AndIMustMask's page

Cavalier/Bard focusing on maximizing the banner can honestly be an incredible buffer, and it would be highly thematic.

Also if you want to be a strategist/leader I suggest archetypes that not only let you buff, but that let you share teamwork feats. This way you can change the tide of battle using more than just raw numbers. (Also teamwork feats are highly underrated)

VMC cavalier on a bard or vice-versa is kind of nutty (if you go human to somewhat mitigate the feat losses and are very careful with your choices), especially with an order like dragon

late to the party here, but off the top of my head i'd say anything bard or bard-esque (bard, skald, evangelist cleric, oath of the people's council paladin...)
particularly the divine ones include a lot of party options such as solid spells (cleric) and auras (paladin), so it really depends on how deeply you're trying to go into party buffing, since bard and skald's bardic knowledge lets them go a bit more into the "strategy" aspect you might want.

voodistmonk lists a lot of really helpful numeric increases, but another i'd toss in to consider might be:
Poet's Cloak - skalds get some bard songs (inspire courage and inspire competence as 4th level), bards or bard-likes get a skald song (raging song as 4th level +1 rage power that they have or thats attached to the cloak)--neither advance beyond that, but it's a good bit of added utility earlier on in a campaign.

also iirc the Lingering Performance feat and Memorable trait (quests and campaigns) allow you to triple your song duration in an encounter (if you're not keeping a performance up constantly for allegro or a finale spell)

if it's accidental, they didnt choose to do so :^)

just remember that the book is a person--wants, needs, ambitions and everything. while they might deign to be lugged around as a piece of equipment for a time, they were once someone whom the very heavens shuddered at his name! and they will see their return.

a week late, but a stream of consciousness for you: you could make it as powerful or as weak as you want, just due to whatever mishap caused his material form to be consumed in the ritual may have stunted his previous phenominal cosmic powers. so, he'd have lots of knowledge but no way to really use it--or seek it, since he's a book, and books dont have eyes to read with (blindsense would show pages as just a flat plane, no?).

or perhaps since it was a "bonded" spellbook, he cant use his full power unless he's likewise bonded to someone, so perhaps he's seeking a suitable host to either dominate (intelligent/cursed item has rules for that) or lure into servitude in exchange for his limited powers and expansive knowledge. likely in exchange for [something], such as helping him restore a physical body for himself, possibly involving some grand and needlessly specific ritual with hard-to-find reagents that you'll have to quest for . or in exchange for letting him read new spells or sources of knowledge via the bonded players' senses, because he's just that bored.
failure to do so in a timely enough manner will result in him either witholding his aid, or to attempting to dominate the PC, or to simply abandoning the players to 'flee' during an opportune moment

on the player side, you could sort of treat it like an advanced familiar of sorts (diminutive animated object statblock as a base? idk), with SLAs (maybe use the spell mastery feat as a basis for picking spells as SLAs for him based on his int stat when he was 'alive', perhaps capped by the 'bonded' players' maximum spell level. perhaps have him pick a spell per slot from the spells stored in the book itself? or both?) and a telepathic link to whoever he's working with. or instead of feats, something like the lore oracle power (iirc) to consult with him on a subject for X amount of time for a bonus on the next appropriate lore check you make.
maybe he grants feats like spell focus(necromancy) or skill focus (spellcraft?) or other thematically appropriate bonsues to whoever he's bonded with, like a regular familiar granting alertness etc.
alternatively, you could treat it like a black blade magus class feature that allows it to start weak and scale up in power as it stays bonded and regains his old strength (and perhaps tries to act towards his own interests more often)?

rather than flight, maybe he just has an 'unseen servant' carry him around? perhaps being a sort-of-weak (if rather hard to destroy) book is kind of a huge indignity.

Lelomenia wrote:

Oath of the People’s Council Paladin is literally what you describe; a paladin that gets Bard performance.

Beat me to it.

OATHBOUND PALADIN

OATH OF THE PEOPLE'S COUNCIL

You're a Paladin without Smite Evil (or related abilities), but instead you get Inspire Courage. Pretty much exactly what you're looking for.

Also, if you DO want to do any multiclassing then I think the People's Council Paladin makes a good base for an "Oradin". I can go into that more if you need an explanation.

after taking the time to look more closely at it, this is pretty much everything I was looking for with solid defenses and passable personal offense out of the box as well! provided the DM isn't incredibly restrictive with paladin oaths, I think i'll be settling on this one going forward.

@avr: I'll admit my initial reaction to that suggestion was "what the hell's an omdura", since i've been out of the game for several years at this point. that's a very interesting class though--some sort of quasi-divine-sorcerer with bits and pieces from many of the divine classes. the archetypes make me ask why you arent just playing a cavalier or magus (respectively) though

Lelomenia wrote:

Oath of the People’s Council Paladin is literally what you describe; a paladin that gets Bard performance.

Beat me to it.

glancing it over now that I'm awake, that's pretty darn close to what I was looking for yeah, i'll have to examine more closely in a bit.

@neriathale: I should clarify (having found out a short while ago) that I'll be joining the group on their /ongoing/ campaign, which was described to me as "we're level 3, we just dealt with an underground dungeon" and "we're in a shoddy made goblin fortress" when I texted to get more info on that, so I'm sort of puzzled there (and we might actually be ahead of the curve in terms of level if not wealth? I'm unsure at this point to be honest)

@coidzor: the first example--you would be a fighter 3/-- until the end of 4th level, at which point you'd become a fighter 3/ranger 2 once you hit 5th.

Spell warrior skald to enchant all of the party's weapons?

i'll give that a once-over alongside my d20pfsrd diving

With that kind of restrains a martial characters who rely on magic weapons and armor will be nerfed and monks/primary casters will shine. Archtypes like a Bladebound Kensai Magus will also be better than normally at lower levels.

If you want a level dip, take it now as you will have passed the dead 2. level for free.

those are sort of my worries for the group (and why i'm trying to support them), yeah. and that's true, now would be the time to consider dipping safely.

I should also clarify that I'm not against this campaign setup or anything, I'm just looking to make sure that everyone can enjoy themselves within these constraints while the GM works through any system hesitancy they might have.

I've been invited to an irl game for rise of the runelords, starting at level 3.
...with level 1 starter wealth, citing fears that players would break the game with "too much" money (see: the average expected assets to have your gear/etc up to par for threats of that level).
...similarly, we are also barred from any item creation feats or traits that circumvent the issue of lack of funds (such as signature moves, heirloom weapon, etc).
...and multiclassing is being houseruled as a "dead" level before coming online--so a fighter changing class to ranger would have to act like a ranger for an entire level with no benefits (including base statistics, effectively a level lower for that duration) before being allowed to benefit from their change of vocation. variant multiclassing is also disallowed.

Since every other player I've spoken to or spitballed character ideas on is some manner of melee-oriented character (and a necro wizard), which tend to require gear bonuses to continue hitting and surviving hits and effects, I'm thinking of something along the lines of a bard or paladin--basically just providing as many party buffs in as many fields as possible at once, to try and cover for the defecits.

I'm wondering if there's some sort of bard-ish paladin or paladin-ish bard or other similar setup (evangelist cleric?) available to pick up and just slap as many group buffs as possible at once for the group. I want to make the entire party into supersaiyans, whether they or the GM want them to or not.

Being able to heal would also be a bonus.

general feat at level 1 for everyone, to allow SOME means of player customization outside of the preset class roles (be it branching out or further specializing) from the get-go, rather than waiting till level 4.
save players several weeks/months of real life time to actually get whatever unorthodox or unique aspects of their character established.

pathfinder eberron, good shit

one of the better d20-based ttrpgs my group has played, with a deep level of flexibility and granularity to build exactly the character you envision while keeping them mechanically viable (many systems have the problem that flavorful or unorthodox characters are mechanically weak).

you want to play a human fighter who just graduated from fighter college, greatsword in hand? you can do that.

you want to play a merfolk inquisitor with a shotgun who cooks and eats everything he kills (and some things he doesn't)? then godspeed to you, fishman!

it lets you bring wild and fantastical ideas to the table and enjoy them in a fantasy world, and do so with your friends without feeling like you're not contributing to the physical or narrative challenges presented.

which is my biggest issue with 2E--they seem to have largely sucked all the customization and fantasy from the game mechanically, between tight numbers, taking so long for any level of deviation from cookie-cutters, and an overall lowered ceiling in things you can do or attempt. everything just seems less heroic and more grindy.

exactly the kind of unexpected oversights i don't want to see enter the game during/after it's un-playtested release phase, when everything's set in stone...

Vic Ferrari wrote:

Ki Rush has verbal casting, so you have to make noise as you move to gain concealment?

I mean I think I'm fine with annoying everybody else with "whoosh", "nyoom", or "hyperdrive, engage"

im going to have a phone soundboard with link's rolling shouts from zelda, personally.

I think people are mistaking freedom with a lack of accountability, people are free to make their choices as far as the Paladin is concerned, but once they have made their choices they also have to accept the consequence of them. Simply put, you cannot have freedom without accountability.

you certainly can! you just need to be rich and/or well-connected.

AndIMustMask wrote:

so wait, the wizard is supposed to be the flexible one, and the sorcerer the rigid?

i could have sworn it was supposed to be the other way around, between the wizard needing to choose strict school limits, pre-prepare their spells for the day, and requiring a lengthy process to change that, while the sorcerer can cast what they need as they need it (previously balanced by narrower list and more per day).

i still need to look over the sorcerer changes, but boy, having the other arcane class have equal spells/day, free heightening as they please, a much wider spell base and a fast swapping process, i'm not particularly seeing much incentive to actually choose a sorcerer over a wizard (to say nothing of however it compares to druids/clerics/bards now). it doesn't even seem like a competition.

This has more or less always been the case with the sorcerer regardless of edition. The Sorcerer has always been a test bed for new ideas handicapped from overcaution. Honestly at this point they may as well wrap the arcane sorcerer back into the Wizard and bring back the Mage class. Just have bloodlines be alternatives to Schools. Everything can go Arcanist style casting because unless Paizo sits down and does major work on the Sorcerer. Right now the Sorcerer has to compare against 4 primary spellcasters and its doesn't stack up well against any them.

i really dig the idea of a personal "build-a-caster" class like they're setting the sorcerer up to be this edition--it's just so lackluster in comparison (probably to avoid the possibility of it outshining the base class).

the simplest way would be like with the paladin change: sorc casting types compare to their other spell list peers by simply taking on a different approach/niche with a similar toolkit (though with druid and bard being spontaneous casters as well, there's a bit more difficulty there since theres more direct points of comparison). things like more heightening, more metamagic-ing, things to show their deeper connection with that type of magic in lieu of their peer's tertiary abilities like performances or channelling energy, etc. etc.

I would disagree that liberators can't try to talk someone out of making certain choices. They cannot 1) force someone to act a certain way or 2) threaten someone for not acting a certain way.

That does not seem to preclude attempting to reasonably convince someone not to act a certain way; trying to talk someone out of something is not "forcing" anything.

by being a paladin and telling a necromancer to stop messing with the dead, you are inherently threatening him with punishment or death should he continue, because it is literally your job to do so.

so wait, the wizard is supposed to be the flexible one, and the sorcerer the rigid?

i could have sworn it was supposed to be the other way around, between the wizard needing to choose strict school limits, pre-prepare their spells for the day, and requiring a lengthy process to change that, while the sorcerer can cast what they need as they need it (previously balanced by narrower list and more per day).

i still need to look over the sorcerer changes, but boy, having the other arcane class have equal spells/day, free heightening as they please, a much wider spell base and a fast swapping process, i'm not particularly seeing much incentive to actually choose a sorcerer over a wizard (to say nothing of however it compares to druids/clerics/bards now). it doesn't even seem like a competition.

EDIT: having read the changes now, i stick by my initial statement RE: sorcerers: still pretty much entirely worse than it's peers in almost every field. great job.

that said: digging the alchemist changes pending further investigation, and VERY hopeful about the paladin changes--i can definitely see the flavor you want for the three paths, and LG/defender paladins are the most iconic/"real" paladins of the bunch with smite evil and whatnot, the others also look pretty solid in their approaches.

i also appreciate that you took steps to mitigate the reaction bottleneck on paladins as well (though not till 1/3-1/2 through their career... but thats a systemic problem of the edition, not just for that class specifically)

Apparently Hit Points and DPR are what is most valued by players, not AC and To hit.

to-hit DIRECTLY IMPACTS DPR, and can in fact be more valuable than more damage, especially when increasing in level and enemy defenses skyrocket even further (your DPR is 0 if you can't hit the enemy).

I'd say AC takes a backseat in the endgame as most enemies tend to have powerful magics or completely devastating abilities or rider effects that require huge saves (with the penalty more often than not being death, effectively).

not sure i'm with everything you're saying, but a solid post nonetheless.

especially dig the expanded ancetry feat amount at start and allowance for half-races of everything right out of the box--makes for so many interesting character designs without waiting till level 12! (some may go "oh but the powergamers will just pick the strongest--" they'll always exist and y'all need to just make peace with that).

stamina i could take or leave--it makes repeated encounters less of a meatgrinder (good!), while requiring (along with the weapon damage scaling removal) a massive rework of all existing monsters, as well as complicating healing (bad!)

while i agree that accuracy and crits need a major overhaul (as they're largely just "player punishment" at present), i'm not sure complicating it even further by adding more things to track for the effect gradient is the way to go.

i think that some means of guaranteeing enemy attention does seem to be in order--especially for people like the paladin, who (as of pre-1.6) has basically 0 active abilities and appear to be designed as a "tank" via covering their allies.

currently this basically doesn't work, as their punishments to enemies that ignore them is nonexistent (-5% accuracy and 1 melee attack/turn against a single enemy), and their other means of trying to dissuade enemies from attacking allies in the first place are mutually exclusive and completely worthless against multiple enemies--but this is all secondary.

if paizo plans to follow through with allowing a "tank" niche, they need to very seriously consider how to fit that into the game on both the enemy and player side, since without some means of guaranteeing enemy attention (such as by forced "aggro", intense penalties/debuffs for attacking targets other than the "tank", or other means--the idea of making yourself the biggest target and/or protecting your allies from harm needs to actually be backed up by the mechanics), the entire role goes out the window from the get-go. and unless the player can act on their turn (especially with their class' core gimmick) and know they're having some impact on the fight as their class, it gets boring fast (and raises questions like "if all this is good for is AoOing and positioning to try and get those, why am I not just playing a fighter?"). especially if you're trying to groom an entire class for that role.

Mathmuse wrote:

Mats Öhrman wrote:

Vidmaster7 wrote:

So maybe like turn a lot of utility spells into rituals using the skill tree's maybe?

Have rituals been touched at all in the playtest? Any groups found them useful in the scenarios, any surveys asked about them? Any discussions on the forum? Any playtesting at all?

Otherwise, if they are looking for something that can be cut to make room for stuff that are actually used...

(Not really fair to compare, but rituals in our 4E campaign were unused and a dead weight until my GM cut casting time *severely* and we got to a level where monetary costs were negligible.)

All rituals in the Playtest Rulebook take a day to cast, except for the one that takes three days, so they don't fit into the playtest adventures. Really, no downtime activities are being tested in Doomsday Dawn.

There should probably be shorter rituals that take hours instead of days. The idea that rituals are only downtime actions limits their possibility. And the fact that nothing about downtime was tested at all means there was no data about them at all.

i actually wouldn't mind some of the longer duration buffs to be good couple-hour ritual candidates, especially for some of the lower leveled ones like mage armor. it'd really take a bit of stress off deciding those precious three (or so) spells per level for the day.

agreed there--some internal consistency should be enforced on both, to the same level.

if your spell can meteor-strike an entire city to ash, i can to cleave a mountain with my sword, etc. etc.

Can I give a "hear hear" for the idea of Barbarians having a "transmute wall to door" high level feat? :D

or we could bring back sunder and actually make use of the hardness/dents system for something other than shields or emergency force spheres...

I'm really hoping those "major changes" for the Paladin don't include non-Lawful Good Paladins.

or some active means of prventing people from harming their allies, if paizo is trying to shift them into the "tank" role.

I'm not sure I could even tell you what the rituals do without looking it up, let alone how to use them. It hasn't been a topic of conversation at our table at all.

well, yeah. they're tucked away in the book, and nothing's really mentioned them playtest-wise to really spark much interest.

Vidmaster7 wrote:

So maybe like turn a lot of utility spells into rituals using the skill tree's maybe?

Have rituals been touched at all in the playtest? Any groups found them useful in the scenarios, any surveys asked about them? Any discussions on the forum? Any playtesting at all?

Otherwise, if they are looking for something that can be cut to make room for stuff that are actually used...

in the case of animal companions we were shown "lack of survey data about it must mean it's fine right" (since i expect many people have been avoiding pet classes due to their overall extreme action clunk, hard-to-find rules entry, and terrible scaling), so unless they really implement rituals into something that everyone tests so that people can properly complain to their main source of accepted feedback, it'll probably be completely unchanged.

DM_aka_Dudemeister wrote:

The problem of limited spell slots and nerfed utility spells is that it makes it very hard to justify a 1st level slot on something like Unseen Servant. Not when you could prep a Burning Hands in that slot. Those spells are not equivalent in any way.

It’s weird seeing the design team understand that you can’t just use a single resource pool for combat and utility by separating out skill feats and general feats, but then completely miss it in combat spells vs utility spells and the utility spells are all but useless in exploration mode.

Indeed; the survey could have done with some questions about the balance between attack/control/buff/utility and encounter/exploration/downtime when it comes to magic.

i mean, if they want 2E to be a 4E-style tabletop tactics game with minis, that's perfectly fine with me--it'd jsut be nice if they'd openly advertise it as such and not beat around the bush.

The problem of limited spell slots and nerfed utility spells is that it makes it very hard to justify a 1st level slot on something like Unseen Servant. Not when you could prep a Burning Hands in that slot. Those spells are not equivalent in any way.

It’s weird seeing the design team understand that you can’t just use a single resource pool for combat and utility by separating out skill feats and general feats, but then completely miss it in combat spells vs utility spells and the utility spells are all but useless in exploration mode.

especially for unseen servant itself--the devs were very unkind to our invisible friend.

I like the choice of uestions for magic items survey. They were spot-on for the most part. Spells I would have liked more about spell durations and utility.

agreed there

I spent the last six years running a campaign with characters that reached level 20.

The main problem with high level spellcasting lies mostly with martials rather than the spells themselves. Martials get little to no narrative power beyond just stabbing or shooting things.

While the feat system helps, martials still get hosed. Most of them don't get any abilities that help them outside of combat. All characters get the same number of feats and class features as they level up, but spellcasters get spells ontop of that while martials (except the rogue) get nothing in return except for the proficiencies they got at 1st level.

The survey doesn't even consider any this and has way too many leading questions.

preaching to the choir there man (contains a nested post as well), i've been talking about martials needing some Thing of their own (that MUST NOT be a feat tax or other cost, as that defeats the entire purpose) on top of class abilities/feats to push them into the same ballpark as casters since shortly after the playtest started.

EDIT: it occurs to me how thunder-stealing that came across, which isnt the intention! it's just great to see someone else on the same wavelength.

Ugh! Even the surveys have impenetrable, dense, hard to comprehend language like the rules do.

I've read this question 3 times and still don't know what it actually means "21. The examples above use "Casting," but the text could instead use the verb-form action name. Which do you most prefer?"

is there a survey glossary which contains "verb-form action name" listed?

there were a few questions in the presentation survey that made me do a triple-take to try and understand what they were trying to ask as well, yeah.

AndIMustMask wrote:

Quote:

In the coming months, the playtest will draw to a close, and there will be no additional public updates to the rules while we focus on making changes to the game.

and there it is, my worst fears realized.

so we'll just have to hope and pray that whatever alterations they make post 1.6 aren't completely nonfunctional or over-/undertuned-and-requiring-another-book-purchase to correct, because by the time we see it to test things it'll already be set in stone.

If the changes keep going until the surveys close, and keep their current update schedule, we should get to like 1.9.

That being said, at some point they have to stop giving us updates and make the final product. That isn't an unreasonable thing to do, it's just how it works.

I suppose I'm just mistrustful towards any "closed doors" devving from paizo at this point, since the last edition went seven entire years with three core classes being garbage pretty much from top to bottom. EDIT: for this edition i'm especially worried about the alchemist and paladin, but as those were specifically mentioned, i will remain hopeful for the time being on that topic. not so sure on things like druid requiring wasted stats for wildshape that don't actually apply to wildshape at all (they just determine the pool, since shapes have fixed bonuses).

I dread the thought of some odd contradiction added without outside testing suddenly completely breaking a class and then being met with "nope it's already in print nothing that can be done--can we interest you in a $30+ purchase that has a character tax to skirt around that?" again (hey there shadow strike feat tax, for when we broke the rogue entirely by altering the concealment rules for light levels).

that kind of neglectful marketing is exactly the kind of thing i want to be wrong in predicting

In the coming months, the playtest will draw to a close, and there will be no additional public updates to the rules while we focus on making changes to the game.

and there it is, my worst fears realized.

so we'll just have to hope and pray that whatever alterations they make post 1.6 aren't completely nonfunctional or over-/undertuned-and-requiring-another-book-purchase to correct, because by the time we see it to test things it'll already be set in stone.

monsters getting more deadly, players getting weaker (and there's just so few things the players can DO or BE now...), people starting to fail at previously basic everyday tasks with alarming regularity, previously ubiquitous magics and constructs being suddenly lost to the ages in the span of a years rather than millenia...

we really do look like we're going from morrowind to skyrim.

my general understanding:
"does it mess with PFS in any way"
yes = uncommon
no = common (until someone uses it to mess with PFS, since encounter design is rather hit or miss for paizo official)

personally i expected multiclassing with the current system to be more like 4e's (i mean we've got the level-striped sets of 'powers' to choose from), where it just wholesale trades out some class feats from the base class for some class feats from the multiclass/archetype (say, losing the animal companion ranger abilities but gaining some paladin mount ones instead), and perhaps swapping a core class feature for one from the other source.

by making hybrids/VMCs/archetypes more modular like that, you could just print one set and have multiple classes access that (the class simply listing what class feats/ability they trade when archetyping/multiclassing), and really double down on 2E's whole "build your own class" angle.

EDIT: which, thinking on it, is already the case really--just on a one-for-one basis rather than a package deal upfront. i just feels sort of... clunky? lackluster? presently.

could be helpful to give them more accurate playtest data

my personal dislike is how late you get to actually interact with it, since if you want to play some odd variant of say, ranger, or a combo-class with multiclassing (something that pathfinder as a brand prided itself on allowing), you're not actually playing anything different than the generic base class (and therefore the unique character you thought up and sat down to play) until level 2-4 which can be a hefty real-life time investment.

i've discussed the topic at length before, so i'll avoid just dumping a repeat here on the topic.

Hythlodeus wrote:

Don't worry. The game itself does a really good job reminding everyody that it is not really Pathfinder. I'm sure nobody forgets that, despite the misleadinding Pathfinder 2 title

You're completely right. You're so completely correct that you've helped me decide that I shouldn't buy a Chevrolet Cobalt because it really isn't a Chevrolet since Chevrolet is obviously only the Corvette...

I'm kinda shocked that this post wasn't taken down as it has absolutely nothing to do with the original post, and also comes off a very passive aggressive way at trying to insult the developers and what they're wanting to do. And to question why some people are trying to claim that Paizo is attempting to "censor their criticism".

i think a more fair comparison would be being reminded that you're trading a beat-up volkswagen for a horse-and-buggy advertised as a car.

i mean, it's technically also a wheeled vehicle, and it'll get you there, but certainly not any faster or more comfortably. and i mean hey, you can see them building some sort of chassis around the horse, so there's promise there for later, even if you can see them getting tangled in the rigging right now.

(late to the party here) @OP:
shouldn't the system be informed by and build off what came before? especially with a playerbase that's become accustomed to the level of individual/horizontal customization in the first edition (which was the whole selling point of the system, and basically what the company advertised as), shouldn't 2E seek to improve upon the good or well-received ideas there before?

And with the official adventures set in the PF1E world, and stated as supposed to be able to tell the roughly same stories (the runelords are in some dire straits atm, hoo boy), people are going to compare the two, just as people are going to compare it with DnD 5E, because both are recent and popular and a great many people enjoy them. 2E doesn't (and shouldn't) exist in a vacuum, and that can't really be ignored.

short answer: no

long answer: noooooooooooooooo--
as (at least currently) the game's numeric balance is set in such a way that it assumes a certain level of player wealth/equipment when confronting a given threat (be it DCs or attacks/defenses/saves), based on your level. there are solutions or workarounds to this, but with the core gameplay loop being [face challenges] -> [acquire loot] -> [power up] -> [face greater challenge], and circled by [story], there's a lot of work involved in trying to fix that if any of those core steps is messed with. so walking around with a character who hasn't had access to the [power up] step in the loop is not going to contribute as expected for a given challenge.

there's the old faq/errata questions thread, and mankind's oldest method: prayer

tivadar27 wrote:

Umm, no, not really in my experience. When *a fighter* has approximately a 50% chance (maybe 60%) to hit an enemy on a first attack in something they're specialized in, you're looking at a random person picking up a bow having around a 30-40% chance or less, while only criticalling on a 20. Not to mention, if it's a non-magical bow at higher levels, it's pretty much worthless... Despite "level to everything" the numbers are so tight in PF2 that you *need* that +4 to hit bonus or else you're going to be pretty ineffective.

50% chance if you are fighting a monster of equal level.

PF2e is fairly clearly built on the assumption that the majority of your encounters will be against multiple creatures lower level than you - in which case you are hitting much more reliably - or single creatures of your level - in which case action economy is in your favor enough that a 50% miss chance is fine.

Keep in mind that Doomsday Door is an overspecced, intentionally brutal module that shouldn't be representative of what typical challenges in an Adventure Path will be.

EDIT: It's also fairly unfair to assume that the person who is building their character as an archer won't have a magical bow.

i dunno, assuming any level of wealth/gear is nebulous at best--particularly when someone gets the words "low magic" into their heads (not realizing the entire system is built off that assumption).

The new system is bad and the timeline of 1 year is nonsense when its really 8 months unless they extend the release. I cant get my group get characters down because the system is so watered down.

try starting at level 4:

it's like you're really playing a level 1 PF1 character/adventure now!