I don't have the book, but I haven't seen almost any complaints about the Animist, except that it's complex, which most people are taking to be a good thing. Pretty cool since I remember it being heavily criticized in the playtest. I will concede that the reactions here alongside my initial trepidations means I'll probably skip on this book. Maybe I'll grab it as a pdf in the future when there's a Humble Bundle or something.
You’re a gem! Thx!! And RIP ** spoiler omitted ** Could you or someone else expand on "Dragon Gods"? I have a PC heavily invested into draconic deities.
4e was even more granular than that: it also had the critical condition at 25% hp. I don't think most would go so far, but having a threshold of 1/(n+1), with n being the individual creature's level difference with the caster wouldn't be the most arduous solution.
I'm cautiously unoptimistic about what we've heard so far.
For instance, a level 20 non-mythic party, I imagine, beats a level 1 mythic monster. And a level 2 mythic monster. But at some point, that changes. And it seems like that would change before the mythic monster was level 24. So hopefully there's a kind of guidance on where that line, blurry though it may be, is. And to curtail the comments of "only mythic parties should be taking on mythic monsters", it was a commonly recommended path to mythic ascension in 1e that the PCs would defeat a mythic monster at the conclusion of a long quest. So there's plenty of narrative precedent for it.
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if the previous level 26-30 creatures were re-balanced to be level 21-25 but with many new Mythic abilities put onto them. Their increased threat level would still exist, but it'd exist under the framework on the PF2E system instead of what they were in PF1E.Yeah, from the various hints devs have been giving that's my impression as well. If Baba Yaga or Varklops are statted in 2E their math will be that of a level 25 creature, not 30. But they'll have rulebending Mythic Abilities that will have the likes of Treerazer going "Wait, you can do what?" Before squishing him like a bug. If a level 25 creature can squish another level 25 creature like a bug, that sounds like a good indicator that the first creature should have a higher level.
I'm interested to see how in the world this system is going to be balanced. Not that original Mythic ever was, but with the tight math being such a selling point of the 2E system, this preview seems to fly in the face of that. Mythic proficiency sounds bonkers, even if limited in scope and number of uses per day.
Cultivator makes them sound more like horticulturists than martial artists, imo.
I mostly feel it in the stat blocks, tbh.
On the one hand, alignment's removal theoretically gives a GM more leeway to use a creature in a wider variety of scenarios, by the other hand requires the GM to select monsters from a larger pool with less guidance. Besides, WRT monster alignment I always considered the listed one as "typical", not absolute (except for fiends and celestials) . So I don't actually buy in to my own point about using a given monster in a wide variety of situations.
Regarding player character alignment, I see no significance since the removal.
The discrepancy has me miffed, I'm not gonna lie. The blog post specifies that hard covers are going to vary in price, based on page count, which is something I can get behind. And Howl of the Wild actually perfectly fits the estimation between their listed price examples. The fact that War of Immortals has the same listed page count and a different price still rankles, however. Especially since it appears to be the only exception to the blog post's projections.
Interesting. The prices for HotW and WoI doesn't perfectly match any of the examples in that blog post. Interpolating from the blog post, does that mean that HotW has ~224 pages, and WoI has ~246 pages? Oh. No, the page numbers are listed on the product page, and they're both 224. HotW matches expectations, but WoI priced higher than was explained as "typical" for its page count.
Was perusing the War of Immortals blog post and when I went to look at the books, I saw a $67.49 price tag, which I'd never seen before.
Sorting rulebooks by price, it became clear that those are the two most expensive non-Special hardcover books right now. The Core series of books are all $59.99. Is this the expected price for hard covers going forward? I was already pretty on the fence about buying HotW and WoI before I noticed the price disparity. Like, $5.00 and $7.50 isn't a lot of extra money. It's just kind of a sentiment thing. "Do I really want to pay more money for a book I wasn't super excited about anyway?" If this is the new price, I'll probably just end up being a little more discerning about which books I end up getting. Times is tough all around. edit: Yes, PDFs exist, but I strongly prefer physical books. So in almost all cases, if I'm interested enough to buy a RPG book, I'm interested in buying a physical one.
Oh man, it's a small shame Crown of the Kobold King was remade prior to PC2. That would be an exceptional place to drop a new heritage, related to the stuff that lives below that tribe.
maybe, and this might get dark, the more mundane the setting, the less... prolific... kobolds get. their young die in their eggs if they are laid in some random, droll, place. so the little guys have to find weird magical locations to keep the species going... darn... that's pretty good! Genuinely, I think the thread is helping me get over my frustrations and look forward. At least the Lore ones, anyway. I want to read about kobolds with weird sources of power.
I think this would sit better with me if the Surki didn't give me a similar vibe, released one book prior. Or if they leaned into it way harder with their new heritages and feats.
Genuinely, I am glad that some people prefer the increased flexibility over their previously less flexible, albeit more defined, lore niche. I will just never be among those people. Perhaps if they had always been that way in PF2 I'd feel otherwise, but not much use in speculating about how things might have been different.
Never liked the change to moving Kobolds from little dragon guys to ambient magic sponges. (Didn't we just get Surki for that?) It's another in a long line of making options more flexible at the cost of a concrete identity. I'm rarely a fan, but whatever. I was mostly planning on looking the other way as much as possible and playing my Kobolds largely as before. Finally got a chance to delve into my PC2 this morning. Kobolds can no longer gain a permanent fly speed. They still get access to the garbage Winglets feat at level 5, which is a prereq for the Fly once per turn style feat that is so popular in the flight feat chain they get at level 9 (which the flight capable ancestries get 4 level earlier).
There's no third feat granting access to an actual fly speed, so Kobolds are limited to 1 fly action per round forever. Arguably, access is somewhat easier because there's no heritage requirement, but this change is terrible.
I usually try not to be this rage posty, but it feels like mechanically and thematically my favorite ancestry is no longer what it was, and that's extremely frustrating to me.
SF1 operatives getting 5 levels worth of early access to a typically highly thematic exploit did a lot to engender me to a particular specialization.
Looking to the SF2 Operative:
The actual unique things the specializations grants, the exploits and advanced exploits, are almost all combat-specific abilities. Intellectually I understand the desire to make the operative into more of a striker and shift skills more over to the Envoy, but it feels like this is too far in that direction. It makes the specialization choice irrelevant outside of combat, which feel wrong to me. Two changes I'd like to see for the operative:
2.) A unique, not specifically combat-related, ability somewhat early on. I'm thinking like the 4-6 range. Could be something baked into the base specialization or, I think more likely, actual class feats with a specialization as a prereq. Just something the specialization can get that helps them stand out. Especially outside of changes to the turn-by-turn combat routine.
Also note that for official playtesting, it is requested to not use Pathfinder Second Edition ancestries, backgrounds, classes, equipment, and feats that aren’t explicitly included in the playtest. Huh. That seems to fly in the face of the text in the book, itself: "All of the classes in this book work alongside those in the Pathfinder roleplaying game, and we encourage trying one or more of these classes out alongside Pathfinder classes to see how they work!"I mean, I get the desire to focus the playtest on the new stuff, but why include that line IN the playtest book?
If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
Attacking people who disagree with your assessment isn't exactly discussing in good faith, either. Framing the discussion on the person who said something ("It's absolutely wild to me that people are...") and not on the something they said is almost always a bad faith argument, imo. It is, however, a great way to convince people to not engage with your posts in the future.
"I ain't telling you jack" is a direct answer that doesn't attempt to deceive the listener.
I'd probably let it work the first time or against particularly dumb or unwitty foes, but after the first time would warrant a discussion about expectations going forward.
Redditors are literally making jokes about us still being hung up on the wizard class which was released ages ago when there's all this awesome new content to be covered and discussed. They aren't wrong, but neither are we. But I don't feel I have that much that I particularly care about. The only PC2 class I really was invested in was the Investigator. But it doesn't sound like it got nearly as much love as I'd have hoped, so I'm a little checked out for the time being. That probably changes when I can go buy a copy.
Kind of unfortunate in that it seems like a Twirling Throw wouldn't allow a Panached up Swashbuckler to add their precise strike damage past the first range increment, a la the restrictions on Flying Blade. On the other hand, Twirling Throw wasn't stated to have the same kinds of weapon trait-based restrictions as Flying Blade, so they could chuck any kind of throw weapon a greater distance without penalty.
RIP the Elemental Instinct barbarian granting kineticist impulses the rage trait. Which means if a main class kineticist took Barbarian Dedication w/ elemental instinct and then took Instinct Ability at level 6, they'd lose access to virtually of of their kineticist powers outside of rage. I wish the last line of Elemental Rage were changed to "If you have any kineticist impulses with the same element type as the one you chose for your instinct, such as ones gained by taking the Kineticist Dedication multiclass feat, they gain the rage trait while your are raging."
I am almost positive I t remember James Case saying entangling fauna replaced both entangle and web. The mechanics are almost the same. The narrative is intentionally not web like.Entangling flora is the spell o think you are looking for. They had to leave the narrative of webs behind I think.I'd call that more equivalent to Entangle than to Web. Entangling Fauna is horrifying, amazing, and being added to my ever-growing list of homebrew things.
I get ya. It's an unfortunate market reality. Y'all's older "The Abomination Vaults Comes to 5E!" post really got the point across right from the title. Different times. Anywho, I'm still super jazzed for the actual product. I've got a group that I've been hoping to get onto Paizo's side for a while and I think this'll be a good stopgap on the path of "I don't want to learn a whole new system".
There's no visual trait. As long as your banner is visible (such as by being affixed to your weapon or worn attached to a pole alongside your backpack), you and all allies in a 30- foot emanation gain a +1 status bonus to Will saves and DCs against fear effects. You pause or resume this effect as part of any action you would typically use to stow or retrieve your banner, such as Interacting to stow it. If your banner is destroyed or stolen, allies within 30 feet become frightened 1. This effect has the aura, commander, emotion, mental, and visual traits.
I think a bunch of the tactics can be broadened slightly.
Mountaineer and Naval training can be combined into one tactic that grants either a swim or climb speed, chosen when you prepare that tactic with your squad. Probably a more generalist Master Tactic will be released, since the two in the playtest are very disparate in the playstyle and party they're good in.
Full disclosure: I noticed that the flavor text on Intercept Strike mentions your armor taking the blow, but none of the ability's actual requirements mention armor. So I got the image of this scrawny naked man jumping in front of a massive two-handed axe, and it just bouncing off of his flesh, because that's how the ability works as written, and it's hilarious. Then I tried planning out a build that uses all feats that don't require medium or heavy armor. That's when I noticed the lack of proficiency gain in unarmored and light armor.
One reason the commander isn't going to fall into certain niches is to make it generally useable with randos who show up at a PFS table. "I just sit in the back and send good vibes or order you around" isn't going to fly socially and in many cases mechanically in that environment. Most decent caster builds will have a mix of direct support buffs, debuffs, utility, and damage. Totally removing the debuffs and damage will almost result in a strictly worse caster, just the same as removing the buffs and/or utility would. Acting like a typical bard or cleric functions just fine never casting spells that affect the enemy is hyperbole at best and deceptive at worst.If a cleric or Bard could get by without casting spells that affect the enemy, they'd have no reason to maximize their caster stat, since it has minimal ROI besides bumping save DCs and spell attacks, which are inherently enemy-focused stats.
Sun Tzu had legions. Typical Pathfinder table has 4-6 total individuals. You are not the same.
Archers requires stat investiture. Archers suffers from partial cover due to allies. Well-built archers do measurably less damage than well-build melee characters, probably designed that way because they don't have to move, so they deal less damage per action as compensation for requiring fewer actions to set up. Your example would require 1 point of intelligence, which is hardly a cost. Even if your version gave you a max number of squadmates equal to your int mod, you're still getting to make melee attacks at a distance without requiring any of the physical stats (or magical equipment) necessary to do so. Bards don't need a significant investment to spam their composition cantrips, but if that's all they're doing they're missing out on 10th level spellcasting. Which many times does incentivize putting their stats into Charisma anyway, since saving throws exist. Regarding the Psychic Amp Message:
That version of the DC thing makes it feel like the Commander is trying to use their allies against their will?
I dont see how my suggestion is overpowered at all. You did not address most of the points I mentioned: You're still getting to attack 3 times without having to spend the actions necessary to move into position.You get to attack from multiple locations with no cost. Suppose in your example the Barbarian felled their foe with your first attack. Now you're attacking with the Fighter from potentially up to 60ft away from where that occurred at no penalty.
You're getting to double dip the power into single target buffs. If that Barbarian received a rank 6 Heroism, you'd effectively be increasing the power of that spell by an extra third or more since you're getting extra buffed attacks, again at no cost. Your entire math argument only works if the Barbarian, Fighter, and Rogue are in non-magical equipment, with 0 buffs, and are all in range to hit each of the 3 different enemies. Heck, that's another point: since this character you've suggested requires no stat or equipment investment, you get to invest those extra resources into the rest of the party, which only makes this whole situation worse, since now we're double dipping in economy. Your suggestion that the ally makes a will save even makes the problem WORSE, since they're saving against the Commander's DC, the Commander is incentivized to have a lower DC, which should never be the case.
For me, having most of their feats and such require medium or heavy does most of the work to get me to want to use those armors.
But the original premise remains valid.
What you ask for is crazy overpowered. Trading 1 for 1 actions is mega powerful; you give extra attacks to your best striker and it's better than just being a 2nd striker:
Your proposal grants unbelievable power at level 1 and makes no concessions or limitations that make it okay.
|
