Naga domain got some big changes. In particular the advanced spell is completely rewritten.
Syncretism appears to have vanished.
The giant, goblin, and orcish pantheons have been added. So have infernal dukes, daemon harbingers, sakhil tormentors, and qlippoth lords. Sadly no velstrac demagogues, rakshasa immortals, or oni daimyo.
They also added stats for Aroden, the Devourer (from Starfinder), Lissala, Camazotz and some other gods.
Does anyone actually know if Dark Archive is getting the remaster treatment? Sounds like the reason Guns & Gears got it was partially due to being out of print anyway, so I'm half curious how close to out of print Secrets of Magic and Dark Archive are.
On the other hand, actually activating the lightweave scarf requires you to cast an incapacitation spell that is well below the level of enemies you are facing, so the actual spell is an action tax that is unlikely to do anything.
You just use it as a no-save AoE dazzled, you don't care about the save or incap trait or anything. It's a really nice item, and remains so way past its level
What's even more ironic is that spellhearts can suffer the "box of wands" issue due to how silly gp costs scale.
Why would anyone buy an L15 L-Scarf to get that 2nd (incap) spell p day, when that 5,500 gp could by *TEN* of the L8 L-Scarfs for 10 daily attempts at the hit-confusion?
(That's what yall invented the Invested trait for, Paizo! If an item is p day and doesn't have Invested, yall need to really think about putting some other safety-limiter in there, c'mon.)
I continue to be amazed that every permanent magic item does not have the Invested trait. You can have 10 invested things at once! Where's the holdup?
And yeah the sack o' wands is so classic it's barely worth remarking over.
Adventure paths have always come overstuffed with treasure because of the likelihood that the PCs aren't going to find all of it. If the PCs are the sorts of people who are going to steal the furnishings and pry the gemstones out of the statues, they're going to end up extra wealthy in basically every adventure path in both PF1 and PF2.
This. A million times this. I still vividly remember when I was reading Agents of Edgewatch, and discovered (to my abject horror) that it put a not-insignificant amount of loot down a toilet. Yes, a literal toilet. You had to dig through literal poo for your wealth by level. Ever since, it's become tradition for all my PCs to upturn chamber pots and go not-so-proverbially dumpster diving.
Agents of Edgewatch:
It's in book 2, chapter 3, area C10, appropriately labeled "latrine", if you want to confirm.
I really do not like those sorts of...the only real term for it is "perverse incentives" (which not only break the loot tables but reward players for being greedy bastards who actively dive into outhouses)...but for some of the dungeon crawling older gamers out there, I believe that's part of the appeal.
I just don't really see that bearing out in practice. Exemplar dedication is an outlier, but even then mostly as a testament to how tight the game is. PC2 and WoI are largely fine.
I'm playing an Oracle in Kingmaker, so "PC2 is largely fine" is... not an opinion I share. But hey, we might get errata at some point for minor details like "how many spells does the class get?" that we're just relying on PFS rulings for right now.
Basic stuff like that shouldn't really be in that state, but there's multiple basic, obvious problems with PC2 Oracle before even getting into the subjective stuff around what they actually changed.
Yeah, it definitely feels like a lot of power creep went on in PC2 in regards to the classes. Some classes needed it because their baseline was junk (Swashbuckler, Alchemist), other classes didn't honestly need it because they were still powerful as it is but still got some anyway (Barbarian, Sorcerer), and some classes became more confusing/nerfed as a result when all they really needed was some basic tweaking (Oracle, Champion).
(Obligatory shout out to evil champion, which was not fixed and still sucks)
Sorcerer is in a weird space. Getting dangerous sorcery was necessary given it's a highly poachable feat tax otherwise. Honestly the nerfbat to crossblooded feels like it more than kneecapped the sorcerer power ceiling, though. Being able to steal heal as an occult/arcane sorcerer was huge, as was being able to pilfer decent direct damage spells as a divine sorc or decent control (hideous laughter, roaring applause) as primal.
Some sorcerer focus spells saw boosts (dragon, imperial, and demon) but all of them were earned, given all of them had pretty garbage 1st level focus spells in the CRB.
Frankly, as someone who plays a lot of sorcerers - CRB sorc is likely stronger than PC2 sorc. Eliminating a feat tax and improving a few bloodlines doesn't make up for the orbital nuking of the crossblooded line of feats.
Now, am I happy dragon/demon/imperial got fixed and that dangerous sorcery is no longer a feat tax? Yes. PC2 sorcerer is objectively a better-written class. But again the ceiling is likely weaker.
You can make an argument that Victor's Wreath isn't as bad because most parties already have Inspire Courage/Bless/Heroism. But that presupposes a very specific party composition and is in my opinion a bad argument. Especially because Inspire Courage costs at least one action (more depending on your choices) per fight and is literally the core bard class feature.
And (say it with me now) it's also not available off a dedication feat.
I think at least 50% of the complaints are that, really. It's still ridiculously strong as a level 6 feat like Champion Reaction, a level 8 feat like Anthemic Performance, or a level 10 feat like Flurry of Blows, but the dedication thing is just wildly out of line.
So... I just had a potentially interesting/horrific idea:
A class archetype for Summoners where they trade in their Eidolon for a magical weapon born from their imagination.
They're proficiency level would be the same as Eidolons with their unarmed strikes... but only for their weapon (which I'll just call an Eidolon weapon), not any similar weapon.
Meaning, just because their Eidolon weapon takes the form of a Sword, does not mean the Summoner has Master in swords.
The justification could be that the Eidolon Weapon is actually guiding the Summoner's strikes, hence why the Summoner isn't actually that proficient with weapons.
What do you guys think?
Gives me the classic Black Blade/ Black Razor vibes.
Oh lord, not Michael Moorcock. goes off muttering something about Epic Pooh
I agree with Squiggit though that summoner could really use better proficiency. Mostly because dragon riders are sad right now, and I want them to not be sad.
Maybe PFS will make some ruling on it, but the exemplar class itself is rare, and it kind of feels like hundreds of Exemplar pathfinders running around in Golarion would be a little narratively strange, so it might be a while before class available in society play.
Played a PFS game yesterday. One of the players mentioned that Exemplar dedication has a limit of only one character per player that can take it ever.
Whereas the class itself is available with no such limitation.
Sounds like a band-aid solution before an errata is issued on the dedication.
Came here to post this exact same thing.
As reference, the only other boon I am aware of which is restricted to once ever per player is Skeleton ancestry -- and that wasn't done for power reasons, but so that it would feel special.
In fairness, in PFS Rare is more difficult to access anyway with the boon system. As opposed to a home game.
I'd like to point out if you're a thief racket rogue of level 12 or beyond your might as well be dealing +2d6 sneak-attack damage raising the damage from 21 and 28 to 28 and 35 respectfully, meaning a thief racket rogue is on par with a d12 weapon Ikon. Especially if you both have Gleaming Blade, oh wait Shortswords are agile meaning the Rogue should be actually above the curve. Not to mention their Reaction to stab a gain at level 8, meaning they should do more damage on average but 3 actions to Gleaming Blade as a Barbarian is fun but nothing says gimmick stopped for a round as the phrase. "Having to move." - Which is why the Starlit Span Magus specializes in, not moving period to use their Burst Damage Gimmick!
Also unless you Transcendence with the Shadow Sheath, getting people Off-Guard in standard play is rather difficult unless you got friends/allies to help with that.
A man with a greataxe and this dedication (and inexplicably, no other class features) deals similar damage to a rogue. That's my entire point. Because the other person does in fact have other class features. They stack with it. That's why it is broken.
I was comparing with Sneak Attack to point out that this is an entire class feature worth of extra damage. Like, it's not as though rogues can't take this dedication. And it is entirely cumulative with Sneak Attack.
As can barbarians. And since it's purely the immanence effect, there's nothing stopping you from starting the combat with Gleaming Blade up. For the low low cost of absolutely no actions whatsoever.
So I'll see your vanilla rogue and raise you an entire rage instinct's worth of damage, a reactive strike, and a pile of barbarian feats. And that is why you don't hand out core class features on dedications - because THIS is what happens. It is no different than handing out Sneak Attack on a dedication. Or fighter weapon proficiency scaling. Even champion multiclass (which is notoriously OP) had the good grace to hide the reaction behind both the dedication AND a level 6 feat.
... a 2nd-level dedication feat adding 8 spirit damage to Strikes and thinking it was okay.
That's an overly simplified way of presenting it.
The dedication feat does not add any spirit damage to any strikes. It grants a choice of an ikon.
Only weapon ikons grant additional damage.
If a player chooses a Worn or Body Ikon, they get zero additional damage for their 2nd-level dedication.
The additional damage of weapon ikons' immanence is not a flat +8 damage "as a 2nd-level dedication," but +Xper damage die. Which means that, generally, at most, if taken at Level 2, it will be +2 damage to start! And it won't scale to +8 until level 19 (barring early access to Major striking runes).
And they aren't all +2 per damage die. One is 1 persistent damage per die. A couple are 1 splash damage per die. And etcetera.
None of the weapon ikons give a universal damage boost. Each only apply to a subset of weapons.
It's true, it gives you a choice of ikons. Which is actively stronger than just always handing you Gleaming Blade. Because giving a choice makes it even more versatile than it would otherwise be, depending on your build. Want to steal shadow sheathe for thrown weapons? Go ahead. Want an aura of +1 to hit? Indulge yourself.
But let's assume you steal Gleaming Blade or Shadow Sheathe (because they're really good in combat, and players are not fools). I'm not sure people are fully wrapping their heads around how much bonus damage this actually is.
math:
Shadow sheathe deals +3 damage per weapon die against off-guard people. That's 3 damage at 2nd level, 6 damage at 4th level, 9 damage at 12th level, and 12 damage at 19th level (going by automatic bonus progression, which is usually what you expect PCs to purchase as well).
Meanwhile, Sneak Attack (the full class feature, exclusive to people who actually take the Rogue class) deals 3.5 damage at 1st level, 7 damage at 5th level, 10.5 damage at 11th level, and 14 damage at 16th level.
Shadow sheathe's damage curve is, um, very similar to Sneak Attack. In fact, one might even say the numbers are basically identical.
You may protest, and say that rogues can fight in melee too and don't need to use thrown weapons. Sure, that's fair. And I raise you Gleaming Blade, which can be used with a greataxe as opposed to just finesse weapons. So you're dealing, assuming other damage modifiers are equal (they aren't because rogues don't have a high strength modifier like greataxe people do, but whatever):
So yeah. You're basically handing out Sneak Attack. On a multiclass feat. If you think Sneak Attack is balanced as a multiclass feat, then feel free to houserule Rogue dedication as giving full Sneak Attack. I don't know anyone who thinks that is sane, but you may think so, and if so: have fun.
Several people have suggested making immanence abilities unavailable to multiclass exemplars, but what about banning them from having weapon ikons instead?
Wouldn't fully solve the problem. Victor's wreathe isn't a weapon ikon but is still completely nuts. It's a 16th level cleric feat...as a dedication. Which also gives, as a side benefit, one of the best ways to remove effects (curses, drained, whatever) in the game. It's especially bonkers post remaster, where things like Sound Body, Clear Mind, etc require counteract rolls to work.
It fixes the alleged problem of having "nothing" to do offensively against creatures with all three mythic resilience saves. Of course it does less damage than an average strike, you're not a martial. A martial can't apply mythic proficiency to 3-4 strikes per round for 1 minute off a single mythic point expenditure.
You're also dazzling it constantly if you keep hitting it every round.
Still does nothing for the core problem of mythic Resiliency: making any non-support spell obsolete.
Imagine if Mythic Resistance instead downgraded attacks. And the solution was "grab a cantrip with your fighter, problem solved!".
I admit. I do remain completely appalled that mythic martials can bypass mythic resistance but casters have no equivalent for mythic resilience. It's just very poor design and if someone with an ax to grind against wanted to pick it up, it's sort of sitting right there as an argument in the old "Paizo hates casters because my wizard can no longer kill pantheons at level 10" debate" that we've been seeing since 2E came out.
I don't think they hate casters, for the record. But I do think it's bad design.
I don't think they hate casters.
I DO think they overcompensate at times for the design problems in earlier editions where casters dominated the game. Mythic Resilience is definitely one of those times, since it's effectively crippling for all offensive magic in the game.
This is an absolutely terrible idea that will simply make a lot of spellcasting classes not fun to play in Mythic unless your GM just decides to never give anything Mythic Resilience.
That this actually exists in this form is remarkable.
Yeah I agree with that interpretation.
At the very least, you'd think mythic spells or mythic points could overcome it. But nope. And having it hit pure-damage spells (which already were probably only dealing half damage, yeesh) is just cruel.
It fixes the alleged problem of having "nothing" to do offensively against creatures with all three mythic resilience saves. Of course it does less damage than an average strike, you're not a martial. A martial can't apply mythic proficiency to 3-4 strikes per round for 1 minute off a single mythic point expenditure.
You're also dazzling it constantly if you keep hitting it every round.
Still does nothing for the core problem of mythic Resiliency: making any non-support spell obsolete.
Imagine if Mythic Resistance instead downgraded attacks. And the solution was "grab a cantrip with your fighter, problem solved!".
I admit. I do remain completely appalled that mythic martials can bypass mythic resistance but casters have no equivalent for mythic resilience. It's just very poor design and if someone with an ax to grind against wanted to pick it up, it's sort of sitting right there as an argument in the old "Paizo hates casters because my wizard can no longer kill pantheons at level 10" debate" that we've been seeing since 2E came out.
I don't think they hate casters, for the record. But I do think it's bad design.
Are most Exemplars' abilities linked to electricity and sound, or can you change it?
I recall an ability that deals extra electricity damage on a critical hit.
What if my deity is fire or winter-based? Is there an alternate way to change the damage without leaning too much on houserules?
Yes - there is a level 1 Feat called Energized Spark that lets you pick a damage type that you can change your Spirit damage abilities to. Your Dominion Epithet at level 7 also gives you this Feat for free with two choices of damage types.
I totally missed that. Thanks for pointing it out. Very thematic.
I mean, I think fundamentally (haha) striking runes are also a problem. They're must buys to the point that the game doesn't even function properly without them. There's no red flag bigger than that.
But elemental runes are sort of uniquely unfortunate because they provide strong mathematical incentives that directly compete with 'fun' options. At least striking runes and tailwind has no opportunity cost beyond their investment, every elemental rune you use is one less of any other type of rune you can take instead, which kind of makes them a double whammy of potential frustration.
I'd agree. Personally (and I'm going to get in trouble with some old guard people for saying this, I know) I'd have preferred simple automatic bonus progression for everyone.
Which is NOT the same thing as killing magic items. But there is no reason to have these boring items that just put extra overhead on the GM to assign loot. It feels like a chore both as a player and a GM to buy that stuff. PF 1E had the same problem with +1/2/3 swords, and it was lame then too. An accuracy boost in a system balanced around everyone not having one is one thing. An accuracy boost in a system that bakes it into the fundamental game math is meaningless.
Oh, and obligatory shout-out to the kineticist, who (as usual) can't use this autopick martial damage booster. Because...
The Kineticist is the class who can sit around with Victor's Wreath active, since the status bonus to attack rolls does work for them. So I'd still think about it on the Kineticist, a class that is normally very feat hungry, but this is a level 2 feat for +1 to hit.
Good point. That's crazy enough to go for. This is just sad.
The (imo) glaring mistake by the designers of providing damage runes inside the property rune category is something that all users of runes will encounter.
But, because this is how the runes have always been, you'll get all sorts of responses, many of which will refute the framing of such runes being a problem / contradiction of the designed intent of property runes (which afaik is only assumed, if there's a dev word on it that'd be cool to see).
If Striking Runes were supposed to be the damage runes, and Property were indeed intended for "special abilities" as the book claims, that is kinda incompatible with the elemental damage runes conceptually.
Like, I don't think anyone even knows if the devs intended for elemental runes to be "normal" and factored into martial damage estimations. IMO, all signs point to "no, not initially."
Fundamental runes are a math fix. Property runes are a math thing too, but more relevantly a way to add "cool stuff" to PCs' weapons. Everyone likes flaming axes or holy blades or whatever, and that's the point of property runes.
But how do you model a flaming sword? Well, D&D 4e (and no other edition) made it turn your entire sword into fire (and thus deal only fire damage). Everyone else made flaming swords deal bonus fire damage. Paizo, justifiably not wanting to look like 4e (that way lies angry mobs), followed suit.
Again, the problem isn't flaming swords. It's that the other runes suck because they do not deal bonus damage. Something like grievous, rooting, or fearsome is directly comparable to flaming - it triggers on a critical hit. So does flaming. But flaming also deals way more damage because it also triggers on a normal hit. If you made it so that flaming runes only had an effect on a critical hit, it would be pretty comparable to grievous or rooting runes. It would also be garbage.
The algorithm to fix property runes is just:
1. Does it already deal bonus damage on hit, or is it one of the following: returning, quickstriking (speed), or animated (dancing)?
Yes: don't change it
No: go to 2
2. Is it level 8+?
Yes: edit it so that it deals +1d6 damage on hit
No: go to 3
3. Create a level 8 version of it that deals +1d6 damage and costs 500 gp.
Keen runes that also deal +1d6 damage will break literally nothing and are probably still worse than flaming despite being six times as expensive. Have a ball.
On the scale of RPG systems the Exemplar archetype is hardly a blip. In most systems, it would not even be noteworthy as an outlier.
But that doesn't really mean anything. Like, 'other system' is right there on the tin, an unintelligible unique set of rules. Giving a 5e character Pathfinder proficiency bonuses instead of their own would be really overpowered too.
Oh and Exemplar Dedication would be really broken in Fate Core, considering that attacks often do 1-2 damage and it's not uncommon to be rolling 3-4 dice on a fresh character if it's your main skill (or it might do nothing at all I guess if you don't interpret Fight or Shoot checks as weapon die).
... It's like, fundamentally nonsensical to point out whether an ability would be disruptive in another system.
It's not about porting the rules to a different system as is, but judging the impact of a small bump in melee damage in the grand scheme of things. If an archetype that grants melee martial characters +10-20% damage is what's going to break your experience it shows that PF2, or perhaps just its players, is a brittle system.
5e, for all the forumgoers here disparage it, is a far less brittle system. It does rely on a strong social contract and ensuring that your group wants the kind of game the GM wishes to run, but it is also a system that isn't derailed when a strictly better option is printed.
5e as written is exceptionally brittle. Even within classes there's subclass options that are worthless and subclass options that break the game. (See Trickery vs Twilight clerics). You cannot run the system as written without having to make a lot of homerules and edits, espeically as you start breaking into the high levels.
Every 5e game i've been in or ran has banlists for this reason, and those banlists make the ones here blush.
I've run it without one before, but never at high level (past level 9). High level 5e needs to be hacked into working. High level PF 2E works shockingly well as-is and requires basically no modification. It honestly plays better than low-level games, in my opinion.
On the scale of RPG systems the Exemplar archetype is hardly a blip. In most systems, it would not even be noteworthy as an outlier.
But that doesn't really mean anything. Like, 'other system' is right there on the tin, an unintelligible unique set of rules. Giving a 5e character Pathfinder proficiency bonuses instead of their own would be really overpowered too.
Oh and Exemplar Dedication would be really broken in Fate Core, considering that attacks often do 1-2 damage and it's not uncommon to be rolling 3-4 dice on a fresh character if it's your main skill (or it might do nothing at all I guess if you don't interpret Fight or Shoot checks as weapon die).
... It's like, fundamentally nonsensical to point out whether an ability would be disruptive in another system.
It's not about porting the rules to a different system as is, but judging the impact of a small bump in melee damage in the grand scheme of things. If an archetype that grants melee martial characters +10-20% damage is what's going to break your experience it shows that PF2, or perhaps just its players, is a brittle system.
5e, for all the forumgoers here disparage it, is a far less brittle system. It does rely on a strong social contract and ensuring that your group wants the kind of game the GM wishes to run, but it is also a system that isn't derailed when a strictly better option is printed.
5e's system is brittle in the sense that it literally cannot be sustainably played at the majority of levels it supposedly supports. It really only functions at levels 3-9 or so, and even there some options blow others out of the water (hypnotic pattern and fireball, I'm looking at you).
Level 1 and 2 PCs routinely get splattered by critical hits. At higher levels, PCs can trivially demolish encounters with wall of force and forcecage, break the action economy with planar binding, break the actual economy with a whole host of tricks, and of course all the usual high-level rocket tag that D&D is infamous for (domination, plane shifting enemies to hell, etc). The saving throw DCs of high level monsters make system math break down - try making a DC 25 Intelligence saving throw with a "mere" +4 intelligence modifier. Go ahead. I'll wait. You'll roll a natural 21 on that d20 at some point, right?
Even with a strong social contract most GMs eventually start having to ban things simply because the encounter rules break down and because player options get ludicrously obscene. Most of the people I know who play PF 2E literally signed up for it because they were sick of 5e being the way it is.
I kinda want to ask what yall would think of a ban on elemental property runes.
It's kinda sad that I've only seen someone buy a Ghost Touch rune once (Abmn Vlts), and post L8, it's really only been elementals. I had a Gunslinger join before L8 who was excited for their Bane rune, but it literally never functioned once, and they were visibly aggravated.
Yeah so the issue is just that most other runes (astral/holy/unholy are the exceptions because duh they're just elemental runes by another name) aren't good by comparison. I'm pretty sure elemental runes themselves are priced into the system, and that banning them would just nerfbat PC damage. It'd be like banning reactive strike.
The actual fix here is to make the other runes give bonus damage so that they're properly competitive. I'd guess +1d4 and not +1d6 since they'd be stronger than the elemental ones otherwise.
As to the thread topic, I don't have the book yet, and I want to be positive as it seams a lot of great things but my favorite thing, Eidolons, don't seem to have any exceptions to work with mythic so I'm a bit bummed. As a gish, adding mythic to just one aspect of your character instead of both doesn't feel great.
I think eidolons probably work okay with mythic actually. At least as far as "being functional" with it. "Your eidolon's Strikes benefit from the fundamental and property runes on your handwraps of mighty blows" includes mythic runes (which are fundamental runes). So at least its strikes won't bounce off mythic immunity. But yeah, Mythic Strike isn't going to work.
It's actually a really good point though - I didn't even consider summoner until you brought it up.
Mythic runes, IIRC, are level 20 only. Eidolons (and animal companions) are going to be very sad about the mythic resistance abilities NPCs can get and that PCs ignore every level up until then.
You know that's fair, I sort of forgot about that. Equally fairly, it's pretty trivial to houserule.
Not to mention any time a "good" god DOES do something controversial, or is just connected to it, this playerbase NEVER lets them live it down (Sarenrae and the Pit of Gormuz, the Cult of the Dawnflower, the trumpet incident with Iomedae in Wrath of the Righteous, etc.). Like, do you WANT your gods to be <_<
Yeah when I said that, that's what I was thinking about. Between Pharasma briefly being anti-abortion, Sarenrae creating the Pit of Gormuz, Torag and the Quest for the Sky being compared unfavorably to Manifest Destiny, and Erastil being pro-patriarchy, people get really annoyed when "good" gods don't match real-world modern (Western progressive) morals. So most of that stuff has been scrapped over time to make them less controversial. Which is good, I think, for the game reaching a wider player base.
What this means in practice is that there's very little reason for anyone to have an ax to grind against the gods, precisely because the designers made certain that their (modern Western progressive) audience wouldn't have an ax to grind against them. It's the entire point. None of the "good" gods are going to smite people for no good reason.
As to the thread topic, I don't have the book yet, and I want to be positive as it seams a lot of great things but my favorite thing, Eidolons, don't seem to have any exceptions to work with mythic so I'm a bit bummed. As a gish, adding mythic to just one aspect of your character instead of both doesn't feel great.
I think eidolons probably work okay with mythic actually. At least as far as "being functional" with it. "Your eidolon's Strikes benefit from the fundamental and property runes on your handwraps of mighty blows" includes mythic runes (which are fundamental runes). So at least its strikes won't bounce off mythic immunity. But yeah, Mythic Strike isn't going to work.
It's actually a really good point though - I didn't even consider summoner until you brought it up.
There is no point in having ions without the immanence ability. Some work ok, but many transcendence abilities rely on having the immanence active. The Ikons are kinda too individual to balance easily with set limits. It makes more and more sense to me that the dedication is a “talk to your GM about how to implement this/see if it is even a fit for the campaign the GM wants to run.” It feels like any other attempt to bash it apart and then back together again is just going to make the whole dedication useless.
Even if you feel like a +2 spirit damage ikon is too much, do you really feel like all of them are too much? You can just ban certain ones.
Of course, going back to the old days of GMs having to go through everything with a fine toothed comb to figure out what options are okay and what ones aren't isn't really something I want to see PF2 devolve into.
Getting away from that is a feature. If fixing that makes the archetype weak... Summoner Dedication would like a word.
But I think its okay for them to have just said "this wasn't a good fit for an archetype so we didn't do it" vs "this ranges from powerful to the best feat in the game for every martial, figure it out on your own."
Yeah, I think "dedications are sometimes weak" is just a fact of life. It's absolutely not worth..."fixing" like this. And I'd rather that Exemplar dedication were too weak than too strong, especially given that as a player I'd cheerfully burn the feat on the dedication if I could later unlock immanence with, say, an 8th level feat.
The fundamental tradeoff here is whether or not you'd prefer a weak option (which again, already exist in spades) or an outrageously strong option that probably 50% of GMs aren't going to allow anyway. I'd prefer to not audit my players' builds for broken things, because it's annoying and breeds ill will.
Oh, and obligatory shout-out to the kineticist, who (as usual) can't use this autopick martial damage booster. Because never forget: every universal boost to martials like this drags kineticist down by comparison (and diminishes casters, but that's another problem).
Most of the Paizo holy deities aren't really that similar to Zeus and company, though. Obviously this doesn't apply to the unholy gods, but someone like Shelyn or Arshea seems pretty omnibenevolent. I don't really think Arshea goes in for thunderbolts at all, honestly. Their anathema is literally "being too judgmental."
I mean, not that I want to tell you how to play. If you want Shelyn or Arshea or whoever to go all "and then I turned him into a shrub because he forgot to burn the thighbones of an ox at my temple one Friday twelve years ago", you can. But it just doesn't match the character Paizo is trying to present, as far as I can tell. They're not going to blast you just for kicks or because they got cranky one day.
For the record, I support clerics of ideals 200%. They're awesome. I just think that this critique of the deities is less valid than it often is in ancient polytheistic societies like Rome, where religion is built around bribing the gods to do what you want and living in constant fear of getting cursed/zapped/blown up.
These two are generally not that likely to do it, but they will act if you go against their beliefs hard enough. Shelyn has explicit divine intercession curses, so if you do piss her off by doing something like "spreading misery via false love", she's going to give you a bad day.
This also just comes up less often for PCs, because generally good characters are never going to upset benevolent deities enough to have this happen, and evil campaigns are generally unlikely to have divine curses smash the evil PCs when its known that they want to play evil PCs.
Curses from evil gods also don't happen a ton, but it's more likely both due to more opportunities but also because enduring that and saving the day anyway can be woven into a heroic story. Like, one of my characters ended up effectively directly rebuffing Zon-Kuthon and you don't get away with that without consequences. Those scars are part of the narrative. It just doesn't hit...
Oh it's true, but my point is that because the Pathfinder pantheon is mostly based on modern (Western progressive) morality, you're just not going to see the gods PCs typically worship flinging curses and smiting for no good reason the way R3st8 was saying. Shelyn's going to curse you for actually doing something wrong (like butchering a prisoner after he surrendered), not because she has a migraine today and you wore an ugly hat.
Like, sure, there are historical religions where even the "good" gods will start chucking thunderbolts at you for every petty slight. Those religions do not show up in Pathfinder, or most RPGs released in the past 30 years or so for that matter, because it makes the "good" gods look like jerks. And then there's no reason for anyone to worship them, in a game where a decent fraction of the classes are based around worshiping a god. So there's less to be gained from being a secular humanist (or whatever other ideology you want to follow) than just worshiping Shelyn, Cayden Cailean, or Qi Zhong.
Tl;dr real-life religion is not the religion of most RPGs, and the gods in RPGs tend to align much more with modern (Western progressive) values than historical deities like Zeus, Odin, and Marduk do.
...No offense meant, but an ideology can be just as full of human imperfections as any religion.
I'd name some, but I'm not sure I should.
Once more related to this thread:
Did anyone else get "Shaman King" vibes when they first heard about the Animist?
Because not only did I, but everything I've heard from the release seems to mostly confirm those vibes.
It can definitely be flawed, but I meant it in the sense that you will never get hit by lightning because that ideology woke up on the wrong side of the bed.
Most of the Paizo holy deities aren't really that similar to Zeus and company, though. Obviously this doesn't apply to the unholy gods, but someone like Shelyn or Arshea seems pretty omnibenevolent. I don't really think Arshea goes in for thunderbolts at all, honestly. Their anathema is literally "being too judgmental."
I mean, not that I want to tell you how to play. If you want Shelyn or Arshea or whoever to go all "and then I turned him into a shrub because he forgot to burn the thighbones of an ox at my temple one Friday twelve years ago", you can. But it just doesn't match the character Paizo is trying to present, as far as I can tell. They're not going to blast you just for kicks or because they got cranky one day.
For the record, I support clerics of ideals 200%. They're awesome. I just think that this critique of the deities is less valid than it often is in ancient polytheistic societies like Rome, where religion is built around bribing the gods to do what you want and living in constant fear of getting cursed/zapped/blown up.
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Besides, let’s be real: I highly doubt the developers are going to include capitalism or dictatorship among the covenant options.
I'm guessing the covenants will be more like edicts and anathemas. Things like "killing is wrong" (Qi Zhong's anathema) or "have you considered making people miserable today?" (literally Zon-Kuthon's edict)
So after paizo nerfed the monk archytype to no longer offer the monks stiker feature at 10th level, I am dubious that they intentionally let you grab the exemplars striker feature/ source of extra damage at level 2 because they haven't done than before and its too powerful for a second level feat.
They nerf older options to better sell newer options.
This was probably planned to sell more copies of WoI to the power gaming crowd.
When something new comes along that Paizo wants to sell, ONLY then will the Exemplar archetype get its nerf.
If that were true, champion dedication would have been nerfed for giving the core class feature away at 6th level in player core 2.
I really maintain trying to ascribe motives is overcomplicating things. I do think this is just a blatant error. It reminds me of late 3.x, where they had such a frantic publication schedule that things routinely broke because there was no time to test everything. And because nobody was able to cross check interactions between every one of the dozens of sourcebooks they'd published.
And also power creep for more sales with paizo's content policies makes absolutely no sense. Nobody is going to buy a $70 book for one archetype when the entire rules corpus is available online for the low low price of absolutely no money whatsoever. If it were WotC, sure, but literally every player option is publicly available on Pathbuilder, AoN, and Demiplane.
Yeah. "It's rare therefore it's okay that its ridiculously overpowered" doesn't fly. The fact that it's rare is a convenient excuse to ban it and have cover from the system to do so.
I don't really think the intent was to make it this powerful and hide it behind the Rare tag. I think it's more likely someone just didn't think it through that well in the rush to get the book done. It certainly wouldn't be the first instance of that in this year's books.
I'll be more concerned if they don't rein it in during the errata.
Like I said in the other thread, I get it. They were in a rush to change things after WotC decided to blow up the entire OGL space in a crass and legally tenuous cash grab. I can't blame Paizo for not editing everything as thoroughly as they normally do, given they had to put out four 300-page books in the space of a year on top of keeping to their existing production schedule. It sounds like a nightmare on the backend.
Given they're re-releasing Guns & Gears and Gods & Magic (as Divine Mysteries) I expect similar treatment for the other two big player-facing books (Dark Archive and Secrets of Magic), likely all within calendar year 2025. But once that's complete, I sincerely hope balance returns to normal.
It also means that OP stuff isn't a problem because a GM can just exclude it from the game.
Ultimately an incredibly lazy and toxic way to approach game balance.
I've said it before, but that attitude to balance in game design is why I will never GM PF1 again. I'm older and have limited time to prep now, I'd rather spend it on things like story than on dealing with busted content.
Literally this. I had a similar experience with D&D 5e, and it's an absolute pain. I honestly would not be surprised if it's one reason people get burnt out on GMing in general.
Red Griffyn wrote:
Tridus wrote:
Hence why Exemplar the Class is allowed while Exmplar the Archetype is banned at my table (pending errata).
OR you could do some minor interim homebrew and still allow it at your table?
I could, but its not like people are starved of archetype options. This isn't a problem that desperately needs solving with homebrew, as once you remove the power creep, I suspect the number of people that truly need Exemplar Dedication in their build for narrative reasons is pretty small (and if that does come up, I can grant an exception only for certain ikons).
Yeah there are...what? A few good archetypes? Mostly for martials, not casters? Off the top of my head I can think of:
-Champion (everyone, for reactions)
-Sentinel (everyone, for armor)
-Kineticist (everyone, for aura stances and reactions)
-Bastion (martials, for shields)
-Rogue (martials, for sneak attack, mobility, gang up, opportune backstabber)
-Sniping duo (martials, for archers only)
-Psychic (casters/magus, for focus spells)
And now this. I suppose mythic ones are also on the table now (apocalypse rider looks quality as a dip, as do prophesied monarch and eternal legend) but they're both 12+ and probably not allowed at a lot of tables because they're part of mythic. Sort of shocking given the sheer volume of archetypes out there.
Well, results from our first playtest with Exemplar archetype allowed are back. Unsurprisingly, all the martials took it because duh.
The barbarian archetyped into champion (paladin), taking nimble reprisal and reaction before archetyping into exemplar. The actual champion (grandeur) also grabbed exemplar. It was somewhat sickening. Barbarians really hit like a bus with that thing in play. And archetyping for sanctification helped in some fights too.
I am saying rare options don’t really need to be so well balanced because the game doesn’t hinge on them.
The game doesn't 'hinge' on any one specific thing at all, regardless of rarity. This is a poor reason to not try to design the game well.
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I think people having a view of examples as just another new class in the game are missing the point of the class being rare in the first place.
The point of it being rare is because of its narrative features (though tbh, even that is somewhat overstated) not to be a red flag that Paizo's going to be lazy about balancing it.
I genuinely can't wrap my head around this cope. This isn't a trend, Paizo just published a problematic feat. They've done it before, with rare options, with uncommon options, with common options. The ideal thing here is for Paizo to issue errata for it, which they probably will.
The sheer amount of fumbling around to try to somehow justify it is just boggling to me.
I think the reason people are fumbling is because it's sort of patently obvious that they dropped the ball with this feat. So there's not much disagreement that the ball WAS dropped, meaning the only thing to talk about is why or how. And being human beings, we all want to justify or explain things, even when the explanation is extremely dull.
I really don't think it's more complicated than "they accidentally published a super strong option that breaks the game and also happens to be Rare, they should just errata it and move on." All this talk about whether it's not actually a problem because GMs can ban it due to Rarity, and whether or not getting +2 damage/die when you multiclass "fits the fantasy of being a god" is extremely silly and reminiscent of ancient Greek astronomers trying to add epicycles and deferents to fix their geocentric model of the Earth rather than admit it was broken. The Exemplar Dedication feat is broken. The authors likely spent less time writing it than the community here has spent talking about it over the past few days. Regardless of whether or not it's Rare, it's not balanced. Just fix it and move on.
if it were nerfed to be less OP then I would allow players to kill and diablerize exemplars in the world to steal their divine spark, to get access to the archetype.
Ah, "diablerize." There's a word I haven't heard for a while...
I feel like "this thing is rare because it's powerful" is a bad precedent in general. Like the problem is not with the Exemplar class itself, which appears balanced compared to other classes, it's just rare because of the thematics and weird flavor fit for certain campaigns.
But the archetype is comparatively easily explained a la "I just stumbled on this fortuitous thing through providence" and the dedication feat itself is stronger than comparable options on nearly every class.
I maintain that people are waaaaay overthinking this. At least 5 times out of 10, power creep can be explained by someone just not thinking things through when they write an option. The archetype was not deliberately boosted because it was Rare. The devs just didn't think the archetype through enough before they published it. As Exhibit A of this fact, I submit that they literally forgot to make the archetype Rare and had to issue an errata.
Why would the dedication for a rare class not also be rare?
Well, technically in the original book as printed, the class is Rare but the archetype isn't, so ask the devs...(yes, they errata'd this, but I had to make the joke).
More seriously - I believe shroudb is making the point that it's extremely silly to ban the archetype for Rarity reasons when the actual argument is that it should be banned for mechanical ones. Because nobody has a problem with actual Exemplar (the class) despite it being Rare.
Why are we banning all of the uncommon/rare things at our table?
That is not the point of the rarity tag. The point of the rarity tag is, "talk to your GM about this option."
We are talking about a book far removed from core options with thematic themes that are not always going to be a good fit for every campaign anyway. I am not saying "hey paizo, never look at the balance implications of this option!" I am saying, like the 6th pillar archetype from Fist of the Ruby Phoenix, this isn't as big a deal as other aspects of the game currently waiting for errata.
The overall power creep implications of rare options are just not that big of deal as folks here are making them out to be.
My point is less that I recommend banning all Uncommon and Rare options (which I absolutely don't), and more that power creep is still power creep, regardless of whether or not it's Rare. So using the Rare tag as a smokescreen for banning overpowered things is going to have a chilling effect on Rare options in general while doing nothing to stop power creep. It's like driving fifty miles an hour over the speed limit but blaming the other person's broken turn signal when you get into an accident with them.
It may not be a problem at your table, but if "Rare" becomes equated with "ban it, that's OP" in the general mind of the community that's really an issue. And ignoring the power creep implications of an option just because it happens to be Rare (again, Exemplar archetype ISN'T Rare BECAUSE it's overpowered, people really need to stop making that particular bad faith argument) means that when non-Rare power creep appears you have fewer options to deal with it.
I kinda do this... but instead of banning them I weakened the heightened effect and put another two heightened tiers.
It is exceptionally powerful in the hands of an organised party for its cost and tends to devalue a whole heap of class options.
I didn't do this because it was powerful though, because I ran two campaigns and it was a boring mechanical choice with no RP attached.
Another similar change I have made is reducing the amount of extra dimensional storage across the board. Because I found players got type 1 bags of holding and stopped caring for higher tiers and bulk became a thing of the past so early. I tend to change this depending on campaign though.
I don't think I have actually banned anything else though, rarities get played around with and some options are disallowed for lore / theme reasons but they are fairly few and far between.
Amusingly my group just accepts Tailwind as a fact of life and moves on, though another party I regularly play with is low-optimization and just never uses them. Scrolls of 7th level haste in the hands of a high level (16+) party similarly get the nod.
I ban the combination of Ancestries and Heritages that are both Uncommon or Rare. I ban Diverse Lore. I remove Wall of Stone shapeability. I consider that most humanoids know what illusions are and as such are not fooled by Illusory Object if they see the casting. I limit some options so I don't get them too much (I like to stay quite close to traditional fantasy so only a portion of the party can take weird Ancestries).
My table banned wall spells altogether for a while.
We also had a blanket ban on everything that wasn't from the Core Rulebook or APG for a while, but that was more so that new players wouldn't be overwhelmed by all the options. We did eventually lift the ban, but continued to remove stuff from random Lost Omens books that had nothing to do with anything like Firebrands, Legends, the World Guide, Impossible Lands, and so on.
It’s not hard at all to exclude some rare/uncommon options and not others. If you have a campaign set in Tian Xia, it is perfectly reasonable even to change the rarity of various things. Rarity tags mean players should ask the GM/talk to them about any specific choice. A GM can say “we aren’t having guns in this campaign” without banning every uncommon option. A GM can say, “that archetype is not a good fit for this campaign.” They can even say, “I don’t think that option is balanced well, and I don’t want to have one player with it or encourage everyone to pick it just for mechanical power reasons.”
A GM can say this about even common options, but the rare tag is a big flag to players “don’t assume this option is available without talking about it first.” So players shouldn’t be assuming every rare option is always available to them in the first place.
It sets a dangerous precedent if people start to equate rarity tag with power level.
It's one thing to say "this option is uncommon because it doesn't exist in this region" and a completely different to say"this is uncommon because it's too strong".
Thematically wise, if Exemplar the class is ok with an adventure, there's no reason why Exemplar the Archetype is not.
So, exactly same theme, same rarity, but one is ok for a campaign but the other is not, is just not right.
Pretty much yeah.
I mean I don't disagree that "Rare" and "Uncommon" can work as catchalls for "things that the GM may say no to", but I think we all know that the reason Exemplar dedication is Rare has absolutely nothing to do with its power level. The fact that it's both overpowered and Rare is basically a coincidence. It's disingenuous to argue otherwise.
You can say "well this isn't an issue because this dedication is Rare so it doesn't impact game balance". But that is just an excuse. The dedication isn't overpowered because it's Rare, so banning it because it's Rare makes very little sense. What happens if Commander dedication comes out in a few months, it's equally broken, and it's NOT Rare? Do you just ban it anyway, because reasons?
If you want to ban it for being too strong, ban it for being too strong. But I wouldn't hide behind the fig leaf of rarity when that's not actually why you're banning it.
I feel like you already know this, but by 15th level, in most combats of significance, a caster’s actions are worth more than almost any other resource. A +3/-3 buff/debuff is a decent use of an action, but only working for your own next spell leaves a lot on the table for how much more effectively you could have used that action to swing the encounter. A one action power word stun is minimally taking away reactions and an action for example. Even a recall knowledge check could be swinging a 3 point difference between a high and medium save or a 6 point difference between high and low at level 15, a bonus that might be useable multiple time without ever costing more actions.
In practice, I think ancestral memories has the potential to promote middling efficiency repetition of play loops over truly optimized play.
The Exemplar dedication, especially as a one feat investment, is clearly a bigger issue…except, at rare, it is one the GM has been given much more powerful tools to reign in if it is going to become a...
I agree that Exemplar dedication is better, to be sure. But I'm less sold on the idea that Ancestral Memories isn't extremely good at 15. Power Word Stun costs an 8th rank slot (and doesn't exist in the Remaster, so some GMs may not allow it anyway). 8th rank slots at level 15 are your top-rank ones, and I'd much rather be using my highest rank slots for a 2-action spell like confusion. Recall Knowledge likewise is by no means a guaranteed success, and even if it is you may not have a useful spell that targets their lowest save. Easily the most obvious example is [Mindless] enemies. Their Will save is usually their lowest, but it's entirely pointless to know that because no Will saves you throw at them will actually do anything. And of course, Memories stacks with Recall Knowledge anyway, thus giving you a better chance of making the target fail or critically fail.
For players, they're used to doing all kinds of things and having those things work. Those things suddenly don't work. Some terms are still there but mean something different, etc. It's quite jarring. That's why players new to TTRPGs tend to pick up PF2 more easily than someone who played PF1/3.5 for 15 years and now suddenly has to make this shift otherwise they get clobbered.
Yeah, I'm a bit concerned that our resident power gamer might not like the game for that exact reason. I'm reasonably sure the other players will have an easier time of it, although two of them are not very with the mechanical side of things even in 1E, so also an area of concern for me. The other three should be fine, even the guy who complains about everything. ^^
It is still quite feasible to optimize a build in PF2. It's just that the difference in power with any other build will actually be pretty small.
Honestly, powergamers tend to dislike the edition for precisely that reason. There's no way to destroy level 20 monsters at level 10 the way there is in PF 1E, D&D 5e, etc due to the math.
And that helps clarify the difference between optimizer and powergamer.
2 concepts that were long seen as one.
Yup, I could not agree more. I've personally always seen myself as the former, but never the latter. Being able to build a good character who pulled their weight is what I like - not creating something so strong the GM has no way to actually challenge it, or building a character that makes everyone else at the table feel small.
In addition to the points already being made regarding Quick Bomber, I'd like to bring up two more.
The first is that Quick Bomber affects only PCs who use bombs. Which is essentially just alchemists. Much like Imaginary Weapon being very solid on a Starlit Span Magus, this feat is not warping the entire game. Rogues, barbarians, fighters, investigators, thaumaturges, swashbucklers, and champions will not try to take Quick Bomber or Imaginary Weapon.
The second is that because of that, Quick Bomber is basically internal to the class. Like it or not, the devs expected (at least some) people who play alchemists to take it. There are some very good feats internal to specific classes (Dangerous Sorcery used to be one for sorcerers, Risky Reload is very popular for gunslingers, rogues almost always take one of Gang Up, Opportune Backstabber, and now Nimble Dodge, etc), and we don't complain about those because they're part of that class's own "toolkit." Likewise, the game is obviously balanced around rogues having access to Opportune Backstabber.
Exemplar Dedication is not internal to any class. The game is obviously not built around people multiclassing into Exemplar. From a pure balance perspective, the devs obviously did not intend for every martial to get +2 damage/die, or an aura of +1 to hit. I think you can make a strong argument for Exemplar Dedication being the strongest 2nd level feat ever published, for any martial class, period. That's a problem in a way that "a bunch of alchemists will want to take Quick Bomber but basically no one else cares" is not.
We will see how many people actual go out and get 2 sorcerer feats to pick up ancestral memories as a focus spell. I think a lot of folks will read these boards and try it, but then ditch it after they realize that there will be many encounters where they have much better things to do with their actions and their focus points to be paying a two feat tax for a sometimes better than a skill check ability.
I don't think we will really see that much of the exemplar spam though because the dedication is rare and, minimally, players are going to have to really justify and sell it to their GMs to get it. That doesn't mean it won't eventually get an errata, just that it is not something that desperately needs a fix because GMs who feel it is a problem already have a rules method for dealing with it.
In fairness, while more true here, it is true of...every broken thing in the edition. The ruling of the GM is final for basically everything, especially everything that doesn't come from Player Core.
Correct, Elemental Blast was its own bespoke action. However, by picking up Elemental Weapon as a 1st level feat, you would get a weapon that used your Elemental Blast proficiency but could make normal Strikes, so stuff like Mythic Strike would be fine with those.
(Side note but I find interesting that it seems people don't hoard their playtest pdfs like I do. Its very interesting to see how design changed, for better or worse.)
I'm confused by this comment, given the playtest is still available in the link provided.
I apologize if this has already been answered, but this is a rather big thread.
I've heard that mythic destinies can have their mythic point elements removed to be used in a non-mythic game.
How powerful are the mythic destinies for this purpose? Are they suitable for allowance in a non-mythic game where the thematic elements might be allowed but the full mechanics element of mythic would not be, or are they still too powerful to be allowed in a game that does not plan to use Mythic Callings. As in, are they roughly a side grade versus an equal-level class feat? Or would they be objectively better?
I am considering whether or not to allow some mythic destinies to be claimable with class feats and free archetype feats this way, as I've heard from some folks with the book that it should work with free archetype this way. But I wanna make sure they are not so overtuned that a player who opts to not use such feats will not feel like they are getting the short end of the proverbial stick.
Most of them are fairly normal and allowable - however, there are a few things to consider.
The first is whether or not you want to allow immortal PCs. For many GMs, this breaks their setting or their rules. Most mythic destinies have a 20th level feat that makes the player character nigh-unkillable. Hopefully this isn't a violation of forum rules, but here is the full text of one (only one) of these feats:
War of Immortals wrote:
Living Epic Feat 20
Mythic
Prerequisites Eternal Legend Dedication
You are a living legend, a being who cannot be claimed by
death, as death has already passed you. You are beyond
whatever they wish to make you. When you would be killed,
you instead disappear. You reappear anywhere where your
name is spoken in the next week. Your name must be said
in the context of recounting one of your exploits, including
your death. If the person speaking your name is a close ally
(such as another PC), you return to life with only 1 Hit Point.
However, if a stranger speaks your name, you return to life
with full Hit Points and you gain a +1 status bonus to attack
rolls, Perception, saving throws, and skill checks for 1 week.
If no one speaks your name within a week of your death,
your soul enters the River of Souls, and you can be brought
back to life us ing other means.
Whether or not this breaks your game is a matter of taste, but it's certainly not appropriate for everyone's game.
Secondly, several of them are extremely, brokenly strong. Easily the most powerful is Fight Through Oblivion, another level 20 eternal legend feat which in essence renders a PC at 0 hit points still conscious but immune to all damage until they miss with an attack for four consecutive rounds.
That feat makes it virtually impossible to kill a PC with it, short of [Death] effects, disintegration, and similar abilities. Again, you have to decide whether or not to allow it - I personally would allow the former but not the latter, since it's frankly disruptive to combat. But abilities like that are pretty rare - Apocalypse Rider, Archfiend, Ascended Celestial, Beast Lord, Godling, and Wildspell really have nothing objectionably strong in them at all, it's mostly just Broken Chain, Eternal Legend, and Prophesied Monarch that lean towards the overly powerful side of things.
The reason I doubt it will happen is because Guns and Gears contains character classes (which seem to be the target for remaster). It also seems like Book of the Dead may have been a one-off that they're less interested in supporting (like you said). Compared to gunslingers, which may have more of a market.
At the very least, I'd expect Dark Archive and Secrets of Magic to get the remaster treatment first, since each one has character classes (which probably need it more, just looking at the number of Magus and Summoner complaints I see).
I didn't mean to imply that I think Paizo is uninterested in supporting BotD, I think it's the opposite, I believe they're trying to get it out of print specifically so they can remaster it. G&G got the humble bundle right before the remaster announcement too. That said I do see your point, as a classless book it seems like an odd choice to prioritize. However I definitely don't think SoM is very high on their list at all, unlike G&G, DA, BotD, and frankly basically any other splatbook that's been put out, it is entirely unviable for a quick and easy remaster job. They've reprinted a lot of the spells from it, Runelord is straight up moving to the Lost Omens line, a lot of the lore in it talks about the schools of magic that no longer exist, a number of the items introduced interact directly with the schools of magic that no longer exist, and really the entire book needs to be reworked more than remastered. Especially if they want to make a real dent in the Magus and Summoner complaints. DA should for sure just get an easy remaster though.
Well, the remastered core books did make quite a few changes - dragon/demon sorcerer got new focus spells, rogues got new feats, Swashbuckler's core mechanic was changed around, as did Witch's. So I could definitely see a rework. I agree that a lot of it was bound up in the schools of magic though.
Still, given how popular magus is, I find it hard to believe it won't eventually get a remaster.
For players, they're used to doing all kinds of things and having those things work. Those things suddenly don't work. Some terms are still there but mean something different, etc. It's quite jarring. That's why players new to TTRPGs tend to pick up PF2 more easily than someone who played PF1/3.5 for 15 years and now suddenly has to make this shift otherwise they get clobbered.
Yeah, I'm a bit concerned that our resident power gamer might not like the game for that exact reason. I'm reasonably sure the other players will have an easier time of it, although two of them are not very with the mechanical side of things even in 1E, so also an area of concern for me. The other three should be fine, even the guy who complains about everything. ^^
It is still quite feasible to optimize a build in PF2. It's just that the difference in power with any other build will actually be pretty small.
Honestly, powergamers tend to dislike the edition for precisely that reason. There's no way to destroy level 20 monsters at level 10 the way there is in PF 1E, D&D 5e, etc due to the math.
