Cranthis's page

Cranthis wrote:

I am also crazy excited for Godzilla vs Kong, and my theory about the movie lines up almost exactly with yours!

Other than the Legendary Pictures Godzilla franchise, are there any other modern Kaiju movies you'd recommend?

Cloverfield is the top of the list, and is one of my favorite kaiju movies of all time anyway.

All the recent Toho Godzilla movies are a blast too. Shin Godzilla's the most recent, and it's a really different type of Godzilla movie, tonally, but quite fascinating.

The Meg was a lot better than I thought it would be; good fun, that one!

I wouldn't really call The Mist a proper kaiju movie, but it has a few of them in there. Really creepy and devastating movie.

Colossal was a fun movie, but very VERY different than the standard kaiju movie.

Big Ass Spider! is a lot of fun.

Super 8 was quite good too.

Trollhunter kinda counts.

Monsters was quite good as well.

The Host is flat out one of the best kaiju movies ever, although that critter's a bit on the small side to really stand up to something like Godzilla.

Underwater is my most recent favorite giant monster movie.

Thanks for the suggestions! I haven't seen roughly half of these, so I'll watch them over the next few days.

Just so I'm not breaking the questions rule, what is your favorite Toho movie?

I am also crazy excited for Godzilla vs Kong, and my theory about the movie lines up almost exactly with yours!

Other than the Legendary Pictures Godzilla franchise, are there any other modern Kaiju movies you'd recommend?

Keep up the great work! I look forward to seeing how both of these turn out!

Do you have a favorite playstyle for Divinity Original Sin 2? I've been having a blast with an archer with elemental arrows and an Aerothurgist.

Grankless brought a great idea in another thread I want to be seen here. Bullet based firearms should use the Dart's critical specialization.

If you decide to put in scatter guns, those could use the Brawling group's spec.

I'd like them to either get a totally unique crit spec, or at least the dart spec. Bullets bleed!

I think copying the dart makes the most sense. Scatter based weapons could use the brawling group, just to have a couple of options.

I think fatal (+1 die size, max d10) makes sense for all bullet based rounds. For "scatter" weapons I think they would need to have no bonus abilities. Getting to attack multiple things at once at no real cost is very strong.

So you have the Firearm weapon group, but not what its critical specialization is. My suggestion would be to make it the same as brawling weapons.

"The target must succeed at a Fortitude save against your class DC or be slowed 1 until the end of your next turn."

The Drifter sounds interesting (Gunslinger not so much), but Inquisitor is one I would still like to see in some form

I had a ton of fun with inquisitor. Why not gunslinger? If you dont mind me asking. They are a well established part of Golarion lore and fit its renaissance era based fantasy pretty well.

Rysky wrote:

If I had to pick just 1 right now off the top of my head, Solarion.

You're a freakin genius. I want to add Solarian to my list too.

I think Solarion could be rolled into Kineticest as part of a melee focused suite of abilities.

Cozzymandias wrote:

Also, as far as my next draft goes--

Would there be an interest in my posting my second draft here? It seems like this is a pretty popular idea, so I think its worth my editing it and doing the last 10 levels.

Additionally, while I was writing it it occurred to me that I should maybe include the animal companion feat line, since the "A man and his dog" and the "A man and his horse" tropes are both pretty core to the genre I'm shooting for here. Do people think this is a good idea? My only concern is it might have a butterfly effect on balance in allowing two powerful moves per turn, since so many of the stronger grit actions are 2 actions.

Yes, definitely post the next draft. I'd like to critique the second draft, now that I'm late to the party.

I don't know if an animal companion feat line is necessary, since there are animal companion archetypes coming out. I would avoid it personally.

Definitely post the second draft! I agree with WatersLethe that with other animal companion options, it doesn't particularly need it...

Unless you can come up with a cool way to synergize grit and an animal companion

In my opinion, the issue with the Wizard is that there are a few weak options: namely familiar, metamagic and universalist. If you choose these options (especially Universalist), you should really consider playing an Arcane Sorcerer as they have a twice bigger spell list for the same spell power.

The other issue is that these options are the worse when it comes to sustainability. In PF1, sustainability wasn't an issue as you were having an extremely big spell list at high level. But since SF, you have to think about it. Many players think that SF casters need to use a weapon (which is false) so it shows how hard it is to achieve it. And then you have players like Zapp's one who achieve sustainability through cantrips, and I agree with Zapp on this point: cantrips are weak after level 4. A properly built and equipped Wizard achieves sustainability without using cantrips much.

Familiars are only weak if you don't make use of them. They are good for yes danger/no danger scouting all the time, and amazing for detailed scouting, saving you spell slots, if you take the speech option. They can deliver potions and alchemical as needed with manual dexterity. Focus point and Spell Battery let you toss more spells out, which is always good to have.

+1 Gunslinger/Drifter/Stranger/Whatever

Everyone else has generally my same thoughts on the mechanics of the class, so I'll address the items.

Nodachi might be too good. Deadly stops at d10s for every other weapon. Every deadly d10 weapon has at most one other positive trait. I believe Forceful is the more appropriate of the two traits to keep.

The nodachi, single shots, and bullets need the uncommon trait for sure. I think the loading weapons should be rare, worth 15-20 gold (comparing to composite bows and Aldori dueling swords), and possibly have the rare trait. Despite the loading weapons high reload times, they still seem to be heads and shoulders above single shots. Its appropriate and (probably) balanced, but that also means they shouldn't be available at the same time and rate as single-shots. The closest comparison I can make is fullplate. It costs almost twice as much as the next best armor, and is unavailable until level 2.

Edit: I also like the Note on Film and Appropriation. Something like that wouldn't make it in an official publication, and its nice to see it.

Oh? I must have misheard then.

Still, I like the idea of reactions setting up later actions. Cozzymandias’s version looked interesting.

I believe I heard during the Paizocon APG stream that they were removed.

My first thought is that Paizo dropped the retort reactions, because they clogged things up. Thats a strong possibility here. Secondth, Lightning Draw is way too strong. Being able to strike as soon as initiative is rolled seems way out of the ballpark for a 1st level ability. Just drawing would probably be a reasonable ability though.

Lanathar wrote:

The challenge on class naming seems to be the unwritten rule that they are one word. Mysterious Stranger fits what we are discussing but is two words. And Stranger really doesn’t sound right!

How I came up with Drifter as a name: I plugged "Mysterious Stranger" into TV Tropes, and "The Drifter" was an associated subtrope.

Funny enough, thats almost exactly how I worked it out too. I also thought about "Stranger" but that seemed a little movie-ish.

Sporkedup wrote:

I guess that's really what I'm badgering on about. The drifter as people are promoting it seems to lean very, very heavily onto the combat side, when both Paizo and a lot of gaming tables appear to want to lean away from that a bit and explore more of things.

I very strongly disagree with this. Drifter, conceptually should have a lot of non-combat abilities tied to social stuff (especially, but not exclusively, Intimidation), Perception (reading people and their combat abilities at a glance, for example), and being mysterious, as well as coming from and arriving out of nowhere (so...plenty of Stealth stuff, but also anti-divination things, maybe a Focus Spell line involving teleportation or automatically being in the right place at the right time if you give them Focus Spell options).

Really, the 'combat' side of things is not even the part of Drifter I find interesting. As long as they're a full martial and competent to keep up with other full martials I'm not super particular about the combat side of things. It's all the neat non-combat thematics I'm interested in.

It's certainly a combat oriented fictional archetype, but as you say 'being good in a fight' is already readily available. It's everything else that fictional archetype has that I'm interested in seeing a Class for.

These are my feelings almost exactly. The theme is much much more than the weapon in hand. Its about the soul of the thing.

But I dont want the drifter thematic for a class that is based around prowess with weapons.

Not every weapon master of a unique style is a drifter afterall.

Which btw is why Gunslinger was a great name for a firearm based class. It has some conotations with drifting, but can also just be a lawman, or something else.

I am sure there should be another more appropriate that works for both of us.

I see this name as a lot like Rogue, Barbarian, and Ranger. They suggest a theme, but not every rogue has to be a criminal, nor every barbarian a "savage," nor every Ranger a wilderness roving hunter. Other things in the same vein might be Stranger, Ronin, or Warrior. However, none of them feel quite as good as Drifter, and one of them is just a synonym for Fighter.

I found some of the ideas re: the Drifter class pretty cool, and threw together my take on it over on the homebrew forum if any of y'all are interested

I'll have to take a look!

Seisho wrote:

I think if you take the fighter as it is now and put on the coming up martial artist archetype you should be pretty close to a brawler

Oh yeah, I forgot that martial artist was an upcoming archetype! Interested to see if that satisfies the brawler's itch.

I also forgot about this. Martial Artist might be exactly the thing for this. Hard to remember all 38ish of those Archetypes.

TiwazBlackhand wrote:

Brawler

Magus
Shifter
Warpriest

Would Brawler work as an archetype? The APG will have archetypes that cater to people who want to use bows, two-handed weapons, and improvised weapons. Makes sense there would be an archetype for players who want to specialize in unarmed attacks without playing a monk.

Brawler's "things" were unarmed, maneuvers, and getting new feats, generally to support those maneuvers. The new feat thing is probably wildly unnecessary in 2e's environment, but getting tricks you could add on to maneuvers could fill that spot pretty strongly. I think these concepts have a strong enough base for at least a subclass (as I put in my initial post for this thread), and possibly a full class. It depends on how extensive you want these tricks to be.

Reziburno25 wrote:

Tatican/Commander/Warcheif/Knight: Whatever it name it martial version of bard focusing commanding and assisting the battle as well as social fields outside of combat.

I would prefer to have any concept as an option on an existing class if it can reasonable be done, but SOME of these are just too different:

A bard is a full caster, that is just not the concept of a tactician

We do have the Marshal coming out in the APG soon. Its supposed to fill this idea.

Temperans wrote:

Yeah your suggestion doesnt sound like an Arcanist.

Also a large part of the appeal for Arcanist are all the Arcanist Exploits. Which largely don't fit the theme of Wizards.

I feel like if the Arcanist is going to come back, it's going to have to come back differently. A class that has prepared and spontaneous casting doesn't feel like it would fit in PF2 without overshadowing other classes. Maybe what I said wouldn't work, but I don't think how it was in PF1 would work either.

I think that Arcanist Exploits fit the theme of Wizard incredibly well. Someone who studies the hell out of magic to figure out how it works, and then use it to their advantage, is the most Wizardly thing I can think of.

Salamileg wrote:

Temperans wrote:

Yeah your suggestion doesnt sound like an Arcanist.

Also a large part of the appeal for Arcanist are all the Arcanist Exploits. Which largely don't fit the theme of Wizards.

I feel like if the Arcanist is going to come back, it's going to have to come back differently. A class that has prepared and spontaneous casting doesn't feel like it would fit in PF2 without overshadowing other classes. Maybe what I said wouldn't work, but I don't think how it was in PF1 would work either.

I always liked the idea of the arcanist in a tinkering with magic sense with the exploits and stuff but was somewhat unimpressed with the outcome of wizard +.

So as a personal homebrew that I have always felt fits and could work here I gave arcanist the words of power as a spell list, all of them. Which I feel gave the class more an identity and pushed the idea of tinkering with magic.

The concept of the Arcanist always felt* like a wizard who's arcane school was experimentation. I honestly can't imagine them seperate from the Wizard, and think it would make a great generalist School, in the vein of the Universalist.

Edit: *to me

Really wanted to see archtypes that are connected to a single weapon or can summon them. Bladebound magus, Steelbound fighter, Gloom Blade, Phantom Blade, etc. Could probably just roll all these up into one archtype.

Those were always very cool to me, even more so after I read Brandon Sanderson's books.

The problem with guns is how do they make them more distinct than "loud crossbows." I agree that that would need a bunch of playtesting, just to make sure they are satisfying for players.

Most of the classes people want back (me included) are casters it seems like, with the exception of gunslinger. But barring a themed book like occult adventures, I imagine the next batch of classes will be a mix of magic and martial. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the more mundane classes got big tweaks like the investigator did to become a very different beast. Slayer, brawler, ninja, samurai could all be reimagined in second edition in really cool ways.

I believe a majority of classes in 1e were spellcasters in some fashion, so that makes sense. A lot of the groundwork for purely martial things is done and out there. Brawler, Gunslinger, Samurai, and Shifter are the only purely martial classes that don't have full representation in 2e in some fashion.

I include Shifter because while they have magical shape shifting abilities, they are still expressed in an almost purely martial fashion. My post right above this one covers my thoughts on Slayer.

-I think the judgement abilties and inquisitions would provide enough space to design a class for.
-Factotum was an insane mess in 3.5. I'm not sure how a class built to do everything can truly shine, without outshining, in a niche based system.
-I love the idea of Shaman being the spontaneous primal. One of my favorite characters was a licensed medical professional and shaman, and insisted everyone call him "Dr. Witch Doctor." I do think there is some merit to considering folding the Medium and the Shaman into one class, that chooses primal for shaman or occult for Medium.
-I tend to agree that Spiritualist and Summoner could be folded together. Summoner could be another "pick a list" class, and your Eidolon determines the list or the list determines what sorts of eidolons you can access.
-Ninja seems like too strong a fit for a rogue racket to me. The racket could give access to ninja themed weaponry, and their racket specific feats could easily give focus spells. As for throwing stuff, that could be an all-racket accesible set of feats.
-Slayer seems like it doesn't have a spot to fill anymore. Picking someone/something and deciding it needs to be dead is covered by the Ranger. I don't think a class that overshadows it would be very welcome.
-I never did like the Psychic much, but obviously I wouldn't be offended if they did bring them back.
-Kineticest is really popular here! I never had a chance to play one, but I did always like the idea of them. I agree that they, and the Occultist (which needs a new name), have a unique enough flavor to get the full class treatment.

- Occultist. An item-focused Int-based magical class. I want to be able to interrogate objects again!

Its fun to imagine someone screaming at a sword "Who did you work for?!"

I'm curious to see what classes you would like to see, and how, why, and/or in what form. Browsing through another popular forum based website, the most vocal opinions are, in no particular order, Gunslinger, Magus, and Inquisitor. There is also a lot of people simply saying "occult classes."

As for what I want: I would like a class called something like "Drifter." This class could contain all of the gritty, self-reliant, intense action, code of honor (not specifically good aligned) classes in one. We could get Gunslinger and Samurai in as subclasses for sure, both being the equal epitomes of the trope. Hell, I bet Brawler and Shifter could get in on this action. Marvel's Wolverine is a good example for Shifter, and while I don't have one for Brawler, something about it just screams that its appropriate to me.

Is there much more creative design space for Golarion's lycanthropic, and other, creatures (pcs and/or npcs) besides adding more animal types? I've been wondering how different cultures on the planet might view the curse as either either a blessing or curse, and what kind of culture would be accepting, or encouraging, of their existence. Werewolves are my favorite monster, and I like to find new ways to explore the idea, both as horrifying monsters and sympathetic creatures.

Cranthis wrote:

I don't believe they will touch the alchemist. There are a lot of people concerned about their direct power, but don't seem to get how insanely versatile they are to make up for it. This post and its comments do a great job of highlighting the strengths of the alchemist, despite the kind of antagonistic title. They also have a "recommended build" section that can be ignored for these purposes, the rest of the post still makes good points.

The problem I have with that post is it reads awesome in theory but you can't actually do it in practice, because they ignore the limits of reagents you have. A combined double elixir of health heals for a bunch, sure, but at 3 reagents per you're not doing it more than once a day. Plus the actual penalties of a mutagen means you get your head critted in.

Throw a bomb or two, drink a mutagen or three, poison all your teams weapons, hand out elixirs of life to your team and keep 3 reagents handy for your super heal. That's awesome but you'll need a long rest after every fight.

These are all fair points, but I believe a lot of this is made up by the fact that you can use downtime to generate many more consumables. Now that is of course gm dependent, but APs provide plenty of downtime for these things, and I would hope most dms would as well to accommodate alchemy crafting.

I don't believe they will touch the alchemist. There are a lot of people concerned about their direct power, but don't seem to get how insanely versatile they are to make up for it. This post and its comments do a great job of highlighting the strengths of the alchemist, despite the kind of antagonistic title. They also have a "recommended build" section that can be ignored for these purposes, the rest of the post still makes good points.

My hope, although I don't expect it to happen, would be for them to remove the "incapacitation" trait from the Sabotage rogue feat. The idea of the feat is so very cool. Being able to break armor and more complex weapons, or even just cut a belt of bandoleer, during combat sounds so fun and satisfying, but being unable to use it frequently makes it a little disappointing.
Edited for terrible grammar.

Cranthis wrote:

I am 100% down for the same ancestry/ heritage, different name. I respect not disrespecting something from a culture. The ancestry would give me the same amount of joy, regardless of name.

Eberron's "shifters" are very similar.

Shifters, Were-kin, Notasgoodasfullwere-creatures, really anything works, as long its not disrespectful.

I'd really like a full 6 book AP dedicated to the Magaambya academy and an exploration of the arcane magic tradition outside of the history of Thassalon.

I would think it would be a good chance for an exploration of magic itself, not just arcane. Nothing gets me going like the mixing of two things to make something better, so Halcyon magic, and by extension the "all school" magic of the Cascade Bearers, would be an amazing subject to explore. Maybe we even get to meet Old-man Jatembe.

This could even be an opportunity to have an entire AP written by authors of color and for Paizo to show how seriously they are taking their commitment to elevating new voices in fantasy role playing

This would be amazing as well.

I'd be excited for an AP that focuses on were-creatures. Exploring different peoples' and cultures' view on it, both positive and negative. Maybe even having the pcs start as were-creatures of their choosing, although that might be pushing it.

I am 100% down for the same ancestry/ heritage, different name. I respect not disrespecting something from a culture. The ancestry would give me the same amount of joy, regardless of name.

Skinwalkers were one of my favorite races in Pf1, so I'm really hoping to see those soon.

I haven't played an Alchemist, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

I feel as though Powerful Alchemy should have been a level 1 class feature and apply to both Advanced Alchemy and Quick Alchemy from the get go. This immediately gives the alchemist the ability to keep up on the dc end of things at the very least.

I keep looking to see if bombers get master proficiency in bombs thinking I must have missed it somewhere. But no, they are stuck with very poor accuracy despite being a subclass that needs to hit.

I am on board with alchemy being weaker, but more plentiful, than spells, but they definitely need a little love to make them on par.