Multiclassing and Archetypes

Friday, July 27, 2018

One of the trickiest parts of the rules is multiclassing. At its heart, multiclassing allows you to build almost any character you can envision, taking parts from multiple classes to build the perfect version of your character. Making these rules play well with the rest of the game, unfortunately, has always been a challenge. Concepts that really should work together just fell flat, leaving you with a character who could not perform at its level and keep pace with single class characters. This was especially the case for certain classes, like most spellcasters, that had a central class feature or features that you would fall sharply behind in if you weren't constantly progressing in that class.

Suffice to say, when it came time to redesign the system for the Pathfinder Playtest, we knew that multiclassing needed work.

Then came the rules for archetypes. The new design for this emblematic part of the game allows archetypes to be taken by any class, so you can decide exactly how much you want to invest into an alternative path for your character. The more we worked on that system, the more it began to sound like it shared almost exactly the same goals as multiclassing. Our thought was, shouldn't they just be the same system?

Multiclass archetypes are one of the more experimental parts of the Pathfinder Playtest. So much so that there are only four of them in the book, one for cleric, one for fighter, one for rogue, and one for wizard. Just like ordinary archetypes, you must take a special dedication feat to gain access to the archetype, but you cannot be of the same class as the archetype (so you can't take the rogue dedication feat if you are already a rogue). Let's take a look at one of these feats.

Wizard Dedication Feat 2

Archetype, Dedication, Multiclass

Prerequisites Intelligence 16, trained in Arcana


You cast spells like a wizard and gain a spellbook containing four arcane cantrips of your choice. You gain access to the Cast a Spell activity and the Material Casting, Somatic Casting, and Verbal Casting actions. You can prepare two cantrips each day from those found in your spellbook. You're trained in spell rolls and spell DCs for casting arcane spells and in attacks you make with arcane spells. Your key spellcasting ability for these spells is Intelligence. You can use wands, scrolls, and staves, but only for spells of a spell level you can cast. Arcana is a signature skill for you.

Special You cannot select another dedication feat until you have gained two other feats from the wizard archetype.

Right away, this lets you cast a few simple cantrips; allows you to use wands, scrolls, and staves; and makes Arcana a signature skill for you (meaning you can advance your proficiency in the skill to master and legendary). Like other dedication feats, once you've taken Wizard Dedication, you gain access to other wizard archetype feats, each of which makes you a more powerful master of the arcane arts. Take a look.

Basic Wizard Spellcasting Feat 4

Archetype

Prerequisites Wizard Dedication


Add two level 1 spells to your spellbook. You gain a single level1 spell slot that you can use to prepare a level 1 spell from your spellbook. At 6th level, add two level 2 spells to your spellbook, and you gain a level 2 spell slot that you can use to prepare a level 2 spell from your spellbook. At 8th level, add two level 3 spells to your spellbook, and you gain a level 3 spell slot that you can use to prepare a level 3 spell from your spellbook.

Even though you can cast spells, the spell level of your cantrips and arcane powers is half your level rounded up.

This feat pays dividends all the way up through 8th level, giving you more spells you can cast, and if you take it later on in your career, you get all of that spellcasting all at once. Better still, there are additional feats you can take to gain spells of up to 8th level! But let's say you want to be even more of a wizard—you want to get some of the other class features that make wizards fun to play. Take a look at these feats.

Arcane School Feat 4

Archetype

Prerequisite Wizard Dedication


Select one school of magic from those found in the wizard class. You gain the level 1 school power tied to your school and a pool of Spell Points equal to your Intelligence modifier that you can use to cast that power.

If you already have a pool of Spell Points, use the higher ability score to determine the pool, as normal, and your Spell Point pool increases by 1.

Basic Arcana Feat 4

Archetype

Prerequisites Wizard Dedication


Gain a level 1 or level 2 wizard feat of your choice.

Advanced Arcana Feat 6

Archetype

Prerequisites Basic Arcana


Gain one wizard feat. For the purposes of meeting its prerequisites, your wizard level is equal to half your level.

Special You can select this feat more than once. Each time you select it, you gain a new wizard feat.

There's even a feat that gives you additional spell slots of every level except for your two highest, giving you more versatility in your spellcasting. It's important to note that these powers come at the cost of some of the flexibility of your primary class, but not at the cost of core features. A cleric who multiclasses into fighter will keep all of her spellcasting abilities, but she will have to trade out some of the feats that allow her to be better at casting heal or at using domain powers in exchange for increased proficiency in weapons and armor, added hit points, and the ability to make attacks of opportunity. You might even choose to multiclass into several classes. You could play a cleric who, in addition to all her cleric spells, also has up to 8th-level druid spells and 8th-level wizard spells, though such a three-tradition spellcaster would have few cleric feats to speak of!

Well, that about covers the rules for multiclassing in the Pathfinder Playtest. If these archetypes work, you can expect to see one for each class in the final version of the game, giving you the flexibility to build characters that draw on more than one class to make their concept click. We hope you'll give these a try during the playtest and let us know what you think!

Jason Bulmahn
Director of Game Design

More Paizo Blog.
Tags: Pathfinder Playtest
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TheWriterFantastic™ wrote:
ENHenry wrote:

I really like it, as it is reminiscent of D&D4's multiclassing, where spending feats got you a "lateral" sliver of power rather than a "vertical" one, as PF1's multiclassing does. Now, you can exercise powers commensurate with a character of a different class within one or two levels of you, but still not be powerful enough to obviate the need for someone who is fully into that second class. If it works as well as I think it will, I want to see more of it.

On the down side, it does crimp the style of those who wanted to roleplay "ex-fighters turned mages" but if retraining is designed to handle that, I think that this is not too terrible a loss. (If it does not, maybe that's an idea for expansion?) I know it doesn't affect my local group, as we have never had anyone go down that path.

I was a huge fan of the idea of 4E multiclassing, but not the actual multiclassing in practice. It unfortunately didn't work, effectively giving a minor taste of the 2nd class, even with the scaling feats. On top of that, you needed to burn feats to even get access to the second class's feat options. In practice, the implementation of it was so bad, it's likely why they didn't bother to even include it in the D&D Essentials soft reboot of the system, and they reverted to a variation on 3E/Star Wars Saga Edition style multiclassing for 5E. Given that these multiclass feats attempt a very similar model, down to multiclass feats that act as gates to class feats, I worry that PF2 is about to make the same mistake that 4E had.

I’m sorry to hear it didn’t work for your group - for my groups, it worked fantastically well, giving my warlord clutch fireballs and my rogues the ability to heal in a pinch, without diluting their access to their most powerful abilities for their original class’ level. It opened versatility at the expense of some truly worthless feat choices, which I found great trades. (honestly, I found some of those highly conditional 4e feats were ridiculous, like “5-foot step as a free action after scoring a critical hit” or “+2 to attack for 1 round after going to 1/2 hit points” - I was happy to give up stuff like that in exchange for a power I could have never taken.)

Several things did not work for me for 4E, but the multiclassing was not the deal breaker for me. The PF2 version seems to be quite a bit more powerful than that one, granting a pretty good spread of spell slots over several levels.


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Though it is tragic that some of your weirdest character builds are no longer identically possible, this system actually opens up A LOT of combinations that were complete trash before, A LOT.

Recently had a player who had a Rogue 3 decide they wanted to become an Arcane Trickster but remaining focused in melee combat, without having to be forced to retrain/retcon. This was pretty much impossible without being total garbage, but now it could be done just by taking 1 dedication feat at 4 and then advancing only as much as desired in the spellcasting without losing armor/sneak attack/HP.

All combinations seem to have some value now and this opens up a lot more character concepts than before. They are different than the ones you're used to, of course, but don't let that blind you to the potential.

Think of like... A martial druid with actual melee oriented feats to compliment their wild shape (expect druid feats to be msotly magical). What about a Divine casting Rogue of Calistria? An usuable Mystic Theurge, Monks with weapons and armor, Hellknight Signifiers, Gish Sorcerers, and many more!

Some concepts will probably require the appropriate new class if you wanna stack archetypes. Like a Pirate Magus would certainly be better off waiting for the class to release rather than Fighter/Wizard/Pirate.


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Chaotic_Blues wrote:
I can't say that I'm a fan of this idea. It feels like it's pandering too much to power gamers.

From a power gaming perspective, it's better to have several methods of swapping out the front loaded abilities granted by each class and at each level. It's also ideal to select things that stack. Something like stacking the urban version of blood rager and barbarian rage, and wyrm singer skald draconic rage with the extreme mood swings feat all together for a huge chunk of extra hit and damage is more a power gamer's jam. You take things modified just enough to work together and break the system.

With this system, everything will need to be designed to be more or less interchangeable. There won't be 5 different brands of rage to exploit. Abilities will need to be more or less balanced regardless of their supporting class chassis and you won't be able to hunt don't a mess of heavily front loaded archetypes with early access to feats and abilities.


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Blueskier wrote:
Arachnofiend wrote:
Mark Seifter wrote:
Arachnofiend wrote:
All I want to know is: Did the healer Barbarian have the Cleric multiclass archetype?
Yep. Some of you guessed it right away because I described her as unhealthily obsessed with Gorum.
Cool, so martial classes are dead then. If you don't have spells, you can borrow them from a class who does. Sigh...

Nope

Mundane character concepts are dead. Which is good. Being non-magical is not a character concept that is level appropiate after lvl 5

Nope, Martial characters are dead, because some people, for some reason, can fathom that a lot of other people want to play as mythical swordsmen, not an arcane caster that can use a sword.

Why do people think that I want to play a mundane character just because I want to focus his skills in weapons instead of spells? Even though The Book of Nine Swords and Path of War exists?


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

I mostly just went through Mark's posts on this thread, so I'm sure I missed some discussion. But. This looks GREAT. I was already down to try this when I thought it was going to be just a few feats you had to take in order, but this looks incredibly modular and fun to tinker with. I daresay this more flexible than core PF1 multiclassing, and certainly makes it easier to do it effectively. (It may not be as flexible as PF1 multiclassing with archetypes, but at that point you just have a head start on content anyway so it isn't a fair comparison.)

This design also means they can add new things to a multiclass just by making some new feats. Aside from this being awesome in general, it means if they screw up the balance and make one particular multiclass too weak it will be easy enough to stealth patch it. (Hopefully we don't reach the point where new feats invalidate old feats again, but it is a nice safety net nonetheless.)

Dang it. I need to find some games to play in. This system will allow for too many cool characters for me to just DM, unless I start homebrewing again. Hmm. Maybe I should do that... At least I can build NPCs at that point.


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Aiken Frost wrote:
Blueskier wrote:
Arachnofiend wrote:
Mark Seifter wrote:
Arachnofiend wrote:
All I want to know is: Did the healer Barbarian have the Cleric multiclass archetype?
Yep. Some of you guessed it right away because I described her as unhealthily obsessed with Gorum.
Cool, so martial classes are dead then. If you don't have spells, you can borrow them from a class who does. Sigh...

Nope

Mundane character concepts are dead. Which is good. Being non-magical is not a character concept that is level appropiate after lvl 5

Nope, Martial characters are dead, because some people, for some reason, can fathom that a lot of other people want to play as mythical swordsmen, not an arcane caster that can use a sword.

Why do people think that I want to play a mundane character just because I want to focus his skills in weapons instead of spells? Even though The Book of Nine Swords and Path of War exists?

Yeah, it's crazy that after all these years, people hear Book of Nine Swords and immediately jump to "crazy, wushu, weeaboo, wire-fu stuff" when maybe only 5-7% of the book comes close to that.


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Moro wrote:
Characters do not gain levels instantaneously in-game either, they earn experience over time and then for some reason reap all of the benefits of that experience at once. Learning the basics of a new class over the course of earning a new level's worth of experience is no more absurd than suddenly becoming much better at an existing class for the same reasons.

Hmm. Since they can't fix everything in P2, then we should scrap the whole effort. Good riddance P2!


Moro wrote:
N N 959 wrote:


In AD&D, Wizard had a starting age of like 35 while Fighters were like 19. WotC got rid of that because it made the game more complicated, not because magic was intended to be learned from Cliff Notes.

Looking at the 1st edition AD&D PHB now, and there is nothing about starting ages in there at all that I can find.

I did find the starting age chart for second edition, which goes by race, of course, but has no modifiers for classes.

Looks like WotC actually added this conceit to the game in 3rd edition, but the differences, as I detailed them in an earlier post, are minimal.

I think you are just remembering your personal preferences as rules. I have been guilty that myself many times over the years.

DMG p.12

Starting age for fighter: 15 +1d4

Starting age for wizard: 24 +2d8 (averages out to 33)

Starting age for an illusionist: 30 +1d6.

In AD&D 1e, when you did adventures, the GM was suppose to give you a rating of A,B, C, D, etc. The average of your ratings determine how many weeks (1 for A, 2 for B...) it took you to train to gain the benefits of your new level. After you got enough xp to level, you couldn't gain any more xp and you had to find someone of your class to train you.

I was hoping to see P2 bring all of this back in full force and effect, but it was not meant to be. I'm gonig to take a nap...then I'm going to rage-quit P2.


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N N 959 wrote:
Moro wrote:
Characters do not gain levels instantaneously in-game either, they earn experience over time and then for some reason reap all of the benefits of that experience at once. Learning the basics of a new class over the course of earning a new level's worth of experience is no more absurd than suddenly becoming much better at an existing class for the same reasons.

Hmm. Since they can't fix everything in P2, then we should scrap the whole effort. Good riddance P2!

I haven't said anything like that at all. I'm just saying that resorting to hyperbole to support or denigrate either side of this issue, or any issue with a system we as of right now know next to nothing about, is a little knee-jerky.

"ZOMGzors Paizo makin da 2e da best game evar, 1st edition should cease to exist, there was never anything redeemable about any game system before this one"

AND

"Ew, there be nothing redeemable about this new 2nd edishun, Pathfinder was perfect as it is, and we demand that Paizo support it 4eva. Never buying 2e becus it suxx!!!!!"

Are both silly and purely emotional stances to have right now.


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N N 959 wrote:
Moro wrote:
I haven't said anything like that at all.

Actually you have. You're bringing up examples of things that are still nonsensical as a counter to the idea that P2 should fix things that are nonsensical.

Yes, there's a lot of silly things in these game, that doesn't invalidate the argument that a rule is good if it makes the game less absurd.

Please, it's a tabletop RPG. Take out all of the absurdity and you have the real world. There is a point where trying to remove things to make them jive with reality makes the game objectively worse. You and I just disagree with where that point lies.

Personally, I am almost always on the side of flexibility and as many options as possible, for both player and DM. I'm not saying all of the options should be used within the same campaign, just that it is nice for a system to have as many options as possible available, especially when it comes to character creation and advancement, because that opens up the game to a wider audience.


Moro wrote:

Personally, I am almost always on the side of flexibility and as many options as possible, for both player and DM. I'm not saying all of the options should be used within the same campaign, just that it is nice for a system to have as many options as possible available, especially when it comes to character creation and advancement, because that opens up the game to a wider audience.

And research shows that customer satisfaction is actually higher when they have fewer options. But consumer's aren't intuitively aware of this. Consumers will almost always indicate that they prefer more options despite the research showing that more options erodes their satisfaction.

And that's just on the purely clinical side of this problem. What you're sacrificing to get all this flexibility is the game's immersion. Total flexibility is immersion breaking. It reduces the game down to mechanics. All things should not be possible. Making them possible doesn't make the game better.


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N N 959 wrote:
Moro wrote:

Personally, I am almost always on the side of flexibility and as many options as possible, for both player and DM. I'm not saying all of the options should be used within the same campaign, just that it is nice for a system to have as many options as possible available, especially when it comes to character creation and advancement, because that opens up the game to a wider audience.

And research shows that customer satisfaction is actually higher when they have fewer options. But consumer's aren't intuitively aware of this. Consumers will almost always indicate that they prefer more options despite the research showing that more options erodes their satisfaction.

I'm sure there is probably a sweet spot in there somewhere between "flipping a coin or playing tic-tac-toe" level of options, and "Rolemaster with all the optional rules" level of options. I like to have my rule systems lean toward the latter end of that spectrum.


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I should also point out that although the blog focused on the Wizard multiclass archetype, it is only one of many, and we don't know what the others give (though we will in a week or so). A fighter/rogue that blends amazing weapon skill and maneuvers with sneak attack and skill boons could get pretty scary both in and out of combat.

What your base class is makes a huge difference: E.g. taking a Paladin gives good hit points, great armor proficiency advancement, good weapon proficiency advancement and a bunch of powerful class abilities that make you pretty tough. If you instead took a sorcerer you'd have less hp, worse proficiencies and advancement and different skills, and class abilities focusing on magic.

You can spend class feats (out of an allotment of 10, typically) on abilities that advance your base class's style - making your paladin "paladin harder" (to quote one of my players). Or you can spend them to grab abilities and features from other classes, which can add to your specialization... but usually make you more versatile.

It isn't really about "which is the most powerful" (the question itself is problematic, as the answer depends on your definition of 'powerful'), but is instead "Does the combination create a character that feels like it contributes meaningfully to the group". I think of it as a sliding scale from Full Martial (e.g. Paladin) to Full Caster (e.g. Sorcerer), and rather than having a smattering of other classes in between (e.g. Magus), you instead blend the two until the mix is right for you. (A paladin/sorcerer is going to be a stronger martial but weaker caster than a sorcerer/paladin, as is obvious from the core class progression).


Moro wrote:
I'm sure there is probably a sweet spot in there somewhere between "flipping a coin or playing tic-tac-toe" level of options, and "Rolemaster with all the optional rules" level of options. I like to have my rule systems lean toward the latter end of that spectrum.

Can you give me an examples from any of the blogs were Paizo has said, "we wanted to reduce the number of options"?

They are definitely trying to simplify things. But it seems every blog talks about flexibility as a point of emphasis.

So yeah, there is a sweet spot, now what do you think is the probability we've long since passed it?

The P2 blogs remind me of Jurassic Park.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY-pUxKQMUE


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N N 959 wrote:
Moro wrote:
I'm sure there is probably a sweet spot in there somewhere between "flipping a coin or playing tic-tac-toe" level of options, and "Rolemaster with all the optional rules" level of options. I like to have my rule systems lean toward the latter end of that spectrum.

Can you give me an examples from any of the blogs were Paizo has said, "we wanted to reduce the number of options"?

They are definitely trying to simplify things. But it seems every blog talks about flexibility as a point of emphasis.

So yeah, there is a sweet spot, now what do you think is the probability we've long since passed it?

The P2 blogs remind me of Jurassic Park.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY-pUxKQMUE

Of course they aren't going to say that, because despite what "research shows" telling your customer you are going to limit their options for their own good, and research shows they should like it that way, is a bad idea. And noone is 100% sure that they are limiting flexibility at this point. It looks like they might in some ways be doing so, but in other ways they could even be increasing the level of customization afforded to characters.

This is a playtest forum, with tons of people discussing and reacting to small pieces of limited information. All of these threads really just boil down to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWdd6_ZxX8c

until after the finished product releases.

Shadow Lodge

Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder PF Special Edition Subscriber

The more i read the more confused i am by the last line of the basic wizard spellcasting feat;

Even though you can cast spells, the spell level of your cantrips and arcane powers is half your level rounded up.

Is this not always the case? Why is this line here, it seems curiously redundant unless the normal rules for cantrips and powers are different? If they are different then it reads very odd indeed, if i take the dedication i use different rules to when i take another feat and specialise more.

I read the intent as you get full CL and access to spells a nd casting just like a wizard but less spells per day, by 2 i think, and at a later level, about 3 levels-so seconds at 6th level not 3rd and 3rd at 8th level rather than 5th.


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Cat-thulhu wrote:

The more i read the more confused i am by the last line of the basic wizard spellcasting feat;

Even though you can cast spells, the spell level of your cantrips and arcane powers is half your level rounded up.

Is this not always the case? Why is this line here, it seems curiously redundant unless the normal rules for cantrips and powers are different? If they are different then it reads very odd indeed, if i take the dedication i use different rules to when i take another feat and specialise more.

As per Mark's comments this is the reason for that line: the normal case is that Cantrips automatically scale to the highest spell level you can cast (which is normally 1/2 level rounded up) for casters or defaults to that scaling for non-casters. In the case of that feat, you now have spells you can cast that do not follow that scaling, so that line is there to re-iterate the usual scaling and confirm that your Cantrips don't get weaker because you now have spells.


Cat-thulhu wrote:

The more i read the more confused i am by the last line of the basic wizard spellcasting feat;

Even though you can cast spells, the spell level of your cantrips and arcane powers is half your level rounded up.

Is this not always the case? Why is this line here, it seems curiously redundant unless the normal rules for cantrips and powers are different? If they are different then it reads very odd indeed, if i take the dedication i use different rules to when i take another feat and specialise more.

Mark explained that one. (… I just watched The Disaster Artist, and it feels weird talking about Mark.)

Cantrips and powers use half your level rounded up if you don't have any spells. If you do have spells, they use your highest spell level. These have an exception in them so that taking the casting feat doesn't drop your Wizard cantrips.

Would it drop the level of your ancestry cantrips? Sounds like something to look at the actual rules on.


I think Mark mentioned in a previous blog (the spells blog IIRC, where Cantrip scaling first came up) that stuff like Ancestry would spell out the scaling for cantrips gained through it.


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N N 959 wrote:
Moro wrote:
I'm sure there is probably a sweet spot in there somewhere between "flipping a coin or playing tic-tac-toe" level of options, and "Rolemaster with all the optional rules" level of options. I like to have my rule systems lean toward the latter end of that spectrum.

Can you give me an examples from any of the blogs were Paizo has said, "we wanted to reduce the number of options"?

They are definitely trying to simplify things. But it seems every blog talks about flexibility as a point of emphasis.

So yeah, there is a sweet spot, now what do you think is the probability we've long since passed it?

The P2 blogs remind me of Jurassic Park.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY-pUxKQMUE

One of the things they have talked about in the blogs, comments, and twitch streams is having binned options. Ancestry Feats, Class Feats, Skill Feats. Each of these categories restricts the number of options at each decision point so while your character will end up having something like twice their character level in feats and a lot of customization over all each feat is chosen from much smaller lists than in PF1.

For skills you start off by selecting a few skills and make a choice every odd level of boosting an existing skill or train a new one. When you get a skill feat that a list restricted (though it is a soft restriction not a hard prerequisite) by your number of trained skills and your proficiency level. The skill feat list is probably the biggest overall list you will look through early on but you will likely know, or have an idea of, which skills you want to focus on.

As for class feats gating them behind levels help make the decisions easier and ensures that the feat list is more manageable for the player since it kind of forces you to look over it again and again every time you level up. At level 2 you look at all the lvl 1 & 2 fighter feats and pick the one you want at level 4 when you pick a new one you look at the four or five new options and then look again at the level 2 options. Each time you pick a feat you have a few new options and then all of the options that you have already looked at. This design prevents you from ever looking at a list of 300+ new (to you) feats and having no idea where to begin like a new player in PF1 does.


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Cat-thulhu wrote:

The more i read the more confused i am by the last line of the basic wizard spellcasting feat;

Even though you can cast spells, the spell level of your cantrips and arcane powers is half your level rounded up.

Is this not always the case? Why is this line here, it seems curiously redundant unless the normal rules for cantrips and powers are different? If they are different then it reads very odd indeed, if i take the dedication i use different rules to when i take another feat and specialise more.

I read the intent as you get full CL and access to spells a nd casting just like a wizard but less spells per day, by 2 i think, and at a later level, about 3 levels-so seconds at 6th level not 3rd and 3rd at 8th level rather than 5th.

If you don't cast spells, your powers/cantrips scale so that they are always equal to half level. Effectively, they scale to max spell level.

So a level 5 Paladin has powers equal to Spell Level 3 (5/2, round up).

If you cast spells, your Cantrips/Powers scale so that they are always cast at the same level of the highest spell you can cast.

If you're a level 5 Wizard, you can cast 3rd level Spells. Therefore, all your Cantrips/Powers are scaled to 3rd level.

With the Basic Wizard Spellcasting Feat, you have a situation where class under the first scaling (like a Paladin) can now cast 1st level Spells. Effectively, it would make your Cantrip/Power scaling worse, since they would scale to the highest spell level you can cast....which is 1st.

Since 1st level spell scaling is lower than what you'd otherwise have (which is half character level), they put that line there to remind you that you keep the better scaling for Cantrip/Powers.


Tangent101 wrote:


I don't suppose you can give us a couple examples of Rogue and Fighter Multiclass Archetypes to help fill things out a little?

Well, the Wizard dedication shows that Wizard feat 4 Basic Arcana allows a Wizard feat of level 1 or 2.

So, we know that Basic Thievery and Basic Fighting will do the same for Rogue/Fighter respectively. What does the basic dedication do though is question? Fighter grants All armor and all martial weapons, of course.

Quote:


In fact, this basically allows ALL of the Hybrid classes.
Arcanist? Sorcerer multiclassed with Wizard.
Brawler? Monk multiclassed with Fighter.
Investigator? Alchemist multiclassed with Rogue.
And on down the line. :)

You need 6 levels to take another dedication if focused on getting another. So by 12 you could have 2 extra classes. I guess, you take advanced Wizardry at 12th to learned 8th level spells by 20th level (starting with 4th level spells).

Likely, there is a multiclass feat to double spell slots (since you only get 1 with current feats shown).


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

I was iffy on it at first, but after some thought I think it has some potential. I wanna lay out my thoughts tonight before going to bed.

PF1 Multiclassing:

Pros:
* No limits on what classes you can take or how many you can have.
* Level-based abilities reduce the potential for game-breaking combos.
* Archetypes add a great third dimension to class combinations.

Cons:
* Investing more than a couple levels is usually detrimental. This isn't too bad with most Martial classes but is far more severe with Hybrids and Full-Casters. Classes with level-based DCs like the Witch get a very bad deal here.
* Multiclass characters get nothing special at Level 20 while single-class characters are getting potent abilities. However, less campaigns reach Level 20, meaning the loss of a capstone ability is rarely felt as a consequence of multiclassing.
* Certain classes are somewhat front-loaded and incentivize dips (Alchemist for Mutagen / Cognatogen, Paladin for Divine Grace, Mesmerist for Hypnotic Stare, etc) while others have few multiclass-friendly abilities early on (Witch, Inquisitor, and Druid to name a few)
* Multiclassing causes some unique scaling issues with BAB and Save progression. These issues can be fixed with PF Unchained's Fractional BAB and Saves chart, but the system used may vary by group.


PF2 Multiclassing:

Pros:
* Classes can now select a Multiclass Dedication feat without interrupting their own class progression, instead spending Class Feats. This means spellcasters are more viable when multiclassing now.
* Multiclassing can now provide features which were previously high-level abilities, such as 8th-level spells from the Wizard Dedication. This may require some investment to pull off, but it is now possible.
* Pesky details such as BAB and Save progression are completely averted due to other features of PF2, making multiclassing easier than before.
Cons:
* Since Archetypes and Multiclasses are now both Dedication feats it will be harder to combine the two on one character. That may reduce potential stacking issues, but it still limits customization.
* While it is actually pretty simple to get a 16 in more than one stat with this system (you can actually start with up to three 16s on some ancestries) it is still strange that members of the class have no ability score restrictions while those who want to branch out into another class require a higher score.
* This is more directed at the presented feats, but Basic Arcana is essentially a tax for Advanced Arcana, requiring an investment of three class feats, a good ability score, and a skill increase to access another class' feat (with an additional level limitation). This seems like a very high cost to pay for access to a single feat, though I can't really evaluate it properly without seeing all the possible choices.


Bardarok wrote:
This design prevents you from ever looking at a list of 300+ new (to you) feats and having no idea where to begin like a new player in PF1 does.

That should definitely help.


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Multi-classing is a tricky thing, either it’s so powerful that any optimized character takes it, or it’s so weak it’s rarely taken. I’m more of a fan of the latter.

“Even though you can cast spells, the spell level of your cantrips and arcane powers is half your level rounded up.”

That sentence should be in the Wizard Dedication feat, for clarity, because that was my first question. Also, are “arcane powers” the equivalent of “spell points” for Wizards or do you mean higher level spells? That might need rewording, because you need to include spells that are not cantrips in that sentence. Or if I don't understand, in Wizard Dedication you need to explain that the cantrips don't scale. I'm not sure of your intent.

It makes sense to do multi-classing through feats, you’re either good at one thing or another. This something I’ll want to playtest. My first impression is that it's too powerful.

Other feats better be good or else the majority of PC will be multi-classed.


Cat-thulhu wrote:

The more i read the more confused i am by the last line of the basic wizard spellcasting feat;

Even though you can cast spells, the spell level of your cantrips and arcane powers is half your level rounded up.

Is this not always the case? Why is this line here, it seems curiously redundant unless the normal rules for cantrips and powers are different? If they are different then it reads very odd indeed, if i take the dedication i use different rules to when i take another feat and specialise more.

I read the intent as you get full CL and access to spells a nd casting just like a wizard but less spells per day, by 2 i think, and at a later level, about 3 levels-so seconds at 6th level not 3rd and 3rd at 8th level rather than 5th.

Cantrips are automatically heightened to your highest spell slot. But those characters don't have spell slots. Mark Seifter said that to prevent this getting messy, those characters heighten it to half their level rounded up. Lvl 10 char casts cantrip as if it was 5th level heighten.


Wow that's interesting. This is definitely one I'm going to have to actually try to decide how I feel about it.

Dark Archive

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So, I remember a lot of people I knew complaining that Pathfinder 1e had a problem of feat bloat, and the fact that new players would have choice paralysis when making characters due to the sheer amount of different things they needed to add to their characters (usually at later levels).

With archetypes, multiclassing, half-breeds, and prestige classes (not including general, metamagic, class, race, etc. feats) becoming feats, is this going to give Pathfinder 2e feat bloat worse than Pathfinder 1e at an earlier date?

Even if a majority of feats are worth taking, that's a lot of feats still.

(Also, not too impressed that everything related to character choice as listed above that let people make unique characters - especially archetypes - are all being boiled down to feats.)


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Kazk wrote:
It could very well turn out too strong, but I have also heard a lot of complaints that many class features are backloaded, level-wise. So not only are characters not able to access feats past level 10, but to continue cross classing at high levels means a high opportunity cost of class feats balanced for double the level of what one could grab from their cross-class.

I've heard complaints that PF1 multiclassing is broken to the point that every character that does it is completely trash.

I've heard complaints that PF1 multiclassing is broken to the pioint that every character that does it is completely busted.

I have no reason to not believe that PF2 won't allow both sides to still complain going forward. But at the same time I feel it punishes players that want to 1-20 in 1 class. Or maybe just rewards people that don't.

Moro wrote:
Only if the class feats you give up for multiclassing are such inferior options to the class features you pick up with multiclass dedication and feats. And we don't know the details yet, so that is a big if at this time. Granted, such a balancing act for every class and class feature would be a momentous feat of balanced game design if they are all even within spitting distance of one another, but there is hope. And a playtest, this is why we are testing, after all.

I don't see how staying hyper specialized is rewarded in this system. But that might jsut the community think that makes it to where basically every time I go online for helps or tips I'm instantly met with "Okay here's how you do everything" or "Here's how you break it". Why shouldn't I expect this to continue?

And really that's the biggest thing I keep walking away from these debates with. All the changes, all the tweaks, all the new and shiny stuff; and everything seems to think everything is suddenly fine now? That everything will be okay? That we're going to be ushered into a golden age that is PF2?

With the same community that has number crunched PF1 into the ground to the point I question if they play PF or just spreadsheets with models?

Forgive me if I come into these topics and worry about the math, numbers and if X is better than Y. But all I think I'm doing is just getting prepared for the B side of this tape.

I would like things to be balanced but even then I expect the forums to just figure out how to break the game once again to the point we have Paladin/Clerics all the time for every game if it's shown to be better. Or Wizard/Fighter. Or whatever else the designers don't think about and others find. And with seemingly no downside to multiclassing, that just gets so much easier for them.

I can't wait to see the Tier list and go to PFS to see 3 of them.

Dark Archive

Mark Seifter wrote:
Deadmanwalking wrote:


Bardarok wrote:
It seems the cantrips you get with the wizard dedication feat scale with you though so they seem like solid choices. Now I'm a little worried that everyone will want to take a multiclass archetype since these dedication feats seem so powerful.
They only seem to scale at half the normal rate, which is somewhat limited, option-wise.
Nope, we're looking at full scaling (spell level = half your level rounded up), so you'll have just as good a cantrip as a full caster does. This fact is likely something that some in the thread are forgetting when thinking about getting "just a cantrip, item use, and sig skill" from caster dedication (they are probably thinking of PF1 cantrips).

To me the blog seems to indicate that with Wizard Dedication you get Cantrips, item use, and signature skill. But those cantrips do not scale at all. This being because the scaling is explicitly mentioned under Basic Spellcasting but not under the dedication feat. Now, this may be to clarify that even though you have spellcasting at levels much lower than 1/2 your level the cantrips still scale at this rate, but then it should also be mentioned in the dedication.


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Jhar226 wrote:

So, I remember a lot of people I knew complaining that Pathfinder 1e had a problem of feat bloat, and the fact that new players would have choice paralysis when making characters due to the sheer amount of different things they needed to add to their characters (usually at later levels).

With archetypes, multiclassing, half-breeds, and prestige classes (not including general, metamagic, class, race, etc. feats) becoming feats, is this going to give Pathfinder 2e feat bloat worse than Pathfinder 1e at an earlier date?

Even if a majority of feats are worth taking, that's a lot of feats still.

(Also, not too impressed that everything related to character choice as listed above that let people make unique characters - especially archetypes - are all being boiled down to feats.)

Screw that I want as much feat bloat as possible! GIVE ME ALL THE FEATS!


Jhar226 wrote:

So, I remember a lot of people I knew complaining that Pathfinder 1e had a problem of feat bloat, and the fact that new players would have choice paralysis when making characters due to the sheer amount of different things they needed to add to their characters (usually at later levels).

With archetypes, multiclassing, half-breeds, and prestige classes (not including general, metamagic, class, race, etc. feats) becoming feats, is this going to give Pathfinder 2e feat bloat worse than Pathfinder 1e at an earlier date?

Even if a majority of feats are worth taking, that's a lot of feats still.

(Also, not too impressed that everything related to character choice as listed above that let people make unique characters - especially archetypes - are all being boiled down to feats.)

Interestingly enough, the dedications seem to lock this out. The character I expect to have something like the most access to any feats is, for example, a half-elf fighter that's multiclassed into wizard. However, even then, the pools are still separated, and you rarely ever get more than one at a time.

When I pick a general feat, I pick a general feat.
When I pick an ancestry feat, I pick from three different pools. (This is probably the biggest one.)
When I pick a class feat, I pick from the fighter and wizard lists, but I still know which one's most likely to be the most efficient - the highest level one.

Odds are it'll probably be easier, and I'm not just saying this because I want to spend a little less time examining every option for making a character across the multiple-hundred-item list.

I think spells are still potentially going to be the biggest problem in that regard, even though some have been cleaned up into one stream.


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Jhar226 wrote:

So, I remember a lot of people I knew complaining that Pathfinder 1e had a problem of feat bloat, and the fact that new players would have choice paralysis when making characters due to the sheer amount of different things they needed to add to their characters (usually at later levels).

With archetypes, multiclassing, half-breeds, and prestige classes (not including general, metamagic, class, race, etc. feats) becoming feats, is this going to give Pathfinder 2e feat bloat worse than Pathfinder 1e at an earlier date?

Even if a majority of feats are worth taking, that's a lot of feats still.

(Also, not too impressed that everything related to character choice as listed above that let people make unique characters - especially archetypes - are all being boiled down to feats.)

But all those things like archetypes, multiclassing, and prestige classes were still extra options to consider before and certainly didn't make the game less complicated. Especially since each of those had its own rules that sort of intersected with each other and sort of didn't. Making it all run on feats at least means less different mechanics to learn.

I also don't foresee multiclassing, archetypes, or prestige classes being a huge barrier for newbies because you can absolutely just run a vanilla single class character. I imagine newer folks won't touch that stuff unless it specifically fits a concept they want to do. And it seems easy to navigate once you have that concept. Want your person to be a pirate? Take some pirate feats. Want your fighter to learn some magic? Take some wizard feats.


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Well my initial reaction here is "isn't this just 4E multiclassing"
Sure it's tweaked for Pathfinder since they don't use the silly "powers for everyone" thing but brass tacks this is 4E multiclassing.

Which I was not a fan off.

So yeah this one goes in the negative collum along with Resonence for me


MerlinCross wrote:
Kazk wrote:
It could very well turn out too strong, but I have also heard a lot of complaints that many class features are backloaded, level-wise. So not only are characters not able to access feats past level 10, but to continue cross classing at high levels means a high opportunity cost of class feats balanced for double the level of what one could grab from their cross-class.

I've heard complaints that PF1 multiclassing is broken to the point that every character that does it is completely trash.

I've heard complaints that PF1 multiclassing is broken to the pioint that every character that does it is completely busted.

I have no reason to not believe that PF2 won't allow both sides to still complain going forward. But at the same time I feel it punishes players that want to 1-20 in 1 class. Or maybe just rewards people that don't.

Moro wrote:
Only if the class feats you give up for multiclassing are such inferior options to the class features you pick up with multiclass dedication and feats. And we don't know the details yet, so that is a big if at this time. Granted, such a balancing act for every class and class feature would be a momentous feat of balanced game design if they are all even within spitting distance of one another, but there is hope. And a playtest, this is why we are testing, after all.

I don't see how staying hyper specialized is rewarded in this system. But that might jsut the community think that makes it to where basically every time I go online for helps or tips I'm instantly met with "Okay here's how you do everything" or "Here's how you break it". Why shouldn't I expect this to continue?

And really that's the biggest thing I keep walking away from these debates with. All the changes, all the tweaks, all the new and shiny stuff; and everything seems to think everything is suddenly fine now? That everything will be okay? That we're going to be ushered into a golden age that is PF2?

With the same community that has number...

And that is why we PLAYTEST. To find these types of things and report them. What the devs do with the information is ultimately up to them. This concept of people breaking the game is no different from people learning how to cheat at video games, or how to cheat the legal system, or be on welfare when they are perfectly fine to work. Nothing can be 100% perfect, all the devs at paizo have tried to do is to make that game breaking combo less game breaking,

I feel like when people read a blog they tend to focus on 1 or 2 things and forget all the other parts of the game. Yes a 1 Level dip into wizard nets you cantrips that scale, but you can either continue to take dedication feats or fighter feats, nothing is forcing to continue your wizard training. Since you only have access to multiclassing feats, you can’t choose any of the feats that are meant for wizard (save for the dedication feat that lets you take a wizard feat. This means a full wizard is going to have lots more options to make her single class unique, and since we don’t know what those feats are we really can’t speculate on the brokenness of multiclassing at this point. Hell a wizard might be able to take a feat such as signature spell where she can cast that spell using one less action. Being able to reduce a spell down to one action, and being able to do it because she is only a wizard (not a fighter with wizard multiclassing) is a pretty good feat in my opinion. But we don’t even know if that feat is an option, cause we just don’t have enough info yet, and we need to wait for the playtest to come out before we make any real decisions.

I for one am thrilled about all that I have read, I believe this is going to be a great game, knowing full well it isn’t going to be perfect, but that it will be better then anything I have played so far


Cyouni wrote:
Jhar226 wrote:

So, I remember a lot of people I knew complaining that Pathfinder 1e had a problem of feat bloat, and the fact that new players would have choice paralysis when making characters due to the sheer amount of different things they needed to add to their characters (usually at later levels).

With archetypes, multiclassing, half-breeds, and prestige classes (not including general, metamagic, class, race, etc. feats) becoming feats, is this going to give Pathfinder 2e feat bloat worse than Pathfinder 1e at an earlier date?

Even if a majority of feats are worth taking, that's a lot of feats still.

(Also, not too impressed that everything related to character choice as listed above that let people make unique characters - especially archetypes - are all being boiled down to feats.)

Interestingly enough, the dedications seem to lock this out. The character I expect to have something like the most access to any feats is, for example, a half-elf fighter that's multiclassed into wizard. However, even then, the pools are still separated, and you rarely ever get more than one at a time.

When I pick a general feat, I pick a general feat.
When I pick an ancestry feat, I pick from three different pools. (This is probably the biggest one.)
When I pick a class feat, I pick from the fighter and wizard lists, but I still know which one's most likely to be the most efficient - the highest level one.

Odds are it'll probably be easier, and I'm not just saying this because I want to spend a little less time examining every option for making a character across the multiple-hundred-item list.

I think spells are still potentially going to be the biggest problem in that regard, even though some have been cleaned up into one stream.

Technically as I understand it your example is a little off. You're still right but little off? Because it's not "General Feat into General Feat". As I understand it "General Feat into..., other Feats"?

I read somewhere in another topic that General Feat can be turned into other feats. Can we get some confirmation there? Not a fan of using 1 feat to buy into another but maybe that might make some people stand the Dedication.


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I haven't read all the replies yet, so indubitably someone probably already stated this...but...

This seems an AWFULLY LOT like what they did with 4e multiclassing in the PHB1 for 4e.

It may be a little more powerful, but it sounds like almost the exact same idea.

Deja Vu?

Liberty's Edge

Mark Seifter wrote:
Sean R wrote:

I like the flexibility. Not a fan of the feat-tax. Again, feat-tax to become multiclass. There seems to be a lot of feat tax for wanting to play concepts that are hybrids of others, something you could do in 1e easily without costing you other class or concept abilities.

This has been my biggest concern when everything was "Feat"ed up, was that feat taxes would tacked on for any character that wants to push outside the mold a bit.

Granted these are great abilities, and come in addition to your core class, but I've seen this used in other popular games to their detriment. At least, in this case, it allows for a broader selection that may or may not work.

I think the word "feat tax" is something we've begun to use in such different and varied ways that it's in danger of losing its meaning. I know I'm guilty of using it broader than most (I consider a feat that increases your numbers in your main shtick to be a tax, compared to just giving you better numbers for free, though weirdly I discovered in the Starfinder early playtests that people like those kind of taxes as long as there are very few, rather than having none).

If you spend feats to get great abilities, is it a tax? In many cases, you're getting something beyond what you would receive for spending your feats in other ways (Fighter Dedication would take 5 feats to replicate for a wizard, and an average of around 3 feats for most other characters).

I do think I get what you're saying, which is wondering whether the currency of feats will work for this purpose. I'd contend that the currency of levels is usually more pricey a cost to pay to your overall character progression.

What makes this viable to me, in terms of whether the 'tax' is acceptable is that you don't lose anything from the core class. You're dipping into other classes to a degree, but it also locks those feats for at least 6 levels if you want to triple class. If I want to play a Cleric-Wizard-Fighter for.. whatever reason (my first character was such in another RPG and it's the lithmus test I use for stuff like this). How much synergy could I get? How viable is it? Would it be better if I chose another option instead (such as a paladin of a Magic-domain god)? How can I do this (oddly enough this character was a half-elf).

In other games and editions I could do it, but it may not be ideal. The character would end up weaker at higher levels. The concept is cool, but that's all the character ends up being as many feats are taken up. So the tax would be: would that be unique enough to work, and would the character be playable, as opposed to, say, taking another feat?

That would determine the value of the tax.

Edit: I'd like to add, that I DO sort of like this as a midway point between old and new. Which is odd, because I was vocal about the Half-X posts, and how much I disliked seeing them downgraded to a subrace.


I... don't know how to feel about this.

This seems balanced like in PF1 level-wise, and this will prevent players from dipping in two classes, so that's cool. Players taking only one level in two classes can really make an overpowered character.

But on the other hand, I don't see how the "you loose spellcasting power" problem is solved (the one problem that always prevents me from multiclassing as a spellcaster). I suppose you don't have this problem anymore if your main class is a spellcaster one and your dedication is on a martial/secondary spellcasting class, but you still have this problem if your main class is martial. Which in a sense is logic. But this will make choosing your level 1 class even more important and lock you out of shifting your character's main class. Hmm. Or maybe you can have the same spellcasting capabilites than a wizard (level and slot-wise), but you'd need a feat that was not featured here (a sort of "Advanced Wizard Spellcasting").
Also, as someone pointed out, your cantrips from Wizard Dedication don't seem to scale with your level RAW, but Mark said otherwise in a comment. You may need to rephrase this, except if the rule "cantrips always scale with your level" is explained in the spellcasting rules. Please, devs, be sure to put every info we need in the book, whatever the rule, so we don't have to argue over several weeks with GMs/players to know what you intended the rule to be.

I was also afraid at first that you would only get access to certain features while reading, but then I saw Basic Arcana / Advanced Arcana. In a sense, that reassured me, since that would allow anyone to take any feat (fighter with a familiar ? Yay !). But then I saw the "Prerequisites Basic Arcana" in Advanced Arcana, and that gave me horrible flashback about the Eidolon's spellcasting which was never a good option since you needed the first evolution to get the second, and the second to get the third, and when you unlocked those possibilities it was too costly.

So yeah, I'm generally not sure about this approach. But maybe I'm just overthinking it and these problems are not as problematic as I think. They seem a bit silly to me, but I'm still a bit concerned. I will need to read the full rules to have a real opinion on the matter.


GreyWolfLord wrote:

I haven't read all the replies yet, so indubitably someone probably already stated this...but...

This seems an AWFULLY LOT like what they did with 4e multiclassing in the PHB1 for 4e.

It may be a little more powerful, but it sounds like almost the exact same idea.

Deja Vu?

what is this

"democracy? that's just what they did in Athens before they got SPARTAN STOMPED"

4E wasn't bad because multiclassing didn't work (there were other motivating factors), and PF2 multiclassing isn't quite like 4E's due to feat budgets

Dark Archive

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Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

So judging by first three pages, this is biggest change that lot of people actually seem happy about(and most of complaints about this to be honest seem more afraid of a change <_< 1e multiclassing wasn't really THAT good) ._. Kind of surprised about that

Anyhoo, way I see this, this eliminates need for "Every class has archetype that let's them be rogue" thing 1e had.


Replying to Deadmanwalking's comment #318 back on page 7.

Deadmanwalking wrote:
Mathmuse wrote:
Let me test these archetypes by seeing whether I can recreate character concepts that needed multiclassing.

In terms of examples, I think you're trying to convert too directly. What you need to do is not convert a character precisely, but instead create a character who does the same thing.

In Amaya's case, there don't appear to be NPC Classes at all, so you'd probably just convert her to a Fighter when making her a 'PC equivalent' character rather than adding levels, which would work fine.

And in the final case, she [Boffin] never took levels in Alchemist and wouldn't need Alchemist Dedication, therefore, just the Alchemical Crafter Feat which is a Skill Feat and could be readily accommodated.

I have had to multiclass in converting unstated NPCs to statted NPCs in order to match the background story of the character.

Amaya of Westcrown has an entry in PathfinderWiki: "Amaya Kaijitsu is a beautiful Tian woman who spend her days working as a skilled glass blower, but secretly supports the Children of Westcrown. She downplays her beauty by wearing the plain clothes appropriate to her profession. ..." I viewed this pre-existing background as sacrosanct. She had to be a skilled glassblower. She had to grow up in an orphanage. She had to join the reform movement Children of Westcrown, which radicalized into a low-impact revolutionary movement. Then I needed to send her in a new direction to move to Sandpoint and join the adventuring party in The Brinewall Legacy. Determining how those events shaped her character would make her solid enough in my mind to roleplay her. Part of that shape was how she developed herself.

In The Brinewall Legacy, Amaya approached the party and asked them for help as an equal. She joined them and pulled her weight. She did not overshadow them like her 5th-level sister Ameiko could. By 3rd level, she had bonded with them so that when the Amatatsu Seal was discovered, it was important to the party because it was important to Amaya. She needed to be a solid character to form that solid bond.

PF1 gave tools for her development: attributes, traits, feats, character classes, archetypes, and multiclassing. Her humble beginning as a shy orphan despite her high Dexterity and Charisma expressed itself as her Expert class, which was also given by the original source material. Her radicalization in the Children of Westcrown expressed itself as her Fighter class, learning to be a revolutionary.

PF2 will give different tools: attributes, backgrounds, feats, character classes, and dedications. Her background would by some kind of journeyman crafter, similar to the Blacksmith background. If no commoner classes exists, she would have to start with an adventuring class, which is hard to fit with her humble origins. I guess I would view her background as her humble stage and her adventuring class as her radicalization. She would join the party with two levels of fighter. Or maybe a Dexterity-based martial class, such as Monk or Ranger, because I had used a Dexterity fighter archetype in PF1. At third level, she would retrain out the feat at 2nd level for Oracle Dedication (Sorcerer with divine spells if Oracle is not available) to represent the unexpected (even to me, the GM) changes from the Amatatsu Seal.

Each background, class, and feat has a meaning. I need to piece together the meanings properly so that her story supports the campaign's story. Most players say that a GMPC is an abomination to be avoided in all cases. My players like my GMPCs, such as Amaya Kaijitsu and Val Baine, because I make sure that those GMPCs raise up the PCs the same way the campaign raises them up. I don't need a PF2 character identical to the PF1 character, but I would need to paint the same art of the character.

PF2 seems to have the pieces necessary, though the price is higher than in PF1. In PF2 multiclassing costs feats. In PF1 it is free but turns its back on the previous classes, which might sabotage progress.


Alric Rahl wrote:

And that is why we PLAYTEST. To find these types of things and report them. What the devs do with the information is ultimately up to them. This concept of people breaking the game is no different from people learning how to cheat at video games, or how to cheat the legal system, or be on welfare when they are perfectly fine to work. Nothing can be 100% perfect, all the devs at paizo have tried to do is to make that game breaking combo less game breaking,

I feel like when people read a blog they tend to focus on 1 or 2 things and forget all the other parts of the game. Yes a 1 Level dip into wizard nets you cantrips that scale, but you can either continue to take dedication feats or fighter feats, nothing is forcing to continue your wizard training. Since you only have access to multiclassing feats, you can’t choose any of the feats that are meant for wizard (save for the dedication feat that lets you take a wizard feat. This means a full wizard is going to have lots more options to make her single class unique, and since we don’t know what those feats are we really can’t speculate on the brokenness of multiclassing at this point. Hell a wizard might be able to take a feat such as signature spell where she can cast that spell using one less action. Being able to reduce a spell down to one action, and being able to do it because she is only a wizard (not a fighter with wizard multiclassing) is a pretty good feat in my opinion. But we don’t even know if that feat is an option, cause we just don’t have enough info yet, and we need to wait for the playtest to come out before we make any real decisions.

I for one am thrilled about all that I have read, I believe this is going to be a great game, knowing full well it isn’t going to be perfect, but that it will be better then anything I have played so far

I feel we can make real decisions. Because as I said, the game might be changing for better or for worse, the game is changing.

Why should I believe the community will?

OH nothing forces you to continue your wizard training(All the threads about How to build X/Wizard, the combo being blue, etc). Why yes that feat you gave as an example could be good(No one talking about it, it being red in guides, etc).

Now you can replace any of those when the game comes out. Maybe it's Ranger/Sorcerer that has some odd thing the breaks the game. Maybe Solo Cleric can just turn into an Outsider and just lay down holy fire at high levels. I'll agree with you, we don't know.

But we will. And that will become the bloody norm, in guides and will be the first thing people see when they look up their class only to find out it's busted or trash.

Did you know that PF1 Rogue is Trash? Like Straight up trash? That no one should play it, it's a bad class to the point even Unchained barely helped?

Now we can argue about how true that is(Sadly it very much kinda is), but to a new player; they join a game, they pick a class(es) they have fun and then they go online...., only to see something they think is fun is completely belittled and dumped on in forums and posts. How dose that make the player feel to just see thread upon thread of "Oh.... I messed up". I don't even know if Rogue IS bad because I've never played the class! It just IS bad.

Why would this change in PF2? Does multiclassing break the game? Heck if I know, it's not out yet. But you can be sure someone's going to try to break it, share the breakage, forums talk about the breakage, people say how trash something else is because it can't get to the breakage level, etc etc.

Which is fine. It is the playtest. It exists to be broken, for things to be reported back and hopefully fixed.

But even with a playtest, I'm going to google any class after a year of release. And I'm going to see threads of "This is trash" or "this is busted". And it just wears on me to see something I liked get turned into a math problem for a game that should be for the story.

Mutliclassing in PF2 will open up new options. Cool. I question how long people will play them till the flavor of the month rolls in.


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Yeah forums are fairly unreliable for most people's games. If you don't play like some of the people on the forums play you may never understand what they are complaining about, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. (in fact leaning towards good thing imo.)

Dark Archive

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Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Mathmuse wrote:

Replying to Deadmanwalking's comment #318 back on page 7.

Deadmanwalking wrote:
Mathmuse wrote:
Let me test these archetypes by seeing whether I can recreate character concepts that needed multiclassing.

In terms of examples, I think you're trying to convert too directly. What you need to do is not convert a character precisely, but instead create a character who does the same thing.

In Amaya's case, there don't appear to be NPC Classes at all, so you'd probably just convert her to a Fighter when making her a 'PC equivalent' character rather than adding levels, which would work fine.

And in the final case, she [Boffin] never took levels in Alchemist and wouldn't need Alchemist Dedication, therefore, just the Alchemical Crafter Feat which is a Skill Feat and could be readily accommodated.

I have had to multiclass in converting unstated NPCs to statted NPCs in order to match the background story of the character.

Amaya of Westcrown has an entry in PathfinderWiki: "Amaya Kaijitsu is a beautiful Tian woman who spend her days working as a skilled glass blower, but secretly supports the Children of Westcrown. She downplays her beauty by wearing the plain clothes appropriate to her profession. ..." I viewed this pre-existing background as sacrosanct. She had to be a skilled glassblower. She had to grow up in an orphanage. She had to join the reform movement Children of Westcrown, which radicalized into a low-impact revolutionary movement. Then I needed to send her in a new direction to move to Sandpoint and join the adventuring party in The Brinewall Legacy. Determining how those events shaped her character would make her solid enough in my mind to roleplay her. Part of that shape was how she developed herself.

In The Brinewall Legacy, Amaya approached the party and asked them for help as an equal. She...

The in 100# Pathfinder AP module they statted her as Detective Bard level 6 :D


Mark Seifter wrote:
thflame wrote:


Doesn't it now take an action to change your grip on your weapon?
To add a hand, yes, but not to drop the weapon out of one or both hands. That's why the bastard sword is great here. If you could switch hands around willy-nilly, being a switch-handed weapon doesn't matter because you always just freely take a hand off, do the hand thing, freely put the hand back.

...This seems to me like a really strange reason to charge an action for adding a hand on a weapon. Shouldn’t the advantage of a switch-handed weapon be that you can take a hand off and do the hand thing *at all*? How do you take the hand off a two-handed weapon to do the hand thing, short of stowing the weapon? If the weapon takes two hands to wield, then using one of your hands to do something other than wield the weapon should only be possible if you have more than two hands.


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Bardarok wrote:
MerlinCross wrote:
Tallow wrote:
King of Vrock wrote:
Disk Elemental wrote:

I'm very disappointed that this is the direction 2e has chosen to go.

Multi-classing was one of the most interesting and skill-expressive mechanics in 1e, allowing players to create a character that's both unique and wholly their own. Reducing such mechanics to a handful of pre-defined packages is a massive loss for everyone who enjoyed the customization of 1e. If anything is reverted in playtesting, I hope this is it.

Unfortunately, multiclassing in PF1 often lead to characters that could not stack up to single class characters in terms of relative power compared to the APL, just like Prestige classes weakened a character. Hopefully, the archetype system in PF2 allows for abilities that are in line with single class options in terms of usefulness at their given levels. At least I think that's what the designers are looking for.

And does anyone else now have "Leeloo Dallas Multi Class" stuck in their heads now?

--Vrock & Load

More importantly, however, was the multiclass abominations that broke the game are now no longer possible.
Amazing that a system that leads to 'trash' characters also lets you break the game.
I think that they only "broke" the game for a few levels. You could get a power boost by taking some strong dips but over the course of a lot of levels you would end up behind. I think the new system works better mechanically though maybe not narratively .

One of my players dipped one level in Paladin and Oracle, then went on being a Warpriest, maxing Charisma, and took feats to be able to use Desna's starblade at maximum capabilities. He started at level 6. He is level 12 now. He was and his still the best tank, the best damage dealer, and can't be touched by any save-allowing effect I throw at him. The only time he was in danger was when he was attacked by an evil paladin who smited him while he was climbing a ladder...

On the other hand, one of my player once multiclassed Oracle/Synthesist, and it became a trash character two levels later.

So I have to disagree with your statement that those builds only break the game "for a few levels". Multiclassing in PF1 was very difficult, and it was very easy to completely fail your character's creation. But when you know what you are doing and spend time researching what the best options are, you can be a monster from level 5~6 to level 20. I expect PF2-multiclassing to remove this problem, or at least make it more difficult to have a character who's so powerful compared to the rest of the team that they single-handle every battle.


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The fact that some combinations worked to well and others not well enough shows that some tuning is in order. I don't think I have ever truly seen multi-classing work flawlessly.

Sovereign Court

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Pathfinder Starfinder Society Subscriber
Charlaquin wrote:
Mark Seifter wrote:
thflame wrote:


Doesn't it now take an action to change your grip on your weapon?
To add a hand, yes, but not to drop the weapon out of one or both hands. That's why the bastard sword is great here. If you could switch hands around willy-nilly, being a switch-handed weapon doesn't matter because you always just freely take a hand off, do the hand thing, freely put the hand back.
...This seems to me like a really strange reason to charge an action for adding a hand on a weapon. Shouldn’t the advantage of a switch-handed weapon be that you can take a hand off and do the hand thing *at all*? How do you take the hand off a two-handed weapon to do the hand thing, short of stowing the weapon? If the weapon takes two hands to wield, then using one of your hands to do something other than wield the weapon should only be possible if you have more than two hands.

You can hold a Weapon in one hand. No need to stow it while you cast a spell. It takes two hands to swing it, though. If you can freely regrip, there is no reason not to use the biggest weapon available.

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