Deriven Firelion's page

Squark wrote:

*Harmonize one composition cantrip, use lingering composition on another)

Harmonize and Lingering Composition don't mesh well.

But as I said: Bless + Dirge of Doom and you swing the numbers by 2 in a single round. So the Cleric is still not at Bard level of buffing (which I consider normal, buffing is the Bard shtick, healing the Cleric one). I also don't understand why there's so much praise for Benediction and Malediction. Overall, they don't add much to Bane and Bless, not enough to change the Cleric's role.

I've also never understood the praise around the Cleric. But that's certainly a discussion for somewhere else.

The cleric's role was changed when they made spirit damage hit everything. They have become more of a blaster at higher levels with powerful healing and better feats.

Cleric is a real power class now after the Remaster. I'm playing one right now and they are brutal. Lots of healing, bless is much better and sounds like it's getting even better. Lots of nice feats now. No longer needs charisma so can focus on four stats. Can blast for spirit damage which hits almost everything.

Cleric may be the most boosted class in the Remaster.

Wow. What a question. Game has changed so much over the years. What have I finished?

When younger I played with different groups, as I hit my 20s I played with the same group that stuck out gaming, though a few have shifted in and out and now all these years later people have moved around, dropped out, and even sadly died.

Modules used to not be long-term, but piecemeal. I'll try to toss in what I can recall of the past.

1st and 2nd edition D and D:

1. Fate of Istus: This is I think Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, 1st edition. We finished that. It was first to 15 or something. Level 15 in that edition wasn't easy.

2. Temple of Elemental Evil: We played this a ton. Not sure we finished it as it was so long. But we played it a ton to various levels from starters to level 12 to 15.

3. Undermountain: This was a lot like Temple of Elemental Evil. Giant dungeon we played multiple times as it had endless adventuring potential.

4. Against the Giants and Tomb of Horrors: Did this combination more than a few times. Gets you from about level 8 or 9 to 14 or so. You usually play lots of different modules to reach that level.

5. Finished lots of modules like Saltmarsh series, Vault of the Drow series, Slavelords Series, Isle of Dread, Ravenloft, and some low level series involving The Dalelands. Sword of Dawn or something. Three modules saving Randall Morn.

3rd Edition and Pathfinder 1: This is when we started APs.

1. Kingmaker: Finished Kingmaker. Everyone loved this module. Played it all the way to the end.

2. Runelords to book 4, maybe 5. Great AP.

3. Carrion Crown: Up to Book 5.

4. Did some homebrew demon campaign to level 17 when we all died because the DM created an overpowered encounter and didn't care when he wiped us out. This happened with this DM more than a few times. He burned out on prep and wanted to put the powergamers in their place at some point during every campaign.

5. Giantslayer: Finished Giantslayer. Super fun campaign. End was awesome. I wish they would redo Giantslayer for 2E. I think it would be way more fun fighting giants in 2E than when you became so powerful you crushed them in 1E. Giants are lot scarier in 2E.

We messed around with other APs, but those are the main ones we went deep into.

Pathfinder 2:

1. Age of Ashes: Book 5 and level 17. Didn't quite finish it.

2. Agents of Edgewatch: Finished it. Good fun. Unique AP.

3. Kingmaker: On book 5 right now on third attempt running it. First two crashed in Book 4 and Book 2. We'll probably finish this one.

4. Extinction Curse: Reached book 5 and level 17.

5. Abom Vaults: Book 3. Did not quite finish. Pretty fun though.

PF2 is easier to run.

Why did we crash over the years?

1. Interpersonal conflict: Just strange feuds as some players get along better than others.

2. Life Changes: Marriage, kids, less time, having to move for a job or school, job schedule changes, etc.

3. DM lost interest: DM would lose interest due to lost momentum or long breaks between sessions. So would decide to crash the campaign and move to something else.

4. Video games: Group took some long breaks when Everquest and World of Warcraft first came out and were at their peak. The allure of the amazing virtual worlds that brought these games we played to life in a living, breathing digital world really sucked us all in.

5. Negative Habits: Not going to discuss them too much as most people can imagine what these might be. A few people fell into some bad places.

That's how it's gone over the years. Surprised I'm still gaming after all these decades. Forty plus years or gaming.

I'm going to toss these on here as this is the best I could come up with given the structure of the rules.

My goals with these house rules:

1. Streamline kingdom building.

2. Enable players to build an interesting and involved kingdom that can roll to do anything. Kingdoms should not be limited like players. They should have access to every skill and be able to roll to do everything. Kingdoms are thousands to hundreds of thousands to millions of people. Limiting skills like you are regular character is not a great way to simulate this.

3. Make tasks that shouldn't be so difficult easy. If you've claimed a hex before, it shouldn't become nearly impossible to claim at high level. It should become easier to do simple tasks.

4. I provided skill ups every level. Limited skill ups combined with high DC rolls was such a bad way to do kingdom building that I'm not sure how it wasn't seen as a problem. For example, my players' kingdom is level 14 and put no skill ups in agriculture which gives them a bonus roll of +18 with a DC of 36 for level 14 Dominion.

That means they would need to roll an 18 or better to Establish Farmland, something they've been doing since the early levels is now nearly impossible due the way the kingdom building rules are made. If they don't spend multiple skill ups to obtain a Master level in Agriculture, this simple task is nearly impossible. Even if they spend to obtain a Master level, their roll would be +24 with a 14 stability. That means they need a 12 or better at level 14 to Establish Farmland, an over 50 percent failure rate.

You couple this with all the different skills you need to conduct warfare and industry and negotiation and the like, you have kingdom rules that set the players up for a lot of failure and frustrating kingdom building that makes everything far too complicated, difficult, and gives the feeling of a nearly impossible task of building up a successful kingdom.

If they decide to redo the kingdom rules, please get rid of the idea a kingdom should be like a character and focus on making it fun, fulfilling, and far, far simpler like they did in PF1.

I did as much as I could to make kingdom building something the players can enjoy and feel good about. This is what I came up with after trial and error trying to make the kingdom building usable.

Kingdom Building House Rules

KINGDOM CREATION

1. Start all statistics at 12 instead of 10 before applying modifiers during kingdom creation.

2. The kingdom starts with trained proficiency in every skill.

3. Choose Leaders: Each PC provides the kingdom with a skill increase to a Kingdom Skill of their choice increasing the skill to expert proficiency. This is in addition to the stat increases you receive from the other choices made during kingdom creation.

4. All starting choices that provide trained in a skill instead provide a skill increase to a maximum of expert.

INGDOM LEVELING

SKILL INCREASES: Your kingdom gains a skill increase every level starting at 2nd level.

LEADERSHIP ROLES

Key Ability This lists the kingdom ability score that is most impacted by the leader. When this role is invested, all Kingdom skill checks based on this ability gain a +1 leadership bonus. This bonus increases to +2 when the kingdom reaches 8th level, and then to +3 when the kingdom reaches 16th level.

KINGDOM SKILLS

BASIC SKILL CHECKS: Many activities call for a basic skill check—a skill check where the DC is your kingdom’s Control DC.

SIMPLE SKILL CHECKS: Some skills maintain their level of difficulty regardless of your kingdom’s level. These skill actions require a DC 15 skill check modified by the Kingdom Size Modifier.

Simple Skill Actions: Abandon Hex, Build Roads, Celebrate Holiday, Claim Hex, Clear Hex, Demolish, Establish Farmland, Establish Settlement, Establish Work Site, Harvest Crops, Gather Livestock, Go Fishing, Harvest Crops, Irrigation.

KINGDOM FEATS

Kingdom Feats: Special: All kingdom feats that provide a status bonus to a skill stack with the leadership bonus provided by Invested Leadership roles for a skill, but do not stack with other feats that provide a status bonus to the same skill. The additional status bonus for a given skill can only be provided by a single feat.

RUNNING A KINGDOM

Kingdom Level: The Kingdom level equals the PC’s level.

Resource Points: Any remaining resource points can be saved for future use.

SETTLEMENTS
Influence: Villages: 1 Hex. Town: 2 Hexes. City: 3 Hexes. Metropolis: 4 Hexes.

STRUCTURES

Buildings: Keep, Castle, and Palace: Add Residential tag to these buildings.

Buildings: All structures are based on Engineering skill or any skill that acts as Engineering such as Magic if you have the Practical Magic feat. You can also use the listed skill if it is higher than your Engineering or equivalent skill.

This is about as simple as I can make it while enabling players to build a robust, powerful feeling kingdom that enables them to feel like they're not overly limited.

It took quite a few modifications and much testing. I finally hit a tolerable spot for myself and the players.

Or summon two minions at once, using the free sustain to have 3 actions left for the second summon.

In what scenario would spending two high level slots to summon creatures be a good use of your spell power? Summons are not great.

Imagine if siegfriedliner had cast the spell and wasted the slot and the enemy still attacks. That would feel pretty bad for the player.

So we encountered some creatura who we couldn't speak to and I had a spell that would allow me to do that and a bardic level diplomacy. So I may have gotten a little excited and thought yes finally an opportunity to use this spell which had ended being far more niche than I expected it to be.

Then they attacked rolled well in initative when the party rolled poorly went first attacked our barbarian who didn't appreciate being attacked and immediately counter attacked.

At that point it became a combat problem rather than a communication one.

So it was a more off the cuff encounter. Not intended to be a negotiation. I see.

I as a DM usually signal when an encounter may be better solved through diplomacy. And set that possibility up more so the player's aren't trying to ice skate uphill.

It's a big pile of crap. Gaining Reactive Strike and a slightly better martial progression for your Font, spell slots and spell DC is an atrocious deal. I don't expect anyone to play a Harbinger more than a couple of levels before realizing how bad it is.

It's best to play a Fighter with Cleric Dedication.

That does sound like a really bad deal. Lose 4 to 6 heal spells, 23 spells and a 10th level slot with no spellstrike or summoned enemy for master weapon proficiency. That is not great at all.

If the caster just started casting truespeech without letting the others know he was going to do so, then I could see a problem. I would think the party would make an effort to show they were peaceful and pantomime they were going to enable speech.

If the enemy was hesitating and making it seem like they wanted to communicate first, then not sure why they would not wait.

If they weren't hesitating, then why cast truespeech first.

Even if you roll initiative and wanted to talk, why not have the party hold back attacking and try to calm everyone down showing you don't want to fight?

Why doesn't the player do the following, "I'm going to cast truespeech, don't attack and if they attack don't attack back until we talk."

You can always stop the fight once they can hear you.

This whole set up seems odd. Why did the player think truespeech was appropriate to start with? Did the enemy seem hesitant to attack giving reason to think they wanted to talk?

This sounds like the DM wanted a fight and so it happened and the player without cause thought their might be negotiation when the DM intended to attack the entire time.

It also sounds like the player wanted to start a dialogue without informing the party he was going to do so.

It sounds like a setup not conducive to communication within the party or with the opponent. No coordination at all. A player deciding to cowboy the encounter themselves for no other reason than they could.

Ever since I got Constant Levitation at L16, I haven't had as much problem with setting my powers off such that they hit my party members -- I'm usually well away from them.

Other feats I've gotten good use from: Psi Catastrophe (you can Unleash, Move, and Bomb all in the same turn. With DPP, you have a good chance of tanking their save with Frightened before you unleash the Bomb), and All in Your Head.

But yeah, I archetyped into Bright Lions of all things because there were feats to spare. But my experience is that all casters have terrible feat selection. The best ones are usually the ones that give you additional Focus spells -- which isn't an issue here because Psychic doesn't *have* Focus spells. A situational but flavorful feat fills that same niche for me.

I wouldn't say all. Druid and Bard are pretty great. Sorc is pretty good, but not as good as when they had the Bloodline spell choice line. Cleric is now much better since the Remaster.

That's why I'm hoping the psychic gets a remaster at some point. If they can improve the cleric and swashbuckler, they can improve the psychic feat selection.

Deriven Firelion wrote:

Their feats really are bad.

Agreed. But I have little problem with classes that have poor feats. It just means I can take various archetypes to make the character effective. In fact, one of my biggest issues with a class like the swashbuckler is that they have SO many good feats that one just HAS to take most of them :-) :-) :-).

But I totally understand that others think a class should stand alone and not rely on general feats or archetypes.

I don't mind bland feats on something like the wizard as that makes sense.

But the psychic has all these feats with great flavor that are not great because they were designed with bad usability. If you were running a solo scanners game with the PC as the main character using those feats on their own, sure, cool. Let me blow up some heads or unleash violently.

But this game is not played solo. It's played in a party with cooperating PCs. All those feats that hit the party are not great. Then missing key feats like Effortless Concentration make not great choices.

I guess you could look at the psychic as generic mental power guy who does other things. Sort of a PF2 way to pick up some psionic power. Then I guess it makes sense.

I would not have a truespeech spell set off a fight. I feel as though a caster can cast the spell in a way that would not cause lethal action to be taken making peaceful gestures unless the enemy wanted the fight to start with. I always like to error on the side of the PCs being smart enough to execute an action like this in a manner that would not cause an immediate hostile reaction.

Oh yeah. Amped Message is nice. I do use that quite a bit.

Thanks for the answers everybody.

Ok, so lots of play experience says the psychic works fairly well, and lots says that it doesn't work all that well. Fair enough. My vague impression that maybe the people who didn't like it were largely theory crafting was just flat out wrong.

It sounds like build mastery is part of the issue. To REALLY make a Psychic pop you have to poach bunches of stuff. The psychic that I was enjoying had Live Wire, Electric Arc and Tentacular limbs. The first 2 pretty much meant that I was contributing SOMETHING even on my post unleash cool down rounds, Tentacular Limbs combines wonderfully with imaginary weapon.

In my experience (NOT saying others experience was wrong, just stating what mine was) combats were usually decided (not finished, but decided except for mop up) in 3 rounds (1 prep round, 2 with psyche unleashed).

In the exceptions it was often the case that things went long enough for me to Unleash, recover from unleash, and Unleash again. The group was running away, regrouping, fighting very defensively in the middle rounds anyway.

I was also reasonably lucky with my stupefied rolls. As I recall I never flubbed a spell that I REALLY wanted to cast.

Just to be fair in the discussion, my table tends to run lots of very large or combined encounters to challenge the party. If we run small piecemeal encounters that occur in many modules, the fights are not very challenging. The psychic damage wise for The Silent Whisper does find in a short, multi or single target fight as long as the saves are at least average.

In the longer fights, they are really bad.

Their feats really are bad. No getting around it. Just not great in play. Lots of imaginative feats like blowing up heads and unleashing your inner darkness, but in play not worth the headache of hitting your own people.

I'm still not sure why the Paizo designers think abilities that hit your own party or require so much care are good to make into feats. It's not usable very often and don't make for great feats. You don't want to hit your own party.

I mostly use Imaginary Weapon with reach, occasional Forbidden Thought, and Shatter Mind is pretty great with unleash psyche unless immune to mental.

But the feats are genuinely pretty bad and need some work.

Ok, I'm seeing lots of posts from people who are actually PLAYING psychics who seem to like their characters and lots of posts from people who don't like psychics but who do NOT seem to say that they are actually playing one (they may well have done so and haven't said that, of course).

So, my question is, for those of you who have actually played a psychic as your main class (NOT as an archetype) for, say, at least 2 levels, how many of you were satisfied with the class?

I'll start. I have and I was very satisfied with the experience. It contributed bunches to the group and was fun to play.

I'm playing a psychic right now. The Silent Whisper Psychic. Conceptually psychic is pretty cool. From a practical play perspective, it sucks.

I've used amped Forbidden Whisper many, many times and had it mostly fail to land the stun effect on their turn.

Shatter Minds is great.

Contagious thought is fairly worthless.

Feats are terrible. I took the one to pick up imaginary weapon. Then archetyped into a sorcerer to pick up reach spell to use with imaginary weapon.

I am level 14. Psychic feats I've taken are: Parallel Breakthrough, Strain Mind, and Mental Buffer with Natural Ambition. Then I took sorcerer archetype and rogue archetype.

Their class feats are conceptually very cool. I wanted to take them. But in practical play, just hard to use and not worth the feat expenditure. A bunch of stuff that hits your own party tied to Unleash Psyche which is dangerous to use and time due to the stupefy effect. You have a low number of spell slots, so you don't much want to use them while stupefied risking wasting them.

You understand where the concept for the psychic comes from as this sort of mental powered magic user who can ramped their brain power up. On paper it is cool. But plays rough. You have some moments like using shatter mind with psyche unleashed, but boy, if the fight goes past a few rounds like our fights tend to do, these classes that have focus point driven and short-term fighting abilities are a bit like sprinters. Come out of the gate fast, then suck the rest of the fight.

Their abilities that hit the party are not worth the risk.

Just makes for a not so great play experience. I really like the psychic conceptually. It just needs a playability rework and a rebalancing of the comparative minds to do more equivalent damage.

But the psychic has a lot of good conceptual work. Very imaginative and you want to see it work because the conceptual work is so good.

This isn't a case of bad rolls, it's a case of unnecessary barriers to the class that don't serve a purpose other than to impose having a bad time.

What if the Barbarian's Rage feature meant that he had a Flat 6 DC to even make a Strike, because he's so mad because he can't see straight? What about a Rogue that has a Flat 6 DC to hit an enemy that's offguard because he accidentally startled his target, thereby causing him to get startled and ruin his approach, or a Ranger companion that has a Flat 6 DC to go after a hunted enemy because sometimes that dog just doesn't hunt? Or the Swashbuckler has to make a Flat 6 DC while having Panache because sometimes he can't stick his landing and makes himself look more like a clown than a person of flair?

That's kind of what the Unleash Psyche feels like to me, and it's just a terribly designed ability, especially when you consider classes like Animist and Sorcerer don't have such drawback gimmicks, while having the same (if not superior) benefits.

And even worse is that focus points and spells are finite resources. If you miss that stupefy check on a psychic, you lose the rare spell or the focus point until you refocus. So even more terrible than a flat check to miss on a strike which is unlimited.

All this for basically double damage to what every sorcerer now gets with four spell slots and focus spells and blood magic effect.

On top of pretty bad feats.

Psychic is not a great class.

Amped imaginary weapon is good on the Magus, and specifically the Magus. Most casters are too squishy to want to risk going into melee for the attack, especially the Psychic who's a 6 HP/level cloth caster, and most martials aren't going to want to pick a spell attack that they'd be casting with far worse accuracy than their regular Strikes. It's specifically the Magus who's both tanky enough to make use of the spell (and fire it from range, if they're Starlit Span), and who has a mechanic tailor-made to let them bypass the spell attack roll and instead use their much better weapon attack roll. Even then, using Focus Points on a non-conflux spell means a melee Magus will have more trouble recharging their Spellstrike while doing other useful things, except on a Starlit Span Magus who can easily just Spellstrike + recharge every turn. On anyone else opting into the dedication, amping guidance is likely to get you far better returns.

I like to take Imaginary weapon on some casters and use it with reach spell.

Deriven Firelion wrote:

Psychic cantrips fall off big in that last tier range at providing a competitive effect or competitive damage.

The good ones certainly do NOT fall off, at least when amped.

At what level does imaginary weapon (2 strikes dealing 1d8 + 2d8 per rank above 1 + 2xrank) fall off? Especially if using Tentacular Limb for an absurd reach.

At what level is (rank +2) d10 + 2*rank in a 60 foot cone a poor choice?

From the same post you clipped.

Psychic starts to feel less powerful the higher level you obtain barring a few cantrips that have been pointed out like Shatter Minds or Imaginary Weapon.

Not sure why people clip a post that covered the subject to try to make it seem wrong, but boy it happens often.

All the cantrips should be brought up that level given the Psychic relies almost completely on amped cantrips.

Monk with witch archetype would probably make the best hair martial. Then pick up the generic martial feats like Flurry of Maneuvers and Mixed Maneuver to do interesting things with your hair.

I think a big part of the problem is Psychic relies on cantrips that don't scale particularly well. Spells tends to scale in a slightly non-linear manner.

1st and 2nd: First tier.
3rd-5th: Second tier.
6th to 10: last tier.

Psychic cantrips fall off big in that last tier range at providing a competitive effect or competitive damage. Psychic starts to feel less powerful the higher level you obtain barring a few cantrips that have been pointed out like Shatter Minds or Imaginary Weapon.

I think they need to review the scaling of psychic cantrips to make sure they feel good at all levels when camped and scale more like spells as the cantrips are the psychic's main abilities.

Casters cannot do melee well. You'd be better off playing a martial and taking witch archetype if you want to be good at fighting with hair. This game isn't built for casters to do martial fighting well. It's a very secondary form of fighting for them.

How about properly explaining what an instance of damage is, or how falling works, or minions outside encounter mode?

As far as priority errata goes, imo a class saves or a feat being slightly out of whack has to be really far down the list.

Instance of damage would be high on the list too.

How weapon specialization and property runes work with battle forms and other non-typed damage.

Awesome. Big thanks to the Archive team.

Deriven Firelion wrote:

I'm playing a psychic right now. They kind of suck. I'm a Silent Whisper psychic. The psychic cantrips and amps don't really make up for the loss of spell slots. They don't hit hard enough to replace a spell.

The Unleash Psyche penalty is too harsh.

They don't do well in pro-longed enocunters as they have a front-loaded, very blow up fast and early, then you're kind of weak and useless. Doesn't play well in anything but fast and simple encounters.

Very limited class and play-style. Not too impressed with their playability and power level, but a lot of very good conceptual work in the psychic.

I'm playing a Silent Whisper Psychic in Strength of Thousands, currently in Book 6. She's generally been pretty strong as a debuffer with occasional blasts. But anytime you fight something immune to Mental it feels *bad*.

I agree with you on standard Unleash Psyche. I went ahead and went with Dark Persona's Presence, which boosts Unleash Psyche and makes it situational rather than automatic, since it also affects your allies, and that has been an effective choice.

At base, the Occult spell list is so strong the class can't be bad, but it does definitely need something else.

I tried Dark Persona's Presence. It's another example of great conceptual design, but poor implementation. Hitting your allies is a real pain and can cancel out the benefit of using it since it is an emanation.

There really should be some what I would call "pragmatic playtesting" in a variety of situations. Concept is cool, but a great concept badly implemented can make a class feel bad.

I'm playing a psychic right now. They kind of suck. I'm a Silent Whisper psychic. The psychic cantrips and amps don't really make up for the loss of spell slots. They don't hit hard enough to replace a spell.

The Unleash Psyche penalty is too harsh.

They don't do well in pro-longed enocunters as they have a front-loaded, very blow up fast and early, then you're kind of weak and useless. Doesn't play well in anything but fast and simple encounters.

Very limited class and play-style. Not too impressed with their playability and power level, but a lot of very good conceptual work in the psychic.

The length of higher level fights seems to depend on group composition:

1. Group fights: AoO power from casters end these much faster with martials focusing on softened up targets.

2. Single target: well built martials with intelligent use of buffing and debuffing speed these up.

Rogue archetype is very good for almost every class. Good feats, able to work skills up, lots of bang for the buck.

Champion archetype can be good for martials who want to pick up Champion's reaction without being a champion. A few good low level feats like Aura of Courage.

Bard isn't bad for charisma classes. Can grab Courageous Anthem for a group buff.

Psychic archetype to grab some quality cantrips. Psychic feats are terrible, but the cantrips can be good, especially imaginary weapon for a magus.

Investigator falls into a similar area as the rogue with weaker feats. But good for skill increases.

I took Magus on a fighter. One spellstrike per encounter isn't bad with fighter accuracy. Feats aren't much use though.

Never too many of the others. They don't seem to provide much unless you want some casting. Then cleric or bard or something that can provide heroism or other buffs is not bad for a martial.

Nothing in PF2 is as good as it was in PF1. Grapple in PF1 was a dead caster button in PF1 and it's just a caster inconvenience in PF2. It helps, but not going to guarantee a win.

There are no "I win" tactics or strategies in PF2. You have to kill the monster using teamwork to hinder it. Nothing will completely put them out of action unless extremely lucky and even then for a very short duration.

PF2 is not built for easy wins no matter what you do other than the enemy being super weak on purpose.

If you're looking for PF1 style build options, PF2 won't provide them.

I noticed the treasure was fairly light too by 20. Half the party ended without maxed out armor and/or weapons. It was extremely costly to obtain weapons and armor at max level.

Bracers of armor were absolutely insanely priced at the max level.

Very hard to max out gear at the top levels from 18 to 20.

Sounds right.

Deriven Firelion wrote:

Nice. I do that too when appropriate. Always teach your players to let no one escape or they may alert worse people that you're coming and let them know what you do.

It's just Chekhov's gun.

Not every runner can be Chekov's gun, so I imagine you use this judiciously.

I think tailwind is pretty powerful, but I wouldn't say it's overpowering. Now, I haven't played in any parties where everyone uses it. So completely breaking fights by kiting, I haven't seen.

But whenever it's easily available to me, I've taken it. Because almost every combat it saves me an action in one or more rounds. Often that's because I only need one action to move somewhere instead of two, so I have enough actions left to cast a spell, spellstrike, or use some class ability that wants a bit more actions.

I think it deserves its notoriety because PF2 has almost completely moved away from the PF1 paradigm of long-term numeric buff spells. Almost everything lasts only 10m at most. I really like it - my PF1 investigator was brutally powerful and scared most barbarians when it came to damage. But if I hadn't played him for a couple months I struggled to remember the exact timing sequence of the 6+ long-term buffs that he relied on to all be active during a fight.

When getting a wand in PF2 I tend to ask "am I gonna use this every day, because if not, I should get cheaper scrolls" and also "am I gonna keep using this as I level up?". There aren't many spells for which that's true. I think overall wands are not attractive enough in PF2 really. The only wands I really sought out were for 8-hour See Invisibility, Telepathic Bond and yes, lots and lots of Tailwind.

Buying a level 5 item that almost always saves you 1-3 actions over the course of every encounter is so totally worth it. Taking a wizard/druid dedication and a basic spellcasting feat to get it is even within visible distance of worth it. It's that nice. The difference between those two is that the opportunity cost of class feats never really goes down. But as you level up a level 5 item starts to look really cheap.

I don't think Tailwind is near that powerful. It's best use is closing or as Gortle stated: stopping runners.

Monsters don't benefit from excess movement or players unless they have an attack sequence and abilities that can use it. If you had a party of ranged attackers and lots of room, then maybe.

Not really having a problem with kiting.

Often it just works and I end the encounter and move on. But it's not worthwhile unless the whole party does it.

My players just use the high speed to close to melee, save on actions, and make sure no one escapes.

Letting no one escape is on me as when I'm running games, they always come back with consequences.

Nice. I do that too when appropriate. Always teach your players to let no one escape or they may alert worse people that you're coming and let them know what you do.

Yeah. Speed boost does let you close faster for melee. But after the often two ancestry feats to boost movement, feats like Sudden Charge, and items, it gets so fast without the wand that my players never bothered to pick them up.

Rogue and investigator. Ranger can be ok too.

You want a high perception which is class specific. Skill ups help with disarming hazards, so additional skill ups like the rogue and investigator have help. Ranger has the perception, but you usually need rogue archetype to get the additional skill ups to make it work.

Arcaian wrote:

Trip.H wrote:

Wands of Tailwind are, and first became, so absurdly "meta" because of the actual mechanical reality of the benefit they offer. They really are specifically "problematic" from a power PoV. I only have some game dev experience, while that GM is a full time professional.

I've not seen Wands of Tailwind actually become meta anywhere I've played

Everyone in my groups has access to it or equivalent by level 5 or so. Basically most players have a move of around 40ft by then. It significantly changes the balance of the game.

When I GM I often respond by bumping movement rate of the monsters, so it's not a great experience.

I'd like to hear how this does this.

The kiting tactic is vastly over-rated unless you have a party with zero Reactive Strikes as moving far puts you out of range to use reactive attacks on the monsters.

It takes you out of range for 30 foot heals.

It splits the party for buffs.

It also isolates party members unless they somehow all roll the same initiative.

The best way to counter this would not be to increase monster move speed, but pick the one that rolled low initiative and destroy them. Continue along the process killing them piecemeal as they spread themselves out running 40 plus feet a turn after attacking.

This to one of those theoretical ideas that works in theory or in some rare circumstances, but leads to pretty serious, exploitable problems once the GM adjusts tactics accordingly.

I've seen kiting tried a few times. It mostly splits the party and leaves them open to real issues in PF2.

We never take tailwind wands. I understand the desire to optimize in that fashion, but I don't see the necessity. It's so easy to build movement in this game, you rarely need something like a tailwind wand. I would not care if PCs bought them as they are overkill the vast majority of the time and even when they might be useful, they are marginally so.

We do ban third party materials as it's a pain to vet it for problems.

Guns and the gunslinger class. We just don't want that element in our fantasy.

I think that is it.

As someone who has played a dragon barbarian, the dragon transformation was a major disappointment at the level you get it at. Like with all things in PF2, the combat form spells are tuned to give casters some martial capability. But they are not tuned to give combat forms equivalent damage to an equal level martial.

So a barbarian at that level with a d12 greater striking weapon and energy runes will do way more damage than a dragon form barbarian. It gets even worse once you hit major striking.

The main thing I used the dragon transformation for was if I was dealing an opposing flying target. You can fly real fast and smash a flying enemy. You can also use reach to attack from the air if you feel like doing so.

It's not terrible, but the damage doesn't match what you can do just standing and fighting.

You can use the form to track down and knock stuff from the air as nothing as far as I know prevents you from using trip in dragon form except a very restrictive DM.

But dragon form looks great, but is mostly not worth using unless you need the flight. Even the breath weapon is underwhelming compared to your melee damage.

By the time you get dragon transformation, you do more damage without it.

And special material weapons are super expensive.

It's not worth it for a martial to use a combat form unless you need the fly speed.

I really hope these mythic rules are playable.

HammerJack wrote:

I notice one other minor detail in that last post, which I don't think would have changed your larger problems, but which you should probably be aware of. You seem to be using an outdated version of how Panache works. If you Fail, but don't Critically Fail a Bravado action (one that can give you Panache, it is now a trait), you gain Panache that will only last until the end of your next turn.

Oh, that is very helpful. Thank you! That will make attempting finishers easier, at least. :)

You were playing a version 1 PF2 swashbuckler? They are not great. Use the Remaster Swashbuckler, they are much better.

Avoid some of the weaker classes early on like the wizard or investigator until you learn the game more.

I have a strong suspicion that the commander class is going to change the narrative around using cones and aoes for casters.

The fact that our play test party had a magus and a wizard and that they absolutely destroyed very challenging encounters is my evidence for this claim.

I strongly agree that setting up casters (and kineticists) to be maximally effective with their AoEs is one of the most underrated tactical exploits of PF2 (again, based off of my currently level 8 party of a wizard, alchemist, and 2 kinteticists).

However, I remain skeptical that magus with expansive spell strike really plays into that as more than an occasional side trick, rather than a base-line effective play, but I am glad the folks that want it have it as an option. I just think the play test magus was a lot more fun for finding ways to cast spells in unexpected ways.

Starlit Span definitely does this. Starlit Span is better than reach for a lot of spells. You can hammer at a 100 feet with 30 or 60 foot range spells that do a harm.

Melee magus doesn't have this advantage.

Welcome to PF2. I felt the same way when I tried PF2 along with a lot of others. The more you play PF2, the more it grows on you.

It's easy to play. Balanced. Easier to DM than almost edition of the game ever.

But it's not as player friendly as previous editions, mostly PF1 and 3E. But it's way easier to run and players are good enough to feel power progression once you learn now to play PF2.

PF2 doesn't value individual power as highly and is built for group power.

Not sure what else to tell you as you will feel far weaker than previous versions, especially PF1 and 3E. But your DM will have a far easier time running the game leading to a better overall group experience.

Deriven Firelion wrote:

VerBeeker wrote:

*stares in growing shock and horror at learning a parasite was living inside of Gorum and has a name I recognize*

What's it called?

Potential Spoiler

Brutal. Gorum met his match.

That would not be great if the kineticist doesn't work with mythic rules or spellstrike.

*stares in growing shock and horror at learning a parasite was living inside of Gorum and has a name I recognize*

What's it called?

Deriven Firelion wrote:

shroudb wrote:

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

Well, given that it is Spirit damage, it won't do anything to constructs, so they have an innate weakness to them that other classes don't.

So... Precision Ranger, a very common edge, has a "weakness" vs stuff that are immune to precision damage?

The Vindicator's edge will also boost the rest of your spells vs the constructs, so stuff like fire ray and such taht aren't spirit damage do get benefits from the hunt target.

Plus, even vs constructs, the Vidndicator's mark still gives the flat damage boost (since that's just "additional damage" and not spirit damage) while the Precision ranger has nothing.

Caster accuracy with spell attacks isn't good. What offsets the need for this is high quality save options in abundance. If there were a bunch of high quality spell attack roll spells, caster accuracy would be problematic and irritating.

The Vindicator doesn't even have sure strike.

Once again, what do you do when switching targets or using something like double prey? Is the Vindicator solely for boss fights?

If you miss, wasted focus point and your key ability doesn't work? That's already been proven to be extremely bad with the Swashbuckler. This feels like Swashbuckler type of design and a lesson should have been learned from this type of design with a higher failure rate and limitations on a class that already has a Hunt Prey bottleneck against multiple targets.

I'll give it a read to see if I'm missing something, but right now this looks really unusable and undesirable.

It's not just with Spell Attacks though?

Enemies also get -1/2 on their SAves vs your divine spells.
So if you want to pick up a divine save based spell, that also benefits from the "increased accuracy".

As an example, your other focus spell is a save based that gives 5 weakness to both your attacks and your spells. If you dread having to land the spell attack, just use that one for an extra 5 points...

I'm going to read it first. Spell attack rolls for a martial that can't max their casting stat to make a thing work is not a great idea. It wasn't even a great idea for the swashbuckler and they could get their activation skill to Legendary with item bonuses.

These kind of double failure abilities that are action hogs combined with a roll are usually not great abilities.

Right now as I see it the ability requires three actions to set up with an attack roll, so if you get reduced to 2 actions by slow or some other ability or have to move, you have another point of failure.

I'm wondering how this ability works with Double Prey or once your main target is dead.

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

Well, given that it is Spirit damage, it won't do anything to constructs, so they have an innate weakness to them that other classes don't.

So... Precision Ranger, a very common edge, has a "weakness" vs stuff that are immune to precision damage?

The Vindicator's edge will also boost the rest of your spells vs the constructs, so stuff like fire ray and such taht aren't spirit damage do get benefits from the hunt target.

Plus, even vs constructs, the Vidndicator's mark still gives the flat damage boost (since that's just "additional damage" and not spirit damage) while the Precision ranger has nothing.

Caster accuracy with spell attacks isn't good. What offsets the need for this is high quality save options in abundance. If there were a bunch of high quality spell attack roll spells, caster accuracy would be problematic and irritating.

The Vindicator doesn't even have sure strike.

Once again, what do you do when switching targets or using something like double prey? Is the Vindicator solely for boss fights?

If you miss, wasted focus point and your key ability doesn't work? That's already been proven to be extremely bad with the Swashbuckler. This feels like Swashbuckler type of design and a lesson should have been learned from this type of design with a higher failure rate and limitations on a class that already has a Hunt Prey bottleneck against multiple targets.

I'll give it a read to see if I'm missing something, but right now this looks really unusable and undesirable.

This seems incredibly bad. No item boost for spell attack rolls. Hit against AC, usually a very high defense. Uses a focus point, so not usable to switch targets or against multiples. It's takes all the negatives of Hunt Prey and makes them worse.