Puff of poison got a sort-of nerfbat, in that it deals 1d4 rather than 1d8 initial damage and no persistent damage on a success (though 1d4 persistent rather than a flat 2). Scaling is better for the persistent poison (1d4 per heighten).
They should really just changed the language so the curse only applies while you're actively in an encounter with a significant foe.
Throughout PF 2E, there's been an almost herculean effort to avoid using the term "encounter" or have "encounter powers" a la D&D 4e, likely due to developer concern that this would go down as artificial (like 4e encounter powers ultimately did). Hence the Refocus mechanic rather than making some spells explicitly encounter-limited and the Medicine method of healing (rather than 4e-style healing surges).
They're moving away from that with some of the barbarian stuff (rage explicitly lasts "until the end of the encounter" now) which I approve of. But yeah curse is still janky, to avoid the "when the encounter ends" phrasing.
I don't like the cross-blooded evolution change, but I think it was necessary. I made sorcerer after sorcerer and always took that feat. It was a feat so good that not taking it was foolish. Poaching a spell from another list was exceptionally powerful.
I like that sorcerous potency is a class feature now. Sorcerer's should be the best blasters and it should not be easy to take that from them.
Wizards are the versatile casters. Sorcerers are the magic blast hammer.
Though they aren't nearly as narrow as they used to be with all the spells they get.
Yeah the issue with the old crossblooded and Dangerous Sorcery is that they were feat taxes. The issue with the new crossblooded is...it's pretty bad.
On the other hand, the new Split Shot is amazing, so can't complain too much. I am SO happy that dragon and demon sorcerer were fixed too. Overall, I think the class is somewhat more playable, though I don't think it changed all that much in the remaster.
Monk archetype imposing a 1d4-round cooldown on Flurry of Blows was a pleasant surprise.
Less exciting than a minor boost to monks FoB at around 10th level, TBH.
It being a 1d4 round cooldown instead of a static length cooldown makes it annoying to plan around, to boot.
I think that was the point. Now people who take the monk archetype aren't going to be as consistent with FoB as monks are, making monks have a bit more of their kit to themselves. I'm also pretty sure that the 1d4 was inserted so that people could still, potentially, FoB more than once a fight if they got lucky, since the standard cooldowns graduate from 1/round, 1d4 rounds, 1/minute, 1/10 minutes, 1/hour, and 1/day.
The lowest of those is what the monk already has, and made FoB real easy to poach, while 1/minute means you're only ever getting to use FoB once per fight. Every 1d4 rounds is the rough medium between those two.
All true, but I'm with PossibleCabbage on this one: buffing the monk's FoB at 10th level would've been a much better way of protecting it's niche than nerfing the multiclass feat, even though both accomplish the same goal.
Still happy something happened, just disappointed it wasn't the more fun option.
I feel like this nerf is way too heavy handed.
Flurry of Blows isn't particularly strong, and is a small portion of the Monk's identity, so I don't think "protecting its niche" is something that needed to be done when things like Champion archetype reactions are largely untouched.
But even more, I just don't see why anybody would bother wasting a level 10 class feat on this version of Flurry.
Most of the arguments that I've seen on this forum have claimed the opposite.
One action for 2 attacks is strong in this game and on a fighter it further enables crit fishing. on a barbarian it gives two more chances of
...
Yeah, attack mechanics pretty solidly dealt with that problem.
The only "abusive" part may have been polymorphed characters or PCs who have access to non-attack abilities (like kineticists, dragon barbarians, casters, etc) but really it's not a big issue.
Redditors put out the awesome fact that draconic and demonic sorcerers now have actually usable focus spells. Dragon claws and glutton's jaws have been patched to work at range!
I'm more interested in the intention behind the rule. Wish could always do anything a game master wanted it to do. This is the first time that I can recall that divinity was on the table as written expressly into the spell.
I think Paizo often takes the in-setting mortal perspective in that most mortals wouldn't really distinguish between a demigod and a true god other than the living god may be physically present. Just see like above that still folks assume the Starstone test makes you a full stop deity which of course it can in any individual's campaign but it is not the setting's assumption.
But for whatever reason, my reading strikes me that it leans into full true divinity, and I'm curious if that reading may have been what they had in mind, as well of the thoughts of my fellow Pathfinder fans.
Given it's possible to mind-control a janni into giving you a wish with no downsides...my thoughts are "highly amused".
But in all seriousness, it seems fair enough. There are tons of plots related to "so and so becoming a god" so I can't fault them for publishing a guess of what it takes to do it mechanically, even if I'm not certain it needed to exist.
Before the Remaster, infused reagents were not items that needed to be held to be used and interacted with. Handling the reagents to make insta-items via Quick Alchemy was a part of that action cost.
In the Remaster, VVials are bombs themselves that need to end up in ones hand to be thrown.
It is not mentioned in the new Q-Alch where the created item ends up, and the listed requirement to perform the action does not mention having a VVial in hand.
It is NOT the normal assumption in pf2 that you get to draw items for free, especially now that VVials are usable items in and of themselves. But assuming the created item ends up in the required free hand is how Alch has been played previously, and that part of the equation is safe to say remains true.
Until I have reason to think otherwise, I also will act under the assumption that the Alchemist only needs to have VVials on-hip before performing Quick Alchemy, and the created item is in-hand after the action.
Yeah that's probably the ruling I'll run with myself, just to avoid accidentally nerfing alchemist. I was just pointing out that it's not really clear.
Oh interesting. There's now a cheaper low-level version of Serum of Sex Shift.
Though I must admit, it's a little niche - you'll wind up paying far more for repeated uses of it than you would for a Serum if the campaign lasts more than a year, so it's really only cost-effective if you actually are an alchemist and can make it for free, or close to free.
As a side note, everything that has come out is such a huge boost for alchemists that I am honestly shocked to see a bunch of the negativity on this thread. There's definitely a less of versatility from the CRB class - it was by far the most versatile class, so not surprising - but alchemist has received such an increase in power from this remaster, it's wild to see it talked about as a downgrade.
To be clear, I'm EXTREMELY happy about most of the changes. Toxicologist in particular fixes one of the core issues with the class, and master proficiency was needed to remain a competitive martial.
I'm specifically calling out bombers because of the issue of Versatile Vials being inferior to normal bombs (also because bomber is likely the most common alchemist type). Quick alchemy can CREATE a short-lived Versatile Vial, but does not solve the fundamental problem that they're bad. It can also craft a Versatile Vial into a halfway decent normal bomb...which you still have to pull out and throw somehow. Quick Bomber allows you to "interact to draw a bomb, interact to draw a versatile vial, or use Quick Alchemy to create a bomb, then Strike with the bomb". What you CANNOT do is use Quick Alchemy to create a decent bomb out of a non-held Versatile Vial, draw the newly-created bomb, and Strike with it as part of the same single Quick Bomber action.
THAT is my issue. Yes, you can always Quick Bomber -> Quick Alchemy (Double Brew) to turn two vials into bombs, throw one, then Quick Bomber another, but this requires you to be HOLDING ONE VIAL in the first place, which requires a separate interact action to pull it out. It's also possible to Quick Alchemy (Double Brew) to create two non-held bombs, and then Quick Bomber to draw and throw them both.
Both of these usages will eventually cost you 3 actions per round, where formerly an alchemist could Quick Bomber + Quick Bomber and then have a 3rd action to spare. That is the issue as I see it.
Okay, I'm confused. So We Can make so many items per day. Then we also have versatile vials which can make so many items/ 10 minute rest, then we also have some spammable vials?
We get 4+Int Items (not batches of items) with the Advanced Alchemy. Those are per day. (upgradable to at least 6+Int with a feat)
We get 2+Int Versatile Vials.
Those Versatile falsks can be used for 3 things:
a)Quick Alchemy
b)makeshift bomb
c)Unique Field use
We get back 2 of those /10min.
In addition, we can spend an Action to use Quick alchemy to ALSO make a "temporary versatile vial"
This "temporary versatile vial" can ONLY be used for:
a)makeshift bomb
b)Unique Field use
(plus it takes an extra action to make)
Yeah the issue is that the makeshift bomb usage for Versatile Vials is a lot worse than normal bombs. Once you hit level 9, you can use 1-action Quick Alchemy to turn 2 Versatile Vials into bombs. But it's still inferior to having a pile of 20 or so Infused Reagents bombs that you could just Quick Bomber without having to waste an extra action turning vials into useful bombs. And remastered Quick Bomber will not save you because you still have to draw the Vials before you can Quick Alchemy them into something decent.
Better at low level because you actually get something, worse at high level because the damage is worse than generic pre-remaster alchemist bomb damage.
Yeah no AC penalty, no "when you run out of enemies you fall out of rage", free action rage at start of combat, the ability to re-up rage when you fall out of it without having to wait a minute, speed bonuses, speed bonuses on top of those while raging...it's decent.
6 bombs per combat without even touching daily resources is a huge plus for a low level bomber, kind of excited about that.
Though the shift from daily resources to encounter/constantly regenerating resources seems potentially less useful for lower-consumption builds. Hopefully a lot we haven't seen but nothing discussed in this thread gets me super excited for, say, my friend's toxicologist getting a glow up.
Which sort of feels weird to put on paper because bombers were already good and some of these other builds less so.
shroudb wrote:
Btw, completely unrelated, but I've just learned Toxicologists get to ignore poison (and Acid?) immunity/resistance. Not sure how exactly that works though, but it is available at level 1.
Anathemas are certainly a really weird design decision. Out of all classes, I certainly didn't expect barbarians to be the one to have in-built restrictions. They certainly aren't going to remove them though since they are making a big fuss about edicts and anathema in the Remaster.
The penalty to AC is both something that barbarians have for tradition since it is common to have barbarians being "clumsy" in lieu of them being hp sacks that hit like a truck. I agree fury needs a boost though.
It's a holdover from PF 1e and 3.x I'm surprised monks don't have them too, but monks don't have subclasses in the same way that barbarians and champions do.
- Limits duration of alchemical item effects to 10 minutes.
- Can turn one Versatile Vial into an alchemical consumable or your level or lower (must be in your formula book). Item is infused and lasts until the start of your next turn.
- Alternatively, can create a Versatile Vial that lasts until the end of your current turn and can only be used either as the Versatile Vial Bomb (Acid damage default, bomber can also choose cold, electricity or fire) or for the Vial option of your research field.
The last is basically a poor man's cantrip. 2 actions for a bomb Strike. Scales a bit with Double Brew at level 9 if you can spend 3 actions on it to throw both Vials.
Quick Bomber feat (level 1) allows you draw a bomb or to use Quick Alchemy to create a Bomb and throw it for the same action!
I see an issue with Versatile Vials.
Namely, they do FAAAAAR less damage than existing bombs. Compare to alchemist's fire. It deals 1d8 damage per tier (lesser/moderate/greater/major) plus 1 splash and 1 persistent per tier. These things deal 1d6 per tier (lesser/moderate/greater/major) rather than 1d8, same splash, and have no persistent damage.
Nondamaging elements like frost vial speed penalty have been removed.
There may be a saving grace in the feats...but that's eating feat slots. The "bomber" subclass has some bonuses (splash damage is optional to other targets besides the person you hit, you can deal your Int mod instead of normal splash damage, you can convert the damage type to fire, electricity, or cold rather than acid damage when you strike, and when you strike you can make it count as special materials like silver or cold iron) but they are not enough to mitigate that basic fact.
Obviously you get more vials at low levels which is great, but at higher levels you wind up losing out on about 6-8 damage per attack, which REALLY matters.
I recently attended the American Library Association's annual convention, this year in San Diego. I told a couple of the librarians about Reign of Winter, and it blew their minds! I have the PDFs I should really read them, I only know the bare bones.
I absolutely love reign. My players are having a blast with it!
In general (by explicit system math) one level [x] monster is equal to a level [x] PC. So you can use normal system math to balance out encounters just like you would if you were running a nonstandard (read: 5-person) party size.
Troops, ironically enough, have their own issues besides clogging the battlefield. For instance - you somehow have to justify being able to heal them. Though you probably can justify it between rests if you can get in touch with your organization and armies, I suppose. Or just say that people get added to the casualty list but aren't dead when the troop takes damage.
I actually really like the idea of adding troops to a party to simulate their army though.
Was she the one with the healthy monthly potions budget who habitually swapped back and forth?
Character Concept: As an alchemist, take Improbable Elixirs (lvl 18). On your days off, use reagents to brew up boxes full of serums of sex shift (about 60 or so a day, if you don't need your reagents for much else ) and go handing them out to the folks who could really use one but can't easily afford the 60 gp.
Bit if a shame it has to hit so late, though.
I like this plan. And hey, if an Infused Alchemical Item has permanent effects, it even gets around the usual "until next Daily Preparations" limitation on duration.
Yeah that's the brilliance of the plan. It's no different than creating an alchemical bomb - the effect is instantaneous.
Monsters and PCs aren’t the only inhabitants of your world. Though they might not be heroes, NPCs can play various roles in your game, such as calling PCs to adventure, serving as obstacles in social encounters, or opposing PCs in battle. This chapter presents almost a hundred NPCs for your game, plus rules to modify them to fit any particular niche.
The rules to modify them include one-paragraph templates to switch their ancestry to dwarf, elf, gnome, goblin, or halfling. However, the highest level of these NPCs is 8th level for Assassin and Guildmaster.
These NPCs can all be found in the Archives of Nethys at https://2e.aonprd.com/NPCs.aspx. In addition, all the NPCs from PF2 adventure paths are also in same section, and any No-Prep characters from the Paizo Blog. While many of these NPCs are unique, some are generic adversaries. For example, I needed some duergar/hryngar guards for my PF2-conversion of Siege of Stone. Their details were not important, so I lazily copied the Scarlet Triad Thugs stat blocks without change.
When I converted the blightguards in Prisoners of the Blight to PF2 creature 13, I started with the Butterfly Blade Warrior from Pathfinder #166: Despair on Danger Island and switched the species to blightguard (they are a redcap-quickling crossbreed). I called that version the Butterfly Blade Blightguard and found Internet artwork for their tokens. To also use the original scythe-carrying artwork I...
Yep, I've done similar swaps before. It's definitely helpful. Heck, I've even done the janky thing where you downsize a fire giant to Medium and call it a fighter. Or reflavor a balor into a really high level warrior-wizard and remove some of its hit points and weaknesses.
The painful part is that you actually have to invest time and effort into that, or in the case of published NPCs you have to locate the NPC and then determine what class "Emaliza Zandivar" even is. Whereas having a level 20 "archmage" statblock removes that ambiguity.
Was she the one with the healthy monthly potions budget who habitually swapped back and forth?
Character Concept: As an alchemist, take Improbable Elixirs (lvl 18). On your days off, use reagents to brew up boxes full of serums of sex shift (about 60 or so a day, if you don't need your reagents for much else ) and go handing them out to the folks who could really use one but can't easily afford the 60 gp.
Bit if a shame it has to hit so late, though.
...weird lightbulb moment.
What does true seeing reveal as the true form for someone who's chugged one of those? I would presume they see whatever sex the person currently has, given it's instantaneous, can't be counteracted, and the alternative is some frankly yikes implications.
If that is so, I can think of about a million new uses for that serum in espionage. So you've got an enormous secondary market for that alchemist as well!
(also if you're looking for ways to do it earlier, I believe that witch Cauldron and Temporary Potions has you safely covered by level 13. The potion itself may only last until your next daily preparations, but it's duration instantaneous so you should be fine)
Most of the wizards the party encounters are not going to be troll wizards, or frost giant wizards. They're going to be humanoid wizards whose main power does not come from being a troll or a frost giant, but from being a WIZARD.
For that you have the monster creation guidelines. If you need a full fledged wizard who's just a wizard, templates won't help you.
I'm speaking of templates, ways to slightly alter a creature to give it a bit of color or tailor it to your adventure. So the Barbazu Commander can have a few Commander abilities, the Troll can be a Barbarian, with the same abilities than a normal Troll but just a "Barbarian playstyle" (Rage and such), etc...
I agree that the monster creation rules work for that. However, since we were discussing useful tools, my point was that some basic flat "this is a level x NPC" statblocks honestly would help a lot.
I don't disagree that slapping the Rage action onto a troll will make it more colorful (okay, actually what it'll do is create a troll with slightly more hp via temp hp and a higher bonus to damage rolls than a normal troll, since barbarians don't actually get that many unique abilities) but my point is that those templates don't address the basic gap in PF 2e monster design - which is that there literally aren't any "vanilla wizard" statblocks for a decent level range.
For the record, this is one of my biggest issues with all the undead templates we have in Monster Core as well - it's great to have a way to turn anything you want into a vampire! Or a lich! Or...apparently not a mummy for whatever reason. Except for the fact that there are minimal humanoid statblocks to graft that "lich" template onto, so in order to create a human lich (this should not be that difficult of an ask...) you either have to
a) Use one of the prepublished lich statblocks (there aren't that many)
b) Rummage around the named NPCs until you find someone who fits what you want, file off their name, and apply the template to them (that is a lot of work)
c) Design an NPC from scratch using the monster creation guidelines and then apply the template (even more work)
It's just obnoxious that there are all these templates pretty obviously designed for humanoids lying around, and the only things you can apply them to are non-humanoids and a small smattering of NPCs. And I also agree it would be nice to be able to create a frost giant mage or whatever, since we currently don't have the ability to that much at all.
Unicore wrote:
I don’t think any of it really needs to be either/or.
the fact that there isn't a level 1/5/10/15/20 generic version of some of the core classes (rogue, wizard, fighter, cleric) in statblock form feels like a huge gap, in my opinion.
1/5/10/15/20?
If the party is level 7, either you have very weak NPCs (with an Elite template they are just weak) or boss NPCs. It's very limited. So you need much more NPCs. Also you need a version of the 20 classes (or at least most of them)? With information on how to create a monster version of these, like a Troll Barbarian?
That's why I think templates would be better. As there are tons of enemies at each and every level, being able to give uniqueness to your mooks will really help. The goal is not to recreate an actual Wizard, Rogue or Barbarian, but to give the feeling the enemy is an actual Rogue, Wizard or Barbarian. Which in general comes down to using signature abilities, that are easy to define in a template.
I mean sure, but I'm not sure a template is feasible or satisfactory here.
Most of the wizards the party encounters are not going to be troll wizards, or frost giant wizards. They're going to be humanoid wizards whose main power does not come from being a troll or a frost giant, but from being a WIZARD. Currently, those do not exist. I guess you could graft on the template to something vaguely humanoid like a giant and then shrink it to Medium, but that is horrible and hacky and WHY?
I'm also not sure that there exists a template to make a troll into a wizard that would make actually casting spells a viable option. This was a big problem in PF 1e and 3.x, where you had all of these options (multiclassing, innate spells, bloodrager) that let a fighter or barbarian cast burning hands...at CL 1...using his awful Int or Cha modifier...and why would you even bother past level 3 or so? I suspect that a "troll wizard" would run into the exact same problems, where he winds up looking exactly the same as a normal troll (maybe with a few buff spells?) in combat.
You also don't really need to cover the full range of classes. Sure, having gunslingers or magi or thaumaturges would be nice, but practically most NPCs fall into a few well-defined archetypes split along the martial/caster divide - "the arcane caster", "the divine caster", "guy who is good with a sword." I expect that just doing player core 1 would be fine. 1/5/10/15/20 doesn't give you the full range of 20 levels, but it gives you 11/20 levels, which is plenty. It's like dragons - sure, you can no longer fight red dragons at every single point of CR because "young adult" and "juvenile" and such got whacked, but it's enough of a level range that you can fight red dragons at a wide variety of levels.
And best of all it's all relatively cheap to write. If you did 1/5/10/15/20 for every class in player core 1, that is only 40 statblocks. Monster core alone has 410 statblocks, and I'd wager there are 40 of them that most people would GLADLY trade in for having high level wizard or cleric stats ready to go. I'm thinking things like ankhravs, krooths, boars, and such. 87 monsters in Monster Core are "animals." I feel you could probably cut half of those, trade them out for NPCs with classes, and wind up with more statblocks that would see more use.
I have probably designed/converted/reimagined about 20 monsters and 50 encounters in the last 2 weeks, and I really cannot stress enough the importance of including a lot of trivial and low threat encounters with creatures that are level -2, -3, and even -4 behind the party into dungeons. Without these kind of encounters, dungeons are stuck in a mode of having to remain mostly static, with minimal spill over between encounter sites, or else the lethality of encounters balloons much too quickly. Additionally, they provide different kinds of characters to shine in ways that feel significant, because they are not just a bunch of easy to kill fodder, they are creatures that are going to be running around the encounter site, activating more trouble for the PCs if they are not quickly dealt with. ...
The low-threat creatures are also a good way to switch from combat encounters to social encounters when the enemy realizes that they are outmatched. This is often humorous, too.
** spoiler omitted **...
Another fun thing to do with the low and even trivial threat encounters that turn into social encounters is to have those creatures escort the party to the boss, so that if a combat breaks out, it can appear to have an extra level of danger to it if the boss is not too strong of an enemy.
Or you can monkey wrench the boss encounter by having the lower threat encounter creatures try to take advantage of the situation to accomplish other goals. Like having some of them fight on loyally with the boss, but consider having one "switch sides" if they think the party will reward them by making them the new boss of the area, or let them keep some minor treasure. I have had some very memorable encounters as both a player and a GM from lower ranking minions/goons deciding to show the invaders in to meet the boss instead of fighting right away.
These things become possible only when every encounter in a dungeon is not already dialed up to severe threats, or over...
Personally when I have free reign to design a fortification or enemy base I will deliberately fill it with trivial encounters. That way the PCs get to feel cool carving through lots of monsters (and actually using their critical specializations, what a concept) and the location actually FEELS dynamic, rather than the artificial "you kick in the door, only one group of monsters fights you, you kick in the next door, the monsters in the other room who somehow didn't hear the the previous combat attack you next" and so on.
Though sometimes my NPCs also defend in depth. If the PCs do one fight and not every monster comes out to fight them, it's probably because they're literally entrenching. And the PCs can generally hear the sound of shovels digging fresh trenches as they heal up.
Yeah, but that's so much more work than a template.
I'd prefer having a template telling me what I should remove or add to a monster for it to become a monk.
Don't we already have templates? Just for undead like vampires and liches and ghosts and such - but they exist.
If I'm being honest, the thing I would like to see more of is "generic humanoid statblocks". Having 15 million weird monsters (ankhravs, I'm looking at you) that you'll only use once every few campaigns is in my opinion way less useful than a generic "this is roughly a level 10 wizard" statblock.
I get that some GMs want to build their own NPCs for everything, but I know that I personally don't and the fact that there isn't a level 1/5/10/15/20 generic version of some of the core classes (rogue, wizard, fighter, cleric) in statblock form feels like a huge gap, in my opinion.
Swashbuckler has amazing high level feats, the core chassis of the class just makes it so they don't add up like fighter feats do.
Ranger high level stealth feats are great but again the core chassis doesn't add up like fighter does.
Champion is similar to fighter, you can actually build up to an amazing defender with interesting effects. Hopefully we get more ways to expand the reactions to make different playstyles.
If monk mixed styles gets a lower level in PC2 then I think that would open up a lot of great ways to build up to greatness. Getting master of many styles early would be fantastic as well.
I think these tend to feel good because they specialize in something, and that seems to be curtailed a lot in PF2.
The weird thing about swashbuckler feats is that they're good but...for lack of a better way to put it...feel like they should be part of the base class?
Lots of the upgrades to opportune riposte are great, but it also doesn't come up (monsters are infamous for having high numbers and NOT critically missing much) enough that they feel justified in eating feat slots.
I can understand why some groups are hesitant to stray from the published lore. It's the same reason I have stopped using house rules and stick to published lore as well.
The overhead of maintaining and communicating the changes can be a real hassle without some sort of content system for it, like HeroLab for character rules or a campaign management program like World Anvil or the like for campaign lore.
Part of the use for published material is to take that load off of the GM to make up and for the players to keep track of. Homebrew campaigns come with the expectation of a lot of lore tracking, but doing it with homebrew changes to published material takes away from the benefit of using the books in the first place.
It's a choice every group has to make, but it doesn't make it any easier when publishers have to make lore changes for important reasons, like Paizo has had to do to get away from the OGL.
Never been a problem for me or my group, honestly. Most people I play with don't actually care about or know the official lore - the system is what matters, and story is determined by the GM. Usually it's close to some portion of the official lore...or what was the official lore...sometime in the past few decades. The nations of Golarion are so disconnected from each other that it's not like you can't have the Worldwound sitting right next to ancient Thassilon right next to War For the Crown Taldor right next to modern Strength of Thousands.
I freely admit to using Pathfinder 2e mechanics in D&D settings like Planescape or Forgotten Realms, too.
It is so weird to come stumbling back into Pathfinder and find that the current state of things has completely eliminated a core species. I don't recall anything like this ever happening in D&D and ultimately I always thought Pathfinder was suppose to be a clone of D&D. Some things just shouldn't be messed with and this is one of them.
So here I am today (6/22/24) trying to catch up on the reasons behind this. While one part of me can see the business side of things, the other part of me is pretty attached to this race and saw how it was made to work.
I played the original edition of Pathfinder for several years in person with a group and a few people had shown interest in trying out 2E with me, but I really ain't feeling it now. I would rather just steer back toward D&D. I felt like there was enough room for both D&D and Pathfinder to exist, but if things are going to diverge like this I am just not interested.
Ehm.
I'm pretty sure the devs would prefer to NOT be known as a clone of D&D. Not just because of lawsuits.
Anyway, there are a whole host of things D&D cheerfully plundered from the Tolkien estate and were promptly mercilessly sued over - namely hobbits, balrogs, and ents.
Also orcs, wargs, goblins, dragons dwarves, and elves, but they didn't win those lawsuits because the words were already in pop culture long before Tolkien. So...yeah.
TriOmegaZero wrote:
Changing a race to avoid legal entanglements seems spot on to me for both cases.
Plus the whole D&D2E removal of demons. That's even more spot on.
That wasn't for legal reasons. That was for "we're worried about being painted by the Satanic Panic as demon-worshipping blood-drinking pedophiles" reasons. Because the 1980s were a truly wonderful time to be alive.
I'd also like to point out that the lore is the most flexible thing about the setting. Myself, I run a dark version of Golarion that's essentially unrecognizable because the villains actually won several of the 1E APs.
The pre-remaster monsters are also all still available and require basically zero modification - I put together a thread here that goes through all of Monster Core and tl;dr you can use basically all the pre-remaster monsters without worrying about it breaking remaster balance. It's also easy enough to reskin the five berjillion humanoid statblocks to be drow - I do it all the time when I run out of orcs in the bestiaries.
Regarding "tripping oozes" you can make exactly all the same arguments regarding swimming.
Well, minus arguably the most important part, that one of them is an established rule and the other isn't. I feel like that's a pretty significant one, especially when it's being used to discuss game balance and action efficiency.
Agreed. Just pointing it out, because let's be honest here. There are lots of weird immunities and tags hiding in strange places in PF 2e - like verbal component spells having the concentrate tag (no longer a thing) or undead bleed immunity being hidden in the bleed condition despite having no mention in the undead statblocks.
"Oozes can't be prone" isn't one of them. The rules are quite clear that oozes can be tripped. But that immunity absolutely could have been hiding in some random place in the ruleset, and the fact that swimming explicitly says you can't be knocked prone implies that it's not unreasonable to houserule that way or assume someone just forgot to put it in the game. Much less likely post-remaster of course, given they tried to patch stuff like that.
Regarding "tripping oozes" you can make exactly all the same arguments regarding swimming. Why can't you knock someone off-balance in the water? I have no idea, but evidently that's different from knocking a blob of jello on its back. And much like Deriven, my empirical study of every table I've played at says no GM allows it.
So let's do some actual math regarding trip builds vs. other builds. I'm going to be looking at levels people actually play, let's say level 9 or 10. Since that's when the Slam Down trick actually gets fully rolling.
Fighter Math:
At level 10 you've got your typical slam down build, which on average will make two attacks on its turn (it does have to move to get into melee and third attacks are pretty awful as a fighter). Assuming it's using a d12 weapon, it's attacking at:
+ 10 (level) + 6 (master) + 5 (strength modifier) + 2 (item bonus) = +23, as is the corresponding eldritch archer fighter. Slam down will make the enemy off-guard, adding an additional +2 most of the time.
Its attacks deal:
2d12 (striking rune) + 5 (strength modifier) + 3 (weapon specialization) + 2d6 (property runes, might be only 1d6 given level 10 is when you get your second rune) = 28 damage per hit. Rises by +6 on a slam down.
Expectation value from two attacks against AC 30, which is the standard "High" value for most monsters at level 10 and therefore the number we'd expect, hit (non-crit) chance is 50% (both off-guard and not off guard), and crit chance is 30% (if off guard) and 20% (if not off guard). Secondary attack is at -5, meaning it's got a hit (non-crit) chance of 50% and a crit chance of 5% (if off guard) and a hit chance of 40% and a crit chance of 5% otherwise.
Expectation damage of first attack, no off guard: 30
Expectation damage of first attack, off guard: 25
Expectation damage of second attack, no off guard: 16
Expectation damage of second attack, off guard: 14
Assuming combat goes roughly along the lines of
Round 1: move, slam down (adds +6 damage)
Round 2: attack, attack, move or attack
Round 3: attack (or slam down), move or attack
you're looking at an average effective damage per round (across three rounds of combat) of maybe...40 damage per turn? If you can get off a reactive strike, rises to total of 65 since you're making an attack against someone who is not off guard.
Meanwhile the eldritch archer (takes psychic dedication at 2, some other psychic feat or basic spellcasting at 4, psi development at 6 and eldritch archer dedication at 8) is firing at the same +23 or effective +25 (against someone off-guard) but with a composite shortbow and un-amped imaginary weapon is hitting for:
With amped imaginary weapon it's instead 73 damage.
Expectation value un-amped (hit chances the same, no off-guard): 42
Expectation value amped (hit chances the same, no off-guard): 67
Assuming three rounds, you're looking at about 59 damage since you have two focus points. At higher levels of course you get more.
So if you don't get a reactive strike, eldritch archer blows slam down out of the water. If you do, eldritch archer is still decently competitive. This is, as Deriven says, party-independent.
The main advantage of tripping therefore is mostly in the other person provoking reactive strikes. If they don't stand up, no free attacks. And unless you have a reach weapon, good luck forcing them to stand up. Prone is a modest penalty to attack rolls and AC, and it's not like flanking doesn't already exist.
So yeah. The countermeasure to this build isn't even oozes. It's things with reach. Given that Giantslayer is an actual campaign in Pathfinder, and at levels above 10 enemies get increasingly enormous, I am dubious this thing is going to outdamage an eldritch shot fighter consistently or by enough for anyone to actually tell.
Now, in a party with lots of reactive strikes or a caster capable of casting Enlarge? Yeah, it's a very solid build. But that wasn't the argument being made - the argument was that it was the #1 fighter, period. It's not - it's good, make no mistake, but not out of line with other builds. Also note that the math I was using was at level 10, which is a weak level for the eldritch archer because cantrips scale at odd-numbered levels. At level 11, the archer's expected damage over three rounds matches or exceeds that of the slam down build WITH a free reactive strike every round.
And by the way oozes are NOT at all immune to Trip and prone :)
Technically, yes. Though I don't think I've ever seen a GM who allowed it, and the Swimming rules do say you're immune to prone so it's entirely possible it's a weird oversight.
It's reminiscent of Ye Olde 3.x Positive Energy Plane. Where technically, undead healed just fine from it and gained arbitrarily many bonus hit points from it because they didn't have Con scores and therefore couldn't explode.
Some rules-as-written stuff gets tossed so frequently people remember the houserules more than they do the actual rules.
On the that's crazy side of the kineticist side while a single usage of their crazy anime attacks are less potent than a level 10 spell they can keep doing them ALL DAY LONG. Just power level over 9000 nonsense all day every day. Even their lower level powers are hilarious. Imma block your attack by suddenly sprouting a tree to block it. Most magic users leave devastation after a fight where a wood kineticist leaves reforestation behind to the point druids have to be big fans of a guy who can beat the baddies and grow a forest at the same time.
Yeah... Timber Sentinel in particular can just trivialize certain kinds of fights. Sure, there are ways to work around it, but when the GM has to meta against a lvl 1 feat, that's a thing.
Oh yeah most encounters can ignore it pretty handily, but honestly the spell as a whole is just sort of silly against solo bosses.
Where you're messing up the argument is that no one is talking about the GM looking at what the player has built and countering that build on purpose or not being upfront and accurate about what sort of campaign they are running.
The rest of us are not arguing that a GM should counter player builds; we are arguing that builds are variable in their effectiveness depending on campaign particulars.
It's you and deriven that are, for some reason, equating "an undead-slaying character works better in an undead-focused campaign and worse in a campaign that has few undead show up" with undead-slaying options being less optimal than other options and trying to frame any GM running an undead-themed campaign as "unusual" or deliberately impairing a character.
My own personal experience, which isn't actually "none" by the way - I've personally participated in campaigns that have only used undead, demons, devils, wizards, and "beasts" (that one meaning vermin, animals, and magical beasts as were the designations at the time) as antagonists - is irrelevant to the discussion because we are not talking about what any particular GM has chosen to do, we are talking about what the game presents as equally valid options to all readers, past, present, and future.
No. This is blatantly false. You're using a Motte and Bailey. You use the outrageous example of the all-ooze campaign, which is a highly specialized kind of game that the players should know about and build for, because it nullifies the Slam Down build. Then you're retreating to the "normal variation in campaigns" position, trying to pretend that you don't know that hyper-focus on one creature type is a specialized game.
Running a game based on creatures immune to precision damage is something that players should know before they show up with their character sheets. Running a game based on creatures who resist a certain element is something that players should know before they show up with their character sheets. Running...
I'd just like to point out that Jubilex is in fact a major villain in the Pathfinder universe, and it's totally valid to build a campaign around The Faceless Lord.
I haven't actually run a campaign with Jubilex and Jubilex's cult as the primary villains, but I've been meaning to for a while now. Now, if I ran that campaign, I certainly wouldn't make it all oozes. That would be cruel to lots of people besides just the fighter (occult casters and rogues, for instance) and I appreciate some enemy diversity. But it'd probably be mostly oozes. Which would probably make that specific fighter build rather sad. Sword and board? Doesn't matter what campaign you're in, you'll probably be fine. So I think it's entirely fair to criticize the Slam Down build for spectacularly failing against an entire creature type, when no other fighter build has that problem.
The argument that's being made is sort of like saying that Frost is the best property rune or that Silence Under Snow is the best witch patron. Sure it is. Until you play Reign of Winter.
...your Precision Ranger is strangely built (one handed weapon, no Twin Takedown/Hunted Shot, nothing in left hand) so I don't expect much damage from them...
I'm surprised to read this, as we were rather proud of that one. He's an amazing switch hitter with good range, his free hand gives him tons of versatility with his actions, and he is one of the few characters who seems to care about what kinds of enemies we are fighting and what spells they are casting.
Why would he take Twin Takedown when he only gets Precision once per round? I understand that to be more geared toward Flurry rangers. And why would he take Hunted Shot when it doesn't apply to his trident?
I know he's been avoiding taking the same feats as the dwarf, so there's that as well.
The issue being highlighted is that versatility is not power. Parties are somewhat designed for specialization - it's a little like asking "why should the wizard stop pumping Strength and investing money into a magic sword, it gives him great versatility in melee?" The answer is because he's a wizard, and swording people to death is something the fighter is actually specialized to do.
Twin Takedown/Hunted Shot are very, very good because they give you two actions for the price of one, freeing up your remaining actions to do other things (move around, demoralize, hide, cast spells like gravity weapon, use a multiclass ability, whatever). They're a form of specialization - they make you more efficient at hitting people.
You have Thunderstrike in the Primal spell list. Electricity meets extremely few resistances. And it does serious damage at level 3 or 4.
The vrock that nearly wiped us all out last encounter (when we were still 6th) might have had a thing or two to say about that.
I wouldn't worry too much about that. Vrocks are infamously overtuned. That double attack of opportunity is murder, and they have a ton of 1-action AoE special abilities that don't add any MAP at all. I had to start fudging die rolls to avoid murdering a level 6 party with them myself.
Electricity isn't that commonly resisted overall, though! At level 6+ these are the numbers of monsters from bestiaries 1-3 with resistance or immunity to damage types:
Acid 35
Cold 47
Electricity 41
Fire 89
Force 1
Mental 49
Negative 99
Poison 142
Positive 517
Sonic 8
The top 5 least resisted types in the game are force, sonic, acid, electricity, and cold.
I don't see it myself. The champion's AC tops out higher. They get the extra Divine Reflexes Reaction and Extra Shield block action. Their shield stacks more hit points as well and at level 20 the hit points on a Champion's shield are nuts.
I find shield champions provide more bang for the buck for the group with the increased reactions and auras like Aura of Courage.
That 2 extra points of AC really does help. You wouldn't think it would, but it does and is very noticeable much like the fighter's extra hit point bonus.
Straight attacks aren't as important in sword and board fighting, so that extra action to raise a shield isn't a big deal. The champion usually makes up for it with the additional reactions. Most champions usually pick up AoO to make their reactions even more optional.
You can also pick up Rogue Archetype on a Champion and get Mobility and Opportune Backstab at level 16 to further expand reaction options.
Champions are top tier if you want to play a shield using defensive character, best in the game followed by monks, then the fighter.
We may have to agree to disagree. Having played a sword-and-board champion, I personally found it to be a little sad. Redeemer has a lot of issues bouncing off things that use finesse weapons or spells (it's a lot more than you'd think at first glance), and its reaction isn't very repeatable - once someone is enfeebled, enfeebling them again doesn't help. So your core boost at high level ("get more champion reactions") winds up being weaker than it should be. Meanwhile liberator falls off the more reach enemies get (which is especially true at higher level), since the step can't get your ally out of range. And the evil champions (especially desecrator and antipaladin) just don't have good reactions.
The only really good champion option at higher level is paladin, but its reaction is pretty similar to reactive strike - and has the usual issues of being lower damage because you're wielding a 1-handed weapon rather than 2-handed and perhaps even more importantly is totally negated by large enemies with reach, who at high level can maul your allies without ever stepping into your aura.
The biggest difference is that the fighter can spend a single action per combat to turn on their shield, whereas the champion is burning an action every round. Combined with the fighter's higher attack bonus, that's costing the champion equal damage to an entire MAPless attack, if not more. Which really hurts for someone using a 1-handed weapon.
And while it's true that champion shields have more HP (especially at high level), at the highest levels that's offset by the fact that indestructible shields exist, and even champions should probably pick them up. So that ability winds up mattering quite a bit less.
Overall I think sword-and-board champion just isn't a great choice. It's not awful if you go paladin, but in my opinion it's not as strong as sword-and-board fighter.
If you did, you'd realize pretty quickly he has almost nothing to do with the PF2 ranger though.
I like Rangers, but they're kind of weird in the sense that most of their identity at this point is self referential.
Yeah Aragorn isn't really a ranger. At all. Apart from the name and the one time he finds plants in the wilderness that...sort of help Frodo. But not entirely. That would be cheating and stealing Elrond's thunder.
Most of the motifs for the D&D/PF ranger come from Robin Hood and Drizzt Do'Urden. The latter of whom comes from D&D.
On the other hand, it's pretty much the same story with paladins. Holy knights have a long and illustrious history dating back to King Arthur, Galahad, Lancelot, Roland in mythology and many more figures such as Valdemar the Victorious, Eric the Holy, and eight whole crusades' worth of knights and saints in real-life history.
But the idea of a spellcasting guy in plate armor who can "fall" is still D&D-inflected.
Agree that action manipulation feats are the most powerful. Thuse for casters:
Patron's Puppet
Cackle
Effortless Concentration
Split Hex
Hex Master
[The witch feats that give a familiar a two action attack, costing the witch one action.]
Spell Combination
Spellshape Mastery
Claxon wrote:
Dubious Scholar wrote:
Out of combat I'm not sure anything beats Wonder Worker from Thaumaturge, one of the most "wait WHAT" capstones any class gets.
It's cool, but you have to build around it to get the most out of it. Since it requires being legendary in the associated skill. Being a level 20 feat you have very limited time to benefit from it and couple that with the fact that you have Diverse Lore as a level 1 feat....most Thaumaturges I've seen don't invest heavily in any of those knowledge skills, let alone multiple ones.
You get two free boosts to your your choice of the four caster skills, making it relatively cheap to go Legendary in one and get free access to all the 8th level and below spells in that tradition. And then if you have the tome at paragon benefit (which is well worth it) you can pick up a second or third for a day. It's nice flexibility and utility, but you do give up Ubiquitous Weakness (in the unlikely event your level 20 allies don't have ways to trigger strike weaknesses against critical foes) or one of the 18th level feats you don't have.
Agree with this. Facilitating action economy is extremely strong. Of course, I have to call things out from my favorite class, the KING of action economy: the kineticist.
Effortless impulse (comes online even earlier than effortless concentration!)
Kinetic pinnacle (free actions)
Deflecting wave (great reaction)
Kindle inner flame (the free steps are shockingly good, and so is giving the entire party bonus runes)
Cyclonic ascent (absurd total-party flight that's better than normal flight by every metric)
Clear as air (always-on greater invisibility that SCALES with your level, making it much harder for truesight to penetrate it)
Drifting pollen (ridiculous number of debuffs on one feat)
Likewise, "champion's reaction" (the 6th level feat for the champion archetype) is great for everyone and appallingly cheap (it only costs 1 or 2 class feats, depending on if you're a human or not).
And then there's rogue. Which is just nuts. Opportune Backstabber and Nimble Strike are the foundations of the rogue throne as "king of damage". Combo with Preparation and it's just sickening.
I'm curious what Deriven thinks is the "one good fighter build."
Because in my experience there are several. Though it depends on party composition.
1. Two weapon fighting. Extremely good with a flurry ranger that can share edge at high level. Or a haste caster.
2. The knockdown chain. Best with a giant weapon, preferably one with reach. Especially decent if you have a caster who is also capable of knocking things prone - for instance, a cleric with naga domain or just anyone capable of casting command. Or someone capable of casting enlarge.
3. The Eldritch Archer. Uses its very high attack bonus and imaginary weapon/telekinetic projectile to make enemies implode.
4. Sword and board. Got a fair bit better in the remaster with reinforcement runes. Focuses slightly less on damage and more on not dying and helping friends to not die.
I'd say #4 is probably the lowest damage, but having seen all four of the above in play they're all quite similarly "high performance" and I'd be hard pressed to declare one of them absolutely superior to the rest.
I'm not Deriven, but I'll give it a shot:
1. Two weapon fighting: Ranger has the better in-class support for this sort of build while also providing more freedom. 1 action twin takedown vs 2 action double slice really makes all the difference. While there is definitely room to argue, in the end I believe Rangers are best-in-class for this. However, see 4. I believe two-weapon fighting with shields is the way to go.
2. Deriven favors 2-handed trip focused fighters, and that is what this is. Exchanging a d12 weapon for a d10 or D8 reach weapon (preferably hammer or flail) and leaning into the fighter's reach feats is exchanging damage for more control which may be a good choice depending on your party. This sort of build makes the Fighter's accuracy and reactive strikes shine and no other class has better support for it. Two thumbs up. Very strong build, but turn-to-turn not much variety.
3. Starlit Span Magus...
1. I'm actually not sure there. Ranger has a heavy action cost with hunting prey. Fighter doesn't, and that helps a lot. And the fighter probably gets enough crits to offset the fact that the ranger sometimes gets one additional attack, since the fighter's double slice is being made with less MAP and has more accuracy to begin with. The fighter also has a lot of reactive strike abuse. I've played in a party with both before and damage was usually a tossup.
3. In fairness, I've played both starlit span magus and eldritch archer and they're pretty even. Starlit span is nice, of course, but it really suffers from accuracy issues (you can't sure strike every round). That means fewer crits and hits, and this build really wants those.
4. As for shields...well, fighter and fighter alone does get the all-important "your shield is always raised" stance (paragon's guard), which is really helpful from an action cost. Adding on tactical reflexes and quick shield block (the latter of which is available to bastions as well but they don't get paragon's) means that you can make a reaction strike and a shield block every round for literally no action cost at all. If you want champion reactions, just multiclass. It's fairly cheap and you're a fighter, you have feats to spare. Especially if you use half-elf/human tricks to get around the Charisma prerequisite and the class feat cost. And of course, as a fighter you have way more accuracy than the champion does.
Fighter really is a LOT better than champion with shields. I've played a shield champion and having to burn that extra action every round REALLY hurts.
Anyway, I do agree with you that I think most fighter builds are viable (beyond the ones I listed). Those pluses can carry you through a lot.
I don't believe I've even cast stinking cloud or suggestion yet. Haven't had much opportunity.
** spoiler omitted **
My staples so far have been my cantrips*, (particularly ray of frost, which helps me stay well clear of the danger), summon animal, and faerie dust + uncontrollable laughter.
Sometimes it seems like you have to twist the healing focused cleric's arm to dole out some healing before anyone drops. She instead casts guidance and forbidding ward a lot. Occasionally she makes Strikes. Frequently forgets her own feats and abilities.
Magus and half-elf ranger do pretty well, closing to melee and ripping things up. Magus seems to prefer electricity spells, such as shocking grasp and thunderstrike while the Ranger is a formidable switch hitter with his trident (which he specializes at using from long range).
The dwarven ranger is an archer, so isn't as much of a bruiser as the others, but still outputs reliable damage. Both rangers have animal companions which join the fight a little more than half the time.
The druid enjoys blasting with fireball and lightning bolt, but she's new to the game and so doesn't know any rules yet.
Except for...
Ah, okay, I see.
Yeah so in general past level 6 or so I tend to think casters shouldn't be using cantrips as their main trick.
The sorcerer has access to a ton of healing and decent control but not much damage. This is the level range where focus damage spells like the druid blasting ones and psychic amps are premium, since you don't have as many spell slots but you actually can multi class for good focus spells and they scale enough to be good. Just my two cents. The druid already blasts a lot - blasting is good additively because aoe damage is "wasted" more often the more single-target characters you have.
Honestly it sounds like you just have a new party.
I'm curious what Deriven thinks is the "one good fighter build."
Because in my experience there are several. Though it depends on party composition.
1. Two weapon fighting. Extremely good with a flurry ranger that can share edge at high level. Or a haste caster.
2. The knockdown chain. Best with a giant weapon, preferably one with reach. Especially decent if you have a caster who is also capable of knocking things prone - for instance, a cleric with naga domain or just anyone capable of casting command. Or someone capable of casting enlarge.
3. The Eldritch Archer. Uses its very high attack bonus and imaginary weapon/telekinetic projectile to make enemies implode.
4. Sword and board. Got a fair bit better in the remaster with reinforcement runes. Focuses slightly less on damage and more on not dying and helping friends to not die.
I'd say #4 is probably the lowest damage, but having seen all four of the above in play they're all quite similarly "high performance" and I'd be hard pressed to declare one of them absolutely superior to the rest.
I think that part of the issue is that fighters start out strong and they more or less stay that way. Whereas other classes start out less strong but feature more dramatic boosts over time (including other martials, like the Giant Barbarian improves quite a bit once they get more reach and Reactive Strike).
Where the fighter is always going to be useful though is that they are the kings of "actually hitting the boss monster" which is never going to be not useful.
Yeah pretty much.
They don't get Reactive Strike at 6 like other martials - because they got it at level 1. But the feats they do get are still very strong, and it's fairly straightforward to build a good fighter because they just have high pluses.
