BellyBeard's page

It is referring to the table linked.

NPC design is very different in the new edition. With the new design philosophy, all first level creatures (including NPCs and even PCs) should be roughly equal in power, and NPCs do not have classes. Of course a level 1 barbarian is probably more powerful than a level 1 sorcerer in most combat situations, but that's the idea. Based on this, I don't think your level 1 commoner has roughly the same combative power as a level 1 fighter or wizard, and I don't think commoner as a class needs to exist. If you haven't seen it I would recommend looking at the Monster Creation Guide. You can use this same guide to make NPCs. A commoner could be a level -1 creature with these rules.

That wouldn't be a level bump on its own imo, unless you also adjusted other stats.

So the scenario is:

* Enemy can fly
* Enemy does not have wings or other obvious means of flying
* Enemy has effective ranged attacks and no reason to come into melee
* Party is below level 7 (access to fly spell) or higher level but no access to flight on barbarian. Maybe your caster just didn't prepare fly or already used it, for example
* Barbarian beats enemy in initiative and immediately activates rage
* Enemy survives long enough to get airborne
* Barbarian has no other enemies to attack or things they can do except attack the one enemy

In this very specific scenario, yes, the Barbarian either stands around doing nothing (maybe attempting intimidate or something) or breaks anathema by using ranged attacks and loses rage for the day. If your team has competent ranged attackers I would probably just shout insults at the cowardly levitating enemy, but otherwise just deal with anathema.

I hope by writing it this way you can see that a large set of preconditions and specific sequence of events have to occur for this scenario, making quite unlikely. I think the low level flier with strong ranged attacks and no obvious wings in particular doesn't actually exist, but haven't looked through the Bestiary to confirm.

Rules for diseases spreading, especially between party members, seems like something that could be fun in an adventure specifically designed around that idea, and antifun other times due to splitting the party or removing a character from play. The 2e rules seem to draw out an intentional "line in the sand" quite often, preferring to spell out rules for playing the game and allowing DMs to do what they want for more book-keepy or verisimilitude-related things. I expect specific rules for the spread of a plague-type disease will show up if and when an adventure is written which needs such rules, and will not generally apply to every disease in CRB.

Maybe a good excuse for the Barbarian to invest in some knowledge skills to know whether the thing will fly away before raging. :)

I read through the backgrounds and thought "Oh, that's nice for a new player." Then I immediately made custom backgrounds for every single character from then on.

I don't mind them being an "I don't know enough to make my own decisions" tool, and certainly campaign specific backgrounds are interesting, but by and large they are not necessary for anyone with a character already in mind and a decent grasp of the rules.

I don't consider myself new to RPGs, but with the way I build characters the backgrounds in the CRB are a great tool for me. I usually start with a build in mind, like "smart Fighter who fights unconventionally", and from that idea adding a background can take the character in many interesting directions. I would not have thought to make the fighter an ex-detective myself, so I find them useful.

...

It is not apparent how to add ancestries or backgrounds or whether not at al nor whether one just adds a level of say fighter. I know the book states you can just adject stats but half the ease of making a fight adequate for whatever level party with whatever level monster there was, was t.he ability to add levels to the creature.

The prior system the first bestiary had rules for upgrading and adding classes to monsters especially pointing out which monsters could be upgraded this way and which were better not. It also had advice for how this affected the CR of the encounter.

For whatever reason these rules in any form do not exist in the original bestiary. I don't find that helpful at all. I can make changes but it is more difficult to then adjudicate the real CR. I am not sure why this was done. Also there are no monster only feats at all such as fly by. Curious as to why they wnet this way?

There is a very different design philosophy for monsters this edition. There are no racial adjustments to stats and classes tacked on base monsters, because when you think of it that was a lot of extra steps to get to the end goal of a monster with abilities you wanted it to have. It required someone experienced enough to know what the "right" numbers were to make a fair and balanced monster in the end, and required a lot of fiddling. It also limited the possible abilities monsters could have in a lot of ways.

The new design paradigm is to skip all that fiddling with racial bonuses, and instead keep the end goal front and center. If you want the monster to have good reflex and poor will, you just give them that, based on their level. You make them unique with some special actions or abilities and it's basically done.

This makes adjusting monsters even easier, since there's no reverse engineering what is a monster ability versus a class ability anymore, and you don't have to worry about the numbers not lining up for your special custom monster. If you have a mage derro and you want to make a warrior derro, you adjust the saves, HP, attacks, etc, take away the spellcasting, and give it a couple warrior abilities like AoO and a special two action attack. After learning it the whole process takes like 5 minutes, it's massively easier than PF1.

I recommend you look at the Monster Building Guidelines which will be part of the upcoming GMG, to understand the new design process. Once you get a handle on it things are way easier for a GM who wants to make their own modifications.

The verbal component is removed, it doesn't "become" anything. The action is still the Cast a Spell activity, with one fewer tag. It's pretty simple.

I usually say something to the effect of "it sears your soul" or "you feel the attack tear into the core of your being", so they know I'm talking about a non-physical effect. I wouldn't want them thinking it's acid damage or something through my description. I usually describe evil creatures being hit with the Sorcerer's Divine Lance as sizzling and hissing in pain.

My very small sampling: out of the 20 groups and approx 200 PF players I know, only one of them has played more than 1 session. The exception is myself. Because I am trying to get sold on the system. That said, if I cannot form a single table...I’ll have to switch around...

I tried to get my GF into tabletop play. After several disastrous attempts when she was younger (old ADND) she had sworn them off. So we signed up for PF2E at a convention. Our experience? 3 and a half hours to go through a single combat round. My GF and I spent about 2-3 minutes total, the rest was by the GM and other 3 players.

Sadly, it seems my GF won’t be joining any PF games anytime soon after that experience.

So I still am giving this a shot, but it is not a big hit in my area...

Were they just chatting about other things and not playing? Three and a half hours is ridiculous, if it was rules discussion the GM should just make a call after a few minutes of searching. I can't see any way you can spend that long on a single turn with even a passing knowledge of d20 systems. Most times I have a whole game session with 3-5 combats in that time.

This is more like comparing your car's speed in MPH to another car's speed in Km/h and complaining the MPH number is smaller so the car must be worse.

As I have stated who knows how many times in this thread, the "actions lost" during stunned are a counter. The actual penalty of being stunned is the fact that at any time you are stunned, you can't act. That is including the turn you gain the condition.

The second sentence of stunned says "Stunned usually includes a value, which indicates how many total actions you lose, possibly over multiple turns, from being stunned." Based on that general idea I don't believe extra actions should be removed on your turn without reducing the stunned value. If you are stunned 1 and lose 2 actions on your turn plus one next turn, that's 3 actions lost, so that would contradict this sentence. Losing actions and being unable to use actions are one and the same, at least as I see it.

In fact I don't think there's any consistent way of reading this full entry for a Stun that happens on your turn. It seems very likely to be an errata target. Because of that, and in absence of developer comment about the intention, I think any ruling will have to effectively be a house rule at this point. Just do what makes sense for your group.

(Im sure others will disagree that it's clear as day if you read it one particular way and make some assumptions, but this is my opinion on the topic)

Agreed that a TN Champion shouldn't just be a Champion on his way between one cause and another, simply because, being a transition, it can't really be a defining character concept for 20 levels of adventures. But I heartily disagree with the bolded; why must the thing a Champion champions be related to an alignment at all? And I don't just mean the three causes of the three TN deities (Soul Cycle, Nature, and Magic), but also other causes that non-TN deities care about that are only peripherally at best related to those deities' non-TN alignments.

Certainly true. I should have instead said that champions have to stand for something, and the champion options presented so far stand for concepts represented by an alignment. I agree that future champion options could open up to other causes though. The important thing is you are fighting for something particular.

I think a bit of the "trap" people are falling into, and whats driving some issues, is that people are looking for an alignment to be internal consistent and without conflict. This overlooks a massive host of character concepts and narrative angles.

I don't think your concepts are champions of neutrality. They are champions of good/evil who happen to be neutral at the moment, but a fallen paladin is not fighting for neutrality (at least not in traditional fallen paladin stories) so they would likely skip right over to champion of evil.

Put another way, it's not sufficient for a champion to merely have a particular alignment at the moment, but they must actively fight for what that alignment represents. This is what the anathema represent. A paladin who falls, but into neutrality as the end goal instead of evil, would be more appropriate as a neutral champion, but is harder to grasp as a concept. What would the anathema even look like?

Pulling from other suggestions up-thread, maybe this paladin realizes that the struggle to pull souls from evil into good and changing their destination to a good plane is somehow harmful, by imbalancing cosmic powers or what have you, and they become a champion of ensuring that souls reach their proper destination, even if that might be a place of suffering and hate.

I agree calm emotions is better overall. Better range, better AoE pattern of burst instead of cone, on a fail it takes the enemy out of the fight, and you can sustain the attack penalty on successful save instead of it only lasting 1 round. The advantage for color spray is that on a failed save it affects them for a minute without sustaining, while you have to spend an action every round on calm emotions. Of course if it's only one or two creatures color spray would also be preferable, since your party will want to direct hostile actions against them if they have no other targets and potentially taking away an action and blinding for a round (which possibly means they have to seek, losing more actions) is a much better penalty than -1 attack.

I agree, I've done more homebrew race and specialized class options then I ever did in PF1 because the structure in place makes it easy to logically build up your own stuff. Combined with the super easy monster building, which are easy enough I think with experience you could generate creatures totally ad hoc with just some reference tables, I think the system lends itself very well to homebrew.

True statements, it is just amusing given that Dwarven weapon familiarity (racial feat) grants proficiencies in Battle Axe, Pick, and Warhammer - which are martial weapons. so my wizard can hit things better with any of those, which given their 'martial' status means they are probably supposed to be harder to use than a simple weapon. But that clan dagger, which is a simple weapon... well apparently it's much harder to use.

The way I look at it, as a wizard the feat represents you getting basic training in traditional dwarf weapons, and clan daggers aren't really a traditional weapon for a warrior. For others with more weapon proficiencies the feat represents practicing the uncommon weapons, even those that are not traditionally combat weapons like the clan dagger, but since you are less skilled with weapons you had to focus your training more on the dwarven basics, even if they are not as "simple" (though I think axes are pretty simple to use too right?).

All dwarves have a knife that was used to cut their umbilical cord. Not all dwarves, or even many dwarves, fight others with that knife. The free clan dagger is a flavor thing, and doesn't need to come with a mechanical benefit for all dwarves.

tivadar27 wrote:

I mean at level 20, a Fighter can AoO once per each opponent's turn, so effectively the maximum damage against an infinite amount of opponents is infinity! Math finished! Much winning!

EDIT: Hmm, unless you have a way on each of those attacks to do an infinite amount of damage... that would actually be bigger than infinity...

I wouldn't say it could be infinite. Enemies (usually) take up space and have limited movement.

So the enemies would have to form a queue and walk one by one through the fighter's reach. Let us make them flying, burrowing creatures too so that we can have them use three dimensions of movement.

Nonsense, the enemies have an infinite amount of allies teleport them in one at a time, then they walk past the fighter into a sphere of annihilation. :p

If you really want the old school roll, then i believe the best way is to roll 2dx. Like 6 hp becomes 2d6. This way you have both the very high and the very low, with acceptable distributions and a bonus average in exchange for the risks involved in rolling.

This is probably the best recommendation for what the OP was looking for.

BellyBeard wrote:

Atalius wrote:

Like the Captain stated earlier the problem is you can walk through it on your turn and exit it without any ill effects.

This is severely restricting their turn, to making a single Strike action and spending two actions a round to avoid the effects of your spell, which is a win in my book.

It doesn't cost two actions unless the caster is also staying inside the area, and they would be subject to their own Black Tentacles (as would any of their allies).

Most of the time, at best it would cost them a single Stride a turn unless they attempted to walk along the diameter.

I agree, but picture stacking Grease and tentacles in a narrow corridor.

And Brutish Shove is marked as one action, and Improved Knockdown is not. Funny how that works.

Eh, I've found grognards can be just as focused on combat. In these cases they probably role play a single character, whose personality is the same as theirs or overly simple, and trawl boards for silly overpowered builds. I've also played with a couple people who RPed in MMOs and transitioned very easily to RPing in tabletop games. I think that a nice part of tabletop games is they can accommodate a wide variety of playstyle at the same table, if care is taken to make sure everyone has fun.

The first line describes what happens immediately as you cast the spell, it makes those grapples when the spell is cast. Then it describes the ongoing effect, stating an enemy ending in the area may be grappled. I don't see any reading that would allow for grapples to be made when a creature enters the area on their turn, and if that was the case it would likely be a reaction or something, as you typically don't get to interrupt enemy turns for free.

A giant instinct barbarian covers a huge area of the battlefield with their threatened area. Their form of tanking is to stand in the way, and the cost for enemies to get to and attack your allies becomes high enough that they attack you instead (of course, they also have lowest AC of tanks, so it's a little riskier than champion).

In other words, the champion mitigates damage to allies through their reaction. The Barbarian mitigates damage to allies by preventing the attacks in the first place.

2 action heal is indeed better than 1 action heal + reach metamagic. But if your target is farther away than 30', without reach you must get closer (and if you can't you simply can't affect them) while 2 action heal + reach perfectly fits this scenario. So even with some overlap the metamagics can still be useful in specific situations.

Metamagics would still provide the benefits they do now, and then some. For example, Widen Spell on the example burning hands gives you the options of 15' line 1 action, 20' line 2 actions (with Widen), 15' cone 2 actions, 20' cone 3 actions (with Widen). So it becomes even better actually, giving you even more options (the example with reach spell would not change what it gives now though).

This would also be a buff to gishes, who want to move and attack with two actions and will be happy to have spell options for that third action without mandating haste be up all the time. Especially if many provide a touch range 1 action option like the proposed slow.

I would really like it if they went in this direction going forward, I think it makes for much more dynamic choices for the average caster.

This is the playtest though. It's the best place to point out vague wording that could be clarified before we have this same issue crop up at launch.

Bare minimum I want Patrons to have a framework around how witches are built and played, even if the exact details are broad and fairly open. Using eidolons as an example, the base form did lay out some groundwork for which the evolutions built on (and while you could certainly end up with a faceless blob, there was at least a foundation).

Yeah, I get that. I'm personally not creative enough to come up with the categorization scheme that would be the patron equivalent of base forms though. I saw others suggest something to do with the patron's relationship to the witch, which would be an interesting route, but seems like there's only so much space in that for new concepts.

I don't really want it to be linked to the patron's true form though, like angel VS hag or something like that. It seems to cut out the chance for mystery if you are required to pick a specific form, while also restricting patrons to a list of whatever's been published so far.

So here it says how Knockdown works, followed by the word "instead" , changing Knockdown to making a SINGLE strike (a Strike being 1 action), as it does not mention changing the Trait "Flourish" then this strike can only ever happen once a round.

To achieve this ability you need to spend 2 feats, i expect it to be better than the L4 feat.

Why would it change the action requirements but not the flourish trait? Improved Knockdown doesn't have flourish and neither does the derivate action Strike, since we're deriving stuff about Improved Knockdown from a base Strike, so it must not have flourish either. Or else, how are you determining what to derive from Strike and what you take from the base Knockdown activity?

You haven't yet responded to all the examples of activities which have action costs that are different from the derivative actions, like Power Attack or Quick Draw. A single blow does not imply a single action, which is really what your entire argument hinges on. You just keep repeating the exact same thing.

The two actions Improved Knockdown is better than the L4 Knockdown feat, for reasons that have been outlined numerous times upthread. Base Knockdown essentially requires two attacks to hit, one for the initial attack and one for the trip, which is two chances to roll low and not get a trip. Improved Knockdown only requires one roll, and turns the trip part into an auto crit success, which is quite a bit better.

BellyBeard wrote:

Rysky wrote:

"I assume this is related to Liz Liddell’s comment before?"

More me pointing out that as is currently there's ansolutely no rules on what is or can be a Patron and so hopefully that (and any loopholes or silliness it could create) is taken care of in the final.

A main-class witch becoming the patron of someone who multiclasses witch later on sounds awesome and flavorful.

That is the least silly interpretation to go off of that, and neat (Coven!)

It’s more “i declare the level 1 Fighter in the group we just started my Patron” that you veer into silliness. Or that random non magical tree stump. Or the lint in your pocket.

Yes, that would be silly. In practice I don't think it's really an issue though, in the same way that PF1 summoners didn't regularly flavor their eidolons as Barny the Dinosaur (maybe for the right kind of game) or other verisimilitude breaking characters despite that being something they definitely could have done.

Now for all the people to pop in thread and tell me about their silly eidolons. :)

"I assume this is related to Liz Liddell’s comment before?"

More me pointing out that as is currently there's ansolutely no rules on what is or can be a Patron and so hopefully that (and any loopholes or silliness it could create) is taken care of in the final.

A main-class witch becoming the patron of someone who multiclasses witch later on sounds awesome and flavorful.

Nope don't do that. It's a real s*!#ty way of shuttering discussion.

I am going to read your reply as "I personally don't need this so I'm fine with it being left out".

Unless of course you actually like a forum where you can't suggest things unless everyone agrees. Meaning no discussion at all, since the things everybody can agree on is likely in the book already.

You are specifically not asking for a discussion though, and anyone who tries to discuss in your threads is basically told to go away.

I'm defending knowing about a more general weakness, like regeneration and fire, or whatever relationship some undead probably have with radiant, or knowing about skelles and bludgeoning.

IMO the GM should decide where the line is drawn between "general knowledge" and something you have to roll for. I would assume most GMs would probably give the regeneration one to anyone who comes from an area with trolls, and the skeleton one seems like common sense, but once you get to very slightly more obscure ones (demons with cold iron, how common is that knowledge?) it gets muddier, which is why the GM should decide.

When's a good time to use Inspire defense (heroics) instead of Inspire courage (heroics)? I'm considering maybe getting Inspire defence as a feat but just not sure if it can hold its own. Anyone recommend Inspire defence?

It depends on how much average damage inspire courage adds VS how much average damage inspire defense mitigates. Both depend on how many attacks are being made on both sides, and how much damage is being done on hit by both sides, and how likely attacks are to hit, and how much your party depends on attacks VS save effects, so it's kind of hard to give a definitive answer.

The short answer is, if you think your party deals more damage than the enemies next turn, inspire courage. If you think the enemies deal more damage than your party next turn, inspire defense.

About the playtest threads:

All I will say (and not necessarily to the OP here, though it does apply to a few of their threads) is don't make threads with baiting titles and get mad when people fall for the bait.

Attempting to respond to several posts here.

You are not being punished for remembering trolls are weak to fire. You in fact have the advantage of knowing useful information will be given to your character with a knowledge check, so are a leg up on someone who didn't know about the weakness.

The fact that troll regeneration can be stopped with fire is not always common knowledge. For example, if a character hails from Osirion where there are no trolls (don't know if that's true in Lore, just making an example), this shouldn't be taken as a given. It's up to the GM to tell the players what their characters know about the enemy without making checks, and up to the players if they want to make checks to learn more.

It's not at all about surprising the players with the troll's weakness, it's about role-playing a character with limited experiences. You make a recall knowledge check so that the character can remember some knowledge; whether the player already knew it or is just learning it, the check still needs to be made. I agree with the idea that characters have heard of trolls before, and may have heard of their powerful regeneration, and may have even heard that stopping that regeneration requires fire or acid. That's what the Recall Knowledge action is there for, to remember those stories you heard years back (and remember which stories were true and which were old wives' tales).

I think there's several issues with the "accept that the story isn't about the things players have already discovered in their previous adventures" idea.

For one, this means you can never replay any adventure path or any adventure at all, including ones that one player has done but nobody else in the group has.

This also means a level 1 8 int barbarian character made by an experienced player is more worldly and knowledgeable than the 20 int level 10 wizard played by a novice to the system.

It means that Recall Knowledge becomes less useful as the player gains more system mastery, and essentially turns knowledge checks into "trap actions" as you learn more out-of-character.

BellyBeard wrote:

...why are they different?

Because in most of the situations that people call metagaming the actions being taken by the character actually do make narrative sense.

The "metagaming is bad" side of the discussion always gets hung up on what the player is thinking rather than looking at the actual narrative though.

That's why there are arguments like "you've never done that before, why are you doing it now?" with the examples of use of a different kind of attack instead of "your character literally can't think that would work" like with this repeated search example.

Here's a test for whether it's actually the narrative that is the problem: if a player that you know had no clue what they were doing chose the same actions in the same scenario, or the same actions were being taken when the player was wrong about them being useful, would you think "this is metagaming"?

If not, then the narrative makes sense, and is not the problem.

And again, if a totally new player made a greatsword character and pulled out a torch only when a fire weak creature showed up, I would also ask them why they are doing that. They might give a reasonable answer why they would stop using the sword, in which case we'd proceed as normal. If they are a new player and don't know about the nebulous term "metagaming" they'll probably say they do it because fire stops a troll's regeneration, at which point I'd point out their character doesn't know that unless they make a Recall Knowledge check.

Only the experienced player would know to give a vague answer to try and avoid the spent actions and chance of failure of a Recall Knowledge check. That's using player knowledge to try and gain an action advantage by avoiding using the rules.

My previous advice was for a severe encounter, so if you want to go moderate it should be toned down a little accordingly.

If their first fight was zombies I actually think that makes zombie shamblers a better choice for an addition here (assuming they haven't seen them since, don't want to overdo it). They'll smoke the level -1 zombie shamblers they had troubles with before, and it will show them how much their characters have improved already (of course I don't know what your game schedule is like and how long it's been since then, so you'll use your own judgment here).

One elite shadow and one weak shadow would work as well for a moderate encounter.

Would an always-on "least" curse effect which is a minor irritation, possibly solely narrative or with very small penalties and no benefit, fix the issue of "I choose when I get cursed" for you?

I would do it as a zombie hulk with 6 zombie shamblers. Position a few extra corpses around the battlefield for his corpse throwing ability, and throw some shamblers instead for some fun combat dynamics, showing off that he's a Mindless brute (the shamblers are mostly there to make the fight more engaging than standing around a big guy and healing melee as they fall, which is very important for the hulk who is not very mobile and dynamic on his own).

When scaling up a boss encounter for a bigger group its usually better to add a few weaker enemies than to make the big guy stronger. The reason is that the fight can be frustrating if you have 6 characters but nobody can hit the big guy's AC even with debuffs, which can happen if you have one super strong creature. It also makes certain tactics, like spamming slow spell, go from a good idea to basically required to prevent the boss from killing your team.

If he just stays in place he's kind of giving up half the actions the activity gives. It makes it less powerful, not more, as he's using two actions just to make the demoralize check, while if he did a regular demoralize he could recover panache and attack with a spare third action. He should be able to just stand in place and use it without penalty IMO.

If you read it that Stride is required and he can't just stay in place, then what he's doing by moving in and out is fine by the rules. The move is to get close and surprise them with the frills and a hiss like the jurassic park lizard, not to prove your bravery, and darting around the battlefield is not cowardly either, as he's still staying around to fight. It's definitely not overpowered, and I personally wouldn't nerf his main ability for his character that arbitrarily.

I think the Craft rules as written were made as simple as possible while being pretty valid for the things most characters will want to craft. If you are GMing a game where crafting mundane items is important I would make up some alternative craft duration rules, because the rules as written are not made to accommodate that scenario.

The idea that you only know about things you've encountered bothers me. Many of the traits are from mythology. And we know them because of storytelling, not just RPG experience. Surely every village in Golarion has storytellers. Featuring trolls as well as vampires and dragons and ghosts and the like. In fact, everyone is assumed literate, so have likely been reading stories. The classic abilities like regeneration ought at least be an easy knowledge check.

Which is why we have Recall Knowledge. You remember a story from your childhood about trolls if you successfully make the check. If you don't spend the actions, that story is not the first thing coming to your mind as a thundering green giant swings a club at you the size of a tree.

Wait a sec, how is searching over and over in the same place because you the player know something is there from previous playthroughs cheating? That's an action my character could possibly take, just like searching once or not searching at all, and I don't need to justify it because it's what I want my character to do. You're just punishing me for having played the AP before and forcing me to pretend I don't know there is a hidden treasure there (and we all know choosing a different action pretending I don't know something is impossible, this isn't play pretend dagnabit this is D&D!). In fact you're the one metagaming for not allowing my character to search multiple times at this particular spot when I could have done it anywhere there wasn't treasure.

I completely agree that this isn't a one-sided issue. What I'm talking about is not disagreement but gatekeeping, where any and all dissent is disregarded and folks are told to "shut up". This isn't specific to any particular viewpoint, and the plural of anecdote isn't data, but I've observed and experienced a lot of this behavior on the 2e forums. I think this kind of negativity scares away new players - I know that's been the case for other RPGs.

Constructive, respectful criticism breaks up groupthink (something I'm certainly guilty of at times) and should be cherished, not scorned.

This is exactly what I meant about reading negative intention into posts. You feel like dissenting opinions are told to "shut up", but really it's normally just other people presenting their own arguments about the topic. The fact that so many arguments are given is taken as a negative implication without anyone actually saying something like that (well, sometimes someone comes out with a personal attack straight away, but that usually happens after the thread devolves a bit instead).

I think part of the problem is that threads seem to be something of an "opinion popularity contest" at times. Both sides of an argument are not trying to convince each other but instead trying to drum up support, and the one who "wins" is the one who has more people come into the thread and express a similar opinion. You can see this in threads where people completely avoid each other's points and/or pull some extreme strawman arguments out, making it obvious that it's not about actually discussing and convincing each other. A lot of times this starts with one person and a whole thread gets dragged into it.

There is a lot of what some would call "bandwagoning", where a lot of people express the same opinion in slightly different ways. This is to make a public display that this is the majority opinion on the forum, and form a sort of "public opinion on the topic by consensus", which definitely gives the impression that since this is now public opinion dissenting opinions shouldn't be voiced. None of this is necessarily directed at you though, it's just how forum discussions work.

I think I'm getting hugely off topic and should maybe make a "meta discussions" thread though.

I do agree on dragon barbarian.

That said, my saying was mostly because the fact I can hardly remember the last time i fought with one of my party a group with more than 6 enemies.

That's why I also mentioned swipe + sweep + axe critical specialization ( by lvl 6 a critical hit would be like 6d12+str+spec on 2 targets )

I come from 5e and I am currently playing AoA. Almost lvl 3 and the larger ( note larger, not harder ) was composed by 4 low lvl creeps and 1 medium one. But same goes for the 2 5e campaigns I partecipated.

Maybe I will see ( mine is just a consideration, so please no AoA related spoilers ) sometimes a group of 7+ enemies.

At last, since we are discussing about aoe effects, what would be the number of enemies hit to justify an aoe?

We can find a theoretical max number of enemies using encounter guidelines.

Encounters should not go above 160 XP total, and enemy level should not go below PL-4. That's 10 XP each, or 16 total enemies. So that's the theoretical max you should ever see in an encounter by those guidelines.

Realistically you will likely have encounters that are 4-6 max. Usually a larger encounter can be one stronger enemy, one at level, and two or three weaker, though this can obviously change a lot.

I think it does not take many enemies to justify an AoE, 3 definitely does it and maybe even 2 (would need to look at numbers). Spell damage of 2d6 per level, save for half, is not very far behind a martial's first attack, so if you hit two enemies it should be more valuable than 2 vanilla Strikes with MAP (the second Strike loses about 50% damage), though of course there are many feats where you are not making two vanilla attacks. However the average damage gains for these feats are not always as high as you might expect, most stay at average damage of 2 attacks at full bonus or lower. So 2 enemies hit by AoE is decent but not great, but more than 2 is definitely worth it, would be my "napkin calculations" assessment.

idk, it's a fun game, but i think i'd prefer to play 1e as a player.

Definitely a valid opinion. PF2 is a more consistent experience where PF1 could vary wildly based on character and builds, but that's not a bad thing at all: in many people's opinions, different builds SHOULD play wildly differently. If you are used to PF1, PF2 can feel like a reduction in agency, where your character (and by extension you) has less control over the story because many things you could do through optimizing or powerful magic before are simply not possible in PF2. You can't get a +20 modifier to lying from glibness and cause hijinks anymore, so a game where that caused an unexpected and fun change from the norm is no longer possible. That does feel like the game is losing something by bringing the outlier experiences in closer to the norm.

My party has been a monk, a bard, a divine sorcerer, and a warpriest cleric of gorum. They have not had issues so far with survivability, and in fact have not had anyone drop in combat yet. I've been homebrewing the adventure, the biggest fight thus far was against some cacodaemons shortly followed by a sod hound (just before level 2).

The monk unquestionably does the most nova damage (he went ki strike), but the rest of the party has been contributing well. Soothe on the Bard and heals from the sorcerer have been working well to keep people standing in combat, and they all do fine with their weapons and cantrips (sorc took an ancestry feat for produce flame).

Our game has only got to about halfway through level 2. I'll see how they progress as the levels increase.

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As for the last part of your post, I agree that there is a lot of negativity, though I wouldn't say it's all from people trying to shut down criticisms of the game. There's just a lot of negativity in any discussion, which I think is nearly inevitable in an internet forum where people can read negative tone into the posts they don't agree with and things can escalate from there. I am as guilty of this as any, unfortunately.