Artificial 20's page

I'll allow you 10 minutes to get back the focus point you used to do that.

One of the best features of PF1E, and something it's great they kept for PF2E, was the fun dynamic of "Don't play the thing advertised as doing the thing you want to do, play this other thing that can do the thing you want to do and does it better because it has better numbers in this edition".

It really would have sucked to leave behind the days of hearing that you don't need "Rogue" written on your character sheet to play that character concept. And the classes that provoke this response are different than last edition, which automatically makes things better! I simply live for the look of joy in a new player's eyes when I explain that the class that inspired them is somewhat underwhelming because it "Had its turn" in a game we're not playing. They're already getting immersed in all the history and lore! I can't imagine a more accessible design than that.

Oh, sorry! That's probably where I got the idea, I apologize if it seemed like I was taking credit.

For gather power, I think instead of the flourish trait (which may be better on the kinetic blast itself, particularly if the unmodified blast is a single action), you might want the open trait. Or, you could just stick with the usual metamagic requirement of "If your next action is to add an infusion to a kinetic blast..."

Oh not at all. There are dozens of posts in this thread, I was more saying "great minds think alike" than thinking you were taking any latent credit.

This is where things get interesting. The PF1E kinetic blast was used as a standard action, while kinetic blade / fist could be a full-attack set and could technically be mixed with other weapon strikes, but it was very rare to find a reason to actually do that, at least in everything I've read of.

Now, I'm not saying PF2E will naturally produce reasons to want to do some other attack before or after a kinetic blast, but I like the potential, so I'm inclined to want basic kinetic blasts to work like weapon strikes, and for it to e.g. be possible to go strike/strike/strike at 0/-5/-10 MAP with them. I'm not saying that should be a good idea, any more than it is for a conventional martial, but I think keeping things on or near to the martial framework will be beneficial to building them as all-day classes, which is what martials tend to excel at. I'd be shy about having Open as a default.

We could also have kinetic blasts effectively be scaling cantrips. There is decent merit to this, as that's kinda what they were in PF1E, at-will magical attacks that scaled with level. I think my only worry about this is the PF2E action economy tends to be less engaging for casters, thanks to all their 2-action spells, so for the fun of mixing things up I hope, at present, that kinetic blasts will basically work like weapon strikes.

I think another alternative would be to have the drained condition from burn be removed when you refocus, like the Oracle's extreme curse does with the doomed it inflicts. That would make it less debilitating for the entire day, while still adding significant risk/reward aspects to any fight you're using it in. This would probably be the best approach if there isn't any ability like elemental overflow to give you additional bonuses for taking burn.

I suggested an Oracle's Curse-like mechanic myself in my first post of the thread. If there was a reasonable minor debuff that applied the first time you use burn, which lasts the full day, and escalating worse debuffs every additional time you use it that can be reset by a refocus, that seems like a great way to design pushing / taxing yourself without it being stifling.

Just spitballing a bit, but maybe gather power could be a 1-action ability with the flourish trait that grants bonuses to any wild talents you use on that turn, like a 1-turn rage for example, and one option of spending burn is casting gather power as a free action instead. You get some interesting possibilities with the PF2E action economy, like composite blasts could be 2-action attacks that do double base damage and avoid MAP by only making 1 attack roll, but maybe they literally need gather power to be used at all.

Quote:

I know at 10th, I have to gather for a Blade Whirlwind with the underwhelming's attacks.

You can't actually take Blade Whirlwind at all until level 11, at which point Infusion Specialization immediately reduces its burn cost to 0, so you can full attack with it from the moment you get it. You also can't get Kinetic Whip before level 7 (and that's only if you doubled down on your initial element), and its cost is reduced to 0 at level 8. Similarly, you can take Whip Hurricane starting at level 13, and it's then reduced to 0 at level 14.

You do have to wait until level 5 to use Kinetic Blade without gathering power (or taking burn, if you didn't trade it out), but that's also generally the earliest you can get bonus attacks from haste or the like, and kineticists don't get an iterative until level 8 anyway. Meaning there are 2 levels where your form infusion can cost more than your infusion specialization is able to account for, but by then you also have an ability that lets you reduce the cost of a talent by 1 for a few times each day, either through Internal Buffer or the Overwhelming Soul's equivalent.

Now there's some clearheaded thinking. Although the Overwhelming Soul only manages it in some cases, I do like that it can have a functional baseline without hitting itself in the face, as some say. Being at least moderately competent on 0 burn across all levels is my one hoped-for change for PF2E.

to be clear, I don't want the "burn just isn't a thing" option. Ideally, I'd like a fairly robust, satisfying burn mechanic that worked well with the kineticist and that was entirely opt-in, so that those who want it can have it (and reap the very real power at a very real cost that it offers) and the rest of us can ignore it. I want it to be opt-in rather than opt-out, though, because from what I've seen, if they do put in an "opt-out" class archetype or something, the practical result is that taking that archetype will be strictly worse in every way than not taking the archetype.

As I said above, I'd like this too. Looking back with hindsight, I feel like burn went through 3 key steps during design, which spun it around:

• Burn is introduced as a mechanic that lets the kineticist "push their limit" a few times a day, with immediate benefit and lingering drawbacks
  
• The lingering drawbacks might overshadow the immediate benefit, so an extra layer of lingering benefits is added to offset lingering drawbacks
  
• The class can now have access to these lingering benefits all day, so its numbers are balanced around it doing so, making for a costly opt-out
  

I can see going sort of an oracle's curse route with burn, where the focus pool functions as burn, and when you use focus you suffer a burn effect as a drawback, but refocusing lets you reduce or remove the penalty. It would keep the "overclocking" mechanic, without making the penalty last all day.

Personally, I like the concept of burn, but think it was tuned punitively.

Lycar wrote:

Stat improvements... Okay, that one I can see with a caveat: Can't be used to improve a stat beyond what normal increases would allow and price should not scale with the improvement, but what stat value someone is trying to achieve. Shoring up a glaring weakness? Affordable. Trying to push a secondary stat to the same level as your primary? Not so much...

I think an item to try to push up a secondary/tertiary stat could actually be kinda cool. PF2's attribute system encourages you to kinda silo your stats to some extent, so some way to say... throw some extra investment in some other attribute that might provide some extra benefit could be a neat way to let... I dunno, an Inventor slightly improve their Charisma so they can feel less bad about investing in Diplomacy.

Maybe a tiered magic item that gives you a bonus but has a cap, +2 to X but no higher than say, 14... with a greater version that lets you go to 16.

Building off of this, some players do feel that PF2E's general feats are a little underwhelming, and that's a resource every character has access to.

What about something like this, a sort of Canny Acumen for ability scores:

Diverse Training (Feat 11)

Choose one ability score. You gain +4 to this ability, to a maximum of 16.

This looks like mechanics recycled from a different monster called the Wheredhego, which was cut from the bestiary.

Artificial 20 wrote:

It sounds like one of your groups tried to do something original and interesting by combining various elements your setting draws from different sources, creating a novel and dramatic development. We can't be having with that.

It's time to crush those spirits. Remind these players of their station and insignificance in this fantasy world, and the foolishness of trying to change it substantially without following a proscribed path laid by higher minds. Really put some research into it. Pathfinder has a great range of powerful characters, monsters and outright deities, officially printed with abilities and resources that can easily invalidate their actions, which is obviously why they're there. You want to impress upon your group the richness of this setting, the grandness of its conflicts and the might of its major players, that the whole...

I am not mad at the players. Let me make that clear.

They had their fun,and now they are going to have an adventure to deal with the consequences. Will it be their characters? new? or old ones? we will see.

What are you trying to say? Your group dares to meddle with the greater balance of the setting, like they're some kind of publisher, and you don't want to grab every option off the top shelf to dogpile onto them for it?

People run games oddly these days. If that's what you're into though, I suppose it's worth mentioning in passing you could say the detonation affected the planar connection to the negative energy plane in Tar-Baphon's realm, partially retuning its alignment to roughly 50/50 with the positive energy plane. Since the first world mirrors the shadow plane in its cosmological position, residing between the material and positive planes as the shadow plane does between the material and negative planes, you could have fey creatures begin manifesting on the Isle of Terror as well as the usual undead, at first minor fairies that merely annoy Tar-Baphon in a comical fashion, but then stronger and greater fey that turn the island into a battleground between primal life and undeath. The players could engage in this new conflict of their own creation, most likely siding with the fey, since they already tried assassinating Tar-Baphon, leading to a whole new adventure to overthrow the Whispering Tyrant now his undead forces face credible opposition.

The Synchrony Device doesn't say it does any of that mind you, so once more I strongly recommend having the setting's deities launch a Divine Crusade of the Status Quo.

So one of the tables I run has used the Synchrony device at the end of Ruins of Azlant to blow up Tar-Baphon’s (whispering tyrant) Ise of Terror.

Due to the number of tables I run and the tables being connected in a group cannon, the Ruins of Azlant was run after Tyrants grasp.

As such it was relatively known that Tar-baphon the Whispering tyrant had escaped. Some of the players where refugees looking for a new life, and all the players were shades Lawful/Chaotic/Neutral Neutral aligned.

So at the end of the adventure they have this Synchrony Device Nuke and decide to stick it to the undead king.
After a lot of stupid high rolls, they reprogram it, fill it up with positive energy, and send it off to detonate in the center of the Isle of Terror. Killing all undead and possibly every one in the surrounding nations.

So I am looking for ideas for repercussions and story hooks, to continue their off canon campaign.

Tldr: Players Nuked Tar-Baphon’s (whispering tyrant) Isle of Terror and I am looking for story ideas.

It sounds like one of your groups tried to do something original and interesting by combining various elements your setting draws from different sources, creating a novel and dramatic development. We can't be having with that.

It's time to crush those spirits. Remind these players of their station and insignificance in this fantasy world, and the foolishness of trying to change it substantially without following a proscribed path laid by higher minds. Really put some research into it. Pathfinder has a great range of powerful characters, monsters and outright deities, officially printed with abilities and resources that can easily invalidate their actions, which is obviously why they're there. You want to impress upon your group the richness of this setting, the grandness of its conflicts and the might of its major players, that the whole thing is greater than they are or can be. Use those GM muscles to bring in Gods, high level mythic NPCs, anything first party you think will reinforce the fact that the players are dwarfed by canon figures who are far more important and can intercede at any moment they wish, so that you earn their respect.

With luck you can salvage things, and get back to properly enjoying the creative spirit of tabletop roleplay.

Artificial 20 wrote:

I honestly don't know why they didn't make class traits for weapons, the way they did for feats. Give a weapon the Rogue trait, say that rogues are proficient with all weapons with the Rogue trait, and then you're set for life. P1E's unchained monk even did this, really expected it in P2E too.

It would create a long list of traits to add to every weapon and every new class (and Paizo does like making new classes) would require adding a trait to a pile of weapons. Broad categories in the class (simple, martial) are lower word-counts.

Ah but that isn't the case.

First of all, every class already has a trait, as shown here. If you click the monk trait as listed under the class section, you'll find that and its weapon entry are one and the same. So zero additional traits are needed.

You also do not need to add the traits to every weapon, as classes would still retain their current simple, martial and advanced proficiencies. All you need to do is add that trait to the weapons you want a class to use in addition to these broad proficiencies. So rapier, sap, shortbow and shortsword would get the existing Rogue trait, and so could any future weapons published for that class to use.

I honestly don't know why they didn't make class traits for weapons, the way they did for feats. Give a weapon the Rogue trait, say that rogues are proficient with all weapons with the Rogue trait, and then you're set for life. P1E's unchained monk even did this, really expected it in P2E too.

My issue is just as the title says I don’t know how to have my half orc do a romantic relationship with a gnome the main problems are how do they kiss,cuddle,etc. and I need advice on it

One simple way to incorporate a bond between characters into adventuring is... Incorporate the bond between the characters into adventuring. Have the characters perform actions that they would perform anyway in tandem.

• The party are recovering items from a lost tomb, the 2 characters carry a heavy / delicate item out together
  
• The party are searching a new chamber, the 2 characters check out this corner together
  
• The party just finished a heck of an encounter, the smaller character leans against the bigger character for support instead of a wall, or the bigger character flops over and asks the smaller character to carry them
  

Due to a misaimed internal pointer, it's actually the character receiving healing that has to have free hands.

Also, if you stand in the very top left square of the map and use Battle Medicine, it heals the first creature in initiative.

*parks Folca's ice cream truck nearby*

Sir that's a social distancing hazard.

I think part of the issue is a lack of visual feedback, creating a notion that nothing but the numbers can provide such awareness.

Imagine a military fantasy where the elite PC squad are gunning through evil human opposition with conventional rifles. They're doing well against standard troops, then an enemy elite squad arrives, all touting superior weapons and armour. The PCs' shots dent or deflect off of their defences and require sustained hits to overwhelm a target, where the regular troops went down from one or two clean hits. Starting to struggle against such opposition, the PC squad decides to switch to the rare and costly armour piercing ammunition they carry for just such a situation as this one. With this improved level of offence, they're able to take down their opponents with less difficulty and progress, until they run into a tank. Standard bullets spark off this thing with the effectiveness of buzzing flies, and even their AP ammo scores ugly pocks in the armour plating, but doesn't penetrate through and do damage on a very meaningful scale. The PC squad swiftly resort to their biggest ace up the sleeve, some providing cover while others unpack and load their portable rocket launcher. They only carry a few rounds, but each packs a mighty punch, and with maybe a couple rockets the tank's armour is blasted open and the insides are blown apart.

None of this is to say that an ace or lucky shot from a lesser weapon can never do telling damage against tougher targets, but you might be able to imagine firing a handgun at a battle tank is usually an act of desperation rather than a strategy with a viable probability of success.

If you imagined that without knowing the precise kinetic energy, ballistic force, explosive yield and so forth of the weapons involved, which are all represented via numbers in military specifications, you've grasped certain offensive calibres being needed to overpower certain defensive thresholds.

Now is this a tacit admission that the oozemorph archetype was cursed?

Ruzza wrote:

DMW, not you too. I've seen worse derails, but this has gone from an uncomfortable topic to a tasteless one.

Sorry, man.

I have real problems not responding when people directly ask me questions on some subjects, moral philosophy included. It's a problem.

I don't think it's a problem. You engaged with all good faith, and gave a consistent reasoned answer, despite the topic, yes, being disgusting. You have my thanks for that, I think your stance holds up.

Being willing to stomach that which we find repulsive empowers us to ask the same compromise of others, who may express disgust towards us. I think you understand that principle.

DMW, not you too. I've seen worse derails, but this has gone from an uncomfortable topic to a tasteless one.

That really depends on the preparation.

Yeah, cannibalism being inherently Evil has never made much sense to me, and is something I hope they do away with in PF2. Sure, murder is Evil, but that's an entirely separate issue from eating those already dead.

I mean, Evil is pretty specifically about hurting and killing people...and eating dead people really doesn't do either of those things, so it's inconsistent with the rest of the setting that it would be morally troublesome.

And actually, even in PF1, it was specifically only cannibalism granting magical power that was Evil, not the mundane kind. Which was always weird to me, though I guess it makes a little more sense in a 'dark bargains to gain power' sense, but was apparently the official ruling.

Now, in real life, cannibalism is ill-advised as a common course of action for health reasons, but again that's separate from the idea of it being morally problematic.

But putting those principles to test, having intercourse with dead people also does not hurt or kill people. Does that make you comfortable with classifying necrophilia as a neutral act?

One step over are modern debates around the practice of harvesting organs from the deceased or terminally ill.

Fumarole wrote:

Eyeball Tsunami wrote:

having player's die of the curse could be dramatically fun and interesting for the adventure, but might get old after a while...

If your players die during your games you're doing something horribly wrong.

I've found "if you die in the game, you die in real life" to really improve player engagement.

I've been giving it a shot, but my GMs never have any feedback to give after the session.

Is there a reason not to?

Some people consider the alchemist flawed, and addressing that can be complicated and get into intricate design elements, but this change is so simple.

I checked all the core classes' key abilities and attack roll abilities. Alchemist is the only one that cannot attack with their key ability.

This wouldn't be a complicated change. Look I'll write it right now:

Since your key ability is Intelligence, your attack rolls and DCs with items that have the Alchemical trait, and with attacks and abilities granted by items that have the Alchemical trait, use your Intelligence modifier.

Why not let them do this? Picturing an alchemist using intelligence to calculate bomb trajectory seems pretty credible, and none of the mutagenist mutagens have a drawback that penalises intelligence, so an alchemist combining physical mutation with a razor mind to strike brutally and surgically sounds on theme, and would be unique and cool.

Am I missing exploits or interactions that makes this a bad idea?

Captain Morgan wrote:

"I need to have physical books,"

"I want to have a complete set of ancestries,"

And "I don't want to have to buy more books," are three reaaally hard things to reconcile.

Don't forget this one:

"I cannot afford to buy all these damn books"

Champagne taste on a beer budget.

Threads either die young or live long enough to get locked, its kind of depressing, and it doesn't help that we seem to view normative conflict with a paternalistic air of disappointment (Not on here in particular, I'm thinking in general.)

This happens if discourse is used as a purity test rather than an exchange and exploration of views, if interactions operate through personal tribal alliances instead of discrete topical stances, if agreeing to disagree is anathema, especially if people very easily spin the volume dial of their rhetoric to maximum over more trivial concerns like how powerful wizards should be, leaving no tonal distinction within forum boundaries to express stronger positions e.g. if it is proposed that a sentient person's genetic heritage should impact their rights to life and liberty.

The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook, in its Foreword on page 2, written 1978, states to the reader "D&D players, happily, come in all shapes and sizes, and even a fair number of women are counted among those who regularly play the game - making DUNGEONS & DRAGONS somewhat special in this regard". Even these outdated, perhaps clumsy words strive at heart to promote diversity. The structure of the game itself, above all else a class system, where a cosmopolitan alliance of different sorts is promoted as best practice, renders fundamental the value of diversity.

Today this structure is intentionally retained, and Pathfinder's publisher proudly champions diversity as a cornerstone of their values.

It's a strange thing to me, upon this tide of cherishing difference, to see such antagonism toward otherness. We seem to avoid arguing about the one correct class to play while shouting up a storm over the one correct way to play.

But you know, not everyone need think like myself, to be fair.

This comes down to a conflation of terms like "even" and "appropriate".

Imagine an organised play campaign where the only encounters were PVP battles. Parties of the same level would duke it out, winners earn points, kind of like an esports league. These would typically be "even" matches, with a typical party winning 50% of their matches, and losing 50%.

Transferring this even ratio of victory and defeat to a "normal" campaign may be frustrating for some groups. There can be expectations for PCs to win the majority of fights, especially when defeat means game over. This shows that "even", power equivalent encounters are too challenging and not "appropriate" to use as the standard in a campaign of this style.

Even and appropriate are very different in games where PCs usually win.

Well what do you think of baboons, gorillas and opposing political voters?

MAYBE

THE

ABILITY

COULD

USE

ERRATA

However, a skilled GM knows to give his players the semblance of freedom, and has several tricks, tools, and strategies to accomplish that.

Skilled players know how to give their GM the semblance of control.

Pumpkinhead11 wrote:

As silly as the Sturdy Shield response was, i find it more baffling that there are some that still use Forge Warden to make a Strawman about Shields in general and then complain about it.

Over and over and over....

Yeah, I don't buy that pointing out that "Sturdy Shields are good, there's not a huge problem here" is a silly argument.

If the plane your family are flying on crashes, killing them all and most of the other passengers, I'm not buying your complaint that plane crashes are dangerous and deadly, because here's 3 passengers that survived and went on to fully recover.

To each their own of course.

I'll mess things up: what if the chair is a mimic?

Mimics as chairs is very deceitful.

Fireballing suspect chairs is equally deseatful.

Sauce987654321 wrote:

Just allow the chairs/tables or whatever take damage. Do they even have health totals? Is there even a point in calculating their damage received? Some of you really have to stop letting game mechanics affect how you fluff your encounters and your ability to enjoy the game.

What a novel concept! ヽ(ಠ_ಠ)ノ

Now be reasonable about this Ravingdork. When you hurl a fireball onto the floor of a crowded inn, you've gotta expect table variation afterwards.

Throw a dart at the dartboard for an answer.

Would you count that as being a direct attack on the dartboard?

I'll take ten!

You can't.

But if you take Assurance (Anandi), the support is very much appreciated. We're hoping to open a website.

For what it may be worth, my general understanding of these terms:
>Crunch comes from "crunch the numbers", for information that can feed calculations
>Fluff comes from how something feels, like the desirability of fluffy pillows

My GM ruled that you couldn't

Your GM doesn't sound very good.

Unchained rogue gets free Weapon Finesse, and dex to damage at 3. It's typically more about multiple attacks, usually achieved with two weapon fighting. If that suits what you want, it would be a viable alternative.

Why is it that these threads always focus on useless bickering, with one preposterous defense after another? (Congrats: now you're arguing over whether allies know conditions!)

It would have been much more constructive if we could simply agree we deserve a better Fascinated condition, and discuss better ways to implement it. Make a reasonable suggestion and have Paizo adopt it as official errata?

To be fairer, you didn't frame the topic as a constructive push to examine and improve the Fascinated condition's mechanics. You said "Anybody notice this part of Fascinated allows a common action to reliably defeat it? Here is a simple scenario highlighting this". Then you spoke about a comparison to P1E mechanics with similar disapproval, presumably because you had been Fascinated by the Submit Post button and did not perceive the Edit option.

If you wanted to refine implementation, I might have led that with "Hey everyone, I feel there's a poorly-represented region between the fragile distraction of Fascinated and the utter puppetry of Controlled. Could the former be developed to cover a helpless trance that would endure through a brisk shake to the shoulder?". That might garner replies like "Well sir, I suggest any creature critical failing its save against Fascinated is also Stunned for the duration. An interact action could grant them new saves, but they must critically succeed on the save to break both conditions".

I'm sure that if I just articulate them in the correct manner, reality will conform to my expectations. Like factbrew.

Okay, requested minmax? Here's a template:
>Take something that does truckloads of martial damage, doesn't matter exactly what, pouncing barbarian, spirit warrior fighter, whatever
>Take everything you can to buff your damage, and ignore your accuracy
>Take VMC (variant multi class) Magus
>At level 9 or later, use Extra Arcana to pick up Accurate Strike, which does this: "The magus can expend 2 points from his arcane pool as a swift action to resolve all of his melee weapon attacks until the end of his turn as melee touch attacks. The magus must be at least 9th level before selecting this arcana."
>Not all, but most high CR creatures have a pretty terrible touch AC, and with a flat Int 10 you'll have enough for one basic enhancement (either a flat +3, a stack of Flaming/Frost/Shock if it resists none of those, since you don't need accuracy, or Speed if for some reason no one brought Haste) and 2 full rounds of battering the CR21 target's touch AC

This approach itself can be countered, but with 3 attacks +1 for Haste you can hit 200 damage per round and triumph or die before you run out of gas.

It's just that when everyone is special, no one is.

I consider you an intelligent person. One willing to discuss their perspectives. So I want to openly ask: why do you explicitly reference an explicit villain to substantiate your stance?

It does not invalidate your point, but is it in some way intended to actually bolster its validity? I ask because it confuses me. I think national infrastructure is important, but I wouldn't try to win over anybody on the fence by pointing to the Nazi Reichsautobahn program.

P1E's Fighter started on Core Rulebook page 55. P2E's Fighter starts on Core Rulebook page 140. That's a 250% buff.

This is quite possible for a fire/fire kineticist.

At level 9, the simple fire blast will do 5d6 + 1/2 con fire damage. The composite blue flame blast roughly doubles to 106 + 1/2 con fire damage.

Unlike a ranged blast, a kinetic blade can be used for iterative attacks, and by level 8, the kineticist can ignore up to 2 points of infusion burn, so the 1-point blade is effectively free. Their BAB is also 6 right now.

So far we have a 10d6 (or 35) + 1/2 con melee attack, with the same as an iterative. Let's call it 36 damage for simplicity at this point.

By having 3 or more burn at level 9, the kineticist will have +3 to their kinetic blast attack rolls, and double that (+6) to damage rolls. There's a cheap 1-burn fire infusion that can add another +3 to this, which still doesn't increase the actual burn due to their 2 points of free infusions.

So now we have a 45 fire damage strike. The composite blast is 2 burn, and empowering the blast is another 1 burn, for 3, which they can accept. This can raise their burn from 0 to the previously-mentioned 3 and apply to the blast that does it. so that's 45 * 1.5 for 67.5 fire damage per an attack.

With haste applied, you get 3 attacks, all against touch AC because that's how blue flame rolls, each at 67.5 damage, for 202.5 total fire damage. If anything, your friend low-balled it, seems they started on 39 base damage.

Excuse me while I oneshot this.

Power Attack: If I am using a two-handed weapon with one hand (such as a lance while mounted), do still I get the +50% damage for using a two-handed weapon?

Yes.

One of my players has a dozen years of fencing experience, so he shows me how he attacks the monster and I consider it an automatic critical hit, as obviously he knows that's the best way to do it.

One of my players has twenty years of experience as a lawyer, so they tell me which argument they support and that side wins.

Maybe it's just me, but this feels like a bad thread to post when all the Paizo employees are enjoying their holiday, and thus aren't on the forums. I don't want them to feel like they can't ever take their eyes off of us.

Oh what are you talking about?

A post like this on Thanksgiving rolling right into the modless weekend?

Sheer coincidence.

Deadmanwalking wrote:

Nobody here is arguing casters are the best class ever. Their Proficiencies in weapons, armor, Perception, and saves lag in general behind martials, as does their single target and at-will damage. Martials are sincerely better at some things than casters are this edition and should be.

But only some things. Casters are much better at buffs, debuffs, utility effects, dealing with large numbers of opponents, and nova-ing with their limited resources. And likewise, this is as it should be.

I strongly (and respectfully) disagree, sir. If you insist on cleaving to a martial/spellcaster line, then I'll phrase my argument in those terms:

There should be means for creating any combination of focus(?) and role. That is, there should be martial single-target damage dealers, martial AoE damage dealers, martial (de)buffers, martial controllers, etc, spellcaster single-target damage dealers, spellcaster AoE damage dealers, spellcaster (de)buffers, spellcaster controllers, etc.

True parity would allow for all of those things -- and that's what we're after, right? Parity?

Your list covered roles in combat, but there's more to the game.

Some casters can, for example, teleport. With a single spell, or perhaps 2 or 3 to cover scrying, such a caster can fill a role of travel expert (master? Legend?). A martial devoting their entire build to transporting themselves, their party and other cargo from A to B will probably fall far short of a caster devoting a fraction of theirs in speed, in safety, in capacity and almost any other metric.

Yes, rarity exists, I am aware.

Martials tend to struggle to match such versatility with the options printed, even if all rarities are allowed. There is actually nothing stopping e.g. a skill feat being printed that lets a martial gather up all their friends and a barn's worth of items on their shoulders before Superman leaping to the next nation or island or planet in seconds. It could be written and given the same level as the spell it counterparts; it could be given finite uses a day much like P1E's stunning fist, as a limitation. There are tabletop RPG games where this kind of content is created. Thus far, P2E has some traces of it, but nothing near parity. A martial desiring such a role must often look to one or more magic items to enable them, ones a caster could use as well as them, if not better.

This is not some impassable barrier. Paizo's developers don't fail to publish such content because it is as far beyond their reach as a cure for cancer or time travel. They judge the flavour of such content not to suit their audience, at least not enough to have published it yet, time will tell. Are they right? Hard to say. Marketing is a form of gambling.

As things stand in the present, magic is allowed to do anything. That's the thematic identity of magic, the incredible happening despite all rationality. That doesn't mean that magic users should be able to do anything, no more than a fire user should be able to create a new sun at full scale because "The sun is made of fire".

The scale of magic use is limited, but the scope of it?

Magic doesn't have to make sense. Why do the abilities I develop to hurl lightning from my hands allow me to slip smoothly into raising the dead from the earth, then creating an illusion of sound, then enthralling an autonomous sentient mind, then peering into the futures probable, then calling an Angel from Heaven, then sealing a complex mechanical lock, then turning myself into a bear? It's like spending years training up to pilot a commercial passenger aircraft, taking a summer to be a defence attorney at the same level, and then settling into heart surgery.

Martials are expected to make sense. A caster can squeeze every spell on their list out of the same mental ability, but a martial that has swung axes mightily all along wants to use a bow? Um, excuse me, that requires Dexterity. You can't just flex the arrows to the target, now please take your turn properly so that the pyromancer can Charisma someone invisible with the spell they learned last week.

We end up with this dynamic, casters having a greater variety of things they can do because magic. It is not inevitable mind you, but so long as feats have feat chains, while the requirement to learn and cast Meteor Swarm is "Be a high enough Arcane or Primal caster", instead of that plus know Fireball and some other spells that build up to Meteor Swarm... This is where we find ourselves.

By theme and by system design, casters dominate in range of options. The given solution, rather than abolish this difference, parity is sought by granting martials, in exchange, greater ability in the things they can do. That is why, primarily, the strength of martials comes from better numbers. More hit points, higher proficiency bonuses, more attacks by efficient action economy. In P2E a fighter's level 19 capstone is still some extra +2s. A wizard's is currently a choice of Cataclysm, Gate, Remake, Time Stop or Wish, and some extra +2s.

Despite this, people feel fighter is kinda OP and wizard kinda weak.

I won't call that view mistaken. What I will say instead is, for a game still publishing content, that's a good place to be.

It's much easier to predict the impact of simple maths boosters like proficiency than irregular processes like spells. It's also much easier to bolster a class that relies on underperforming options by publishing new options than it is to unpublish overperforming options that make a class too powerful. Classes based on numbers having better balance out of the gate, while classes based on options are on the weak side, is a predicable launch state, and has a fairly easy road to addressing the latter. 5 years from now, fighters will likely hit barely if any harder than they do today, because how much more are they going to be able to eke out on top of Legendary with most weapons? Casters on the other hand will have vastly more options, and will effectively be stronger simply because it will be possible to cut more fat and get closer to what you want with the greater selection. There will likely be an option, I hope a few, to specialise casters in single target damage, once Paizo find a way to balance "And I can teleport as well". Else it's no parity at all.

Artificial 20 wrote:

Corwin Icewolf wrote:

Quote:

“That’s (not) what my character would do” is not a good argument when all it takes is a little imagination.

Well I guess I have no imagination then.

That seems to be the case.

Have you ever felt intimidated before? Was it only in that situation?

Lots of things can be intimidating. A stranger intently observing your child. A previously locked door slightly ajar. The only person in the room with a gun chuckling to themselves.

Intimidation is the portent of threat. Is your wizard not a threat? Are they incapable of inflicting ailments their enemies would wish to avoid?

"What's your favourite animal?" as you wind up with a Bale Polymorph, or "Your agony will be brief" while the Fireball blazes into existence, or "Do keep your melting organs off my robes" to accompany a poisonous mist spreading from your hands.

You're magic, curse them out literally.

I dunno man, I'd feel like a complete cornball saying stuff like that.

Do you not feel like a cornball yelling "We're going to rip out your entrails and strangle you with them!" when playing a martial? Or do you feel gated from using intimidation as those classes too?

You don't have to say anything, except for "I roll for intimidate". If you want to spice that up by adding an in-character line you think of or recall, have fun, but doing so is optional. Browsing all written literature would likely turn up many examples proving it's possible for a wizard to be very threatening in a wizardly way. It can happen, it's mechanically enabled, if you want to imagine it try googling for famous wizard quotes, if not don't hold yourself to improvisational standards you feel uncomfortable with. You're allowed to survive dragons dousing you in acid without method acting.

NPC stands for Not Provided Clothing.

Quote:

“That’s (not) what my character would do” is not a good argument when all it takes is a little imagination.

Well I guess I have no imagination then.

That seems to be the case.

Have you ever felt intimidated before? Was it only in that situation?

Lots of things can be intimidating. A stranger intently observing your child. A previously locked door slightly ajar. The only person in the room with a gun chuckling to themselves.

Intimidation is the portent of threat. Is your wizard not a threat? Are they incapable of inflicting ailments their enemies would wish to avoid?

"What's your favourite animal?" as you wind up with a Bale Polymorph, or "Your agony will be brief" while the Fireball blazes into existence, or "Do keep your melting organs off my robes" to accompany a poisonous mist spreading from your hands.

You're magic, curse them out literally.