Darkorin's page

One of the big things I'm wondering about is...

Since they move away from elemental dragons (metallic/Chromatic) to go for spell tradition dragons, this is going to affect the kobolds, dragon sorcerer and the barbarian sorcerer in the new remastered book since the core dragons won't be element based anymore.

This shows that the remaster probably will have a whole lot of ripple effect in the new remastered class, even those that do not get a deep rework.

Address that have been used in the past are attached to orders and are not deletable. If you need assistance in making sure the Lost Omens subs go to the correct address, please email customer.service@paizo.com.

I did find a way to remove old addresses from my account to prevent new shipments to them by the way.

While playing around with my account, I realized that when managing your addresses you cannot delete them, but strangely enough, when you add a new address you can edit your old ones and even delete them.

It would be a lot better if you could delete them when managing your addresses too…

Hi,

I would like to cancel my current subscription. I wish I could continue to support Paizo directly but unfortunately the shipping cost for Canada is too high and with what happened to my last subscription, I cannot justify it.

Thank you.

Hi,

I currently have 8 addresses associated with my account, but 7 of them are old addresses that shouldn't be used anymore.

For some unknown reason, it seems like when I re-subscribed to the Lost Omen line, it selected by default a very old address of mine (hasn't been used in more than 7-8 years) instead of the newer address where I already received numerous products and had used as a subscriber address before.

I am probably not going to be able to retrieve those physical copies, and I would like for all of my addresses to be deleted except the one that is currently the default in order to prevent another issue like this.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Hi,

Could you remove the guns & gears pocket edition from my sidecart?

Thanks!

Hmm, quick additional opinions:

- The new Sorcerer feat that allows heightening all bloodline spells for free is going to put a lot of pressure on bloodline spell list, and the more I think about it, the more it feels like a bad solution. Some bloodlines will have multiple (H) spells when others will have none. It would be better to grant as many additionnal use of spontaneous heightening than the number of bloodline spell you currently have access to, these being fixed possibly (And give this as a class ability, not as a feat that everyone will take because it is necessary)

- Please, stop saying that wizards are only good for 15 minutes adventure day. 2E made the cantrips really good, and can now be seen as an alternative to weapons, if you burn all of your spells in one combat that is because you decided to burn everything for one combat, it's not the system's fault. Spellcasters must act in moderation and know when to unleash their spell and when not to.

- With the new Cleric having CHA usages of Channel, I'm wondering if this shouldn't be merged with their spell points... (Spells points being CHA+WIS possibly) I really liked that in one of the playtest I ran as a DM, I had a player with 10 Wisdom, and high Con/Str/Cha. He still performed nicely as a cleric since he could channel nicely, but he was a great addition to the front line at the same time.

- Some don't like the reactive Paladin, but the one I witnessed as a DM was really great. He had lots of opportunities to "save" his teammates by interupting an attack, and I think that the new version is quite nice as well. Yes he won't be able to "cancel" the ennemy attack, but giving DR is quite nice, specially with the new "within 15 feet" rule. My player really liked his paladin as well, since he felt important to the team by protecting them, while it isn't as offensive as the 1E paladin, it feels to me (and my players) that this new protector role feels great.

I wasn't able to playtest that much but here is my opinion :

Thanks for the changes to the Paladin!
Why do you put book keeping inside the rage class features?
Hey the sorcerer got a nice boost!
Wait... The wizard gets an even bigger boost? Like... Why? I understand that sorcerers are more "interesting" than wizard, but wizard are a lot more powerful than sorcerers!

By the way... That new lvl 10th feat for the sorcerer that heightens the bloodline spells? EVERYONE is going to take it, why don't you give it for free like quick preparation for the wizard?

The issue is that there needs to be more healing sources than clerics, and right now the divine sorcerer isn't that great of a healer when compared to it. If you want a sorcerer that heals, you're probably better with a primal sorcerer in order to have a more sorcerer friendly spell list (Sorry, My week was busy, I'll probably post my primal sorcerer analysis on Monday).

Giving channel energy as a power that uses spell points would be a huge step in my opinion, the fact that it will share spell points with the bloodline powers would be a nice limitation and the cleric should still be able to do more things with his channel + his domain.

Or Paizo could give divine sorcerer a regenerative healing option instead of normal healing. You could even make it work exclusively in encounter mode by explaining that this power comes from the sorcerer blood boiling with excitement or something like that. A regenerative healing ability that requires concentration and can only target a single user could be interesting. That way a sorcerer would be a better in combat support for single target while the cleric would be a group healer.

Vengeful Strike, the Retributive Strike of AntiPaladins works on Critical Hits, I'm pretty sure it's an error from one of the previous iteration of Retributive Strike.

Are you all ignoring the rest of my point? I'm saying that it does need a boost, and I gave not one example but two examples on how it could be improved and become great!

You're saying that it is entirely DM dependent? I give you other example of class features that are GM dependent! Then you just say how you prefer Attack of Opportunity, that's beside the point, the point was that other classes also have lesser class features that are DM dependent. You disregard my proposition to add feats that gives more flexibility to retributive strike, and then you say how great attack of opportunity is because you can make it trigger more easily by taking new feats.

I'm giving you example on how you can make great use of retributive strike with shield ally, you're saying that it's not the old smite and you're not happy with it.

Honestly, I'm giving time and time again examples on how to improve the ability and how you can use it effectively and it feels like I'm just hitting myself against a wall that focuses on the small part of my argument that you can bring down. I understand that some of you are sad that the PF1 Paladin is gone, but I think that it required some major retuning and that is why Paizo did what they did, otherwise they could have kept the old version around.

It's a lot more situational than AOO, but I'm not sure if AOO can remain fighter exclusive without throwing the game off, since playtest data seem to indicate enemy casters and such pretty much acting with impunity.

Really? You have access to all of the playtest data? We're at the first part of the playtest where people are mostly playing lvl 1 characters, I'm pretty sure it's too early to say that, but if you do have access to all of the playtest data showing that, I'd love to take a look at it and see how wrong I am.

Just to raise the question... a cleric can feasibly focus on healing, dump Wisdom to 10 or 12, and buff Charisma and physical stats, making their armor and weapon proficiencies, as well as HP, more valuable.

How big of a difference do spell rolls and spell points make for these classes?

Spells rolls isn't that important when you don't want to target enemies. You are right that you could build a Cleric with lots of Str/Con and make a great battle cleric by dumping your wisdom. You won't get that much spell points, but that might not be that bad since Channel Energy seems better in most case, while powers are more situational.

It's the exact same thing with Attack of opportunity guys! If the DM doesn't want it to trigger it won't.

Paladins have other class features that are more reliable, it is fine if one of the features is less reliable. The same way that fighters can't use attack of opportunity reliably.

Honestly it is fine. I do agree with the fact that it needs some buff or new feats to allow additional playstyle, and I proposed a few fixes previously in this post, but Retributive strike shouldn't be replaced with another ability.

Darkorin wrote:

That's a trap. You're comparing a lvl 20 cleric with a lvl 20 sorcerer which is the best situation for the sorcerer. If you compare at lvl1 for example, the cleric has 3+CHA channel which means that the cleric has a larger advantage.

Well if you're unwilling to compare at the sorcerer's most favourable level, it seems a bit dishonest to compare at the cleric's most favourable level. Would you settle for comparing at 5th level?

I am not unwilling to compare at higher level, you cut the part of my argument where I was saying that it gets better for the sorcerer at higher level. But we always have to keep in mind that most game will probably be played at 10th level and lower, where the cleric advantage is at its highest.

Yes. If a sorcerer wants to equal a cleric in healing they will need to devote resources into healing. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

Except that while the sorcerer will devote resources to healing, it is free for the cleric since channel energy is a first level class feature. Some could argue that the clerics has no choice in the matter since channel forces them to devote energy to healing, but healing is a big part of divine casters.

Seems to me the divine sorcerer needs some kind of theme it can excel at when compared to a cleric.

There are two things that the sorcerer could be good at but it's complicated to analysis and will need testing from players. If you do play a divine sorcerer try to look into:

• Concentration spells: the sorcerer has great feats to easily keep concentrating. That means that the sorcerer could be a better buffer, but the divine spell list is one with many useful spell to learn and the sorcerer is very limited.
  
• Counterspelling: I'm not really a fan of counterspelling and it will require quite a few feat investment for it to work and there might be a few blockers. Sorcerer aren't going to be the best when it comes to the religion and divine spellcasting identifying, plus the current system requires you to take a reaction to identify the spell before you can counterspell which takes a reaction too. There is a feat that allows you one free identify spell per turn but if the sorcerer doesn't manage to identify it, that means he can't counterspell it, and there is always the chance that you identify the enemy's cantrip which is a waste of time to identify.

Why not just give them Channel Energy powered by Spell Points? It makes for an interesting trade off between the powers you want to use.

That is one of the thing I proposed in order to balance things out. Divine evolution should grant you the possibility of casting channel energy with your spell points instead of once per day.

Is there for example a staff of heal?

There is the staff of healing (p409) which will require about 3 Resonance points in order to get about 2 casting of heal spell and a bonus to the healing of all heal spell (the cleric probably want a staff too).

Here's a question: Is 9 extra spell slots = channel energy?

That's a trap. You're comparing a lvl 20 cleric with a lvl 20 sorcerer which is the best situation for the sorcerer. If you compare at lvl1 for example, the cleric has 3+CHA channel which means that the cleric has a larger advantage. The sorcerer will close the gap during his career but will never exceed the ability of Channel energy.

If a cleric devotes all of their resources into channel energy they will actually get 7 uses of channel energy, each channel energy will deal 18d8+7 hit points (healing hands feat) and once a day they'll get to add an additional +36 hit points for one of those channel energies. This is a total of 652 single target healing per day.

Let us not forget all the other cleric class feats that can improve Heal and channel energy, like communal healing, Improved communal healing, selective energy (a sorcerer will never be able to exclude enemies from his mass healing), etc.

If you translate 3 of those resonance points into a wand of 9th level heal then that gives the sorcerer an extra 250.5 hit points of healing for a total of 678 healing.

So only by the sorcerer using costly wand charges can they equal that of a cleric when it comes to healing. I'm not sure whether or not this is a good trade off.

Wands are limited to 4th level spell which means that this part of the analysis is wrong.

The next best thing is the staff of healing which will enable the sorcerer to cast one lvl 7th heal spell as well as one lvl2 heal spell with the staff charges.

One thing missing from your analysis is the fact that in order to be correct, the sorcerer must either learn Heal at every spell level or have used one of his two spontaneous Heightening on Heal every single day.

Exotic Weapon shouldn't exist anymore, uncommon and rare rarity item have the same purpose and they even talked about how eastern weapons are now uncommon or rare instead of exotic.

I was really surprised when I saw that some previously exotic weapons became uncommon but others kept that exotic tag.

We now have 2 different systems saying the same thing, which is just weird.

It seems like you agree with my analysis and you can feel free to join the discussion. If you do make a cleric and compare the two characters that would be extremely helpful.

Darkorin wrote:

When evaluating a new edition, you shouldn't compare part of it to the previous one, it is a whole and a lot of things in the system changed. The current question is: Is the PF2 Paladin good/fun to play.

The Paladin has a core identity of a chivalrous knight dedicated to rooting out evil and protecting the innocent. Its features don't support this, and your Retributive Strike ability being primarily "I didn't get to do anything but I made you move 5 feet away/I made you attack me" is not really strong support for that identity, nor is it very fun to play.

It's a starting ability that evolves over time and you can make it great. Let's take a small example:

I have a paladin with Shield Ally, Shield Warden and Shield of Reckoning.

An enemy attacks an adjacent friend of mine, I can thus with one reaction do a Shield Block and reduce the enemy damages to my ally, but even before that happens, I do a Retributive strike against the enemy. With a single reaction that acts on a single trigger. IT IS GOOD, and I will feel like a chivalrous knight protecting my allies!

You were talking about 5-stepping away? Well... I can get Holy Wall and prevent you from acting this way! This means that if you're next to me you must choose between attacking me, attacking my ally or taking an AO. That seems like the enemy will have a real hard time!

Darkorin wrote:

Honestly just take a look at the number of class features that paladin are getting at first level and then take a look at other martial classes.

They get three features: Champion Powers, Deific Weapon AND Retributive Strike. I think it's enough.

At first level you get ONE Champion Power, Lay on Hands. Deific Weapon doesn't do much since you already have martial weapon proficiency, it's mostly a fluff feature. Retributive Strike, as discussed, hardly ever gets used since it is primarily a deterrent.

So, compare that to other first-level features like Rage or Sneak Attack which are pretty strong and give the class a real, strong, and flexible core identity that is consistent with the "classic" barbarian or rogue that a player...

Everyone starts at first level with only one power and must take feats to learn others. Asking for the paladin to have more is honestly just greedy.

And retributive strike can become quite great if you want it to become.

The current paladin has multiple way to evolve, but you must now choose one when the previous paladin could do all. You can make him great with divine power, making him protect his ally, or make an attacker (the weakest of the three options right now).

But honestly, the "classic" paladin that protects? The current class is great for that, shield ally being really awesome in my opinion.

Adding feats to make a crappy ability better is not a tenable solution whne we could just not have crappy abilities that need to be rebalanced in the first place.

I don't see a reason why Warded Touch or Hospice Knight need to exist at all, they get rid of weaknesses that you just simply didn;t have in PF1 and these feats exist to make you feel like you're enhancing your character but really you're just buying back what already existed.

In PF1 paladins got Heal as a class skill, it didn;t cost them a feat.
Lay on Hands used d6's normally, it didn't cost them a feat.
Lay on Hands did not require any feats to get around AOOs because they didn't provoke and you could use it with a weapon in hand because moving your hand off to do something was considered part of the action of whatever you were doing, so ungripping your greatsword and using LoH then regripping and attacking, no problem.

Retributive Strike would make for a much better feat that any of these and we could get a real class ability that doesn't force you to build a specific way if you ever wanna use your class feature.

In PF1 Paladins were also one of the most overpowered class that could do everything by themselves.

PF2 seeks to give a clearer role to the paladin with the ability to open your paladin to some different playstyle by giving you the choices of what kind of paladin you want to play.

When evaluating a new edition, you shouldn't compare part of it to the previous one, it is a whole and a lot of things in the system changed. The current question is: Is the PF2 Paladin good/fun to play.

Honestly just take a look at the number of class features that paladin are getting at first level and then take a look at other martial classes.

They get three features: Champion Powers, Deific Weapon AND Retributive Strike. I think it's enough.

Another solution could be to have a feat that enables the paladin to switch place with an adjacent ally when the ally is targeted by an attack.

The Paladin becomes the new target, and can do a retributive strike if the enemy is within reach.

That would fit really well with the defender purpose.

The issues with ranged paladins is that they currently don't fit with the defender purpose. If you are in the back shooting arrows, you're not actively trying to protect your allies.

Paladins already have a lot of class features at first level, and retributive strike works well there because it's not something that you can trigger whenever you want. You cannot switch it with smite or divine grace since those abilities you can rely on. And paladins already have that with Champions Powers.

This is just not something that I feel comfortable compromising on. That doesn't mean that I bear any ill will toward those on the other side of the battle. If I lose, then I lose, won't be the first time, probably won't be the last.

I would like a lot if you could react to my previous post about how to create a new class that includes the Paladin and keep it as it is. I am genuinely interested in your response and your opinion.

In fact if Paizo was going to go that way, I would be fine if there was only two options in the core rulebook since other alignment orders would be an organic growth of that class. And the strange thing is that the antipaladin in the playtest adventure is built on the Paladin template, and creating support for X classes instead of 1 seems like so much work that we'll never really get them.

I think that allowing a full stride to be taken with retributive strike might be too much, and I also agree that having a feat at some point allowing for a 10 feet movement when activating retributive strike might be enough.

If you still want to make sure it feels tanky and not mobile you could have the following :

Trigger: an enemy not within reach attacks an adjacent ally
Effect: you reposition yourself with a 10 feet stride that must end adjacent to your ally and within reach of the enemy, and you take a retributive strike action.

That would fit the role of the protector really well. I think that giving a 10 feet stride at every retributive strike might be too good, and the plain will always reposition himself with retributive strike, which shouldn't be the case.

I see it more like a "Move aside Friend, I shall take care of that fiend!".

The feat should enable to attack enemies that have reach or try to move out of the Paladin's reach that are trying to attack allies protected by the Paladin.

Casting a spell is not a raise the shield action, thus you cannot do it. Reactive Shield enables you to take a specific action and not any other.

Except every other class' core abilities work regardless of enemy tactics. Retributive Strike doesn't. That's why the ability is a dumpster fire, along with the class that was misguidedly built around it.

This is not true at all.

Let's take for example Attack of opportunity. You currently have no clue if your adversary has it or doesn't. In most cases, you don't have to care about the manipulate trait or to move carefully out of someone's reach.

That means that Attack of opportunity depends solely on enemy tactics. same as Combat Grab which requires enemies to stay close to the fighter, and lots of other feats/abilities.

You could also say that Sneak attack depends on enemy tactics, since enemies could do what is necessary in order to not be vulnerable to flanking, in fact it's even worse for sneak attack since multiple enemies will be naturally immune to sneak attack.

I don't see enemies naturally immune to Retributive Strike.

There's Antipaladins in Doomsday Dawn.

One more reason it's really strange that the Ordered Knights of other alignments aren't core...

Edit: If the player option isn't there, I won't call the option core, since players normally shouldn't be built with monsters options.

An ability shouldn't have to rely on a DM running encounters with intentionally stupid enemy tactics to be useful.

Except when your ennemies ARE stupid, like... goblin dogs?

If you DM your ennemies that should know nothing about the PCs as if they knew all of their abilities and you prevent them to use said abilities, I don't think the issue is with the abilities.

If the enemies never saw said abilities, they shouldn't assume the PC has it, and thus they shouldn't use enemy tactics to prevent such usage.

I have now run 8 playtest games.

3 of them had Paladins. Data only comes from those.

Paladin builds:
Sword and board
Longbow only
Shield only

Here are the statistics:

Number of encounters: 8

Encounter 1:
Game 1: 4 PCs against 1 Goblin Dog. Retributive strike triggers: 0
Game 2: 5 PCs against 1 Goblin Dog. Retributive Strike Triggers: 0
Game 3: 5 PCs against 1 Goblin Dog. Retributive Strike Triggers: 0

Encounter 2:
Game 1: 4 PCs against 3 Goblin Dogs. Retributive strike triggers: 0
Game 2: 5 PCs against 3 Goblin Dogs. Retributive strike triggers: 0
Game 3: 5 PCs against 3 Goblin Dogs. Retributive strike triggers: 1

Encounter 3:
Game 1: 4 PCs against 2 Goblin Warriors and 2 Goblin Dogs. Retributive strike triggers: 0
Game 2: 5 PCs against 2 Goblin Warriors and 2 Goblin Dogs. Retributive strike triggers: 0
Game 3: 5 PCs against 2 Goblin Warriors and 2 Goblin Dogs. PCs turned back after disasterous encounter 2. This encounter did not happen.

-----

Retributive Strike needs to go.

You do realize that you are the DM and you are the one who makes the decision about what players the goblin dogs are attacking?

Thus you control ENTIRELY when Retributive strike will trigger, and it is part of your role as a DM to make every player feel special.

If you feel that Retributive strikes don't trigger enough, just make it trigger more!

If Paizo opens the class, I'm gone. If they don't I'll be staying.

I don't think they are going to open the class in the core book.

Except that you are completely disregarding what some of us are saying. Please take the time to read it carefuly.

Most people here do not want to have a Paladin class with non-LG. What people want, is a class that is larger than Paladins but includes it, and part of that class would be alignment gated. What would be behind the LG gate alignment would be what is currently called the Paladin class.

Nowhere in that explanation we are saying that Paladins shouldn't be LG or to open them up (at least most of us here, I can't speak to everyone). What we are asking is to have a class enabling different Knights of different Order/Alignment, and that Paladins would be the LG version of that class.

See it as a "Knight Class" with "Paladin Order", "Hellknight Order",etc. The Paladins would live as they currently are as the Knight Class of the Paladin Order. We take NOTHING away from you.

Except losing the "Class" term, how does that affect Paladins and you?

Paladins would still get lots of support with the martials abilities of that class being open to all and the power abilities specific to each order.

Honestly, I'm totally against Additional Heightening as a feat. It is so powerful and essential to spontaneous caster that it will become a feat tax and those things are never good. I'd much rather have a natural progression of the Spontaneous Heightening class features where you get additional use at certain levels.

About universal class feat: it seems to me that some people still think that some feats are essential in order to have a certain playstyle, as if the pf1 logic and must have feats are still relevant to the new system. On that I'd like to say that I totally agree with what Jason said on the twitch feed on Friday. With the new action economy a lot of thing that were not possible in pf1 are now possible with everyone with no class feat necessary.

What I am afraid about is the fact that currently multiclassing archetype seems almost too god as a feat, rendering multiple general feats completely useless since a multiclass feat can bring you a lot more. I do know that one is a general feat and the other a class feat, but the difference of power between the two is too big.

They are a class.
They are Lawful Good.
Let us just move on.

It is a new edition.

Darkorin wrote:

Nox Aeterna wrote:

I will point this out again as it was pointed out before during said hundreds long post threads regarding the paladin already.

Darkorin wrote:

they showed with the second edition that they could keep the pure Paladin identity with a combination of Powers and Orders/Tradition/Anathema/Feats.

To you and some others this was enough.

To me and some others, paladin are a core component of the game and one that MUST BE LG.

I think you misunderstood my point. I never said that paladins should be something else than LG. I said that Paladin should be an order (see druid, bloodlines,...) requiring LG in a class that also enables player to create champions of other alignment by selecting an order other than Paladins. And Paladins should retain some of their key abilities as their order power.

There is nothing wrong with Paladins being their own class with the LG restruction. Nothing wrong. At. All.

What is wrong is the lack of support for other champions in core. Paladins are a great class and concept, I'm not saying that they shouldn't exist or to give their abilities to everyone. I'm saying the class is a great template to build something more inclusive for everyone who wants to see other champions.

And the people who want to see these other champions are disappointed by the fact that paizo currently does not seem to be interested to use their great new tools (powers, orders, signature skills, etc) to create a more inclusive class.

Darkorin wrote:

Nox Aeterna wrote:

I will point this out again as it was pointed out before during said hundreds long post threads regarding the paladin already.

Darkorin wrote:

they showed with the second edition that they could keep the pure Paladin identity with a combination of Powers and Orders/Tradition/Anathema/Feats.

To you and some others this was enough.

To me and some others, paladin are a core component of the game and one that MUST BE LG.

I think you misunderstood my point. I never said that paladins should be something else than LG. I said that Paladin should be an order (see druid, bloodlines,...) requiring LG in a class that also enables player to create champions of other alignment by selecting an order other than Paladins. And Paladins should retain some of their key abilities as their order power.

So, swap Paladin and Cavalier around in terms of class/archetype (i.e. make Paladin an archetype and Cavalier a class), that I could get behind

I think that Paladins don't really fit as an archetype and a class of "Champions" is interesting. Paladins as we know them know would just be the LG path of the class, but it could open a lot of new cool concepts. A list of tenets being one of the most important thing for the class. With those tenets being defined by each order.

I will point this out again as it was pointed out before during said hundreds long post threads regarding the paladin already.

Darkorin wrote:

they showed with the second edition that they could keep the pure Paladin identity with a combination of Powers and Orders/Tradition/Anathema/Feats.

To you and some others this was enough.

To me and some others, paladin are a core component of the game and one that MUST BE LG.

I think you misunderstood my point. I never said that paladins should be something else than LG. I said that Paladin should be an order (see druid, bloodlines,...) requiring LG in a class that also enables player to create champions of other alignment by selecting an order other than Paladins. And Paladins should retain some of their key abilities as their order power.

Darkorin wrote:

The simple fact that the paladins is the only class left with an alignment restriction is an aberration, and they showed with the second edition that they could keep the pure Paladin identity with a combination of Powers and Orders/Tradition/Anathema/Feats.

Did clerics just blink out of existence? They have alignment restrictions too you know.

They do not have an alignment restriction, you can create clerics of any alignment, you just have a limited choice of divinity depending on your alignment (or a limited choice of alignment depending on your divinity). It could be the same with the generic version of the paladins, with the Paladin order requiring LG, but other order enabling different alignment.

Edit: I am fine with limiting powers, orders and feat to an alignment like what is happening with clerics, but not with an entire class.

I can see the conceptual argument for not using the term "Paladin" for other alignments than LG.

I do agree, it should be a generic class with X orders, and the LG order would be the Paladins with lay on hands as an order power.

It seemed like the dev didn't want a generic class with very divergent order that locks you out of the other orders. But if you take a look at the sorcerer, it's what they did with the four magical traditions.

The simple fact that the paladins is the only class left with an alignment restriction is an aberration, and they showed with the second edition that they could keep the pure Paladin identity with a combination of Powers and Orders/Tradition/Anathema/Feats.

The Cantrip one does say "from your spell list" and your spell list is determined by your bloodline, so I don't think you can pick from other spell lists.

The one for sorcerer does, not the one for cleric/bard/wizard/druid, which would mean that they could learn any cantrip if we apply the same nonsense logic.

Please remember that the designers are always trying to cut a few word here and there in order, it is normal that sometime they take a few shortcuts but I think we can accept that and understand the intent behind each feats.

And Arcane Evolution intent is to bring some flexibility to the sorcerer arcane's spell known, not to learn any spell from any list.

Gavmania wrote:

Then too, my arcane sorcerer can have access (if he so chooses) to the complete list of heal spells (or e.g. cure spells). Can a wizard do that?

But how?, I hear you say. Easy. Sorcerers can pick up the Arcane Evolution Feat at 4th level. That means they can add a spell from a scroll to their repertoire. Any spell. It doesn't even speify it has to be an arcane spell.
So, If I have a scroll of Heal1 (which is cheap), and get trick magic item so as to be able to cast it, I can add it to my repertoire for the day.
Now, spontaneous heightening says I can pick a spell I know - such as heal1, and heighten it to know all the heal spells. I'd like to see a wizard do that.

That is actually an excellent point and a definite plus for the Sorcerer.

That is really twisting the rules... The feats has a prerequisite that you have an arcane bloodline, and takes for granted that you will use the feat to take Arcana spells. If you go this way, you might as well say that "Cantrip expansion" allows you to have two more cantrips of any spell list as a wizard/cleric/bard/sorcerer! After all, it doesn't say that the cantrip you are learning must be from your arcane tradition...

Edit: The feat is named Arcane Evolution not Spell flexibility or something like that.

(Copied from a post I made at the same time and that I've since deleted):

Before talking about my interpretation, I will first quote the different rules necessary to debate the subject. (emphasis mine)

Now, the big question is: Can you use your Shield Spike or Shield Boss when your shield is Broken?

My interpretation is Yes!.

Why?

• A shield boss or Shield spike is a weapon in itself. As noted in the attached entry, they are a weapon within themselves, and they just need to attached to something in order to be used.
  
• Destroying a shield doesn't destroy the attachment. As specified in the attached entry, the attachment is normally not affected by an attack destroying a shield since it can be retrieved afterward.
  
• Broken condition prevents the item to be used normally. This means that a broken shield cannot be used to take shield actions or to shield bash, but when attacking with a shield attachment, you are not using the shield to attack, but the attachment itself!

My take is that the attached weapon only needs to be attached to the required items and doesn't care about it's current condition (broken or not, I do not consider destroyed as a condition since destroyed means that the item is no longer).

I disagree on the shield should have been destroyed.

The shield took 3 dents.

A 12 damage hit, on a hardness 3 shield.
12-3=9

That exceeds the hardness of the shield three times.

If you look at the rule:

It never says that exceeding the hardness of the shield three times inflicts 3 dents. It says "If the item takes damage equal to or greater than twice its hardness in one hit, it takes 2 Dents" and 3 times the hardness is greater than 2.

You interpreted the rule as saying that an item takes an amount of dent equals to the number of times the hardness of the item is exceeded, which is not the rule as written.

The rule as written stipulates that the maximum amount of dent an item can take in a single action is 2 dents.

Edit: As explained in a previous post, a Shield boss is a weapon independent of the shield that needs to be attached to it. You make an attack with the shield boss and not the shield, and I do agree with you that you cannot use the shield to protect yourself while it is broken, but I do not agree with the fact that you cannot use the shield boss when the shield is broken. The shield boss needs to be broken in order to be not usable, not the shield. In fact, I do think that this deserve a thread of its own in order to clarify it.

No - This was over multiple encounters.

In the second encounter the Paladin didnt even get attacked until the second round, and...

Sorry, the following quote inducted me in errors then:

We press forward, finding more goblin dogs and more combat. I head up to one, whiff with the shield boss attack, and raise shield as my final action. This saves me from a couple hits as it attacks back twice.

Things go bad on the second round however, as the goblin dog rolls a nat 20

It was a comment on how badly the shield itself (failed) to hold up.

Then it seemed like most of the issue was with bad luck with high rolls on the monster part, and a table ruling error (which will happen a lot in a new system) since the shield shouldn't have been destroyed by that attack.

Hi everyone.

I just wanted to start a new discussion about Exotic weapons and weapon rarity (common, uncommon, rare, unique).

Let us first take a look at the definition of Exotic:

As you can see, these definitions does fit well with the concept of rarity. Something exotic IS something that is unusual, or as some people would say... Uncommon.

It feels to me that Exotic weapons are superfluous since the concept is too close to the rarity concepts. It's even more striking when you go back to the Rarity blog where it is said that "Eastern weapons" would be considered uncommon.

My position would be to scrap all references to Exotic weapons since it is purely a legacy term and most of the previous "exotic" weapons are now "uncommon".

What do you think?

Darkorin wrote:

So what you are saying is that a goblin dog is intelligent enough to recognize highest threat and understand that the Paladin will try to protect his ally if it attacks them? The Paladin had a scale mail, I'm pretty sure there must have been someone with more flesh available to take a bite off...

Your goblin dog seems really too intelligent, that is what prevented the Paladin from using retributive strike, and it seems like a DM error to me more than anything else.

Edit: A goblin dog has a -4 Int modifier

You misunderstand.

No, the Goblin dog broke off the attack on the Paladin when the shield broke because of 2 reasons:

1. The Paladin was not seen as a threat anymore.
2. The monk WAS a threat and was...

And my point is that your first reasons to stop attacking the paladin was that now that the paladin was unarmed, the dog no longer considered him as a threat.

That implies that the dog did consider him as the biggest threat before BECAUSE he was wielding a weapon and that sounds like you might have focused on attacking the paladin because he was the biggest threat. It is a bit hard to say anything else without knowing how all of the encounter went (and I was not there to witness it). It's honestly hard to say if that paladin had really really bad luck, or if he was focused on by the dog (which seemed to have attacked him at least 3 consecutive times in 2 turns when the monk was also next to him?)

Darkorin wrote:

Blave wrote:

You're only half correct here. It's true that the attack would only have caused 2 dents. But even that is enough to give the shield the broken condition which makes it unusable. For all items except armor, broken basically means useless. The only difference to destroyed is that a broken item can be repaired while a destroyed item is lost forever.

Except that shield spikes and boss can even be salvaged from a destroyed shield. This means to me that you might not be able to defend yourself with a broken shield, nor shield bash, but you could attack with a shield boss or spike since they have their own hp.

I don't see how that would work with no spare shield to attach them to.

My point was that your shield was not destroyed but broken.

Blave replied that even if your shield was broken you could not use it normally.

My answer is that the "attached" trait (p182) seem to treat the attached weapon and the shield as two separate entity, and you can still wield your shield!

You cannot use a broken shield as a shield, take shield action with it or attack with it. But since you had a shield boss and that it was not broken, you should have been able to attack with it since you are not using the shield to attack (shield bash), but you were using the shield boss, an attachment, to attack.

That may be the intention, but it doesn't exactly parse that way. As written, it states that you get the following with one exotic weapon: 1) trained proficiency and 2) access to critical specialization effects. You get access to these as though the weapon you chose was a martial weapon in its weapon group, but that doesn't mean too much because it doesn't say you can otherwise treat the weapon as a martial weapon.

Well, I think my interpretation makes more sense since otherwise the feat is rendered useless at 13th level by the class features Weapon Specialization which gives you access to Critical Specialization for exotic weapons in your selected weapon group.

In fact the first paragraph of Weapon Specialization has the same kind of parsing:

Your proficiency rank for all simple and martial weapons increases to master, and you gain access to the critical specialization effects of all weapon groups (see page 183). Your proficiency rank for all exotic weapons increases to expert.

You can choose one weapon group and increase your proficiency rank to legendary for all simple and martial weapons in that weapon group, and to master for all exotic weapons in that weapon group. You gain the critical specialization effects of all weapons in that weapon group.

I do agree that these abilities seems to have issues with how they are being written but if you take a closer look, I think it is easy to understand the intent.

The first bolded part of weapon specialization seems to say that you get critical specialization effects for all weapons groups, these weapon can be simple, martial and exotic.

But if you take a look at the last sentence, you can understand that the first paragraph probably only concerns simple and martial weapons, while the second paragraph gives you access to the critical specialization effects on exotic weapons of your chosen group.

Since I do believe that the designers wouldn't put a feat with no value after lvl13, I think that the only remaining explanation is that the Exotic Weapon Training gives access to an increased proficiency and early access to the critical specialization effect on a single exotic weapon.

I would back this interpretation with the first paragraph of weapon specialization which suffers from the same parsing as exotic weapon training, where you are not sure if everything after the "and" is apart from the first part.

I would propose that the Exotic Weapon Training would be rewritten this way:

Choose one exotic weapon. You consider this weapon as a martial weapon of the same group for all other feats and features. You also gain access to the critical specialization effect for that weapon.

Edit: Honestly, Exotic weapons should just go away and be replaced with uncommon or rare weapons that belong to the simple or martial list. What makes a weapon Exotic is that it is uncommon...

Choose an exotic weapon when you gain this feat. You gain trained proficiency with that exotic weapon and access to its critical specialization effects as if it were a martial weapon in its weapon group

From what I'm reading the "as if it were a martial weapon in its weapon group" part applies to both the proficiency and the critical specialization.

With Weapon Mastery, you gain the critical specialization for all simple and martial weapons in the group but not exotic weapons. Your proficiency is also at a lesser proficiency for exotic weapons in that group compared to simple/martial weapons.

With Exotic Weapon Training, my interpretation is that you choose 1 exotic weapon, and consider it as a martial weapon from now on. This comes with the critical specialization + an improved proficiency.

You're only half correct here. It's true that the attack would only have caused 2 dents. But even that is enough to give the shield the broken condition which makes it unusable. For all items except armor, broken basically means useless. The only difference to destroyed is that a broken item can be repaired while a destroyed item is lost forever.

Except that shield spikes and boss can even be salvaged from a destroyed shield. This means to me that you might not be able to defend yourself with a broken shield, nor shield bash, but you could attack with a shield boss or spike since they have their own hp.

Quick reaction, in Raw I don't think your shield would break:

If an item takes damage equal to or exceeding the item’s Hardness, the item takes a Dent. If the item takes damage equal to or greater than twice its Hardness in one hit, it takes 2 Dents. For instance, a wooden shield (Hardness 3) that takes 10 damage would take 2 Dents. A typical item can take only 1 Dent without becoming broken. A second Dent causes it to become broken, though it can still be repaired. An item that would take a Dent or become broken while already broken is destroyed beyond salvage. Some magical or especially sturdy items can take more than 1 Dent before becoming broken, as noted in their descriptions.

It doesn't say that if it takes triple damage it gets destroyed. Two times the hardness or more gives it the broken condition, but as I read it, it seems to me that it requires another attack to destroy it.

That simple fact would have changed the session quite a lot since your Paladin would not have been left without any melee weapon.

I also hate Retributive Strike. The only reason the player got to use it was because I felt that he was too close to death and the Goblin Dog no longer saw the unarmed Paladin as a threat.

So what you are saying is that a goblin dog is intelligent enough to recognize highest threat and understand that the Paladin will try to protect his ally if it attacks them? The Paladin had a scale male, I'm pretty sure there must have been someone with more flesh available to take a bite off...

Your goblin dog seems really too intelligent, that is what prevented the Paladin from using retributive strike, and it seems like a DM error to me more than anything else.

Edit: À goblin dog has a -4 Int modifier

How to automatically succeed disabling trap lvl1-4 then 7-13:

As a rogue, select at level 1 the following feats: Assurance and trapfinder. You can now use assurance to disable traps with a DC20 in thievery.

If you increased your thievery skill to master at level 7, you now auto succeed disabling every trap with a DC equal to or lower than 30, meaning you're good to go until level 14.

Edit: this honestly makes disabling traps a joke for more than half of a rogue's career.

Alchemist tip. Don't bother trying to do direct damage with bombs.

Focus on the statis effects or persistent damage. That works far better.

Sorry to inform but I'm pretty sure it has been stated that the persistent damage activates only on your primary target if you succeed. I'm on my phone right now and can't search for the clarification unfortunately.

Darkorin wrote:

I'm not sure to understand what you're saying. Bards, Sorcerers, Wizards, Clerics and Druids all benefit from Assurance the same way.

Let's use the example of a 10th level Wizard trying to learn a 5th level uncommon spell. The DC is 25. With the take 10 bonus of assurance and +5 from intelligence, he only needs to be trained in arcana to succeed on the check. However a Sorcerer won't have 20 intelligence, he's unlikely to have more than 14. So he needs to be expert (which improves Assurance to take 15) in order to succeed on this same check. At most levels the Sorcerer requires one higher level of proficiency than the Wizard to succeed on this check.

Read the assurance feat again:

You can forgo rolling a skill check for your chosen skill to instead receive a result of 10 (do not apply any of your bonuses, penalties, or modifiers).

In your example you add the +5 from Intelligence, but the feat asks you to NOT apply ANY bonuses, penalties or modifiers.

The result is a flat 10, both for the sorcerer and for the wizard.