Dracoknight's page

I know i could easily reflavor or houserule in a spider myself, but i guess i like to make every character concept i have "PFS ready" as its easier to take them with me to games without arguing for my case or do compromises or similar deals with the current GM.

Made this thread a bit to point out how weird how the spider is missing considering it was a core book choice in 1st edition, and i hope there is some news if there is more companion choices available soon?

Been looking over the options and there seem to be no available spider option in 2nd edition, would that be a later option i wonder?

I know you could easily just refluff the scorpion to work out the same deal, but i have always prefered something that is written down and a option no matter the table i play on.

Its kind of weird that its missing as a option in my opinion.

Lets see theres a few that could work around a bit, but i feel it would be reworks for other classes or classfeatures that would suit another class better.

Forexample Gunslinger i feel could be absorbed into Ranger as class feats, as i personally feel they didnt bring much else other than being "guy with gun", but as a part of ranger they could just be an alternative to the ranger in a setting that allows for guns.

I am in the opinion that Cavalier should have replaced Paladin as a Core class and made the paladin as a "path" for Cavalier as a order to follow. The Paladin is no more than just a fighter with some holy abilities, but the Cavalier chassis would suit better with a paladin flavor than just their own class, hell a paladin could even done better as a prestige class in all honesty, like the Holy Vindicator.

The Oracle i think actually would have enough to be their own thing if they expanded on the "Curse and Mysteries" line of their class, and then they would be less "spontanious cleric" and more their own thing.

Swashbuckler would be something of a "prestige" shared between either fighter or rogue, brawler would be a prestige between monk and fighter etc etc.

From what i can see there is really nothing that stops you from using "Legacy" multiclassing other than some things might be a bit "weird" in terms of proficiencies, for the most part you could just add a level of X to your Y like before though its not completely supported.

This was kinda like a response to that one person that just had to have a character that was a Y and redeemed themselves with X class type of scenario.

@Vidmaster7 agreed, so far i have seen people use "feat-tax" if only there is a feat in a chain of requirements and the definition have been lost.

The term was most often used in context of Power Attack, Combat Expertise and the chain for whirlwind attack where you had to take some weird choices that did not add any other benefit other than opening the option for the chain.

Expanding on the note that i am annoyed by this negativity is not because of the mere uttering of opinion, but its that its so often is either just straight up "I am dissapointed" and nothing more or followed a spiel of how this will ruin their life.

There is a way of going forth with opinions that dont drain everyone around you, "This is awesome" and "I am dissapointed" as the sole point in a post is arguably equally draining depending on your mood and outlook.

Lets take the controversy of Resonance, i like the idea of a "pool" of "Equipment points" instead of slots that you use, one whereas its more interesting than just a hardcoded slot system. Though i have no good ideas on how they would sort out the wand system as i share opinion with Vidmaster7 on that wands and cheap scroll takes the attrition aspect of casters out of the picture and null what was supposed to be a balancing weakness to martials.

As of PF2 where martials are scaled up and spellcasters down, then perhaps this wand "fix" is overkill when you consider overall power?
So expanding on your skepticism and your dissapointment/awesomeness would lake scrolling down the forum page a lot less "noisy" so to speak.

I dont have time to poke at all of the point, but there is just one point that i saw a few peopel mention on:

The point about magic marts, and how you as a GM makes drops more appropiate... if anything that is in my mind equally bad. Wandering the pygmy pyramids of ancient pasts and here we have a hat of [your stat] and its in [your size] and its in [condition] and its perfect for [your level].

Gotta be a better way for this than to ruin economies or gain the blessing of the loot gods?

I am glad i am not the only one that is starting to get aggrivated by the line "I am dissapointed" or "This is bad" or similar when something doesnt go their way.

Forexample Ranger they reworked Favored enemy to study target like the slayer and people are not comming out of the woodwork telling how flavorful it was and its THE thing that make ranger a ranger...

I feel like i have been infulenced too much by this negativity, and i have a hard time not sounding sarcastic in writing.

I have to ask why Favored Enemy is so glorified? It was borderline useless most of the time until you got the 4th level spell that let you pick a favored enemy, and in some cases you had to beg the DM to tell you what was most likely enemy to meet in the campagin.

Otherwise you just pick the most common types like Humanoid or Undead, where is the so-called "Flavor" of the class here? If anything its a dead feature, or is it just that dead features and traits are "Oh so flavorful" in just that they are in fact useless?

I for one dont mourn the current loss of Spellcasting and Favored enemy, for the spellcasting might return later in form of other class feats, and favored enemy have effectively been replaced by something that lets a ranger act like a ranger, always found it weird a ranger only knew how to track down this one particular creature, or know that "maybe the head is a fine place to apply a hammer?"...

All of this doom and gloom on this forum is aggrivating.

Bringing it to the picture as a whole, without resonance this time as its such a hot topic and where some people spell the next doomsday.

I like how classes have become, its kinda like rogues in the main system where you get talents every now and then that makes your class more *your* style, even if the paths would be limited i personally would make do even with a single alternative path a class can go.
This ofcourse reduce the relevancy of archtypes as you can just pick whatever you feel fits best for your character and opens up easier ways to implement features down the line.

I like the Weapon types, the features and crit focuses these can offer, maybe even replacing some of the feats of PF1 to just become weapon qualities in its entirety like Axes being the "cleave" weapon. And shields being able to readied up to give DR depending on their hardness is already a thing we used in a homebrewed pathfinder alternative, which surprised me of being PF2 core.

Theres been a few points that i have been skeptical to, like goblin as a core race, which honestly i think never will be a issue on my home table, and honestly i rarely cared for monsters in the group as i like it to be a cooperative game and if it gets too dumb i might aswell leave. Still i must say i really hate entire races that have as a "trait" to be annoying little t#!%s that is disruptive to the rest of the party for the sake of "Role-play"... See Kenders for reference. If Goblins have the little line that says: "Oh they tend to hate words, and destroy X" or something like that i can garantee you that this race WILL be banned for any table i do not trust.

Anathema is interesting, its a collective term for basically what Druids and Clerics had before, and now other classes can have it too as a part of their features and you will know exactly what it entails regardless of class. (Like PF1 druids basically had Anathema for not using metal armor or teaching others their language)

I am actually holding the same opinion as the OP here, i feel like the forums is holding a extremly negative attitude for something that is just being read about and not even tested yet. I can understand the negativity for something that is new, but we have yet to see the whole picture on how it plays through and all of the preconceptions so far is based on PF1 mindset.

Its okay be be skeptical and maybe negative, but some of the reactions i have seen is way too extreme to be a more disagreement.

For the design of PF2 itself, i am rather optimistic, and i really look forward to it. However i have a few bugbears here and there, but i wait and see until the playtest to see if it makes more sense in context.

I think we have gotten to the point where the argument of immersion doesnt mean anything anymore.

Plus when it comes to names of weapons and historical accuracy the "weapon classes" as our dear weapon expert talk so much about were not even used during the times before the catagorization and naming schemes were applied by historians way past its time. So in all reality its a fruitless effort to make it "accurate" as it was never accurate to begin with.

Argument of immersion is fruitless in general as there is always something that takes you out of it, but the game have never claimed to be more than a game which simulate a adventure in a fantasy setting. Having historical accuracy to real life counterparts or its handling of magic within the laws of thermodynamics is way out of the scope of the game to begin with.

So what we have here is history VS established fantasy tropes, and considering this is a fantasy game you can take a guess which one wins out in terms of relevancy.

Hmm, i feel like not having a limit on how often you can use the wands and staffs might have lead to other issues, and fully basing everything on the "spell points" seems to be a mess already in conception as we already have exceptions.

On how things got introduced we were given information that we had spell points tied to charisma as a form of resonance... why did you call it "spell points" and not just outright "resonance" and just add "point" after it if it was confusing? Now we have technically two names for the same attribute already. With HP we had just Con mod + class = HP, while spell points is: Cha + Level = Resonance = Spell points, why not stop at Resonance?

In the event of the wand we have now to think about 4 attributes: Your Resonance, your Spell Points (Which is given by Resonance), Item charges, and the Item level. Would it been easier to cut that down to two by just saying Resonance is your pool, and the level is the number of uses? Then we get into the problem that low level wands have too few uses, and late game wands just scale out or propotions. And just basing wand usage on Resonance we fall into the latter event where characters just scale out of propotions and spell slots is not even needed because you just "auto-attack" with your wand of fireballs.

If you play Cleric you have to tally these: HP, Spell-points, Heal/Harm uses, Wand Charges (Up to multiple), Consumables (Up to multiple) and maybe ammo, as i consider that as a important difference to merely "consumable", and Spell Slots.

From its PF1 counterpart it remove: Channeling uses, Domain power uses (up to 4), and magic item x/day uses. However the Heal/Harm uses is technically channels... so we only remove the domain uses and the optional items?

I might be unfair using the Cleric here as its a class of exceptions, and i understand why they would have a pool of heals as to not waste precious spell-slots to be a healbot. Tying heals/harms to spell-points would just come around to the problem at high level where a cleric could in essence just burn his entire pool just on heals later on at max heighten it would just move the CLW issue from a item to a class. Now the spell points is tied to Items and Domain abilities, and can use these abilities freely without holding back to save for heals, or allowing heals to scale too highly in the end.

TL;DR - Resonance is a mess, but i see what they are trying and its not easy.

I am wondering if the "Dimensional Agility" featline would be available to the game at playtest, and if other classes can get a option to get similar abilities... in PF1 my go-to enabler was 3 levels of horizon walker to get that 3+wis goodness.

Franz the Barbarian was a weird fellow, he have such belief in his own strenght that it by hard work and absurdity managed to manifest itself. Even if you were to see it as a delusion it serves him well, and he likes to test his limits against almost any challenge, though unreachable goals he just blows off as "fairytales and drunkard stories".

However some days Franz feels weak, worried that his strenght has left him, constantly shivering and and lost his confidence in even the simplest of challenges. These is the times he lock himself in seclusion and trains until he once again feel his strenght has returned.

- Saga of Franz, the man of giants.

This is just a mere 1min write-up of how i would think a barbarian could handle a "totem" without it even being refered or known to the user themselves. These "totems" seems to be vague in the sense you could technically make them anything you like, a personality trait, a physical mutation, a magical blessing, a tribal totem patron... its actually pretty interesting.

If non-combat abilities are being quarantined into skill feats, I hope monks get more skill feats than fighters do.

So far it does seem that Monk will retain some of their jumping abilities at least.

Also we havent really seen if any of the class or ancestry feats give any options for utility either, so its going to be a long wait until playtest to find out.

They've said guns wont be in the original book because they'd want to do a separate playtest for it.

Oh i might have missed that, do you have a source to where i can find that line?

Elleth wrote:

Unless I've missed something, I'm a little curious as to why an entry feat is needed for ki, rather than simply giving the pool for the first ki power you take (most of the others feat gated higher than ki strike).

They wanted to allow monks without any kind of magic/ki power to exist. So you could build a basic brawler without any kind of sparkles. And from the sounds on how the new archetypes will work, this could not be realized that way.

Also considering that Paizo want the Classes of PF2E be less reliable on archtypes for minor changes such as "Ki / No Ki" or similar effects, Archtypes might be something similar to rogue/ninja as "alternative" classes from the looks of things.

Well now that we had a look on how items and alchemy have been reworked to work better in PF2E i started to wonder how the effects of gunpowder items would work both in crafting and mechanically in combat/encounter.

With Gunpowder items i mean vaguely around everything using gunpowder or "explosives" per say, like Grenades, Bombs, Guns, Firework and the like, and maybe some of the items that "work as" gunpowder, maybe something similar to the "Warplock Rifles" the Skaven use in Warhammer Fantasy.

Will we be able to see any of these items in the first releases of PF2E or would we need to see a expansion before we will see the resurfacing of firearm weaponry? At least i hope reworking the firearm system to be more compelling and less than a pain then 1E is considered.

Btw, did the designers do anything to the Lawful requirement? If anything the Vow system for monk would be a idea to put anathema to.

Well at least it says "Encounter" when it comes to stances, meaning its not completely locked to combat. Though i would question the idea of going into a combat stance under a social encounter.

Personally i would prefer that Ki-strike alone didnt unlock Ki, but ANY Ki power regardless of level and previous feats would unlock the Ki pool. ( Choose a power, get the pool )

I guess its something about the choices in character progression that some things needs to be learned before you can expand, negatively known as "feat tax"... but honestly some people call any requirement a "tax" in this game regardless... the term have nearly lost its meaning.

However i do wish Ki had more entrance "side-grades" than just the strike.

Hmm, for me as a MTG player this system is just extremly familiar and easy to get your head around even without knowing the condition itself.
Then again we had this "Ability/Condition X" for ages now, here you have one character with First Strike and Scry 2, or this thing has hit with infect/wither and have now 4x -1/-1 etc. etc.

So i really look forward to the consistency, and what rules and designspace this will open up for the entire system.

Well that and it doesn't take up your boot slot and a resonance.

Well what would you put in there instead? Boots of speed? Normally i rarely get to use my boot slot at all, so Boots of the cat is just a fun item to put there in PF1 at least.... though i got a feeling this resonance thing is going to be annoying to deal with if done wrong.

I do not have much against the totems for Barbarian actually, they seem to be reasonable in their "requests", and even those which sound scary like the Giant totem, it still have the "safety" that you cannot be challenged into suicide, and if you do not accept a challenge it is not a "attonement spell and be on your way" but rather a small ritual to regain your center type of deal.

My opinion is that it adds flavor and the mechanical bit is not a big turn off, especially since my tables can easily just rule it out, and yet its not even that big of a deal than just one or two things you need to consider appeasing your totem.

PF1 Ring of Feather Falling cost 2200 gp. Easily within reach of any 3rd-level character according to the WBL table

The heart of the matter is not the ability itself but the "no magic involved" bit

Well you have the "Bots of the cat" for 1k GP.

Honestly the only problem i have seen when it comes to codes in a tabletop is the Paladin due to its "Incorruptable" or "meme" status, and some DM/GMs just love the idea to corrupt the "stick-in-the-mud" paladins or "lawful stupid" and see them fall. From my experience i had 4 of these DM/GMs, mostly out of pure Bias against the paladin.

On the opposite end i never seen a DM/GM make a Monk or Barbarian "fall" due to alignment shifts, never have i seen a Cleric being stripped of his or her powers, never have i seen a samurai or cavalier disgraced... i actually never seen a situation that require the spell attonement that was not on a Paladin.

The point i am trying to make is that these "Malicious" DM/GMs that want to drain your characters powers by exploiting geas/codes is portrayed as a bigger problem that it actually is. With the exception of the paladin, plus if a DM/GM is of "that guy" caliber he would find a way to mess you up regardless of class mechanics.

Well considering that the later levels was a mess it makes sense for Paizo to try to correct this in a new edition instead of having virtually 5-10 levels being undesired or broken.

I bet for a lot of people bringing the legendary monsters down to the player would cause a lot more uproar than a high level redesign.

Most likely Human Rogue, rogues have always had a pull on me despite being one of the least optimal classes in the game.

Also look up the definition of "Anathama" and most of the meanings go for a "curse" or "loathed" often by "higher beings". When they added this to Cleric was a bit skeptical to this word, then Paladin got that AND the code, and now that barbarian got it too i finally understood why Paizo picked this.

Its not a code, its a restriction, its a curse, its a requirement. The flavor is very loose so you can choose "why" of the Anathama. Like the anti-magic Barbarian it can be that the curse of Totem of anti-magic just outright make the barbarian feel sickend, it doesnt work, etc etc. you can put soo much flavor into this and the "only" negative is that you dont *willingly* take the benefit of Spells cast onto yourself.

I think a lot of the issues around the "Legendary aspect" could be a little in that people have their own notion of what kind equivalicy there is in power and levels.

However in PF2E the ruleset is of Golarion Bias, meaning that the default core setting of the rules is set to be of Golarion instead of a setting neutral ruleset. From there you have to realize the powerlevels of characters. 1-4 is basically your "everyday man" from newbies to just average worker. 5-9 is where you have your experts and specialists. 10-14 is when you have the ground breakers, the foundation makers that have reached the pinnacle of man. 15-20 is where you find demigods, god-likes and legendary heroes of yesteryear.

I for one actually like that the PF2 ruleset would take a bias to the Golarion setting as it make it so that the rules have a point of reference in a setting and from there people can thus convert it to their setting. Here you will have a established power structure and people can adjust for their own need.

So those who dont like the legendary system, there is already several suggestions given to you so far, so either take those suggestions or stop making Pathfinder what it never was.

I feel like i should chime in after reader several pages of comments before i went with the prediction that "uh-oh, someone is going to champion their anti-legendary mindset".

Seriously though legendary skills are what does you over? Your 30+ Strenght Barbarian that can cleave deamons and titans alike, Your rogue that can sneak past a beholder, a bard that can sing the gods to tears, and you now feel like the game is getting out of hand because the Acrobat now inherently can do at lvl 15+ what you could do with a 1k gp item? (Abeit it reduced all fall damage die to 1, but after you get 26 HP this is a non-issue really)

Still i dont see the argument why legendary skill-feats would be so immersion breaking after Level 15 that litterally everyone in the party can single-handly wipe out several lower tier devils, Challenge demi-gods to fisticuffs and threaten cities and gods alike.

Even after several suggestions to how you can limit this in your own game i see the comments is still on-going and i just have to ask: What are you actually trying to champion here?

Look up what they mean with "Legendary", and see now that you now actually can be a legend on the par with Hercules, Beowulf, Conan, Carmen Sandiego and Dora the Explorer. And here we are complaining about realism in a game where you basically walk hand-in-hand with gods already from Level 1.

I think if you are the kind of player to plan out your whole build before the character is level 1 there will be some analysis paralysis. But I'd also wager if you are the type of player to do that you either relish the challenge or adapt guides anyway.

If you are the type of player to just pick as you go I think the segregated lists will make that very quick and easy.

I am of the first kind, but honestly you have that in PF1 with the myrad of choices you have across 10 years of content. However i think its going to be easier for everyone with this new system if they manage to have a consistent way of listing it up.

The problems doesnt show up before the first few additional content books we get, so i wonder what kind of problem PF2 might get from this.

This is a concern for me, so many moving parts, but hopefully at each level it is not overwhelming.

From what i have had the impression of is that there is a lot of sub-catagories. So in every catagory you may have only like 5-7 choices to begin with and slowly expand as you level up.

Stuff like Ancestry Feats, Skill Feats, General Feats and Class Feats might sound daunting if you think of all of them at once, but as soon as you just decide to see them in their own catagory and what you actually have the requirements for the list might not be so wide anymore.

For the Legendary being gated behind a Class' signature skills, I agree that it sounds bad. But maybe for actual characters signature skills are enough. After all Legendary is gated behind high level AND limited number of rank increase

What are the chances that one of the few skills you want to take all the way to Legendary is NOT one of your Class' signature skills ?

One of the devs were saying there was a way to gain legendary skills with other means, but in general the legendary skills is normally limited to your signature skills.

So maybe it also ties to ancestry, general feats, or other means?

I like the structure of the current character generation, even though the system "feels homogenized" i believe the variance and the meat is in the selection and the "baseline" abilities of Classes and whatever variance ancestry adds to the character.

It basically makes every class similar to what Rogue, Slayer and that Monk Archtype where you can "build your own Rogue/Slayer/Monk" and have the potensial to have very different characters in mechanics even if they were the same class and ancestry.

So from what i gathered a character will have a set of Baseline abilities in *addition* to the system put forth, which is far from homogenized in my opinion, tho it rise the question of choice paralysis.

@Deadmanwalking
Just digging up the topic on the previous page around the notion of people being negative at not being "bad" at anything and i have bumped into discussions around it rather than at-table complaints.

Forexample one notion of this was with 5th edition where i discovered there is actually no negatives to picking a race ( as in the old +2 to X and -2 to Y deal ) and argued this felt like choices were not made with any drawback.

Which leads to the second part that many and maybe myself included that theres a false notion around the concept that power never comes with a choice that you just get handed "free power" with no caveat. In a weird way justifying that i can be "extra good" in one thing at the cost of being bad or "extra bad" in another.

However i never seen anyone at the table actually complain that they are "too-good" in a thing they wanted to be bad at, and this argument only finds place in theorycrafting where i see it as a lack of variance or choice. Even in this mindset i just play whatever the hell i like and pick whatever fitting for the concept be it numerical or fluffy reasons and if i wanted to be bad at something i just dont put ranks in it!

Sounds like Diego should limit his intake of alochol when eating a sheet of paper around a pineapple is considered a good idea, but then i remembered that he got sad over a pun... so he should have doubled his intake at that point, or until its funny.

What if Plan A doesnt include gunpowder at all?

Hmmm, how does riding work in PF2E? In the case of mounted character i admit i have skipped out on those quite a bit in PF1, one exception was my horse archer hunter that i attempted one time.
Still what can we expect out of mounted character in this new edition?

What legacy mechanic from 3.5 are you glad that you finally could remove or completely change in the rise of 2nd edition?

I know PF was made out of their loyalty to the 3.5 system, but its interesting to hear what systems that couldnt be changed/removed from PF1 before it was properly established.

At this point i dont really care what they call it, as long as its consistent in its mechanics through the game and content, and that the name is reckognizable and understandable from the moment you hear it.

When a tabletop discussion becomes more juggling of semantics and exploiting vagueness of the clustertruck that is the english language then the rules in question is too vague and inconsistent to be called a rule imo.

Maybe Gish/multiclassing wont be so bad in PF2E eh?

So favorite thing about PF2E so far?

And have this "Thantos gauntlet" pop-culture meme gone too far since we get a !Infinite Gauntlet in PF2E too?

Hey Mark, what legacy mechanics leftover from 3.5 are you happy about getting rid of or changing in PF2E?

I asked previously, but the answer was that i should re-ask after the memorial weekend. ( From what i can tell memorial day is today.... US special days is nothing i know nothing of )

I know PF2E is trying to be made in such a way that older materials is still compatible with the new ruleset, but can we expect some progression in the worlds of Golarion as it shift into 2nd edition, or is pieces of history rewritten to work out some of the aspects that 2nd edition allows/disallows?

I find it ironic that there is complaints of a "gamey" term in a game... There is already terms in the system that is most likely not awknowledged by the setting, but we stick to it as it makes the game more comprehensible to deal with.

So shall we make away with Hit Points, Caster Level, Classes, Spell Slots, CR, DR, Spell Likes etc.?

The final answer to what happens when you grapple a succubus.

Well personally i feel that the game is better being tied to a single setting as a base, as it gives a good place to reference and give examples on how the rules work in practice and then you can just shift it to more generic fantasy after.

A few of the problems that pops up when the rules tries too hard to be generic to the point the point of reference falls off and examples becomes too vague to be used.

Paizo Blog wrote:

(Remember, that [[A]] code you see indicates that this is an action, and it will be a snazzy icon in the final rulebook!)

Thanks, but no thanks. There's no advantage to using an icon rather than the [[A]] (I still have no idea what the various Bestiary icons mean, and I'm a long-time gamer).

I actually think that the [[A]]/[[R]] works better: in addition to the sight-impaired accessibility issues already raised, it's easy to indicate whether something's more than one action: [[A]], [[2A]], usw.

I like what the rest of the blog has to say, though. Sorry to nit-pick on the one thing I (really, really) don't like.

The videogame generation would have a rather easy time with it, especially the MMORPGers where you have to indentify a debuff or a icon in no time, or just know that the "Rabit-with-a-little-red-across" does wonders for your abilities.

Or pull the examples from Magic the gathering where the icons of resources is a must-know.

In PF2 the closest example would be the MTG example, you spend 2 "Action" on "Ability" and use 1 "Action" on "Movement" etc.