3-Body Problem's page

But clearly you already knew it wouldn't work to your satisfaction, because you told us that PF2E should - your word, 'should' - allow this. Implying you know it doesn't. And you asked for the creation of a feat that doesn't exist in order to make the character work. Again, implying you know that without a new feat, it won't work.

Yes, and... I was opening up a wider discussion about why cantrips have to be weak by showing how an outrageously overpowered feat still has trouble keeping up with a pretty basic fighter build. People read that as me wanting to figure out how PF2 works rather than simply taking it at face value as a conversation about why PF2 does or doesn't support certain options.

In addition to which, it would've been simple to ask "is there a RAW feat I can take as a Fighter, at level 1, which allows me to blast a fire cantrip that hits about as accurately as my fighter hits with a weapon and does comparable damage to d12+4 twice per round."

That's not the conversation I was aiming to have though.

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Now. There are many firebreathing samurai concepts that the game can answer yes to. Like:

1. Can PF2E build this level 1 fighter without the limit of "fire attack must be comparable to fighter weapon strike"? Yes. Several ways. We gave them to you. How about, instead:
2. "Can PF2E build this with the 'lvl 1' and 'comparable attacks' requirements in place but with the fighter restriction removed?" Why yes. Druid, Magus, and Kineticist might all work for this. How about, instead:
3. "Can PF2E build this with both the fighter and comparable restrictions in place, but it can be at a higher level?" Answer: probably. I haven't done the analysis but...

I don't care about the hypothetical character that I borrowed from another user's post as an example. I am not interested in the specifics aside from as a seed to hang ideas on. The real question at the heart of things is, "Why does PF2 fight so hard to avoid giving characters single specific unique strengths that define them?" I'm not talking about Niche protection or the Fighter's +2 to hit. I'm talking about a mechanically satisfying answer to the question, "What is your character's unique ability?"

3-Body Problem wrote:

Sandal Fury wrote:

When I was making my fighter, I almost took the Dragon Spit feat. I just thought it would be pretty cool and fun to be a fire-breathing samurai. Thank goodness I picked something else, or I'd be...

I then tried to find out what it would take to make such a character work to my satisfaction and people started getting upset.

You weren't trying to get the 'character' to work. You want a specific combination of game mechanics to work. That is different.

The character works fine. Several suggestions have been put forward that do work. Many that work quite well.

They don't work to my satisfaction. If they work to yours then you are welcome to enjoy such builds.

3-Body Problem wrote:

Complexity isn't a net negative. It allows for granularity and fine-tuning which is highly desirable in a TTRPG. The constant simplification of skills and character-build options makes 5e and PF2 objectively less interesting games than PF1 and D&D3.5 even as their better balance makes them more playable.

You can have the complexity without the worst excesses if that is your goal.

Counter example 1: FATAL. (Please do not look this up if you are not already aware of it.)

If I could convince anybody to read the rules I would run it as a one-shot just to see if it plays as badly as it reads.

Counter example 2: AD&D.

Both examples have tons of granularity which provides absolutely no improvement to the game. In AD&D's case, for instance, Haste aging the target by 1 year and having a material component of licorice root does not make it more "interesting". The weapon tables of AD&D do not allow for more "desirable fine-tuning".

AD&D has less granularity than most modern games because, by default, it doesn't even use skills or weapon proficiency. It's quirky and I like how stats aren't just +1 to a bunch of things bit it's also dated and all but requires splatbooks and houserules to run.

And before you attempt to say something to the effect of No True Granularity, I don't think you can prove that skill simplification and weapon simplification are meaningfully different.

You picked bad examples. AD&D isn't particularly detailed or granular for a modern TTRPG that isn't a rules light it's just from a different age and isn't very tightly writen with lots of fluff and ambiguity.

Fatal would be bad no matter what rules it used because it seems to be writen from a deeply racist and sexist place. The issue with fatal starts with the fluff and doesn't stop until you close the rulebook.

How about we pick an example that is neither out dated by 20+ years nor hateful.

The Riddle of Steel.

It is complex, deadly, and detailed to the point where many tables wouldn't enjoy it, but it uses it's details for a purpose. It wants to be a hand to hand combat simulator and, a few balance quibbles aside, does so very decently.

It's also spawned successors that each want to take what it did and put their own spin on them.

I think it is an example of how complexity can be very good for doing something well even if that thing is niche.

Is that how you see yourself? I am pretty sure that NOT all players would agree. Based only on your postings here ( and so conceivably incorrect) I'm virtually certain that I would NOT find you player friendly. I'm pretty sure that I'd find you dictatorial and insisting that I play the game YOUR way and be constantly complaining about the badwrongfun I was having.

As a GM I view my role as a facilitator of player fun and encourage my players to create as much, if not more, of the plot than I do. I tend to be loose and improvisational in my GMing style so I fund myself preferring 5e because I can easily eyeball things or ignore rules where it suits the flow of gameplay. I also allow creative interpretations of rules with the understanding that if the PCs can do it so can their foes.

It's as a player that I will ride my GM hard and generally be a bit of a spotlight hog. I don't mean to but it's hard to adjust to how other GMs rule things and how unprepared a lot of less experienced GMs can be when you don't follow their script exactly.

3-Body Problem wrote:

How does that help when you're now failing saves, down on HP, and could have simply taken Intimidating Prowess to negate the need for maximized Charisma?

It's not really as bad as all that. The general consensus around here has long been that Fighters don't need to bump Dexterity... they can simply get +3 against damaging Reflex effects with Bulwark and that's good enough.

So, you bump Str, Con, Wis & Charisma every chance you get and you have some fun with those build possibilities and you call it a day.

To max Charisma Constitution and Wisdom are still lower than they otherwise would be. If you just want to put your free boosts into it then your Charisma-based abilities end up even further behind.

I have very strong opinions about the NFL and everyone should listen to me about it. No, I don't play in the NFL or work for it. No, I don't even enjoy watching football. But you should listen to me anyway and make the sport more to my liking...

Hey, where's everybody going?

You picked a bad example because one could easily watch the CFL, XFL, or College Football instead and may well vocally wish that the NFL adopted specific rules from those leagues instead. I'm not that passionate about football but I do watch the CFL, XFL, and NFL and can spot things that each league could steal from the others to make a more interesting product.

Being a massive hockey fan I can say that half of what a sports fan does is complain about things the league does that displeases them. Everything from refereeing, to rule changes, to player discipline can and will be complained about. That's just the nature of being a sports fan.

If you were a sports fan you might understand that.

The other thing is that granularity leads to complexity (what if instead of 16 non-lore skills, we had 48 and you had three times as many skill ups?). But complexity by itself is a net-negative. Some complexity makes the game more interesting, but that's because the complexity in question creates depth, and depth is interesting.

Complexity isn't a net negative. It allows for granularity and fine-tuning which is highly desirable in a TTRPG. The constant simplification of skills and character-build options makes 5e and PF2 objectively less interesting games than PF1 and D&D3.5 even as their better balance makes them more playable.

You can have the complexity without the worst excesses if that is your goal.

I'm not sure if catering to "I want to be a warrior with exactly one magic trick that is offensive in nature and just as strong as my other options" is something that it's honestly worth the effort to enable. Like there's plenty of concepts for characters that I wanted to play that don't really well in the rules (e.g. monk with a polearm, crossbow inventor, gun sorcerer) but the point is not "can you play any concept you can think of" but "are there enough viable character concepts for you to have fun with the game."

I find this concept of "enough" to be a failure of class-based rules-heavy TTRPGs. I want to be able to build a character that fits my vision without being told that I can have flavor or effectiveness but not both.

The thing about a max STR and CHA fighter is that in addition to whatever cantrips you picked up from innate spells being rad, is that you can also put together a pretty spiffy intimidation build- go get yourself Dazzling Display!

How does that help when you're now failing saves, down on HP, and could have simply taken Intimidating Prowess to negate the need for maximized Charisma?

Sure, but only at the things you deem important. However, the character will be better at the things the creating player deems important to them.

You really gotta dial back the negative buzzwords dude. You're not doing yourself any favors by describing everything in terms of absolutes.

I say this as a very player-friendly GM. You can make a player's build feel amazing by catering to their strengths without making them jump through hoops to track down every plus to their "thing" but you can't make a player feel good when they constantly fail saves or get hit by things because they've neglected their defenses. If I saw a player at my table investing heavily into Charisma with their Fighter because they wanted to be good at something I'd find a way to allow them to be good at that thing without nerfing their saves.

TLDR; A fighter that has maximized their Charisma to make a gimmick work is going to be worse than one that hasn't and their GM should work with them to make their character effective at that gimmick without making them hurt their saves.

So I think you have to ditch this idea that you're merely asking for one small feat that will add this incidental conceptual bit to your character and not impact game balance. That's not at all what this feat would do. The notion of a 'single feat' that would make a level 1 fighter be able to spell-blast equivalent to their d12+STR 1a strike is a fundamental design shift. In that respect, I don't think you're going to get such a thing officially. Ever. My advice for you is to homebrew it because that's the only way it's going to happen. Like it or not, PF2E is simply NOT a 'point-build-to-anything' ttrpg system. The devs don't want it to be, and from my limited understanding of the feedback you get on these fora, most of the vocal/active player base doesn't want it to be that either.

I think any character should have that ability. I don't understand the whole idea of niche protection. If you want your niche protected that's an easy rule zero conversation to have and most groups will make reasonable accommodations to ensure you get to shine in your area of expertise.

"Merely" is a complete misnomer. You're asking for a massively powerful 1st level feat. One that lets a noncaster create a cantrip blast that starts out doing more damage than any current cantrip, that continues to grow in damage without any further investment, and also continues to increase in effective proficiency rank again without any further feat investment (i.e. because you want it to stay viable as the PC levels). Allowing such feats completely breaks the magic system. There would largely be no need for casters at all if a single 1st level martial feat gives a "one and done for my whole career" magical blast attack. In that case, everyone could just be martials and take a 3-body feat any time they wanted a spell.

There are plenty of feats available at low levels that scale exactly this well. Fleet, Toughness, Titan Wrestler, and Incredible Initiative are all General Feats that stay powerful through a character's entire career. Sudden Charge and Reactive Shield are evergreen feats for their respective builds.

So why are these things cool but a scaling spell isn't?

Caster archetypes spread out proficiency gains over 3 feats at level 2 (trained), 12 and 18 and never give legendary. But AIUI you want all three given (incrementally, as the PC levels) in this single 1st level fighter feat. And you want the increments to be 1 (expert), 5 (master), 13 (legendary) to keep up with Fighter to-hit bonuses.

It doesn't have to keep up with the to-hit numbers of this character's melee attack, it just has to be close enough and scale well enough to be worth the action cost.

And you want to avoid investing in a caster stat but still get the full attack bonus.

I never said that. I pointed out that, as things stand, such an investment for extant options does not provide enough of a benefit to be worthwhile.

Plus you want the damage of the cantrip to increase equivalent to a runed d12 weapon.

I compared it at level 1 to weapons without runes and the options, mostly, didn't stack up well even against a short bow which has double the range and doesn't require having two actions to be useful. Unless enemies are grouping up so it's easy to catch 3 or more in a 15ft cone and you've invested into Charisma even Fire Breath, which people are saying is too good, doesn't compare overly well to making a couple of Javelin attacks and to get that close to parity you need to subtract -1 from all of your save stats.

Even at level 17 with automatic scaling, +5 Charisma, and using Fighter class proficiency, I'm not convinced a DC 36 basic save against 18d6 fire damage in a 15 ft cone is going to be worth 2-actions. Not when Sudden Charge + Crashing Slam at +33/+28 to hit is on the table dealing 3d12+13+3d6 per hit.

There is nothing "merely" about that. You are talking about a single 1st level martial feat that does the things an entire archetype feat sequence does, does them better than the full archetype sequence, and also throws in a few other benefits no archetype sequence can do.

You have zero flexibility because you get one Rank 1 spell that automatically heightens and gives you a focus point to cast it with. That is worth significantly less than the utility that one would normally be seeking with a full caster archetype.

3-Body Problem wrote:

MEATSHED wrote:

I mean it was also just needing to rush out the class because the mechanic they were built around was removed.

Paizo needs to put a system in place to prevent this as it happened to both the Alchemist and the Witch and it's unacceptable for a company as balanced focused as Paizo to release stuff that is so far below par.

I mean they have, its making books with less classes. After the APG I think gunslinger is the only class that get discussions about its power level (which honestly is probably more about reload weapon balancing than anything). Some of them get complaints, e.g inventor doesn't get a lot of support outside of guns and gears, people want summoner to be better at casting summon spells, but not really in a this class is bad way.

They haven't messed up an entire class that badly since, but the Remaster is still rushed and the new Wizard schools are a nerf to the class so they haven't entirely solved the issue.

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3-Body Problem wrote:

I fundamentally disagree with how PF2 silos things by class. I vastly prefer games that include classes to allow full multiclassing so you can take precisely the ratio of classes that fit how you see your character. I prefer classless skill-based systems to even that however.

Serious question: why play Pathfinder 2e then? Why not one of those other systems?

For the most part, I don't play it. I wasn't aware I had to have enjoyed the game enough to continue playing to post here.

I mean it was also just needing to rush out the class because the mechanic they were built around was removed.

Paizo needs to put a system in place to prevent this as it happened to both the Alchemist and the Witch and it's unacceptable for a company as balanced focused as Paizo to release stuff that is so far below par.

Would Int be more well liked if it had a combat skill that used it?

Int is the stat that is good at identifying patterns and RK is only meant to establish knowledge not patterns that are happening in real time so maybe add skills that provide some 1 round benefit because you watched the target in action and see through their moves. The drawback is int based benefits take seeing it happen at least once to work, another limitation can be that it doesn't keep working beyond a single round of gaining the benefit as combat is fluid nad you have to keep analyzing to get the benefit again. Like other abilities maybe the benefit cant be done again tot he same target for a duration.

Example
Defensive Analysis or something. Choose a target to analyze. After one round of analyzing a target that uses a strike gain +1 status bonus to AC against strikes from that target at the beginning of your next turn until the following turn?
Maybe this can be combined with raise shield or the shield spell to make for a very defensive turn?

New skill feats could interact with these skills in interesting ways.

Yes. Every stat should have a combat skill linked to it. Most stats already have one and some might argue that RK is supposed to be what Intelligence gets, but RK is far weaker than the other extant options and not exclusive to Intelligence.

Something like what you propose is a good start to making Int feel better in combat. I would also give Con a skill that allows one to raise a save by +1 the way Raise Shield does for AC.

3-Body Problem wrote:

I'm not convinced any of this will be better than that same Fighter using those 2 actions to attack one foe twice or two foes once each.

And what's that got to do with Kelseus' post? They're not arguing that a spell will do better than a fighter hitting someone twice, they're pointing out how a spell slot does more average damage than a focus spell. Or are you trying to prove that a fighter is going to be better at fighting someone than breathing fire on them. If that's the case then ... I mean, yeah? They should be? If I want someone who's good at breathing fire I'll turn to a kineticist.

I was never arguing that it wasn't better. I was arguing that even a more powerful option still wouldn't be viable for Fighter to use in combat.

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Magus is quite literally the class for this. You can't really call something inflexible when you can make the concept perfectly fine but are just ignoring how to do that.

Like, systems have conceits and tradeoffs? I'm not sure what else to say. Even in supposed 'flexible' systems, I've always found conceits and constraints, because that's just how systems work.

Not every single possible concept ever conceived can be made down to the minutiae - some things are give and take.

I don't want multiple spells. I want a character with a single magical trick that is powerful enough to be useful in combat and which has a cost to acquire that is on par with other options that the character could take.

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Can the javelin or alchemist fire even hit twice? I’d think that would require 4 actions total, not 3.

Or are you able to stow the maul and then pull out 2 thrown weapons with the same action? I thought that took 2, but willing to be proven wrong.

If you're not just stumbling into fights randomly and instead choose to scout you can start with a Javelin drawn, throw it, and then draw and throw another. 2 Attacks in 3 actions, which at level 2 with the Duelist Archetype becomes two attacks in 2 actions.

The same applies to any other thrown weapon and the bow.

If you're caught off guard you don't get to make two attacks in a round at level 1 but I'm still not convinced that any of the options are better than throwing a single Javelin at +7 to hit for 1d6+4 damage.

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3-Body Problem wrote:

Too bad you're either dumping strength or gimping your saves to do that.

They're not dumping or gimping anything.

They're simply allocating their character resources in a manner that you wouldn't in your own characters.

I'm sick and tired of seeing these types of loaded badwrongfun buzzwords any time someone feels threatened by different playstyles.

Seems to me they've been on the rise as of late.

Objectively a Fighter with maxed strength and charisma is and will continue to be less effective than that same character with a more traditional array of stats.

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You said in your later reply that that you are fine with tradeoffs, but you're ignoring the biggest tradeoff in the game: class. Picking a class makes you better at some things for the opportunity cost at being worse at others.

I fundamentally disagree with how PF2 silos things by class. I vastly prefer games that include classes to allow full multiclassing so you can take precisely the ratio of classes that fit how you see your character. I prefer classless skill-based systems to even that however.

If you want a character more balanced between both, Magus, shapeshifting Druid, maybe summoner, maybe kineticist* are better choices.

I don't want that though. I want a Fighter with a single unique trick that is viable throughout his adventuring career. Spending a feat to get Ignition or Kobold Breath and then investing in them by pumping Charisma is always strictly worse than taking a generically good general feat. I'm merely asking for options to provide equal utility.

Now, you are absolutely right in pointing out that at low levels (1-4ish), spell dpr doesn't compare to weapon dpr. If you want to argue that cantrips should start with a higher floor across the board (i.e. for everyone, regardless of class or how they got the cantrip), I'm all ears. I see little problem with making them 3d4 Heightened +1 (1d4) instead of 2d4 etc... I think a lot of people on these boards would agree with you there. But if you are asking for a single 1st level Fighter feat that allows a fighter to do about the same as d12+4 damage per 1 action magical spell-like damage (and then keeps up with their weapon dpr as they level!) using the logic "hey, that's what she does with her weapon and so to make her fire breath a viable combat option it must give her the same," no I strongly disagree with that. That would make her a better caster than actual casters.

You have one spell, a first-rank spell, that requires stat investment to function. A Wizard or Sorcerer could heighten 1st-rank spells into 9th-rank slots but will never choose to do so because it is a terrible idea to do so.

You're also a Fighter so would only have a single focus point gained by taking this hypothetical fire-breathing feat. You'd need to invest at least 1 more feat to use it more than once per combat. Which is throwing good money after bad.

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Literally what trade-offs means is that you have to give up something in order to get something else. You don't seem to want to give up anything. So what you are describing isn't a trade-off.

There isn't anything a Fighter can do to make any of these proposed fire-breathing builds better than buying Alchemist's Fire and taking Duelist at level 2 to Quick Draw them.

It is not possible for the same game system to allow and support both 'my build choices make my character more powerful' and 'I can freely pick what I want to play and all of them will be equivalent in power'. That is not a false dichotomy. Those two design concepts are in fact mutually exclusive.

I prefer games that provide freedom. I can work with my players to ensure that all their characters can thrive and contribute.

Pathfinder2e has a strict power ceiling. You cannot build a character more powerful than the limits. It is possible to build a character less powerful, though you usually have to deliberately try to do that. You can also build a character that is not powerful for the specific concept that you are trying to fill. But that aside, the reason for the power ceiling is so that the power floor is also solid. The characters and encounter designers are not in an arms race with the players where the players are trying to create ever more powerful characters to trivialize the encounters, and the encounter writers are having to create ever more powerful encounters to still challenge them - leaving those who don't minmax in the dust in the process. Without the power ceiling, the power floor would be left behind.

I don't think that a single scaling Rank 1 spell can break the game the way you're claiming it will. Except for the hypothetical Wizard who prepares only Magic Missile in every slot to top DPS charts nobody is willingly heightening Rank 1 spells into Rank 9 slots.

Now you might try to compare this to focus spells. Focus spells are already completely uneven in their utility with some being powerful all-day options and others leaving you questioning how many characters will cast them thrice in a campaign let alone a single day. I don't think a scaling 1st rank spell pushes things so far beyond what already exists that it threatens the foundations of the game.

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This exactly. You were arguing that a single feat should give a spell slot spell that auto-heightens like a cantrip. My point is that is a significant power boost over a cantrip or focus spell.

Yes, I'm aware of that. I don't find it to be an issue.

A clear design choice in P2, which the developers have stated multiple times, is that you shouldn't be able to steal another class's shtick and do it as well as them. Your fighter wants to cast spells? Great! It's easier then ever and you are still a good fighter while doing it. No you're not as good as a wizard at it, you're a fighter.

It's a good thing that a Wizard is more than just a single heightened Rank 1 spell cast a few times per day.

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They also got the size of the splash wrong, it's fifteen feet rather than twenty, and of course we'd still be wondering how they're juggling all the hypothetical weapons, or why a fighter who is ostensibly a samurai or similar is rocking a maul (Not saying a samurai couldn't, of course), but I didn't see much point in calling any of that out since that isn't the point of their post.

20 feet is the range increment to throw the Alchemist's Fire. I listed it in the same way as I did range for the Bow and Javelin, I don't know how that confused you...

3-Body Problem wrote:

Too bad you're either dumping strength or gimping your saves to do that.

I am not sure at this point what you are looking for. For sure you can't achieve max all saves with max str and max cha. Are you implying that the system ought to give you a way to do this? It almost sounds like what is disappointing you about the system is the very notion of build tradeoffs?

I'm fine with trade-offs if you get something worthwhile out of them. In this case, you can maximally invest in any of these options for -1 to each of your save stats and you get abilities that are worse than investing in throwing Alchemists Fire or putting a Flaming Rune on a ranged weapon. If I'm spending a feat and three stat increases on an option I need it to be competitive with what I can do without making that investment.

I mean, "Wizard with a Halberd" is not going to be a very good character if you insist that they have to be a Wizard and not a Magus.

There are plenty of systems where that would be a very good character. One of my biggest issues with PF2 is that it is rigid and requires bending character concepts to fit the system because the system itself is inflexible.

Breath Fire, rank 1 spell, 2 actions, deals 2d6 in 15 foot cone, basic Ref. H+1: +2d6.

Fire Ray, a rank 1 Focus spell, 2 action, 2d6 fire on successful spell attack roll. H+1: +2d6.

Rejuvenating Flame, rank 1 Focus spell, 1d4 fire 15 ft cone, basic ref. H+1: 1d4.

Slot spell is objectively better, AoE v. Single Target, and save instead of spell attack roll, or average damage of 7 instead of 2.5/rank.

I'm not convinced any of this will be better than that same Fighter using those 2 actions to attack one foe twice or two foes once each.

Let's take a human Fighter with a stat array of Str +4, Dex +2, Con +2, Int +0, Wis +1, Cha +0 and give them a Maul. You could also give them a Greatsword or Katana and very little changes.

At level 1 they have the following options:

They can swing that Maul at +9/+4 to hit for 1d12+4 damage per swing.

They can also shoot a Shortbow at +7/+2 to hit for 1d6 damage per attack at 60ft range.

They can also throw a Javelin at +7/+2 to hit for 1d6+4 damage per attack at 30ft range.

They can also throw an Alchemist's Fire for +7/+2 to hit for 1d8 fire damage with persistence and splash at 20ft.

The magical options are:

Dragon Spit (Ignition) [Cantrip]: Two actions at +3 to hit for 2d4 fire damage at 30 ft range.

Breath Fire [Rank 1 Spell]: Two actions for a basic save at DC 13 for 2d6 fire damage in a 15ft cone.

Fire Ray [Rank 1 Focus Spell]: Two actions at +3 to hit for 2d6 fire damage.

Rejuvenating Flame [Rank 1 Focus Spell]: Two actions for a basic save at DC 13 for 1d4 fire damage in a 15ft cone.

Kobold Breath: Two actions for a basic save at DC 13 for 1d4 fire damage in a 15ft cone or 30ft line.

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As presented none of these are competitive with the other options available to an otherwise standard Fighter. Even if we added a +1 stat bonus from our Wisdom they simply aren't viable options.

Even if we warp our character to have Str +4, Dex +1, Cha +3 you aren't getting a good trade because of the cost to your saves and the poor scaling of these options.

TLDR; There's no way to make a fire-breathing Samurai's defining trick combat viable. It will always be a gimmick that has too large an opportunity cost.

Bluemagetim wrote:

you sure that innate ray of frost cantrip is nice to have when you also have a cha of +0?

Having the cantrip makes you versatile but not powerful with it.

If I decided to take Ray of Frost I'm probably going to raise Charisma. Oh woe is me, my fighter can now actually talk and intimidate people as well as just kill them.

If my character has a Cha of +0 a better example is likely the 2 handed weapon fighter with the shield cantrip.

But even if I have a Dex of +0 and a Cha of +0 the Ray of Frost has SOME advantages over a bow (more damage without money, no actions to swap weapons around).

Too bad you're either dumping strength or gimping your saves to do that.

But what is the “Baddest” attribute?

HP. If you have none, you don't exist. What can be badder than that?

Several posters have offered a couple different mechanical methods to build the fire-breathing samurai. It can be done. Strap laminated armor and a katana on a Dragon Barbarian or Magus, and you can build this. The rpg can deliver it. What the rpg can't deliver is the mechanics if a player insists that it must be the fighter class, the firebreathing must be from a cantrip, and the fighter-using-cantrip must achieve a fairly high level of proficiency and damage at the fire breathing.

The question is the cost versus efficiency. There's no reason why a single scaling first rank spell, in this case Burning Hands, should cost more than a feat. What would be broken about a Fighter, or anybody for that matter, spending a feat to get a single rank 1 spell that heightens like a focus spell and can be cast with a focus point? It'll be weaker than a proper focus spell and might not even be worth two actions to cast in most combats.

I guess your players didn't realize that "it's about the friends you make along the way." No one ever gets far without the magic of friendship in this game. XD

Who could have possibly known that a bunch of loaner isolationist introvert characters wouldn't work out in a social cooperative roleplaying game? :P

There's going against theme, and then there's totally ignoring what's clearly spelled out on the tin and calling it the game's fault. :/

I had a similar situation with Skull and Shackles and its Player's Guide, but unlike your party, after my players' characters killed their mutually hated enemy near the end of Book 1, they looked at each other and said "Wow, you guys are really swell! Thanks for the assist in the coup! How about we keep the momentum going and make each other rich?"

It's totally cool if your players simply decided they were done with the campaign; nothing badwrongfun about it. But it sounds to me they let something relatively trivial cause them to miss out on a grand adventure.

I had the happen with my character in Skulls and Shackles. I was playing a Kobold Gunslinger (Krickbop D. Nosplode) whose goal was to get himself and his dog (A massive Cocker Spaniel named Big Eater) off the ship and get safe. Once he was able to reach shore he found a nice cave and left the adventure and I brought in a new character.

In my case, I made the character as a bit of a 1-note joke and didn't know where I wanted to go with him so I chose to retire him when I couldn't come up with a way to make him interesting after the first act. If that hadn't been the case he would have found a reason to stay with the party.

I'm not really a fan of that as a solution. Seems way too meta to me. Also makes for loads of checks and rolls which will slow the game down and take table time away from the other players.

In my current 5e game I have a ranger that hides every turn and he just rolls at the end of each turn if he's in a spot her can reasonably hide. It doesn't take all that long on his end. For the monsters/enemies, I only roll for them if they aren't otherwise engaged and have the means to impact the ranger who's often 100+ feet behind the front line, it rarely slows things down because so few things meet those requirements. THis is very much a YMMV-type thing though.

This whole disguised character problem is something I'd solve by giving them a sanctuary effect at the start of combat that breaks when they or their familiar take a hostile action. From then on, they're going to need to spend an action each round maintaining their disguise if they want to avoid notice. Even this could be contentious for the other PCs unless everybody was in on the plan.

“Fire breathing samurai” doesn’t really scream fighter with an innate cantrip to me, at least not past low levels where a cantrip would be 1 accuracy point off a full casters. It sounds like either a barbarian, or a martial who has picked up dragon related focus spells. In PF2, you have to keep building up your character’s shtick, first level ancestry feats really shouldn’t be the character defining element for a character’s whole career.

I think Samurai in general does fit with Fighter given the whole armored, skilled with multiple weapons, and how they are the standard by which other warriors in their region are compared. Them breathing fire as a key gimmick that's meant to be useful from when it comes online to the end of the campaign shouldn't be overly costly as it's a narrow ability with little utility that the character couldn't accomplish in other, less stylish, ways. I think the power of a thing should be reflected in how easy/hard it is to add to a character.

Not every option is supposed to be optimal for every build. There are distinct tradeoffs and that is perfectly viable. Now if your fighter had taken a magical dedication then he would have a proficiency in magic and it would have gotten better

Why should a player have to jump through that many hoops to make a Fire Breathing Samurai that has the fire breath as usuable feature?

The other issue is that these new schools are still beholden to the spells that existed before the ORC/OGL split so when they're smaller schools with the same spells we had access before, but in smaller numbers, it's really hard to see the change as anything but a downgrade.

Base stats made a lot make a lot more sense when you either roll for them or can have them change, such as getting a new body in an Altered Carbon game, than they do in games where they don't change except slowly by leveling up. In a game like PF2, they could ditch them entirely or set a primary and secondary array for each class and 99.5% of characters would be fine. They're already all but set for you and vestigial so ditching them or making them interesting in some other way for PF3 would be a big improvement.

I think what Unicore is getting at (and correct me if I am wrong) is that the new wizard rules allow for your character to have a wizard whos school can be created to exist specifically in golarions lore. The current schools are generic but if paizo wants to introduce adventures in specific settings with new wizard schools like a Magaambya school they have the open design space to do it. Also they opened the design space for any of us to make it for our own campaigns.

Is it unique in the sense that these concepts and patterns are new? No, but is it unique in the sense that it is specific to golarian lore and specific to characters in golarian lore? It can be and a structure was presented in the new rules to do it yourself.

To add here, yes any game can be homebrewed to do anything. The unique part on paizos end is basically saying heres the format we used to make schools make more if you want.

What was stopping Paizo from doing that before but making class Archetypes for these unique schools? Or even just giving lists of spells that are iconic to Wizards who trained at a particular school?

Xenocrat wrote:

Uh, you didn't all mutually see each other and have to roll iniative against a moving giant insect 50' away with no wall or other total cover in the way? That's wild.

Wild...

So, the Familiar detected the insects that were waiting for us hidden among some rocks. They actually detected us but were waiting for us to get closer to ambush us. The second we detected them we moved away from them defusing the combat entirely. I can't tell you what would have happened if we didn't detect them but have I been the GM, the PCs would have triggered combat.

Looking at every land-based giant insect that could have noticed you to be set for an ambush only two the Giant Stag Beetle and Giant Tick could have reached something 50ft. away with a Stride -> Stride -> Strike or Stride -> Stride -> Grapple and a few could reach the party in a single stride. Your GM was very generous in not at least making your retreat into a chase and I would have run it as a combat.

You don't have a target in combat either because the whole point of Keen Senses is to detect said target.

So, per RAW, you can use it. If you consider that you need a target to use it then you can't use it at all and then, per RAI, the GM is forced to houserule it. So it works at each and every table.

So target an enemy you can see and just accept that it might not work against a single hidden target. That also works by RAW.

exequiel759 wrote:

Is there someone that takes skilled though?

Of the 12 characters I've played, eight have been humans with the Skilled heritage. The exceptions were a Druid who wanted the Gnome ancestry feats that allow talking to animals, an Elven Rogue in a campaign where elves played a central role in the story, a Duskwalker in a hack and slash campaign about fighting undead, and an Ancient Elf Monk who wanted to combine might and magic from Level 1 and didn't have access to the Magus.

In one case, the Skilled heritage allowed the character to take a feat he otherwise wouldn't qualify for. For the other characters, I took it because I like skill increases. If I don't need to use free archetype feats to realize a character's concept or patch weaknesses, I'll spend them on archetypes that boost skills. I doubt I'm the only one who enjoys versatile characters.

Incidentally, half of my characters have had Intelligence as a primary or secondary stat. "A sharp mind can overcome anything" is a big part of the fantasy I'm looking for when I play tabletop RPGs. I'd still consider Intelligence weaker than every other attribute and would love to see it buffed in a future edition.

But be wary of granting too many skill increases for Intelligence. Go too far, and it'll be too easy for characters to step on each other's toes, especially in large groups that use the free archetype variant.

As GM I've never really seen the toe-stepping thing come up all the often in any group I've run for. Usually what happens is the group all roll for their most relevant skill for any checks where the entire party can see it and I treat any non-high roll that's high enough to work as an aid check. For more specialized skills or checks where only one character is making a check (the rogue up ahead picking a lock for example) they'll often bring in the team if they find the task difficult. More skills just means everybody gets to roll dice for tasks and it keeps the table engaged.

Charon Onozuka wrote:

Personally, I wouldn't allow targeting hypothetical invisible enemies as a means to get around the targeting rules by repeatedly casting at the air. You can get around this by repeatedly targeting a teammate, but I think they should be allowed to feel a bit offended by it. ("Why do you keep growling at me??")

You can target your Familiar. Overall, you can't forbid its use without bending the rules.

Charon Onozuka wrote:

Sure it's flavor text and many GMs allow re-flavoring - but I'd argue there is certainly noise here.

You are casting a spell, so there's noise anyway. It can't be done stealthily.

Charon Onozuka wrote:

Yup, you'll start the occasional ambush early. Personally, I don't see ambushes actually occur as often as many assume, but there is that use. Compared to nearly every other familiar ability however, this is incredibly niche and will often be replaceable by normal familiar abilities.

You also map the dungeon for creatures. Don't forget this use. And inside dungeons you have walls and doors, so the noise of casting a spell and growling is not a problem.

Charon Onozuka wrote:

Abilities the rely of the GM bending over backwards to be good

The other way around: The GM shouldn't bend over backwards to forbid this ability (as you state you'd do by preventing its use on the air or that it should cause issues with other party members).

This would also exhaust you in exploration mode as you're using an action to cast, an action to move, and an action to command your familiar. So it only works if you're forcing the action to a crawl and using round-by-round time tracking the entire time you're in a dungeon.

Intelligence was a better stat when it was what got you the best spells in the game. Wisdom used to only grant spells that maxed at lower level and charisma none at all. Problem at least partly lies with charisma being a casting stat at all

Charisma spent all of 3.x as the universal dump stat so you'd need to be very careful how you handled that.

Orikkro wrote:

There was 4 printings of the CRB already in a few short years. I foresee at least that much if not more for PC1,2 GM Core.

I'm not sure what you gain by only buying PDFs. They are not updated any more frequently than the physical books. And they have all the same errors as the physical books.

As Pixel Popper said, the only time those PDFs will get updated is when Paizo sells out of the physical inventory and needs to print more.

The 'rush job' was not anything Paizo had a choice in. They couldn't risk reprinting any books that had OGL material. If they hadn't rushed the process, there wouldn't have been any rulebooks to sell until next year.

Paizo also has said they want to decouple Errata from new print runs moving forward so you'll get updates faster with a PDF version.

As a player, I've only ever used AI for character art.

As a GM I used it to create a mood board for a specific location and to generate the basic bones of an enemy group the players fought. I still spent two days making the group a base for the players to assault and every encounter was hand-crafted by me. I probably wouldn't use AI for anything plot or encounter-related again unless I was pressed for time and creatively burnt out but I wanted to test what Chat GPT could do so I used it once to see what kind of results it could give.

3-Body Problem wrote:

Sanityfaerie wrote:

That all said, an honest political calculus says that it's not a solution that's going to be implemented any time soon. In the meantime, we have generative AI out here disrupting lives right now. So UBI might be shiny, and if we had it, it might make this less of an issue, but that doesn't really have any sort of bearing on the problem at hand.

Then the solution is to wait a decade while rulings worm their way through courts, are challenged, and new laws are finally drafted. By the time that happens the situation will have changed enough that the issue the laws and court cases were designed to prevent aren't relevant. That's as effective as campaigning for UBI in that it also does nothing to solve the immediate issue while also not solving future issues either.

That's certainly a take... but the question at hand is more like "Is it morally acceptable to use Generative AI right now?" and perhaps "How should we, as a group, treat this thing in the short term?" That's a question for which "Well, obviously you should campaign for (my pet political position) for the next decade under the theory that it will solve the problem" is not, in fact, an answer.

My use won't change. I already don't support companies using it to replace people but do support individual use just the same way I didn't support companies stealing art but did support it for personal use. There's very little I can do beyond that.

Not really an important difference though. If wizards had a class feature that required them to throw their spellbook into the middle of the battlefield in order to function properly, it would be no less debilitating or obnoxious to destroy it.

If you want to make a habit of regularly breaking someone's core class features as a GM, it would be easier to just tell the person not to play that class before the game starts.

I expect my players to understand that some abilities come with greater risks than others and to be smart about it. In the case where you must throw your spellbook and risk it being destroyed I'd expect players to, as much as possible, make back-up spells books or even make spellbooks designed to meet the bare minimum requirements to generate the effect so their main spellbook isn't at risk.

Themetricsystem wrote:

It is as reasonable for an enemy to know that Familiars are crucial to a Character as it is for them to know that a Spellbook or a special Holy Symbol is.

If anything, Familiars should be more obvious as a source of power and have a bias toward being targeted than basically any other thing that a PC uses to leverage power since, well, they have their own HP and can easily be targeted to great effect.

Kill the cat.

... This seems like a weird example because "GM destroys the wizard's spellbook" is one of the prime examples of an 'obvious' good tatic that's generally considered bad form because it just makes one player kind of miserable and useless.

That's different the spellbook will usually be guarded and kept on the Wizard's person. If that same spellbook starts whizzing around the battlefield slinging spells or otherwise being a problem it's fair game to destroy it.

That all said, an honest political calculus says that it's not a solution that's going to be implemented any time soon. In the meantime, we have generative AI out here disrupting lives right now. So UBI might be shiny, and if we had it, it might make this less of an issue, but that doesn't really have any sort of bearing on the problem at hand.

Then the solution is to wait a decade while rulings worm their way through courts, are challenged, and new laws are finally drafted. By the time that happens the situation will have changed enough that the issue the laws and court cases were designed to prevent aren't relevant. That's as effective as campaigning for UBI in that it also does nothing to solve the immediate issue while also not solving future issues either.

The ones I've heard have been more like "you ought to be able to barely scrape by without also having to grind your internal resources down to nothing in a soul-destroying job for the privilege" rather than "we can all be rich together", but there's still a bunch of potentially problematic details to work out.

If people are willing to accept mass-produced housing, mass-produced single models of vehicle (two-seat city car, five-seat family sedan, eight-seat van, truck), and fewer brands of food you can get current standards of living down to pennies on the current dollar. The issue is generating the will to do this and having that will be greater than incentives to keep the status quo.

3-Body Problem wrote:

Then you should campaign for Universal Basic Income to insulate people from such changes. That's the best way to allow for these large-scale without hurting people's live's in the here and now.

UBI seems rather outside of the scope of this particular discussion... and veers dangerously close to Dread Politics.

That said, I'm not fundamentally opposed to UBI-based solutions, if they can be made to work properly. I just note that all such things are pretty much inherently messy.

AI art is politics. The only reason we care about the theft of IP is for economic reasons and economics and politics walk hand-in-hand. UBI solves the current main issue caused by AI art hence my suggestion.

Well, we care about technology being disruptive within our current band because it causes real problems for real people who are ambushed by changes in the environment that are happening faster than they can adjust to. Like, people who've invested significant amounts of effort into actually getting good at creating art, with the expectation that they'd be able to use that as a way of helping to pay rent, now find that this technology is threatening that, in a way that they could not reasonably have predicted when they actually made that investment in artistic skill.

Then you should campaign for Universal Basic Income to insulate people from such changes. That's the best way to allow for these large-scale without hurting people's live's in the here and now.

My table is generally fairly player-favored in terms of rulings but I always make it clear that the NPCs can do anything the players can. This tends to stop my players from trying any exploits they wouldn't want me doing back to them. So if they want to instantly recognize that an effect is coming from a familiar that's cool and that's how we'll run things but they won't be able to get mad when their familiar is targeted when it starts to do spooky stuff on the battlefield.

Correct! It's a difference of degree and method. But those differences matter - for the viability of art as a subject, for the people making a living at it, for how the market will work for new art, for properly recognizing whose talent and hard work created some new wonderful human social thing, for all sorts of important human social reasons.

As I said in another post, this is a tragedy of the commons problem. All of the "artists taking inspiration from other people's works and using that inspiration to create new art", combined are like 1 sheep. They aren't a risk to how the commons works. Just a few generative AI programs is like a whole flock. It is a risk. But when you or someone else asks 'but what's the difference between any one sheep in the flock and that lone sheep we had before', the answer is 'no difference, same animal.' Still, the law can easily treat human sheep-generators and computational flock-generators differently. So I expect that is what will happen in the future.

Why should we care that this technology is disruptive within the narrow band of capitalism that society currently operates within? No system lasts forever and one can imagine both better and worse societies arising from the inevitable explosion of automated labor in all fields. This change becomes even greater once we imagine what the rapid colonization of space will do to supply chains and the notion of scarcity and ownership of land.

3-Body Problem wrote:

Yes, but without Napster and its P2P ilk, the digital revolution would have stalled and taken longer. Companies don't change their business model unless their current model becomes threatened.

So your defense of these Generative AI programs amounts to: you agree they are doing something blatantly illegal, but you see using them for blatantly illegal activity as moral and ethical because oh those big bad corporate artists ought to change their business model? Because 'Big Fantasy Art' is keeping the little man down?

That is not at all what I have said. I've merely made note that sometimes a disruption that current laws are ill-equipped to handle can have positive results. AI art may have a worse impact if only because it doesn't seem poised to create a new model that benefits the masses. Movies have already gone digital and now we're seeing the downsides of that change. AI art will only make lazier mass-produced movies more attractive to studios who need no incentive to further favor sequels and remakes over original IPs.

On the other hand, AI art could advance to a point where it produces excellent results from small sample sets. Such an advance could allow a small team of creatives to create an animated movie based on concept art and live-action film and that would be a net positive. It remains to be seen which outcome comes to pass and it might be that both mass-produced AI slop and home-grown projects alike make use of this technology to different ends.

3-Body Problem wrote:

Easl wrote:

It's a difference of degree. What AI platforms do is like what Napster did...

Digital music has been a massive win for listeners and artists alike. If AI art turns out anything like that we should all be happy.

Properly paid for digital & downloadable music has been a huge win for everyone. The ability of new musicians to offer their music free for download in order to build up recognition and a fan base has also been a huge win for everyone. But the current generative AI programs are neither. They are napster-like. Even worse: they are napster with the composer or composing group's name stripped off the music, so that you couldn't figure out who wrote it and buy more of their stuff even if you wanted to.

Yes, but without Napster and its P2P ilk, the digital revolution would have stalled and taken longer. Companies don't change their business model unless their current model becomes threatened.

3-Body Problem wrote:

I've never paid for character art and didn't do so before AI art became a thing. I either didn't use art at all or grabbed a good enough picture from the internet and used that. AI art, for personal use, isn't any worse than either of those things.

It's a difference of degree. What AI platforms do is like what Napster did; take a slow, low tragedy of the commons problem and crank on it to create a fast, big tragedy of the commons problem. And very much like that case where the industry went after the copying 'engines' while not bothering with the issue of individuals sharing copies of music with each other, I expect that here the industry will focus on these content-scraping 'engines' while leaving the constant background 'noise' of casual, individual image-copy-and-paste alone.

So everyone enjoy your free loot while you can, because while you will never be prevented from copying a picture from pinterest and adding it to your character sheet, I predict that in a few years all the AI programs will be fee-for-service with some of the money going back to the artists...and consequently, the number of people who use these programs will go way down as the casual users who were in it for the free content now won't want to pay a fee to get that same content.

Digital music has been a massive win for listeners and artists alike. If AI art turns out anything like that we should all be happy.

I've never paid for character art and didn't do so before AI art became a thing. I either didn't use art at all or grabbed a good enough picture from the internet and used that. AI art, for personal use, isn't any worse than either of those things.

The psychic already had focus spells a plenty and ways of getting 2 back with ease (and only within their own class) and a minimum amount of spell slots. Spell slot spells are generally better than pre-remaster, so classes with more slots and less focus spells are doing better than classes with good access to focus spells and limited number of slots. Especially with cantrips now taking a step down and requiring more different ones to target different weaknesses to really be worthwhile. Only the primal and arcane list get enough different cantrips to be able to play that game except against undead and fiends.

We really don't know what sorcerers will look like yet. They should be close to the same, but the bloodlines might get a pretty decent shake up. If you really value spontaneous casting, there is a good chance sorcerers will always look better than wizards. I think that is probably the way it should be though. The witch catching up to the wizard is probably a good thing overall for the game, but the difference is pretty minimal and you will never have as many top slots as a witch as you would if you were a wizard. I think the caster balance is pretty good in the remastery

I don't think enough spells were tweaked to really impact the value of a spell slot. Plus any class not impacted by the remaster still gets to use their focus spells and the cantrips in their books as they were written so Psychic should be just as good as it's ever been. Better now that it can pick up Wizard spells via an archetype and use them at full power.

I know you're relentlessly positive about PF2 but I don't agree that Wizard didn't fall another half step behind post remaster.

Yeah, but before the remastery, Psychic was ok as a MC, but you still were only really getting to use 1 Focus spell an encounter for a long time, so it was an either or thing. getting 2 force bolts by level 2 is a pretty big deal if you want to be a damage dealer. At level 1 Force Barrage looks like it will be the most reliable ranged damage dealing option out of any martial or caster, but by level 3 throwing down a Thunderstrike and a Force bolt or Force Barrage is going to be top tier single target damage. The starlit magus with Imaginary weapon eventually will out pace them, but they will stay really good against any higher level enemies.

Which is kind of ironic because it was a niche that casters really didn't do well in pre-remastery.

That tide lifted the boats of every class that uses focus points. I don't see how any of this makes a Wizard more attractive than a Remastered Witch or Psychic or Sorcerer.

3-Body Problem wrote:

Unicore wrote:

A spell blending wizard is then stuck with 2 school spells, one of which is very likely going into a staff? The school limitation really can be bypassed with ease if it bothers you.

In that case, the question becomes why take a school if the best way to use those slots is to blend them away and feed them to a staff? The focus spells aren't good enough to be a draw.

Well. I'm not a huge fan of the new schools, but even I can see that the focus spells improved. Especially for necromancy (boundaries) which is no longer stuck with Call of the Grave.

I can attest that the staple spells thing is totally true. Especially since you have plenty of slots anyway to prepare non curriculum spells.

Be that as it may, if you want good focus spells you're still looking at other classes before Wizard, and even as a Wizard it isn't a bad idea to take an archetype to get improved focus spells. This is a technical buff but in practice a very small change.

A spell blending wizard is then stuck with 2 school spells, one of which is very likely going into a staff? The school limitation really can be bypassed with ease if it bothers you.

In that case, the question becomes why take a school if the best way to use those slots is to blend them away and feed them to a staff? The focus spells aren't good enough to be a draw.

A one action saving throw spell with stun one on a crit fail is way over powered. Players should not be spamming Daze 3 times a turn crit fishing for action removal with a cantrip. Minimally it would need to be restricted to have the flourish trait, but I don't really see one action daze being a good idea, at least until we get some other damaging one action cantrip to see what the baseline for that should be. And if we never get it, then I think there is probably a reason why.

One action Daze could have a 1-minute lockout on the stun effect, so if you wanted to fish you'd need to ping multiple enemies and if you didn't get the crit fail they're immune for the length of the fight.