue then attached some serious social stuff that actually works with minor superhero trappings.
I believe they need some serious examinations on class identity for them to earn their page in the books, other than being in a sacred cow position.
I know it's probably too late for the playtest, but it is a question that's really bugging me (regarding in-game balance between spell schools).
Specifically regarding Conjuration and Transformation, the two classically overpowered schools (for they can easily creep on the niches of other spell schools, or also often, entire classes just by themselves). How would you split and pilfer spells from these two to create (a) new school(s) of magic spells?
Also, reorganizing spells into other (new or old) schools that fit them better is already a thing (as healing spells properly sorted into Necromancy in PF2), so such suggestions are also welcome.
It seems very likely that (somewhat tragically) NPCs would be using different rules from PCs, except the ones with PC class levels.
Now, this doesn't mean that's not totally acceptable for in-universe verisimilitude, my greatest priority in choosing a favorite RPG ruleset, if done correctly. For instance, even in PF1 and 3.X, non-humanoids usually have a lot of (Ex), (Sp), and (Su) abilities arbitrarily tacked on their stat block, and (usually) no one bat an eye on that, for it could be hand-waved off as some sort of a racial trait for those creatures. Plus, they follow general rules like (in case of PF1) BAB following HD size without exceptions, feats added up every odd HD, etc.
What's totally inacceptable is when the rules turn sort of inconsistent with formula. Like in a certain adventure in a certain edition of the Brand (which even had NPCs' general check bonus scale twice faster than PCs AND their ability bonuses absolutely meaningless in combat, god), in which a NPC paladin's stat block suddenly "transformed" into a monster stat block without the guy in game actually changing, just because he was temporarily an enemy for the duration of the encounter, for balancing reasons. In another awful instance, in Starfinder's Alien Codex, the main text explicitly stated that for the alien species which are playable, there are two different ability adjustments each for NPCs and PCs; no, just no. For me, these instances were accepted as some sort of a highest order of Blasphemy. It's like the gravitational constant(G) working explicitly different for humans and non-humans, a total chaos.
Now, the Brand's 5E is teetering on the line between my personal acceptance for NPC presentation or not. All generic stat blocks for NPCs don't have specific abilities that arbitrarily surpass PC abilities with similar usages in fuctionality, so they all could be hand-waved off as an unseen flexible NPC class statted up for easy usage. Well, except for the horrible fact that their Proficiency bonus does NOT scale with the number of HD, but their CR, a floating, weightless value that should never have had in-game interactions (but unfortunately do, like Turn Undead and polymorphing spells). Plus, The new monster races added on later books often have ability adjustments and racial features arbitrarily "watered down" from the monster versions, further making me lose favor for the 5E ruleset, despite its core rules still being an OGL based one (which usually earns a lot of points when I'm deciding wich book to buy and support for).
So, in conclusion, I'd be still accepting different NPC rules as long as the game's basic formula isn't crushed (like their proficiency bonus hopping up and down for different rolls without explanation, or ability score bonuses not mattering), and PC versions (if any) NEVER get a watered down nor buffed version of NPC racial features but only equal ones. How about you?
A thing I realized just a bit ago was why 5E got to use Neo-Vancian casting for prepared casters. Since the "caster levels" stack in 5E's multiclassing along with spell slot growth, you have a hard time which slot came from which class, and thus cannot allot individual slots to a single cast of spell each. As such, as a side effect, it finally saved Sorcerers from dented slot growth, too.
So I wonder, how will caster levels and Vancian magic function for PF2? I personally prefer Neo-Vancian, as it is super-tedious to prepare spells like individual bullets filled with different viruses, plus PF1 already has the Arcanist as an acceptably fine execution of a Neo-Vancian caster. And as we know that PF2 spells will also now require manual upcasting (plus downcasting, too? I don't have a clue about that), this actually might be what's really happening.
If Neo-Vancian for PF2 is true, I'd mostly be happy, but would also want it ensured to be like {prepared caster's daily prepared spells < spontaneous caster's full known spells}; the former can change spells completely each day on the fly, while the latter is stuck with its choices semipermanently, so a balance issue (5E failed miserably on this one).
So, my morning (UTC+9 here) ramble is finished now. Do you have any other thoughts about this topic?
It seems they made dumping Charisma a hard choice by adding the new Resonance pool system.
As such, do you think they made steps to ensure that it's a tough choce to dump Strength either, for inter-ability balances? Assuming PF2 did so, what could have been added to Strength, oher than weapon hit/damage, Athletics, armor versatility and carrying capacity?
I hear of this Creation domain here and there, so I did some research on it.
As it turns out, the Core Cleric domains in Pathfinder are composed of those from the original SRD, including the so called Divine rules' additional domains, EXCEPT the Creation domain (Scalykind having joined back later through later hardcovers); apparently its original domain bonus to conjuration caster level stacked with the Artificer domain, so the dev team seems to have considered its presence useless.
So basically, did the Creation domain in Pathfinder truly had gone the way of the dodo?
Recently while trying to realize a character concept (basically a fantasy Iron Man without flight nor energy blasts), I've found out that there was no Armor magical ability that let you don and doff quickly by yourself without penalties. If such ability existed, how much worth would it be to add to a full plate armor? Or better yet, does such ability already exist?
p.s. I was struggling on where to post this, here or one of either Advice or Homebrew, but gave up and decided to post this here.
