FAQ on Errata

graystone wrote:

BigNorseWolf wrote:

Well, it did get worse for dipping...

I think you can stop at "it did get worse"...

I could but then it would meet no goals...

How so? Making the class terrible makes ME less likely to dip the class so they indeed met the goal of discouraging dips. The total failure was in the "make it more rewarding to those that stuck with" by instead making it bad enough that I don't want to take ANY levels in it.

Kinda late to reply, but...

We just got a Con based blaster caster, what's the big deal with a Witch using Con?

Paizo's been doing this a lot recently.

"Hey, guys, Y is coming out, but X does something similar and is actually kinda better. What should we do to get people to buy the book with Y?"

"Change X completely/somewhat, making it either useless or nonsensical for no apparent reason!"

Kinda why I like getting 1st printings.

i would point out, that comparing kineticist to any 9th level caster isn't really a fair comparison. A witch is FAR more powerful.

also, kineticists lose hp to use their abilities, witches don't. again, not a fair comparison.

Actually, they don't lose HP at all. The simply have a much sooner chance to be knocked unconscious. They actually gain a ton of bonuses from Elemental Overflow(like more HP).

i would point out, that comparing kineticist to any 9th level caster isn't really a fair comparison. A witch is FAR more powerful.

also, kineticists lose hp to use their abilities, witches don't. again, not a fair comparison.

That's the whole point he was making. As a con casting class the Orc Witch was better, so to make the kineticist look better they got rid of it's competition.

shroudb wrote:

i would point out, that comparing kineticist to any 9th level caster isn't really a fair comparison. A witch is FAR more powerful.

also, kineticists lose hp to use their abilities, witches don't. again, not a fair comparison.

That's the whole point he was making. As a con casting class the Orc Witch was better, so to make the kineticist look better they got rid of it's competition.

i meant it more like:

a true con caster would have insane hp (whatever class he was)
kineticist have high con, but their effective hp-pool is lower, exactly because of burn mechanic.

i dont think they wanted to have a caster with a gadzillion hp, and that isn't happening with the kineticist. nothing to do with "to make kineticists more appealing"

(always imo, noone can actually know what they were actually thinking, only speculate)

Actually, they don't lose HP at all. The simply have a much sooner chance to be knocked unconscious. They actually gain a ton of bonuses from Elemental Overflow(like more HP).

meh, the same effective thing. when you have high hp pool, but you can only use half of it before you are out of the fight, it's more or less the same.

shroudb wrote:

i would point out, that comparing kineticist to any 9th level caster isn't really a fair comparison. A witch is FAR more powerful.

also, kineticists lose hp to use their abilities, witches don't. again, not a fair comparison.

That's the whole point he was making. As a con casting class the Orc Witch was better, so to make the kineticist look better they got rid of it's competition.

Yes, people pointed out that the scarred witch didn't need to punch themselves in the face to power their abilities and the response seems to have been 'well we better nerf the witch then...". And sadly the nerf was a substantial boost in 1/2 orc witch power all to make burn look better...

I noticed this with the Magus and the Brawler too. The Eldritch knight is just kind of...there. It doesn't DO anything, because magus is unflinchingly superior to it. And if you try the 'well its meant for wizards to get tougher, not fighters to get spells' argument, then I will point you to Con bonuses and False Life being more efficient than the entire class, while not sacrificing spellcasting (slots OR levels).

As for the Brawler, it does almost everything the Monk does, but it can also wear armor, summon feats as needed, and take fighter-only feats. Plus unlike the fighter, it just gets some of the harder prereq feats (I'm looking at you, combat expertise!).
Every time a new class comes out, they seem to go out of their way to give it exactly what it needs to function, and add a paragraph of shackling it so other classes can't make effective use of it ever.

Warpriests? Fervor instead of Lay on hands. 80-90% same function, but now they can't use each other's feats.

Rogue Talents- Every time a class with talents comes out, they get some mish-mashed sub-set of the rogue talents they can use, that in turn doesn't get updated as new books come out.

Kinda late to reply, but...

Robert Jordan wrote:

We just got a Con based blaster caster, what's the big deal with a Witch using Con?

Paizo's been doing this a lot recently.

"Hey, guys, Y is coming out, but X does something similar and is actually kinda better. What should we do to get people to buy the book with Y?"

"Change X completely/somewhat, making it either useless or nonsensical for no apparent reason!"

Kinda why I like getting 1st printings.

I've come to a similar realization recently. It wouldn't be so bad if they maintained a history of the rules rather than aggressively updating every single source with only the changed rules.

I noticed this with the Magus and the Brawler too. The Eldritch knight is just kind of...there. It doesn't DO anything, because magus is unflinchingly superior to it. And if you try the 'well its meant for wizards to get tougher, not fighters to get spells' argument, then I will point you to Con bonuses and False Life being more efficient than the entire class, while not sacrificing spellcasting (slots OR levels).

As for the Brawler, it does almost everything the Monk does, but it can also wear armor, summon feats as needed, and take fighter-only feats. Plus unlike the fighter, it just gets some of the harder prereq feats (I'm looking at you, combat expertise!).
Every time a new class comes out, they seem to go out of their way to give it exactly what it needs to function, and add a paragraph of shackling it so other classes can't make effective use of it ever.

Warpriests? Fervor instead of Lay on hands. 80-90% same function, but now they can't use each other's feats.

Rogue Talents- Every time a class with talents comes out, they get some mish-mashed sub-set of the rogue talents they can use, that in turn doesn't get updated as new books come out.

You can pretty much ignore prestige classes when it comes to design considerations. SKR, back when he was a designer, said that the consensus was pretty much they were a dead end and the design staff didn't like them. That's why theres been very very few released in the past few years.

You can pretty much ignore prestige classes when it comes to design considerations. SKR, back when he was a designer, said that the consensus was pretty much they were a dead end and the design staff didn't like them. That's why theres been very very few released in the past few years.

Seems to me it's more like they're a dead end because the design staff doesn't like them. :-)

Does make me wonder, though, why they're in the game at all.

Legacy rules.

Right, nothing like Magus existed at the time, and ElK was only in Core because it was that way in 3.5.
There are plenty of other PrCs that are great. Paizo has never said they don't want to do PrCs,
they have said that they want to use them for flavor-related design purposes, a bit more carefully than 3.5.

Honestly, I think Paizo would do a much better job at designing a lot of their classes if they just banned multi-classing, because way too many of their bad decisions are driven by curbing dips.

The niche of "using a prestige class to specialize a class into something more focused and flavorful" has been taken up by archetypes. Archetypes do it better, and they do it from day 1 of acharacters career.

Honestly, I think Paizo would do a much better job at designing a lot of their classes if they just banned multi-classing, because way too many of their bad decisions are driven by curbing dips.

I believe that they'd do a better job if they had a stable and predictable power curve, alongside with a healthy errata policy to maintain it in case of editing mistakes.

I like Pathfinder, but if I had my druthers I'd prefer a classless system, like Harnmaster or GURPs.

The niche of "using a prestige class to specialize a class into something more focused and flavorful" has been taken up by archetypes. Archetypes do it better, and they do it from day 1 of acharacters career.

I LOVE archetypes, but they Do fill a sorta different niche. Archetypes are defined by what they give up. Every archetype trades something for something else, and that thing is (generally speaking) of equal power to what it gave up.

Prestige Classes let you multiclass out of a fully intact class to get something BRAND NEW. It may sound similar (give up 10 levels in class A and all progress in features for 10 levels in class B and its features), but in practice it's quite different.

Also, they get page space on par with full classes, meaning they can have more complex abilities and take up a lot of words. They also let many many different classes get in on the action, making a Class X/PrC Y combo feel different from game to game.

Quick example: The Horizon Walker, one of the few good PrCs. It has prerequisites which can, technically, be filled by any class in the game. It has has a long list of abilities that takes up a lot of space.

Sure, it could just be a Ranger archetype...but that would take away a bit of the flexibility and bring with it a lot of baggage unless it traded out EVERYTHING the Ranger gets. What if I don't want to get Favored Enemy? or an Animal Companion? Alternately, what if I DO want both of those things, at a lower progression, and still get the Horizon Walker goods?

Prestige Classes still have a niche, as long as they're solid classes in their own right and not glorified "class hybrids" or things with terrible mechanics or +1s to random things.

One problem that prestige classes have is capstones. One original design rule from 3.0 was that prestige classes should typically not be attainable before level 6 (5 levels in other classes, and 6th level is the 1st level of the PrC). Another was that prestige classes should be no more than 10 levels.

In PF, this means that you can reach the maximum level in a prestige class at around 15th level... Which is way too low for the class to have a significant capstone. Except it probably should have a capstone, since you've gone out of your way to focus on this character to get into the class, so something awesome when you get that 10th level is reasonable... Except it shouldn't overshadow the abilities of other characters at level 15... And shouldn't be overshadowed by the core/base class capstones when you all get to 20.

I'm not sure there's a good balance point of those factors.

Chemlak nailed the "problem" with prestige classes. They are hard since they can't be stronger than the earliest you could enter it. something that needs bab 5 should be as strong as fighter/barb 6. But then if you enter it late it's a bad deal. bards/cleric at lv8 are getting lv6 worth power. Then as Chemlak pointed out, the final level can't be too big of a bonus since it's 5 lvs early. Also you're then left with going to a lv6 bonus at lv16 once you're done. As there's not late prestige classes to go into.

1. Geek the mage

2. Kill it before it full attacks

Few things get harder as you level than #1, unfortunately. Kinda makes you wish for an assault-cannon now don't it?

Regarding Capstones: Perhaps the biggest issue is that they're level 20.
Honestly most classes and players will never see them, because the vast majority of campaigns just don't get near that point.

If capstones were at 15th, then putting one at the 10th level of a PRC would make complete sense...

On prestige classes, I find the Winter Witch (Archtype) vs the Winter Witch (Prestige Class) interesting. As I remember, the Archtype at higher levels is more defensive vs cold, while the prestige class is more offensive. ("Oh, you think you're immune to cold! That's cute. Infriga!) It's an interesting mechanic for two 'schools' of winter.

Insain Dragoon wrote:

1. Geek the mage

2. Kill it before it full attacks

Few things get harder as you level than #1, unfortunately. Kinda makes you wish for an assault-cannon now don't it?

Regarding Capstones: Perhaps the biggest issue is that they're level 20.
Honestly most classes and players will never see them, because the vast majority of campaigns just don't get near that point.

If capstones were at 15th, then putting one at the 10th level of a PRC would make complete sense...

Especially if you allow actual BS spells like Emergency Force Sphere or that permanent body swap one.

If at that point your martials aren't decked out with clear spindle ioun stone wayfinders, they deserve to be possessed.

If at that point your martials aren't decked out with clear spindle ioun stone wayfinders, they deserve to be possessed.

Necessary magic items are bad, but sure.

Plus, a lot of casters (even enemy ones) are Neutral, and they have plenty of ways to dick over a martial besides mind control.

The niche of "using a prestige class to specialize a class into something more focused and flavorful" has been taken up by archetypes. Archetypes do it better, and they do it from day 1 of a characters career.

The problem is, they ALWAYS do it from day 1. Mid-campaign revelations, or even revelations a few levels in, are too late to swap out. Your desire for career change means weeks of retraining, rather than just leveling up the next time.

It's again not that they don't get anything, it's that the things they get don't come close to comparing against what they could receive through multiclassing. Didn't you already ask this earlier in the thread? If you're not understanding it after that explanation, then I would say it doesn't apply to you, but rather people who are trying to get more out of their build than you are.

Ah thanks, yeah I had asked I see now but I missed the reply. I guess I kinda do see now what you mean although my reasons for multiclassing gunslinger in the past and even now I think are for concept than anything... like my Gunslinger (Pistolero) / Shield Marshal and then Captain Quinn here is a Gunslinger {Techslinger) / Witch (White-Haired),

The archaeologist is not intended to gain additional rounds of its luck ability as it levels. It receives a number of other abilities to balance out the loss of bardic performance.

You might have overlooked this (although I don't think so) but the Core Races Half-Elves, Half-Orcs and Gnomes can increase their rounds of luck via favored class bonus. As well as Goblins and Vishkanyas in other races.

Considering how good that bonus is, I think it works just fine as currently written. The archetype gains a fair number of other bonuses to compensate.

I agree with you the first part, but I disagree on how well the rules work. The whole kit of the Archaeologist comes together very nicely, a well rounded hybrid.

• a feat based Archaeologist with bonus performance and lingering performance: the most glaring example is a human with at level 1.
  (assuming 12-16 Cha) 4-7 base rounds, 10-13 with bonus performance, 30-36 with lingering performance at first level.
  This many rounds makes management of Archaeologists Luck obsolete.
  
• a FCB based Archaeologist: pick once of the races with bonus performance FCB and pick up lingering performance early and add 3 extra rounds per FCB.
  (assuming 12-16 Cha) 4-7 base rounds, 5-8 with FCB, 15-24 with lingering performance at first level.
  After five more picks (as they should 6 FCB equal one Feat) of the FCB this build reaches the same sate of post-scarcity in lucky rounds as the first build and with further FCB picks this build can use the Archaeologist's Luck even for long skill checks (for which the ability clearly wasn't designed) 4-7 base rounds, 24-27 (at level 20) with FCB resulting in 72-81 rounds or 7-8 MINUTES of Luck with Lingering.
  
• no Archaeologist at all, with no way to increase your rounds you are done. 4-7 Rounds of spotlight might be cool for a starting character at Level 20 this is just too little. After your first few level ups you will take one of the two options to keep your character afloat.
  

The Archaeologist's Luck ability has some major differences though, it is incredibly powerful as it provides a wide range of bonuses to very crucial
throws. Almost every roll that you wish were better actually gets better with it. This is precisely why prolonging the effect is such a big priority!
Tripling the rounds of your Luck is an effect so powerful, nothing will stop an Archaeologist to pick it.
That said I would never give an Archaeologist access to as many rounds of Luck as the Bard gets Performance. However some scaling might actually improve the situation of maxing Luck rounds as fast as possible. A small but steady influx of Luck rounds might be enough to spent FCB and feats on something else.

Torbyne wrote:

except as noted by others, there are favored class bonuses to grant extra rounds, Lingering Performance triples the bonus and frees up action economy further and extra performance is also a thing (when the two feats are combined you get better action economy and ~24 rounds of luck)

None of that is archaeologist specific, those are feats available to it or standard bard, thus a comparison is without them is perfectly valid.

you shouldn't need to jump through extra hoops to get a workable for more than 1.5 encounter class ability when the one its replacing is meant to do so and for the whole group...the bard takes them when he wants to be able to handle a really long day. The arch would have to to handle...just about anything, thus crimping their choices in other character building decisions

I wholeheartedly agree! Somehow it feels like the Archaeologist only comes together as a human, half-orc or half-elf...

Holy threadromancy!

Funny, my aasimar archaeologist and tiefling archaeologist seem to gel just fine...

Holy threadromancy!

Funny, my aasimar archaeologist and tiefling archaeologist seem to gel just fine...

It's very dependent on how many minutes of adventuring day your party normally uses. If your group is constantly resting to start every fight at 100% then it shouldn't be much of an issue.

Eh, Lingering Performance covers almost all needed uses of luck per day. If you really need more, you can take extra performance.

It's not a good enough class feature to justify needing to spend that many Feats to make it work most of the day though.

Funny, my aasimar archaeologist and tiefling archaeologist seem to gel just fine...

I guess I'll forget about any logical assessment of the situation because of your anecdotal evidence then?

Eh, Lingering Performance covers almost all needed uses of luck per day. If you really need more, you can take extra performance.

This is true. This is precisely what I'm unhappy with. A Bard makes a meaningful choice when he picks up Lingering, as Archaeologist this is a "Feat Tax" you have to pick the Feat, I tried to "rework" the Archetype in a way that makes playing without Lingering possible without overpowering the archetype.

It's not a good enough class feature to justify needing to spend that many Feats to make it work most of the day though.

I think it is debatable whether the Luck feature warrants a feat tax to be used for all rounds of fighting on any given day. I would argue that one or two feats for a virtually endless supply of rounds of a massive combat bonus is actually pretty fair. But I have an issue with the fact that you cannot focus those two feats in something besides the Luck feature. The whole archetype falls apart without the Lingering Performance feat.

I'm puzzled as to why the piecemeal armor for "Lamellar (Steel) Torso Piece" is a +1, while the Horn version is a +2? That would mean..

Lamellar (Steel) Piecemeal: +1 (Torso) +1 (Legs) +1 (Arms) = +3
Lamellar (Steel) Full Suit: +6

So... where does the other +3 come from? That seems like an incredibly hefty loss of protection. It's obviously minus a helmet (let's say +1), but feels like the Steel Torso piece should at least be as strong as Horn armor (+2).

Is there an explanation?

Good thing they cant screw the physical book with this "errata" garbage.
If i had to choose between fun and PFS balance (and lets face it, we had to. Crane Wing was Deflect Arrow of melee combat, it was consistent) i would choose fun. They chose PFS balance. Does anyone even care about non-PFS anymore?

And the answer is "ignore the errata"... So what they say is true, ignorance is a bliss.

I'm puzzled as to why the piecemeal armor for "Lamellar (Steel) Torso Piece" is a +1, while the Horn version is a +2? That would mean..

Lamellar (Steel) Piecemeal: +1 (Torso) +1 (Legs) +1 (Arms) = +3
Lamellar (Steel) Full Suit: +6

So... where does the other +3 come from? That seems like an incredibly hefty loss of protection. It's obviously minus a helmet (let's say +1), but feels like the Steel Torso piece should at least be as strong as Horn armor (+2).

Is there an explanation?

I think it was an error on their part, not something intentional.

Nicholas Pettinato wrote:

I'm puzzled as to why the piecemeal armor for "Lamellar (Steel) Torso Piece" is a +1, while the Horn version is a +2? That would mean..

Lamellar (Steel) Piecemeal: +1 (Torso) +1 (Legs) +1 (Arms) = +3
Lamellar (Steel) Full Suit: +6

So... where does the other +3 come from? That seems like an incredibly hefty loss of protection. It's obviously minus a helmet (let's say +1), but feels like the Steel Torso piece should at least be as strong as Horn armor (+2).

Is there an explanation?

I think it was an error on their part, not something intentional.

For my games I would just have change the numbers to add up to +6, but if you want something official I would suggest starting a new post, and asking for an FAQ so they can put it on the errata list.

You get +1 for having a full suit, so the parts should add up to one less than max or +5 in this case.

Nicholas Pettinato wrote:

I'm puzzled as to why the piecemeal armor for "Lamellar (Steel) Torso Piece" is a +1, while the Horn version is a +2? That would mean..

Lamellar (Steel) Piecemeal: +1 (Torso) +1 (Legs) +1 (Arms) = +3
Lamellar (Steel) Full Suit: +6

So... where does the other +3 come from? That seems like an incredibly hefty loss of protection. It's obviously minus a helmet (let's say +1), but feels like the Steel Torso piece should at least be as strong as Horn armor (+2).

Is there an explanation?

I think it was an error on their part, not something intentional.

For my games I would just have change the numbers to add up to +6, but if you want something official I would suggest starting a new post, and asking for an FAQ so they can put it on the errata list.

Considering the piecemeal armor rules are an optional variant, not even allowed in PFS, it's already pretty much unofficial if you use them anyway. Just use common sense.

You could say that for anything concerning errata. It's lazy. I'm sure it was an oversight, but it should be corrected in the errata. Especially for those of us who don't give a toss about PFS.

Especially for those of us who don't give a toss about PFS.

+∞

Quick question, if a rule says references "enchantment (Charm)" effects is that diffrent from just referring to "charm" effects? Does the term "enchantment (Charm)" apply to all enchantment spells whereas "charm" only refers spell of that specific sub-school? It seems to me that the same as how all "divination (scrying)" spells are divinations, but not all divination spells are scrying; so you can't use non-scrying spells to qualify for superior scryer, but you can use scrying spells to qualify for the Loremaster Prestige class. It seems pretty obvious to me that this is how referencing subcatagories of a larger umbrella like "enchantment (Charm)" works, but my gaming group as a few screws loose so I would greatly appreciate an official ruling on this.

Quick question, if a rule says references "enchantment (Charm)" effects is that diffrent from just referring to "charm" effects? Does the term "enchantment (Charm)" apply to all enchantment spells whereas "charm" only refers spell of that specific sub-school? ...

a good example is "shadow". Mostly it is Illusion(shadow) but sometimes it is a Necromany spell. "Shadow" is also used as a qualifying word for some magic feats. Effects refer to the spell school or descriptors. Thus the couple of necromany spells with (shadow) are shadow effects. There is no necromancy shadow subschool so it is a case where the descriptor is tacked on. So Enchantment(Charm) is slightly different than just "charm" or (Charm). Anything that works on charm effects work on a spell with the charm descriptor. There could be some oddball cases in RAW (I have not done a search on "charm").

It's nice you have hope for a clarification but Paizo has moved on to PF2.