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Also consider Gestalt rules, free archetype rules, or even simply giving the ancestry test that gives you 2 free skills and a bonus lore as a bonus feat. All three of those can help fill out gaps in a characters ability to meet challenges.


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I have some experience with this, as it is my favorite way to playtest, as it stretches the base assumptions of the game’s math to the breaking point without actually breaking them. An interesting quirk about the system is that a solo character is challenged as it were a full party of PCs 3 levels below their current level. So if you play a character that is level 4, and level 1 adventure is appropriate for them to solo, with some caveats:

1. Avoid save or die effects. Even with the inherent advantage to rolling here, one unlucky roll can end the adventure.
2. Skill challenges are extra challenging. Considering giving a hero point as an additional reward anytime a hero successfully completes one. I also end to use NPC hirelings for downtime rolls.

Remember, grant XP as if it were a PC of the correct party level instead of one 3 levels higher. Even if an NPC would normally be too low to grant any XP, like a -1NPC against a level 4 PC, while soloing you count as a party at level 1, and gain the XP for a creature 2 levels below you instead of 5.

The “one unlucky roll” also means later written adventures tend to work better than the early ones. My solos died hideously almost immediately in Plaguestone and Age of Ashes. I have used solo characters successfully on the beginners box, some of Abomination Vaults, the first volume of Season of Ghosts (it was extremely fun to run my friend on his animist through that), and the mini-adventures in Dark Archive which I played as a mini campaign.


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I read this differently than many of you. I don't think the undead are rising from every grave. They're potentially rising from every grave though, because the being that controlled undeath is no longer at the helm and it is just going off willy nilly.

[quoteNot all, but some, begin to turn without a necromancer’s aid, and stagger from their resting places trying to fill their hunger. Without Urgathoa to lend some order to the chaos, some dead stay locked inside their graves, while others now reanimate with no real rhyme or reason, rising from their tombs and slowly crawling off battlefields, horrified and terrified and sometimes all too eager to see what unholy agenda their new bodies can pursue.

This is the key section for my take. Under Urgotha, necromantic energy could be controlled. Channeled. Directed. Without her, it just happens, and can happen anywhere. It can't be stopped because there's simply not enough magic to stop it everywhere. It also sounds like the deliberate creation of undead is no longer reliable (some dead stay locked inside their graves).


Sanityfaerie wrote:

Things I notice...

These look like kineticists, as much as anything. They keep throwing around elemental effects, anyway. If they're not kineticists, then the story suggests something that branches easily out of Monk.

Being a cultivator pretty clearly increases lifespan significantly... which suggests that it might be a mythic archetype? So "cultivator" might be in an upcoming book that isn't specifically about Tian Xia.

I'm not sure if you are unaware of this, but for anyone that is reading that is unfamiliar with the term, "cultivator" in this usage most often refers specifically to "cultivating" immortality.

I bring this up because your phrasing makes it sounds like the extended lifespan is a rather neat side-effect, when it is usually the entire point.

Also though, yes, it's certainly possible for it to also be a Mythic path of some sort in WoI.


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AnimatedPaper wrote:
KaiBlob1 wrote:
AnimatedPaper wrote:
Isn't War of Immortals set to be a 1-20? I thought I recalled that as part of the announcement, but it could be my assumptions running away with me.
War of Immortals is a sourcebook, not an adventure
During the WoI announcement, when they were mentioning how all product lines will tie into the event, wasn't it mentioned that the AP portion would be 1-20? I thought I recalled hearing that, but it's been a while.

So I was incorrect.

I’m actually less than thrilled about that. I have no objections to adventure paths becoming whatever length they’re required to be as an actual policy going forward, and 6 parters being a very rare exception, but the combination of both the remaster and WoI “event” I thought would be a reason to make that exception.

Perhaps they still are, with the AP after the opera. And pushing it out to that point would give everyone a little more time to fully set and then become familiar with the remaster. But either way I clearly either misheard or misremembered what I heard.


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The Raven Black wrote:
magnuskn wrote:
Deriven Firelion wrote:
Rise of the Runelords update and Wrath of the Righteous with playable mythic rules would get my money.
Emphasis on "playable". ^^
Keeping my fingers crossed for the PF2 version of Mythic Rules that will arrive soon.

Hard to believe we’re a bit less than 6 months from having those in hand.


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Love this story. Great way to introduce some basic cultural concepts that westerners might not be familiar with.

Easl wrote:
Geez ladies, do the countryside a favor and channel that tension into a "who can qi up the best water garden" or "most beautiful castle" competition next time!

Not sure that would help. I’ve seen what happens with a suburban retiree with a competing urge and a (real or imagined) talent at beautification.

Tremble children, and pray you are not destroyed in the pursuit of “Best Christmas Lights” or the perfect bake sale sponge cake.

And Golarian has access to Alchemy, so who knows where THAT would lead.


I've had it for about 1 week and a half, so they have been shipping out.


I’m a little surprised at how many seem to be surprised at how Fury Totem (later Instinct) came to be written the way it was. They were pretty open about it during the design process. It is even alluded to in both the playtest document and final version of the class that Fury is the one you pick if you don’t want to bother with anathema.

I didn’t follow all the iterations of the playtest too closely, but I do note that originally all totems/instincts had the same rage damage, so they weren’t as far apart in that first draft. Which suggests I was wrong about the weakest damage being tied to the lack of a theme. Maybe due to disparate damage types? Seems like a relatively easy thing to boost, in any case, probably as Teridax suggests.


ElementalofCuteness wrote:
It is just one of those silly things Paizo put in class design which will probably be changing in PF3. It doesn't really work on casters since which caster is actually going to use a weapon outside potentially Animist, Warrior-Muse Bard & War-Priest Cleric? I can see those 3 classes getting weapon specialization vsa a Sorcerer, Witch & Wizard.

Holding out hope for a class archetype that gives all full casters Warpriest proficiencies.

Not sure if I’d include kineticists in that, but the thought is intriguing.


arcady wrote:
Just being 'Mr. Furious' ought to have the best baseline damage as what it gets for not having any other theme - yet it's the weakest one.

For the record, the lack of theming is supposed to be the primary benefit of Fury Instinct. That's also why it has the weakest bonus.


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I tell people whenever I get the chance, but my specific suggestion if you do this is to move the graveyard scene from the middle of Book 1, chapter 2 to a night or two after the end of the beginner box. The new "town heroes" would naturally be called on to help a random uprising of the undead, and this strange beam of light gives them a reason to go to the ruins.

Makes for a neatly cohesive story if the "thrown right at the entrance" way AV was written doesn't work for you.


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Karmagator wrote:
Evan Tarlton wrote:
The PF release probably won't be that big. It almost certainly won't have a playtest, because we're going to do that for SF2.
I wouldn't bet on that. They obviously respect it when the other team does a playtest for one month, but an entire year? Especially when only part of the PF2 community will be involved? I find that very unlikely. If there isn't a playtest involved somewhere, it'll be because they didn't plan on doing one anyway.

Right, but I would guess that they don't plan on doing a playtest, or at least not a class playtest, during that period. They seem to be very resource intensive, and I would assume some of the load is going to be picked up by the PF2 design team (who obviously would have a lot to contribute, given their experience in designing for the basic game engine).

I'm not going to claim it would be easy without more information on their internal processes, but it would not be unrealistic to schedule three rulebooks in a row that do not introduce new classes. Like, say, something focusing on Golarian underdark. I think there would be enough interest in that to hold down the Gencon 2025 rulebook slot without needing a class in it. If the Fall 2024 and Spring 2025 rulebooks were the much requested Abomination, Dragon, or Fey focused supplement and another book remastering the remaining 6 classes, I think we'd not feel neglected.


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dirkdragonslayer wrote:
Will we get an adventure path about trying to stop the Sekmin from restoring their headless god king?

Just as info, Serpent's Skull has that as a plot.

I think it could be revisited, but ideally it would incorporate that failure into its plot line.


Thank you Xenocrat for correcting me. I had forgotten some of that.


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Jacob Jett wrote:
The thing is, we really don't need the kind of rules bloat being discussed elsewhere in this thread. Like why wouldn't runes work with technology? That's not an assumption a lot of modern urban fantasy actually take. Heck, it doesn't even work that way in things like Star Wars. Why are we doing so much mental gymnastics for something that could be so simple?

Because in pathfinder, weapons mostly don't have levels higher than 0, and so runes are there to provide the damage scaling that a higher level item would normally have. Starfinder weapons do have higher level versions of their baseline (not all of which start at level 0 or 1), making fundamental runes redundant.

Different game, different assumptions about item progression. We'll have the chance to vote an discuss this during the playtest. If they get a lot of feedback that the rune system is better than scaling weapons, they'll probably use runes in the final version.


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Jacob Jett wrote:

That would be quite sufficient to write some distinguishing game rules. (And yeah, as someone with an electrical engineering background, I'm going to say that not only is it not technically correct to call an axe analog, it's also vacuously idiotic. Like of course the axe doesn't use electricity. Why would it? So I'm left with, what was the point of this trait?)

Both Powered and Analog should be traits. And "Analog" as a trait is useful for any ability or mechanic that interacts with analog weapons, as that one word is easier and clearer to write out than "Weapons without the powered trait".

Think of it as the number of hands a weapon uses. They could have simply used 1+ and 2, leaving 1 as the assumed default with no entry there, but specifying 1 handed weapons are 1 handed gives them a bucket to be sorted into.


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Just…no. I mean this in the least condescending way possible, but you have a bunch of assumptions about starfinder 2e where the developers have already said there might be changes.

My advice is for you to step back and assume the majority of starfinders mechanics are not hanging around, most especially the class designs. We simply don’t know enough about how even the playtest versions of the classes will look like to see if there’s going to significant overlap between PF2 and SF2 classes. And that “we” includes the developers, as they aren’t even finished writing those classes out yet.

Edit: and then also check out the starfinder forum where the playtest is being teased. That’ll help answer your questions, or at least give you better questions to ask.

https://paizo.com/community/forums/starfinder/secondEditionPlaytest


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What exactly are you trying to ask about?

If you are looking for the exact, PF2 version of a Rougaru ancestry, then it does not exist and as far as we know, won't soon.

If you are looking for ways to play one until such a conversion is put into the system, then Beastkin or Werecreatures will suit. Otherwise, I expect Rougaru to come along whenever they do a Lost Omens Arcadia supplement.


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If those aren’t in the upcoming Tian Xia books, I wouldn’t expect them at all.


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Ryangwy wrote:
Honestly if the Alchemist isn't able to be the dedicated bomber class, we should just have one, separately. Master bombs on the martial track.

I had a wild thought that an inventor innovation might work.

Certainly explosives, chemicals, and explosive chemicals should be right in that wheelhouse.


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AnimatedPaper wrote:
Given the similar mechanical underpinnings of both games, they can probably expend a little more effort after that is finished to file the serial numbers off for use in Pathfinder. Might even be something to the idea of running overlapping playtests for both game versions, to get complimentary feedback from different slightly player bases and system assumptions.

To expand on this guess, I don't expect to see a Pathfinder class playtest at all for the 2024 - 2025 season. I would assume any extra resources that would go to that will be used up by the Starfinder playtest. I think we might see something like a ship combat system or a similar, serial number filed off subsystem playtest, so that the Pathfinder team can do some of the lifting without losing ground on their own design targets.


KaiBlob1 wrote:
AnimatedPaper wrote:
Isn't War of Immortals set to be a 1-20? I thought I recalled that as part of the announcement, but it could be my assumptions running away with me.
War of Immortals is a sourcebook, not an adventure

Okay, sure. I'll restate my question.

During the WoI announcement, when they were mentioning how all product lines will tie into the event, wasn't it mentioned that the AP portion would be 1-20? I thought I recalled hearing that, but it's been a while.

I guess we'll find out more details at Paizocon.


Isn't War of Immortals set to be a 1-20? I thought I recalled that as part of the announcement, but it could be my assumptions running away with me.


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Sanityfaerie wrote:
Basically every way of connecting existing content to Arcadia talks about the long, dangerous overseas voyages necessary to get there... and the fact that we've been racking up undersea ancestries (and the existence of the Firebrands book) is one of the reasons that I'm expecting we'll see an oceanic adventures book of some sort soonish. It's kind of like how including centaurs and minotaurs makes Iblydos more likely rather than less.

Another potential brick, but they are actively working on a ship combat subsystem for Starfinder 2e. Given the turbulent reception all iterations of those systems have been received so far, I would expect they will be putting a LOT of effort into making it as interesting as possible.

Given the similar mechanical underpinnings of both games, they can probably expend a little more effort after that is finished to file the serial numbers off for use in Pathfinder. Might even be something to the idea of running overlapping playtests for both game versions, to get complimentary feedback from different slightly player bases and system assumptions.


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First off, thank you Yuri for saying all that. I wanted to chime in with much the same thoughts, but was afraid that I would come off as peeing in everyone's cheerios.

Because I have to agree, none of the remasters so far fundamentally changed the design intent of any of the classes, just more fully enabled the intended playstyles. So I don't think the alchemist will wind up, after remaster, as a class that pulls stupidly powerful tricks out of its alchemy bag, but instead will still be the class that is extremely efficient at crafting alchemical items at little to no cost (either time or gold), as well as being a general multitool and vending machine.

Which is why I keep suggesting we have another class that uses alchemy. I don't think there's any reason why they couldn't make a class that makes alchemical items that rival a spell of the same relative level, I just don't expect it to happen on the alchemist.

I'd love to be proven wrong on that, of course. There's 10 abilities on the alchemist chassis; 7 of which make crafting alchemical items from your reagents more efficient, and 3 increase the power or utility of those same items. Reverse that ratio, and I think there would be quite a few players made a lot happier, and it might not require as many new words or time as more comprehensive redesign.


Looks like there's several APs where the second book picks up at level 5, so there's more options than I thought. Ruins of Guantlight could easily be moved to this area, but my brain keeps locking into "The Show Must Go On" (book 1 of extinction curse). The idea of going from a circus act to guards amuses me more than it probably should.

Agents of Edgewatch 1, if moved to Oparra, might also make a lot of sense.


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As for the actual question, I'd honestly love to see an aquatic sourcebook announced. It was one of the "throw everything at the wall to see what sticks" guesses. With a combat system that transitions between ship to ship or fleet to fleet combat, but then also moves into boarding actions and person to person combat.


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Laclale♪ wrote:
Cyder wrote:
More stuff for Starfinder 2e.
Class play test, perhaps?

I don’t think an actual playtest, with the questionnaires and full solicitation of feedback, is too likely. Not that close to the already scheduled playtest.

That said, just releasing a full class as a field note and letting as go nuts sounds plausible.


Sy Kerraduess wrote:

You ask what would happen, and therefore I answer: this would happen.

... On a more serious note, you would have to decide what happens with Additional Lore, since it has no prerequisites and is infinitely repurchaseable.

Maybe you get additional (and autoscaling) lores instead of skill feats at every even level?


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Sanityfaerie wrote:
- HotW is a thing, and (as far as I'm aware) we haven't yet seen anything that it's laying bricks for.

Not to take away from your larger post, but to respond to this directly, the Wardens of the Wildwood AP, coming out in between Sandpoint and War of the Immortals, will presumably utilize at least some of HotW.

https://paizo.com/products/btq02ev4/discuss?Pathfinder-Adventure-Path-201-P actbreaker#tabs

Edit: That said, no reason to assume that is the only thing it is laying bricks for. Might be, but also might not be.

Edit edit: Aaron's post speculating that players will use Howl for this AP


Beginner Box to Troubles in Otari would work.

I would guess that the players guide will have other suggestions.


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So, my question is, do people want the alchemist to be a martial? Because thinking critically about what the class gives and does not give, I do not think that is the intended role of the alchemist's design (please note, this is purely my opinion and conjecture, not a definitive statement). I think it is meant to be a spell less caster, and damn near satisfied me as a pseudo kineticist. Honestly I prefer it to the kineticist in some ways, not least because it is far simpler in design. But whatever the intention was, the real intent was "make a class that's fun to play" and I think it falls short in several ways.

-Party dependent - They have to be willing to use their actions to make you useful.
-Action cost - Action costs are a bit too high for the impact of their effects
-(related) Lack of Oomph - As Yuri points out, alchemy items usually have low impact for their level, making big moments for the class harder to acheive
-Chip damage as a major damage component - I like this, and have advocated it more than once, but I am clearly in the minority on this.
-Resource hog - particularly at low levels with no "cantrip" like abilities to fill in the gap
-Splash - it's weird. Less weird now, but still.
-Melee dependent - if I'm right and the alchemist was intended to be a front line caster, then it is far more reliant on melee strikes and doing interact actions while in melee than it really should be.
-Bad at firearms - canonically, they invented firearms. And they are quite possibly the single worst class at actually using the damn things. Wizards can beat them now.

These are all solvable problems, and re-tuning the class to be a martial would admittedly solve most of them. But still, I would not prefer that. I like the intention of the class as is, and want the designers to make the vending machine interesting to play, whatever that takes. I have ideas, and have posted them elsewhere, but as most are directly opposed to the direction most of you want I won't derail by going over them again.

I will say that I would still love to see an alchemist martial designed from the ground up, which would probably incorporate many of the things people have asked for in this thread. We see some of it on the gunslinger and investigator (and the thaumaturge gives me ideas too), but I want alchemy use to be centered, not options. Something like a bound caster, but using alchemy.


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Honestly I'm not sure we would have had these core books either if they hadn't also decided to reorganize and redo the layout of three of the books. That seems to be what really drove making a new core set, not just the ORC compliance. If it had just been the ORC license, errata (and a new reprint) might have been enough for those books as well.


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I expect that Errata will cover most of the update to ORC. I think it’s possible that classes might get reprinted into a new book in a remastered version (how likely is the magic question of course), and a handful of feats and other options, but generally I assume the books will just be quietly updated instead of reissued.


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Erik Mona wrote:

Also I want to make really really clear that we have NO Casmaron Lost Omens book in development, and my current project is more an attempt to gather all of the lore we have already leaked out and try to make sure that it fits to a cohesive plan, so that when we finally DO schedule a Casmaron book, that critical research phase will have already been completed.

Until that happens, it's frankly impossible to slate a book like this in, because the pre-work is just too intense. Frankly, this is the kind of info-gathering/connection-making task that I enjoy working on in my free time, so as the person who invented most of Casmaron originally and the person who has been loosely tracking its development from the beginning, it makes sense for me to take the lead on gathering what we already know.

Just wanted to chime in and thank you for this tidbit of how these books are created. Learning more about your processes is always fascinating.


Perpdepog wrote:
3-Body Problem wrote:
I'm not convinced any of this will be better than that same Fighter using those 2 actions to attack one foe twice or two foes once each.
And what's that got to do with Kelseus' post? They're not arguing that a spell will do better than a fighter hitting someone twice, they're pointing out how a spell slot does more average damage than a focus spell.

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

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


To add to what Captain Morgan says, PF Easy tools is your friend.

Unicore wrote:
Maybe not if the next big push is into the mythic/god killing stuff, but it might be the case that folks want to be able to dial back down from that epic fantasy after it has gotten published.

Actually, that sounds kind of cool. Perhaps a 2 to 4 book AP at high levels as a follow up to the War of Immortals, but then after something distinctly low powered and local stakes, like Outlaws of Alkenstar.


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Sandal Fury wrote:
When I was making my fighter, I almost took the Dragon Spit feat. I just thought it would be pretty cool and fun to be a fire-breathing samurai. Thank goodness I picked something else, or I'd be stuck with a useless feat, barring retraining. The more I play this game, the more it feels like "fun" doesn't seem to factor into the equation.

They did just boost innate cantrips, FTR.

Your proficiency increases to expert at level 12 now, unless you'd get there faster via a spell casting class. p299 of the player core


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Trip.H wrote:
AnimatedPaper wrote:
I would also like to see level 0 alchemy items, items that can be made using Quick Alchemy but consumes no reagents, so that they can have “cantrips” right from the start.
That could double up with the idea of the Alch specializations getting X Lvl Additives as math fixers.

Actually, yes. The couple of bombs like this that I homebrewed were “1 damage, 0 splash, and on crit 0 bleed damage” with the idea that feats or anything else that added to bleed or splash would do so normally, just starting at 0. So your idea would work well with that.


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Shisumo wrote:
Honestly, I think the model for how the swashbuckler should handle panache is the magus. There are lots of really good reasons to compare recharging spellstrike and gaining panache and, while the action economy can be kind of tricky sometimes, the magus's version of the system works pretty well, all in all. If all it takes is spending an action to get panache, and each subclass gets a different kind of action they can combine with getting panache, then you've solved most of the inherent problems with how panache is gained and used.

To be honest, I think that’s what they were trying for in the first place, so yeah I would also expect that to b close to were they land.

“Terridax” wrote:
The other half to this I think is that despite the class putting lots of emphasis on their skills, their finishers are very Rogue-ish in that they're mostly just a chunk of extra precision damage. It may help to change finishers up a bit so that panache can be used to supercharge skill actions for increased reliability and effectiveness. I wrote a separate thread about reworking the Swash, and unless I'm missing something critical, it could be interesting for panache to be used to bump up the degree of success of certain actions, whether it be Strikes, skill actions, or other actions unique to the class.

I would definitely love to see that, at least as feat options.


I expect them to have the same proficiencies a a warpriest, post remaster, given that they were the only ones with those specific proficiencies pre remaster.

I could be wrong though. Perhaps the bound caster chassis would suit the alchemist better. In that case, I would expect a class ability that removes splash on bombs but adds Fatal or Deadly to those items, so that the math works closer to other weapons.

Actually, that might be an interesting addition if you could choose on the fly which way to go. Would let you gain the extra damage of Fatal or Deadly when fighting enemies around your level or lower, but give you splash damage as a fallback option to let you deal chip damage to bosses.

I would also like to see level 0 alchemy items, items that can be made using Quick Alchemy but consumes no reagents, so that they can have “cantrips” right from the start.


Then we’re back to “get rid of the class” territory, and I agree with those that say that’s not on the table.

The swashbuckler is an interesting class to me, as its narrative concept is amply handled by other, existing classes (possibly because Rogue, Fighter, and Ranger are overly broad in the concepts they try to handle), so instead it offers new mechanics to accomplish it: heavy interaction with skills mid-combat, so that its round is a mix of skill actions and (effectively) flourish strikes.

It sounds like the problem lies in the skill action half of that. Given that is the entire point of the class, I don’t think it’s going away. So what would make it more worthwhile? Does the finisher need to exceed the potential damage of its action cost plus 1 skill action?


I think fighters can be the exception and should *not* have encounter powers on their class.

All other martials, yes. Please in fact. But I like that fighters occupy the “relatively uncomplicated gameplay” niche, and wouldn’t want them to pick those up.

Besides, there’s archetypes aplenty that they could pick up to get encounter powers if the player chooses. That I have no objection to, I just would prefer them not to be part of the baseline fighter or on any of its class feats.


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Just annoyed at people responding to me as if I had said something completely different than what I actually said. Gets a bit tedious.

My comment referenced a meme from several years ago about twitter, though I often think about it here:

Quote:

Twitter the only place where well articulated sentences still get misinterpreted.

You can say "I like pancakes" and somebody will say "So you hate waffles?"
No [ smurf ]. Dats a whole new sentence. Wtf is you talking about.

Probably best for me to continue taking a forum break. Stuff that I should just shrug off is more annoying than it ought to be.


I'm fairly certain I don't have any posts saying "I hate waffles", but maybe it's somewhere in my post history.


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Sandal Fury wrote:
There's nothing inherently magical about "focus." No reason classes couldn't gain non-magical maneuvers and abilities that use focus points, too.

Yes and no. There's nothing inherently magical about the concept of focus, as TMS more eloquently argues than me, but the way the system is written in PF2 it is explicitly magical. Like I said, I would rather they had done otherwise, or had just leaned a little further into the magical dressing and called them "mana" point instead of focus (which would allow them to retroactively apply an in game meaning to the word and make "Mana Wastes" as a name make more sense), but it's all water under the bridge now.


I truly do miss inspiration. I played a sleuth that added either that or luck to almost everything, it was great. I totally get how the mechanic is not within PF2s paradigm, so I'm not actually asking or hoping for it to return, but I still miss it.


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Staffan Johansson wrote:
AnimatedPaper wrote:
I think the Unstable trait on the inventor was an attempt at this. Unstable abilities certainly seem to be on par with focus spells.

Perhaps, but Unstable is kind of unreliable. I was thinking more along the lines of Tome of Battle-style maneuvers or 4e-style encounter powers, where the martial has some abilities that just work, but are balanced by frequency of use.

For example, Disarm is a really weak action, because if you could keep disarming your foe with just a skill action, that would lead to degenerate situations where you just keep disarming and they have to keep picking up their weapons, and that's kind of silly. But if you had a 1/encounter ability that was something like "Disarming strike" that let you make either an attack roll or an Athletics check against your opponent's Reflex DC and on a success they drop their weapon, that'd be a Cool Thing without being degenerate.

Right, but why not just make them focus spells at that point? Attach some kind of non magical trait if it helps, but you have a working point based format with established power levels ready to be used, why not just use that?

To be candid, I had assumed when focus spells were initially pitched to us that this was in fact their intent. And that the choice to use "focus point" instead of "spell point" was a semantic choice to have a power point that could be magical or nonmagical, depending on the class. That didn't turn out to be the case, of course, but it's why I have the view I do. Unless you're going to make a departure from the cost to cast, like Inventors and Kineticists (and Swashbucklers to a certain extent with Panache) do, I think just using that established system makes the most sense.

Edit: I'll admit that the biggest reason to not do as I suggest would be that a class would be able to use what is intended to be a completely non-magical effect to cast overtly magical spells, since a focus point is a focus point no matter where it comes from, so some kind of limiter on what you could spend your class points on, or doing away with the cost like psychics can do, would need to be added.


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I think the Unstable trait on the inventor was an attempt at this. Unstable abilities certainly seem to be on par with focus spells.

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