AlastarOG's page

I'll add them as well.

I'll also ping KaruiKage from the AoN team to let them know this doc is now 22 pages long if they want to import it into the archives.

Here is an updated link to the document:

Sorry for lack of updates, I came here to check if there were new settlements, I will update all the new ones !

Thanks for posting these guys, I check occasionally !

Added Jula from Hurricane's Howl

AlastarOG wrote:

Yeah exactly.

By comparison the black plague killed 20 million people just in medieval Europe.

In my campaigns I often take the population for metropolises and just add a zero at the end to make more sense.

A 310 000 population Absalom is nonsensical for such a big city. That's the population of a middling sized town at an advantageous positioning, not the city at the center of the world.

3 010 000 makes a lot more sense, specially when you consider how big it is.

9-10 million worldwide is near extinction levels. A much better, and more reasonable, count would be near a billion.

Constantinople peaked at about half a million population, in 1000 and 1500 AD (considerably lower around the 1300s, both from plague and war.)

Paris in 1000 has about 20,000, climbs up to 300k before the Plague, drops to 200k after, and doesn't hit 500k until the 1700s.

Rome had a population of about a million during the Empire, which plummeted to 20,000 until the 1400s and didn't break 100,000 until the 1600s.

A 310,000 population Absalom makes sense, given that it's a medieval metropolis without an attached continent-spanning empire. A manorial economic system where 5 out of 9 people have to be agriculturalists to prevent mass famine simply can't support high population densities.

One thing to keep in mind is that the entire population of cities is supported by about an equivalent population of small villages surrounding it - that's where the food comes from. So while Paris in 1000 has about 20,000 residents, there's at least another 20,000 people in the surrounding countryside whose economic activity (i.e., farming) is required to support Paris. You can double the population of any given non-agricultural settlement in outlying farms, fishermen, huntsmen, and herders producing food.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_European_cities_in_history#Ti meline:_Roman_Empire%E2%80%93Modern_Age_(1%E2%80%931800_A.D.)

Thanks for the stats!

A small note is that to me settlement stats should account for those farming field populations around it ?

Another note would be that Absalom, at least as couched in the lore books, is a city that is much more developped than what a medieval city would be. Medicine is much more advanced (to the point where even deadly diseases like cancer and the plague can be simply erradicated) the terraforming that they can do is miles above even current engineering projects (for god's sake they redid an entire city district in under a year, this would be a decades long project in modern times) and their industry involves an abundance of high commodity items that is commonly being purchased by non traditional big buyers which helps to feed a thriving and varied bourgeois class (I,m talking about magic items and adventurers)

Considering all of that, I think comparing Absalom to Medieval era paris or antiquity rome would not be accurate, probly more to 19th century New york which would be around 2.6M

Added Graydirge, Yled, Alkenstar City, Pagked, Sallowshore to the compendium.

Sorry it's been a while, was taking a break from forums and uploading my guides for mental health reasons.

Link me any towns you want me to add.

I might flag this to be repositionned to the advice forum, I don't think me adding Torch and Starfall in italics makes it homebrew.

Ok I'm going with 2, I'm at Barbarian for now.

For explanations, which format is best:

Ex 1:
Alchemist (total points: 15/25):
Reasoning: The alchemist is a poor damage dealer, either through bomber or mutagenist, the damage output is not there and you only scale to expert in attacks. With ultimately medium armor mastery and 2 saves at Master they are tankier than wizards, but still have 8 hp. Alchemists are great healers though, able to create healing potions on the fly, or in advance and distribute them. They have good debuff abilities through bombs and poisons, and great buffing. In exploration, they can whip out skill bonuses on the fly that are non negligible, and in downtime their heavy focus on the crafting skill will serve you well.

Or

Ex 2:
Combat:
Damage: 2 With proficiencies stopping at expert, damage alchemists struggle either through bombs or mutagens. Adding the fact that their key ability is not the main ability needed for their damage styles and that even if they manage an attack that has DC’s (like poisons or mutagenic breath) that DC does not go above Master. Overall, Alchemist are not a damage class.
Survivability: 1 Very late Master proficiency in armor, and 2 saves at Master, but 8hp per level. Better than mage, worst than tanks or semi/tanks.
Healing: 3 3 is for a chirurgeon alchemist, otherwise it’s a 1 or 2. Chirurgeon are first class healers though, and can give out a lot of healing in a turn.
Control: 2 Debilitating bombs, poisons, alchemical items and the such give alchemists a great many ways to debuff opponents.
OOC:
Exploration: 4 Alchemists can buff skills on the go, have the right tool for the job on a whim, recall knowledge like champs, and even be thievery or stealth focused.
Downtime: 3 Being heavily crafting focused helps alchemists perform well during downtime, no unique or auto scaling feature though.

I try to evaluate the class as a whole, into what it can potentially provide for your party.

As an exemple: Alchemist has potions which are abundant and heal for quite a lot (not as much as a heal spell though) but also has access to the chirurgeon field, even though not all alchemists will go that route. (2 or 3 in healing was a debate for Alchemist I'll grant, but in the end since I'd put investigator which has 2 paths that grant healing (tincture and forensic, the Alchemist can potentially have both at the same time, hence the 3).

I rated warpriest at 2 in healing because in my understanding most warpriests want to go for cast down+channel smite which means you either go versatile font or harmful font? That might be a mistake though.

For witches and other prepared casters, while in early levels they could struggle at having damage and control, eventually as prepared casters they can do both at whim, changing by what they want to be doing that day, the ability to pivot is key here. Yes some spell lists are better at it than others, but overall each spell list has an abundance of damage and control. The ability of witches to grab any one of those is core to their narrative power.

For downtime... Well it really depends on campaign ? Kingmaker is upcoming (and I'm running my own) and downtime has been quintessential, same thing in SoT where we are crafting our items at massive discounts. AoA has massive parts with downtime activities, specially in chapter 5, and ultimately, if you don't have a caster to teleport you to Absalom, crafting is literally the only way to get upper level items in mass.

Teleport and shadow walk are uncommon spells so if you're in a campaign within a set world with a max settlement level of 7-11, which is very probable, downtime is key to progression as otherwise your martials will be woefully undergeared and underperforming (this is currently happening in our EC siege of the dinosaur game despite us having access to Absalom! We got sieged in while being undergeared and are struggling) so while I agree that downtime takes MUCH less time than combat, it is proportionally just as important to determine how your character impacts the game.

I've had parties that shifted their entire class picks when an inventor got in the party because "f*@& yeah, we got a crafter dude!" And that's part of the perks of the inventor I'd say.

But definitely on downtime YMMV

Touché!

It's a nice overview, but to actually mean anything you should add why you come to these values, and also which variant of the class you're looking at for these values. Not all barbs do the same damage, same as rogues, same with rangers.

Edit: I missed your post where you mentioned to explain the ranking. Would be very useful indeed. I would love to see how a champion would do more damage than a two-weapon flurry ranger.

Edit 2: I agree with what I saw elsewhere about tiers also being defined by level. low level play can be a lot different than high level play, on all fronts.

I'll add a paragraph to each class definitely! And the values are up for debate anyhow.

I could also do further sub-divisions, such as healing font cleric vs harming font cleric.

For Good Champion damage vs Flurry Ranger I admit at the time I was thinking of Paladin, which has an easily triggerable actions per round that deal persistent good damage, which in turn triggers weaknesses very often. Levels 14+ it can do that reaction twice a round, on top of its actions, which can be incredibly damaging.

If I take the class as a whole with redeemer and liberator, a 4 would likely be more appropriate.

I would disagree.

Aid is a circumstance bonus that scales up to +4. Circumstance means that it stacks with status such as inspire courage, heroism and marshal aura.

It's also at 30 ft. range, affects any of your ally within 30 ft (meaning you don't have to say ''I aid such'') and keys off your strongest skill.

Lower levels, it's useful, higher levels where a crit success is guaranteed? great value

I also thought the geb vs whispering way schism was weird

Google doc is done, but will probably undergo several changes. I could also do a paragraph to explain the ranking of each class

I am still working on the google doc and excel, reason I posted here first is I had the whole forum coding done already and didn't want to lose it.

I'll post again to indicate when I'm done.

Through another thread, we have discussed much on what is power in pf2e, what is relevant, and which class is best at what.

Through that, I've devised a system of weighted ranking that I believe could be helpful to new players that are looking for an answer for the eternal ''which class to play'' question.

This guide has two goals

1 - To accurately represent the ability of each class to affect meaningful change to multiple areas of the narrative at broad, through only their core class kit, discounting archetypes, skill feats, general feats, items and ancestries as non-pertinent to the matter.

2 - In a broader sense, to accurately determine how these classes intermesh with each other in a party, so as to determine where a party, based on only their classes, might be weak or strong, and thus tailor further build options around that, if so desired.

To reach those objectives, I've devised a ranking system that will give a brief ranking to each class on scales described bellow. I will then aggregate those points for each class, but this is in no means a reflection of their power, merely of how varied and versatile a class can be. Every class performs differently based on campaign and classes that are weak in downtime could perform very well in a short timeline campaign, but less well in a multi-years campaign (such as AoA or SoT)

The rating system takes the class as a whole from level 1 to level 20.

The rating system is based on:

15 points for the combat rating:
Damage: 6 points
Survivability: 3 points
Healing: 3 points
Control 3 points

10 Points for the out-of-combat rating system
Exploration: 5 points
Downtime: 5 points

These premises stipulate a ratio of roughly 60% combat to 40% exploration in most campaigns.

These premises stipulate that damage is double the value of any other aspect of combat.

Overall I believe this to be a fairly reasonable rating system, not perfect, but not irrelevant as well.

I will post the rankings on this google doc, so I can keep it up to date as new classes come out

This calculator will enable people to come in and automatically get the stats for their party, to see where their party might be weak

Sanityfaerie wrote:

Guntermench wrote:

Rules to be ignored: Shadowrun

Shadowrun is pretty edition-dependent too. Like, it has seen some serious shifts back and forth over the years.

I think of it as "Shadowrun is a big system, and 80% of it works". It's just that the 20% of it that doesn't work changes dramatically from edition to edition.

And then there's the piss poor book editing and review.

I remember one of the 5e books had an endless reference loop for drones and just.... No rules for drones when you parsed it. Despite drones being actively a thing that was in the game !

Also ultimately.... Yes you can cast lifeboost in combat but it's best use is to heal max spell level*8 every 10mins outside of combat.

Last I checked, a psychic can’t give you fast healing for 4 rounds equal to 2x your level so, not really invalidated, no.

Also something to be said for prepared casters that can just memorize remove curse on the day if they need it.

Yah and restoration, remove disease, etc etc. They can also easily prep utility like tongues, teleport, shadow walk, lock, glyph of warding, etc.

And lessons of life IS clutch

Castilliano wrote:

I'd say Monks have the most of what I'll call agency. They have the mobility to go where they want, the defenses to remain there if they wish, and the free hands to Interact/maneuver as needed.

...
Monks don't have good speed, they have the best speed, speed so far ahead it strains other builds to catch up, and backed by feats that build on that.

I agree, and I love how a monk's movement speed serves to further create action economy for the monk.

One of my favorite examples of this "agency" (I like that term) is on a monk with the Medic Dedication's Doctor's Visitation.

In 3 actions/1 turn, this monk can do what would take most characters 7 actions/3 turns to accomplish:

> Move 50 feet (2 actions for the price of 1... assuming a 25 ft movement speed for another character)
> Flurry of Blows (2 more actions for the price of 1)
> Doctor's Visitation (move 50 feet...administer Battle Medicine to an ally...that's 3 actions for the price of 1)

Is this an optimal turn/approach to combat? <shrug>

Does it feel good to play? It feels great to play

As a side note: in my iron gods game in the ultimate fight agaisnt Hellion, the swashbuckler with medic dedication did just that. With panache swashys have as much speed as monks so she was constantly moving around with doctors visitation and healing everyone, tripping the low ref DC boss and she did almost no damage, but she was the most impactful character in the fight.

Definitely a rewarding playstyle that the monk would also be great at.

Here is Ronald's Video

Perpdepog wrote:

Temperans wrote:

It makes it worse given that Clerics and Druids know all their spells (at least all the common ones). But then Wizard and Witch have to pay exorbitant amounts of gold for something that most of the time wont even be useful.

I shudder to imagine how tight your games have to be that half, or quarter, the price of a scroll of equivalent level to learn a spell is considered "exorbitant."

I am not calling a single spell exorbitant. I am calling the total sum of all those spells that people expect prepared casters to have exorbitant.

It really adds up! The level 9 witch in iron gods is easily 700-900 behind other PC's in gold because I've been generous on the spellbooks.

AlastarOG wrote:

I've never really liked the monk, that being said I think pf2e did a fair take on it.

I would however fix minor things like:

Monastic weaponry being included into the class without a feat.

Brawling focus being integrated at 7 like the other martials.

Right now monk weapons, a big part of the flavour and theme, are horrible for them.

Aside from that, not really my cup of tea but pretty decent.

Just a note that it would be 5 for Brawling Focus.

Noted, wasn't sure and had spotty wifi !

I've never really liked the monk, that being said I think pf2e did a fair take on it.

I would however fix minor things like:

Monastic weaponry being included into the class without a feat.

Brawling focus being integrated at 7 like the other martials.

Right now monk weapons, a big part of the flavour and theme, are horrible for them.

Aside from that, not really my cup of tea but pretty decent.

Thanks for the reference to my thread, love your channel keep up the great work ^^

Two things:

1: Electric arc can easily be added to a psychics arsenal through their ancestry magic class feat and ancestry powers (humans, tengu, etc. ). I'm looking at a tengu psychic build level 3 right now, and I got to say that the ability to shred out 2d4+8 damage on two targets as an int occult caster with the right DC has me excited!

2: spell attack rolls are tricky and a subject of many debates *gestures at thread*. I agree with the Dev's ultimate decision of not putting item bonuses, that being said as a Gm I have tentatively added consumable items that give item bonuses to spell attack rolls, as well as permanent items that add item bonuses to spell attack rolls but only ones with certain trait.

Ex: Souldrinker is a sacrificial +1 striking cunning dagger that allows you to gain death knell when you use it to kill an ennemy. It also gives a +1 item bonus to spell attack rolls with spells that have the evil trait. It is a level 8 item.

In my understanding of the scaling , if you do add item bonuses to spell attack rolls it should NOT be on par with potency runes. +1 at levels 8 and 16 would be my take.

AlastarOG wrote:

I have been running an undead game for a year now (kingmaker but with characters that are all dhampir and run a necromantic empire )

One of them is a cleric of Urgathoa and if you know kingmaker you know that there's undead in there (vordakai being the main one).

How I've presented it to my player is that... They don't know. Gods don't negotiate and deal with their followers, especially not goddesses like Urgathoa. You can get a phylactery of faithfulness to know when you'd violate anathema though !

That being said, Urgathoa is not the most merciful or understanding of deities, so I feel like players having "a logical and reasonable" reason as to why they're killing an undead would be lost on her. It doesn't matter to her, you devote yourself to her and in exchange she grants you power. Part of that devotion is the tenant that you will put undead life above all else's no matter the cost.

That being said, as mentionned above, if you're not DIRECTLY killing the undead but enhancing someone who is, well, Urgathoa also strikes me as a deity who enjoys a good loophole that craddles the line.

And if you're a GM and you think your players are playing loosey goosey with the Anathema, I'd like to remind you that Urgathoa's minor curse is HILARIOUS!

"You must overindulge or partake in forbidden feasts before you find yourself even remotely sated. You need to eat 20 times as much food as normal to avoid starvation, though you always feel hungry regardless of how much you eat. If you dine on the flesh and blood of sapient creatures, you need to eat only the normal amount of such meals and your hunger abates."

This would be my starting point to punish an anathema violator.

PS: cleric of anathema in Geb can be very potent because of anthemic reprisal. If everyone in your party is an undead, anyone attacking your party is committing anathema against your faith ;-)

I would not ask for the phylactery of faithfulness.

The PCs have been indoctrinated in...

**Gestures wildly at the entirety of catholic philosophy and ethics**

The thing with learning spells is that you don't try to learn spells of your highest spell level unless you really need that spell or otherwise it will be expensive.

I usually go for the spell level-2 rule, like if I have lvl 3 spells at the highest then I will mass learn lvl 1 spells as I will crit success almost all of them.

But at the same time as a prepared caster only having 2 spells for your 2-3 spell slots can be somewhat limiting, especially if you're picking one that's situational cause you need it right now (like turning level 7 and really needing the veil spell cause you're about to go on an infiltration mission)

Does the Psychic invalidate the Witch? No.

Does the Psychic make me wish the Witch was anywhere near as customizable and interesting as it? Absolutely.

Yeah I guess this reaches my sentiment more precisely.

I have been running an undead game for a year now (kingmaker but with characters that are all dhampir and run a necromantic empire )

One of them is a cleric of Urgathoa and if you know kingmaker you know that there's undead in there (vordakai being the main one).

How I've presented it to my player is that... They don't know. Gods don't negotiate and deal with their followers, especially not goddesses like Urgathoa. You can get a phylactery of faithfulness to know when you'd violate anathema though !

That being said, Urgathoa is not the most merciful or understanding of deities, so I feel like players having "a logical and reasonable" reason as to why they're killing an undead would be lost on her. It doesn't matter to her, you devote yourself to her and in exchange she grants you power. Part of that devotion is the tenant that you will put undead life above all else's no matter the cost.

That being said, as mentionned above, if you're not DIRECTLY killing the undead but enhancing someone who is, well, Urgathoa also strikes me as a deity who enjoys a good loophole that craddles the line.

And if you're a GM and you think your players are playing loosey goosey with the Anathema, I'd like to remind you that Urgathoa's minor curse is HILARIOUS!

"You must overindulge or partake in forbidden feasts before you find yourself even remotely sated. You need to eat 20 times as much food as normal to avoid starvation, though you always feel hungry regardless of how much you eat. If you dine on the flesh and blood of sapient creatures, you need to eat only the normal amount of such meals and your hunger abates."

This would be my starting point to punish an anathema violator.

PS: cleric of anathema in Geb can be very potent because of anthemic reprisal. If everyone in your party is an undead, anyone attacking your party is committing anathema against your faith ;-)

I fully agree that being prepared is the dividing line here.

An issue with prepared casters though that I have mostly only recently come to understand (and read the tier list thread to see just how much I understand the advantages of being a prepared caster) is the drop in purchasing power.

Learning spells in your spellbook costs a lot of money, vs spontaneous spellcasters who will need to use the learn a spell activity like 3-4 times in their career. Half of the wealth of the witch in my iron gods game has gone to making their familiar lick the pages clean of the spellbooks the group has found.

They're very versatile! But it's cost a lot ..

With the new class coming out, I find myself looking back over my currently running games and thinking to myself "wouldn't this character be better as a psychic instead of an occult with?"

The three characters I have in mind are:

Occult patron tengu who's a paranormal detective in a legend of the 5 rings style game.

Haughty elf witch who's known as a darkmaster to her elf peers, currently a curse elf witch.

Upcoming night curse fetching shadow caster witch, but the player is considering not playing witch cause psychic is so interesting.

So in all of these cases the answer is that I do want to play the psychic for that character role more than the witch. I did not necessarily want a familiar with all of these and it's not like familiars are unique to the witch class anyways (fetchling shadow caster build wanted a shadow familiar but shadow caster provides it...)

And outside of the familiar the witch class provides.... Very little.

Aside from that it was very synergistic with its INT key ability and occultism synergy but now... Well two of the subconscious minds have int as key ability, and psychic casts occultism and has better skill synergy with occultism through class abilities.

So I'd say that the occult witch has very much been made irrelevant by the psychic, who delivers a weird, dark take on occult casting and reliable, repeatable powers and focus point usage that the witch just fails at delivering.

Which leaves the witch with 3 more familiar powers. Don't get me wrong, I like familiars...but they don't make a class by themselves.

Also 1 spell slot more per level, which isn't that bad since you can use class feats as a psychic to even out, and the class feats are overall better too, giving you near spell abilities.

Share your thoughts.

Also reminds me of needle of vengeance

Greetings,

I have a bit of an interrogation about the forbidden thought cantrip:

You place a psychic lock in a foe's mind that prevents it from a specific action. Choose “Strike,” “Stride,” “Cast a Spell,” or a specific action you know the creature to have (such as “Breath Weapon” against a dragon). If the creature attempts that action on its next turn, it must surmount your lock to do so, causing it to take 1d6 mental damage plus your spellcasting ability modifier (with a basic Will save). The target is then temporarily immune for 1 minute.

Why use the "lock" terminology? Is the action forbidden until the save is successful? It doesn't sound like that from the cantrip, it sounds more like if they do the locked action they just take molding damage.

Then on an amp, if they fail they're stunned 1. Does that mean they lose all remaining actions in the round?

How do other people read this one ?

This is one of those few areas where I think 5e did it best with how they classify "monk weaponry"

It's simple, elegant, and you kinda make it work, and it unlocks exotic monk builds like bare chested samurai or exotically dressed fan girl monk fighter that are simply not viable in 2e.

I might actually homebrew that a bit in my Isekai game since one of the players wants to play a Monk.

Yes but my point was more along the lines of:

It's not a de facto bonus, it's a conditional one, even more so because brawling focus is in the same window as stunning fist.

For those saying: critical specialisation.

Monks don't get auto-critical specialisation, they need to pay a feat for it.

So that just adds to the feat tax.

Imo monastic weaponry and brawling focus should be part of the standard kit.

Cordell Kintner wrote:

aobst128 wrote:

One fun thing it looks like you could do with ammunition thaumaturgy is throw shurikens with a hand occupied by an implement.

While you can reload using the hand the hand you're holding your implement with, you can't Strike with it, so that doesn't work at all how you think it would.

We just need a shuriken gun and we're good. Yeah, wouldn't work like that but It would be fun. Hopefully we get some support for shurikens in the future so we can utilize it's reload 0 since currently, they're just worse throwing knives once you start putting runes on one so you need a returning rune, making reload 0 completely irrelevant

This is one GM's judgment but I'd definitely let you reflavor an air repeater as a shuriken gun !

For unicore, I edited this in:

Also I find item bonuses to skills to be much more practical, I rarely get weapons for this trait, cause armbands of athleticism give you +2 to maneuvers AND climbing/swimming/jumping.

Then the apex items just give you +3 across board and are am assumed item.

So AT BEST those traits are niche and situational. Stances are better all of the time.

Elven branched spear monk with an elven curve blade on their back looks amazing though, too bad it costs me 3 feats to match baseline stances and thus I'll never try it.

You know ... If I were to play a Monk one day.

Isn't the value of Monk weapons that they have lots of traits like disarm, trip, grapple, shove, etc? The value here is that 1 shifting rune pretty much gets you an item bonus to any combat maneuver you want to perform without spending feats on stances that have the matching trait.

Yah but the stances do too.

Also I find item bonuses to skills to be much more practical, I rarely get weapons for this trait, cause armbands of athleticism give you +2 to maneuvers AND climbing/swimming/jumping.

Then the apex items just give you +3 across board and are am assumed item.

So AT BEST those traits are niche and situational. Stances are better all of the time.

Right... I must be the one playing the TTRPGs wrong by wanting to use a bow and arrow without main class features stripped away for no good reason.

Toxic community much?

You're not playing wrong, but several other classes have great bow synergy.

Thaumaturge ain't ont of them.

And paizo is definitely not dumping on bows, we have a like 350 post thread that's about how bows are overpowered over everything else including guns.

With math

And excel tables and stuff.

So your comment kinda sounds like a "woe is me" comment.

Very nice, might steal some of that, my players are about to begin choking tower in my 2e conversion.

@mathmuse:

I think my favorite Oracle NPC was Cassandalee.

Ancestor Oracle that lived all her past android lives? So flavorful!

Precision ranger do have the action economy to make devastating gun sniper shots.

Gravity weapon+ hunt prey+ shoot , round 2: reload, shoot, reload.

Kinda works since precision ranger is all about that first attack.

My main question would be what happens when you cast a shadow reservoir spell with a ranged touch attack using a shadow signet.

Is it the highest of fort/ref DC or will DC?

(I concur with everyone else, this basically allows you to have more spells in your repertoire)

Before guns and gears came out I was kind of expecting the guns to have a high damage high risk reward, a bit like what the inventor gave us.

Something like an overturned damage option, I'm talking d10/d12 ranged weapons with the deadly trait and maybe backstabber for the big ones, and some d8 options with reload 0 and maybe agile. Something that's overtuned vs bows/crossbows.

But then you balance that out with misfires on a critical miss, making the weapon jam, taking 2 or 3 actions to unclog (less if gunslinger) and dealing minor damage to you.

I was a bit disappointed, but I can understand why it swung that way.

here is the breakdown, with the fighter assuming they have point blank shot and start it round 1. When greater striking runes come into play and longbow overtakes shortbow as best candidate for point blank shot, fighter switches to a longbow.

The gunslinger is better at outputting damage in the mid level ranges with the fatal trait, but that tappers off as the fighter styles just explode in the higher levels.

Overall though I'd say it's pros and cons

Just saw your post Michael, great points overall and I agree.

I'm not in front of comp right now but to Michael's points I'll run the gauntlet excel calc I had going for the magus vs fighter thread and try to work in mechanics on both sides and check out an edge.

I already had the full calc from one to 20 for a shortbow fighter. Adding a gunslinger comparison should be easy.

Also afterwards I'll specify it, but the shortbow shooter has the edge in reactions, because of the reload mechanics the gunslinger is terrible at using s#~$ reactions, where the shortbow user is great at them.

AlastarOG wrote:

@aobst128: I agree about combination weapons, right now they just kinda make me sad.

On the iron gods campaign, one of my players actually fell in love with the idea of a gunsword, but then upon learning it was 2handed and didn't work with quick draw dropped it cause just having a bastard sword was better for her flurry ranger build.

So as a gm I modded it, I made gunsword 1 handed (for melee) and allowed the switch to work with quick draw, and she really likes the feel.

I understand why the balance point came down that way, but sometimes as Gm's we have to allow our players to go SWOOSH SLASH CLICK CLACK PEW PEW PEW without too much hassle.

Wait, why wouldn’t a gun sword work with quick draw? There are no restrictions on the kind of weapons it works with.

I had understood that quick draw would not allow you to switch from the melee to ranged mode on a combination weapon, I could have been wrong.