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There are a lot of hypotheticals. PF2E requires a certain amount of tactical positioning and a given battlefield could be a 5' wide hallway or an open field. Reactions to defend others tend to be within weapon reach, especially early levels. Tanks don't really need to compell a specific action so long as they're making the action suboptimal. If it was intended for the enemy to only ever target the tank they wouldn't need a specific action, just a mechanic to force retargeting.
PF classes certainly do have some role-based design, but they are still quite loose and easily built against. Champions lean toward support and tank roles, but you still need to build into those roles instead of having them handed to you at level 1. That said, at level 1 you get:
Tone etc. aside, there are probably some action compression meta builds that Flashy enables, like being able to get a two action spell off, but that's going to be a very specific set of builds with significant tradeoffs.
Batman, unlike most adventurers, doesn't usually kill or maim his recurring villains. Villains need to be able to obtain distance and cover more consistently, or to work through proxies or cheat mechanisms like monkey's paw revive curses, lich-style revival, conjuration by cultists, etc.
Awesome, thank you!
Tekko-kagi is probably worth mentioning. Agile/Finesse, Parry, Disarm, Monk, and Free-Hand on a non-sword (i.e. less redundant with fencer).
Flamboyant Thief from NPC Core has Dramatic Exit, which is non-magical but compresses a lot of actions so it feels less like cheating.
Yeaaa, Though that creature is written with the idea that you most likely have a trinked called a hope-talisman right?What even is a hope talisman? There is no mention of a hope talisman anywhere in the game outside of this stat block, and there is no talisman in the game that features the word "hope" anywhere in its text. Yep. This creature is an unkillable plot monster from a Dark Archive mini-adventure.
Only if you're a Ninja Turtle...lol. The sai is a chinese weapon isn't it?Uhhhh... excuse me, but the sai, nunchaku, bo staff, and katanas are actually iconic ninja weapons.Note that the katana was a weapon for samurai warriors. Not for monks. Sai are from Okinawa, aka Ryukyu. Okinawa was its own region, with a notable usage of Chinese elements, but was still closer to Japan culturally and was eventually taken over by Japan.
If you're familiar with the gargoyles cartoon, basically any time Goliath gives a speech and then goes white-eyed rage mode would fit the braggart intimidation style, with a hint of Brookyln for the brasher moments.
Swashbuckler could be an option, especially the Braggart or Gymnast. Gives you a lot of ways to be spooky or overwhelming, with abilities to draw attacks to yourself and to make you very hard to put down. You can even get tekko-kagi for parrying claws.
That said, for a naga deity I would assume "jaws" is a catch-all for "mouth".
Part of it is that "fangs" implies a bite that pierces deeply without much surface damage while "jaws" implies more crushing and tearing. Fangs are good for delivering venom bit with weaker damage while jaws are for rending flesh or crushing bone. Some features will call out multiple kinds of mouth-based attack. It would be handy if there was a sidebar that made it very clear how tightly they expected these to be adhered to.
With ninja, samurai, and the original post, it's important to start with the concrete desired features rather than just the label, as otherwise you end up dancing around different interpretations. Indeed, I have a character build I'm working on inspired by my D&D 2E ninja class character, and they're a swashbuckler - a class with a reason to do ninja flips as they move around! Plus they basically do pressure point attacks.
While obviously we attach pretty firmly to names, the Japanese folded blade with the flat tip could be used for any number of Slashing-primary swords, knives, etc., evidenced in the wakizashi, tanto, nagimaki, odachi, etc. etc.
The pop culture of it is hardly debatable, but at the same time we're able to actively discuss it here rather than assume it is set in stone. If what is *actually* desired is a folded metal blade matching a given aesthetic there are more options even if the text doesn't say "katana". If the desire is actually to be a monk who is a former samurai or who otherwise uses equipment from a samurai, there are entirely different suggestions to bring. That said my understanding is that Zatoichi uses a cane sword.
There are plenty of katana-like swords, both historical and fantastical, that are not katana. Katana are a very specific subset of secondary weapons for a noble class who more typically would use spears and bows. If the character is not specifically trying to use the weapon nobles use when not on the battlefield, there may be other on-theme options.
The ability is a reference to the Japanese "peach boy" story, in which the boy born from a peach made some animal friends and beat up some oni, which is why it's peachchild-only. It's basically there to let you play a variation of that character, as implied by previous posts.
Kobo has them. There was a Humble Bundle a ways back that had them, but unfortunately that has passed and there's no telling when they'll have another one.
If someone knocks it out of your hand, disrupting the throw, I would not expect it to jump off the ground and into your hand.
I agree that, in general, you should just convert as needed. Identify some existing analogues and then focus on developing only that which absolutely needs it. The important things about Planescape are the politics, the portals, the philosophy, and the people.
For my part I don't restrict the physical things either as a hard lock. I mean technically there could be some advantages in being able to hide a corpse that would otherwise take a month to consume...
Great to see! Especially with Paizo's focus on inclusivity and representation.
Traditionally, a round is about 6 seconds. Think about how good at being scary you have to be to get them to change their behavior after six seconds.
NPCs don't need to wait for a PC's skill check to acknowledge their situation. PCs need to roll when they want to get a specific outcome. You'll find a lot of encounters where they note "tries to run away if reduced to X hp" etc. The GM is empowered to use logic here in how they would behave. That is different than actually applying a debuff or status change.
Agreed. Some ideas that are interesting but super niche might be amazing for a sandbox campaign but destroy something like Kingmaker. Sometimes it's important to accept some limits to enable certain kinds of stories, as with the Pathfinder Society restrictions. Learning to respect that is important for players.
Small tangent, but it has a potential impact on tactics if you have a camp or base: Interestingly creating bricks at 1 bulk could create stone enough to build a small building (~5,000 bricks) after about five hours - though I think structural stone is about 50% heavier than brick, so let's round it up to 8 hours. I would say that, without also using wood for beams and a roof, this should be doubled because you've got a heavy stone roof and need to make stone pillars. So, after 16 hours, you have a crude stone igloo and you probably need some significant crafting checks to not have it all collapse or leak, and that's assuming they have a sound blueprint and have taken time to flatten the land and know how to do so. So, being generous, if they have a blueprint, I'd say four days of dedicated labor with the right measuring tools and skills (and lores!) would be reasonable - but that's a lot of your build invested for shabby housing. It would also be far better to have a wood/earth kin for this. A wood/earth/metal kin carpenter would be *fascinating* but this is pretty niche! The kind of thing for a quirky inclusion in tertiary books like that potion garden thing.
That defensive player story is interesting because that matches my 4th level build in PFS, but I used tactics - grappling, tripping, weapon infusion, healing allies, and thoughtful positioning. Winter Sleet is a pain to use before safe elements if your allies are in a cramped space, but that's a team tactics issue. Going pure tank as a kin can work quite well if you're a team player. Now, tanking +3 level that early is... a heroic sacrifice. And yeah a low-level kineticist can build a hot tub easily enough, but at level 4 you're making half a brick at a time... there's a reason permanent igneogenesis takes a full hour, and even then you're going to need good crafting skills to be able to justify anything more complex than a stone igloo, and that's going to be four hours to make something about the size of a tent.
A familiar can be handy for rounding out kineticists rather than boosting their main focus. Sensory and movement abilities are great for scouting, as stated above, but they also have some skill-related abilities such as Threat Display, Snoop, Skilled Familiar+Second Opinion, Partner in Crime, Ambassador, and Accompanist - and kins generally need all the help they can get with skills.
A feat or feature that allows you to swap vitality to void would be reasonable to introduce. There are some thematic and balance reasons for vitality to be more common and easier to use. Void healing would ideally lean into the theme more by draining life, even if it was just something like eating a lot of food (meat, rotten fruit, etc ) or draining the environment along the lines of defiling from D&D's Dark Sun setting - basically sucking the life force out of the plants, soil, water, etc. and leaving inert ashes that could never support life again.
The "teaching" part would be in the introductory boxed set. I think there's a lot of room for creating some examples of clever combats, but that's not much different than just asking the community or reading examples and guides. At a certain point players need to read the rules enough to understand them rather than just follow them.
There's certainly a lot of room to develop void ancestries. I'd personally like to see about four diverse ancestries and a non-undead versitile heritage so there's enough variety for full void campaigns without overlap and without anyone needing to be a corpse.
Familiars use pet statistics: https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=5186 They're basically pets with special abilities, per the familiar rules: https://2e.aonprd.com/Familiars.aspx "Familiars are mystically bonded creatures tied to your magic. Most familiars were originally animals, though the ritual of becoming a familiar makes them something more. You gain the Pet general feat, except that your pet has special abilities. Common choices for familiars include bats, cats, foxes, ravens, and snakes."
It's one of those things that's fine until it's not. I personally adore ideas where you cast spells by summoning something to cast for you, but it's possible that it can grant you access to something way too early. That may not currently be the case, but I wouldn't take it as a given long-term.
as well as the Lost Omens books that have a large number of character options like Character Guide, Ancestry Guide and PFS Guide. Yeah, non-rule content endures without revision unless the setting changes, and PFS rules are largely separate from game rules. Which is good, especially with PDFs being readily available. It can be a bit rough for special edition collectors who are late to the system, but that's a bit niche.
I've seen people complain about this back in D&D, so it would become another thing to "fix". I agree that the difference between builds is good. All limitations that create build differentiation get pushback. Dex to damage is another one. Using a two-handed weapon with a shield is yet another.
I've seen people complain about this back in D&D, so it would become another thing to "fix".
From a design standpoint this is a "give a mouse a cookie" situation. If the fighter is equally good at all weapons, it sure seems bad that they have to burn actions to swap weapons. If they can easily swap weapons it seems bad they have to buy so many or use the shifting rune. If they have a shifting rune it seems bad their other runes may not work on all weapons and they can't use different weapon handednesses. If the shifting rune is more flexible it seems bad they can't shift weapons as part of their reaction or someone moving into reach flanking range. If they can shift to any weapon at all it seems bad that they can't also change their fighter feats during combat. If they can shift their feats during combat it seems bad they can't get weapon specialist dedication bonuses on all their weapons. If all that then it feels bad you have to give up your shield sometimes. And then, after all that, it feels bad that fighters are all samey and complicated. -- It really is healthy for a game to have "if I had X instead of Y this would have gone differently" outcomes. Ironically, the original RPG multi-tool, the rod of lordly might, had different pluses for each weapon option.
Specialization also has value in making characters stand out from one another through making interesting decisions. If every fighter has a similar kit, their actual play can become samey. It's actually an issue that impacts Kineticists with Weapon Infusion - weapon infusion works about the same for different elements, and the choices are all very obvious, and it's going to be the same every time I use it even if the build is otherwise completely different.
Really a big book of classic mythic monster-likes would be fun. Greek myth alone is riddled with fun things to turn into ancestries.
Honestly, it's weird we haven't gotten sthenos yet. They look tailor-made to be an ancestry. They're probably inevitable. Fun fact that my avatar will make less surprising: I've wanted medusa-like ancestries since I got my first D&D monster book - in 1992. I had drawings and homebrew ideas jotted down and everything.
Nonlethal damage is basically wearing someone out. Agonizing stings, heat exhaustion, shivering cold, nervous system thrown for a loop, muscle spasms, shortness of breath, etc. can all winnow you down until you pass out from the strain.
Always room for more feats and archetypes! A weapon juggler archetype would be fun for a lot of classes. Maybe something a bit like a metal kineticist and able to warp a weapon mid-combat.
Advantages come with costs. The more advantages, the more costs. If the fighter is going to get more advantages they will need to pay for it.
Designers have a lot of information to juggle and good designers - especially those who design for multiple systems - may not have as much memorized as GMs and players. I do hope there's an internal FAQ or checklist being built to identify things that can be easily forgotten (See: Kineticist blasts) but the speed, scale, cost, and complexity of production will lead to misses that seem obvious.
Divs also have special weaknesses, including: Secrets, Lies, Beauty, and The Color Red.
Hard and simple: The OGL Fiasco Complex: I was a D&D fan from the 90s, from 2E through 4E. I did not like 5E, so skipped it after I finished DMing my 4E campaign and stopped playing RPGs. With 5.5E, I let hope into my heart as I liked a few things they were saying, but the rules only got worse as things went. I picked up the Planescape set and, as an OG PS fan, was mortified. Then the OGL Fiasco, and I dropped WotC entirely and decided to check PF2E out, and I've been quite happy since.
I do agree that the glossary definition is unhelpful. Even though a basic game design reading makes it clear that it would apply to character features of all kinds, it's not clear that "abilities granted by items" is a valid notion. Or indeed "abilities granted by circumstances".
I concur that the term is a problem. I think there are scenarios where even a cleric ability could be weapon, fist, or any other unarmed attack exclusively, but these should be unambiguous.
Goblins having an ability that vaguely resembles the scene does not equate to me actually describing that ability. Being two degrees from Kevin Bacon does not actually make one Kevin Bacon. Note the abilities are explicitly exceptions and the reference are feats, spells, etc. They are the elements that allow to do more than move and strike in generic ways. Environmental effects are not exceptions. Water being boiling is not an ability of the water unless the DM chooses to characterize it as such, nor with acid lakes, etc. Otherwise the concept could be said to only apply to house rules and GM fiat, as feats and spells and disease are not exceptions. Pathfinder does assume that basic standard word usage is in effect. When the definition no longer resembles the English word used there is likely an interpretation error. |
