| 1 person marked this as FAQ candidate. 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
Introduction
I think that Paizo has improved their class design chops quite a lot throughout the years. But even their runaway hits like the Magus and the Alchemist have kinks here and there.
I decided to start posting my opinion on the classes with disruptive design issues that should be considered for Unchaining.
As usual, this is all but my opinion and you are free to disagree.
I know I wasn't the only one that was super excited to see the Brawler released. Fisticuffs was a much maligned combat style that had been historically crippled by expensive enhancement options, the many issues surrounding Monks, and full-attack reliance.
With the coming of the cheaper Amulets of Mighty Fists, a class ready to make full use of the Brawling armor enhancement, and the coming of Pummeling Charge, it seemed like the Brawler was ready to offer a powerful, flexible option to the game.
However, I find the class to have too many design flaws to be considered a finished product, and Unchaining it seems like the only solution available.
Here are the flaws that I consider to be the reason for this.
I'll start off by listing the fantasy flaws. These issues are mostly related to what someone would expect this class to have, but does not deliver upon. These are the most subjective listings.
Not particularly tough - Fantasy Flaw
The Brawler fantasy includes the concept of toughness in it. Perhaps not on par with a Barbarian, but certainly able to stand its own ground with a cloistered Paladin who dines fancy "cooked meals" and drinks wimpy beverages that are "safe for humanoid consumption".
Good Fort saves and d10 is probably the reasonable place to start, but some other abilities portraying an outlaw boxer being tough as nails are pretty much warranted.
Not particularly mobile - Fantasy Flaw
While Pummeling Charge and Outslug Weave can fix this, the base class does nothing to deliver on the typical fantasy that Brawlers should be quick on their feet, bounce-step around combat, perform rolling dodges or silly acts of acrobatics like we see Jackie Chan do in his movies.
While the AC Bonus provided by this class can make Light Armor viable, and thus allow STR/DEX checks to be made with practically no penalty, the end result is objectively worse than a Monk, who has features to grant big boosts to their maneuverability and out-of-combat mobility.
Now I will move onto the mechanics flaws. These are more disrupting than the former, because these actually prevent the class from doing its job.
Opportunity cost on unarmed builds too high to be viable - Mechanics Flaw
While I'd like the Brawler to be a good option for unarmed builds as the next guy, I know it's actually not because unarmed fighting carries with it large penalties, the two larger of them listed here:
- First of all, enhancements are more expensive to obtain. While this is moderately compensated by larger base damage and DR-bypassing, it's actually pretty noticeable for a class without any attack bonuses. The Brawler would love a masterwork weapon as soon as possible, so spending your first feats on something like Weapon Focus (unarmed) feels like a bad idea, particularly because Close Weapon Mastery removes most of the issues with close weapons in general, and a cestus + buckler combo allows you to freely grapple and damage without much issue.
- It prevents you from obtaining an amulet of natural armor. This is a constant pain for all TWF unarmed builds, which 100% of unarmed Brawlers are. Amulet of Mighty Fists taking up an Amulet slot prevents you from obtaining one of the major sources of cheap AC, reducing your viability as a frontliner.
Martial Flexibility doesn't work - Mechanics Flaw
Let me preface this by saying what we all know: martial flexibility is a powerful feature and, if you decide to dedicate some major mental space to memorizing every single combat feat possible, it's actually super fun to use.
However, that doesn't mean it's a well-design feature.
It's extremely unfriendly for new players. This needs no explanation. While I understand that MF is supposed to represent your ability to pick up tricks through your journey, it shouldn't force the player to actually memorize those tricks. There are much better emulation/fantasy solutions to this, that avoid issues like option paralysis or splatbook diving.
It also has extremely awkward interactions. You can get Toughness for 1 minute?
While it always feels cool when your Brawler is falling down and you manage to MF as an immediate action for Equipment Trick: Heavy Blade Scabbard (Grab Purchase) and get a +10 Climb check retry, this whole thing just stinks metagamey munchkinness. Not because of the result, which is undoubtably awesome, but because of the hoops you have to move through to pull it off.
Progression on AC Bonus is silly - Mechanics Flaw
Yes, I get they just had to fill level 13 with something, but I still don't get why they'll choose to give AC Bonus a non-conventional scaling scheme. I feel like any editing pass would tweaked things a little bit to get this to work.
It's pretty jarring at the end of the day that the class ends up having less boosts to AC than a Monk, without having any of the defensive measures the Monk has.
Brawler's Flurry progression is weird and design feels outdated - Mechanics Flaw
The fact that the ability uses a 3/4 BAB class TWF progression for the extra attacks is, to me, enough grounds to redesign the feature. This looks like a relic from an older 3/4 BAB Brawler design, as it makes little sense and sort of encourages you to spend your MF uses on ITWF on the odd 2 levels until your Brawler's Flurry improves, which is clunky design no matter how you slice it.
Furthermore, -2 to attack for a class without any attack boosts seems unnecessary. The UnMonk's Flurry is a better designed mechanic all in all, and should perhaps be looked upon as an example of how to make this mechanic.
Brawler's Strike comes in too late - Mechanics Flaw
This is short and simple - by the time your Brawler's Strike is able to bypass DR, your enhancement bonus should be high enough to automatically bypass it anyway, so this is pretty much a null feature. Unless you are attacking with unenhanced unarmed strikes as a last ditch effort, which is pretty sad.
Maneuver Training goes against the rest of the class design, and it's obsolete design - Mechanics Flaw
What's the point of having access to every type of maneuver when you are forcibly made to specialize in a certain type of maneuver?
Furthermore, the "diminishing bonus" type of boost used here and in Weapon Training was a bad design call when it started. It doesn't make you feel happy when you need to use your weaker bonus maneuvers, and it makes you feel bad whenever you can't use your larger bonus maneuvers.
It's also not quite high enough a bonus to maintain the viability of maneuvers in high level play, which brings us to...
Not actually good at maneuvers - Mechanics Flaw
To be good at tripping, bull-rushing and overruning, you need to be treated as Larger than you are or lose viability as the game progresses.
There's also the issue of maneuvers losing their potency as CMD climbs way up, or simply suffering from natural lack of power - for example, tripping loses power along the way as more enemies fly.
Grappling is also easily countered by its most egregious targets - casters - through freedom of movement or dimension door, and similar abilities.
The inability of the Brawler to scale up as a maneuver user is a bit jarring.
There's also enough reason to mention Awesome Blow, the 16th level ability of the Brawlers, which has a very restrictive size limitation and doesn't receive any major CMB boosts to make it something you could actually land.
These are some of the reasons why I consider the Brawler a candidate for Unchaining. Perhaps I don't think it's as pressing to Unchain them as it is to Unchain the currently splatbook-reliant Fighter, but I think enough people know that also needs to be done.
[b]PS: Just out of curiosity, would anyone be interested in a 3PP Unchained Brawler release addressing these and some other issues with the class?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I don't like the complete lack of a built in attack bonus. All of the other full BAB classes have some mechanic that boosts their attack rolls. And flurry lowers this relatively low accuracy even more.
I don't like the complete lack of a built in attack bonus. All of the other full BAB classes have some mechanic that boosts their attack rolls. And flurry lowers this relatively low accuracy even more.
Yeah, it seems to me that if Brawler's Flurry simply didn't exist, TWF would not be necessarily the best pick for most Brawlers.
Your description seems less like fundamental mechanics flaws and more like just... reasons you don't like it. Which is fine, but different. And frankly if you think Flexibility is so fundamentally flawed that seems more like an argument for the class to simply not exist, because that's really its core defining feature.
I was on the fence on classifying it as "Mechanical/Fantasy". The problem with it is that unless you have actual full knowledge of every feat in the book books, you are not able to live out the fantasy and its utility.
The fact that its power level is highly reliant on player knowledge, to me, is a mechanical issue.
If it worked closer to what the Cloaked Wolf Inquisitor does, then I think it would be much more acceptable, if much less powerful.
I feel like rather than giving the Brawler the ability to pick up the Demon Hunter feat spontaneously (and other cooky interactions it has), it should have instead allowed access to a pool of talents. Perhaps it should have been another Deed-based class altogether.
bump cuz i care cuz im a nerd
|
Worth mentioning in the Unarmed Section that static damage bonuses lag as well. Power Attack lags behind two-hand fighters and further limits accuracy, there is no sneak attack to help either. Archetypes help and so does jabbing style, pummelling style or dragon style but a lot of work has to go into builds and equipment to make this all work. Accuracy, is defiantly a bigger issue but the lack of static damage does not help.
Static damage is nice, but the brawler does get an average damage increase through its increasing damage die. For instance, going from 1d6 to 1d8 is an average 1 more damage per attack. As for accuracy, this would never happen, but I'd rather the brawler just steal the ideas from the unchained monk's flurry. That flurry is good for not giving an actual bonus, but helping you actually hit more often per round. The old flurry of misses just isn't fun.
Well put, I can't help but wonder if the Brawler would have been a much better class (both at enabling the fantasy of the class, and mechanically) if it wasn't afflicted with "whatever happened to the ACG during development." A good portion of the classes in that book could use some work/additional support (Bloodrager and Warpriest are probably exceptions).
Having taken a peek yesterday at what a particular brawler can do with their martial flex at 6th level (I stopped at D in the combat feats list), I can see the option paralysis/too much info to check argument clearly. Just nixing it down to fewer feat chains (or wildcard style chain feats like MoMS) would hurt an already not particularly powerful class however. If you were going to do something like that then you'd need to buff the class elsewhere in something like the ways SW described.
Are there any other weird rule interactions you can think of? Because this complaint falls a little flat given the fact that you can't pick Toughness with Martial Flexibility.Martial Flexibility doesn't work - Mechanics Flaw
...
It also has extremely awkward interactions. You can get Toughness for 1 minute?
I could have sworn Tness was a combat feat. Whoops.
Well put, I can't help but wonder if the Brawler would have been a much better class (both at enabling the fantasy of the class, and mechanically) if it wasn't afflicted with "whatever happened to the ACG during development." A good portion of the classes in that book could use some work/additional support (Bloodrager and Warpriest are probably exceptions).
I think that's why Brawler's Flurry has a 3/4 BAB class progression.
Having taken a peek yesterday at what a particular brawler can do with their martial flex at 6th level (I stopped at D in the combat feats list), I can see the option paralysis/too much info to check argument clearly. Just nixing it down to fewer feat chains (or wildcard style chain feats like MoMS) would hurt an already not particularly powerful class however. If you were going to do something like that then you'd need to buff the class elsewhere in something like the ways SW described.
I have ideas.
When I first saw Martial Flexibility, I thought that it should have been a core fighter class feature. And the rest of the brawler then could be made into a fighter archetype.
Bump for love.
What if the benefits of Outslug Style (scaling at the same rate as weapon training or studied target) and Outslug Sprint were baked into the brawler as bonus feats at 4th and 10th (Replacing Knockout), Brawler's Flurry worked like the Unchained Monk Flurry (so you COULD take TWF with it if you want), and Maneuver Training was replaced with Bonus Feats that can only be used for Style Feats and/or Combat Maneuver Feats?
What if the benefits of Outslug Style (scaling at the same rate as weapon training or studied target) and Outslug Sprint were baked into the brawler as bonus feats at 4th and 10th (Replacing Knockout), Brawler's Flurry worked like the Unchained Monk Flurry (so you COULD take TWF with it if you want), and Maneuver Training was replaced with Bonus Feats that can only be used for Style Feats and/or Combat Maneuver Feats?
Unchained monk can't use TWF.
I think the central problem with the Brawler is mostly that its defining feature requires you to be able to reference hundreds of different combat feats. This is extremely powerful to people who have the mental space/exhaustive notes to keep track of the relevant combinations, but the class would probably be improved by making martial flexibility less flexible (you can choose from a shorter list of powerful options), and make up for the loss on the high end with things like the mobility and defense of this class.
But as it stands it's a punching class that requires almost as much bookkeeping as a wizard does.
Well put, I can't help but wonder if the Brawler would have been a much better class (both at enabling the fantasy of the class, and mechanically) if it wasn't afflicted with "whatever happened to the ACG during development." A good portion of the classes in that book could use some work/additional support (Bloodrager and Warpriest are probably exceptions).
You can look back at the playtest forum for the ACG to find out exactly what went wrong. I (and many others) brought up most of these same complaints during development, and they were largely ignored.
These aren't problems introduced by editing, or added post-playtest, they were apparent from the start.
What if the benefits of Outslug Style (scaling at the same rate as weapon training or studied target) and Outslug Sprint were baked into the brawler as bonus feats at 4th and 10th (Replacing Knockout), Brawler's Flurry worked like the Unchained Monk Flurry (so you COULD take TWF with it if you want), and Maneuver Training was replaced with Bonus Feats that can only be used for Style Feats and/or Combat Maneuver Feats?
Extra 5 foot step baked in would be pretty good.
Maneuver Training needs to go, but not for feats. I think it'd be done with the Martial Flexibility rehaul.
Well, I for one think that they been hitting better design notes lately (save for some egregious examples...), so I'm wondering if there's any good will from Paizo to revisit the design issues of these classes.
Are there any other weird rule interactions you can think of? Because this complaint falls a little flat given the fact that you can't pick Toughness with Martial Flexibility.Martial Flexibility doesn't work - Mechanics Flaw
...
It also has extremely awkward interactions. You can get Toughness for 1 minute?
On that note, even if you could, I don't see what is so awkward about it. You get a temporary boost in hp for a brief time; it's the idea of finding your second wind, shrugging off blows.
The Rocky Balboa effect, in other words. The more I think about it, the more I'd be inclined to allow it even though it isn't a Combat feat.
I bought the ACG on dead trees (like all the RPG books I buy) and the sheer amount of errata needed to correct the sheer volume of errors in that book that should have been caught in a design, development, or editing passthrough made me hesitant to buy any more Paizo books for a while. There's so much wrong or changed in that book on my shelf that it's basically useless at this point; there's no point in even referring to it unless you want to look at the art or something. It's not even "so much was changed" but "so much has been changed that I can't be sure anything I read in it has not been changed".
So it's not exactly a bright spot for the line, in my opinion.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
But hey, at least you have the special edition "Advanced Class Guide Adventure Path".
The ACG had a lot of odd/bad design choices. The warpriest is a mess, requiring swift actions to use almost all of its abilities, while having 4 different resource pools to keep track of. And sacred weapon damage puts them in a weird place where they strongly favor small wacky weapons over the more traditional weapons that most martials use. And the blessings vary wildly in power level with some being almost worthless, while others are borderline OP.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The ACG had a lot of odd/bad design choices. The warpriest is a mess, requiring swift actions to use almost all of its abilities, while having 4 different resource pools to keep track of. And sacred weapon damage puts them in a weird place where they strongly favor small wacky weapons over the more traditional weapons that most martials use. And the blessings vary wildly in power level with some being almost worthless, while others are borderline OP.
Honestly I could go on about every class in the game like this.
But hey, at least you have the special edition "Advanced Class Guide Adventure Path".It's in my top 3 favoruite Pathfinder Hardcover APs ^w^
But it's also been like 2-3 years since the first book in the AP. I'm starting to get really impatient waiting for these other 50 promised classes.
They are here already they're calling themselves 'archetypes' and they ate all the design space.
I am very curious what you would replace MF with.
Some sort of scaling bonus to any one of the saves, attack rolls, damage rolls, AC, Strength and Dexterity based checks, or movement speed that eventually progresses to 3 of those bonuses at once?
Exactly. I like Martial Flexibility.
I don't think there's really anything wrong with Martial Flex. It may be "unfriendly to new users" but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Even to the uncreative it has undeniable uses(grabbing any Combat Maneuver on the fly for one combat is pretty useful to anyone).
I think tomorrow I'll post my proposed changes. It's late now.
Because that cuts out all the fun combos you can do with them. Grab Style Feats on the fly, like Monkey Style to fight when someone trips you, for example.
This is supposed to be the Brawler's main class feature, as well. The thing that draws you into playing it. The options you propose are just boring, honestly, and not strong enough to be a draw. It doesn't just make the class more player friendly, it makes it WEAKER.
Giving the class a higher skill ceiling is not a bad thing.
I would suggest that you could jump between a number of brawler styles one that provided scaling bo us to grapple, one to sunder, one to some of the more fun style feat chains. They could scale up like the various feat chains granting bigger bonuses as you level, at later levels maybe you can pick two at once.
That way you don't have to look at 700 billion feats with complex pre req and stuff you just look at a list of 12-18 scaling combat boosts that favor certain styles.
That would be my approach.
Yeah, I think the Brawler would be a lot simpler if instead of "pick a feat, pick any feat" it was "pick a stance relevant to that thing you want to do, and it gives you the following benefits".
Like theoretically a stance could let you choose an improved combat maneuver feat, then at a certain level give the greater version of that maneuver feat. It could give you the foundational feat of a style chain at a low level, then at higher levels give you the second and third feats in the chain.
All you would need to do to unchain the Brawler is to enumerate the basic things you'd want to use martial flexibility for, and provide a number of options that accomplish those things but do not require reference to a thousand different feats.
I honestly don't see why the Brawler should be simpler. The talk of option paralysis is a fairly small issue given that you're served perfectly fine by simply picking a few solid options to run with and leaving it at that (just like how a wizard who sticks to more basic spells is fine too, even if a wizard with more game knowledge might squeeze a bit more out of the class with esoteric stuff) and frankly we have more than a dozen simple, straight forward martial(or martial ish) classes. Having one that's different is a good thing.
Threads like this kind of scare me really because as someone who actually wants to play the Brawler I'm worried that Paizo will see stuff like this and future archetypes will end up gutting the class' core features and be functionally unusable for people who aren't interested in just a variant monk.
It's also a shame because I agree with the OP on most of his other complaints, but this whole thread has turned into talking about martial flexibility.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
-.- seeing a thread calling for unchained brawler scares you?
Forgive me but when the other classes got unchained their previous incarnations weren't removed from the game were they? You can play either iteration. Why would a different option for someone who wants something different from with the same improvised fighting flavour be any more problematic?
-.- seeing a thread calling for unchained brawler scares you?
Forgive me but when the other classes got unchained their previous incarnations weren't removed from the game were they?
Well the chained summoner is essentially abandoned, so kind of .
You can play either iteration. Why would a different option for someone who wants something different from with the same improvised fighting flavour be any more problematic?
First and foremost I don't see them unchaining the Brawler. More likely what we'll see is archetypes, and given how rarely the Brawler gets new content and that design time is limited I'd obviously rather see archetypes that alter the Brawler in other ways.
Secondly, as said before, the class does have a lot of real issues and seeing all that conversation get shutout is a shame.
Well the chained summoner is essentially abandoned, so kind of .-.- seeing a thread calling for unchained brawler scares you?
Forgive me but when the other classes got unchained their previous incarnations weren't removed from the game were they?
I think the summoner is a special case, as it's not hard for a moderately skilled optimizer to make one that is wholly unreasonable.
The unchaining of the summoner was to make something that still fits the fluff of the class, while limiting the outrageous extremes the vanilla one could reach, and at the same time making it simpler to make a pretty decent one. I mean, if anything, giving the Summoner access to Haste a level before the Wizard gets it was a mistake.
The vanilla summoner went away because it was already a class that was banned at many tables because of how unreasonable it could get in a hurry. I don't think anybody has that problem with Brawlers.
-.- seeing a thread calling for unchained brawler scares you?
Forgive me but when the other classes got unchained their previous incarnations weren't removed from the game were they?
Well the chained summoner is essentially abandoned, so kind of .
You can play either iteration. Why would a different option for someone who wants something different from with the same improvised fighting flavour be any more problematic?First and foremost I don't see them unchaining the Brawler. More likely what we'll see is archetypes, and given how rarely the Brawler gets new content and that design time is limited I'd obviously rather see archetypes that alter the Brawler in other ways.
Secondly, as said before, the class does have a lot of real issues and seeing all that conversation get shutout is a shame.
That's because the summoner is considered broken. Pretty sure the brawler doesn't have that problem.
So you're scared that a brawler archetype might be released and might trade away martial flexibility rather than another class feature because you'd rather they change some other CF of the brawler.
im afraid that's just different taste, not worth being scared of.
