3-Body Problem's page

What it says above. How much of the new, changed, and clarified bits of the remaster do you intend to use at your table?

For me, it's likely I'll allow a hearty mix of old and new while choosing to ignore the clarification of how wounds and dying are supposed to work. This will just give more options to my players.

How about all of you?

Hello everybody,

I would have done this sooner but I was rightly suspended from posting due to events that happened on the 20th. I was initially posting about ways that Paizo could generate revenue with my tongue firmly in my cheek but as people called me out for my views I engaged in a bad-faith debate. It should not have happened and I am sorry to those posters impacted by my poor choice.

I would also like to apologize publicly to Jonathan Morgantini for causing him extra work that shouldn't have been necessary.

To work on the root cause of my negativity about the game I'll be seeking out a play-by-post game so I can play more and focus on perceived flaws in the system's rules less. If anybody is starting a game I would be interested in joining and seeing how a Wizard actually plays. I promise I am a far better and more courteous player than I have been a poster on these forums.

Your fellow in roleplaying,

Jason "3-Body Problem"

It's no secret that I'm an opinionated curmudgeon who rubs some of you the wrong way; I can't promise that will change. What I can do is offer an olive branch of positivity in hopes of mending some fences.

With that all said, if you were asked to start designing a PF3 tomorrow what are the best bits of PF2 that you would make sure ended up in PF3? This can be anything from general concepts to specific mechanics and you don't have to bring anything over whole cloth. If you love a class or idea but the execution was off it's totally valid to say you'd bring it over to PF3.

In keeping with the theme let's keep this thread positive and flag free. If you dislike somebody's suggestion hold your tongue or make a new thread about how [idea] could be better implemented for PF3.

As per recent discussions about the viability and relative merits of different spells, it feels like people aren't on the same page as I am when I talk about a spell being bad. So here I am to clarify my stance on spells, balance, and why I feel the way I feel.

Balance is a Zero Sum Game

First and foremost you must understand this concept. In a two-player game such as chess if either side has an advantage (and white does have a clear advantage) the other side is negatively impacted by the same degree. In Pathfinder, this doesn't apply as concretely but I feel it still applies.

I feel that the balance in Pathfinder's Second Edition is still zero-sum because every spell has an opportunity cost associated with it and thus competes with every other spell at that rank. This cost might be paid in terms of spells known for a spontaneous caster, in terms of a literal cost in gold for a Wizard to scribe a spell into their book, in terms of taking up a slot for a prepared caster, and in terms of its action cost to end effect ratio if/when it is finally cast. Given that these costs are the same for all spells all spells must equally reward casters who choose to use them. This is currently not the case.

Utility spells, like Knock, are especially bad now that they no longer automatically solve a problem when cast. Summons are bad because they are only effective in very narrow situations. Spells like Slow and Cone of Cold are far more predictably useful and thus often find themselves cast and prepared while other spells that aim to be equally useful in combat simply go uncast.

I find that this is undesirable and that Paizo should have been aware of the narrowness of certain spells and given them more power to compensate.

That said, what can be done to bring underused spells up to par and how can we identify such spells in the first place with the data at our disposal?

EDIT: Feel free to discuss feats, class features, and class chassis here as well.

It seems that Paizo believes that the correct way to play a caster is to pick the greatest hits, memorize the bestiary, and generally have a very particular spread of spells in order to meet the needs of the game's tight math.

This is supported by the following quote by Michael Sayre:

That would actually make the math more complex and confusing, and it would mean that instead of helping guide people into how play casters, it would create the mistaken impression that they should play like martials.

The shadow signet allows you to target saves instead of AC, which helps people learn that pretty much every monster in the game has at least one low save, which in turn encourages diversifying your spell list (and a diverse spell list is something that many/most/all casters assume, especially wizards).

If you used a potency rune instead, it could only apply to spell attack rolls, but not spell DCs. This would break one of the fundamental structures in the game when it comes to how checks and DCs are determined, making the advancement less intuitive and more complex, and it would have the FOMO knock-on of making people think that the "proper" way to play a caster is to focus on spells that use spell attack rolls, since those are the spells that get item bonuses.

So the shadow signet pushes the caster towards doing the thing that all casters should be doing: learning how to identify enemies' weakest defense and deploying a spell that targets it. A well-built caster won't need a shadow signet at all, because they'll deploy a spell that targets the weakest defense without needing the hack.

So the shadow signet essentially serves two purposes-

Help guide people into understanding how to play a spellcaster

Provide some additional support for spell attack spells if a player wants to focus on them more than the base engine of the game assumes they will.

As a player gets more experience with spellcasters, they should begin to see things like how staves and scrolls are the equivalent of swords and shields for martials; where a fighter wants to progress their base bonus and damage die, the wizard wants to expand their repertoire and be ready to leverage their significantly broader toolbox towards whatever best suits the situation.

The kineticist, then, is more of a middle ground. It simply can't have the breadth of options that a true caster has, but it can offensively target more defenses than a typical martial. It's able to be that "I only memorize fireball" version of a spellcaster who can hyper-specialize and gain higher accuracy bonuses because none of its abilities hit quite as hard as a spell slot, and it's okay that it gains items that push it towards more of a martial playstyle because it's designed to accommodate that. It doesn't have the break point a wizard would have where adding item bonuses would distort the math so heavily on a well-played wizard with strong system mastery that we'd find ourselves back in an era of caster dominance, and so it also doesn't need to create as many workarounds or dictate other system dynamics in a way that over-complicates the game and creates increasingly difficult-to-bridge gaps based on system mastery.

This design ethos makes casters boring and makes themed casters far behind the curve. So many of your spell slots at each level are basically locked in because the tight math means it's very easy to tell which spells are worth taking and which aren't.

Beyond that, you know that as a caster you are expected to pack spells to meet all of the following needs:

1) At least 1 spell in your top 2 spell ranks that targets each save, targeting AC is optional and requires that you have a source of True Strike.
2) That every spell you prepare does something on a failure because only your highest spell slots matter and spells that can whiff can lead to a TPK.
3) That while doing the above you will still bring debuffs and battlefield control to the table.
4) That you still find room to pack some buffs/utility in because everybody loves a caster handing out buffs so they can shine at doing their thing more effectively.

This idea that the correct way to play a caster is to only take the specific meta spells and maybe sprinkle in some flavor is basically forced on Paizo by their own design choices. Getting rid of class-specific spell lists, tying spell effects to the slot rather than the caster's level, and not allowing "problem-solving" spells to actually bypass problems contribute to why the standout spells are what they are.

These issues won't be fixed by the remaster - I expect that they might be made worse given that the design team seems so confident that they "get" the system - but please can we make it so there aren't so many godawfully useless spells clogging up the book.

Fix incapacitation spells so they aren't essentially spells that only the GM gets to feel good casting. Let damage-dealing spells, especially single-target spells, feel good without locking yourself into True Strike and waiting for your martials to tee the BBEG up for you. Let utility spells actually solve issues again so casters don't feel nerfed for preparing them instead of waiting until they are cheap enough to be grabbed as scrolls.

I want more support for casters who want to be a summoner (generally a complete waste of time and spell slots beyond bringing in a flank buddy for a round or two), a necromancer (still almost entirely unsupported), a blaster (who gets to be a full caster and not something new entirely), a utility specialist (this would require spells be allowed to outright solve problems again).

Get back to each class as a specific list of spells known so you don't have to balance every caster feat and class ability around comboing with every single spell. Bring back caster level as a meaningful boost to spell effects so 2/3rds classes can exist again (wave casting feels like a failed experiment).

Sorry for the rant, I just strongly dislike what we've seen regarding casters.

Whether one loves, hates, or is indifferent to the classes that have been released since the CRB one cannot deny that each of them has some level of action tax built into their chassis. Panache, Reload, DaS, Spellstrike, etc. every post-CRB class has to spend actions, often multiple times per battle, just to fulfill the fantasy the class presents. This added complexity and limiting action economy doesn't buy these classes power as universally none of them even approach the Fighter, Bard, or Druid and many of them are below average by a fair margin.

I'm not concerned about power level, I've said my piece on that before, what I am concerned about is how Paizo has taken a free-flowing class like the Swashbuckler which should play with as much fluidity as a Monk and locked it into a cycle of generate Panache, use a finisher, repeat. Even classes that use their actions for more interesting things like a Thaumaturge often have scenarios where their unique action is less useful than simply moving in and making a strike. I don't think this is an ideal state for these classes.

I'm primarily interested in two things:

1) Discussion around how these class fantasies could be realized without the action tax.

2) If there are post-release bandaids in the form of items or class feats that could solve what I see as an issue in class design.

I would be interested in opinions on if these classes can do everything they do now minus the action tax without being broken and what numbers might need to change to make that happen, but I fear that would devolve quickly and drown out what I'm actually interested in.