Arachnofiend's page

Arachnofiend wrote:

I think the issue is that the bestiary portrayal of hobgoblins is just really bad art. The Hobgoblin General in the bestiary looks ridiculous; she looks like you had physically stretched out a goblin. This woman does not look like a seasoned war veteran and leading officer in a military hierarchy, she looks like someone who is the subject of her subordinates' wacky hijinks and never quite manages to catch them red-handed.

The Hobgoblin Alchemist in the blog post (and which I assume is also in the Character Guide book) is FAR more believable as a member of hobgoblin society. There's nothing funny about this design and he manages to be legitimately intimidating. The muscle bulk really helps with this, though there's a lot more going on with his expression and other details that assist in making him look more serious. He still has the squashed head, long ears, and full set of pointy teeth to make him look more goblin than orc but he has all of those things without it being funny, which is absolutely crucial for hobgoblins.

Funny, the general is one of my favourite of the new Hob pieces.

... is it the non-blue skin?

Your insistence on disagreeing with literally everything I post has got to be deliberate at this point right

Arachnofiend wrote:

I think the issue is that the bestiary portrayal of hobgoblins is just really bad art.

that's an astonishingly rude thing to say to the person in charge of art direction. even by the low standards of this forum.

The bestiary hobgoblins made a terrible first impression of the new art direction. I feel it's more constructive to point out why rather than simply allow Jacobs to be confused as to why people don't like goblinoids who look like goblinoids. I don't claim to speak for everyone upset by the new look but I really do not feel my criticism was out of line.

I think the issue is that the bestiary portrayal of hobgoblins is just really bad art. The Hobgoblin General in the bestiary looks ridiculous; she looks like you had physically stretched out a goblin. This woman does not look like a seasoned war veteran and leading officer in a military hierarchy, she looks like someone who is the subject of her subordinates' wacky hijinks and never quite manages to catch them red-handed.

The Hobgoblin Alchemist in the blog post (and which I assume is also in the Character Guide book) is FAR more believable as a member of hobgoblin society. There's nothing funny about this design and he manages to be legitimately intimidating. The muscle bulk really helps with this, though there's a lot more going on with his expression and other details that assist in making him look more serious. He still has the squashed head, long ears, and full set of pointy teeth to make him look more goblin than orc but he has all of those things without it being funny, which is absolutely crucial for hobgoblins.

To be honest, if Golarion was a sillier setting "species that have no business having boobs have them because Lamashtu likes them" would be a legitimate explanation.

I think it's kinda overblown either way.

'Only' +2~4 hit I think is something OP is really underestimating. Math is fairly tight in this game. Generally speaking a martial is going to have a mostly reliable first attack, a semi-reliable second attack and an unreliable third attack. The warpriest starts half a step or even a full step down compared to the fighter.

It's also really +2~5 to hit, because the Warpriest is going to have an inferior attacking attribute at levels 1-4, 10-14 and 20.

To be honest, I'm more concerned about whether or not the warpriest's spells are enough to make up for that gap than the other way around after playing around with martial casters for a while.

The advantage for the warpriest is more about what she's doing for everyone else in the party, I think. Bless doesn't make up the difference, but you're not the only one getting the benefit of Bless. On the defensive side you still have the damage mitigation/healing argument between Fighters having better armor and a warpriest cleric potentially having a ton of Heal casts if you abandon your DC's and go for charisma over wisdom.

Paizo is an amazing company and even just for the AP's I'd want to see them keep publishing instead of relegated to a 3rd party D&D 5e publisher with a few side projects.

I can't say with absolute certainty because I don't have the sales numbers, but what reports I've seen indicate that PF2 has been quite successful; it was a huge hit at its Gencon launch and has even made some waves outside of the "hardcore gamer" market enough to break into top seller lists on Amazon.

I doubt it'll compete with 5e, because nothing short of tabletop gaming going back to a niche hobby will lead to 5e dropping off its pedestal, but a solid #2 is more than enough for a company like Paizo to keep doing what they do for the foreseeable future.

Corrik wrote:

I feel like a lot of them come online far too late to replicate the hybrid and 6th level casting classes. It's no fun waiting until level 8 to finally start playing your character concept.

I am toying with the idea of a free dedication at 1st level. You can either take Dedication 2 at 1st level or a dedication to your current class, the latter of which I have not settled upon, but might come from me taking away some things (and then giving them back if you single-class). For example, the fighter and champion might lose heavy armor proficiency; barbarians and rangers might lose medium armor proficiency and only get one martial weapon group; and bards, druids, rogues, and monks might lose their martial weapon training and one skill unless they choose the single-class dedication. You can then make a dedication 4 into a dedication 2.

Not sure what to take away from sorcerer or wizard. I need to get my house rules finalized by this weekend though!

Be cautious of drawbacks that aren't drawbacks. Being "trapped" in light armor is no concern to an archer ranger who was going to wear leather anyways, and a full caster bard cares not that she is not proficient with the rapier (also druids+monks don't have martial weapon proficiency).

I think a casting barbarian is just going to cast their best buff spell at the start of every fight before they start raging.

Moment of Clarity kinda sucked in PF1 too. I'd contend that the restriction on casting while raging is not a power limit and is mostly tied to flavor. If you strip away all of the stuff that makes it unique rage is fundamentally just the way Barbarians catch up to a Fighter's legendary proficiency without getting an accuracy boost; rage not letting you cast spells while you use it is equivalent to being unable to cast spells with Hunter's Edge active, which doesn't make any sense unless you consider the thematic reasons why it shouldn't be easy to cast spells while raging.

I can say with almost full confidence that a bloodrager that can cast while raging more freely will appear at some point - for now, if the restriction is a frustration at your table don't feel bad about just getting rid of it or replacing Moment of Clarity with an unrestricted "you can cast spells while raging".

I guess it's a question of how many Archetypes are going to require Advanced Weapon Proficiency?

From a setting standpoint Humans have been the advanced weapon master ancestry though.

Aldori? Human.

Rondelero? Human.

Followers of Achaekek (sawtooth saber) and Zon-Kuthon (spiked chain)? Mostly human.

Yeah that's because humans are the masters of f&$&ing everything in Golarion

At this point I just want to say Humans aren't allowed to use the weapons of other races at all just out of spite. If you want to wield a Necksplitter at least one of your parents had better be an orc.

A Fighter would do more damage than a Druid in a target dummy situation starting from day one, and that never really changed.

The difference was stuff like flight. It does not matter how much damage your falchion fighter does if he can't reach the enemy.

Monks are damage dealers out of the box. Highest damage comes from Dragon Stance, though Mountain Stance gets pretty close too.

I'd recommend just straight Monk unless there's something very desirable from another class. The dedication for other martial classes is a dead feat for Monks so you have to weigh the value of the feat you want as two feats.

Dueling Riposte comes later because the Fighter is getting another, better einhander feat at 2 because they don't have to worry about wasting a class feat on a skill increase just so they can get abilities they actually want later.

I... really hate the dedication feats. At least Aldori Duelist and the other LOWG archetypes bump you up to expert so you can potentially qualify for a skill feat early.

Ironically Fighters are actually a pretty poor choice for going into Aldori Duelist. The main perks of that archetype are identical to feats that Fighters already have, there's close to zero reason to invest in it.

I don't really see problem with humans or fighters or human fighters getting earlier access to certain archetypes nor do I see it being "punishing". I mean, other classes and ancestries can still get them even if its later on.

I just don't think all archetypes should be universally "you can get them at level 2 earliest". Like I get why you might be annoyed about it, but I don't see why they should all universally be available on level 2 for everyone.

If it's going to be a level 2 feat then it should be a level 2 feat. This is the equivalent of some ancestries not being able to pick up Brutish Shove at 2nd.

Giving the dedication feat a higher level prereq is also a solution you could consider, though naturally all of the feats would have to be stronger to justify that. Which illustrates the problem, really.

You're looking for the first edition forums; this is the second edition forum.

That being said, this is a fairly easy question so I'll go ahead and answer it - unarmored charisma builds are fairly well supported with a couple Monk archetypes, namely the Scaled Fist and the Nornkith. Both work well enough though I'd recommend the Scaled Fist since it can be an Unchained Monk archetype.

You can do this as a full build, or as a 1 level dip to get charisma to AC on a different class.

So elf rogues aren't good at something that setting-wise is a human fighter thing? I don't see an "excessive" problem here.

Think about how easy it will be for humans to qualify for an archetype that requires elf weapons and try that again.

Also, "being a human for the bonus feat" is not a new thing by any means, since lots of builds in PF1 did that to get the combination of feats up at the earliest levels.

To be honest, I was under the impression that "humans being bright blue for every possible build because the bonus feat is too strong compared to every other option" was one of the things Paizo was going to fix in this edition.

Cabbage is right, this design imposes a massive penalty on anyone that doesn't want to play a human and it's only going to get worse as more archetypes are printed.

I do feel like psychologically an AC item which gives +3 to saves, +1 (or +2) to AC, and has a Dex cap of 7 (or 6) is something I'm going to want in the game.

Sometimes... what you want emotionally... is worse

It seems very possible to me that we'll get alternate Dedication Feats at some point. They'd be easy to do and provide alternatives.

I hope it comes soon... The homogenization of the caster dedications is pretty frustrating for a lot of concepts. A dragon-blood Monk doesn't much care about getting Vancian casting so it's annoying to have to wait all the way until 4th level before it's possible to get the claws the entire build is based around. Same deal with Bards and having to wait forever before you can get Inspire Courage through the multiclass.

AC is pretty strictly limited so that we don't have another celestial armor situation where dexterity builds suddenly explode into absurd levels. Any armor in which you both fill the dex cap and reach the strength rating is optimal, there's no real benefit in removing your leather armor once your dexterity gets to +5.

Phntm888 wrote:

Arachnofiend wrote:

I think you kinda have to think outside the box - Fighters already make good duelists without the dedication, so you'd want to take these feats with classes that struggle at fulfilling that concept like the Champion or Barbarian.

I did build out an Aldori Duelist using a Scoundrel Rogue as the base - it did work fairly nicely for that. I went Human for Unconventional Weaponry to get proficiency, and I chose the Rostland Partisan background for flavor. I was going to try a Ranger next, although a Champion might be a good choice, too.

I'm not sure I personally like the flavor of a raging duelist with the instincts we have right now, but maybe if we get an "Urban Barbarian" type instinct, I'll warm up to the idea.

Hmm, a Dragon Instinct Duelist actually sounds kinda interesting. You could really go in on the duelist ego stereotype with the Dragon Anathema if I remember it right.

Handsome warriors never lose battles. XD

A Blue Dragon Barbarian is one of the first character concepts I got excited about, the moment I realized rage works with non-agile finesse weapons. Lightning fits pretty well with high dexterity. Green would be another very fitting color.

True power move: Iruxi have boobs regardless of gender

The main advantage of Aldori Duelist is being a way to play an einhander style without being a Fighter; the Aldori dedication is notably better for characters who already have martial weapon proficiency since you get expert in a skill out of it.

I think you kinda have to think outside the box - Fighters already make good duelists without the dedication, so you'd want to take these feats with classes that struggle at fulfilling that concept like the Champion or Barbarian.

If I were to guess, I'd say it's likely gonna be 20 ft, possibly with a feat to extend the range. Hopefully we don't need to make a guess when the book comes out properly. >.>

Zwordsman wrote:

Could this in theory be used to obtain uncommon ones? Like Inspire Competence or Protective Ward?

No. The feat says you pick a cantrip from one of the four spell lists. The bard's composition cantrips are not part of any spell list. The same is true for Protective Ward and that one is not even a cantrip.

As for which cantrip to choose, I'd probably avoid anything with an attack roll or saving throw. Shield is always nice if you don't wield a physical shield already. Detect Magic is also always useful.

Other than that, any utility cantrip will probably serve you best. Mage Hand, Ghost Sound, Read Aura, Dancing Lights, Message, Prestidigitation.

I'd stay away from Shield or other cantrips that are most useful in combat; I'm pretty sure you need to have your wayfinder in hand to cast the spell. Any of the utility cantrips you listed are good choices since you don't really mind pulling the wayfinder out of your pocket to send a message to a party member and putting it back during exploration mode.

That isn't PF1 style multi-classing either. You're basically just going the other route on how to fix all the things that were broken with the old system.

I'm just holding out hope that the following feat I submitted makes it to the final product:

Lizard Mammaries

Prerequisites: Enjoyment of boobies

Effect: In defiance of all laws of nature, you are inexplicably a lizard with mammary glands. You get a +2 on Charisma skill checks against teenagers, leering strangers and nursing mammalian babbies.

I feel like this is more appropriate for kobolds

I'm also inclined to houserule the sword having agile. It would make it more or less equivalent to the saw tooth saber, save with versatile swapped for twin, and perhaps disarm into the bargain.

Agile for the dueling sword would be out of line, I'm pretty sure. It also has a bigger damage dice than the saber so they aren't directly comparable like that.

Just adding disarm would make it fair.

A leshy can look pretty much however the hell you want, given that it seems they can be made out of anything that's alive and isn't an animal.

Cyrad wrote:

Unfortunate they're uncommon and likely won't be PFS legal despite a faction leader being a lizardfolk. Regardless, very cool stuff!

Also, kitsune plz

Boons.

Did PFS change the boon system to be something regular people can interact with or do you still have to win an auction at Gencon to play a weird ancestry

Yeah, Liberating Step could not interact with grabs at all and it would still be exceptionally good. Free five steps are rare in this edition and will in many instances result in an outright loss of action for the enemy who triggered it. The anti-grab stuff is just gravy.

I have to wonder what grapple an Iruxi is going to get in that is going to be so severely debilitating that he's willing to give up his fifth level feat and lose access to his first level feat for a week to get out of it.

Presumably if you're taking Tail Whip you plan on using the tail to whip things. Are you really gonna give that up for a week just to escape one grapple?

Well, the Red Mantis Assassin is a very specific type of assassin. Frankly there's nothing stopping a Fighter from being an assassin in PF2 anyways since they aren't so severely limited on skills... and if you're looking for a class that's the most "assassiny" out of the box, I'd argue that that's the Ranger, not the Rogue. And Rangers can get into RMA about as easily as the Fighter can.

I'd expect a more generic Assassin archetype to come out in the APG next year, which won't have a weapon restriction and isn't obligated to do mantis things.

sherlock1701 wrote:

Deadmanwalking wrote:

sherlock1701 wrote:

What I wanted from PF2 was an evolution on PF1 with even more options and depth. What I got instead was a completely different game with little depth by comparison. So yes, I am disappointed in PF2, which is why I am particularly active on the boards here as opposed to other systems I dislike, which I largely ignore.

What in the world do you hope to achieve by posting regularly and extensively about a game you clearly dislike?

At least one of the following:

1) PF3, if and when it is released, winds up being more in line with my tastes

2) They release an 'unchained' book with more palatable rules

3) They significantly overhaul the system in the next printing

The first two at least have a decent chance of happening. It isn't fun, but it's necessary to be constantly heard to be taken into account for future plans. I'm doing everything I can to push towards a shift back at some point.

You seem to be disappointed that PF2 doesn't, with a single book release, surpass the "options and depth" of a decade of PF1. That just isn't a fair comparison or a realistic expectation. If you expect to someday see a PF3 release that equals the "options and depth" of a decade of content, then anticipate being disappointed.

The proper comparison would be to look at PF1 Core Rulebook and the PF2 Core Rulebook, ignoring all other PF1 materials. I don't see any reasonable argument that PF2 offers less robust options than PF1.

The Wizard isn't Tier 0 in the PF2 CRB, which makes it worse.

If PF1 was already the "perfect game" then there is no good reason to spend your time ripping on PF2. Just go play PF1 dude

Aaaand I just realized that I misread Unnerving Prowess. Yeah, that's definitely a misprint; either it's impossible to proc Unnerving Prowess on a Disarm or the Dueling Sword should have the Disarm property.

What’s the crimson assassin?

It's the Red Mantis Assassin with the copyright scrubbed off for the purposes of d20pfsrd. That doesn't explain the OP though since the RMA's abilities don't match up with what they're talking about.

Let's say you play a human rogue with high intelligence multiclassed in whatever you want (maybe wizard or alchemist hence the high intelligence)...

You haven't made a single choice to specifically get more skills and you have all the skills but one at level 2. I consider that as being easy.

You literally picked the Lots of Skills class and decided to boost intelligence

Well, either we're underrating the speed penalty or Paizo is overrating it and I have not played nearly enough PF2 to say for sure. In the exact perfect circumstance for using a spell like Ray of Frost I think you're looking at the penalty effectively being stunned 1, which isn't bad, but is difficult to justify a slot for. It'd be more interesting if the speed penalty lasted longer so you could really use it to better play keep away against the slowed enemy.

GameDesignerDM wrote:

I guess I find it kind of odd that needing to the roll the die in a d20 tabletop game is somehow a flaw?

To each their own.

Failing to tie your shoes 5% of the time is a flaw.

And this kids is what we call a "false equivalency".

Dont you also have to be an atheist for that (it really sounds like a requirement for such a feat)? At which point you can't be a Chirurgeon worshiper of Sarenrae.

That is correct; it's a Rahadoumi option and requires you to worship no gods. It's a fair restriction, since essentially what it does is give Medicine+Alchemy healers a powerful tool that clerics can't access. Though I can see why it'd be a bit bothersome for some.

Smugmug wrote:

I was actually thinking about a class feature or feat where a Chirurgeon would be able to spend Elixir of healing to use Battle Medicine without being affected from the timeout.

while it isn't a class feat 'godless healing' from the lost omens book boosts your battle medicine, and drops the cooldown to only one hour for each party member.

While it isn't perfect it makes battle medicine a lot more usable and stretches your life elixirs much further

I believe Godless Healing only affects healing used on yourself, not everyone. It's still a great feat, though.

Specific overrides general; normally you can't use the sword to disarm, but when the feat procs you can. Note that the Aldori Sword Style involves fighting with an open hand so you'll generally be able to perform combat maneuvers anyways, you just can't use the sword's item bonus on the check and have to get it elsewhere.

I agree it's pretty weak for an advanced weapon - it compares 1:1 with the shortsword, getting the next die size up in exchange for giving up agile. For a more proper example of an advanced weapon the necksplitter is just a d8 scimitar with no drawbacks other than needing to take a feat. There's still some builds that may be enticed by it but it does seem like it should be a martial weapon.

sherlock1701 wrote:

Arachnofiend wrote:

sherlock1701 wrote:

I think a great houserule is adding "per level" to the duration of most spells with an hour or less duration. Shoulda been that way RAW, but here we are.

It's a great houserule if the intent is to make it so that spells that are written to last a single encounter instead last many encounters as you get further up in levels.

By which I mean it's a terrible houserule.

I mean it's bad if you hate magic. If you like spells with durations being actually relevant it's good.

I love magic, and I find your suggested house rule bad.

Yeah, but do you love magic to the expense of everything that doesn't have magic? If not then you don't really love magic.

A thing I believe is that if you are basically assured to succeed (or fail) on a given roll, then actually rolling the die is a waste of time and you shouldn't do it. Just narrate the success (or failure) and move on.

Having the actual result of the fundamental die matter for what you're attempting to do is a good development.

Agreed; if you're living in a world where the expert never fails a skill check, then you're living in a world where all out of combat problems are trivial to solve. Why even put a cliff face to climb if you're just working on a binary "you have an expert at Climb in the party and it's completely effortless for them to get up the cliff and secure a rope for everyone else" or "you don't have an expert at Climb and you have to find another route because no one can get up there"? Either way the cliff doesn't factor into the narrative in any meaningful way.

That right there is the issue. It's a poor design philosophy that sucks the fun out of gameplay. Manipulating your chance of success to 90+% for specialties is the most enjoyable way to play. Failing constantly is no fun at all.

If the most enjoyable way to play a dice game is to remove dice as a factor entirely then maybe you should consider a different RPG.

It ain't as bad as the bad classes in the PF1 CRB, I suppose. That's an extremely low bar to set though.

You don't get to say your character isn't sneaky if you're trained in the skill. Of course, you're also completely ignoring the other benefits of higher proficiency like access to skill feats - Swift Sneak makes the Bard better than the Alchemist at stealth just by itself.

Striking doesn't actually add a die - it sets the number of dice to the listed value. So if you were to apply the effects of, for example, a Greater Striking rune to your moderate alchemist's fire, the RAW interpretation is that it would reduce the damage to 3d8 since a weapon with that rune "deals three weapon damage dice".

This is naturally ludicrous. Almost as if striking runes aren't intended to be used on things that already scale their damage dice up on their own.

I think a great houserule is adding "per level" to the duration of most spells with an hour or less duration. Shoulda been that way RAW, but here we are.

It's a great houserule if the intent is to make it so that spells that are written to last a single encounter instead last many encounters as you get further up in levels.

By which I mean it's a terrible houserule.