Cpt.Caine's page

Stephen Radney-MacFarland wrote:

Okay,

Studies strike stays the same (sort of, see below).

Studied combat becomes a move action to activate (with the quick study bumping it down to a swift). You then gain a half your investigator level bonus to melee attack rolls (as it is now) and as precision damage to the target (not multiplied on critical hits). You gain that precision damage even when you make studied strike. In other words there will be some wording that needs to be changed in studied strike to make that clear, because its time does not.

Thoughts?

I'll playtest this soon-ish but right now seems great! But I'd give him the poison stuff at 4th level and studied combat at 2nd level. (studied strike still at 4th level).

Combine both of these posts into one ability, and we have a winner. (4th level is way too late to gain such an important & distinctive class feature).

A) It should not be strictly better than the parent class at everything the parent class does (as the previous version was)

I'll disagree with this; when the parent class is bad, the child class should be better at everything.

I don't use the term optimization; which entails thoughts of munchkinism, minmaxer, cheeser.

Instead it is very important to me to build efficient characters. The character doesn't have to be the biggest melee badass, or the most likable, or the greatest magician on Golarion. The character does need to pass most obstacles/tests without needing to roll high, jumping through hoops that are on fire, or making the once in a lifetime shot on a daily basis.

The reason it is OP is BECAUSE IT IS CONJURATION WHICH MAKES CONJURATION EVEN MORE BROKEN AND EVOCATION EVEN MORE OF A DUMP SCHOOL.

That's not a reason, it's a fallacy. Which school a spell is in doesn't result in said spell being OP.

Is Conjuration more powerful than Evocation? Yep, because blasting sucks as a strategy; not because of what spells are in what school. Moving Snowball to Evo is not going to make Evo equal, nor will switching every other damage spell in the game.

Go back to page 1 of this thread, and go from there. I'm not going to repeat the entire thread for you. Others have explained it much better than I can.

No, it hasn't been explained. Most of this thread is nothing more than a bunch of whining over Conj vs. Evo; no one has sufficiently explained why this spell is broken. Having a rider that can be negated is not OP. Nor is dealing 5d6 at 5th lvl or 10d6 at 10th lvl to a single target (mere chump change).

It's accepted that blasting is a weak strategy. Most damage spells are inherently weak, dealing insignificant amounts of damage. There are so many better spells to cast than direct damage spells, yet when a good blast spell shows up everyone begins crying over it.

I say the designers need to make more blast spells in the same ballpark as Snowball, then maybe Blasting will be a feasible strategy. I'd also say +1 for power-creep in order to enhance a weak play style.

I certainly don't believe the crap on the internet. I have my own experience to draw on. If you expect blasting to kill the BBEG in one round, you don't know how to use it to best effect.

Never said I believe a blaster should one-shot a BBEG; please don't put words into another's mouth. No PC type should one-shot a BBEG, but blasting is currently still full of weak-sauce; thus a few new spells to beef up blasting is a welcomed change IMHO.

Now I'm curious... What would you rate the difference between a 15 point party, a 20 point party, and a 25 point party in terms of CR per encounter? Is a +5 point buy big enough to justify a +1 to CR? What about a +10 buy?

Peet

Ok, I'll say it again: the point level used has no impact on balance.

Raising the APL is all about what the players can handle, and how well/bad the DM is able to challenge the players. A group of good players will require a higher APL regardless if they used a 15 or 25pt buy. A group with a couple (few) of bad players will require a lower APL.

A weak DM will need to use a higher APL regardless of the point buy level. A good DM will not have to increase the APL, and may even need to lower it.

Having a stat at +6, with a couple of others at +4, will not change encounter balance when compared to having one stat at +4 with the others at +2.

The only issue with point buy is whether players can play MAD classes with a 25 point buy or are "forced" to play SAD toons using 15 points.

So that just mean Bracers of Archery are obsolet,

They were obsolete when the game was released, and have no bearing on Bracers of Falcon being too good.