CommanderCoyler's page

So Twin Take-down is strictly worse than double slice? Ranger is becoming less attractive.

Twin Takedown is one action, Double Slice is two

1 and 3 I very much agree on, though moving them away from the general feats would highlight just how few of those there are...
I'm fine with trained being the gate to most of the uses of a skill, then feats can pick up the more specalised versions of those uses.

Every ancestry gets at least one free boost

Dragon magazine, even the article in question, was unofficial optional material. Meaning it didn't count. In no official material was there a non-LG Paladin until 3.X.

Optional, yes it was (as all rules are technically). It was also official, as in published by TSR/WoTC.

But you don't care, you've chosen your (ant)hill and you're going to die on it.

In my group, the GM didn't notice for most of the session that the Paladin's Retributive Strike doesn't have the "ignore multiple attack penalty" option that Attack of Opportunity has.

After it was noticed, monsters no longer took paladin's tanking with any seriousness. Although there were 10 more attempts at Retributive Strike from her, she didn't hit once. Adding MAP to the -2 is just too much unless you waste your turn hoping for a reaction that you -may- be able to use, and without any spells or ranged attack (no Gunladins so far, and we all miss those in our group) there wasn't anything for her to do outside of trying to hit them with the slashy end.

You had it right, assuming enemies weren't somehow attacking the paladin's allies on the paladin's turn:

The multiple attack penalty applies only on your turn and resets at the end of your turn. Attacks you can make outside of your turn might include their own penalties

Also, one that I didn't misread but multiple others have: 'Spell rolls' being used for 'spell attacks', i.e. spell attacks being off your casting stat instead of Dex.

Tiefling, Aasimar, Pixie, Orc, Kobold
No dragonborn or half-dragon on the list :(
(Unless they were there and I didn't recognise the pf1 name for them)

Here is another question for Natural Ambition: Can you select it more then once?

The example is: First taking Natural Ambition as your first level Ancestry feat. Then using the 3rd Level General feat to take the natural Ambition another time, via Ancestral Paragon, gaining another Class feat. It would still only add a 1st level class feat.

It doesn't have the 'Special: you can take this feat multiple times..' line, so no.

Your adaptability manifests in your mastery of a range of useful abilities. You gain a 1st-level general feat.

Special You can select this feat multiple times, choosing a different feat each time.

Critical failure hurts PCs way more than enemies. Any given enemy is only "on screen" for a few rounds before combat ends. PCs however are there for the whole campaign. A PC rolls hundreds or even thousands of attacks for each one attack made by an enemy. That means PCs will fumble countless times while enemies generally will not.

Fumbles should not exist.

This, and it's a nerf for martial characters compared to casters. Martials are going to be making attacks every round, casters can just cast spells that rely on the enemy saving and not have to worry about fumbling.

If any sort of fumble system is made official, that will be the nail in the coffin for me playing this.

Recovery saves don't get you back up in the new rules. That was the original rules.

If you return to 1 Hit Point or more, you become conscious. As noted before, if you had the dying condition, you are slowed on your frst turn after regaining consciousness. If you did not have the dying condition when you regain consciousness, you aren’t slowed.

When you’re unconscious and at 0 HP but no longer dying, you naturally return to 1 HP and awaken after suffcient time passes. The GM determines how long you remain unconscious, from at least 10 minutes to several hours.

We better not start comparing the damage including the mobility of a lightly armored archer against a plate wearing bruiser as that will lead to bruiser tries to get in range deals 0 damage and dies while the archer runs around in circles.

That is the plan behind making them roughly equal to 1h weapons. Though I will also say the speed penalties (and ACP) need to be toned down a lot (probably to a maximum of 5') either way

The only thing I think needs to be addressed is range. Your damage bonus from Dex needs to shrink with range (except on critical hits). Maybe your Dex damage bonus could go down by 2 with every range increment, the same as the to-hit roll.

That is a thing that could work. Though it might be a little complex though for something that isn't going to come up hugely often. The penalty to attack rolls for range does lower the effective damage too.

Deadly is a quality that scales and is an awesome trait for bows. If the long bow loses it and the short bow keeps it, the short bow is a much better weapon, even as it levels up. Having bows be devastatingly effective when really hitting (critical hit) and not so powerful on regular hits really does a good job of making Archery fun and feel like it looks in fantasy action movies (regular hits glance off arms or armor, while critical hits are the ones that really stick in vital areas.

Die type is still king. D8 will still beat out d6, deadly d10 in terms of average damage at every level, especially as deadly doesn't go up as quickly as raw damage. You can see the difference for yourself here (compare rapier to d8 weapons)

It does have a problem currently though, and it is not that ranged combat does too little damage.

An issue that the new action economy hides well, but has not addressed is that standing still and attacking as much as possible is the best way to defeat enemies. ranged weapons with no reload time are pretty much the kings of action economy right now and giving them any full attribute bonus to damage is going to make them the much better option than using finesse weapons, especially if you make longbows usable at all ranges. Without AoOs, the Archer doesn't have to move if someone advances to melee on them. You just keep standing still and firing three times.

As long as critical misses have no failures when attacking (especially when attacking with a ranged weapon), any weapon that reliably lets you get 3 attacks and not waste time moving is worth a lot more in damage calculations than it is getting in your analysis.

This is why ranged weapons are balanced against one-handed weapons instead of two-handed. So they get some penalty in terms of damage per attack to make up for the fact that they can make more attacks because they have to move less.

If flat die to damage wasn't threatening at any level of play then fireball would never have become one of the most popular spells of all time over every edition of the game.

Fireball, I suspect, is mostly popular for rule-of-cool reasons. Against single targets its damage is lacklustre, it gets most of its damage capability from its AoE potential.

Correct, spells that have attack rolls have the 'attack' trait. Spells that only have attack rolls on certain modes of the spell, such as Heal/Harm gain the trait when used in that way.

This ability grants an attack. For each attack you make beyond the frst on your turn, you take a multiple attack penalty (see page 305).

As an extension to the above: you have 3 actions on your turn, you can spend them however you want. With your weapon as your symbol you don't even have to spend actions swapping over to count for the somatic casting.
Just remember that spell attacks are subject to, and cause, multi-attack penalty.

CommanderCoyler wrote:

'Unbalanced at low levels, less so at higher' is how I'd describe the current system. Also you haven't answered my question: What big weakness in the Strength stat, and all it brings outside of attacks, would being able to get the same numbers when using different stats be unbalanced in pf2 when it works brilliantly in other systems?

Does Carrying capacity, Breaking objects, Climbing, Disarming, Grappling, Jumping, Shoving, Swimming and Tripping not stack up to Reflex saves, Balancing, Grabbing edges, Sneaking, Stealing, Opening locks and Disabling devices?

It didn't feel like you were specifically asking me a question.

Carrying Capacity is rarely relevant for combat. 5 Bulk is plenty, more is nice, but you have enough.

Skills are roughly comparable and you listed all the sub aspects of Athletics instead of just listing athletics. Combat maneuvers require not just Str, but Athletics and Athletics magic item for competence.

You also forgot to mention AC which is huge as is Reflex saves. Dex allows you to wear light armor and that means minimal ACP, which consequently greatly lowers your ability to perform non attack Str and Dex based skill checks.

So, no, without being the primary source of bonus damage Str doesn't stack up against Dex. Bulk, Maneuvers, and some skills do not equal AC, Reflex, and skills. With being the damage determiner Str pulls its own weight... hehe pun intended.

I would disagree, for one dex only partially adds to AC (which is why I didn't mention it). In the current system, a high strength character can wear heavier armour to get the same AC as a high dex character, but a high dex character can't do anything about their pathetic damage output compared to a high strength character. Getting dex to damage would BALANCE that out.

CommanderCoyler wrote:

Zman0 wrote:

This feels like a problematic solution intended to fix an imaginary problem. It feels convoluted and creates more problems than it addresses.

Dex to all Finesse and Ranged weapons makes them really really good. Too good based on current balancing. Remember, that Ability to Damage is a smaller part of total damage now. When you get extra weapon dice it makes dice matter far more than your ability mod. To avoid Str dumping completely you use it as your damage boost, all characters have the ability to boost strength as they want with general ability boosts. Propulsive lets you stay close to melee weapons for damage. This is all balanced by the fact ranged weapons can be fired at range, and without standard AoOs you can move, and keep moving to keep shooting.

This argument again...

Other than Zman's hypocrisy (dex to damage would make them too strong, literally next sentence ability mod doesn't matter as much), what is so unappealing about Strength that players would dump it, given the choice?
Does Carrying capacity, Breaking objects, Climbing, Disarming, Grappling, Jumping, Shoving, Swimming and Tripping not stack up to Reflex saves, Balancing, Grabbing edges, Sneaking, Stealing, Opening locks and Disabling devices?

Morality had nothing to do with it, so you meant to say I was contradicting myself not exhibiting hypocrisy.

Now, you were wrong, my statements weren't mutually exclusive. Though, I could have formatted it correctly. Adding dex to damage for bows really does have an impact at low level, but by the time we see extra damage dice the static modifier doesn't matter that much. And with propulsive, the difference really wasn't that large unless the character completetley dumped str. We're talking about something like 5d6+2 vs 5d6+6. So at 16th level dice matter more, the static is a very small part of total damage. Now at 1st level, d6+0/1 vs d6+4 is big. See, both statements are true and not mutually exclusive and I should have been more specific. It is very possible to simultaneously unbalance low level play with a suggestion that is rather inconsequential at higher levels.

'Unbalanced at low levels, less so at higher' is how I'd describe the current system. Also you haven't answered my question: What big weakness in the Strength stat, and all it brings outside of attacks, would being able to get the same numbers when using different stats be unbalanced in pf2 when it works brilliantly in other systems?

That's why the trait is where it is. And besides, if all ranged weapons get dex to damage by default, Propulsive can add on top of that damage from strength. System preserved.

Ok, I can accept that. Makes bows somewhere in between 1h and 2h melee weapons in terms of damage.

CommanderCoyler wrote:

Again read the whole thing:

CommanderCoyler wrote:

♦ Composite Bows lose the Propulsive trait, Regular Bows gain it.

WHY DO THE HIGH-STRENGTH REQUIREMENT BOWS† NOT DEAL DAMAGE BASED ON STRENGTH?

Quote:

But, when choosing a compound bow for hunting, then you will need to choose a bow with as much draw weight as you can handle. Thus, most youth and female hunters choose draw weights from 45 lbs. to 50 lbs. and most male hunters choose draw weights from 60 lbs. to 70 lbs.

You took the trait that made high draw weight bows special and literally gave it to the other type of bow for NO REASON.

†That's what composite bows have been, traditionally. Req Str 16, deal bonus damage based on Str (up to Str 16).

Ok, then change them back. Regular (what even is a regular bow in terms of draw strength then?) bows get dex, composite bows get str. Feels weird to pay more for the downgrade though...

There is no way this is EVER going to fly. Adding Dex to Damage is SO good that once it can be done for free you will instantly see a massive shift from PCs with balanced/good strength scores, over to Fighters, Rogues, & Barbarians with 10-12 Strength.

This feels like a problematic solution intended to fix an imaginary problem. It feels convoluted and creates more problems than it addresses.

Dex to all Finesse and Ranged weapons makes them really really good. Too good based on current balancing. Remember, that Ability to Damage is a smaller part of total damage now. When you get extra weapon dice it makes dice matter far more than your ability mod. To avoid Str dumping completely you use it as your damage boost, all characters have the ability to boost strength as they want with general ability boosts. Propulsive lets you stay close to melee weapons for damage. This is all balanced by the fact ranged weapons can be fired at range, and without standard AoOs you can move, and keep moving to keep shooting.

This argument again...

So, basically

Regular bows attack with Dex, damage with Str
Composite bows attack with Dex, damage with Dex
Shortbows are just weaker longbows
Crossbows are just slower composite bows
Thrown weapons are melee weapons with range

Am I getting it right?

Kinda, though the deadly trait remaining on shortbows makes up at least some of the difference to longbows and gives a different niche i.e. crit fishing. Also most of those comparisons can already be levied towards the weapons in question.

CommanderCoyler wrote:

Please read the whole thing:

CommanderCoyler wrote:

Composite bows getting the upgrade of one stat for attack and damage makes sense in a balance sense, with them costing more money. They are also constructed to take the strain off the user, allowing for precision (Dexterity) to have an effect over Strength.

which ties into:

CommanderCoyler wrote:

♦ Ranged and Finesse weapons default to Dexterity for attacks AND damage.

But non-composite bows get that same benefit! Your changes make no sense!

Again read the whole thing:

♦ Composite Bows lose the Propulsive trait, Regular Bows gain it.

Which ties into:

♦ The propulsive trait changes the damage to (full) Strength mod

I admit I may not have been 100% clear, but this was meant as a replacement not an option. So regular bows (and slings) use Dex to hit, Str for damage, Composite bows use Dex for both. This makes Composite an upgrade over regular for high-dex characters.

CommanderCoyler wrote:

♦ Composite Bows lose the Propulsive trait, Regular Bows gain it.

Wait, what?

Do you not know what composite bows are? You've literally taken the trait that makes composite bows composite bows and given it to regular bows and left the composite bows without.

I don't get this.

Please read the whole thing:

Composite bows getting the upgrade of one stat for attack and damage makes sense in a balance sense, with them costing more money. They are also constructed to take the strain off the user, allowing for precision (Dexterity) to have an effect over Strength.

which ties into:

♦ Ranged and Finesse weapons default to Dexterity for attacks AND damage.

Quote:

♦ Longbows lose the Deadly and Volley traits.

Longbows losing the Deadly trait keeps it in line with most Martial one-handed weapons as it's getting damage boosts from Str/Dex now.

...But it's a two-handed weapon...

Again, read the whole thing:

So, coming off 4e and 5e D&D where two-handed ranged weapons are balanced against one-handed melee weapons of the same 'tier' (simple/martial/exotic), into playing PF2, ranged weapons just feel weak.

Balancing 2H ranged weapons against 1H melee weapons makes sense, you're giving up a bit of damage for extra range. Similar to reach weapons.

So, coming off 4e and 5e D&D where two-handed ranged weapons are balanced against one-handed melee weapons of the same 'tier' (simple/martial/exotic), into playing PF2, ranged weapons just feel weak. Their damage output may have felt better in 3.5 where everything had much lower hitpoints, but in pf2 it just feels archaic.

My changes (and the reasons for them) would be:
General rules and Traits
♦ Ranged and Finesse weapons default to Dexterity for attacks AND damage.
♦ Thrown weapons change the attack AND damage of the weapon to Strength. Finesse then changes it to Dexterity as normal.
♦ The propulsive trait changes the damage to (full) Strength mod
A slight buff to all ranged weapons. Flat dice to damage is not threatening at any level of play, and a small (~+1) bonus is not that much more in the scheme of things. Thrown weapons' attacks being off Strength gives strong characters a decent (although still relatively short range) option for ranged combat, with finesse then keeping specific ones (mostly) the same as things are now.

Specific Weapons
♦ Dart and Shuriken gain the Finesse trait
♦ Composite Bows lose the Propulsive trait, Regular Bows gain it.
♦ Longbows lose the Deadly and Volley traits.
Composite bows getting the upgrade of one stat for attack and damage makes sense in a balance sense, with them costing more money. They are also constructed to take the strain off the user, allowing for precision (Dexterity) to have an effect over Strength. Longbows losing the Deadly trait keeps it in line with most Martial one-handed weapons as it's getting damage boosts from Str/Dex now. Keeping the Deadly trait on Shortbows keeps them in line with Rapiers and gives them a different niche to longbows.

Vampires sorta do, they don't get their resistance to silver weapons

Like cantrips, bloodline powers are automatically heightened to the highest level of spell you can cast.

Works the same for powers from other spellcasting classes. Non-spellcasters (and powers from sources other than spellcasting classes, including multiclass feats) heighten their powers to a spell level equal to half their level.

I'm assuming the planetouched (Aasimar, Tiefling etc) races will be added anyway at some point, so my vote/suggestion would be Dragonborn.

Half-Dragons have been a thing in D&D since at least 3.0 (not read into much of 1st or 2nd). I love the way 4e presented them as strong and charismatic, honour-bound warriors from a fallen land and made them front and center on the cover of PHB1. I also like that 5e kept that idea of Dragonborn rather than going back to half-dragons.

I agree that my second choice would be the Witch, but I don't think the Witch should be another occult spellcaster. I think it should be the PRIMARY occult spellcaster. I may get some flack for this but the Bard is a weird class conceptually.

Essentially, the Bard is a showman who sings to use their magic or otherwise buff the party and has some acrobatics. To me, that's the sort of thing that should be an archetype, not a class. In fact, I think you could get MORE out of it as an archetype than a class. Want a full spellcaster who sings magic into the world? Wizard-Bard or Sorcerer-Bard. Want a dashig rogue who seduces the ladies and relies on acrobatics and guile and preformance but maybe doesn't actually have "magic"? Rogue-Bard.

Heck, you could go Druid-Bard and essentially play Tom Bombadil. Tell me that wouldn't be awesome?

Whereas I feel Magus (or Witch for that matter) is a class that benefits from a more direct focus, Bard is a class that everyone has so many different ideas about that it works better by being an archetype.

I will add my support for this. We already have a servicable spontaneous occult caster in Sorcerer. Occult wants a prepared caster to bring it in line with Wizard/Cleric/Druid. I do however also think that preparing spells should be looked at and something more akin to 5e's system would be a lot better than the full vancian system ported from 3.5.

Bard as an archetype would also allow for a facsimilie of Warlord, though I would still prefer that type of character to stay entirely martial and start from level 1.

I have my doubts over wether Paizo would do this though. One of the major things that kept being brought up around 4e's release is that Bards (and Sorcerers and Gnomes) weren't in PHB1 (and thus 'not core'). It wouldn't be palatable (from the fan's point of view) for the company who made a 3.5 clone so that people could continue playing it to not keep the core 3.5 classes in their new product.

My order of priorities would be:
1) Warlord
2) Fix prepared spellcasting
3) Bard as archetype instead of base class

I'd add Warlord from D&D 4e. Awesome martial buffer/healer!

May seem a little weird, but how would you feel about adding the 'Charge' trait to Shortbows instead of Longbows having Volley? Encourages you to stay mobile with Shortbows.

There are a few other changes I'd make to ranged weapons, but they're less relevant here.

CommanderCoyler wrote:

Bosses (elites and solos) had the same defence calculation as regular creatures of their level.

Sure, but just like PF2, boss monsters were typically higher level than everything else. I played enough of the game to know that. One class's ability was "if you hit, deal damage to an adjacent enemy." That looks like it'd be a great way to hit the boss and kill one of his minions, but the minion was easier to hit, giving you free damage on the boss!

I didn't read many of the published adventures (only the very first, preview one), but almost every DM I've interacted with (myself obviously included) has said to only use on-level monsters (the rules for levelling up/down monsters are there for a reason :p). Use elites/solos and more monsters relative to the PCs (elites count as 2 regulars, solos count as 5). Using higher level monsters just throws off the hit rates for PCs and monster, making things less fun.

Quote:

I've never played Tomb of Horrors, that rule sounds horrible (heh). Was it cumulative? So if you spent 2 days there you'd be at -2 etc?

Yes it was. Note that the first rest was all the way to full, the penalty accumulated from a base of 0.

(so if you had 6 normally you'd play the adventure with 6, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0, 0...)

That sounds like an annoyance to deal with (and shortens adventuring days, not lengthens). Also what's stopping players walking out of the dungeon and camping elswhere for the night?

Also back on topic: The concept of a short rest, to restore some hp and get some spells/powers back is another thing I would like PF2 to adopt.

vestris wrote:

I never played 4E how did that work in detail?

So healing surges were a Thing that every class got (I think 2 was base, some classes got more). Any time you wanted (once a fight) you could spend an action to activate Second Wind and heal 1/4 your maximum HP (so if your max was 20 and you were currently at 10, you'd gain 5 to 15).

2 was for the weird vampire class. Normal classes got at least 6+con mod per day.

Several classes had powers that consumed, triggered off of, or otherwise played with Surges. E.g. the warlord (sort a paladin class) could use a (once per fight) power that caused him to spend a healing surge and an ally in 30 feet got the benefits (it was 1/4 of their max, not the warlord's).

That is the paladin's Lay on Hands (except it's melee range), Warlord works like cleric below. Warlord was also an awesome, martial leader (healer/buffer)

Stuff like that. Even clerical healing consumed surges (Cleric targets someone, they spend and heal with a bonus). Healing surges were the primary 'resource' you'd need to conserve across your adventuring day as most of your abilities were either per-fight or at-will. The once-per-day abilities were kind of a toss up (thematically you always wanted to use them on the boss, but mechanically you were best using it on small fry, due to the miss chance against higher ACs).

Bosses (elites and solos) had the same defence calculation as regular creatures of their level. They just get flashier abilities, action points and more off-turn abilities to make up for their disadvantage in the actions department. This is one of the many things I very much wish Paizo would adopt from 4e: The concept of monster roles rather than just throwing a higher level monster at players and calling it a boss.

Anyway, the first published adventure was a revisiting of...tomb of horrors? Classic module, several rooms had traps described except that "someone else already disabled it." The adventure's atmosphere was what caused the lack of surge regeneration, but it had the desired effect of making the players push as far as they could before stopping: if you had all your surges and recharged to max-1 you lost that unspent surge.

I've never played Tomb of Horrors, that rule sounds horrible (heh). Was it cumulative? So if you spent 2 days there you'd be at -2 etc?

Also Action Points encourage players to go as long as they could. Action points let you (1/encounter) take an extra action and you gained one every other encounter. Also certain classes, and every paragon path (kinda like a prestige class, but everyone gets one at level 11) do stuff to interact with Action Point use.

Also, to clarify the (base) rules on resting in 4e:
There are two types of rest, Short (5 mins) in which:
♦ You regain use of any spent encounter powers
♦ You can spend healing surges freely (restores your surge value, typically 1/4 of your max hp)
Then Long (6 hours) in which:
♦ You regain use of any spent powers
♦ Your HP and surges per day are reset to maximum
♦ Your action points reset to 1 (regardless of how many you had)

{A} RECALL KNOWLEDGE

You can use Lore to remember a bit of knowledge related to your type of Lore. The GM determines the DCs for such checks and whether your Lore applies to the topic.
Success You recall the knowledge.
Critical Failure You recall erroneous knowledge

So, not just for making money...

Thinking more on this, and looking more into the maths: nat 20 being a crit (or, at least one stage up) needs to stay, otherwise you're unable to crit when you'd need to roll an 11 to succeed normally (11+10=21)

I agree with pretty much everything on the list, except I would also keep the 4 stages for attacks. It means differences in attack rolls matter more, needing less than a 10 to hit increases crit chance for example.
Agree that Bard should be an archetype, Sorcerer is 'the spontaneous caster'. There should be a prepared Occult caster (Witch?) instead. Also 5e does prepared spells much better than pf2

Kerobelis wrote:

@ CommanderCoyler

A first level fighter has +6 to hit, not +5 (+4 STR, +1 proficiency, +1 level)

Oh! Didn't realise fighters get expert in simple/martial at level 1!

That throws off my numbers a bit, but won't change the relative rankings. Also don't think it'll throw off the calculation for number of rounds for Unicore's longsword question, will have to check when I get back home

Updates with new maths:

@ CommanderCoyler

A first level fighter has +6 to hit, not +5 (+4 STR, +1 proficiency, +1 level)

Oh! Didn't realise fighters get expert in simple/martial at level 1!

My question is whether or not Valeros takes less damage dispatching the Goblin over more rounds with a long sword and shield raised or by focusing entirely on dealing damage as fast as possible.

Again, spoilererd in case others want to do their own working:

Oh look! A use for my Spreadsheet!

Spoilered in case someone else wants to do their own working out :)

CommanderCoyler wrote:

That would require other ways of getting the extra damage, such as 4e's getting better powers as you level up, or 5e's extra attacks. Otherwise hp soon outstrips the damage you can do and fights will take ages

In PF1, a +1 weapon did +1 damage. Most of us were OK with it.

The designers can change monster hit points at any time, they don't need to outstrip damage. The designers PICK the hp, they know exactly what they're doing.

3.5 characters also got extra attacks as they levelled up...

CommanderCoyler wrote:

I'm in favor of the OP's suggestion magic weapons all do the same damage per plus. 1d6 was the suggestion. I'd even take 1d4. Make it even across the board.

I'd like them to just pick something. There's too much difference between D12s and D4s when it comes to magic items.

It makes sense to pick a D6 for additional damage. We have plenty of them and while it adds to your damage, it doesn't make combat all about your weapon. And the change is less dramatic, which is good for scaling.

I hope Paizo makes this change, it would fix a lot of concerns without completely changing the system they've created.

Wasn't my original statement, but yes I agree that combat should be less about your weapon. It should be more about how you wield it, i.e. your class and feats

PossibleCabbage wrote:

It feels like the way we can make heavy armor more viable is to give strength (a stat which currently doesn't do much) some ability to mitigate ACP.

But it generally seems that people are generally going to want to put a good portion of their stat ups into the three stats which correspond to saves, so the only real advantage to heavy armor is if you're a class which gets better heavy armor proficiency (fighters and paladins) than any other kind, at which point you're going to want half-plate or scale mail.

Easier way:

Remove the ACP and Movement Penalties on armor, and instead have it correspond if you don't have enough strength to wear it.

So, for example:

Padded Armor - Strength 10
Leather Armor - Strength 10
Studded Leather - Strength 12
Chain Shirt - Strength 12
Hide - Strength 16
Scale Mail - Strength 14
Chain Mail - Strength 16
Breastplate - Strength 18
Splint - Strength 16
Half Plate - Strength 18
Full Plate - Strength 20

That would be a good start.

Good idea, I'd lower those by two each though. Would feel weird to need investment for Padded/Leather and need to wait until level 10 to wear plate effectively.

Update: added paramaterised backswing o.o

Studied some excel functions and worked out how to paramaterise the 'AC' (and base Multi Attack Penalty, for all you Rangers out there).
Updated the sheet except the backswing weapons!
Let me know if I broke anything with the update :)

I would guess that people might read "a trinket can be affixed to it" and take that to mean "only one trinket can be affixed to it ever". This way makes it clear that they work in the same way as armour i.e. “A single trinket can be affixed to only one item at a time, and affixing a new trinket burns out any trinket already on the affixed item.”.

As to why specifically light armour when there are no trinkets that specify what type of armour: I would assume futureproofing, so they can add in trinkets that do care about what armour they're on.

Went back and redid the math. My initial numbers were higher because I applied the Critical Specialization for Picks in my calculations.

The Crit Spec grants you +1 damage per weapon damage die on crits (including extra dice from a crit), so that a level 20 Greatpick will deal 13d12 + 10 + 13 on a crit, where the 13 comes from its Critical Specialization.

Ah, fair enough, glad the error was fixed :)

I think they are being pretty careful not to allow a d8 weapon that can be used with precise striker lest rogues become over powered.

I think the feature you're looking for is Sneak Attack which, should for the record, be more powerful than a regular strike (as it is). If you're worried about that being overpowered compared to other classes' entries then the other classes should get better options to bring them up in line.

CommanderCoyler wrote:

Cyrad wrote:

I'd like to see something like:

1d6 slashing with the agile, finesse, and two-hand (1d8) traits

If just the Katana were being made finesse: I'd make it 1d8, two hand 1d12 and drop the agile. Fills the niche of there not being a d8 or d12 finesse weapon and keeps it level with the Bastard Sword damage-wise, but gaining finesse as it's uncommon.

It's uncommon for regional reasons, not because it's more powerful or there's a good reason to keep it away from you for balance reasons (like legally katanas are restricted). If your campaign is set in Minkai rather than the Inner Sea, the katana becomes common and the longsword uncommon. They're not going to give katana greater mechanical abilities as a result.

Why have the seperate entry then?

I think it would give more player freedom if they included alternate (uncommon) versions of the weapons in an additional column.

So Shortsword would list wakizashi as an uncommon variant with the same stats. Note uncommon weapons don't get bonus abilities they are just different.
Bastard Sword would list katana (or maybe o-katana)
Greatsword would list Nodachi

Ronin Pi wrote:

I can dig the finesse thing. But at least they should be a slashing version of what they have as a bastard sword (which is its own issue but that is another place and time). It would at least allow for the image that is more constant to katana combat styles.

I totally agree.

I'd like to see something like:
1d6 slashing with the agile, finesse, and two-hand (1d8) traits

If just the Katana were being made finesse: I'd make it 1d8, two hand 1d12 and drop the agile. Fills the niche of there not being a d8 or d12 finesse weapon and keeps it level with the Bastard Sword damage-wise, but gaining finesse as it's uncommon. Agile is not seen on two-handed weapons, my assumption behind that is that Agile is for 'off-hand' weapons. Two-hand also always seems to be two die types, so if it were d6 the two-hand would be d10 (in the four examples of it currently, not exactly the best sample size I know)

Sounds interesting: Spend the first action of your turn to shout at someone to make your two attacks be against 1 less AC instead of whiffing a -10 attack :p

On that note, I think your Greatpick calcs for hitting on a 7 are too low. I'm getting 71.85 damage for 3 attacks at level 20. Similarly, the level 1 calculations are a slightly low as well.

What hit and crit percentages did you use for the calculation? I used:

Knight Magenta wrote:

xevious573 wrote:

I realize this might be an annoying request but would you consider adding in the Monk style types to the table?

I think most of them are already there. Dragon style is the same as a "Greatclub: d10, Backswing" for example.

Most styles are indeed covered by another option. But Tiger and Wolf Style are d8 with Agile and Wolf style also has a situational Forceful trait. There are no Agile d8 weapons in the weapons table that he made and Curved Blade/1d8 only covers the 1st strike of Wolf Jaw Strike if flanking.

To be honest, I haven't looked at the monk class at all XD. Might do one for Tiger and Wolf if/when I get around to adding sweep and backstabber.