StreamOfTheSky's page

Monk will still suck in a high point buy game, but not as badly, so it's definitely a step in the right direction. Hell, it's a really dull and boring way to "fix" the class that still doesn't accomplish its goal, but you could just award +1 to all six stats for each level in the monk class you take and the class still wouldn't be any better than middle tier.

(It's true, monk doesn't have to suck any more. But that requires playing it in a way that doesn't feel like the normal monk type character -- as an archer, or lance charger, or so forth. In armor if possible. Or by finding tricks to infinitely generate ki. If you just want to be a guy who punches and kicks. runs fast, has good defenses, and is supposedly good at mage hunting...you're going to have a bad time.)

This pisses me off. The only thing broken about Paragon Surge was using it to spont. cast entire spell lists on a whim. Using it as intended to simply get whatever feat you need at the moment (ad qualify for) was fine and not in need of fixing. Instead, they left that Energy Attunement feat in for a handy loophole and nerfed the spell to hell for gish/martial types trying to use it.

All they had to do was say, "You cannot gain spells known through use of this spell" and it'd have been fine. Ugh, this reeks of when they realized the gun rules were broken and rather than nerf guns, decided to nerf free actions in general.

And the tin foil hat guy is on to something. This nerf makes the Arcanist look more appealing. It also makes the Brawler's spontaneous grabbing of a fighter feat a bit more unique and special. It really does seem like some of these nerfs are driven by the desire to make the new classes more appealing.

There are options in D&D 3E if you can use them. It had nice prestige classes and items for throwers, and its version of Far Shot was much more thrower-friendly, too.

Check out Bloodstorm Blade. It's a 10 level class, but people generally only took 4 levels of it for the abilities to treat (for 1 round as a swift action) thrown attacks as melee (so you can 2H power attack, make weapon-based combat maneuvers from range, etc...) and the ability to instantly regain the weapon after each attack, allowing for full attacks with the same weapon. The other 6 levels are actually also pretty decent, but 3E was nice to martials and had lots of good options for them, so most people preferred 5 levels in Master Thrower or whatever to 6 more in BB.

Since we're still on the topic of Powerful/Deadly Sneak and how bad they suck...

Check out this 3E feat.

Not how it does not require full attacking, nor incurs any penalty on your attack rolls. Also note how it just straight up lets you reroll (so instead of a 2 or 3, you could potentially get a 4, 5, or 6, too) though you only can reroll once (even if it's another 1).

It's pretty much just plain better than the rogue talents and has no possible drawback at all, at worst it just does nothing.

People *still* didn't take it. It was considered a subpar feat. I've played at least a dozen rogues between campaigns and one shots in 3E, and I never took it, nor did I ever see anyone else. It's just...underwhelming.

Of course, 3E had much better feats for martials in general (pathfinder had to balance "broken" things like that, you know), so that was part of it. In any case...if you're looking for a quick hotfix for the rogue talents...just replace both of them with Deadly Precision.

It's not scary, and the game should dramatically pare back all the stupid personal range buffs. Being able to share more buffs with the weakest classes in the game isn't bad for the game, quite the opposite.

Also: Mage armor is pretty great for a wildshaping druid, too, until he can afford Wild armor.

Artemis:

Ok, let's ignore the comparisons in DPR to power attack for whatever reason. Let's look at *just* the DPR of Powerful Sneak itself.

As others have shown, it adds a paltry +0.167 damage per SA die on average. But it *also* inflicts a -2 to hit which means, unless you only miss on a 1-2 or only hit on a 19-20 (which, if anything other than a very rare situation, means you've got other problems / fights are so easy you can afford to make bad decisions), powerful sneak means you're hitting 10% less often, which means you're effectively doing 10% less damage. That's a loss of 0.35 damage per SA die (1d6 average is 3.5), already about DOUBLE the bonus damage you're getting! And that's ignoring the 10% hit to base weapon damage, strength and enhancement bonuses (if any), other random damage boosts like bardic music, etc...

"But I don't care about theory-crafted averages, I never do 12.167 damage in a real game!"

Right you are, Pathfinder is a game of absolutes. Either you hit or you miss. The monster is downed or up and trying to kill you. This is why powerful sneak is even worse than painted above. Because you're not "just" going to do 10% less damage consistently. You're going to occasionally just miss entirely and do *no damage*. Quite likely (since it was a sneak attack), the damage lost making a difference in whether the monster gets another turn to ream the party or not. On the other hand, since the talent just converts 1's to 2's, it's only ever going to add a few points of damage in the "ideal" case where you roll incredibly poorly. In which case, your damage will still end up pretty low and the monster will likely still be up.

"But I don't trust math at all, I hates the maths!"

Well, then you're beyond reason and I could care less about convincing you. But I will still refute your arguments, for the sake of other people who may read this thread and can actually be swayed by logic, rather than let them be duped into thinking this is actually a good rogue talent instead of the massive trap that it actually is.

Yeah, it works for CMB. But sadly most maneuvers are limited to one size larger or only work on foes w/ manufactured weapons. The only real option for such a character is grapple, which PF actually removed all size restrictions on, oddly enough. You could hypothetically make a pixie that suplexes the tarrasque.

PF has opened up an "interesting" new tactic of using "buffer buffs." Note how the dispel order goes by CL, not spell level. Most spells will often be from the same source (you?) and thus, same CL. This can be exploited at high levels when you've got a dozen long duration buffs and some short range ones running...

Say you've got some specific, higher level buffs you'd really not like to lose, that are of utmost importance to you. You can use the rules for intentionally casting at a lower CL than you have (as long as it's high enough to cast the spell) to cast them a 1 CL below your max! Why do this? Because then you can put up all your low level buffs (that can be cheaply replaced with pearls of power) at max CL, and bam! Unless the enemy knows which buffs to specifically target, the insignificant buffs act as a buffer for the important ones!

I've done this before in high level PF games; it really is quite effective at lowering your risk to dispels. I throw up completely pointless 1st level or even 0 level spells for no other reason than to act as a buffer, it's hilarious.

It wasn't any help in 3E; dispel can just take a crack at every spell you have to try and get rid of it. Also, Reciprocal Gyre existed to punish mages for being heavily buffed with spells. I highly encourage porting the spell over to PF, btw.

Glorious Heat (used with orisons like Spark) was never broken. Infinite out of combat healing already exists by level 5, it's called wands of Cure Light Wounds. Someone taking a craft feat (say...wondrous items) instead of GH would have to pay for wands of CLW, but the savings on gear would more than make up for it.

I loved using Glorious Heat with Spark on my Druid. I took out candles and dished out "hippy healing" by lighting them. Way more interesting than poking someone with a wand over and over.

I would be proud of them nerfing a caster thing, except...as is usually the case when they nerf a caster thing, it hurts noncasters more (infinite healing and little to no per day resources means they can actually fight "all day"). The other time they nerf caster stuff is when it's an anti-caster caster thing, like Dispel Magic.

Hurray, we now have another worthless bomb discovery.

(-_-)

Or you could rule it as I suggested. Only the Inquisitor gets anything that could remotely* be considered a "bonus" and his already narrow class feature is no longer incompatible w/ one of the small handful of feats it's meant to do something with.

*

I've seen many a monk in play, and they're all overpowered sooner or later. Whether by an NPC fighter, a dragon, a mummy... Lots of things make the monk feel like he's being overpowered. :p

The problem is that the Improved Maneuver feats require 13 INT themselves.

It's only there b/c it's a requirement for Expertise and the devs think they have to re-list every prior requirement. If they didn't, neither Monk nor Lore Warden would have such problems.

Because of unfair stereotypes against the school of Necromancy.

Seriously though, it should be under necromancy. Anything involving toying with life and death energy should be.

Combat Expertise was never good, and the Int requirement has always been annoying, but IMP it was PF's change to combat maneuvers where they're all attacks (and suffer attack penalties) is what made it officially terrible. In 3E, you could at least use Expertise and still trip or grapple people just fine (you had a touch attack, but seriously...touch AC is a joke).

Here is how the logic works:

1. Fighters don't get many class features, but they get a LOT of feats.

2. I want to make stuff for the Fighter specifically, but I don't want to label a feat as "Fighter only," then I'll feel silly when people ask "why didn't you just make it a class feature?"

3. How can I effectively make this Fighter-only, without explicitly saying so?

4. I know! By giving it a crap ton of horrible prerequisite feats so no one else wants to take it or even *can* for a long, long time. The Fighter harnesses his one real class feature to get the feat no one else can! Victory! *Final Fantasy victory fanfare starts playing*

5. Of course, that now means I've effectively taken away the fighter's one true class feature by making him throw most of it in the garbage, but hey...my brain shut off as soon as the fanfare hit, so not my problem any more.

Seriously. That's the logic.

Yeah... Hexes don't work with spell combat. If they did, Hexcrafter would win hands down.

That's why you use the offensive hexes (basically just Slumber till high levels, really) to complement spell combat / spellstrike. Not synergize with them. You use them to get a nice ranged threat for when you can't get to melee or full attack in melee. For when stealth is an issue (hexes are usually Su, and most make no sound; plus...Slumber on the guards). For when you're grappled and have no hope of making the concentration check to cast. Flight and Prehensile Hair on the other hand, *do* synergize with and aid the Magus's normal shtick. The hair lets him deliver touch spells from outside enemies' reach and flight helps him to actually reach melee in the first place.

Of course, there is also the Hex Strike feat, if you're willing to invest in unarmed a bit (just a bit; make all but one of your attacks with your sword, use a single unarmed strike to try and land Slumber or whatever as a swift) and your DM is willing to go RAI instead of idiotic RAW ("The class feature's called 'Hex Magus' and not 'Hex', so you don't qualify for the feat herp derp!"). I don't think it's worth it, but it's an option.

1. They have to save against each one, they're all different bomb effects. The condition itself would not stack and the durations would overlap, but they WOULD have to save against each.

2. Most bomb effects specify they affect the splash area of the bomb. If you are not splashing a particular square (that an ally is in, say), then the cloud should not exist there, it would be an empty spot in the cloud. If the bomb effect goes even further and says "those damaged by the bomb...." the DM really has no leg to stand on.

So basically, your DM is wrong, but good luck getting him to change his mind. You might be stuck with his so-called "RAW" rulings.

You basically need to intentionally, blatantly, anti-optimize this NPC just to make it viable.

I honestly am not sure if there's a WORSE choice of class for such a level disparity. A Magus's whole schtick is super high single target, single hit damage (or super nasty single target debuffs, like with Frigid Touch's staggered for a whole minute). A Magus with more than double the party's level *will* kill someone, if not multiple people, before falling. And it will happen suddenly, to people who until that moment were at full health and had no cause to be concerned. And it *will* look like you targeted them for insta-jibbing. A huge party will overwhelm the magus after a few rounds and defeat him, but there will be a few unfortunates as casualties, largely for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It will reek of unfairness, and the players will be justified in thinking such.

Seriously, even a super high level wizard would be more "fair," because at least then he's killing the entire party instead of just a few people in it chosen by you the DM.

It depends on level. Later on, a horde of pouncing and smiting monsters can do pretty crazy high damage. Earlier on, eidolon-focused summoners will do the most damage. DPR isn't something you need to care too much about anyway, summoner has more staying power and survivability (the latter largely b/c he's far the hell away from danger with lots of meat shields) than most classes to drudge through a long hard fight. And plenty of battlefield control spells to pin down enemies, not to mention the eidolon if it has trip, grab, or pull with reach evolution.

Your houserules are terrible, fumble rules are terrible, yours are even more penalizing than the typical ones. I have nothing nice to say about your ideas, and in fact am exercising quite a bit of restraint to be as cordial as I'm being towards you.

Yes, they stack. Pathfinder has rules for stacking multipliers. Basically, for all multipliers after the first one, you subtract 1 from the multiplier and add it to the base one. No matter what order you do it in, it will come out the same, as long as all multipliers are greater than 1, as they should be....

Example: Multipliers of 1.5x, 2x, and 3x all apply to your damage roll.

1.5 +1 (2-1) +2 (3-1) = 4.5x
0.5 (1.5-1) +2 + 2 (3-1) = 4.5x
0.5 (1.5-1) +1 (2-1) + 3 = 4.5x

No matter how you do it, it comes out to 4.5x damage.

PF or even D&D is not a PvP game. So, I can't understand why you want to do this in the first place.

Because it's fun once in a while?

They nerfed it. It used to be 10 + Barb level + Cha mod, so it was useful for low cha dippers and horribad for true barbarians.

Now it is 10 + 1/2 barb level + Con mod and thus horrible for everyone.

As for the dip.... NEVER as a caster, that's just dumb. For an archer, maybe. But that's the *only* useful class feature you're getting for those two levels, pretty much. For a melee character...full attacks can be hard to come by. Even if you do have pounce, the penalties to attack and AC don't seem worth it if the foe can fight back. Archers don't have to worry about the foe hitting back as much, but melee does.

So....
For casters: Hell no!
For archers: Maybe; appeal grows stronger the more levels you have to work with.
Melee: Unlikely to be worth it.

It removes the condition. Full stop. Ditto for the Paladin mercy to remove fatigue.

For an example of something that only temporarily suppresses or "cures" fatigue, see the Bard spell Invigorate.

Monk 1 / Synthesist Summoner 19

Or alternatively,

Monk 1 / Druid 19.

Backstory: Johnny really wanted to be a badass martial artist growing up and quit school to enroll in a dojo at age 12. By age 13, even at his still young age he realized how pathetic and worthless monks are in a fight and [was seduced to the dark arts of summoning] / [went to go be a hippy in a druid grove] so that he could actually beat stuff up unarmed.

Ya know, now that I think about it, why doesn't shaken do anything really to casters? Why not just buff the shaken condition to cause casters to have to make concentration checks to cast spells? It'd help slow them down a bit and it makes sense. Your mental state is impaired, but you're still cool to bend the laws of the universe?

A lot of conditions are like this. I asked the same question about fatigued, exhausted, and slowed recently. I was trying to customize the basilisk's petrifying gaze to happen gradually over 3 rounds so (combined with the smeared blood fixing it) it could be a fun and less instantly deadly encounter. I was going to have it go Slowed-->Slowed+Exhausted-->Petrified.

Then I realized that'd do freaking nothing to the casters in the party, so I changed it to:
"You feel your skin tightening, your muscles resist the urge to move, your lips struggle to articulate words, even your mental faculties seem to be slowing down."
Exposure (failed save): Slowed, 25% cast/manifest failure
2nd round: Slowed, 50% cast/manifest failure, and Exhausted
3rd round: Petrified

Far, FAR too many conditions don't really hurt casters at all.

I think the fighter needs 4 skills points. Actually I think no class should have a base of 2 skill points.

I'm quite fine with the primary spellcasters who currently have only a base of 2 staying that way.

Bro you claimed "rogue can't do more damage than a bard plus a martial"

Of course not-- one character not being able to do more damage than TWO characters just makes and of course that's not a fair comparison.

You keep saying how much more damage the bard is causing to happen without ever showing how or how much-- you're the one who keeps claiming that the numbers are on your side, so yes, asking you to show those numbers is logical, fair, and necessary to have a discussion in good faith.

You have posited a theory "bard does more damage" and a second theory "bard+martial does more damage" it is YOUR responsibility to show the evidence if you want to "prove" how bad rogue is.

But you won't provide any support other than repeating that you are right.

It isn't that bard + martial does more damage. It's that bard + the extra damage bard buffs the martial to do (which includes higher damage from hitting more often) does more damage than rogue. Haste, Inspire Courage, Discordant Voice, etc... add up fast.

In any case, damage output is probably the area bard obsoletes rogue in the least. With Versatile Performance, bard flat out has more skill points, and spells provide far more utility beyond what rogue is capable of (including huge skill buffs / supplements like Charm Person, Sift, and Glibness). Good Will and defensive spells mean bard has better defenses, too.

If you've detected or found the trap and it attacks you (say...you fail badly to disarm it, or you opt to have the party meat shield just take one for the team so everyone else can get past), not flatfooted.

If you have no idea the trap is there and it attacks you, flatfooted.

StreamOfTheSky wrote:

Deadmanwalking wrote:

Lemmy wrote:

Dude! Don't attract too much attention to Bards! Paizo may decide to Crane Wing the class!

I don't think the corebook classes are changing, for better or for worse, any time soon.

Tell that to the Monk.

Okay, I admit Monks get the shaft...but none of the problems you mention involve actually changing the corebook's wording of the Monk class, which is what I meant wasn't going to change (I admit, this may've been less than clear). And as long as the corebook's wording doesn't actively change, I'm not sure how the Bard could really get screwed too badly. Some other clases could, but the Bard doesn't really have a lot of questionable rules areas for such issues to crop up in.

I don't think most saw what was "questionable" about monk's unarmed strike being a natural weapon (it says so right in the class's entry!) or flurry of blows with "a single weapon", either.

Lemmy wrote:

Dude! Don't attract too much attention to Bards! Paizo may decide to Crane Wing the class!

I don't think the corebook classes are changing, for better or for worse, any time soon.

Tell that to the Monk.

And I'm not even talking about their non-core toys that got severely nerfed / rendered useless like Crane Wing, Cloud Step (originally infinite speed at level 20), or brass knucks (originally -- and FINALLY -- a fair way to enhance unarmed strikes at the same price as a weapon).

I'm talking about stuff like monk's unarmed counting as a natural weapon (and thus you can take Imp. Natural Attack with it, as in 3E) or the whole "what are you guys on about, flurry of blows was TOTALLY meant to be used with two different weapons (sucks that "unarmed" is one weapon, huh?) all along, ignore all the evidence to the contrary, these are not the droids you are looking for..." (that thankfully got toppled by sheer massive player outrage) that were nerfed after the fact and came right from core.

So yeah, the correct answer is, "Bards are primary casters." Or possibly, "Bard class doesn't have anyone on the main paizo design team that actively hates them."

Paizo has absolutely NO problem nerfing or significantly changing core stuff, if it's from a class on their hit list.

It would be nice if the 3e/PF paradigm wasn't 'let's make this stuff overpowered then give it a silver bullet'.

Agreed.

Except, archery really isn't overpowered, which makes it even more frustrating.
And the things with "silver bullets" seem to always be martial stuff.
And the "silver bullets" themselves are almost always spells (and if there is a martial "silver bullet," it is often relatively easy to neuter)

The spell is bs, and shouldn't exist.

Of course, the base spell, wind wall, is also bs.

Both should just give a 30% chance of blowing away any projectiles instead of completely shutting down certain ones. Fickle Winds is just especially bs because the cop out "just go around it!" doesn't even work anymore.

But, if your DM "goes by RAW" and is unyielding to requests to nerf or ban the spell... Keep a sling as a back up weapon, or shuriken or other thrown weapons. Since by strict RAW, wind wall and fickle winds only auto-shut down bolts and arrows.

i really can't understand how there are ... what, four? archetypes of the ranger who have non-functional class abilities and it hasn't been answered yet.

does everyone just houserule this or something?

I'd almost rather they NOT address it at this point and leave it to DMs to houserule.

Because I have a hunch, if they actually do take the issue on, they're just going to say, "Ah...yuuup, yeah, you lose all those class features as part of the archetype as well. Sorry. That was totally how it was meant to be from the start. Honest."

Because taking stuff away is so much easier than actually trying to redesign an archetype with whole new abilities.

I like to apply the simple "What if it happened to me" metric to gauge this.

Bow archer: If a dragon's touch AC went up? I guess I'd just keep shooting till it died.

Crossbow archer: If a dragon's touch AC went up? I guess I'd just keep shooting till it died.

Dagger thrower: If a dragon's touch AC went up? I guess I'd just keep throwing till it died.

You mean like that? The ideal solution would be fixing the gun rules themselves, but the OP's idea is better than nothing. I do feel bad for the Alchemists of the world, who can't full attack touch AC till mid levels, don't get to Deadly Aim it, and only get so many bombs per day. Oh well...

Rage cycling is clearly not intended.

Having one martial character do all the damage is no fun for anyone.

"All the damage"? What 1/rage powers are being exploited to do a lot more damage? The best ones to rage cycle are Spell Sunder (no added damage), Strength Surge (boosts CMB, not damage), Eater of Magic (defensive ability) and possibly Flesh Wound (defensive ability). Please, tell me what rage powers the barbarian is cycling to "do all the damage."

Using multiple free actions in a round is stretching action economy thereby cheesy.

Free action to use rage power, full attack, free action to turn off rage, free action to turn rage back on. . .

Well, turning off the rage really shouldn't even BE a free action anyway, it should be a non-action. That is the rule that's dumb. It is literally impossible to use a single round of rage unless you either a) have no more rounds left that day or b) end it at the end of your turn you activated it...in which case it wasn't actually a "round" of rage -- a round would mean it lasts until your initiative count comes up again.

The only 3E classes not already in PF that would be overpowered in PF are Archivist and Artificer - just as they're OP in 3E.

There are plenty that would suck royally in PF, though. To expand on what Drejk said, not only are many of the noncaster splat classes severely lacking in a 3E game as it is and would likewise suffer in a PF game...the big problem for noncasters of all stripes in PF is that often what cripples them is not the words within the class description, but the general combat/skill/etc... rules of PF as a whole.

Think how the maneuver feats got split up and bonuses halved and now need BAB +6. Think of the horrific nerfs to tumbling. Think of how "class skill" means almost nothing now. Think of how grapple went from "replaces individual attacks/AoOs and can't autofail" to "standard action, can auto-fail, and have to give up full attack to maintain (which can also auto-fail)". Think of how splash weapons are no longer considered "weapons" (such as with Quickdraw). Think of how you can no longer sneak attack with those splash weapons. Nor can Blinking grant you ranged sneak attack. Think of how PF decided Imp. Natural Attack doesn't appl to unarmed strike anymore. Just seriously...the entire rules chassis. This is why "take some stuff from 3E and port it to PF!" never works that well.

The rot in PF isn't in the modular pieces like classes (generally speaking...they did a pretty good hit job on the Monk and Rogue both IN-class *and* outside the classes)...it's the underlying rules themselves. It's much more effective to take classes you like in PF and port them to 3E, and causes far less problems.
If you try to take a perfectly fine 3E non-caster like the Swordsage into PF, you often will have problems. In the SS's case, he's a squishy "melee specialist" who relies upon skirmishing with single strikes to survive and contribute in combat. Works in 3E. In PF, the tumble nerf means that style of play is impossible/suicidal. The Scout, another 3E splat class widely praised as being decent, is annihilated by this even WORSE.

Do people REALLY hate martials that much...

...Are you unaware of the recent changes to Crane Wing?

It's not OP.

It does not need to be nerfed.

Blaster caster is the weakest sort of caster you can build (other than really specific case examples, like "enchanter in an all-undead game").

And all but like 3 (Eater of Magic; Spell Sunder + Strength Surge; maybe Flesh Wound....) rage powers that are 1/rage really aren't even that good even when made 1/round via rage cycling. At least half of them are *still* not even worth considering.

I'm curious, do other people get the feeling that a solid portion of people on the messages boards lack any common sense? I've been reading a lot of threads recently, and sometimes the ideas I see just blow my mind.

Why do so many Pathfinder players have such a low real world wisdom score...... :/

It's not a coincidence. I'm surprised you expected differently.

It takes a special kind of person to not just tolerate, but also love the changes PF made to 3E, especially the martial nerfs like to combat maneuvers and their feats. Anyone who refers to them as "improved" or "streamlined" without sarcasm has to be pretty oblivious to reality.

People list multiple different options of "win spells" not because the wizard needs to know ALL of them at any given point. It's because he just needs to know ANY of them.

How does 'you may use you int mod instead of your cha' equate to the skill being changed from a cha based skill to an int based skill?

Because the skill bonus is now based upon Int instead of Cha?

What makes the Knowledges Int-based skills?

The skill rules don't have any sort of "formal definition" for what "[ability]-based" means.

It just says:

Key Ability: The abbreviation of the ability whose modifier applies to the skill check.

Some things really just do come down to basic logic and don't have a specific cite-able RAW answer, sorry.

No. What's evil is bratty little players attempting to memorize stat blocks and gain an advantage they shouldn't have. Those types richly deserve a nasty little surprise ... and if it gets their characters killed, well ... maybe they'll learn something.

The irony that you call the players bratty as you crow over killing them to teach them a lesson is utterly staggering.

There cannot exist any level of parity why these to game rules exist:

* arcane casters that can learn unlimited number of spells

* divine casters that have instant access to all spells available for their level

* non-casters that must allocate limited character resources (feats) to gain new abilities.

Since I do not expect the above to ever change, I conclude parity is and will always be unobtainable.

Right. It's impossible to ever have total parity between the two camps. So if I were to make a feat letting wizards quicken all their spells as for free and another one that doubles their caster level for all spell parameters....

Who cares, amirite? I mean, so long as it isn't perfectly balanced, why should we care about balance at all? It's not like we're going to completely fix the problem no matter what we do, so f*** it. It wasn't balanced before, and wasn't balanced after. And all decisions on balance are clearly Boolean true/false.

A thought...

You cannot, no matter how hard u try, nerf casters and martials equally. Martials are largely based on a succession of feat chains or a handful of top tier feats mixed with good quality class features. Casters on the other hand tend to have spells and be built on those spells. Even if someone says nerfs a spell or a lot of spells, there are so many blue rates spells among the guides that its impossible to nerf the caster.

Furthermore, the feats based on casting tend to support virtually any spell in ur entire list as long as u meet prerequisites, which is usually minimal when compared to combat feats. Also, consider that if glitter dust was just abolished, great I still have invisibility and how many other spells to cast half a dozen times?

I feel that feats are already less than most spells and when any feat or feat chain gets dumbed down it makes a controversial situation more problematic. And as I said we have too many spells for a caster to truly b dumbed down. U could make the arguement that if every caster lost every class feature he would still be as good as a martial character.

Casters and martials don't have to be equal. I don't think anyone playing 3E or PF expects that to ever happen. All we want is to close the gap a bit, and for martials to actually be better than casters in some situations (other than the "days you have like a dozen encounters but infinite healing" scenarios that almost never happen). At the very least, since PF is a modified version of 3E, we should at least expect the gap to not expand even larger, like it DID. That's seriousl not asking for much.

And it does not have to be that way. Caster feats can be nerfed. Noncaster feats can be buffed. The paradigm of martials having to burn a bunch of feats they don't even want just to get to the end of the chain for the one they want CAN die in a fire like it should have long ago. If a feat requires Dodge, Mobility, and BAB +4...what is the harm in just making it require BAB +4? You're not getting it any earlier than you could have before. But now you actually have those other 2 feats to spend on whatever you want.
These are pretty basic, simple requests. That for some reason fall on deaf ears.

Well thanks for pointing that out! Now I know, and knowledge is power!

Well, the game is better if you ignore that horrible rule anyway.

Things to nerf for casters:

Make Concentration a skill again. Force them to spend skill points on it.

Re-impose Wizard's specialty penalty of not being able to cast / use items of prohibited schools *at all*.

Get rid of nearly all the +mental stats of races, and only ones who come with a -2 Con can have one. In 3E, there were about half a dozen +Int races w/o level adjustment despite all of the splat books, a couple +Cha ones, and...+Wis was almost unheard of. And many of them featured a Con penalty.

Get rid of the flight skill. It serves as an impediment to martial flight (via winged boots, fly spell from allied wizard, etc...) due to needing the ability to fly to take ranks in it.

Make Mirror Image work like it did in 3E. Where the images only had AC of 10 + your dex. And you explicitly had to wait until your next turn to "re-shuffle" them (if a foe hit "the real you," all his buddies could then pinpoint your ass till your next turn). And Cleave cut down multiple images. As did Whirlwind Attack. As did Magic Missile.

Now for some things that were entirely new, and not just bad houserules of 3E...

Remove Dazing Spell from the game.
Remove Spell Perfection from the game.
Remove Bouncing Spell from the game.
Remove Persistent Spell from the game.
Remove Blood Money from the game.
Remove Paragon Surge from the game.
Remove Divine Interference from the game.
Remove the spell that gives Oracles Paladin class features (forgot the name) from the game.
Remove Teleport Conjuror from the game.
Remove Opposition Research from the game.

(I say "remove from the game" for simplicity, but nerfing it into the ground to the point of uselessness - like they did to Crane Wing - works as well).

Just some things off the top of my head...

What Snig said. If you have a listed speed for that movement type, you can 5 ft step with it. "Step" really is a misleading thing to call it, even the normal ground-pound version is seldom a single step.

I will say that you should not be able to do a flying 5 ft step "up" (straight nor diagonally so) unless you are able to fly up without halving movement. In D&D 3E, those with perfect maneuverability could do so, anyone else had their movement halved when trying to do so due to gravity and such (thus, trying to do a "5 ft step" would consume 10 ft and be impossible, much like trying in difficult terrain). I...have no clue how movement in 3 dimensions works in PF, their flight rules are a hot mess. Can't even find anywhere that says flying upwards takes more movement than other directions.

Also, I could understand a DM not allowing a burrow 5 ft step. RAW it should work, but...that's just weird.