Dubious Scholar's page

Impossible Magic updated Magus and Summoner and they no longer lose lower ranks of spell slots as they level, instead capping out at 2 per rank. They still don't get 10th rank spell slots. There's some other adjustments to the classes as well but that's the biggest one.

Maneuvering Mines (TC p43) - Doesn't list a duration for the Slowed 1 condition

SRO Weapon Mount (TC p18) - "you can instead install a one-handed martial weapon or a two-handed weapon in your weapon mount." This is phrased awkwardly and it's unclear whether the 2h weapon can only be simple or can also be martial.

Personal opinion, it should allow 2h martial weapons, but I can see it going either way. (My thought process is just that martial weapons aren't necessarily larger, they're more complicated, so if the mount can handle the complexity of a martial weapon and the size of a 2h weapon it would be odd to not allow 2h martial weapons, but)

Kineticist is somewhat uniquely difficult I think, because you really want to add a couple impulses per element for it to feel meaningful, and that's more work than is needed for throwing out new Thaumaturge implements, or a witch patron, etc.

NotADragon wrote:

I think Paizo should provide more support for existing classes.

However, I do not think my players would buy a book with no classes in.

I would, but I'm the GM, and therefore a smaller market.

So I think the solution is either adding content for older classes into new class books, or relying on 3rd party publishers, some of which are actually good.

Yeah you hit the market reality I think. As a GM I'd love a book of "just stuff for already existing classes/ancestries", but it almost certainly doesn't sell as well as a new class.

They have been doing more of this though. Battlecry added the Thaumaturge shield implement for example, and I hear we're getting another one.

Some classes have gotten more of it than others and there's ancestries that really need some love (looking at you, Shoony), but I'm upbeat about the general direction with these kinds of releases.

Censer implement in LO:Infernal Inheritance. (Nethys: https://2e.aonprd.com/Implements.aspx?ID=26)

It's interesting and a neat way to mess with ranged opponents and especially spellcasters. Not as universally useful as Shield.

Dubious Scholar wrote:

Explode gains 1d6 every 2 levels.

Every level. That's why I say Explode and Megavolt are the base for Inventor Unstable abilities. All the others are dealing ridiculous damage but Cacophony at high level, but this one costs 3 actions.

Dubious Scholar wrote:

Compliant Gold and Steel on Steel

Compared to the 39 damage of Gigavolt (and incredible area) and 42 of Explode, they deal rather low damage. Also, being Transcendance, you have to pay an extra action to get your Ikon back (I don't know the Exemplar much, so I may be wrong about that).

Overall, there's no real comparison between these abilities.

pauljathome wrote:

I'm not at all sure if I'm just being pedantic (ie, when you say "best" you actually mean "Amongst the best" which I'd agree with) but I don't think Dragon Breath is any better than Powerful Inhalation or Pulverizing Cascade (I think all 3 are basically on par). And I'd put all 3 of them substantially below Remember the Lost.

I missed some Focus Spells. I remembered Dragon Breath as being the best, but it's now one of the best, and no more the best as Remember the Lost is extremely strong. Still, Dragon Breath is a high bar most Focus Spells fail to compare to.

Oh huh. I'm so used to "increase at X and every 2 levels" text I totally missed Explode was just per level. That does put it in the right damage bracket for something you can only reliably use once per fight though.

The comparison to exemplar is because those abilities are at-will effectively - you can use them every round without limit. (In the case of exemplar, doing it every round does burn an extra action.) The point of that comparison is that the damage scaling of those inventor feats (Roar/Cacaphony) is in line with other martial at-will AoEs, but not the base damage.

I think it's clear that it's one mine, except in the specific case of Smart Mine.

Modify, second sentence: "Select one item in your possession or in the possession of a willing creature within your unarmed reach." (Mines get a specific 60' range exception, even before Distant Mods comes online for the other exocortex variants.)

Smart Mine: "Smart Mine (mine exocortex): You program your mines with rudimentary virtual intelligence, allowing them to recognize your allies. Select one target within 60 feet. That target is excluded from the area of all mines you detonate. At 5th level, you can select up to three targets, and at 10th level, you can select up to six targets."

Targeting Mine is also written to only apply to one mine, making Smart Mine the exception, second sentence: "Increase the mine’s damage by an amount equal to your Intelligence modifier."

Targeting Mine however starts with "Your mines' proximity sensors calculate precise explosions." in the plural. Which is why it's confusing. (Most of the feat based upgrades also do this, with the exception of Healing Mines... which is also the one feat you almost certainly do not want active on all your mines at once)

Debilitating Exocortex - "Creatures damaged by your exocortex..." presents another awkward case. As a generic feat this doesn't reference mines at all, which makes it the least clear.

The initial ranged modification ability mines get reads "You can Modify one of your deployed mines at a range of 60 feet as if it were a grenade". All of the cortexes have slight differences in how they define what additional categories of mods apply to them though, but it does make it unclear if it's saying "you modify your mines individually and can do so as if they're grenades and at range" or "you can modify individual mines as if they're grenades and at range".

For action economy reasons only ever modifying one mine at a time would really suck, so I'd prefer a clarification the other way, but...

One thing that really needs clarification is if Mine Exocortex mods apply to one mine, all mines, or your choice. Like, are you modding individual mines, or the entire exocortex system?

Smart Mines explicitly includes all your mines at once in a single mod, others will switch between plural and singular for mines and it's less clear. Debilitating Exocortex is written for the class as a whole so it's doubly unclear.

Ball Lightning Cannon isn't giving you extra dice, it's a level 4 weapon baseline.

The Delayed trait is one I'm unsure on, but it's definitely cool even if it ends up impractical. I do think it's potentially funny on a Bombard soldier though when you can just shell your own position repeatedly.

Cryo Carbine and Voltaic Rifle are both fantastic new weapons for anyone with martial proficiency. As you noted Fatal d12 is great if you've got any kind of extra accuracy going on. The Voltaic Rifle is Arc and Parry, which is another generally useful trait set.

You mention Turret Team Up for the free off-guard shots. I'd also call out the Debilitating Cortex feat on mines, because "fort save if you took damage" is extra fun when it's AoE, and those offer off-guard among their options. (The payoff for full debilitation investment is significant too at high levels with Improved+Double giving off-guard+clumsy 2)

I'd also call out the Liquidator just for being a Flamethrower except without using chems. Chems suck. Acid damage is great. Good Soldier toy.

Explode gains 1d6 every 2 levels. Unstable Megavolt gains 1d12. That's not remotely the same scaling. At level 6 you're comparing 4d6 to 3d12, Megavolt is already ahead and has a much better AoE to work with.

Guardian Lion Roar is 2d8+1d8/2 levels without being unstable. Adding a d8 every two levels is on par with kineticist impulses, exemplar abilities, and general strike scaling. The problem is solely that it starts slightly low. If it was a level 6 feat the damage would be very good. Cacapohony has the same issue on it's stable mode, 6d4 isn't great (it's worse than Guardian Lion Roar, which will deal 5d8 at that level). Like I said, right scaling, wrong base damage.

Amusingly, Deep Freeze isn't actually that far behind Cacaphony in damage. 6d4 averages 15 damage, compared to the flat 12 of Deep Freeze. (And likewise, 6d8 is 27 versus 24)

For what it's worth at level 12 a basic strike deals 3d12+2d6 (baseline) for an average of 26.5 damage. ...unfortunately that's not a martial strike. Compare to something like Compliant Gold dealing 6d8 (27) damage in a line at will (with bonus passive effects), or the 12d4 (24) of Steel on Steel and you see what I mean about at-will AoEs dealing similar damage to strikes. (Notably, 12 is a high point for strike damage because 11 adds a d6 and 12 adds a d12 in that calculation. This is also a d12 weapon, doesn't account for martial damage bonuses, etc, but still)

And yes, Dragon Breath is the gold standard I compare focus spells to. If they're dealing less than that, I'm looking at what other effects they bring with. There's quite a few focus spells that deal similar damage (other sorcerer ones just for starters). Also, for what it's worth, I'd argue Necrotic Bomb displaced Shatter Mind handily thanks to Necromancer's ability to have to it deal vitality "damage" to allies)

The only thing the class really suffers from for me is a sense of "But I want that, toooooo! <whine>".

I've argued before that elemental blast should be Heighten +3 instead of +4, but for the most part yeah. It does have some issues of not playing nice with other stuff, it's very self-contained. Metal could use some love (the early impulses are somewhat lackluster).

More impulses would be very welcome, mainly. But the nature of the class means it's always going to be somewhat constrained there.

As written the Long-Range Propulsors modification can be applied to ranged area weapons. For Burst weapons this is good. It increases the range you can place the burst at. Works fine, no weirdness.

Line weapons it outclasses Big Boom because the line goes up by 30 feet instead of 10. But probably still fine because it's mostly just increasing the effective range rather than catching more enemies.

Cone weapons however. Well, most cone weapons have a 15 foot range, with a few at 20 foot. This is massive area increase for those weapons and probably not intended, a 45 foot cone is a lot.

As a bonus, auto-fire weapons join in the fun here, but get a less ridiculous boost (unless you have a friendly Action Hero who gets the full 30 foot increase).

Oh yes, it's not just the restrictiveness of Unstable. Megavolt is an outlier in that is actually does damage comparable to the stronger focus spells. (That is, it's right behind Fireball. Dragon Breath from Sorcerer remains the standard to compare them all against imo). The stable version is just a cantrip, which is fine if unexciting.

The remaining unstable damage actions are scaled much more in line with at-will AoE abilities available to martials. Which is to say... they do damage comparable to a Strike, give or take. (And many of those AoEs are literally just "strike everything in the area") Except of course that they consume a very finite resource to activate.

Celestial Cacaphony and Guardian Lion's Roar come close to being useful because they at least get the scaling right. 1d8 or 2d4 per 2 levels is good! But Cacaphony has too little base damage (if it was available at a slightly lower level...) and Roar has poor area without unstable (also a little low on base damage, but not as far off)

Chordpocalypse (Tech Core p100) - Listed range is 20 feet for Area (Cone).

The weapon description though: If you're trained with this weapon, you can expend 11 charges to increase its range when you Area Fire to 20 feet. If you aren't trained with this weapon, decrease its range when you Area Fire to 10 feet.

The untrained part works. The trained part doesn't make much sense. First, 11 charges is odd for a weapon with 10 charges and expend 5. (It's not a clean multiple of the expend, and it's more than it has at base level) Second, increasing the range of a weapon with 20' range to 20'... doesn't do anything.

Is it intended to expend 10 charges to increase the range to 30 feet? By 20 feet? Something else?

Edit: Biotic Equalizer has a similar issue - Primary Target doesn't expend extra ammunition for Area weapons, but it has "If you're trained with this weapon, the expend is 1 when you make a ranged Strike against a single creature, such as when attacking your primary target, if you have that soldier class feature. ". Also, Area weapons can't normally Strike at all.

Dubious Scholar wrote:

Grenadier archetype, Soldier Synchronization feat:

...This isn't how Soldier already worked with grenades? There was the question of primary target but did anyone ever argue that suppressing fire etc didn't work with grenades already?

It feels like this is a stealth nerf to Soldier (And buried in some stray feat of another rulebook) if we're supposed to interpret this to mean that grenades don't play nice with Soldier normally.

There was previous Errata that grenades did not work for the soldier primary target ability. Grenadier allows them to primary target with grenades.

The full text of the feat in question:

It's not just primary target. It's literally the entire Soldier class's interaction with grenades being area fire weapons.

Dubious Scholar wrote:

Healing Mines seem... very underwhelming? 2 HP at level 2, 3 at level 3... 4 HP at 5...

Like, they heal basically nothing at all without the level 12 upgrade feat. I suppose the fast healing mod if you take High-Tech Medic helps a lot though (as that actually does scale well).

I suppose out of combat you can still patch people up eventually with them, but...

At low levels if you pair it with high-tech medic which you really should if you want to go this path you can apply one of the mods from that to the healing mines which makes the healing mines REAL solid condition removers.

Your choice of aoe lower sicken condition by 1, aoe frighten/enfeebled condition by 1, aoe let people o an immediate flat check to end persistent damage with DC 10 or grant fast heal equal to half the items level -1 for 3 rounds.

So at level one if you have both feats it would do 3 heal the first round and then 1 more for the next 2 so 5 heal guaranteed over time which isn't bad. Still it is some really good condition cleansing at level 1 which is some very good support utility.

Edit

I did see one other interesting thing for the impressive healing mines feat it says rather than creatures in the area regaining a number of hit poitns equal to the mines number of dice + your int modifier, creatures in the area gain 1d6 HP per mines damage dice + int.

This implies normal healing mines should be adding your int mod which makes them better yet.

+int is an upgrade at level 8, it's part of the level 2 feat.

Also, the fast healing is an additional modification if I'm reading it right. So that would mean 1 action to deploy, 2 actions to modify (healing+high tech medic), then 1 action to detonate for a total of 5 HP healed over the next two rounds. This is fine out of combat. This is almost literally worthless in combat.

I'd say it's too bad to be true but I don't see any other way to read it.

Grenadier archetype, Soldier Synchronization feat:

...This isn't how Soldier already worked with grenades? There was the question of primary target but did anyone ever argue that suppressing fire etc didn't work with grenades already?

It feels like this is a stealth nerf to Soldier (And buried in some stray feat of another rulebook) if we're supposed to interpret this to mean that grenades don't play nice with Soldier normally.

Healing Mines seem... very underwhelming? 2 HP at level 2, 3 at level 3... 4 HP at 5...

Like, they heal basically nothing at all without the level 12 upgrade feat. I suppose the fast healing mod if you take High-Tech Medic helps a lot though (as that actually does scale well).

I suppose out of combat you can still patch people up eventually with them, but...

Sibelius Eos Owm wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

TBT if a whole party succeeds at their Stealth and remains Unnoticed, why is there even a switch to encounter mode to begin with ?

This scenario is most likely to come up because the party intends to attack a target from stealth. The guidelines for initiative are pretty explicit that you generally roll as soon as any participant intends to attack. This scenario would only come up because the decision was already made to enter encounter mode and roll initiative, so there's not really any reason to then not enter encounter mode.

And that's where it gets weird. "We're rolling initiative for no apparent reason" because the people rolling it on one side have no idea there's anything there.

It's an edge case that just feels weird because it amounts to "I'm thinking about attacking you so we're rolling initiative and thus you might go before me despite there being nothing to react to except my intent that you don't know because you can't read thoughts."

If actually launching the attack is what triggered initiative in this situation, it would feel more natural.

Yeah, it should probably work similar to hazards - the hazard does its trigger action and then initiative happens.

Considering Disintegrate says it reduces an object to dust, can you just put the armor to a grindstone for a few weeks? That should also reduce it to a fine powder eventually, right? Would that count as obliterating it?

Your average forge won't do it, because it only heats metal to the point it can be worked. If you can completely melt the armor I'd argue that's basically the same as the volcano option. (Although the volcano is also going to rapidly render the rejuvenation impossible because lava so)

Dubious Scholar wrote:

The "throw it into a volcano" is probably the most reasonable option for parties lacking a powerful arcane caster, for sure. Well, depending on location. I'd also argue for tying some big rocks to it and dropping into the deepest depths of the ocean (if nothing else, perpetually crunching the armor to a lump ought to interfere with the rejuvenation perpetually).

But as to the original question? "Artifact" is a tier of object way above a mere graveknight's armor. Artifacts tend to start at like, level 17 or higher and it's rarer than Unique. As the graveknight details go into, some particularly powerful and legendary graveknight might require that kind of specific methods of destruction. The common level 10 graveknight however is not that. There is no conflict in the rules to begin with.

Party Leader: How do we destroy this graveknight armor? It keeps coming after us.

Sage: Well, you're easiest option is to find an active volcano and throw the armor in.

Party Leader: Ok.

Party Leader goes back to Party and asks: Anyone know where an active volcano is? We gotta drag this armor to an active volcano and toss it in before it rejuvenates. The sage says that's our best option.

To be fair, reading the entry on it nothing stops you from destroying the partially-reformed graveknight over and over to keep resetting the timer. Just every morning use a sword or two to scrub out the undead nonsense.

The "throw it into a volcano" is probably the most reasonable option for parties lacking a powerful arcane caster, for sure. Well, depending on location. I'd also argue for tying some big rocks to it and dropping into the deepest depths of the ocean (if nothing else, perpetually crunching the armor to a lump ought to interfere with the rejuvenation perpetually).

But as to the original question? "Artifact" is a tier of object way above a mere graveknight's armor. Artifacts tend to start at like, level 17 or higher and it's rarer than Unique. As the graveknight details go into, some particularly powerful and legendary graveknight might require that kind of specific methods of destruction. The common level 10 graveknight however is not that. There is no conflict in the rules to begin with.

Yeah, the entire point of that feat is that it lets a str character just jump up and slash the dragon that refuses to land.

I suggest to make Pain of Ages a green spell: For some reason you have judged it as a cone, but it is a 30ft-burst at 120ft range.

It also targets enemies only with an average of 36 spirit damage; for comparison, Divine Wrath (20ft-burst, 120ft range, enemies only) at the same rank (6) would only deal 33 spirit damage. It's only 1 rank below Fireball in terms of raw damage (5th-rank Fireball: 35 damage). Unfortunately not sanctified, nor inflicting Sickened 1 on a failure, but the crit failure is more crippling.

I also like that it is a Will-save spell without the Mental trait, so works great against mindless enemies (but not spirit-immune ones, like most constructs, ofc). It's a good blasting option for the divine list.

Debatable if it doesn't hit friendlies. It doesn't actually say "enemies in the area" or "creatures in the area", it says "you unleash this against your enemies" which reads more as description than mechanics to me. (Compare e.g. Arrow Salvo)

The scaling is very high though, yeah.

Honestly, Magus and Summoner (especially post-remaster) already cover the gish style. Both classes are very good at both spellcasting and striking. They can basically do anything you want in combat, it's very easy to always have options with them.

One of the big draws to Witch is all their 1-action hex cantrips. Most of those are potent options to throw out every turn.

As to strikes as a third action, I think an issue there comes from how anemic ranged combat is at low levels. A spellcaster probably gets all of 1d8 damage at best, which will often feel bad in the final result. And that's assuming a crossbow, which has to be reloaded...

Which leads to my main complaint about low level combat - +4 strength adds roughly an entire die of damage. A ranged weapon needs a striking rune just to get the same damage a fighter with a hammer gets. (A short sword may be a fantastic weapon, but anyone's who's played a non-thief Rogue knows how easily you can hit an enemy and just scratch them without sneak attack, etc). There's a significant power disparity before level 4 between STR and DEX martials.

Like, a barbarian and a rogue flanking the same target are attacking it for 1d12+8 or 2d6+0. The barbarian's minimum damage is well above the rogue's average. This does get a lot better at higher levels as rogue gets more dice and options on their attacks, but still.

Urglid wrote:

Ravenous Earth [one-action] (concentrate, earth, unholy) With a single, devious thought, the urglid causes a mound of grave soil to well up at a creature's feet. That creature must succeed at a DC 30 Reflex save or become restrained (Escape DC 30). The restrained creature then begins sinking below the ground into a spontaneously formed grave. A creature restrained by this ability for 3 rounds is buried 6 feet deep in the ground and begins suffocating within 1 minute. A buried creature must be dug up to be freed (see Burial). A creature that is slain by Ravenous Earth rises as a ghoul the next midnight.

This ability has no range, temporary immunity, or incapacitation trait, allowing the urglid to use it three times per turn, from any distance, even against the same PC, even against higher level PCs, as long as there is at least one PC not restrained by grave soil.

This might still be balanced due to the DC being moderate, but it still seems strange enough to potentially warrant errata.

If there's any saving grace it's that Escape is 1 action... the problem is that Restrained means you can't do anything else and with MAP applying to Escape... it's a massive potential loss of actions for the party.

At least by that level PCs having fly speeds is a real possibility.

Tridus wrote:

Lord Fyre wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

Lord Fyre wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

Lord Fyre wrote:

Deriven, is it not also true that you could inflict the PCs own tactics upon them?

In my PFS experience, opponents' parties' dynamics are hugely different from those of a PC party.

There is usually no more than a single boss in a combat encounter.

While there is nothing similar to a boss in a PC party.

While true. Is this beyond PFS, or a PFS only problem?

I think it happens in all published adventures and most homebrewed ones, except when the GM takes great care in designing a rival party with dynamics similar to a PC party.

And even then, not all combat encounters will be against this specific party of PC-like opponents.

That is true, and was true in Pathfinder 1e. It was less of a problem because combat wasn't so "game-ified" (I don't play PF2e for this reason.)

Is this a serious comment? PF1 is absurdly gamified and a lot of completely ridiculous things happen in PF1 combat because of it.

Oh yes. See "Tight Math" and "Illusion of Choice."

Pathfinder 2e is much stricter on tactical options. Because of that it plays like a Table Top Wargame, not an RPG.

I love Warhammer Fantasy Battles, but that's not what I am looking for in an RPG.

Kind of a pick your poison isn't it? Because 1e had the issue of someone just building a character that would have a 90% chance of going first and scoring a massive critical hit on your boss monster that deletes it instantly. A lot of work for a GM and the party to try and make anything remotely balanced in that system because of the wild divergence in power level of various builds.

Dubious Scholar wrote:

Jumping on this - I also feel like we could probably do with more flat damage and less dice on things for variance reasons too. It is not fun to hit the boss and then roll 1 damage. (Or crit and then oops, you rolled a 1 for damage and deal less than some normal hits)

It's actually interesting here because monsters will very often have a lot of flat damage even for ostensibly dex-based opponents. Where PCs might have 2d6+2 a monster will have 1d6+7.

If it were up to me I think I'd go for a goal of everything being runnable with 1 set of dice plus a pile of d6 or something? Maybe 2 sets.

This also probably has a side effect of lowering the HP/damage curves across the board a bit, which I wouldn't be opposed to anyways - there are some very spiky damage jumps that can be problematic for mixed-level groups like society play. (In particular the 3-4 band is troublesome because for a lot of martials level 4 almost literally doubles their damage per hit)

My son would vehemently disagree with this assertion. He was rolling 14d12 (plus some other stuff) on Vicious Swing crits in the endgame and he never got tired of that. Big smile every time.

If you're only rolling 1d6 and most of the damage is flat numbers, why bother with the d6 at all? When it's d6+30, the d6 is barely matters.

PF1 ended up like that at lot at higher level and it was a thing. (Course, PF1 also had cases of "I'm not going to even bother rolling this skill check because I'd need a -5 on a d20 to fail." The dice not mattering is not really healthy for the game.)

Unicore wrote:

I know the remaster change to cantrips was upsetting to some because it replaced attribute with another dice, but I have found this has really strengthen the d6 cantrips, and have grown to like it a lot.

On the d4 cantrips it was a straight nerf. They needed to add 2d4 instead of 1d4 to them. That was the upsetting part. The single target d4 cantrip spells weren't good enough in the first place to justify a nerf.

I'd mostly argue that at larger numbers of dice everything converts to a d6 equivalent eventually anyways. (This is also partly that I hate rolling piles of d4s in particular) And of course large piles of dice generate normal curves of their results, which means there's a point where you can absolutely start substituting things out. (Might be better as an optional rule though, but if you let casters roll 2d4+5 instead of 4d4 for cantrips I think a lot of them would jump at it)

My idea on strikes was that they'd step up both flat damage and dice count as they upgraded. So a weapon might start at 1d6+1, the first upgrade goes to 1d6+3, then it's 2d6+3, etc. I dunno. The better solution might be to allow characters to add half dex to damage on finesse weapons or something so that low levels don't feel so bad?

Or a mix - again, I look at how creature stat blocks will be 2d6+15 instead of a PC throwing like 4d6+7 for a strike. (Or really, on d6 weapons it's more likely to be like 6d6+2)

HolyFlamingo! wrote:

- I feel like a little flat damage on everything instead of pure dice rolls for ranged weapons and spells would help a lot of stuff feel better and more consistent (like 2-action heal, monster attacks, and legacy cantrips).

That reminded me of something I’d like to see in a future edition: fewer dice in damage rolls!

The number of dice scales significantly with progression. This isn't an issue when playing online, but it becomes a hassle during in-person games when you have to roll—and sum up—more than ten dice.

I’d like a future edition to use more flat values ​​instead of dice. Dice would still be used, but the count would be capped at around 5 or 6. For automatic damage increases gained through progression, flat values ​​would simply be used instead.

For example, electric arc, which currently deals 2d4, could deal 1d8, with its heightened version adding +2 damage per rank. A fireball—given its higher base level and availability starting at level 5—would roll one extra die (averaging one extra die for every 4 levels of the base spell); it would roll 2d6 + 14, with its heightened version adding +7 per rank. This would still ensure some die-roll variance without requiring so many dice to be rolled. After all, mathematically speaking, the more dice you roll, the more likely the damage is to land near the average; so, a flat bonus wouldn't actually change the outcome that much, but it would certainly speed up mid- and high-level combat in face-to-face games.

Jumping on this - I also feel like we could probably do with more flat damage and less dice on things for variance reasons too. It is not fun to hit the boss and then roll 1 damage. (Or crit and then oops, you rolled a 1 for damage and deal less than some normal hits)

It's actually interesting here because monsters will very often have a lot of flat damage even for ostensibly dex-based opponents. Where PCs might have 2d6+2 a monster will have 1d6+7.

If it were up to me I think I'd go for a goal of everything being runnable with 1 set of dice plus a pile of d6 or something? Maybe 2 sets.

This also probably has a side effect of lowering the HP/damage curves across the board a bit, which I wouldn't be opposed to anyways - there are some very spiky damage jumps that can be problematic for mixed-level groups like society play. (In particular the 3-4 band is troublesome because for a lot of martials level 4 almost literally doubles their damage per hit)

Thaumaturge mainly runs into issues with their passive implements (Lantern/Tome/Regalia). The active/reaction ones get to free action themselves out whenever they're relevant, so if you stick to those you don't have hand issues as much. On the other hand it makes it really hard to do a build with Tome/Regalia that isn't using Weapon or unarmed strikes (thankfully, Thaumaturge is fantastic at unarmed combat)

Was a big reason for the debate on weapons as regalia imo - it sidesteps the hand issues if the implement you need to always have in hand to do anything is your weapon.

Turn-to-turn, the class is easy to play, but I feel like it does have moderate complexity in character creation because of the hand limitations.

Mainly, it would be for a class where you value your low level class feats a bunch. Getting a free second level class feat isn't a bad benefit for an ancestry. It's a very specific niche though, as many of the classes I look into archetypes on I'm doing so because they lack interesting feats for the build at those levels.

Edit: Yeah, the comparison to Natural Ambition is a good one.

The Raven Black wrote:

Gray Warden wrote:

Enfeebled 2 gives the followup Shove (or other Athletics maneuver, see below) also an effective +2, which works with Assurance.

I think Drained 2 would do this by reducing their Fortitude save by 2.

Not Enfeebled 2.

HOOF, got a bit too excited. You're right of course. Still good for the firearm shot (which is the main thing anyway) and Assurance (Trip).

Enfeebled penalizes STR, so it doesn't really impact defenses at all. AC and reflex DC would be Clumsy.

It occurs to me now that it's a bit of a grey area whether tripping a flying creature causes them to land prone or not. (It's not clear if the "...they fall" rule is instead of or in addition to the prone status, and Arrest a Fall or just a creature flying low would avoid the fall damage>prone rule of falling)

In either event, Trip is useless in aquatic combat at least (Swimming grants immunity to Prone). This is a bit more of a way for a GM to frustrate the party's usual tactics than anything though in most campaigns I figure.

For individual classes, a lot of the guides to classes do go into sample builds and such.

For broader party composition, it's mostly just making sure the essential roles are checked. You want someone who can take hits, you want someone who can heal, etc.

I suppose one thing that would be useful is a rough list of what level you want to have a plan for X by. Like, if you're at level 10 and have no plans on what do against a dragon toying with the party from the air you should figure that out ASAP.

Definitely more the scope of a community guide though to just accumulate all the little tricks everyone's developed.

Put the trigger for a trap at the end of the very long hall and have it attack the entire hall. Set it up so a necromancer has to be in range of the trap in order to see the Thrall they're commanding and give it directions.

Make a hallway that's sort of on fire. 1 damage per round. Thralls can't exist in that hallway but it'll barely bother PCs.

Yeah, for a hypothetical 3e type thing I'd convert the various weapon style archetypes into commmon martial feats and such. The dedications can be kept around for allowing non-martial classes to invest into those feat chains, but they'd be able to fit into a single page really easily. (Actually, they could be a combined non-martial gets training in weapon group, martials get training in the advanced weapons of that group type feat? Advanced weapon access is another pain point in 2e where you're either a Fighter or using specific weapon groups with a working archetype or you just can't use them with scaling proficiency)

A few of the archetypes don't cleanly fit that but a new edition can clean up the oddities of e.g. Martial Artist in that model.

I think you're starting from a false premise - that PCs need to roll Recall Knowledge to effectively interact with the haunt in the first place.

The throwaway line about figuring out how to disable a magical hazard is meaningless. First, of course, is that haunts aren't magical hazards RAW, so requiring recall knowledge is not actually supported by the rules as written. But I also feel like it runs into a fundamental rules issue.

Hazards are written to require specific skills at specific proficiency to disable them. And this can often be very loose. Why does one haunt allow Religion and another uses Occultism to put the dead to rest? Both skills generally do the same thing with haunts, in most cases there's no good reason why only one should work.

Skill challenges more broadly though are amenable to alternative narrative solutions. Just because it doesn't list Athletics to jump a gap doesn't mean a PC can't do it, you just figure out the DC on the spot.

In general, whether to require recall knowledge or something for any hazard is a question for the GM on how obvious any given solution is. Occultism and Religion should not require a check, and if for some reason neither works you should probably be telling the PCs that after they try. (And frankly, if one works, the other should just work the same way unless there's a good narrative reason it doesn't, that's well within GM discretion)

I have played with high level haunts demanding recall knowledge to even know how to deal with them and it's a miserable experience. As has been noted, RAW, a failed Recall Knowledge means no more Recall Knowledge checks. And with how DCs scale with level this means you might have 1-2 PCs who have any chance of getting info on a subject (which is probably also a coin flip in odds. 25% chance of 2 PCs failing and now you can't resolve an encounter reasonably? That's terrible design and hits the too bad to be true line for me). And because the skills to identify a haunt are probably also the skills to disable it, those same PCs are probably also the only ones who can do that (especially with minimum proficiency involved), and they need 2 actions to disable, assuming they're in the right spot (so they may not even be able to interact for a turn). And meanwhile everyone else at the table is spending their turns looking off into space and passing because there's literally no way for them to do anything, but you're in encounter mode so you can't just have the two relevant people keep rolling. Oh, and everyone's probably getting murdered horribly while this is going on because haunts love to have "damage everyone everywhere" routines.

...Honestly, I just think haunts are very badly designed and work a lot better as a narrative skill challenge in exploration mode than something in initiative. They also have the frustrating element of being unlike most other hazards that can be smashed to bits by being completely invincible (leaning into that misery of playing those encounters).

My preferred approach as a GM is absolutely to lay out any obvious interactions and what skills it calls for. I am absolutely going to allow the person with Religion to roll on the haunt with Occultism (Trained) as the only listed skill to disable it. If there's a bard who wants to comfort the weeping ghost with an uplifting song and Performance? I'm going to allow that, especially if the block says something about Diplomacy.

I'm curious - Spiritual Armament is 4* and Spectral Blade is 2*. While the significantly worse range is an issue, I don't follow your argument that Spectral Blade doesn't do enough damage, because it does 3d6 with Heighten +1, compared to Armament's +2 heighten. It's definitely underwhelming at rank 3 (10.5 to Armament's 9 average), but at 4 it picks up to 14 against Armament's 13.5, and it never falls behind.

Are you just weighing the short range that heavily against it to where the better scaling isn't better enough?

Summoner wins by virtue of being the CHA gish and rolling well on Deception to manipulate the fight.

Realistically, while there's a lot of ways to get martial+spellcasting (and Magus and Summoner are very good at it out of the box in particular), none of them are so head and shoulders above the rest that they'd be sure to win a battle royale. PF2 is well balanced that way.

Although Magus/Summoner do have one advantage - they can open a fight with AoE blasting on par with any full caster. Warpriest can do that at some levels but their proficiency progression is generally worse (they have to wait until 19 for master casting and striking as opposed to striking at 13 and casting at 17. And they never get master AC)

It actually is pretty fast as out of combat healing, since it doesn't have a 10m cooldown attached. The worst case is basically Lay On Hands every minute instead of every ten, it's definitely on the faster side if you need to patch up a lot.

Actually, I'm not sure how many things beat it for long-term healing output outside of Runesmith. There's a couple ways to outdo it for self-healing (Exemplar, for instance) but not much is that repeatable for the whole party.

Even if you can't use it on the original target, you just need two people (which can include yourself) - transferring life both ways guarantees at least 6 HP recovered over the next minute net to each of them.

Nothing seems to prohibit hurting and healing the same person with the spell, it just feels odd. But it definitely allows you to hook the entire party up in one big circle of life energy being passed around to heal everyone anyways.

Farien wrote:

Deriven Firelion wrote:

especially in martial boss fights. Definitely might want to modify it to prevent cakewalk fights.

You mean the martial beatstick boss might have to break down and *gasp* use Reposition.

They don't have time to use reposition when they're using 3 actions versus your party's 12 or more actions, especially when the reposition causes a MAP penalty or disrupts their ability to use 2 action or better attacks.

If the boss is slowed, they're in an even worse position. Then trip them, even worse.

So the protector tree acts as another action eating action even if forcing the use of a reposition which the unlimited use Timber Sentinel kineticist can cast over and over and over again every round while tossing in an attack for some damage with the party also applying slow or trip further turning the fight into a trivial encounter.

Just give the boss some AoE to drop on all the PCs huddled around the tree. There's a lot of enemy types it's not great at dealing with.

As another way for the studious Wizard to show up, maybe a thesis about knowing your enemy. On a successful Recall Knowledge against an enemy you get +1 circumstance to spell attack/DC to that enemy for the rest of the encounter and +2 on crit. The knowledge of your enemies and the knowledge of how your own spells works allows you to tune them on the fly to the current foe.

In general I think that thematically wizards are best suited by things that play in the area of knowledge. Knowing more spells, knowing how spells work, etc. If wizards became spontaneous then just having a thesis where you get +2 spells/rank in your repertoire would be a valid option.

This is starting to remind me about what Paizo said about Inquistor. Ask three people what they want wizard to be and you get four answers, and a lot of the time you're given a mechanical prescription.

So, in that spirt, what do I want out of a Wizard, thematically?

I want a class who understands magic, and can therefore tweak around its edges. Wizards know the rules, and they know those rules are suggestions. Everyone else can cast spells yes, but it's like driving a car, you don't need to know how it works. If you want to make your car do something unique, you need to learn how it works.

Translating that to mechanics, I'm thinking something that approaches technomancer, without the overclocking. Spellshapes galore, perhaps even some innate free action spellshapes, like changing cones to lines, changing damage types, maybe even changing saves down the line.

What I don't want, and I mentioned this in the other thread, is a Wizard who's identity is being "the best". I appreciate this is how Wizard has been before, and it's a fantasy people enjoy and are attached to, but if we assume pf3e, pf2e unchained, whatever holds the same goals as PF2e, it's just not something that can be facilitated.

At the worst case, it could constrain design space where every new caster feature has to be evaluated against "does this make them better than wizard?" and once that dam breaks, that's it. Wizard's identity is gone.

I don't think it would go that far, but it's a very real possibility.

A metamagic specialist definitely captures a lot of the fantasy, and I love the idea of just having "Linear Spell" as a metamagic and such. You could even do things like "Selective Spell" that lets you exclude INT targets from an AoE so you can drop a fireball in a tiny room and not hit your allies (probably want some frequency limit but even so).

I've also thought about breadth of spells and I think you should be able to over-prepare or something. Like what if you could prepare 6 spells of each rank but only cast 4 of those each day, which would mitigate the weaknesses of prepared casting by letting you have both silver bullets and generically useful stuff loaded each day.

Given how Halcyon magic works, I'd also probably allow them a feat to cheat at spell lists somehow. Let them add spells of other traditions to their spellbook but at a drawback or something (takes two slots, or lower max rank when preparing, etc). The truth of magic is magic is already there as one of the big Arcana feats at 15, and as Wizard in particular is the class about study then they're the ones who make sense to get that. Yes, there's already the archetype for it, but still.

I think in general it makes sense for Eidolons to be able to use mundane items. And then just say potions work normally on them, but that's outside the scope of errata (it just seems odd if healing elixirs work and healing potions don't etc).

AestheticDialectic wrote:

gesalt wrote:

The pf2e wizard simply offers nothing mechanically good or interesting compared to other casters. You could delete the whole class and nothing of value would have been lost.

If I ever want to play a scholar-caster again I'll just save it for a system where it isn't bad.

Whatever problems the class has, this hyperbole hurts your case. Having the most top slots at minimum is mechanically good

5 inflexible prepared slots with blending with 1 locked often as not to a mediocre spell is inferior to 4 spontaneous slots I can use on whichever top-tier spell as needed.

So no, I don't think the wizard is mechanically good and would recommend that nobody ever play one in this system.

Edit: not to mention how much better CHA is as a stat, the better focus spells, etc

Just in general I find spontaneous casters so much better to play. Now granted, this is basically all Society play. But I would 100% throw away prepared casters in the future if I could.

And if you do that, what might be the defining Wizard trait is what Sorcerer currently gets with Arcane Evolution - the ability to swap out your repertoire every day. A trade off of the size of the repertoire (but the same amount of magic each day, just fewer options in the moment) for being able to tailor your spells to the day's problems.

I do like that take on Wizard as the studious type with extra tricks.

If I had to do it from scratch, I'd look at Spell Substitution as one specialization to juice. The out of combat swapping is great. But they should also be able to swap mid-combat with some kind of cost or restriction. Expend an extra slot a rank or two lower or something, and in exchange you get to have exactly the spell you need right now from your entire spellbook. Possibly make that once per day, but it's still the flavor of winning by sheer knowledge.

The other angle would be something like ad-hoc spells. You understand magic so well you can improvise a spell on the fly. This would be the metamagic specialist, but they should get some unique options like turning any spell into a line spell. Like, let them sacrifice an extra prepared spell to use its AoE template for a different spell. So they can prepare Noise Blast in 2nd rank slots and just use that to tailor the damage of their Lightning Bolt to better hit enemies and such.

Maybe their bonded item should be a battery for these tricks and so Drain Bonded Item is doing different things for every wizard. (The universalist's improved spell reuse also works great here imo - a caster so practiced they get more mileage out of spells than anyone else). But it would need to be more rechargable or something, I guess.

You could remove the Unstable trait entirely from Explode and it would still only be average. It's very good at level 1 but doesn't scale enough to be worth the unstable trait (The only damaging unstable effect worth it is Megavolt. Everything else is underpowered. ...well, Celestial Cacaphony's solid. TXCG's new options were all actually interesting - if the rest of the class's options were like those there'd be far fewer complaints). Compare it to things like Steel on Steel that scales at 2d4 every two levels (about 50% faster) and can fire off freely.

If you look at the damage of AoEs available to martial classes, the at will ones tend to average out to similar damage to strikes at the same level (and some of them are explicitly just "strike everything/saves against strike damage).

The ones with once per fight limits tend to be on par with focus spells/spell slots (Dragon Rage Breath for instance is just 1/fight Fireball damage for a barbarian).

The original unstable actions all have the damage of at-will AoEs but only once per fight instead. Megavolt is the only real exception there.

Does the spell guide work only for sorcerers or for any spellcaster class?

It may be labelled a sorcerer guide but it's pretty much a general purpose guide to spells. The end even has suggestions for spell lists on other classes. Spells that are particularly useful to specific classes get called out as such, etc.