Elvenoob's page

Anyway, mention of it being present in the upcoming Gamemastery Guide got me thinking, how exactly should Alignment be removed?

The Angelic Sorcerer by Default has Divine Lance, so in order to do this we need to deal with Law, Chaos, Good AND evil damage. And that's about it, champion aside classes don't really have alignment restrictions, and even if you took out the demands of the tenants of good, each archetype we have makes it's own demands plenty clear.

So, how to reconcile away these damage types, becomes about the only issue. (And of course, subbing in other domains for the gods who do have those explicit domains.) (And I guess replacing detection of alignment with detection of outsiders?)

Now, I feel like Good and Evil damage can kind of be reconciled with another quirky mechanic, Positive and Negative energy. This doesn't do any changes to most, say, Healing and Harming spells, just rewords them a little, but it means the *aesthetic* of good and evil damage can sort of be maintained.

I'm of course talking about Radiant and Necrotic.

Heal would still heal, or deal radiant damage to undead, but Good damaging effects would instead deal Radiant damage to everyone (with Celestial creatures having resistance to it as one might expect, and fiends and vampires and such having weakness).

And necrotic works fairly well as the darker mirror to this, although in some cases maybe just using fire would work better?

However, to fully integrate such an approach you'd likely want to have a few straight up Radiant damaging spells on both the Arcane and Primal lists, not as many as the former-good spells, but enough.

And, of course... The hell would you do with Lawful and Chaotic damage?

A gimmicky approach like the one 5e took for wild-magic-ish spells just feels kinda weird, but all the same these two seem to defy any attempt to just automatically replace all instances of Lawful damage with X, so I'm very curious to see how Paizo handles that.

Still a bit frustrated that it's drawing on mostly edgy pop culture anarchy rather than the actual political and philosophical movement, but aside from that it's pretty cool stuff.

Tapu wrote:

There's a clear double-standard here.

Is there? Chaos as an alignment represents capriciousness, a disregard for the concerns of others and a general antipathy toward organizations and hierarchies in general. CN in particular is an alignment that exemplifies not giving a damn about anything other than your own interests, although not to the same extreme as a CE character.

That they'd come across as problematic in relation to species' that define themselves around complex societies seems kind of a given. Chaos is, well, chaos.

Chaos opposed to Law instead of Order is inherently weird, to be honest.

Although, it does provide a clear and uncommon place for a few societies which would be most similar to modern anarchism/anarcho-communism.

Order, but through a concerted effort towards equality and freedom, and a constant effort to maintain that and prevent unjustified hierarchies for emerging. (Which is more complex than it looks and gets into ideas like, yes trust the doctor in matters of medicine, but that authority doesn't carry over into other situations unless they have earned it there too.)

Unfortunately, what we GOT instead of an interesting attempt at a medieval society following those ideals without the same advancements that enable it in the modern era, was Galt. And Galt was shallow, confusing and ultimately just kind of a rubbish place nobody would want to live in.

I don't like how in a world with many deities, the game rules nonetheless assume people are not polytheists. Like there's no reason someone who isn't directly affiliated with a church or deity, wouldn't say prayers or perform rites for whatever deities are appropriate to their immediate concerns.

Like it shouldn't be weird for the same person to say a prayer to Desna and Gozreh before an ocean voyage; to say a prayer to Erastil for a good harvest; say a prayer to Irori that the tax collector is honest; and say a prayer to Iomedae, Gorum, and Torag before a battle.

But the character sheet just has one spot for deity.

THIS! This has been nagging me for AGES! Hell most common folk wouldn't even have a single preferred deity, unless it's one tied to their profession like Posiedon was for greek fishermen.

It's only when you get into the hardcore clergy that you started having Seers following Apollo and priestesses of Athena and so on.

Yet in this you're expected to follow 1 special god more so than the others by default, they're treated more like individual religions than a pantheon coexisting.

Hsui I've already explained this, the fact that they don't have a core function of, not the specific class, but spontaneous spellcasting as a whole, is what makes the spontaneous duo weaker COMPARED TO OTHER MULTICLASS ARCHETYPES.

EDIT (to better respond to your edit): The comparison to make would be most akin to a Wizard's spellbook, which the multiclasss archetype does indeed give full free access to as if they were a pure wizard/

But, like, Compare this to the Wizard Multiclass, who has exactly the same *list access* mechanics as his full caster bretheren, just slightly delayed and diminished in number.

These weaknesses are there, and still push for a different playstyle to the reverse combo, but ON TOP OF THAT you don't have enough spells known to even properly establish your character's flavour until level 8 because you keep needing to go back for crap you've already learned just to make it keep up with the game.

Like, adding Signature spells would just mean they can actually make use of their spell slots in a similar way to their original class, rather than more akin to a Wizard multiclass but you only get to change your preparations when you level up.

They're so utterly weak compared to OTHER Multiclass archetypes due to the mechanics of spontaneous casting.

Signature spells is an important mechanic for spontaneous casters, helping their small Known lists not feel like quite so much of an oppressive force... However, it's technically a Class Feature, so Multiclassing Sorcerers and Bards, who would struggle under the burden of an even smaller Known list, not to mention not having the focus spells which also help alleviate the burden of the core classes on the spells known segment of their lists...

They don't get it.

So, they're left without what is basically a core mechanic of spontaneous spellcasting, since it's consistently given to both Sorc and Bard the instant they can actually make use of them at 3.

This seems like an accidental oversight, since elsewhere in the book, discussions of spontaneous casting just assume Signature Spells are present when discussing heightening. If there were cases where you were supposed to have spontaneous casting without that feature, I feel like that would have also been worded to reflect it...

What about we just include 5e-style Short Resting and spending hit dice to heal outside of combat, but not tie that into other mechanics like they do?

This way we can happily nerf Wands of CLW into the dirt without worrying too much about sustaining an adventuring party's HP bars.

Alchemists and Potions need to be taken out of the Resonance system, though, it makes no sense to include those, and leaves alchemists really underpowered.

Ooooh, I like that idea Tholomyes...

So, just one pool of generic "trade for class feats" feats, but pre-requisite gated; "The ability to cast spells", or "Expert with (Relevant item)"

That could definitely work, yeah, though the Dedications would also need to get a slight buff, from making you Trained in weapons, to Expert, in order to enable access to said feats.

First, to explain the problem.

A ton of very generic combat feats like quick draw and power attack have been class locked, including the basic lines for each weapon, and generic maneuvers which could be learned by anyone with sufficient combat training, like I mentioned above.

To solve this, my suggestion is adding a new feat pool, Combat Feats.

Characters with a martial class (Rogue, Monk, Fighter, Barbarian, Ranger, Paladin) would be able to freely spend a class feat to take any one of these combat feats. (Existing pre-requisites would remain, of course.)

Characters who multiclass into one of those classes would also gain the ability to do this as part of their Archetype Dedication feat.

This leaves the ACTUAL class feat design space for things which interface directly with the class' features or flavour.

And, most importantly, this approach doesn't arbitrarily prevent people from making a Sword & Board Ranger or an Archer Paladin, or any similar flavours which might be slightly less common than your generic dual-wielding rangers or whatever, but is no less valid despite that.

It's definitely possible to create a solid class identity for every class without randomly gating off certain playing styles just because they're not the most common.