ApocalypseJack's page

moosher12 wrote:

I'll give an answer then.

A ninja is a magical ambush martial that maintains a healthy balance between spell utility and martial prowess, toward the goal of tracking and incapacitating humanoid opponents. A ninja blends magic with tool use to infiltrate and exfiltrate areas, and track and ambush targets of interest with the aid of utility spells.

See, to me that sounds like something I would build as a laughing shadows magus who invests in stealth. It also seems like a bigger conceptual space than "ninja" occupies.

That's EXACTLY the space the ninja occupies. Already. In 1st edition, where it's an actual class and functions pretty much without issue. It does all those things by having the flexibility to pick from rogue talents and thematically chosen monk ki abilities in a way that allows them to be part assassin, part investigator, and still leaves room for being a martial artist or a swordsman or an archer.

And that's BEFORE you consider multiclassing or archetypes.

Now, 2e does things differently of course, so it's not like you can jus straight port it over, but there are a couple important lessons we can take from the original model:

1e's Ninja as an alternative rogue's base appeal is that it allowed for a variety of experiences and playstyles, via feat/talent choice, which enabled you to strongly customize WHAT the class felt like. What your particular ninja specialized in. This is one of the things about PF2e that I actually think excels and makes it PERFECT for creating an updated ninja! And irritates me so much that it seems to get so much pushback.

The system's already got the entire groundwork for enabling a broad variety of class ability feats which could be written to spec out a unique, multifaceted ninja who has various bits and pieces of somewhat scaled-back class features from other classes combined into a unique tapestry of associated skillsets. I shouldn't HAVE to cobble together a PASSABLE ninja out of the leftover scraps of 2e's godawful archetypes that live in abject terror of actually letting you experience any of the joy of the class they offer up piecemeal. Archetypes are fun for when you want a class that has a couple of niche abilities from another class that'll almost invariably never be anywhere as useful as you imagined them to be when you took them.

But that doesn't work for making a Ninja. It needs the flexibility of bespoke class feats that actually enable a modicum of function and choice in its borrowing from the talents of rogues and monks and a smattering of spellcasting thrown in. Because these aren't INCIDENTALS you're picking up on the side. They are what defines the class, and to get the FEEL of what the Ninja in 1e does in 2e, you need to actually be a whole fully-realized class with feats/abilities that facilitate its playstyle based around flexible player choice.

- It needs its own bespoke version of a sneak attack/precision damage ability. Probably somewhere between the Investigator's strategic strike and the Rogue's full-out sneak attack.

- It needs some version of racket/curriculum/style selection which enables access to more fully-fleshed systems for magic/whatever the ki stand-in now (crappy focus spell system probably), stealth, etc.

- It needs some kind of access to a tracking ability.

- It would ideally offer some kind of benefit to using the specialized tools and equipment from the region of the world it originates (but this seems difficult to accomplish with how much weapon-choice feels like flavor more than mechanics now)

- It needs to be modular, and have a means for those who specialize in any of the main Ways/Schemes/Schools/Whatever to gain access to bits and pieces of the other talents a la carte.

These are things that only a fully-fledged class and the infrastructure it provides can really adequately accomplish.

Why is space-age gun worse than crossbow?

Waitaminute. I was browsing the Soldier, and I noticed, Starfinder 2E has the Unwieldy trait too!

So, between heavy weapons only being usable once per turn, and the rocket launcher requiring two actions to even use...

So.

What you're saying my friend and Game Maestro, is that everything these brain geniuses have said about the balance of having four arms that work is completely irrelevant and meaningless because it just doesn't work that way?

Huh. Who'd have thought the folks trying to browbeat everyone for daring to have opinions about the uselessness and fun-less quality of the four arms in this playtest could be so wrong? Who I say? Who?!

It just makes no sense to me that you would do this, when the action economy already ensures that you're not really able to abuse having multiple arms.

Even if you have four arms... you only have three actions.

So what? What does that hurt? If I had two arms, I could still make three attacks in a round. Is the fear that a player with four arms is going to carry two extra weapons that make them overly specified for the combat? Is the fear they'll wield three and a shield?

Again. So what? That makes it a cool and unique ancestry ability that gives you a very marginal advantage, just like all the other cool and unique ancestry abilities. Hell, wield four shields! Wield three revolvers and use your fourth to reload! Wield two shields and two spears and become a one-alien turtle formation.

Let. People. Have. Fun.

Or what is even the point?

Finoan wrote:

moosher12 wrote:

So, today is game day and we're winding up for my Kingmaker game, and I just told my Pathfinder 2E players about how the new Multi-Arm rules work, and boy are they rioting.

So have them make accounts and come here and explain their reasoning for their rioting.

Currently in my mind these people are hypothetical, not actually existent. They likely do exist, but I have no evidence of that. And they should be able to speak for themselves.

And if the reasoning is that they want a power bump that they can use in the Kingmaker game by somehow getting multiple arms on their character, then while that is a valid reason to riot that they aren't getting what they want, it isn't a valid reason for the game developers to change the game rules to give them what they want instead of giving me what I want - which is multi-armed characters that don't break the game balance.

My players are coming.

Hi. Already have an account. I've been here a while, but I mostly just like to lurk and not get into pointless arguments with pedants. I just skim the forums for answers to questions I have about rules, or to see what generally larger groups of people agree to be a fun or enjoyable interpretation of a rule or GM ruling.

This. Mechanic. Is. FCKED.

The ENTIRE purpose of four-armed characters was to enable the MULTI-WEAPON FIGHTING feat tree from Pathfinder 1e. To incorporate the mechanic of multi-armed characters and omit, nay, HAMSTRING the entire purpose of the ability originally leaves me wondering why you bothered to include it at all.

The entire DRAW of Kasatha was their unique dual-wielding archer build. I'm pretty damn sure that don't work using these rules.

It offers literally no mechanical advantage over having two arms, except maybe holding a useless object you have to waste an action to then activate your arm to use.

I WOULD RATHER HAVE TWO ARMS! At least then I won't forget I'm holding an item by the time I can finally waste an action to get around to using it.

What is the balance here? What is the fear that this is going to break, and if that fear is so great that you cannot find a way to make the mechanic actually work in a meaningful way with some drawback... don't... include it.

I don't want a powerful character. I want a character that has the appropriate manual dexterity for a creature with its number of limbs.

-

Okay. Now that I've gotten that all out of my system...

I honestly... don't think it's that BAD. I just think it's pointless. There's no reason or interest here for me anymore. It defeats the entire purpose of its own being, and it makes me sad.